Chapter 44

Chapter 44

Though the situation was grim and survival rates plummeted, the rescue efforts above ground never ceased.

The thunder of gunfire and explosives echoed through the night without pause.

Conventional weapons still held some sway against biological pollutants. Headquarters dared not deploy missiles with excessive destructive power, however—not with hundreds of lives still trapped below.

The shelter's main hall was packed with four or five hundred people, a palpable current of dread running through the crowd.

Lu Yan found an armed guard nearby, flashed his identification tag, and traded a pack of cigarettes for a bow.

These soldiers were the ordinary kind, the final line of defense. The other Awakened had already descended to the front lines underground, fighting to contain the spread of the pollution.

Lu Yan didn't know exactly what was happening down there.

But as the trickle of survivors dried up and casualty reports grew, he could imagine the stories unfolding in the dark. Stories of sacrifice.

A safety line forged from flesh and blood.

Falling back on old habits, Lu Yan began tending to the wounded.

His white coat and Research Institute ID granted him passage through the chaos. No one stopped him.

Some injuries were simple trauma. Others were aberrations caused by the Pollution Disease.

The latter were isolated in a critical care zone—a dedicated ward.

'Ward' was a generous term. Curtains strung between beds were the only privacy. It was just a slightly more comfortable place to wait for the end.

Lu Yan pushed aside a curtain and stepped in. An Awakened lay on the cot, missing a leg.

"Rounds," Lu Yan said, his voice flat. "How did it happen?"

"Ghost-Face Spider bite. Thing wasn't big, but its fangs punched right through my combat suit," the Awakened on the bed grimaced. "My captain… he stayed behind to cover me. He hasn't come up yet."

A grotesque tumor swelled on the man's knee, the faint outline of a human face pressing against the skin.

The patient was a talker. In the moments Lu Yan's attention drifted, he'd already moved on. "Saw some of the Institute volunteers down there. My god, is that even human? One guy could breathe fire. Absolutely insane. Whatever he touched just… ignited. I asked for his autograph. He said he'd sign after, that he lived in dorm 907…"

Lu Yan measured the wound with his fingers, studying it intently. "No anesthetic. Should I cut it out?"

"Ah, Doc, it's no use." The patient sighed. "The face just grows back. I've seen how others go. The face gets bigger, swells up. The rest of the body withers away. When the pollution level hits 100%, spider legs burst out of the face. Turns you into a new pollutant."

"Close your eyes. Don't move." Lu Yan's tone was calm.

The injured Awakened looked confused but obeyed.

Lu Yan peeled off his glove. A seam split open across his palm.

Wang Yu, starved for months, was ravenous. In an instant, it latched onto the crimson tumor.

The tumor let out a shrill scream.

Taste-wise… not the best. But it would do.

Lu Yan pulled his glove back on. "Done. Next."

The 'treatments' proceeded smoothly. In these early days of the catastrophe, the pollution values weren't yet sky-high.

What unsettled Lu Yan was the time. Twenty-four hours had passed, and Qiao Yu still hadn't surfaced.

Four in the morning. Lu Yan finished his 'rounds' in the critical ward. He was uncomfortably full.

A full stomach brought drowsiness. He leaned against the wall, eyes drifting shut for less than half an hour when a violent tremor shook the ground.

A long, jagged fissure tore open in the distance.

The floor cracked, spiderweb fractures racing outward.

A slender, colossal ant leg emerged from the breach.

A tide of smaller ants, a seething black mass, surged toward the crowd.

"The pollutants… they're coming up?!"

Cold sweat beaded on the forehead of the Awakened in command. He keyed his radio, calling for ground support, only to be told seven rescue teams had already been dispatched.

Without exception, none had made it through.

The Research Institute's first-floor shelter had become an island in a sea of corruption.

A wave of panicked screams assaulted Lu Yan's ears.

The detection meter beside him spiked instantly to 5400.

Awakened in the critical zone struggled to their feet, scrambling for weapons, bellowing at the others. "The life pods! Get to the life pods!!"

'Life pod' was a misnomer. They were just reinforced metal boxes, no life-support systems, more like high-tech sleeping bags.

Without dealing with the pollutants, the pods were just a different coffin.

Lu Yan didn't move. He started counting his arrows.

The patient beside him grabbed his collar, frantic. "Doc, what are you waiting for? Run!"

The upper body of a gigantic ant heaved itself from the fissure.

Its head featured massive, scissor-like mandibles. Two long, translucent wings dragged behind it. Its abdomen was grotesquely distended, pulsing with fist-sized eggs.

It attacked and reproduced simultaneously, eggs spraying from its abdomen to hatch into vicious worker ants upon hitting the floor.

The meter delivered the final reading: 8100.

The queen stood sixteen meters tall.

She was a monarch of the underworld. For two months, her colony had migrated across half of Sector One, from a distant plateau all the way to City A.

The depths held many like her.

Even releasing every experimental subject from the ninth level wouldn't be enough to handle them all at once. This queen was just one that slipped through.

Lu Yan had assumed Yu Zhizhi awakened today. In truth, from the moment her foster father had his dream, the little girl had already stepped onto the path of the Awakened.

Pollutants, as if summoned, were converging on this suburban underground institute in City A, like attendees to some grim gathering.

The inky workers rushed the crowd, a dark, endless wave.

Someone doused a patch with a fire extinguisher. Against the countless ants, it was meaningless. The front line was swallowed by the chitinous tide.

Ants poured into every orifice, greedily devouring flesh and bone, leaving only empty skin behind as an incubation bed. Sated, they crawled out and swarmed toward the next victim.

Since becoming Awakened, Lu Yan had grown accustomed to risking his neck.

He popped a mint into his mouth, offering calm to his frantic patient. "Don't panic. Small scene." He asked, "Got gasoline? Rubbing alcohol works too. Dump it everywhere."

The Awakened blinked, then his face lit up. "Yes! We do!"

Lu Yan climbed onto a three-meter-high lighting rig. The vantage point was good.

He wrapped gauze and cotton around an arrowhead, lit it, and let it fly. The flaming arrow streaked into the swarm like a meteor.

These hand-sized ants weren't invulnerable, their pollution value barely 80. Their strength was in numbers. The flames made their bodies sizzle and pop, filling the air with the nauseating scent of roasting chitin.

Bottles of gasoline and alcohol showered the ants. Fire spread rapidly. Workers curled their legs, thrashing in the blaze.

The colossal queen shrieked in fury and laid a new batch of white eggs.

They hatched into winged termites with long, needle-like mouthparts, swarming like monstrous mosquitoes.

The termites took flight, heading straight for Lu Yan.

The patient below, still hurling fuel, yelled, "Holy shit, the damn ant's cheating! Doc, get down! We gotta fall back!"

Lu Yan didn't answer. He drew the dagger at his waist. Fine fish scales erupted across his skin.

His combat grades had always been A+.

The blade flashed. Termite bodies rained down.

The patient stared, dumbfounded. "Research staff are that hardcore now?"

The commotion finally drew the queen's full attention.

Lu Yan wasn't the Awakened with the highest spiritual power here. The commander himself registered 3700, a rare elite of this era.

She had intended to eliminate the combat-specialized commander first, but Lu Yan had provoked her.

Ignoring the sword strikes already scoring her carapace, the queen pivoted, one massive leg scything through the air.

While her forward movement was slow, her limb attacks, driven by immense weight and gravity, were terrifyingly swift.

In an instant, the black limb was upon him, the nightmarish hooks on its surface horrifically clear. The wind of its passage alone nearly knocked him over.

The chasm between power levels, like the chasm of knowledge, was not easily crossed.

Lu Yan's scales flared to their maximum, shielding every inch of his body. He dropped into a prone position, spreading the impact, hoping to avoid being smashed into paste.

But he didn't hit the ground. He landed in Tang Xun'an's arms.

The dragon scales on Tang Xun'an's face, which had receded as his aberration level dropped, had returned—likely from overusing his abilities. They gleamed against his skin.

Behind him, vast black dragon wings unfurled, larger than when Lu Yan first saw them.

Tang Xun'an set Lu Yan down without a word. His golden eyes burned like sunfire.

Gripping Huang Chen, he shot toward the queen. The moment the blade cleared its sheath, the world seemed to drain of color, washed in shades of gray.

Many around him wept with relief, but Lu Yan’s brow only furrowed deeper.

That brief contact had revealed something: Tang Xian’an’s aberration level was dangerously high, so high that the stench of pollution seemed to seep from beneath his very scales. And he was already wounded.

Lu Yan opened his palm. He’d touched Tang Xian’an’s arm, and now his hand was slick with dark, coagulating blood.

The man was injured—in the future.

As if confirming Lu Yan’s suspicion, the more intense Tang Xian’an’s battle with the ant queen became, the more pronounced his aberrant features grew.

Dragon wings. A dragon’s tail. Claws. Even his body began to swell and distort.

Finally, under the stunned gaze of everyone present, he completed the transformation—into a massive black dragon.

The dragon roared, its jaws closing around the queen’s neck with a sickening crunch.

The queen went still.

The black dragon’s scales were torn and missing in patches, its body a tapestry of wounds. Its wings hung limp, dragging on the ground as it slumped onto its side like a fallen mountain.

The blood that flowed from it was the mountain’s weeping stream.

Then, its golden eyes found Lu Yan.

In that instant, Yu Zhizhi’s painting flashed in his mind.

A pitch-black dragon. And its weeping eyes.

The detection meter no longer registered an aberration level for the dragon. It displayed a pollution value instead.

A sharp alarm pierced the air.

A long, heavy silence followed, broken only when a white-coated researcher stepped forward from the crowd.

Gong Weibin pointed a trembling finger at the dragon on the ground. “It’s not human anymore! If we don’t kill it now, while it’s wounded, it will slaughter every last one of us when it recovers! You all saw it!”

A ripple of fear passed through many eyes.

These were frontline personnel. They knew exactly what a pollutant was.

The commander raised his gun, then lowered it again, conflict twisting his features. “But… this is Tang Xian’an, isn’t it?”

“Pollution is irreversible! Commander Wang, don’t be weak! Do you want to be responsible for all our deaths?!”

Gong Weibin’s voice was a sharp, grating hammer blow to the commander’s resolve.

No one else spoke, but the unease on their faces said everything.

“He hasn’t fully become a pollutant yet.” Lu Yan’s voice cut through the tension from within the crowd.

Anger flashed across Gong Weibin’s face. “I am a senior engineer of the Research Institute! And who are you?”

“I’m his psychological counselor. For the past three months, I’ve been the one observing him.” Lu Yan didn’t look at Gong Weibin. His eyes were on the commander, his tone steady and certain. “I have a way. Trust me. Let me go to him.”

His calm, confident demeanor made the commander nod almost instinctively.

Lu Yan, in truth, had no plan. He possessed no healing talents. All he had was Wang Yu, which could devour pollution. And from his earlier ‘treatments,’ he knew that consuming the pollution source could significantly reduce a patient’s aberration level.

He was out of options, but he had to try. Tang Xian’an could die a hero’s death, but not like this—not surrounded by the hateful stares reserved for an enemy.

Under the collective gaze of the survivors, Lu Yan walked toward the fallen dragon.

The black dragon’s breathing was still labored and pained, its maw stained with blood.

Its golden eyes had narrowed to predatory slits—the sign of a hunter in the natural world preparing to strike.

The commander’s palms were slick with sweat. He feared the dragon would simply open its jaws and swallow Lu Yan whole.

Lu Yan placed a hand on the dragon’s massive head, repeating the words from their first meeting. “I’m not here to hurt you. Don’t be afraid.”

The fish scales on his arm lifted slightly. From beneath them, thin white tendrils extended.

It had been a long time since Lu Yan had fed this way… not since Wang Yu evolved its second form.

“It’ll be alright,” Lu Yan murmured, his voice low. “I promise you. You won’t become a monster.”

The dragon’s golden eyes remained fixed on him.

It was still grievously wounded, utterly spent. Yet, from the corner of one eye, a single tear traced a path through the blood and grime.

Then, the dream began to shatter.

Everything around them—the people, the scene itself—started to break apart like fragments of a smashed mirror.

[You’re finally back. Baby, I missed you.] The system’s voice sounded in Lu Yan’s ear. After three months of silence, it felt almost unfamiliar. [Good news: I don’t know how long you wandered in that dream, but only half a minute has passed in reality.]

[Bad news: Even half a minute is long enough for your little staring contest to alert the banyan tree. If I were you, I’d feed your drill instructor some blood right now. Stack that Bloodlust Gene buff. Get him to kill this big tree for us.]

The moment Lu Yan looked up, Tang Xian’an’s eyes snapped open in front of him.

The emotion swirling in their depths was one Lu Yan knew all too well… attachment.

For some reason, Lu Yan felt a sudden, acute awkwardness, like an online romance crashing headlong into an unexpected first meeting.

But there was no time.

Lu Yan acted. He drove a sharpened fingernail into his index finger, then stepped forward. Before Tang Xian’an could react, Lu Yan slipped his bleeding finger through the gap in the man’s muzzle.

“Lick it,” he commanded.