Chapter 129

Chapter 129

The clock read 3 AM.

Even if the Agents dragged into this place fought with everything they had, saving everyone was an impossible task.

Lu Yan passed by the X City school, a shadow wreathed in dark light. By the gate, several students in uniforms lay motionless on the ground.

Around them, the Butchers gathered like hyenas, forming a gory circle for their feast, eyes gleaming with greedy hunger.

But not all pollutants were eating.

One pollutant, dressed in a white shirt and suit pants, was futilely trying to pull the Butchers away from the bodies, over and over.

A proctor’s badge hung from his chest. His eyes bulged from their sockets on long stalks, like a snail’s.

[This pollutant awakened clairvoyance. He’s clerical staff for the Slaughterhouse now. Before becoming a pollutant, he was a teacher at this school.]

Even mutated, the Snail’s combat ability was weak.

The burly Butchers shoved him aside, sending him sprawling. Unfazed, as if feeling no pain, the Snail clambered back up each time, pulling at the Butchers feasting on his former students.

A dog-headed Butcher snarled, “Mind your own business, or we’ll eat you too!” It bared a mouthful of sharp teeth for emphasis.

The Snail Teacher ignored it. One hot-headed young Butcher lost patience, grabbed the Snail by the neck, and hoisted him into the air.

With a vicious grin, the Butcher jammed the Snail’s head between the iron bars of the school gate.

The Snail’s eye-stalks contorted grotesquely. His body thrashed in mid-air, a pathetic, ridiculous sight.

The surrounding Butchers roared with laughter, their cruel mirth echoing down the empty street.

The pollutants here, even if not perfect evolutionary specimens, clearly possessed more intelligence than their counterparts in the outside world.

The Rabbit Butcher in Lu Yan’s pocket poked its fuzzy head out. “Mama,” it whispered. “Tummy hungry.”

Lu Yan pressed a hand over the doll’s head, shoving it back down. “Endure it.”

The minor disturbance went unnoticed by the other Butchers.

“Letting pollutants hunt freely will lead to extinction,” Lu Yan murmured. “What happens after that?”

[Pollutants have an instinctual craving for those lower on their food chain.]

[But if they can’t find prey beneath them, they turn on each other. Like the pollutants in the ocean—they’ve survived until now by cannibalizing their own kind. Ordinary meat can’t provide the nutrients they need.]

[I’ve said it many times. No matter how similar they seem, humans and pollutants are different species with entirely different physiologies. From an evolutionary standpoint, the pollutant life-form is more advanced. Better adapted to environmental shifts. More capable of surviving extreme conditions. Superior.]

[Thousands of years ago, humans domesticated wild beasts into livestock. Did anyone ask the pigs if they were willing to be eaten?]

[This is just the prologue of evolution. According to Research Institute studies, some low-level, social pollutants have already developed basic communication methods, like monkeys. Given enough years, pollutants will likely develop their own language, writing, even civilization. From the Cambrian to the Cenozoic, the apex predators have changed—Anomalocaris, Dunkleosteus, Eryops, dinosaurs. Those extinct, once-dominant species… can we be sure they had no civilization?]

[By human standards, they are pollutants. But by their own?]

The System’s words gave Lu Yan pause.

[I know what you’re thinking. But the tragic truth is,] the System paused, [even cutting open your stomach to prove there’s only flour inside wouldn’t make everyone believe you. Tang Xian’an isn’t even a pollutant, yet he’s worn a muzzle for decades.]

[They fear him.]

[One day, they’ll fear you too.]

Lu Yan didn’t pursue the topic.

He skirted the crowds, heading for his destination. His mental map indicated a high-level Slaughterhouse Butcher lived nearby and would likely pass through this area.

The map displayed NPC positions—Agents as white light, pollutants as red.

[By the way,] the System added, [remember to avoid Zhou Qimeng. His talent overrides the rules of this inner world. Get too close, and he’ll see the title above your head.]

Instantly, a blue dot appeared on the edge of Lu Yan’s mental map. Zhou Qimeng.

Just as he neared his target location, the doll rabbit in his pocket began squirming violently. “Mama! Mama!”

Lu Yan clamped a hand over its mouth. “Quiet.”

“Mmph! Mmph!”

For the first time, the Rabbit Butcher disobeyed.

Clutching its scissors, it leaped from Lu Yan’s pocket.

The doll hit the ground, tumbling several times before righting itself. It dusted itself off and began hopping forward on its short legs.

Its strides were small, but its jumping power was exceptional. With a few bounds, it was dozens of meters away.

System: [It’s Li Ping. She’s been pulled in too.]

A red dot lit up on the map—the Rabbit Butcher’s location.

Lu Yan disliked deviations from the plan. He stood still, a slight frown creasing his brow.

[If you don’t go, they’ll probably die.]

After a moment’s consideration, Lu Yan turned and followed the path the Rabbit Butcher had taken.

*

Li Ping shoved the last person into the basement storage room.

Her grip tightened on the gun in her hand—a Fifth Research Institute weapon designed to give ordinary people a fighting chance against low-level pollutants.

All Prevention Center staff underwent mandatory training, including firearms proficiency.

Her instructor had put it bluntly: “When there aren’t enough Agents to go around, we step up.”

Li Ping had no awakened talent, but her marksmanship was excellent. She’d already taken down several low-level Butchers with this gun on her way here.

On countless sleepless nights, she’d go to the shooting range alone to practice.

No profound reason. She just believed that if she’d had these skills seventeen years ago, maybe she wouldn’t have had to watch, helpless, as the plush bear took her child.

This was a mall’s underground storage warehouse, used for goods. It had a heavy iron door and contained supplies.

From the distance came the heavy thud of footsteps and the scrape of an axe dragging against a wall.

A Goat-Head Butcher was prowling nearby.

A staff member clutching a child looked at her, panic-stricken. “Professor Li, aren’t you coming in?”

“Stay hidden,” Li Ping whispered, already pulling the door shut. “I’ll draw it away.”

As Prevention Center staff, Li Ping knew far more about pollutants than these civilians.

That iron door wouldn’t stop a Goat-Head Butcher. It needed a distraction. These Butchers weren’t bright. Lure it away, and it likely wouldn’t circle back.

A man’s hand shot out, stopping the door. “Professor, let me go.” He was also Center staff.

Li Ping’s eyes flicked to the child in his arms. “I’ll go. My parents are gone. No husband. No children.”

With that, she closed the final sliver of the door.

There was no signal in this inner world. Everyone was cut off.

Even Li Ping couldn’t reach Yan Bei.

Gripping the gun, she climbed to the mall’s top floor. Fear sent adrenaline screaming through her veins, but it didn’t shatter her focus.

She scanned the area, then deliberately kicked over a round, metal trash bin by the elevator shaft.

It clattered noisily down several flights of stairs.

The next second, Li Ping hit the elevator button, rode from the top floor to the first, and sprinted for the mall’s main exit.

Above, the tricked Goat-Head Butcher let out a roar of fury.

As Li Ping reached the doors, a deafening crash of shattering glass erupted from above.

The Goat-Head Butcher leaped from the rooftop. It stood nearly three meters tall, with bull-like horns, muscles like slabs of stone, and a bloodstained executioner’s axe in hand. Its cloven hooves struck the asphalt, leaving deep impressions.

Fear spiked, a primal drumbeat in her chest. Li Ping raised her gun, aimed for the Butcher’s eyes, and fired without hesitation.

Luck was with her.

Normally, at over ten meters, with her skill level and the Butcher’s sheer size obscuring her aim, hitting such a small target would be near impossible.

But in this moment, under the shadow of death, Li Ping awakened.

A faint white halo shimmered around her.

[Talent 309 – Tracking Shot]

The bullet traced a faint arc through the air and struck the Butcher’s left eye.

It exploded in the orb. The Goat-Head Butcher’s vision swam with red.

“Fk! That was my World Cup-watching eye—!”

If it had been toying with its prey before, now it was fully enraged.

It hefted its massive axe, charged forward like a raging bull, hooves pounding the street with earth-shaking force.

The distance between them vanished in a terrifying instant.

The heavy axe swung down toward Li Ping’s back. Seeing its shadow on the ground, she threw herself forward without hesitation, rolling across the pavement in a desperate scramble.

The axe bit deep into the asphalt, splitting a jagged fissure in the street.

The Goat-Head Butcher released the axe handle and stomped down, aiming to crush her beneath its hoof.

At its weight, one solid hit would mean death or shattered bones.

But at that exact moment, a rabbit doll sprang forward, landing with pinpoint precision beneath the descending hoof.

The rabbit was small, a C-Class pollutant like the goat, another Butcher of the Slaughterhouse.

Rabbit Butcher raised its tiny sewing scissors. The small blades punched clean through the thick hoof.

Blood gushed from the wound. The Goat-Head Butcher bellowed in rage. “Have you lost your damn mind?! You want to get kicked out of the Slaughterhouse?!”

Butchers squabbled over prey sometimes, but tonight the streets were crawling with meat. Fighting him was a waste of a good hunt. And they had no grudge.

A Butcher expelled from the Slaughterhouse ended up just like the pigs on the chopping block.

Li Ping didn’t understand why the two pollutants had turned on each other, but she knew an opening when she saw one.

Stumbling to her feet, she ran. She didn’t look back.

The Goat-Head Butcher ignored the rabbit, lifting its leg to give chase. But Rabbit Butcher was stubborn. It leaped again, sinking its teeth into the thick fur of the goat’s throat.

The goat’s massive hand closed around the plush doll, tendons bulging along its arm.

The doll’s mouth gaped open, spitting out tufts of white stuffing from between its stitched seams.

It ducked its head and clamped down on the goat’s thumb joint, swallowing gulps of hot, coppery blood.

[Talent 144 – Life Extraction]

Rabbit Butcher was different from the other Butchers. It had no hulking frame, no terrifying strength or speed. The reason it had earned its place in the Slaughterhouse was a single, high-ranking talent.

Blood poured into the doll’s fabric body. The glass-bead eyes rapidly grew a nictitating membrane, then eyelids.

It could blink now, like a real rabbit.

The goat, forgetting the Slaughterhouse rule against killing fellow Butchers, drew back its other fist to smash the rabbit’s head.

But a hand caught its wrist.

Compared to the goat’s thick limb, Lu Yan’s arm looked slender enough to snap.

Yet when his hooked fingers drove into the flesh, they cut like scalpels.

From behind the Goat-Head Butcher, Lu Yan ripped out a still-beating heart.

It pulsed in his grip, thick vessels dangling.

In that final moment, the goat smelled it—damp, briny, the scent of the deep ocean. Familiar. It knew that smell.

It had never imagined that scent would mean death.

Pollutant blood was viscous. Lu Yan opened his hand, letting the pomegranate-sized heart thud to the ground.

Rabbit Butcher crouched by the corpse, nibbling between choked sobs. “Mama doesn’t remember me.”

The little rabbit had finally stopped calling him ‘Mama.’ A small relief.

Lu Yan thought for a moment. “She probably does.”

“But… she didn’t even look at me.”

Lu Yan wasn’t good at comfort. He stated it plainly. “She didn’t recognize you.”

“I look like this now…” The little rabbit was suddenly too sad to eat. “Will she still love me?”

Lu Yan considered it.

His memory of Yan Bei’s liaison officer was vague—a single meeting, a middle-aged woman with gentle eyes.

He put himself in her place. He had no children, but if Tang Xian’an became a pollutant… he probably wouldn’t mind.

So he scooped the rabbit up and tucked it back into his pocket. “Yes.”