Chapter 37

Chapter 37

Lu Yan realized that many things in life only seemed to offer a choice. In reality, there was no choice at all.

Take a college graduate, for example. If they didn’t go home to inherit the family business but instead struggled to find a job, was it because they loved working?

No. It was because there was no family business to inherit in the first place.

Just like now.

Lu Yan considered for only three seconds before answering. “I don’t care about the future. I just want to know which choice makes it easier for me to kill Lu Cheng.”

The System replied, [The second one. If things go smoothly.]

“Good. Tell me what to do.”

[The pollutant joining this time is… I won’t say his name. You already know it. One of his talents is called ‘Divine Descent.’ It allows him to turn the bodies of his followers into disposable vessels. These vessels can wield, at most, one-tenth of his power. Don’t think one-tenth of an S-Class pollutant’s power equals a contamination value of 1000… it doesn’t work like that.]

[Every vessel he uses explodes and dies without exception. But he doesn’t care. He has vessels like this all over the world. The most disgusting part is that as long as a single vessel exists, he can never be truly killed.]

[His second talent is called ‘Conversion.’ As the leader of the Cult of Bliss, he relied on this talent for his early missionary work. It’s also the reason he wants to descend now. If he can convert Tang Xun’an to the Cult of Bliss, he’ll gain his most powerful follower.]

[After all, as a mental-type S-Class pollutant, he’s good at playing god and fooling people. But in a real fight among his peers, he’s practically useless. He needs someone to charge into battle for him.]

The official data on the Celestial Forum had no definitive conclusion on what kind of creature the Holy One originally was. But judging by the System’s tone, the Holy One had started as an ordinary human.

To have spread the Cult of Bliss so widely, he must have been an excellent salesman in his previous life.

[So, what you need to do now is eliminate as many of his vessels as possible. He can descend into multiple vessels simultaneously.]

A map lit up in Lu Yan’s mind.

It was the botanical garden map originally sent by the Prevention and Control Center. Now, over twenty points of light glowed on it. One of them was red.

[The red point is the source of this outbreak: Chen Anzhi. The remaining green points are all the new converts he’s developed.]

The entire training center only had 60 trainees. Who would have thought Chen Anzhi had turned over a third of them?

[He can only target those with low vigilance and low spiritual power thresholds. But as disposable vessels, they’re good enough.]

“I want to deal with Chen Anzhi first,” Lu Yan said.

[Possible. But he won’t be easy to kill. And he has a righteous iron fist by his side.]

Lu Yan didn’t reply. Instead, he began moving toward the red dot on the map.

During his two months of training, tracking and counter-tracking were among the skills he’d mastered best.

***

Night fell.

Small sleeping bags were set up around the periphery of the botanical garden.

The trainees, having completed a day’s work, prepared to rest.

This was precisely why teams had been formed in groups of three.

Surviving alone in these conditions was simply too difficult.

Zhou Qimeng gritted his teeth as he pulled the venomous stinger from his arm, then took a hemostatic agent from the medical kit.

The pollutant—a giant wasp—had evolved barbed hooks on its tail stinger. Zhou Qimeng had also slept through the first-aid lecture on extraction. Ripping it out tore a chunk of flesh with it, and blood immediately poured from the wound.

Beside him, Chen Anzhi’s face was full of guilt. “I’m sorry, Brother Zhou. If it weren’t for saving me, you wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”

“What does it matter?” Zhou Qimeng said dismissively. “You’re a mental-type. Of course you’re not as tough as a pure combat-type like me. I have my Iron Arm talent, and it still stabbed this deep. On you, it would’ve gone right through.”

It had to be said that Zhou Qimeng still retained much of the “brotherly loyalty” from his days mixing in the underworld.

“But damn it,” he cursed. “There were way too many pollutants on the way. I don’t even know if Lu Yan’s still alive.”

Chen Anzhi’s eyes flickered. Reflected in the deep crimson campfire, they held a strange, bewitching light.

“I’ll keep watch tonight,” he said. “As a mental-type Awakener, going a day without sleep doesn’t affect me much. You’re injured. You should rest.”

Zhou Qimeng didn’t refuse. After tending to his wound, he crawled into his sleeping bag.

The reason they’d encountered so many pollutants wasn’t without cause.

Lu Yan had pricked his finger and smeared his blood along their path. The pungent scent of plants masked the blood well, and the tree bark was dark. Except for natural predators, no one would have noticed.

Now, he had finally waited for night.

His night vision meant he didn’t even need a light source.

He lay in wait on a tree branch, silently biding his time.

The drawback of cold weapons was their tendency to reflect light, so Lu Yan hadn’t yet nocked an arrow.

He watched as Chen Anzhi took a scented candle from his backpack, lit it, and placed it before him.

As a devout follower, Chen Anzhi preached to his new converts in their dreams every night.

His imaginary table was already filled with bewildered souls, waiting only for the descent of their god.

If nothing went wrong, today would be the final page of the old era.

[This dream-entering ability is truly annoying,] the System, silent for a long while, suddenly remarked. [After falling asleep, Chen Anzhi can detect nearby spiritual presences.]

Lu Yan frowned, preparing to withdraw.

[The only silver lining is that he also wants to kill you. No particular reason. He’s played the benevolent saint for so long during the day that his personality has twisted. He finds you detestable.]

[But I can understand that. The exceptional are always envied.]

Chen Anzhi closed his eyes for only half a minute before slowly opening them again.

That compliant, harmless smile still hung on his lips.

He glanced at the sleeping bag, then extinguished the campfire. By the look of it, he seemed to be going to relieve himself.

Lu Yan naturally followed.

Chen Anzhi knew Lu Yan was there and wanted to kill him. So he wanted to use this information asymmetry to turn the hunter into the prey.

He thought he was playing 4D chess.

He didn’t expect that Lu Yan, with his cheat-like Omniscient System, was playing from orbit.

[Hmm. He lit Tranquility Incense. This incense can temporarily induce a deep sleep state. But since the sleeper can be easily awakened by external force, it seems he wants to hypnotize you into killing yourself.]

For Lu Yan, holding his breath wasn’t too difficult. He had two respiratory systems.

He patted some water behind his ears. Not much, but enough to avoid asphyxiation.

He moved in the direction Chen Anzhi had left, carefully, without making a sound.

But upon entering the range of the Tranquility Incense, Lu Yan stood still as if stupefied.

His eyes closed, eyelids fluttering, the pupils beneath moving rapidly.

A long moment later, Chen Anzhi’s figure emerged from behind a tree trunk.

Chen Anzhi’s eyes were now completely occupied by pitch-black pupils. Upon closer inspection, the pigments accumulated in his irises—dark and light—made his pupils look like overlapping black coils of varying sizes.

“Your soul… is black,” Chen Anzhi suddenly said. Perhaps because his usual demeanor was a facade, his words now were unusually voluble. “Ordinary people are blue. Tang Xun’an is gold. Followers are red. But yours is black—the same black as those pollutants who still retain their sanity.”

“But you are clearly human. Your mutation level is still very low. Why is that?”

As he spoke, he walked toward Lu Yan.

“Open your eyes. Look at me. I know you are weary of this world filled with slaughter and strife. Your soul is exhausted…” That smile returned to Chen Anzhi’s face. “Let me lead you to the pure land of bliss and eternal life. In this world, no one will ever harm your soul again.”

Different from the daytime, this time the smile on Chen Anzhi’s face was no longer gentle. Paired with those eyes, it looked utterly pathological.

Lu Yan, as desired, opened his eyes. But he deliberately avoided looking into Chen Anzhi’s.

In a reverse grip, he drove the sharp wasp stinger into Chen Anzhi’s chest.

Lu Yan moved too fast. By the time Chen Anzhi reacted, he only felt a sharp pain in his chest.

Everyone knew Lu Yan was skilled with a bow. They didn’t know his first weapon had actually been a dagger.

One of Lu Yan’s hands clamped around Chen Anzhi’s throat, stifling any cry for help. The other hand pulled out the not-so-long barbed stinger and replaced it with the dagger.

He pinned Chen Anzhi to the ground. The other man’s pale face flushed crimson. He used his hypnotic ability to its absolute limit, but Lu Yan showed no reaction.

The dagger twisted in Chen Anzhi’s chest, producing a sickening, wet sound of churning flesh.

Chen Anzhi’s hands clawed painfully at Lu Yan’s arms, leaving shallow scratches. “Why… why… you…”

—Why aren’t you affected by the hypnosis?

“Yes. Why is that?” Lu Yan retorted, a cold mockery in his eyes.

Villains always died because they talked too much. So, only after confirming Chen Anzhi was thoroughly dead did Lu Yan begin to mutter to the corpse.

“My father never liked me. He preferred my younger brother.”

I'm an only child, but I do have a brother. The doctors called him a second personality. From the moment he was discovered, my father wanted him to emerge every single day—so I was hypnotized. Often. I always knew, in those moments, that I was being hypnotized. Lu Cheng wanted to kill me. To leave this body for him."

"My brother tells me, too, that if it hurts too much, I don't have to bear it. He'll take it all for me."

"But I won't let him out. In all these years, he's only come out once."

"That time, after he appeared... my father's body began to change. An aberration, right then. I saw a second head pushing out from Lu Cheng's back. I felt the power. But I was also... terrified by it. I live in that fear. You people wouldn't understand. No one could."

Lu Yan wiped the blood from his cheek with the back of his hand and gave a slow, final nod. "I won't let him out.