When An Yu opened his eyes, he was in a truck compartment and his skewed vision jolted along the vehicle’s movement.
A pair of crimson eyes venomously stared at him.
An Yu immediately sat up straight.
The clothes sliding off his body reminded him why, after their two-day separation, Jiang Xiao still hated him so much.
——He was wearing Qin Zhilu’s coat and kept leaning on Qin Zhilu’s shoulder when he fell asleep.
“……”
Under his teammate’s intense gaze, An Yu struggled to recall a piece of gossip Ling Qiu had once shared with him: a voluptuous woman with a thin waist who lived upstairs hooked up with the Resource Manager. Not only did she get high-end supplies, she also bragged around the slums by wearing the Resource Manager’s uniform in front of other outcast people.
Ling Qiu’s evaluation of her was: “a coquettish bitch.”
“Are you wake?” Qin Zhilu casually picked up his coat.
His gloves had already been taken off and An Yu suddenly realized he had never seen Qin Zhilu’s hands before.
“Billy has reestablished the wave frequency of District 53. Grape and Ryan are driving.” Qin Zhilu glanced toward the back of the truck. “They met Lieutenant Rui Jin in the inner city.”
The soldier in the corner of the truck had a stubble on his face and nodded to An Yu in a listless manner.
Jiang Xiao suddenly started coughing, and An Yu noticed that he was covered in dark blood stains and weakly leaning against a wall.
“Jiang Xiao was badly injured,” Billy said with a sigh, “You haven’t been easy to deal with either. When Law brought you here, I was scared to death—you were covered in wounds.”
An Yu’s external injuries had already been treated, and his survival rate had returned to 75%.
He suddenly remembered what had happened before he fainted.
“Where is the bread from the resource station?”
Billy rolled his eyes. “I took everything I could. No one else wants that stuff except you.”
Following Billy’s gesture, An Yu saw the pile of bread bags in the corner and the tension in his body finally eased away.
Jiang Xiao sneered, “A bitch remains a bitch, all you think about is food. Can you think about anything else?”
Besides food, he also thinks about pleasing his Commander. He thinks about it every day.
An Yu opened his mouth but swallowed his words back. From his limited experience with chatting, he knew that this sentence wasn’t a good thing to say.
But Jiang Xiao seemed to have read his mind, and the murderous intent in his blood-red eyes almost seemed tangible.
An Yu could only pretend that nothing happened and looked away.
Qin Zhilu suddenly turned to Jiang Xiao. “Report your mental strength.”
The carriage suddenly became quiet, and Jiang Xiao’s hand awkwardly covered his terminal.
After a long pause, he said, “It’s no longer decreasing.”
“I asked about the current value.”
Jiang Xiao’s chest heaved as he turned his head away. “48.”
Billy tried to smooth things over with a laugh. “Hey, even though it’s below the 50 warning line, it’s still far from 30. No need to be so…”
“You should know that 30 is the bottom line.” Qin Zhilu was so calm it was chilling. “Control yourself. Otherwise, once it falls below 30—”
Jiang Xiao whipped his head around. “Then I have to die?”
A cold mechanical click.
Qin Zhilu loaded a magazine of thermal bullets designed to kill aberrants into his pistol. “You can only die.”
An Yu was as silent as a cicada, staring at the floor motionlessly.
The intense emotions radiating from Jiang Xiao almost suffocated the carriage. He suddenly looked at An Yu. “Then I want to ask, a pure human with a genetic entropy of 0.2 was covered in so many wounds, how many times was he exposed to aberrants, and how much has his mental strength decreased?”
“He?” Qin Zhilu glanced at An Yu and holstered his gun. “He had three encounters. Killed a level-one mantis-man by himself, got entangled by a giant jellyfish, and solo killed a jellyfish-man.”
“You killed two aberrants alone?? You?” Billy’s eyes widened. “How did you do it? It’s hard even for me to kill those things—wait, that’s not important. What’s your current mental power? Have you distorted?”
Qin Zhilu looked at An Yu’s profile and spoke calmly, “No distortion, and his mental strength hasn’t decreased.”
Since entering District 53, this frail human had been quietly observing everything. Every action seemingly forced him into a crisis yet was actually a step closer to his own goals.
He constantly claimed to be afraid of death, yet dared to use aberrants to test his abilities. He had a sickle put on his neck, got repeatedly stung by jellyfish, knocked up and down, and dragged roughly across the ground, until his senses failed and he collapsed in the rain—yet his mental power on the terminal never changed. It was as if within this fragile body, there was a superior brain that overlooked everything, untouchable.
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.
There was dead silence in the carriage for a moment.
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“Ktja’r cba lwqbgajca.” Hlc Itlie cjaegjiis ibbxfv jkjs. “Obbx ja atlr olgra, atf gfmbgvfg mjqaegfv Aljcu Wljb jcv atf batfgr’ yjaaif.”
“Oh.” An Yu reluctantly opened the terminal.
The battlefield was a filthy bus station.
The super-aberrant was a young man in his twenties, with dirty green hair and a deathly pale complexion. He stood in a corner, smiling sinisterly at the camera.
An Yu immediately paused the video.
“What’s wrong?” Qin Zhilu observed his reaction. “Do you know him?”
“Well…” An Yu picked up the terminal to confirm. “0313.”
It turned out to be him.
That young man lived in the most cramped corner of the same building as An Yu. 0313 was a welfare code; no one knew his real name or cared about him.
He was a loner, and his only friend had moved to District 54—the infected person who tried to bring rabbit genes into District 53. After sneaking into District 53, he went straight to 0313. Although he was shot dead before he could knock on his door, 0313 was still deemed unclean because of it.
After witnessing the shooting, An Yu was so scared that he slept for several days. When he woke up, he heard that 0313 had disappeared and someone saw him walk into the canal late at night. It wasn’t surprising; every year, many outcasts inexplicably committed suicide. But that canal, which was originally a flowing waterway connecting two oceans, suddenly stopped flowing a while ago and reeked with stench.
Qin Zhilu asked, “An orphan?”
An Yu nodded, then shook his head.
Ling Qiu had once mentioned that 0313 had parents who had moved to the more resource-rich District 9 many years ago. They had three children, two of whom made it to the Main City, while 0313 was abandoned.
Billy muttered, “Having three kids, and two of them have high-genetic entropy?”
“These things are hard to predict,” Jiang Xiao said hoarsely. “The Brain has been researching which gene combinations can increase the likelihood of high-genetic entropy in the next generation. It seems they’re getting somewhere.”
Billy sighed, “He died in the canal, no wonder there are so many aquatic aberrant children.”
An Yu was puzzled, “Children?”
Qin Zhilu resumed the video.
The super-aberrant was surrounded by a multitude of bizarre insects and mollusk creatures, and they crawled together towards Jiang Xiao as a giant black mass.
Jiang Xiao’s lower half transformed into a snake, and the golden-red python tail swept through the aberrant tide. The snake scales unfolded into blade waves, and countless deformed corpses were scattered into the air as a large amount of blood burst from the super-aberrant body.
An Yu stared at the screen, “Killing the children will cause backlash to the super-aberrant entity?”
“He received backlash at the same time the city’s electricity went haywire,” Qin Zhilu explained.
“Then why did the lights…”
Before An Yu could finish speaking, the super-aberrant sneered and stuck out his tongue.
The long, thin, and resilient tongue was like a frog tongue, and it darted in and out, healing the wounds it touched in an instant and a new batch of aberrants poured out from underneath it.
Jiang Xiao propped himself up from the wall, “We’ve temporarily named it [Frog Tongue]. Its abilities include consciousness projection, gene radiation, and self-repair. All the aberrants in District 53 are merely fragments of its genes. Its consciousness is encoded in its offspring, making them act in unison. The children first acquire human genes, then engage in a survival of the fittest, continuously self-selecting until they spawn a new super-aberrant.”
“This great mother herself has no combat power but keeps producing children who take over the city. When her children are injured, she suffers backlash, but she can generate new children through self-repair. The time required for this process is—instantaneous.” Jiang Xiao laughed bitterly and desperately, “This place is beyond saving. I can’t think of any other way out than clearing the city with thermal weapons like they did in District 95.”
An Yu pondered, “Are there any children stronger than the jellyfish and mantis?”
“Watch the rest. I have no obligation to report to you,” Jiang Xiao leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes in exhaustion.
In the video, countless aberrants were swept up by the golden-red snake tail, blood and mucus raining down.
The super-aberrant bled profusely and it tried to repeat its trick, extending its tongue out. Just then, several deep purple vines shot out from behind the camera, deftly hooking its tongue!
Zhu Tao stood high, his slender figure steady in the midst of the airwaves with a focused expression. Several vines gently covered Jiang Xiao’s wounds while the rest firmly gripped the super-aberrant’s tongue, effortlessly controlling the situation.
Jiang Xiao raised his snake tail decisively struck toward the super-aberrant’s head—
Then, a loud crash! Suddenly, a jellyfish tentacle appeared, sending Jiang Xiao flying and viciously piercing his snake tail!
Wait! It wasn’t a jellyfish!
The camera fell to the ground and rolled around several times before finally lining up to reveal the massive creature above.
——It was a nearly three-meter-tall humanoid octopus, with dozens of tentacles coiling below its waist, each grotesquely large and with different human faces twisted on its tip.
Jiang Xiao closed his eyes and coughed twice, “At that moment, my terminal went berserk. Its genetic entropy is at least 100,000, and those faces are all from those it devoured. The jellyfish and mantises are still fighting in the outer city, but the octopuses in the inner city have already completed multiple rounds of selection, climbing to the top of the food chain in District 53. This aberrant is its mother’s best offspring—smart, powerful, and still extremely loyal to her.”
Lieutenant Rui Jin, who had been silent all this time, stood up and said, “Your man is injured and can’t drive for too long. I’ll replace him.”
Jiang Xiao also slowly got up, “I don’t want to waste my time watching trash sleep either.”
“By the way,” he paused, “According to Ryan’s investigation, there are eight identical mothers in the inner city. We have speculated that they are just clones of the super-aberrant body, and the real super-aberrant entity is still hiding in the dark.”
A stifling atmosphere engulfed the carriage.
Qin Zhilu’s expression was solemn, as if he was making some major considerations.
“Anyway, let’s first send a warning to the entire city,” Billy sighed, “Avoid the rain, don’t turn on the lights, and mantises only eat their own kind, right?”
An Yu, who had been silent all this time, suddenly whispered, “And, jellyfish can only sense movement.”
Billy was surprised, “What?”
An Yu looked at the floor of the carriage, “When you’re entangled by a jellyfish, if you don’t struggle, it won’t harm you.”
On his first night in District 53, he had watched from the window as a jellyfish landed on the water insects. The insects remained motionless, and after a while, the jellyfish wriggled away. He initially thought the aberrants had a mutualistic relationship, but it wasn’t until later that he discovered the competitive relationship between jellyfish and mantises, and that remaining still might’ve just been the survival instinct of the water insects.
“Dear God!” Billy was heartbroken, “Before we set off, I bet you’d come alive. Why did I only bet 1 point!”
Jiang Xiao coldly said, “Baseless speculation.”
An Yu shook his head slightly, “Tested and verified.”
When he was entangled by the large jellyfish in the garage, despite being nervous to death, he still tried his best to remain still.
Though now he doubted that the jellyfish didn’t harm him because of this.
He couldn’t help but glance at Qin Zhilu again, who calmly returned his gaze.
An Yu turned his gaze away from the subtle confrontation with his Commander, and mumbled, “Anyway, I can remember everything I’ve seen and I don’t make mistakes.”
Ling Qiu had said that this was the ultimate manifestation of the talent of the outcasts—internalizing everything they see and gain, not just food.
After everyone had left, Qin Zhilu brought over a bag of bread, “Eat something.”
An Yu immediately hugged the paper bag to his chest and just as he took a big bite of the bread, he suddenly heard him ask, “Before you fainted, what were you saying about your superpower?”
He almost choked to death on a bite of bread.
An Yu looked down, clutched the paper bag in his hand and mumbled with a piece of bread in his mouth, “It’s just… the infection from aberrants seems to cause some changes in me.”
Qin Zhilu also lowered his head slightly, “What kind of changes?”
“I can run a bit faster.” An Yu swallowed the bread and his voice gradually got quieter, “Like the teleportation mentioned in the lieutenant’s recording. It’s just that the jellyfish-man’s gene entropy might not be high enough, so this ability only shows a slight sign of awakening.”
“Mm. It seems that only real aberrant genes work on you and the simulated frequencies of the catalyst experiments don’t work.”
An Yu held his breath, “Infection is just the beginning. Once it tries to acquire my genes—it will… explode.”
This ability sounded very much like a super-aberrant entity.
An Yu swallowed hard, unsure how Qin Zhilu would view him because of this. He knew very well that these abilities could only be passively triggered against things attempting to infect or absorb him. If Qin Zhilu suddenly pulled out his gun on him—this simple killing method would definitely make him die on the spot.
He was so anxious he wanted to eat another hundred pieces of bread, and he whispered, “Although I’m the same kind as Rabbit An, I haven’t lost my mind, Commander. I am controllable.”
Qin Zhilu stared at him seriously, “Do you really know what you’re saying?”
“I do.” An Yu gently rubbed the torn fabric of his prison uniform, “I will try to kill as many aberrants as possible to prove myself.”
Qin Zhilu suddenly lowered his head slightly, and An Yu had the illusion of seeing the corners of his lips curve up.
“Good.” When Qin Zhilu looked up, he had regained his usual calm demeanor, “Kill more aberrants and save as many people as possible.”
He raised his hand, paused for a moment in mid-air, then finally placed it on An Yu’s head, pressing it down gently.
“What are you talking about?” Zhu Tao came out, puzzled. “What is Rabbit An? I’ve never heard of it.”
Seeing that Qin Zhilu didn’t stop him, An Yu muttered, “It’s my distortion type.”
“You distorted? And your distortion type is a rabbit?” Zhu Tao frowned, looking him up and down, with an expression like looking at an expired compressed biscuit, “Will a rabbit distortion look like you?”
An Yu was confused, “You know about rabbit distortions?”
“I know too much.” Zhu Tao grumbled, “Rabbit distortions are very spicy. You don’t look very typical.”
“Spicy?” An Yu didn’t understand, “What do you mean?”
“Search the 197th floor high-level officer information.”
An Yu tapped on his terminal.
Tang Feng, 25 years old, the youngest elite colonel in military history.
He was infected while performing a cleaning mission, and his distortion type is an antelope jackrabbit.
In the photo, Tang Feng had dark gray hair and was wearing a black tight combat suit. He had broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and a perky butt, mixing both strength and sensuality.
He shouldered a bazooka and sharply stared at the camera.
Zhu Tao smiled proudly, “My Commander, spicy or not?”
“……”
An Yu finally remembered this term, which Ling Qiu often used when gossiping.
“Actually, I’m also—” He instinctively wanted to argue but then stopped himself.
Zhu Tao asked, “You also what?”
Ling Qiu had said that if he had been able to eat well since childhood, grow up properly, and not always wear clothes like torn sacks, he would be quite spicy too.
But forget it.
An Yu sat back expressionlessly, “Nothing.”
Competing over such things shouldn’t increase the Commander’s favorability towards him.
No bread, no house, no life.
What’s the point of having a perky butt?
[07 The Unlucky Number]
The number that the Protectors hate the most is 3.
A mental power of 30 is the critical threshold; if you cross it, you’re no longer a human being.
Those who are executed close to 30 are considered lucky. Falling below 30 before dying is a fate worse than death.
That’s why the most common social mistakes made by rookies in the Spire all involve the number 3.
For instance, the clueless ones who insist on joining a two-person lunch with their tray.
Or those who, when the elevator doors open to reveal two people inside, still force their way in.
Such people deserve to be kicked out.
This superstition of these dead ducks also aggravates their moral rigidity on some level.
—In the Spire, everyone strives for and defends emotional exclusivity.
After all, knowingly becoming the third party is absolutely intolerable.
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