Shen Jie: “It’s you.”
He looked at the elderly nurse… no, the elderly researcher before him. She wore a researcher’s badge on her chest, with a prominent “S” on it.
An S-class researcher. There weren’t many of them in the entire research institute.
Of those he knew, Ke Xi Ya was one of the youngest and one of the few who had risen from the bottom in recent years. The remaining S-class researchers were mostly elders who had been working at the institute since the apocalypse over thirty years ago. Many of them lived in rooms inside the institute that were specially protected and rarely showed their faces in public.
“I want to talk to her,” he said, turning back to Zong Lin.
Zong Lin nodded slightly, partially releasing the soul suppression, and whispered to Shen Jie, “Her aura is different from the nurse we saw in the hospital just now. None of the people I saw earlier had souls. But she does, although only half.”
As an ability user of the “Soul” category, even as an attacker-type ability user, Zong Lin still possessed a strong perception ability toward souls.
“I understand,” Shen Jie replied.
After the partial release of the soul suppression, Zhang Shihe still couldn’t move, but she could speak. As she looked at them, her eyes were filled with wariness, fear, and complexity.
“Professor Zhang,” Shen Jie said, “Is that how I should address you?”
“No,” Zhang Shihe replied slowly and hoarsely, “It’s been a long time since anyone called me that.”
The elderly researcher looked up at them and said, “I’ve already modified the data, giving you a chance to leave safely. Why did you still come back here?”
Modified data.
Shen Jie glanced at the control panel behind Zhang Shihe.
The control panel was covered with numerous complex buttons, with a black screen in the middle scrolling a row of red command records, dated 2077.10.17.
[Command Modification – Image Recognition Replacement: Lin Tong, Lin Zheng, Gu Peng]
[Command Modification – Sun Trajectory Replacement: Speed Deceleration (Removed) – Speed Increase]
[Command Defense – Intruder Detection in Progress, Central Protection Mode Activated]
This was a world controlled by computer data.
The sun and sky were composed of false screens, manipulated by the central control computer before us.
Even the cognition and memories of the “people” living here were controlled by the main computer, capable of being injected and modified at any time.
So, as soon as they entered this domain, he and Zong Lin were identified as “Lin Tong” and “Lin Zheng.” When the children in the hospital saw his knife, they only thought it was a toy.
“Why were our identities modified to Lin Tong and his father Lin Zheng?” Shen Jie asked.
Zhang Shihe closed her eyes, the wrinkles at the corners tangled like dry bark. “Here, identity is the passport. With this identity layer, ‘it’ will allow you to leave.”
Shen Jie asked, “Who is ‘it’?”
“It’s the creator here. You’ve already seen it before,” Zhang Shihe replied.
Shen Jie asked, “You mean Dr. Lin?”
“Doctor… is just a part of it,” Zhang Shihe said. “During the day, it’s a doctor, a friend of the children. I made a deal with it: I help it clone the people it wants, and it gives me partial control over this place. But at night, it becomes a devil. The devil devoured half of my soul and would even skin disobedient children outside. That’s why I wanted you to leave before sunset.”
Shen Jie asked, “Since you can modify the data to let us leave, why don’t you leave yourself?”
“Leave? Where can I go?” Zhang Shihe fell silent for a moment, bitterness in her voice. “You can leave because there’s still a place for you in the outside world. But for me and these children, this is the only place we can stay.”
Thirty-four years ago, before the apocalypse began, she was still a professor in university, with her own independent laboratory and assistants, leading research in the field of life sciences.
But the sudden disaster plunged everything into chaos.
The mist kept spreading, and living people were infected and turned into a different kind that consumed the living.
To combat the mist, the city established research institutes and invited her to join.
At first, Zhang Shihe devoted herself to researching antidotes to reverse the infection process and restore the infected to humans.
However, the progression of the infection completely surpassed the current understanding of genetics, and research made no progress for several years, leading to despair.
At that time, Zhang Shihe’s husband and their infant twins encountered the mist.
Her husband died protecting their children in the mist.
Although the children were rescued, their infection levels were too high, and they could only be placed in nitrogen chambers.
Before they were placed inside, Zhang Shihe secretly retained some of their biological data using her authority.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Afterwards, she stopped researching antidotes for infection reversal and began researching biological cloning.
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Zhang Shihe actively participated in the plan at the time and always believed she was doing the right thing.
The substitution of patients couldn’t be discovered by the public.
Therefore, all the nurses in the Psychological Treatment Center were clones, with their memories altered and instilled with absolute loyalty.
As the executor of the Bait Plan, Zhang Shihe was the head nurse in charge of managing the nurses on the surface, while secretly overseeing the underground cloning work.
Zhang Shihe watched as each cloned child was nurtured and sent out, and as each patient who would have been euthanized due to mist exposure was sent outside the city, fulfilling the necessary sacrifices.
No family would experience the same pain as she did back then. They could still have their own relatives and children, even if they were no longer the same as before.
The mist in the city significantly decreased, and people could live peacefully again.
How wonderful.
Every day, she told herself that this was a good thing.
Good for everyone.
But the screams and cries of the patients catalyzed as “bait” in the laboratory always lingered in her ears.
Later, her resurrected children, due to the incomplete technology of the first generation, only lived until their teens before their genes collapsed.
This time, she erected gravestones for them and did not proceed with a second cloning.
“Do you think cloned individuals really don’t have souls?”
Zhang Shihe lifted her eyes to look at Zong Lin.
“But my children, they’ve been with me for over ten years. They really lived.”
On the screen, the children in the hospital were happily running around the house, while nurses wiped sweat and chased after them.
“Now, these children are living well here. After the Psychological Treatment Center is destroyed, there won’t be a place for us in reality anymore. Only here can accommodate us to survive.”
“So, could I please ask you, to just leave like this, without disrupting this world?” Zhang Shihe tearfully pleaded.
—-
Hospital rooftop.
“Mr. L?”
The young boy spoke in an innocent voice, tilting his head to look at Lin Ze, who was kneeling on the ground, unable to help urging him with a voice.
His time was running out. The city was too dangerous, and he had finally found an opportunity to squeeze in and had to quickly complete the retrieval work.
Lin Ze wanted to get closer to get a better look, but he was immobilized by the pale spear, only able to hoarsely say, “Tong Tong… come here… let me… take a look at you…”
The little boy walked over and squatted down, curious, “How did you know my name? Did the gentleman introduce me to you?”
Lin Ze looked at the boy’s innocent face.
The pouring rain beat down on them.
Unlike Lin Ze’s miserable state, Lin Tong had a thin layer of spatial membrane around him, shielding him from the rain.
The young boy had a head full of curly hair, big round eyes, and a face like a soft, white bun, incredibly cute.
There was no difference from the image in his memory.
It is Lin Tong.
His… younger brother.
—-
Domain world.
It was already nightfall after the sun had set.
Dr. Lin sat by the window.
His computer in front of him was still on, displaying the profiles of Lin Tong, Lin Zheng, and Gu Peng, with the photos restored to their original appearance, and added a data card for Lin Ze. A family of four, neatly arranged.
Moonlight poured in, casting shadows of trees.
Outside was quiet, but he could hear the laughter and chatter of children downstairs. Dr. Lin listened, maintaining a faint smile on his face.
But suddenly, he heard the sound of something scraping against the window.
Not the window of his room. It was a bit higher, at the attic window.
He quickly got up and hurried to the corner of the room where the lounge was, opening the wardrobe, inside of which was a staircase leading to the attic.
After quickly running up the stairs, he arrived at the attic.
The attic was arranged very warmly, like a fairy tale house, with a small wooden bed in the middle, where a child was sleeping.
A cute little boy with curly hair.
At this moment, the attic window was already open, and a jet-black tentacle had reached in, aiming at the boy’s heart.
“Stop!”
Dr. Lin shouted loudly, rushing over to stop it, but he was swept aside by the tentacle, flying three meters away and hitting the wall, coughing up a mouthful of blood.
Ignoring the intense pain, Dr. Lin said, “You’ve already killed him once, do you want to kill him a second time?”
At the tip of the tentacle, an eyeball split open, emitting a sinister voice.
“It’s just a clone. I’ve already found the… real Tong Tong.”
Dr. Lin hesitated, but he saw the tentacle hovering in front of the boy again and said, “Don’t do it! You’ll regret it!”
The tentacle replied, “I won’t.”
“If you won’t,” Dr. Lin said, “then why am I standing here right now?”
“And even if he’s a clone, after spending so much time by your side, do you only have suspicion and hatred towards him? No, there are many things you’ve forgotten after becoming a different kind…”
The eye of the tentacle was cold.
Dr. Lin wanted to say something more, but the next moment, his chest was pierced by the tentacle.
Lin Ze pulled out the tentacle, looking at the body that resembled himself lying against the wall.
It thought, it didn’t kill itself, but only the human consciousness that shouldn’t exist as a different kind, nothing more.
And soon, it would die too.
“Brother?”
The little boy on the bed suddenly spoke.
He was awakened by the commotion and opened his eyes.
“You came back this time to take something, didn’t you?”
The little boy smiled at the tentacled form of Lin Ze.
“Brother, you can take whatever you want. I’ll be obedient.”
Nurses always said that when facing family, you had to be obedient.
If he is obedient, will brother like him more?
—-
Real world.
Lin Ze reached into his own heart, feeling around for a while, and slowly pulled out a black box from it.
Crimson mixed with dark liquid dripped from the box.
He truly didn’t regret it.
But at the same time, he almost couldn’t feel the joy of reunion anymore, nor did he feel particularly sad about asking too much of his clone brother.
Hatred. Resentment. The desire to kill. The desire to destroy. The desire to disrupt. Most of the time, the world of the aliens could only perceive these.
This was the source of their power, stemming from the confusing and insane mist.
But. He looked at Lin Tong.
“Do you like eating candy?” Lin Ze asked.
The little boy smiled happily.
“I love it! I love eating candy the most!”
Lin Ze nodded, squeezed the box in his palm, and it turned into a candy wrapped in rainbow paper, which he handed to Lin Tong.
“Go on. Eat it when you’re far away.”
“Don’t come back again.”
—-
Zhang Shihe continued to plead.
Shen Jie asked, “Do you still think what you did was right?”
Zhang Shihe hesitated. Her lips moved, but she didn’t speak.
“You want us to leave, yet you choose to live in the world of the different kinds yourself and refuse to leave. Are you really doing it for the children here?”
When they decided to turn back, the speed of the sun was artificially accelerated, and there were corpses of cloned people attacked, as well as various deadly traps in the replication center.
They didn’t choose to leave, and Zhang Shihe wanted to keep them here forever.
“The Psychological Treatment Center is destroyed. And you, you’re just avoiding people’s judgment.”
Suddenly, the surrounding space began to shake violently.
Zhang Shihe’s face turned pale.
“How could this happen…”
Zong Lin said, “The domain is collapsing. Lin Ze’s core has been destroyed.”
Domain collapse meant the host is eliminated, and those trapped inside will run out.
Of course, this also included the aliens existing in the domain, which would also be released.
The city’s rain curtain began to seep in. Zong Lin erected a layer of ability protection for Shen Jie to avoid the rain.
Zhang Shihe was still pinned in place.
Shen Jie glanced at her, and Zong Lin, guided by the Pale Spear’s sensitivity, took him across the domain switch in advance and instantly teleported to the Psychological Treatment Centre rooftop.
The Pale Spear was inserted into the concrete.
After the death of the Undead Soul Corpse, there was no trace left in this world. Only a pool of black blood on the ground, which had already been diluted by the pouring rain.
Just as Zong Lin pulled out the long spear, he suddenly heard the voice of Shi Chen.
“Zong Lin, urgent mission. Three minutes ago, a ‘Space’ alien breached the blockade and infiltrated the city, taking the host core. Go after it immediately! Make sure to bring the core back before the alien fully integrates it.”
“‘Dawn’ team has all received the mission, and personnel from the Research Institute and Monitoring Center will fully support your operation.”
After Shi Chen’s voice, there was a weak, hoarse voice.
“Zong Lin, I am Zhu Wu You.”
“Cough, cough, cough… The target is now moving rapidly northeast… There’s a high chance of it advancing to Rank Two after merging with the core. It must be dealt with quickly. You know, we absolutely cannot afford another Rank Two alien disrupting the balance now, otherwise… cough, cough, cough… In ten minutes, it will cross Plain No. 2 and enter the fallen area ‘Curse Desert.’ My predictions will deviate then… Be fast—”
A helicopter descended onto the rooftop.
Inside, several researchers hurriedly pushed out a peculiar figure wrapped in bandages and still wearing restraining clothing.
At the same time, a spatial rift tore open from the air, and several people emerged from it.
“Captain!” Bald-headed Chen Jiahua was the first to run out of the rift. “I just received an urgent mission. They want us to leave immediately. Can you believe it’s only the second day of our vacation? I was just about to take a shower—”
At that moment, Chen Jiahua noticed the white-haired youth beside Zong Lin, his words halted, and his eyes widened like copper bells.
Seeing the striking resemblance between Zong Lin and the young man, as well as Zong Lin’s protective embrace, Chen Jiahua felt utterly perplexed.
He had never heard their captain mention having such a grown-up son!
“Captain… who is he?”
Ahahaha Shen Jie’s causing all sorts of problems with his aesthetic choices
Thank you for the chapters! ❤
Oop! The curse of the hot son strikes again!
lol these mf boutta be confused af after finding out Zong Lin’s wife is cosplaying as their son 😂
Confusion flows like mist…hahaha naughty Shen Jie… Thanks for the chapters ❤️❤️