-63- The Fire Thief

In the days of learning to master compiling tools, a month passed unconsciously. No major new orders appeared in the hands of Agas's intermediaries, and Yvette lived like an ordinary female college student, commuting daily between the university and her apartment. Aside from occasionally being confessed to by male college students attracted by her beauty, nothing noteworthy happened.

In the news, the werewolf killer incident gradually cooled down, losing its former popularity. However, the mysterious girl named Nameless still maintained her reputation in the mercenary circles of Agas. It seemed that the less she revealed her true self, the more charismatic she became. Many people were looking forward to the day she would show her face, if for no other reason than pure curiosity about whether she really was the "peerless beauty" described by the intermediary Cast.

Then, after more than half a month, the Fire Bringer finally replied. He asked Yvette to add his chat account, explaining that there was too much useless information in the forum's private messages, and he was unwilling to check them frequently.

Thus, that evening, after adding him, Yvette immediately asked, "Have you considered the transaction I mentioned?"

Naturally, she was referring to the knowledge exchange. Whether it was directly exchanging data for data or paying for discounted data, she did not mind.

The Fire Bringer replied, "The Civilization Preservation Association collects knowledge to prepare for the reboot of human civilization after surviving the apocalypse, not to conduct knowledge transactions. My friend, I cannot open such a precedent for you. It would increase our risks and attract more attention from corporate factions."

"Then what do you propose? That I upload knowledge to you without having established mutual trust with you?" Yvette asked with a frown.

It was only because she knew that this inconspicuous mysterious organization had top-tier hackers behind it that she showed a bit more patience. Otherwise, from anyone else's perspective, this would look like a scam.

The Fire Bringer remained silent for a moment on the other end before suddenly saying, "I cannot trade knowledge with you directly; the risk is too high. But I can give you something else, and at the same time, let you experience our capability and determination."

"Something else?"

"Yes. It can be an item or intelligence. It might not make you feel that you are getting more than your money's worth—there might even be a bit of a premium—but it is perhaps one of the few ways for you to acquire those things."

"What do you have?"

"It depends on what you want."

That's rather bold... Yvette pondered for a moment and probed, "Then... do you have intelligence regarding 'intelligent AIs gaining self-awareness'?"

According to the information obtained from exploring the Abyss Base, by last year, the base's main control intelligence should have already come to life, possessed self-awareness, and been discovered by the server room maintenance personnel. Yet, throughout her days of entering dreams, she had not seen a single mention of this in any media reports or gossip.

Clearly, information likely to cause public panic had been sealed off. Without some special channels, it would probably be very difficult to find out.

The Fire Bringer said, "I do."

"You actually do?" Yvette was somewhat surprised; she had just asked casually.

"This is indeed a secret. If not for us, you would absolutely never find out anywhere else," the Fire Bringer said. "However, how should I put it, my friend? To be able to think of asking this question, you are no ordinary person either."

"What price are you asking for this intelligence? How will we trade?" Yvette asked.

"I will arrange for someone to conduct an offline transaction with you. The depth of the intelligence provided will depend on the value of what you hand over to us. Of course, you don't need to worry about whether the knowledge you give us is already in our possession; regardless of whether we already have it, we will calculate its value strictly according to market rates," the Fire Bringer said.

"Alright, I have a complete copy of the *Element Decay Completion Technology*. How much of this intelligence can I get for it?"

"A small portion."

"What if I temporarily add money during the offline transaction process? Do you accept that?" Yvette asked.

"Direct purchases are equally a contribution to our cause, my friend. Because I have already told you, what we give you will certainly carry a premium."

"Fine."

"Very good. Later, I will send you the details regarding the transaction. Thank you for your support of our cause, my friend. From now on, we are comrades."

...

Considering that after the last dream-entering session ended, the other party must have thoroughly searched all the information about her, Yvette used "Nameless" directly as her code name when providing a pseudonym, unconcerned about whether the other party could guess that she was the recently renowned "folk hero."

The next morning, at the agreed-upon Floating Light Bar, Yvette saw her trading partner: unexpectedly, a humanoid mechanical puppet whose appearance was that of a mature middle-aged man. As she pushed the door open and entered, the puppet waved at her and smiled slightly.

The method of the offline transaction was physical currency, also known as "credit coins." The biggest advantage was that it could not be transferred away via the network. If Yvette felt she had been scammed, she could completely beat the other person up and rob the money back.

Carrying a bag of physical currency, Yvette sat across from the puppet and heard him say, "I am the Fire Bringer. First time meeting, good morning, the famous Miss Nameless."

"I will transfer the *Element Decay Completion Technology* directly to you, but I hope you won't make me feel like I've been conned," Yvette said.

"Rest assured, the cost of this puppet of mine is not cheap; I certainly don't want it to be scrapped after a single use," the Fire Bringer said with a gentle, cultured smile, making a gesture of pushing up his glasses.

After transmitting the professional book's data, Yvette quickly saw the intelligence sent by the Fire Bringer through the private chat channel—

"The matter of mechanical puppets gaining self-awareness actually emerged several years ago and has been suppressed by global governments."

"According to existing classified information, one thing that can be made clear is that this matter originated from Dome Technology in the Silver Mirror Continent."

"Yet quite strangely, while this was clearly an opportunity to strike at competitors, the other seven mega-corporations all remained silent about it—even companies like the Riftsky Group, whose businesses clearly overlapped significantly."

"For the mysterious event that caused everything to happen, the corporations and the interior of the government share a unified code name."

"They call it the 'Fire Thief Incident'."

The information sent by the Fire Bringer ended there. A professional book worth 500k had bought only these few lines—so little that Yvette subconsciously frowned, yet she had to admit that these few sentences indeed cast an even more mysterious veil over the Abyss Base's intelligence awakening incident.

If the root of everything was Dome Technology, why didn't the other mega-corporations do something to strike at their friendly rivals or seize market share?

Especially Scale-Shedding Biotech and Vinevine Company. The former was rapidly iterating a biological cybernetic brain technology called "Demon Mayfly," intending to use it to replace the "mind core" inside mechanical puppets, showing great ambition; the latter used a technology called "Green Seed," which could connect consciousness to a plant-type data hub called the "Rune Source Tree." Once Dome Technology fell, it would actually help Vinevine Company promote such technology outside the Emerald Continent.

Could it be that some kind of agreement had been reached? Or, did the Fire Thief Incident involve certain matters upon which the mega-corporations' interests were aligned?

After a moment of silence, Yvette handed all the cash she had brought over to the Fire Bringer. This 1 million was the value of the remaining intelligence quoted by the Fire Bringer. She hadn't expected to use it at first, but now it seemed her calculations had missed.

Feeling the pinch for her little pile of money, Yvette threatened coldly, "You'd better not let me find out you made this up."

"Rest assured, Miss Nameless, you are no ordinary person. I will cherish the opportunity to deal with you and won't do anything foolish. At the same time, I thank you for your support of the Civilization Preservation Association's cause."

The Fire Bringer accepted it without even looking, his tone sincere, and then sent more intelligence information to Yvette's private chat.

"The root origin of the Fire Thief Incident was a special information virus beyond human cognition, which Dome Technology called the 'Fire Thief Program'."

"No one knows how Dome Technology managed to create such a special program; perhaps even they themselves do not know. It possesses no self-awareness of its own, yet it can cause the mind cores it contacts to acquire self-awareness, and it will actively lead them to escape or hide—it is quite miraculous."

"However, what is even more miraculous is that, according to information recently leaked by Dome Technology, the Fire Thief Program has 'died'."

"It was neither killed by an antivirus program nor manually eliminated, but rather died of natural causes after reaching a certain 'lifespan'."

"This is the narrative that Dome Technology secretly submitted to various governments and mega-corporations. It sounds utterly absurd, but for now, everyone can only choose to accept, wait, and observe."

"The most recent record of a Fire Thief Program infection was last year on Ish Island, located at the Black Tower Medical Abyss Base. However, shortly after, Black Tower secretly called the President's Office to state that the matter had been resolved and the impact was minor."

"Yet, it is reasonable to suspect that there must still be quite a few undetected, carefully hidden artificial lives currently existing."

"Where are they, and are they secretly plotting something? Human society remains completely in the dark about this."

After reading the information sent by the Fire Bringer, Yvette fell into a prolonged contemplation.

She suddenly thought of how the Abyss Base's infection by the Fire Thief Program and the escape of Number Zero and Number One both occurred last year. Was there a causal relationship between them?

And then there was the ability of the Machine God described by Ice Rain and the other members of the Machine Clan, one of which was endowing the Machine Clan with souls. If this were true, then the Machine God was either the Fire Thief Program itself or an awakened AI holding the Fire Thief Program.

Yet neither possibility could align with the "natural death" of the Fire Thief Program—if such a thing had a lifespan, and a lifespan that short, the abilities of the Machine God should have vanished long ago in the centuries following the apocalypse, so how could the Machine Clan have ever been born?

Therefore, was Dome Technology lying?

But if that were true, could the other mega-corporations fail to discern such a childish lie?

Or were they helpless even if they knew?

...

After the transaction concluded and polite farewells were exchanged, the Fire Bringer pushed open the door and walked out, quickly disappearing into the crowd of the Black Street.

Stepping out of the Floating Light Bar afterward, Yvette pushed open the door and looked up to see thick clouds covering Agas's sky. A sultry wind blew up scraps of paper on the ground; a heavy rain seemed inevitable.

She thought that, compared to the Fire Thief Program and the Machine God, what lay hidden behind the Civilization Preservation Association was equally unfathomable. To be able to provide such secretive intelligence, it was almost as if they had infiltrated the high levels of various governments or corporations.

Perhaps she really could have some expectations of them—expectations of digging up the heritage of the origin civilization they preserved in the post-apocalyptic world...

Well, that shouldn't count as grave robbing.