It was 12 o'clock in the evening.

Just finished typing the last command line, Gu Wencheng rubbed his eyes and covered his cooing belly, took out a potato chip from the drawer, and looked at the screen in front of him, which was part of the open-source code of the mechanical dog just launched by the Gugou company, and the boy was copying the recognition system in it.

Wen Cheng pressed the test button, and soon "Hot, hot, hot, hot" appeared on the screen.

There must be something wrong again, the boy smiled bitterly and lowered his head, finding that the drawer had not been closed, and saw the few remaining drawings of the refining array pattern and spell inside, he looked at the drawing and sighed with a lost look, and closed the drawer.

A few pieces of graphic paper in the drawer quietly lit up, and the layers of drawings quietly flipped and jumped, and swung up and down in the darkness to make a rustling sound, and of course the boy did not notice this.

He is a junior high school student in the middle and lower reaches of Qiantang No. 15 Middle School, in fact, the first year of high school is not like this, as the only foreigner in the class who has passed the high school entrance examination, he still has some strength, why did his grades drop so much? That's thanks to his constant exploration of magic.

He has loved literature since he was a child, he likes both romantic love literature and magic literature, and grew up in the boundless sea of magic books, and gradually, he has both a longing for a beautiful love affair and a different world full of imagination.

So, becoming a powerful magician who can protect his beloved has become his goal.

When he was a freshman in high school, he was fascinated by alchemy and magic spells, and he always felt that if he stretched out his hand, the object in the distance could move with his mind. The reason why he is firm in the ideal of a magician is because in a physical education class in the second year of high school, a basketball was thrown at him, and in a hurry, he stretched out his hand to block it, but the basketball did not touch the palm of his hand and bounced back, leaving Wen Cheng stunned and holding his heartbeat.

Although Wen Cheng has never repeated the miracle since then, he has found another way, trying to find the door to open the magic world in program development, spending every day in a waterfall of code, one after another crappy programs are born from the keyboard, although the boy did not succeed in finding the door to the magic world, but accidentally practiced a good development ability, a while ago just made a breakthrough, successfully developed a program from action poems, but because of those crappy poems by the classmates laughed at the "artificial mental retardation".

The time is 2017, Gu Wencheng's world is a seemingly unmagical "world", the density of mana in the air is really thin, only a few people can discover and use magic, as an absolute minority, most of the magicians are hidden in the corner, as Muggle classmates naturally scoff at Wen Cheng's random attempts.

In contrast, technology and capital are the main drivers of human civilization, artificial intelligence has just beaten humans in the field of Go, people have become accustomed to mobile phone payments, and the moon landing project is in full swing.

With unsociable interests and hobbies, his friends became fewer and fewer, and his grades gradually dropped, except for the two girls sitting next to him, there was no communication with other classmates.

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Gu Wencheng put down the yellow packaging bag dissatisfiedly after eating a few potato chips, he had to drink something to eat snacks, the tea was naturally not matched, the soda on the table was empty, he went to the kitchen to open the refrigerator and found that the soda was gone, and returned to the table in the room and swallowed saliva several times.

Recently, there have been frequent disappearances, and there has been news of the disappearance of many classmates in the school, most of them have never appeared since they went out at night, it stands to reason that it is better not to go out at this time, with such thoughts, Wen Cheng unconsciously trembled slightly.

He swallowed his saliva, but after all, he still didn't overcome the temptation of soda,

"What are you afraid of, isn't it just to go out and buy water?"

Wen Cheng clenched his fists and shook it up and down, took a deep breath, put on his sweatshirt, put his phone in his pants pocket, walked outside to get the key, and closed the door. When the body was already outside the door, there was a damp breeze in the corridor, and the darkness of the quiet night was full in front of me.

Wen Cheng came downstairs and glanced at the trash can, and found a large green trash can with a square crack unexpectedly, and the ground was covered with kitchen waste, Gu Wencheng covered his nose and hurriedly left.

After crossing the street, he went to the convenience store to buy soda and came back, and when he entered the community again, he found that it was pitch black in front of him.

"Isn't it just going out to buy a bottle of water, and when you come back, the street lights will break, as for it?"

He looked up at the pitch-black lamppost and sighed.

After all, he had walked many times, and he could walk as usual with only a glimmer of light, so he slowly stepped into the dark part and looked at the light source in the distance, about 50 meters away.

Still wet, he slowed his pace, grabbed the soda in one hand and clenched his fist in the other, slightly resting it on the front and back of his waist.

The darkness bit the boy into it and began to slowly stretch and change.

"Click!" With a bang, he stepped on a hard object,

The body jumped back violently, and then gently stretched out his foot and kicked it, and after hearing the crisp sound go away, he exhaled a long breath, relieved the slight tremor, and quickened his pace.

The vehicle parked not far away lay motionless on the ground, and the air seemed to be cut and torn apart by countless ice picks. The cat stopped barking, the leaves stopped swaying, and everything around them stared at the boy's face.

There also seemed to be a problem with the airflow, both clockwise and counterclockwise felt like the blade of the dagger was gently scraping against the skin.

The dark red night sky seemed to be splashed with some organic liquid, and people couldn't help but poke at everything they saw with a sharp weapon.

He shook his head and hurried past one bicycle after another, parked like corpses.

A lot of sweat was already oozing from both his forehead and his armpits, Gu Wencheng coughed lightly, and a tingling pain came from his throat.

Wen Cheng exhaled heavily, pulled up the zipper of the black sweatshirt, and couldn't stop speeding up.

"Cluck...... There was a regular sound in front of it, like a wooden toy with a broken clockwork.

Two robot monsters are dragging the corpse of a woman.

The head of the machine is a huge jaw, more than twice the size of the dog's mouth, and the body is a pile of circuit boards and wiring, surrounded by a steel skeleton, the circuit of the test body is exposed, and the four legs of the mechanical dog have more than a dozen axes to jointly operate.

"Robot dog!" Gu Wencheng called out dumbly.

It turns out that the murderer who caused the frequent disappearances is the mechanical dog just launched by Gugou Company!

The two mechanical dogs with bare wires put down the corpse, raised their heads and gathered the red light, their limbs swinging flexibly, their bodies as smooth as the gimbal, and the ghosts leaned towards him.

"Giggle."

The boy slowly backed away, dropped the soda in his hand, endured the chills and gurgling teeth on his body, and turned to run back with his heart covered, sweat on his neck and back stained with his T-shirt.

Suddenly, two more mechanical dogs appeared behind him, and they slowly paced towards him.

4 mechanical dogs, two front and two back.

There was a wall to the left of his position, the exit in front had been blocked by machines, and behind him were pursuers, he turned and tried to turn to the side of the fork in the road, and a mechanical dog behind him folded and appeared in front of him.

It has been surrounded by three directions: front, back, and right.

The dark ground with stiff oxygen gradually swallowed his nostrils and throat.

Cold sweat seeped from his forehead, and the air condensed into iron.

"Giggles", "Clucks",

The sound was small, but it grew denser and denser, coming from all directions.

In the corner of the wall, in the dark grass and trees, behind the deserted newspaper column, a red glimmer gradually appeared.

The red light got closer and closer, and when the distance was about 4 meters, a circle formed and stopped.

More than a dozen mechanical dogs surrounded him, some of the wires were still exposed, and a few of them had white shells. The white movable joints are wrapped in spherical surfaces, the skulls are whitewashed, and the white lacquer surface of the jaws has fallen off, revealing a silver-gray color belonging to industrial steel, and the abrasion marks on the surface are clearly visible.

"Giggle." The shaft body of the joint rotates and rolls without anger.

More than a dozen narrowed the encirclement around him, and several red light wolves generally approached closer and closer.

Plopping and plopping, the heartbeat is already approaching the limit, even if the hand covers the chest, it can't stop the throbbing.

He swallowed, looking behind him from time to time. There were no lights in the surrounding buildings, only one or two windows emitting dim light.

With their speed, it was easy to drag the corpse away without a trace, and shouting loudly would result in faster death.

The dark red night sky taunted the boy with sparse black shadows.

He touched the phone in his pocket and shook his head, smiled bitterly at the ground, spread his sweaty hands, relaxed his body, and looked at the dusk in the distance.

No one will care about the corpse of an extra male student, let alone a guy with hopeless grades and no one to take care of, so there must be no nostalgia. The mother must have fallen asleep, and the father was floating on the sea.

"Giggle."

Several mechanical dogs in front of them have already begun to make offensive gestures.

The boy didn't make any moves, and watched as a white mechanical dog pounced on his neck, closed his eyes, and the corners of his mouth relaxed.

Even if there is only a 1 in 10,000 chance, let the delusion bloom, unrealistic but buried for a long time.

If the memory of the bounce back basketball in the sophomore year of high school hadn't gone wrong.

He suddenly opened his eyes and stretched out his right hand to block the 50-centimeter jaw in front of his neck.

He had studied some spells before, and he knew about what kind of spells corresponded to what effect, and he had to chant them very hard, with admiration and praise, which of course he certainly couldn't do.

The instinctive desire to survive was the last line of defense, and the boy closed his eyes tightly to carry out his thoughts.

Suddenly, the black shadow on the ground was torn apart by the heat, and there was a violent vibration behind him, and the air resonated with the thought.

A white light flashed in the darkness.

"Boom!" There was a loud thunderous sound in my ears.

Then came a crackling pop, accompanied by the smell of scorching and molten iron.

The darkness was replaced by the Shura field of Purgatory, and it seemed that all roads, bicycles, and plants were about to be burned.

The violent flash of light caused a long-lasting visual residue, and even when the eyes were opened, they were still bright and white, and the long tinnitus seemed to be the whisper of a witch on the pillow.

The white mechanical dog that had been lifted into the air had fallen to the ground, charred and black with smoke, while several other mechanical dogs were on the ground and exchanged ears.

The ground slowly reflected a dark red and yellow light, illuminating the boy's unkempt hair.

It worked? Except for the heartbeat and breathing that had just been restored, why didn't there be any unusual sensations.

I'm alive? He looked at his hands, overwhelmed by what he saw?

If not yourself......

His eyes widened, and he suddenly looked around, and found that under a lamp not far behind him,

The delicate and white right hand had already fallen, the shaved shoulders and collarbones were shining through the clothes, and a puff of gunpowder smoke was wafting around the slender arms.

It was a girl in a red sweater.