Chapter 7

Chapter 007

Fusing with the Kingfish larva had cut Lu Yan off from the outside world for a time.

The moment he stepped outside, he sensed something was off.

Deep, savage palm prints were gouged into the iron security door of his apartment, as if someone—or something—had hammered against it. He studied them. They weren't human. They looked more like the webbed hand of an oversized frog.

The cloying, metallic stench of blood hung thick in the air.

A power outage had plunged the hallway into absolute darkness. Lu Yan's fingers brushed against his phone screen.

[Something you should know,] the system chimed in. [While there are no pollutants in your immediate line of sight, these aberrations are phototropic. I wouldn't recommend any light sources unless you want to be swarmed. You have night vision now. Learn to accept what sets you apart.]

Night vision was limited. It worked by a blue-shift reflection of infrared light into the visible spectrum through a liquid crystal film. His eyes now glowed with a faint red luminescence, like a cat's. His world was painted in shades of ghostly green.

The neighbor's door stood wide open. The inside of the metal door was clawed to ribbons—final, frantic struggles etched in steel.

A sticky substance coated the hallway floor. Lu Yan nudged it with his foot. Dried blood. It crunched under his sole like crystallized syrup.

The trail was a drag mark. It paused at his doorstep, then, finding no entry, veered toward the stairwell and vanished around the corner.

His irregular hours meant he rarely saw the neighbors, but he remembered the family of four next door: a couple, a child, an elderly grandparent.

He stared at the bloodstain, silent for a beat. His grip tightened on the cleaver. He stepped inside.

Pardon the intrusion.

The smell inside was a physical wall, denser and richer than the hall. The volume of blood suggested multiple victims.

Lu Yan followed the trail two steps into the living room and his foot landed on something soft. A severed hand, halfway to the wrist. He looked down. An adult female, judging by the size. The stump bore clear tearing and bite marks.

No other obvious remains. It seemed pollutants didn't bother with bones.

The living room was the primary scene, but the blood trail originated from a child's bedroom down the hall.

The room was painfully cozy. A corner piled high with LEGO sets spoke of a cherished child.

Even though the pollutant was gone, the room reeked of damp fish and decay. A chair lay toppled on its side. Several lengths of frayed, broken rope were scattered on the floor.

[Clearly, the child was the one who mutated. The parents didn't want to send him to a containment shelter. So they tied him up here, waiting for a vaccine that would never come. At first, the aberrant child might have listened. In the end, it was just a monster that wanted to eat. And one day, the monster broke free.]

The tragic heart of parents.

[Also… you might want to look up. It seems to have crawled back via the stairwell.]

A drop of foul, fishy saliva splattered on the floor by Lu Yan's foot.

So the stench wasn't just residual. The pollutant was here.

He looked up.

A little boy clung to the ceiling like a gecko. Its hands, disproportionately large and webbed, gripped the plaster with viscous suction. Its belly was grotesquely distended, swollen like a woman ten months pregnant—too much to eat.

The pollutant's face split into a ghastly grin. Its mouth gaped, revealing rows of needle-sharp teeth. A long, muscular tongue shot out like a frog capturing prey. Tumorous growths along its surface erected into sharp, barbed hooks.

Dissecting one Frogman had given Lu Yan confidence, and a basic understanding of its kind. Fast, strong, but predictable. It either pounced or used its tongue. It could spit corrosive stomach acid, but reserves were limited.

Pushing past the visceral revulsion, with his current physicality, it wasn't a serious threat.

He didn't bother dodging. Instead, his hand snapped out and seized the lashing tongue.

Ignoring the barbs, the tongue felt slippery and dense, like a slab of raw liver.

Surprise flickered across the pollutant's face—a difficult feat given its permanently bulging eyes.

Lu Yan yanked, hard.

The creature tore free from the ceiling and slammed onto the floor with a crash that would have woken the dead, if any were left to wake.

Self-preservation was an animal instinct. It tried to scramble away, but Lu Yan's grip was an iron vise. It thrashed, pinned, a frantic, guttural hissing escaping its throat. It watched in terror as Lu Yan, still holding its tongue, approached with a scalpel in his other hand, a calm, professional smile on his face.

"Pediatrics isn't my specialty," Lu Yan said. "But needs must. I do have a legitimate medical license."

The scalpel opened the Frogman's abdomen. It convulsed in a final death spasm before going still.

From its gut, Lu Yan extracted partially digested human limbs and a head.

[Once a mutation completes to this stage, reversion is impossible. As for dealing with the pollution… I doubt I need to explain. You'll see soon enough.]

A vein on Lu Yan's forearm bulged. The reviving Kingfish larva.

Smooth skin gave way to overlapping scales, emerging like plate armor along his arm.

Then, the scales lifted. Dozens of hair-thin, pearlescent filaments extruded from the gaps, connecting to the fallen Frogman. They began to feed.

Like drawing blood, the white filaments slowly tinged crimson. Lu Yan reached out and touched one. A full-body shudder wracked him.

Not pain in his hand. The filaments felt pain. It was like having someone finger his exposed spinal nerves.

No wonder the Kingfish waited until it was dead. If the Frogman had still been thrashing… the feedback would have been agony.

A side effect of the symbiosis: as the Kingfish fed, Lu Yan felt a wave of profound satiation, a warm, comfortable fullness in his gut. He closed his eyes briefly. A faint, feverish blush colored his pale cheeks, like the flush of hard drink.

The system observed with palpable weirdness. [Most humans would experience some psychological distress witnessing this.]

It had been prepared to offer therapeutic counsel. Lu Yan was, as usual, not cooperating.

"Your view of humanity is excessively fragile," Lu Yan replied flatly. "By your theory, we're incomplete, lower life forms. But in the millions of years from ape to man, we never stopped fighting to survive."

The feeding lasted half a minute.

[Spiritual Power Threshold +10. Congratulations. You've been enhanced.]

The system issued a soft, cold laugh, muttering too low for clear hearing, especially with the constant whisper of tidal waves in Lu Yan's ears: [That turncoat's foresight was accurate. If a pollutant hosted the Kingfish and consumed all of K City's taint, it could breach that threshold… Pity it met me.]

The lustrous filaments retracted into his skin, leaving no trace.

*

Perhaps the neighborhood had been partially cleared earlier. Lu Yan encountered no other pollutants all the way to the complex's exit.

The quarantine cordon at the gate remained, but the guards were gone. Only a blood-smeared security booth hinted at the fate that had befallen them.

The city was supposed to be dark, but to the east, near Qujiang Park, a harsh, eye-searing brightness lit up the sky.

[That's the Pollution Disease Control Center conducting pollutant recovery. You could take a look, if you're curious.]

Lu Yan glanced indifferently and turned away.

Night in K City was unnervingly quiet.

Only when passing certain side streets did Lu Yan hear the sounds: heavy, wet breathing, punctuated by the crunch and tear of feeding.

Each time, he turned into the alley.

He wasn't there to break up the party. He was there to join it.

……

……

Lu Yan pressed a hand to his stomach. He was a firm believer in stopping at eighty percent full. It had been a long time since he'd felt this nauseatingly stuffed.

In one night, his Spiritual Power Threshold had increased by 70. Combined with the 100 from fusing with the Kingfish, he now stood at 170.

Not a high number. By the Research Institute's standards, it barely qualified him as a bottom-rung, Tier 1 Awakened.

But K City was his territory now. The bloodline suppression gave him an overwhelming advantage here. Besides, an Awakened's strength wasn't solely determined by a number.

"Full. Time to head back. More tomorrow."

He wouldn't have minded encountering patients in the early stages of Pollution Disease. According to the system's theory, they might still be treatable. But he couldn't force it. Going door-to-door with a megaphone wasn't an option.

He walked the deserted street. A bleak east wind cut through the ruins. In his pocket, his phone vibrated once.

An Apple AirDrop notification. A message from a stranger:

[Dude, why are you outside? A bunch of security guards in our complex got infected. Nobody's come to collect them yet. You trying to get yourself killed?]

A real stand-up guy, that one.

The phone buzzed again. [Block the light! Those pollutants are sensitive to it! Don’t you watch the news?! How the hell did you even get out here?]

[Shit!!! They're coming!!! Run!!]

The message had just popped up when a light flared on the 13th floor of the building behind Lu Yan. A petite girl stood by the window, nervously rapping on the glass. The sharp noise echoed, and then she vanished like smoke.

A moment later, a new message arrived: [This whole building is my family's. I'm going to hide in another unit. That's all I can do for you.]

"While I harbor no particular fondness for the human species," the system mused. "Weak, selfish, pathetic. I must admit, you sometimes do things that utterly baffle me. Moments like this, you can be almost… endearing."

The street shuddered.

A fish-headed humanoid, nearly three meters tall, came hopping into view. Its body remained vaguely human—hunched, lanky—but its head was a grotesquely oversized fish skull. A catfish, by the looks of it. Its fleshy lips parted and closed, its four barbels twitching in the still air.

[Wow, congratulations. You've met your first mini-boss for this experience run. A fish-man with a pollution value of 400. This one was a competitive eater in life. After its aberration, its appetite only grew. Ate sixty people in three days, got nice and fat. Eats its own kind too. More aggressive than your average fish-man.]

[The good news is, the fish eggs it spits, while disgusting, won't pollute you. Also, that big head isn't for nothing. You humans have a saying, 'Deep friendship, bottoms up. Shallow feelings, just a sip.' This fish-man's feelings for you run deep… Its weak point is the gills. Just… be careful.]

The fish-man wasn't bright. It had been heading for Lu Yan, but the light from the building top instantly captivated it. With heavy, thudding steps, it turned toward the residential block.

All Lu Yan had encountered so far were frogs. He hadn't dissected anything this big.

Besides, he figured his odds of survival against a pollutant were a fraction higher than most.

So, he flicked on his phone's flashlight.

The fish-man's head snapped around. It seemed to sense a challenge. With impossible speed, it charged.

A night of feeding had sharpened Lu Yan's reflexes. He reacted instantly, darting back, evading the initial lunge.

But the thing was just so damn big.

One of the fish-man's barbels, seemingly soft and boneless, whipped across Lu Yan's arm. It was sharper than any blade.

His sleeve tore. Blood welled up.

The fish-man froze. Stopped dead.

[Oh, fuck. Your blood, your blood—I should have known! Shit!!] The system's voice, usually dripping with sarcasm, was now raw with panic. A first.

[Don't fight. Now. Go. Run for the Pollution Disease Control Center. If you don't want to be swarmed, RUN!!!]

…

…

Qujiang Park.

The Qujiang District lived up to its reputation as the birthplace of City K's outbreak. The numbers weren't overwhelming, but the danger level and pollution values here dwarfed every other zone.

Grotesque pollutants surged forward one after another, drawn like moths to a flame.

The waters of the Qu River ran nearly red with blood.

Lin Sinan's brow was slick with sweat. Sixteen Awakened had been stationed in the park to handle the threat—more than usual. It still wasn't enough. Some of the things here had even evolved a rudimentary cunning.

Then, at two in the morning, as if a pause button had been hit, every pollutant in the park abruptly stopped moving.

Lin Sinan didn't know why, but he wasn't about to waste the opening.

He’d barely cleared a path for two minutes when the frozen pollutants shuddered back to life. As one, their heads turned in the same direction.

On their twisted faces… something like fanaticism flickered to life.

Like hyenas, starved for days, catching the scent of carrion.

A single, croaking call broke the silence.

The next second, not a single pollutant spared a glance for the brightly lit park. They moved as one, a dark tide flowing in a single direction.

"What's happening?" the analyst beside him breathed, face pale.

Lin Sinan stared for a moment, a terrible possibility dawning. His expression hardened. "I've only heard of this happening once before…"

"At the First Research Institute. Experimental Subject Zero awakened. A rare healing-type talent. Said to be the 'Revelation' talent, ranked number one on the aptitude sequence. That day… the Institute was surrounded by pollutants."

"To protect Zero, they had no choice but to seal him inside a life-support pod."

The analyst, though an Awakened himself, was auxiliary class with low spiritual power. He was a permanent City K resident and had never heard this. "A healing talent? Why haven't I—?"

Of course he hadn't. There were only three in the entire world.

One was locked in a pod, too dangerous to release. One was kept at headquarters, treated like a priceless relic. The last one was overseas.

Lin Sinan holstered his gun, flipping open his comms. His eyes were bloodshot. "Bai Qiushi!" he roared into the mic. "Stop watching from the damn walls! City K has a suspected healing-type talent awakening. Get your ass over here now, or we'll be collecting a corpse!"