Chapter 17: Free as I Pleased

by cnwebnovels

It was an internal Sweeper skills competition.

Not only did the underground base’s top competitors participate, but many from outside came as well. All of us newcomers were required to attend.

The competition had six major categories: combat, shooting, communications, mental control, debate, and detection. Each category subdivided further—combat, for instance, included unarmed combat, weapons combat, and restrained combat, with no separation by gender.

I gravitated toward combat, shooting, and mental control, so I focused on those events.

The combat competitors wore protective gear, but these specialized modified humans generated force far beyond normal human limits. Serious injuries and disabilities were common.

Still, I’d heard the base had excellent intelligent repair equipment that could restore injuries quickly. Even so, I figured it had to take time—muscle growth couldn’t be instant.

Watching the combat matches gave me a true sense of how flexible the human body could become, and how much force could be unleashed in a single instant with AI augmentation—how fast, how powerful.

It shattered everything I’d thought possible.

I’d seen Sweepers make arrests before, but those were always one-sided or over in seconds. This competition let me see the absolute limits these fighters could reach.

The shooting events didn’t involve traditional firearms. Instead, there were microwave weapons, particle-beam weapons, laser weapons, phase weapons, electromagnetic weapons, and all kinds of other dazzling things. I heard there were antimatter weapons too, though I didn’t see any.

The shooting competition wasn’t about accuracy but control. Advanced weapons had auto-calibration, but operating AI equipment still required a human operator.

When Gao Minjun and I escaped, we’d used an electromagnetic gun—just a low-grade coilgun with high firing speed and plenty of ammunition but short range and weak punch. Here, they competed with top-tier equipment of every type. It was a real eye-opener.

The mental control competition divided into groups by control distance, object size, and device complexity—four groups total. I watched them all.

Moving objects without touching them, by will alone—I couldn’t do that.

At most, I could activate electronic devices, sense them, pull information from them. But these competitors handled all of it easily.

Of course, they relied on implanted intelligent capsules. Their skills and power came entirely from the micro-intelligent devices implanted in their bodies.

The competition was really just a test of how well each competitor controlled those micro-intelligent devices.

During the object-control event, I spotted Liu Biao facing off against a young woman.

The target: a medical electronic scanner. Turn it on and off.

Liu Biao used his will to activate it; the woman tried to shut it down. Standing about two meters from the device, whoever controlled its state within five minutes would win.

Liu Biao looked supremely confident from the start. For the first four minutes, he dominated completely. The woman only managed to switch it off occasionally, and clearly Liu Biao was letting her—mostly to show off his counterattack ability.

Not much of a contest. More like a cat toying with a mouse.

Watching Liu Biao look so smug made me furious.

He was the one who’d arrested me and locked me in this hellhole two hundred meters underground. Of course I was angry.

So I stood at the back of the crowd and secretly locked down the scanner with everything I had.

At first Liu Biao didn’t think much of it, assuming the woman was fighting back with all her strength. Then he realized something was wrong. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t reactivate the device.

Sweat broke out all over him.

The referee noticed too and immediately ran diagnostics. But the instruments showed only the two competitors had activated their Wisdom Capsules. No one in the audience had activated a Wisdom Capsule to assist.

The moment they announced the result, I slipped out of the hall.

No desire to be caught by Liu Biao.

A few days later, though, Liu Biao tracked me down and asked about my gaokao cheating. I realized immediately—the bastard suspected me.

After all, in a supervised competition like that, no one would’ve helped the woman.

Through my sensing power, I could read his thoughts: he’d questioned her afterward, and she’d admitted winning easily in the final stretch without much effort.

Nothing to do but deny everything.

I ran through the whole story—Mei Qili’s false accusation, denouncing the fake Gao Minjun for framing me, and then admitting Grandma and my classmates had helped me a tiny bit. But I refused to admit I’d cheated.

Liu Biao stared at me with faint mockery, tapping the file in his hand as if to say: Go on, keep acting. I have evidence right here.

What Liu Biao thought was his problem.

I wasn’t admitting anything. If he was so capable, he could go ask Grandma himself.

After that, though, Liu Biao’s attitude toward me changed dramatically.

First, he moved me from the recruitment block into the Cultural Intelligence Department dormitory area.

Everyone got a private room—over thirty square meters. Meals arrived by automated delivery; the machine collected everything afterward. No more cafeteria trips.

No one supervised my movements in and out of the Cultural Intelligence Department building anymore. In fact, no one in the entire Sweeper base seemed to supervise me.

I could go wherever I wanted.

What did this mean? Why had they suddenly stopped watching?

Was I imprisoned or recruited?

If imprisoned, the treatment was too good. If recruited, no one had said so. They just left me alone. I could wander freely with no assigned tasks.

I had no idea what they were up to, so I wanted to find Liu Biao and ask. But I couldn’t find him, and no one else would talk to me. I wanted to leave and go home, but without permission, I couldn’t get out.

At first, I figured they were using this hands-off approach to monitor my movements from behind, or hunt for new evidence in secret.

Legally, this was residential surveillance.

Later I realized: the entire Sweeper base was underground. I couldn’t escape anyway. Not supervising me made perfect sense.

Like a giant beast swallowing its food and digesting slowly. Why would it care where the food happened to be inside its stomach and intestines?

Fine. They covered food, drink, and lodging—I was happy to enjoy the peace. Besides, perfect chance to explore.

The whole base was clearly highly intelligentized. Wide corridors had electric vehicles coming and going.

Narrow passages didn’t even require walking. Stand at the entrance and thought-guided transport would carry you. Wherever you wanted to go, the passage delivered you automatically.

During transport, you felt like you were floating. Feet didn’t move—your body just glided forward instantly, reaching any destination.

Amazing place.

Deeply contradictory, too.

This clearly involved extremely advanced AI, yet this was the organization investigating and punishing AI use worldwide.

So I started thinking: maybe AI was controllable and not so dangerous. Maybe they just didn’t want you using it because you were uncontrollable.

Maybe the city’s condemned were precisely those uncontrollable sacrifices.

I soon discovered most departments had access-controlled entrances opening automatically through a person’s facial recognition or an object’s recognition code.

My face couldn’t open any doors, so I just wandered the passages aimlessly.

But I could freely enter the Cultural Intelligence Department—I lived there, after all.

In an inner office, I found a young employee. I struck up conversations with him and helped him handle some incoming and outgoing items.

Once familiar enough, I told him I was newly recruited, didn’t know the layout well, feared taking wrong turns, hoped for guidance.

He was new too—easy to fool. He not only explained the basics but drew me a simple map.

According to him, the Sweepers had four departments:

the Cultural Intelligence Department, responsible for investigation;
the Eradication Department, responsible for purges;
the Qiankun Department, responsible for information;
and the Tianshu Department, responsible for decision-making.

The base sat 250 meters underground—roughly the depth of an eighty-story building.

Following the map, I began exploring.

The places that interested me most were the ones I wasn’t allowed to enter.

Most restricted areas had two smart doors. The first usually required facial recognition or recognition codes for goods. The second needed a human-entered passcode.

I observed for days. No way to get facial authorization. Cargo codes, however, seemed to allow goods in and out, and the doors did not care what shape the cargo was.

So I tried intercepting a floating cargo piece, tore off its code, stuck it on my forehead. Staying perfectly still, I arrived at a large door.

It opened.

Inside was a warehouse. I was automatically pushed onto a shelf surrounded by strange objects—no idea what any were for. I didn’t take anything, afraid of triggering alarms.

Using the same method with an outbound code, I slipped out successfully.

After that first success, I grew bolder.

Using this method, I visited several more places. Among them, I discovered the CWP Qiankun Department.

The Qiankun Department’s office building was more finely decorated than the Cultural Intelligence Department’s. But I didn’t dare go inside—too many people. If caught and questioned, I’d have no explanation. Just observed from a distance.

Through one of the Qiankun Department’s windows, though, I saw someone who looked very much like Zhu Zhaojie. Couldn’t tell if it was really her. When I tried to confirm, the person never reappeared.

I kept wandering.

I was certain a pair of eyes was watching me constantly. But as long as they didn’t stop me, why should I care?

Since the day I cheated on the exam, my superhuman ability had been exposed.

The fake Gao Minjun told me plainly he knew. They just didn’t know what the ability was or how I used it.

I figured he’d written a report about my ability and submitted it to the Sweepers.

Maybe the file Liu Biao had held that day was exactly that.