Chapter 11

011

Lin Sinan nodded eagerly. "Yes, yes. Our Special Operations Department has excellent benefits. Not just the standard social insurance and housing fund—joining comes with a free apartment."

"I have one," Lu Yan replied. "Downtown. A two-hundred-and-forty-square-meter penthouse. Market value, thirteen million."

The penthouse was compensation from the relevant authorities after they'd taken his father away. Property prices hadn't been this insane back then, but it was still worth several million.

"And family members receive generous subsidies and special privileges."

"Both my parents are dead. I'm an only child."

"Children get priority placement in top-tier elementary and middle schools."

"I'm gay. No possibility of offspring. Opposed to surrogacy. Everyone has a responsibility."

Lin Sinan: "……"

The earnest way Lu Yan answered each point made him sound like a professional contrarian lifting steel bars on a construction site.

Lu Yan gave a light cough, took another sip of water. "Monthly salary?"

Having worked this job for so long, this was probably the first time Lin Sinan had ever been asked about monthly pay. He was momentarily at a loss. For people like them, money was the least important thing.

"One hundred thousand?… Base salary plus commission."

Lu Yan did the math in his head.

Not bad. A lot more than he'd made as a doctor. But then, the patients had gotten considerably more dangerous. The pay seemed fair.

He took the proffered document and began to read.

What Lin Sinan had brought was a formal contract, but perhaps out of consideration for his non-military background, the binding conditions were few. Only two main points: regular reporting to headquarters, and the requirement to undertake at least one mission every three months.

By joining the Control Center, Lu Yan would receive a fixed monthly supply of special medicine, free access to Pollution Disease intelligence, participate in headquarters training, and have organizational support if he ran into trouble.

All in all, to attract more people to choose this life-on-the-line profession, headquarters' offer was quite generous.

[The Pollution Disease Control Center and the Research Institute are not the same organization. If you want to, joining isn't a bad choice.]

Lu Yan finished reading the employment contract and signed his name in the bottom left corner.

*

At Lu Yan's insistence, Lin Sinan dispatched two staff members to escort him home.

Just one night had passed, and the streets looked like they'd survived a terror attack. Shattered glass and toppled street lamps were everywhere, with occasional splashes of blood and torn remains—some human, some pollutant.

The pollutants in City K could still be eliminated with physical attacks, so the roads were busy with figures in military uniforms.

Lu Yan rolled down half the car window, observing the outside world.

He'd been holed up at home until now, never venturing out during the day. Seeing it on the news and seeing it with your own eyes were completely different experiences.

With his heightened senses, Lu Yan could even make out the tear tracks on the face of an officer collecting a comrade's body. Tears mingled with blood, grime, and dust, a silent, wrenching grief.

[City K has a few dozen Awakened, plus over thirty thousand assisting officers. How could they possibly save all three million citizens unscathed? Obviously, because of the earlier riots, some humans hiding in their homes were dragged out and eaten by enraged pollutants. Crunch, munch.]

The system's detached tone made Lu Yan frown.

[Demanding the system empathize like a human is rather asking too much.]

Lu Yan closed the car window, pressing his right hand over his left palm as he closed his eyes, discomfort tightening his features.

Something was swelling there, like bamboo shoots after rain, ready to break through the soil at any moment.

*

Back home, Lu Yan booted up his long-unused computer.

Lin Sinan's contact info was still in his phone. The man had sent a web address, telling him it was an internal forum.

Probably due to something the Control Center had configured, Lu Yan's IP was no longer trapped behind the firewall.

He saw the outside world's discussions about City K's lockdown.

"Pollution Disease," "monster transformation," "aberrant humans"... these topics had dominated search rankings for weeks.

But for those who hadn't experienced it, it was impossible to grasp the true horror.

[The pace of evolution worldwide is accelerating. Nations have chosen to abandon information lockdowns. Hoping that through public education, more ordinary people can survive when they encounter danger.]

[Also, this makes it easier to recruit Awakened.]

……

……

The internal forum was simply called "Revelation." It was invite-only, with accounts for every officially affiliated Awakened in the world. Administrators were selected by each country's Pollution Disease Control Center. To accommodate different regions, the forum thoughtfully included a built-in translation system.

The forum required a fixed user ID, but it didn't record real information, and posts could be made anonymously. Even administrators couldn't view user identities.

Rumor had it a foreign official organization once tried to hack the forum. Not only did they get no information, but the head of the operation died unexpectedly the next day.

No one dared cause trouble after that.

Lu Yan hesitated for a long time at the username field.

He initially wanted "Doctor," but that ID was taken.

Lin Sinan had told him that some mission combat records of Awakened might be published on the forum, where their forum name would replace their real one, so he should choose carefully.

"There was an Awakened from Sichuan who set his ID to 'Any Tops?' Later, on missions, he was either avoided like the plague by straight teammates or pestered by… peculiar individuals. Anyway, think it through. The forum doesn't sell name-change cards." Finally, as if remembering something, Lin Sinan added, "His ranking on the forum is pretty high. If you're a top… ahem, you could try posting a selfie to team up with him…"

Lu Yan wasn't interested in teaming up. He thought for a moment and typed two characters: Dì Tīng.

Dì Tīng, the legendary divine beast, knows all things in the world, can distinguish truth from falsehood.

It fit.

This time, the registration succeeded.

The Revelation Forum looked like one of those early internet chat forums from the turn of the century. The UI was ugly and tacky, like a computer science freshman's final project. It had three main sections: "Technical Exchange," "Bounty Missions," and "Watercooler."

Lu Yan opened the sub-forum under Technical Exchange: Pollution Disease Case Studies. He read through all the materials from S-Class to F-Class.

Information was crucial. At least then, when encountering a pollution source, he wouldn't have to dissect a case on the spot to learn its traits.

The lower the pollution source's grade, the more detailed the information.

S-Class Pollution Disease files were only a few lines long, but the C-Class pollution source "Parasitic Fish" had a good seven or eight pages.

[Ahem. That's normal. Even though everyone talks about a shared fate now, Awakened still have nationalities… You can apply for the Control Center's internal materials; they're much more detailed. To be honest, the First District is already quite generous. Forty percent of the data on the Revelation Forum is provided by Awakened from the First District.]

After all, in the current situation, "shared fate" wasn't a joke. If the whole world fell, the First District alone couldn't hold out for long.

Lu Yan had always been a fast reader, but it still took him two full days to get through all the case files. Some of the images alone were like psychic pollution, nauseating.

He saw Lin Sinan's pollution source: the C-Class pollutant "Parasitic Worm."

The image files showed numerous corpses crawling with plump, pale, long worms.

The plump, soft worms emerging from nostrils, ear canals, and mouths made one want to drag the photographer who hadn't used a blur filter out of the computer and beat him up.

Within the data section, there was also an "Awakened Rankings."

This was an annual official assessment based primarily on spiritual power thresholds, contributions over the past year, and other political maneuverings not for public discussion.

Over sixty thousand people were registered on the Awakened forum, but the list only displayed the top 100.

Lu Yan scrolled to the very bottom. Number 100 was that "Any Tops?"

Personal intro: Face matters. Ugly tops need not apply.

Bai Qiushi's codename was "Cicada in Winter," ranked 37th.

The list also included names that were clearly foreign, like "Indra," "Michael," "Odin," "Miyamoto Musashi," and so on.

Lu Yan scrolled up, all the way to the top.

ID: Tyrant.

He clicked. The personal page only had the name hanging there, affiliated with the First District, but the visit count was staggering.

Lu Yan was speechless. "So edgy. Who names themselves 'Tyrant'…"

He also noticed something: the Tyrant ID's registration date was 84 years ago. Meaning, even if they'd registered at birth, Tyrant would be 84 years old now.

Lu Yan's own registration date was February 26th of this year.

He checked a few others. Registration dates ranged from the last century to this one. It didn't seem to be a system error.

"So, Pollution Disease and Awakened existed even last century."

Probably, it was only recently, when it became impossible to hide anymore, that these bizarre changes entered ordinary people's view.

Like an elderly person just learning to surf the 3G waves, Lu Yan browsed the forum with keen interest for several days.

He lurked, never posting, but learned many useful things. For instance, the closer you were to a pollution source, the faster the disease progression; the farther away, the slower it became… Also, pollutants came in two types: biochemical and psychic. The ones in City K were all the former. But the truly powerful pollutants were often a hybrid of both.

Beyond that, Lu Yan also scrolled through the Watercooler section and saw a few posts offering "Heavy rewards for healing-type items."

With global evolution, besides healing-type Awakened, there were many special items that could slow biological mutation.

And among the dozen or so branches of awakened abilities, the healing type was the rarest. Only three had been discovered so far.

No wonder the Control Center had been so anxious. If Lu Yan hadn't outright refused, they probably would have enshrined him at headquarters.

On the fourth day back home, the uncomfortable symptoms plaguing Lu Yan finally began to subside.

Before, his arm had ached as if about to tear open. Even flipping a wok while cooking felt unsteady. Nights were worse, pain wrenching cold sweat from him.

Now, with the throbbing eased, a new change manifested in his body.

Lu Yan looked down at his left palm.

As he stared, the skin of his palm split open, revealing raw, crimson flesh beneath. The edges of the fissure were lined with sharp, triangular fangs—the teeth of a shark.

It was grotesque, but undeniably a mouth.

Lu Yan probed it with a finger from his right hand. The sensation was bizarre. His left hand didn’t exactly hurt, but it was profoundly uncomfortable. His right finger felt like it was being eagerly licked by a happy puppy.

Later that night, he slipped out again, returning with a severed piece of an Algae-Man’s tentacle.

The mouth on his left hand ate happily. Far more convenient than those white threads.

“Is my left hand still my hand?” Lu Yan asked. “Will my body ultimately belong to my soul?”

The system chuckled. [It’s still a juvenile. Very dependent on you. But if you remain at your current level… when it realizes its master is so easy to overpower, even a naughty little fish will turn on its owner.]

*

On Lu Yan’s seventh day home, a news anchor announced in an uplifting tone: “After a month of unrelenting effort, standing united and working together, we have finally brought the pollution under control! The Prevention Center states that after three more days of observation, City K’s lockdown can be partially lifted!”

“This Pollution Disease incident has been classified as a B-Class emergency. The source was the C-Class pollutant ‘Parasitic Fish.’ This disaster has resulted in 46,321 deaths in City K, with 456 rescue workers among the fallen…”

As she read, the anchor’s eyes reddened.

Behind each cold statistic was a family, a life, years of joy and sorrow.

Lu Yan turned off the TV and sat in silence for a long time. His social ties had always been thin, but thinking of the dead Doctor Li, the rich kid, and the missing Shen Qingyang, a wave of melancholy and sorrow washed over him.

Fortunately, Lin Sinan’s call cut through the mood.

“Doctor Lu, it’s me. Lin Sinan.” A hearty laugh came from the other end.

“Captain Lin.”

“Calling because there’s something to discuss. Advancement for Awakened requires exposure to pollution sources. Your file has been sent to headquarters. There are two schools of thought up there. One hopes you can gain experience, with safety guarantees of course. The world is changing too fast; personal strength is crucial. The other faction wants you to go to headquarters and advance like ‘The Pope’… by taking medicine.”

When he said “taking medicine,” Lin Sinan’s tone held a slight strain.

[Medicine or people, this editor would also like to know. It must be said, among the nation’s thirteen research institutes, the First Research Institute is truly… aberrant.]

[A group of humanity-erasing maniacs conducting experiments that would terrify even gods. One day, it will backfire on them.]

Over the phone, Lin Sinan continued. “If you choose the former, headquarters has already selected a location. A mountain village near City K, in W City, has undergone mutation. Case codename: ‘The Living Dead.’ Pollution source grade: E. Maximum detected pollution value: 1100. Besides me, another Awakened with a spiritual power threshold of 3000 will accompany us. For the latter option, I would also escort you to the First Research Institute. The benefit is that it’s safer, more controlled.”

“I’m downstairs right now. Once you’ve decided, you can come down and tell me your choice.”