An Yu didn’t know how long he had been unconscious for. It wasn’t until the sound of the rain gradually became clearer in his ears and the darkness slowly diminished from his vision that he realized there was no one left in the garage, nor were there any jellyfish—only a ground covered in blood and a lone leather glove in the corner.
The terminal showed that the survival value was 82.4% due to the inflammation of his hand wound, unmetabolized neurotoxins, and excessive hunger.
He went over to pick up the glove. The glove looked stiff and cold on Qin Zhilu’s hand, but when he grasped it, he realized that the leather was actually quite soft.
He put on the glove and quickly left the foul-smelling garbage dump.
Just as he reached the door, a figure lit up in the distance.
A burst of static suddenly exploded in his ear.
An Yu paused for a moment before realizing it was coming from the earphone that had never emitted a sound before.
The noise continued for over ten seconds before Billy’s voice abruptly came through, “Hello, hello? Who’s on this frequency… An Yu? Can you hear me?”
“Incredible… it’s actually working,” An Yu said in disbelief.
He had long been used to the fact that there were countless technologies in this world that he was unworthy of touching, but people using abilities to control technology still amazed him.
“Thank heavens! If I can connect with one, then the rest will be easy,” Billy sighed with relief, “Law is with you, right?”
“Um…” An Yu looked at the broad figure approaching in the distance, “He’s missing.”
“Missing? I’ll look for him later. Oh right, we’re about ten kilometers apart. Do you need any help?”
An Yu quickly remembered that Billy was purely an intelligence type, useless in a fight, so he said, “Can you go back to the resource station for me?”
“Sure, I’m pretty close. What do you need?”
“There’s bread in the cabinet on the first floor.”
“How much do you want?”
An Yu replied without thinking, “Everything.”
“…You must be starving to death,” Billy muttered, “Alright then, I’ll search for Law’s frequency ASAP.”
“Thank you. I have something to handle here as well.” An Yu said softly, then cut off the communication.
The figure in the distance had just reached him, it was Lieutenant Chu Ning. He breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing An Yu, “Thank goodness, you’re still alive! I went out in the dark to search for the energy core and saw many giant jellyfish so I hurried back to inform you. Where’s Qin Zhilu?”
An Yu looked at him strangely, “If you haven’t seen him, why are you asking me?”
“Isn’t he with you?”
An Yu shook his head, “Aren’t you afraid of him?”
Chu Ning was puzzled, “Why should I be afraid?”
“Don’t you realize it yourself?” An Yu paused, then pointed at him, “Your head is glowing like a breathing lamp.”
Chu Ning’s skull had become completely transparent, and a human brain floated inside of it. The brain was gradually shrinking while the surrounding nerves grew thicker, entwining and trembling like jellyfish tentacles.
An Yu jumped up, using the momentum from his kneeling position to slam his knee into Chu Ning’s abdomen, and stabbed his shoulder with a knife!
Thick, bubbling blood splattered out, but Chu Ning remained unfazed. He easily threw An Yu off, and tentacles spread out from under his sleeves, waving wildly.
“You missed your only chance to escape,” he said and pointed to his head. “The knife should always aim for the vital spots.”
An Yu saw his own reflection in those cold eyes, looking like a fragile ant.
His pupils shrank sharply, and he tried his best to cut off the tentacles wrapped around him. After he freed himself, he turned around and ran away, exposing his vulnerable back to Chu Ning.
The tentacles pursued him from behind, hooked around his neck and dragged him back!
“I didn’t realize before that you’re just a genetically pure human. Where do you think you can run?”
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.
An Yu’s chest heaved violently, and he once again used all his strength to cut off the tentacles wrapped around his neck, and ran away!
Dfobgf tf gjc j ofk rafqr, atf afcajmifr ktlqqfv tlw ab atf ugbecv jcv vgjuufv tlw yjmx nlbifcais!
Llr rtbfr rmgjqfv boo bc atf ugbecv, yea tf vlvc’a mjgf. Lf mea atgbeut atf afcajmifr jujlc jcv gjc!
“Qtja j afcjmlber tewjc yflcu,” Jte Rlcu’r nblmf rbecvfv ffglf, jr lo la kfgf rfqjgjafv ys rfnfgji ijsfgr bo rfj kjafg.
Every time the tentacles pierced An Yu and started to release a bit of genetic material, An Yu would sever those tentacles, and Chu Ning allowed this little act of defiance, dragging him back again and again!
This game of toying with his prey excited him so much that he could barely maintain his human form. The whites of his eyes turned transparent, and blood spread through his pupils as more and more tentacles burst from his body.
Chu Ning was so exhilarated that he didn’t notice that An Yu was running faster every time, as if he could suddenly shift forward a short distance. After repeating this many times, that short distance became more than 10 meters.
Although he would tremble after being caught back and become sluggish when cutting the tentacles, An Yu’s initial burst of speed became faster and faster! He moved so quickly that it seemed like the surrounding space was shifting. As he dashed forward, instead of being caught up by the tentacles, it was more like he stood still and waited for the tentacles to drag him back.
Finally, An Yu was completely ensnared and dragged back into the aberrant’s embrace.
His bleeding feet stood barefoot in the stagnant water. He was dying and his hands were weakly pulling at the tentacles around his neck.
“I feel sorry for you,” Chu Ning tightened the tentacles around An Yu, pressing against his soaked back and feeling the intense heartbeat of a human.
“Your genes seem unique. I can smell that pure, delicious scent.” He whispered in An Yu’s ear: “Let me have a taste of you.”
An Yu had no intention of running away anymore. It seemed like he had resigned himself to his fate; his eyes were low and the blood from his forehead rolled down to his eyelashes.
“I couldn’t ask for more.” he murmured softly.
Suddenly, an alarm blared, drowning out his quiet words.
“I remember this alarm, hmm…” Chu Ning tried to recall, “Oh right, it means your survival value is below 60%. You must be really afraid of death if you run so desperately, right? Let me free you from that fear.”
He unskillfully pressed his teeth against An Yu’s shoulder, grinding them for a long time before finally returning to his old method – his tentacles.
The prey had given up struggling and relaxed, allowing his tentacles to pierce through his neck, going through his skin, fascia, and exploring deeper. Just as the tantalizing flavor reached its senses, Chu Ning suddenly noticed a faint smile in An Yu’s downcast eyes.
He suddenly realized something was wrong and Chu Ning began to retract his tentacles, but in that instant, a bony hand tightly grabbed his tentacles!
“Don’t back down now.”
An Yu turned his head slightly, casting a glance, “Just because I am afraid of death, when I’m willing to risk my life, it means—”
His golden eyes suddenly flashed ferociously, and he forcefully drove the tentacle deeper into himself!
“I’m certain of victory.”
The remaining human intelligence failed to overcome instinct.
Like a baby’s sucking reflex, Chu Ning frantically absorbed An Yu’s genes. When a muffled pop sounded, he hadn’t yet realized what happened.
Even though the brain still retained some ability to think, it was just a fragile brain, unable to see or guess that it had forever lost the protection of its skull.
It fell to the ground and quickly disintegrated, flowing into the sewer along with the burst slime left by the explosion.
There was deathly silence in the garbage dump, leaving only the pitter-patter of rain and An Yu’s violent breathing.
His heart pounded like never before, as if a beast was trying to break free—not maybe it wasn’t his heart that was trying to break free but something else entirely.
He couldn’t hold on and fell down in the rain.
The headphones crackled again, and Billy muttered, “Damn it, there are too many mantises near the resource station. I tried to detonate them, but no matter how hard I tried, it didn’t work. This new ability is too damn hard to trigger.If I had known better, I should’ve practiced more with the jellyfish.”
An Yu lay in the rain, struggling to suppress his breath, and weakly said, “Doctor… is it possible that you weren’t the one who exploded the jellyfish at that time?”
“If not me, then who? You?” Billy laughed heartily, “Don’t kid with me, darling. You’re not going to talk about Rabbit An’s passive ability again, are you? A human with a genetic entropy of 0.2 awakening such a huge power on their first distortion? I might as well drop dead.”
To prevent Billy from actually feeling ashamed enough to take his own life, An Yu chose to keep his mouth shut.
“I only took a portion of the bread. There’s too damn much. I couldn’t carry all of it.”
An Yu was startled when he heard this and struggled to open his eyes. “You should hide them first…”
He paused, not finishing his sentence “…then I’ll bring them back to the dorm later on.” because he seemed to not have heard the first half of his sentence.
“Doctor?” He tentatively called out.
He didn’t hear his own voice either.
Suddenly, the whole world became quiet and the sound of the rain had ceased without him noticing.
What the tentacles injected in his body wasn’t only jellyfish genes, but also a large amount of neurotoxins. His hearing disappeared again, and the darkness gradually enveloped his vision.
The familiar numbness spread from his limbs to the top of his head…
That feeling of something bursting out from within his body returned, and his chest went up and down as if his heart was also about to explode.
He couldn’t afford to faint, at least not in this dangerous open-air environment.
The man lying in the puddle twitched and struggled for a long time before finally getting up, groping forward with both hands in the rain.
But after only a few steps, he fell back down to the ground with a “bang”, motionless, as if he was dead.
Billy’s shouts came from the headphones that fell to the ground, “What’s wrong?Talk, what’s happening?!”
“Fuck, I just saw that your survival value is only 50%. Did you encounter an aberrant?”
“An Yu! Speak!”
The world under the rain was dead silent. After a long time, the person on the ground suddenly struggled again and managed to stand up with difficulty.
An Yu wondered if he had mutated into a jellyfish. Every step he took felt weightless and he couldn’t feel the ground or his feet. He no longer knew if he was resisting the neurotoxins or some mysterious existence; he just knew he couldn’t give in.
He had to prove his controllability.
After falling countless times, a sound finally broke through the deathly silent world.
The effects of the neurotoxin began to wane.
In the pitch-black world, footsteps gradually approached from behind.
An Yu tensed up and reached for the dagger at his waist.
As soon as he touched the blade, the pain from the cut cleared his mind a bit.
As the footsteps drew closer, he held onto his sinking consciousness and reached for the blade again.
A hand suddenly grabbed his waist.
His body tensed up for a moment, before suddenly relaxing.
— His prison uniform had been torn long ago and the familiar texture of leather brushed against his waist.
Qin Zhilu seemed to put his lips close to An Yu’s ear and say:
“Don’t hurt yourself, it’s me.”
“Don’t think about anything, try to control your heartbeat and breathing, don’t pant so hard, you need to learn to manage your stress response.”
He pulled An Yu closer into his arms, letting him feel his presence through physical contact, “It’s normal to be exhausted, you did a good job.”
An Yu had never heard such a gentle tone from his Commander.
He wanted to clearly his expression at this moment, but his vision hadn’t returned. All he could feel was the trench coat wrapped around his body, covering his vulnerable abdomen.
The mysterious turmoil within him suddenly calmed down, and an unfamiliar sensation spread across his heart—perhaps it was that thing called sense of security that the Brain people said he lacked.
Qin Zhilu moved in front of An Yu, opened his coat, and pulled him more tightly into his embrace.
In fact, he could have taken off his coat, but maybe An Yu’s body was too thin. Just like finding an injured little rabbit in the rain, people would instinctively want to hold it closely in their arms.
“Sleep if you want.”
An Yu let out a few weak breaths.
“Sir, can you promise my safety?”
Qin Zhilu seemed to nod, “Mn.”
“I have control over… that thing.” There was a hint of mirth in his weak voice.
Just like a child showing off, a bit proud.
Qin Zhilu was taken aback for a moment, then reached out to gently hold the back of his head.
“Very impressive.”
An Yu followed his movements and leaned his forehead against the Commander’s shoulder.
As his consciousness gradually faded, he murmured, “I’m almost certain about my ability. I’m a rabbit-type distortion, I’m… the same kind as Rabbit An.”
Darkness descended from deep within his consciousness, completely engulfing him.
Qin Zhilu, who was holding him, instantly froze and hesitated for a long time.
“I thought you knew that it was a character from a TV series,” he frowned and said, “The rabbit-type aberrant in District 54 was just an ordinary rabbit gene infection that had been discovered long ago. There is no such thing in this world, at least not yet, like the super-aberrant rabbit you are talking about.”
An Yu could no longer hear anything and his consciousness quickly slipped away, leaving the only connecting between him and the world being the feeling of being embraced.
It was a very novel experience.
Before falling into a deep sleep, he seemed to catch a fleeting thought—
Maybe he was going crazy, but he wondered if the jellyfish that hugged him for so long in the garage was actually his Commander.
Even though he had no evidence.
Author’s Note:
[06 The Hunter’s moment]
There’s a notorious book circulating in the Spire that I find particularly cringeworthy, titled “God An Yun’s Fantastical Abilities”
Before that abomination was published, there was a precursor—a forum post named “Let’s Talk About the Moments When Mr. An Yu Hunted You.”
I prefer to call it “Dead Ducks Group Hype Post.”
Amidst all the fanatical adorating comments, there was one early anonymous reply that particularly stood out:
——“He was barely alive, yet was a bit proud of himself.”
Everyone in the Spire openly mocked this person for fabricating such bullshit. After all, how could anyone be lucky enough to witness such a moment?
But I always felt that person had an unusual identity.
So, being as cautious as I am, I chose to remain anonymous when joining the group and mocking that person.
M1zushi: ok so you know how zombies always want to contaminate “normal” people? I think distortion works based on the same principle, like they want to contaminate(or infect/eat) everything that has a low entropy(or hasn’t distorted to a certain point)
or it’s like a moth being attracted to fire. All the aberrants want to infect an yu and ultimately die in the process
Thank you for the chapter 😍 ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
So attractive to the infected, this little bunny…lol. Thanks for the update ❤️❤️❤️
Thank you for the update 🖤💯