Underground city, City of Intelligent Machines.

This is an automated city constructed by Burrowing Insects.

The city moves incessantly and adjusts its urban planning based on the current environment and status.

The Mountain and Sea People living within have long adapted to the city’s constant changes.

Some of the Mountain and Sea People even gamble on whether the buildings outside their window will change by the next day.

Under the management of the city’s main control center, the nano machines forming the city’s foundation silently and invisibly influence the daily lives of the Mountain and Sea People.

Inhabitants of this city, if they don’t implant navigation implants specifically, may get lost as soon as they step outside.

Nonetheless, exceptions always exist.

Humanoid·All-terrain Architech Intelligent Mechanism—Jia Shen is one of these exceptions.

Though the main control center of the City of Intelligent Machines has high authority and can change the city’s nano-level structures,

Under normal circumstances, it does not drastically alter the city.

Thus, intelligent machines specialized in modular reconstruction and assembly were born.

Jia Shen, as one of them, often appears in the Mountain and Sea People’s sight with its humanoid structure.

Whenever the city needs changes and expansion, the massive Jia Shen carries huge modular components for restructuring and renovating the buildings.

Yet one day, while Jia Shen was following instructions embedded in its system, performing its routine work.

Jia Shen’s partner—a unique Burrowing Insect with a single horn, four legs, and three tails—climbed onto its head.

"Jia Shen, have you moved on your own again?"

This unique Burrowing Insect is also one of the Mountain and Sea People.

It calls itself "A Qi," being one of the few who willingly approaches these intelligent engineering machines.

According to A Qi, it was the seventh child born to its parents, hence the blunt name A Qi.

Perhaps due to this, after becoming independent as an adult, A Qi became Jia Shen’s maintenance technician, specializing in maintaining humanoid intelligent engineering machines like Jia Shen.

"Moved on my own?"

The mechanized head armor suddenly opened wide.

A scarlet single eye appeared within the armor and looked at A Qi.

Jia Shen, as a high-grade architectural intelligent mechanism, was imbued with low-grade artificial intelligence at its creation.

Though incapable of independent thoughts and decisions,

The extensive internal database of Jia Shen is sufficient to deal with any possible situations.

Only the "moving on your own" mentioned by A Qi seemed beyond the understanding scope of Jia Shen’s low-grade artificial intelligence, unable to address it with the existing data in its database.

"I know you can’t comprehend. Open your ’core’, I need to go in and inspect!"

Knocking helplessly on Jia Shen’s sturdy outer shell, A Qi said irritably.

"Alright, please proceed with formal operations as per the maintenance guide, avoid unauthorized operations."

"In case of accident, I will activate the protection program immediately..."

The tall humanoid machine put down the architectural module in its hand, then its scarlet single eye began rapidly contracting, transforming.

The next second, a handrail, which A Qi could climb, appeared in front of it, directing A Qi to the deepest point of the scarlet single eye’s data core.

"Don’t worry! I’m not a novice; I’ll surely find out the reason for your unauthorized actions this time."

Without any hesitation, A Qi entered Jia Shen’s scarlet single eye.

......................................................

The core deep within the single eye of Jia Shen, was unexpectedly spacious.

Pure white armor filled the entire core, while clean and tidy data pipelines connected each part of Jia Shen like a neural system.

At the central spot of these armors and data pipelines, a physical data module endlessly radiated seven-colored lights.

From A Qi’s current position, it could clearly see the data messages inside that data module.

"Sure enough, an anomaly appeared here!"

Connecting its brain-computer to the data module, A Qi soon noticed a large cluster of garbled data within the module’s contained data messages.

By comparing the timeline, it could basically confirm that it was data messages from when Jia Shen moved unauthorizedly.

"Is it just a simple BUG?"

"Or did someone invade Jia Shen’s core?"

Amidst substantial confusion and doubt, A Qi was about to further restore the scrambled data cluster when it suddenly discovered the data messages on its retina dramatically changed.

Sizzling... 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

In an instant, intense electric current surged from the data pipelines and swiftly appeared at the brain-computer interface.

Realizing the danger, A Qi disregarded much and immediately extended its claw to disconnect the external data line of the brain-computer.

Unexpectedly, the garbled data cluster directly rushed out of the data module, morphing into a physical form.

"What!?"

It was a golden gear, a crystal emitting infinite Divine Power.

A Qi instantly recognized it; this was precisely the famed new energy of recent times—Sun Gear.

No time to dwell on why the Sun Gear appeared at Jia Shen’s core; A Qi decided immediately.

Crack!

At the risk of burning out the brain-computer and its brain, A Qi severed the external data line of the brain-computer in a single stroke.

Then, A Qi only felt everything go dark.

It didn’t even notice that the golden Sun Gear was just rushing straight toward it.

Bang!

After a loud explosion, the entrance to the core quickly closed, replaced by the reperked up scarlet single eye.

"..."

Silently looking at the architectural module it had just placed down, Jia Shen had utterly forgotten what had just transpired.

Then, the perplexed Jia Shen performed an action absolutely impossible for low-grade artificial intelligence—a systemic self-check.

From hardware structure to operating programs, to image playback...

Jia Shen seemed to witness again the scene that just unfolded, watching A Qi enter its core, never to emerge again.

"A Qi..."

A hint of bewilderment appeared in the cold mechanical voice for the first time.

Jia Shen did not understand what was happening to itself and didn’t know why A Qi hadn’t reemerged.

The database built into the system didn’t tell Jia Shen what all this happening now meant, nor did it tell how it should handle such a situation.

The only certainty was that Jia Shen now had become the city’s BUG.

Woo...woo...woo...

With the interruption of A Qi’s Life signal, the main control center of the City of Intelligent Machines was alerted and immediately issued the highest danger level city-wide alert.

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