Chapter 16

016

Hiding under the bed during a crisis was rarely a wise choice.

Lu Yan’s life was monotonous, but he’d always found an odd comfort in horror films to relieve stress. Cannon fodder dying under beds wasn’t an uncommon trope.

Still, the bed was the only real cover in this bedroom. Statistically safer than the wardrobe.

He could have charged the nanny head-on, guns blazing, but his current physical condition simply wouldn’t allow it.

She was wielding a massive axe. With his dream-state spiritual power threshold barely over five hundred and a measly dagger, he’d be lucky to survive two swings.

The axe reduced the door to splinters. A thick arm reached through the gap, twisted the lock from inside, and shoved the ruined door open.

The room was empty. A tomb-like silence.

The nanny stepped inside, axe in hand, her smile stretching wider. "Miss Lu, on my suggestion, the master had the windows sealed this time. No jumping out for you."

Her son, sensing living flesh, thrust his pitch-black arms from her apron, writhing in the air with frenzied delight.

"Let me guess… where are you?"

Since becoming a pollutant, the nanny’s weight had clearly increased. The floorboards shuddered with each heavy step.

This made Lu Yan doubt the viability of his hastily formed plan. His body was enhanced, but he had no idea if this would actually work.

Desperate times called for desperate measures. Frankly, he couldn’t think of another way to survive.

The nanny lumbered to the bathroom door, shoved it open. Empty. Lu Yan wasn’t there.

Next, the wardrobe. Her smile grew manic with each violent yank of a door, the slams echoing through the room. At the last cabinet, she couldn’t resist—driving the axe deep into the wood with a sickening crunch.

"I hate you rich people. A little girl’s bedroom is bigger than my whole home."

"Miss Lu, have you ever been poor? Tried squeezing five people into a twenty-square-meter rental? My husband got sick. His parents are frail. That’s why my boy started stealing—just to ease the burden."

Her voice grew more frenzied, laced with venom. She hacked at the wardrobe again and again, splinters peppering her face. She didn’t blink.

The axe was rust-pitted but unnaturally sharp.

"He’s a monster in your eyes. But who made him that way? Mr. Lu is a good man. Gave my husband legal aid when no one else would. Even gave me this job. But you… why do you get all this? Just lucky birth?"

Axe held tight, she turned slowly toward the princess bed in the corner.

From beneath it, Lu Yan watched a pair of swollen feet approach.

His fingers tightened on the chain. He’d rehearsed this move a hundred times in his mind, along with every possible contingency.

But in this dream… he’d likely only get one chance.

The nanny’s shadow loomed closer, her ankles thick as posts.

Lu Yan calculated the distance. From under the bed, he flung a loop of chain.

It settled perfectly around one advancing foot. The disturbance made her pause, glancing down in confusion.

Thanks to the dream’s infection value, now over eighty, Lu Yan’s reflexes outstripped even the Frog-Man he’d faced. He shot from under the bed like an arrow, scrambling to the far side of the room in seconds.

The moment he felt the chain go taut, he hauled back with all his strength.

Heavy people lose balance easily. Caught off guard, the nanny crashed down. The axe followed, striking the floor with a dull, heavy thud.

A pained roar tore from her throat. Lu Yan lunged forward with the dagger, getting his first full look at the monster.

A woman over two meters tall, swollen with fat, her belly distended as if it held another person.

He had no doubt a stab would only pierce her blubber.

So he changed targets mid-lunge, driving the blade toward her eye.

She was heavy and strong, but clearly no fighter.

This was kill or be killed. He showed no mercy, not even when her hand closed around his throat.

The point pierced her eyeball. Dark, foul blood sprayed over Lu Yan’s hand.

"AAAAHHH!!!"

She clutched her face, screaming, stunned by the ferocity of his resistance.

Two hands emerged from her apron, obeying their mother’s will, and seized Lu Yan around the waist.

A deathly cold corpse-chill invaded his body. Instantly, his entire left side went numb.

The King Fish inside him grew frantic. The mouth on his left palm yawned wide and snapped shut, severing the son’s withered black arm.

A different, masculine shriek joined the cacophony in the bedroom. The two arms recoiled in pain.

The pollutant in the pouch was far more fragile than its mother—still gestating, not fully formed.

The mouth on Lu Yan’s palm chewed twice, apparently found the taste revolting, and spat out the scrawny limb.

He could have sworn he heard it gag.

"You little bitch!" the nanny shrieked, yanking the chain in a rage. "You hurt my son! I’ll kill you!"

Her son’s injury had weakened her.

A realization struck Lu Yan: She’s pregnant.

In this state, nothing was a bigger weakness than the belly.

He wrenched the dagger free and stabbed downward.

Instinct made her protect her child, but she quickly realized eliminating Lu Yan was the only way. She threw herself forward, crushing weight aiming to pin him, heedless of further harm to her son.

Lu Yan twisted free, slippery as an eel, but his triumph lasted less than three seconds. The chain around his ankle went taut, and she hauled him back.

Damn it… His first time being dragged back by the ankle, and it wasn’t even in a bed.

He couldn’t unfasten the chain. They were literally bound together. What had tripped her now trapped him.

It wasn’t a good plan. But in a seemingly hopeless situation, he couldn’t think of another.

Too weak. No power.

The helpless truth of those words sank in.

Her hand locked around his throat, crimson eyes burning with insanity. If not for his enhanced body, his neck would have snapped already.

Gasping through the pain, her face a mask of fury, she snarled, "Got you now, you little slut. Let’s see you run!"

One hand strangling him, the other fumbled for the fallen axe.

As the blade rose, Lu Yan’s eyes squeezed shut. Not from fear—pure biological reflex.

Then he choked on a spray of warm blood.

The nanny’s severed head struck his face. It hurt.

Gasping, he coughed, the world swimming back into focus.

"Young lady, where are your guardians?" A lazy drawl came from above.

Lu Yan sat up, looking.

The man was tall. Lu Yan was 180 cm himself, but this man stood a good half-head taller. Such height often came with bulk, but his frame was lean, carrying the streamlined elegance of a deep-sea predator.

A long, black sword hung at his waist. His eyes were a disturbingly brilliant gold.

As Lu Yan assessed him, the man did the same.

A voice crackled in Tang Xun’an’s earpiece: "Target pollution reading: 81.7."

Not even a full pollutant yet.

Tang Xun’an had called him "Young Lady."

Lu Yan glanced down at himself—his build, his height, the subtle but definite bulge in his trousers—and concluded that nothing about him should read as female. Given the dream’s context, he reasoned this body must appear as a girl to others.

The King Fish, dormant beneath his skin until now, stirred with sudden, palpable agitation. Sharing its senses, Lu Yan felt a spike of raw fear—deeper than anything it had shown toward Lu Jiahe.

His own gaze sharpened with wariness.

Tang Xun’an waited for a reply that didn’t come. His eyes fell on the detection watch around Lu Yan’s wrist. It looked familiar.

He narrowed his eyes slightly. "Hm. A colleague? Don’t believe I’ve seen you before."

Logically speaking, anyone who could reach this layer of the dreamscape, even a fellow traveler, shouldn’t be too weak. But Tang Xun’an combed through his memories for a long while—while he recalled quite a few formidable female Awakened, none of them looked like Lu Yan.

By Tang Xun’an’s standards, the girl before him was quite striking, resembling the white-uniformed campus belle from the class next door back in his high school days. Even if he’d only seen a photo, he shouldn’t have had no impression at all.

Lu Yan’s hand quietly closed around the dagger behind his back. “Who are you?”

Tang Xun’an blinked. “You don’t know me? Have all my years of work been for nothing?”

Lu Yan pressed his lips together. On his wrist monitor, this man’s pollution reading was 98. Dangerously high.

But then again, he hadn’t even been able to defeat the nanny. This man had cleaved it in two with a single strike. Even if he deteriorated into a pollutant, Lu Yan probably still wouldn’t stand a chance. The tension drained from his shoulders almost as quickly as it had come.

He lowered his head and began tending to his wounds with a strip of bedsheet.

The gash on his arm, courtesy of the axe, was still bleeding steadily.

His movements were practiced, precise.

“Doesn’t that hurt? I’ve got military-grade sedatives here.” Tang Xun’an offered what looked like a cigarette. “No tar or nicotine. Lychee flavored. It’s just shaped like this because it’s compact, easy to carry.”

“Not needed,” Lu Yan replied.

Quite the wary little thing, Tang Xun’an thought.

But then he remembered the occasional social news stories he saw while browsing online, and figured he could understand.

After a moment’s consideration, he produced his identification from inside his coat. “Here. Take a look. Yours?”

It was the standard-issue work badge from the Pollution Disease Control Center.

Lu Yan glanced at it. The front bore only two lines:

Tang Xun’an.

S-Class Awakened.

Below were an employee number, a fingerprint, and a DNA code.

Lu Yan found his own and handed it over.

“Only F-Class? Must be new. Probably haven’t even attended the orientation training. No wonder you don’t know me.” Tang Xun’an’s mood lightened considerably. “Who took your ID photo? The quality is terrible. Makes you look like a guy.”

Lu Yan opened his mouth, then closed it.

Not really worth explaining.

“Though the immediate problem seems dealt with,” Tang Xun’an continued, “I came here because the pollution readings were highest in this area.”

He pointed at the nanny’s corpse on the floor. “I didn’t even need to draw my blade for that. I refuse to believe it’s the final boss of the Wall of Resentment’s deepest layer.”

Wall of Resentment…?

Something clicked in Lu Yan’s mind. His gaze shifted to the blood-soaked wall.

It was completely covered now, the original plea of “Save Me” drowned beneath the crimson tide.

“Lin Sinan and I were on a mission. We fell asleep and woke up here. The highest-level pollutant here is…”

Before Lu Yan could finish, Tang Xun’an raised a finger and gently pressed it against his lips.

The temperature around them began to rise.

In Lu Yan’s vision, the world washed over with a layer of red.

The scarlet light pressed closer.

The black night was torn asunder—not by a meteor, but something more akin to a falling star, blazing as it descended. No, not a star either. A meteorite might be a better fit.

But it was not a meteorite.

It was a person, engulfed in flames.

Featureless, its entire body bore the marks of carbonization, no different from the charcoal-like figures he’d seen on the roadside earlier.

As it drew near, everything in its vicinity began to char and blacken, like plants caught in a wildfire.

Only the bone-white spikes protruding from its pitch-black form made Lu Yan realize the truth.

This was Lu Jiahe.

His brother.

He had received the message and hadn’t dared to pause for a second.

If not for Tang Xun’an, he would have been too late once more. He would have lost his little sister again, just like all those years ago.

Something flickered in the chaos of Lu Jiahe’s mind, but he couldn’t grasp it. Only one thought remained, burning with singular purpose.

Flames melted half the wall away. Even without features, Lu Yan could feel the unrestrained killing intent radiating from his brother. It grew palpable, almost solid, the moment those burning eyes fell upon the blood staining Lu Yan’s clothes.

Across the city, everywhere except where Lu Yan stood, raging infernos erupted.

Lu Jiahe’s gaze locked onto Tang Xun’an, his voice dripping with frost. “You’re the one who hurt her?”

A faint, excited gleam flashed in Tang Xun’an’s narrowed eyes—the thirst for a worthy fight.

Instinctively, he shifted to shield Lu Yan, raising the scabbard of Huang Chen before him. “It wasn’t me,” he said, a slow smile touching his lips. “But you’ve earned the right to see my blade drawn.”