Chapter 1

Chapter 1

For a surgeon, pulling all-nighters in the operating room was just part of the job.

So when the director called him back to the hospital for an emergency case in the dead of night, Lu Yan didn’t complain.

His skill with a scalpel was the best in the hospital. Young and well-versed in new techniques, he was the director’s go-to for difficult procedures.

But this surgery felt different from the start.

Lu Yan didn’t even know what the operation was for until he walked into the prep room.

That was never a good sign.

Inside, he changed into his scrubs with practiced calm, listening to the hushed whispers around him.

“They say there’s another outbreak of the Pollution Disease along the coast…” The head nurse wrung her hands, her face tight with worry. “Online, they’re saying it’s a genetic illness from nuclear waste dumped in the ocean years ago. City H is already under lockdown. Thank god it’s only coastal.”

Lu Yan looked up. “It’s not just the coast. Inland cases exist. And the cause can’t be just nuclear waste.”

“How do you know that, Dr. Lu?”

“My father contracted it,” he said, his voice flat. “He lived in City K. The day after his aberration symptoms appeared, the authorities took him away.”

Lu Yan remembered that winter day years ago. His father’s head had swollen grotesquely, like a waterlogged football. A second face had begun to press against the skin of the tumor bulging from the back of his skull.

It had been the happiest day of Lu Yan’s life.

“…I’m sorry,” a young nurse murmured, looking down.

“It’s fine,” Lu Yan replied evenly. “I don’t care.”

Dr. Li, another surgeon in the room, glanced around nervously before pulling out his phone. “A friend of mine’s a journalist. He was assigned to City H. Sent me this last night.”

Lu Yan leaned in to look.

The video was shaky, clearly shot from a hidden angle. The lens pointed at the ground—nighttime, streetlights casting a sickly glow on the cold sheen of military riot shields. Distant screams and gunfire echoed in the background.

The camera tilted up.

A collective, sharp intake of breath hissed through the prep room.

“What… is that?”

In Lu Yan’s experience, Pollution Disease aberrations meant tumors, twisted bones, malformed brains. The victims were still recognizably human.

The thing in the video was not.

A shadow stood in the doorway of an office building under the dim light. It had no head. Thick tentacles erupted from its neck, splaying outward like the branches of a diseased tree. From the end of each tentacle hung a limp, human-shaped body. Blood dripped onto the marble below, sizzling with a horrible sound.

“—Ready! Concentrated fire!”

The shouted order was frayed with raw, undisguised terror.

Gunfire erupted, a deafening downpour of bullets.

The projectiles tore into the monster’s flesh, blossoms of blood bursting open. Its body was pulverized into mush.

It collapsed. For a long moment, there was only silence.

“Is it over…?”

The next second, the mass of tentacles tore free from the bloody pulp and dragged itself forward one agonizing step.

The video cut to black.

A heavy silence settled over the room.

“Special effects,” a resident said with a dismissive sneer, trying to sound brave. “Pretty good CGI.”

“But what if it’s real? Aberrants have been appearing for years… The outbreaks were always contained, but…”

A nurse scoffed. “You believe everything those clickbait accounts post?”

Dr. Li just hugged his arms, face pale, shaking his head.

…

Lu Yan didn’t contribute. His name meant “speech,” but he was a man of few words. He was pulling on his latex gloves when the prep room door opened again.

The director entered with three strangers.

One glance told Lu Yan they were military. They moved with a rigid, drilled precision, their presence sharp and dangerous.

The director, usually a jovial, Buddha-like man, wore a grim expression. He scanned the room, his voice cutting. “Scrubs aren’t enough. Full Level-3 biohazard protocol. Now.”

The young resident blinked. “This serious? Is it Ebola?”

A tall man beside the director stepped forward. “My apologies for the interruption. I’m Lin Sinan. The patient is one of my team members. He was infected with the Pollution Disease while handling a pollutant on the coast. He is now in an aberrant state. We hope to excise the afflicted tissue surgically. First, you’ll need to sign confidentiality agreements.”

He paused, his gaze level. “Aberrants themselves are not contagious. However, the surgery involves direct contact with the pollution source. There is risk. Participation is entirely voluntary.”

Hesitation flickered across many faces. A doctor’s duty was to heal, but self-preservation was a powerful instinct.

Lu Yan broke the silence. “Where do I sign?”

The director wiped his brow and produced the documents. Lu Yan skimmed them—standard non-disclosure, no recording, no discussion. He signed his name without hesitation.

In the end, three doctors remained: the director, Lu Yan, and Dr. Li. They had one extra assistant: Lin Sinan.

Outsiders weren’t allowed in the OR. Today, no one questioned it.

“If the patient doesn’t make it,” a nurse muttered darkly, trying to lighten the mood, “you think he’ll just pull a gun and finish us off?”

Lin Sinan wasn’t in uniform, but the distinct, hard outline of a weapon bulged in his jacket pocket.

The operating lights blazed down on an empty table.

A minute later, two officers wheeled in a cylindrical metal capsule on a gurney.

Lu Yan glanced at the director. The man was a legend, his name in textbooks, a savior of countless lives. Now, his hands trembled slightly.

The capsule hissed open, releasing a wave of frigid air.

The patient was transferred to the table.

The moment she saw him, Dr. Li spun away and retched.

The young nurse paled, her voice a tremble. “What… what is this?”

The patient’s abdomen was covered in translucent sacs. Under the harsh surgical lights, things squirmed inside them. Fish.

Tiny, black fry swam with frantic energy within the fluid-filled eggs. The sacs seemed to have grown from the man’s flesh. Stretched skin and withered subcutaneous fat were visible through their membranes. They clustered together, dense and overlapping.

Like a spoonful of caviar, Lu Yan thought.

The officers efficiently strapped the patient down. They’d done this before.

“He was parasitized by a C-Class pollutant,” Lin Sinan said from his position near the wall. “This is the second stage of aberration. Our lead researcher believes excision of the parasitic mass, combined with adjuvant therapy, offers a chance of recovery. The situation was too critical to transport him back to the Center Laboratory. We’re in your hands. The fry are simple parasites. They pose no secondary contamination risk to ordinary people.”

Lu Yan’s greatest asset was his cold calm. It had guided his hand perfectly the first time he’d held a scalpel. It served him now. After a moment of stunned silence, he was the first to step toward the table.

Lin Sinan’s eyes tracked him, noting the movement.

The patient’s breathing was shallow. He could still feel pain.

With every egg sac Lu Yan carefully excised, the man’s body convulsed in a silent spasm, his face flushing dark red. Blood vessels webbed across the membranous surface.

The removed sacs shriveled instantly upon separation, collapsing into wrinkled, leathery lumps like desiccated sea cucumbers.

They were dropped into a special disposal unit filled with boiling water. The heat wouldn’t kill them, but it drastically reduced their activity.

“Why no anesthetic?” Lu Yan asked without looking up. “Even restrained, the muscle tremors obscure the field.”

Lin Sinan was silent for a beat. “Our circumstances are… unique. Anesthesia is not an option.”

City K’s First People’s Hospital had the best doctors. After the initial shock, the surgery settled into a grim, methodical rhythm.

The patient’s blood loss remained within acceptable limits.

By the third hour, fatigue began to blur the edges of focus. Dr. Li’s scalpel slipped, nicking his own glove. Foul fluid from a punctured egg sac spilled over his hand.

“No—no! Get me out!” Dr. Li’s composure shattered. “I quit! I’m done! Let me go!”

He threw down his instrument and bolted from the room.

Lin Sinan’s brow furrowed, but he didn’t stop him. Guards were posted outside. Dr. Li wouldn’t leave the hospital. He’d be taken for psych evaluation and Pollution Disease screening. They’d release him only if he was clean.

The surgery lasted four and a half hours. Finally, the last egg sac, nestled deep near the thoracic cavity, was successfully removed.

The director was an older man. Beads of cold sweat streamed down his forehead, and the moment he set down his scalpel, a wave of dizziness washed over him.

"The surgery was a success…"

He looked toward the patient's only "family member."

Lin Sinan, who had held his muscles rigid for hours, finally allowed himself to relax. A faint smile touched his lips.

Lu Yan blinked, his gaze dropping to the patient's hand.

Beneath the skin, something seemed to writhe within the veins.

The patient must have possessed extraordinary willpower. An unanesthetized surgery had only drawn a few muffled grunts from him. Toward the end, even those had ceased. Perhaps the pain had numbed him.

Now, his fingers twitched minutely, as if trying to capture the doctors' attention. Strapped down securely, the movement was barely perceptible.

Lu Yan looked at his eyes. They were weeping eyes, brimming with a desperate, resigned sorrow.

Was he… pleading for help?

Almost on instinct, Lu Yan’s scalpel sliced into the skin on the back of the patient’s hand.

A spray of tiny, golden fish eggs erupted from the incision.

Lin Sinan’s expression transformed in an instant.

BANG—

The gunshot was deafening, utterly unexpected.

Nurses screamed, clutching each other.

Lu Yan had performed countless surgeries, especially critical life-saving procedures. He couldn’t guarantee every patient would walk off the table.

But he’d never imagined a patient on his table dying like this.

Blood sprayed across his protective suit. Not just blood. Bits of viscera. He’d been too close to dodge.

The director’s legs gave way, and he slumped to the floor.

Lin Sinan lowered the gun, his voice thick with apology. "My mistake. He’d already entered the third stage. The pollution was irreversible. The pollutant had to be eliminated. Specialists will contact you all tomorrow regarding compensation."

Lu Yan simply stared, dumbstruck, at the corpse on the table, seemingly unable to process it.

Lin Sinan’s teammates moved forward in grim silence, beginning to collect the body. It wouldn’t go to the morgue. It would be sealed in a containment pod and incinerated at high temperature.

"My apologies. For making you witness that."

Lin Sinan glanced at the remains on the floor, gave a short bow, and left the operating room.

Those left behind exchanged hollow looks.

The director didn’t dare remove his stifling suit, despite the sweat plastered to his skin.

A bitter taste filled his mouth. "I’m giving everyone three days off. Go home… get some rest."

The young nurse’s hands still trembled uncontrollably. She wiped condensation from her face shield. "Director… is the Pollution Disease really a disease?"

The director offered a weary smile. "I don’t know. But I’ve heard a theory. The people at the Research Institute… they call it evolution. And evolution always walks hand-in-hand with extinction. Without extinction, a new species finds no empty niche to fill."

"Prepare yourselves," he said, unwilling to elaborate further.

Lu Yan entered the changing room and turned on the faucet over the sink.

Post-op protocol demanded he wash his hands. The water streamed down, but his fist remained clenched.

He looked at his reflection in the mirror.

A face stared back—calm, impassive. Devoid of joy, it was naturally free of panic or fear.

No one knew what he was thinking. No one had noticed what he’d done in those final moments of the surgery.

Lu Yan shut off the water. He shoved his hands into his pockets and finally unclenched his fist.

At that moment, a crisp, mechanical voice rang with perfect clarity inside his mind—

[Congratulations, host. Talent awakened: Omniscience.]

[Congratulations, host. Item obtained: Wang Yu Larva (Unhatched)]