Dominion’s End - Volume 3 Chapter 5

Volume 3, Chapter 5: Those Numbers

Translator: Elkin (proofread by EvlNabiki; C/E edited by lucathia)

“A-are you two crazy or something? What the hell are you talking about?”

Blackie was so shaken that he could barely stammer out his words, and he stared at Jiang Xiaotian like he was staring at an aberrant.

Pissed off by his expression, I said in icy tones, “The world’s gone crazy anyway, so two more crazies don’t make much difference. Off you go. You should count yourselves lucky—not only will I actually do something to help you guys, I’ll even take on the boss of the experiments. You guys only have to take care of his subordinates. Lucky you!”

Blackie’s face didn’t look like he felt lucky at all. Come to think about it, he’s right. Maybe this entire troop is part of the Jiang family as well, with such misfortune that they have to confront the future elite of the aberrants?

As I continued down the corridor, I compressed a few layers of ice onto a dagger. Although the ice layers were very thin, the dagger given by Jin Feng was way better than those we’d picked up randomly at a weapons store. It seemed decently durable, and in any case, a dagger wasn’t a blunt instrument and I wasn’t stronger than an aberrant. Ultimately, my fighting style was to focus on attacking weaknesses.

Jiang Xiaotian quickly scanned the monitors above all the glass cylinders.

“Let’s see which subordinates came from here as well… Ah, ‘Asura,’ Thirteen’s most trusted war general. So he started following him from here. Hmph! This time, I’ll make Thirteen have a taste of what it’s like, having one of your own men made into a pet!”

Dàgē, I have exactly zero interest in taking an aberrant in as a pet. You’re on your own if you get him!

Fortunately, we reached the end of the long corridor of the laboratory, and Jiang Xiaotian didn’t say any other names.

“So only Asura?” Jiang Xiaotian sunk into deep thought, then suddenly blurted, “Shit, the crying baby sounds we heard at the start are probably from the ‘Maternibaby.’ The aberrants really have seized control of the entire research center and are luring people in for the kill.”

“What are these three aberrants’ unique characteristics?” I asked calmly and was rewarded with an appreciative look from Jiang Xiaotian. In that instant, my self-confidence exploded and my chest swelled to the point of becoming an A-cup.

“Asura is simply a war general. He wields dual swords and he can grow swords from all parts of his body.”

That’s pretty much a porcupine, not at all a simple war general, okay?!

“Thirteen is also a fighter. It’s said that he doesn’t have any weapons, and just uses his claws and tail. He even has hellfire and psychic abilities, but I don’t know the details, since I’ve never actually faced off with him before.”

As expected of an elite—his abilities varied across the different types to this extent. Are you sure he’s not cheating?!

“As for the Maternibaby…” Jiang Xiaotian frowned as he said, “I’ve never heard anything about what her abilities were. I only know that she once went nuts and didn’t differentiate between friend and foe, and demolished an entire city… Shuyu.”

“Hm?” I was paying close attention to his words, and at the unexpected calling of my name, I almost couldn’t quite catch up with the change in topic.

Jiang Xiaotian blandly said, “Go grab that person from behind that table.”

He pointed at one of the large tables in the laboratory. There were a large number of carcasses laid out on it and bones were scattered all over it as well. That table had probably transformed into a dining table at some point.

Well, since Jiang Xiaotian said there was someone behind the table, there had to be someone! Just as I was able to go over to grab them, he had already shot to his feet by himself. He was covered in blood and flesh all over, but his movements were quick and weren’t ones that could be made by the heavily injured. It was probably someone else’s blood he used to disguise himself to survive.

He raised his hands high in surrender and said, “H-how do you know about 013 and 042? And Maternibaby is probably 005? That’s made of two aberrants—after a woman who was seven months pregnant died, both the mother and child turned into aberrants. They’re similar to conjoined twins and are very unique.”

Damn, you sure remember your numbers!

Probably because my expression betrayed my thoughts, the man explained without any prompting, “005 and 042 are very special and are the focus of our research, so everyone here knows about them.”

“But 013 isn’t?” It felt off. After all, Thirteen was the one who was the most feared.

The man explained patiently, “He’s nothing special. At least before he started this whole incident, he was extremely calm, and the only evolution he underwent was body strengthening, that is, growing scales on some parts and a tail. There are lots of specimens like him in this lab. And as for whatever hellfire or psychic abilities, he doesn’t have any of those.”

Here, he paused then chuckled wryly, “Well, at least, he didn’t demonstrate any of those abilities.”

The three of us stared at him, and he said embarrassedly, “I’m Wu Yaojin. A-are you the reinforcements here to rescue me?”

“So you must be Professor Wu?” Blackie frowned as he looked him up and down, the look of disgust as clear as day on his face. “Orders from above say that we absolutely must rescue a Professor Wu, but you look too young to be a professor. Are you really him?”

If you’re asking it like that, of course he’ll say he’s Professor Wu!

“That’s my gē, but he was probably one of the first people killed by 013. He had always felt that something was off about this specimen, but no one listened. So he moved this experiment to his own lab. You guys must have passed by it on the way—it’s the one with the most complete range of equipment.”

Wu Yaojin asked dejectedly, “T-the lab’s not far from here, but I don’t dare to go close. Did you guys see my gē?”

Fine, I’m vilifying good hearted people by assuming they’ll do the same things as me. I held my head in my hands, wondering whether I was just assuming the worst about them, or whether these scientists had done so much research that they no longer had any common sense?

I’d originally thought that this research center’s scientists were all cruel and cold blooded, but now they seemed a bit stupid instead! I couldn’t tell if he was so shocked that he hadn’t recovered his wits, or if he really did lack them to begin with.

“We only saw a pile of body parts,” Blackie said coolly. Evidently, he didn’t have a shred of sympathy for the professor of this lab.

Wu Yaojin’s face went ashen, and just as I was able to grow a seed of sympathy for him, he sighed, “Gē had so much important research that was coming to fruition. I can’t believe it’s all gone, just like that.”

These scientists probably have zero sense of familial love…

“Sorry, did I say something odd again?” Wu Yaojin saw that our expressions looked off, and explained, “I have Asperger’s syndrome, so I don’t see a lot of things the same way as normal people do. Please understand.”

My face twitched. Shit, a what syndrome again? I don’t understand…

Jiang Xiaotian asked impatiently, “What exactly happened here?”

Wu Yaojin shook his head as he replied, “I have no idea. There was a sudden howl, the alarms went off, and the lights suddenly went out. They only came back on after a few minutes, and by then, the whole place was going crazy. I crouched behind the table once I saw that things didn’t look right, and I didn’t dare to make a peep. My assistant was torn into pieces and thrown over to where I was, so I covered myself with his blood and flesh and lay on the floor. I even kept a scalpel in my hand—if any experiment dared to eat me, I’d immediately stab it into its heart.”

He gave a wry laugh and said, “That’s all I know. I don’t know what actually happened, so I had to eavesdrop on you guys to find out that it’s the work of 005, 013, and 042. Honestly though, you guys might have gotten it wrong. 013 isn’t that scary—if you’ve seen him before, you’d understand. 013 is really quiet and completely different from other experiments.”

“Probably did that to lower your guard.” Jiang Xiaotian didn’t agree, and challenged him, “Aberrants are like kids. Unless they’re plant-types, there’s not a single one that’s quiet. Thirteen’s silence is the real sign that something’s wrong.”

Body strengthening, and fire and psychic abilities. He already possessed such high intellect at the early stages of the apocalypse, and in the middle stages, he wiped out an entire continent and established himself in the aberrant metropolis. In the later stages of the apocalypse, he became an aberrant elite. Doesn’t this sound like Thirteen is the main character of the story?! Are small potatoes like us really challenging the main character to a death match?!

“Aberrant?” Wu Yaojin asked in confusion.

Although it wasn’t me who made the slip, Jiang Xiaotian had no desire to respond to his question. So I had no choice but to explain, “It’s the name of those monsters.”

Wu Yaojin nodded and said sorrowfully, “Can you accompany me to my gē’s lab? I have his password, so as long as the computer’s still working, we can get hold of the full set of data of 005, 013, and 042. The three of them are really very unique. It’ll be a real shame to lose that data.”

Jiang Xiaotian narrowed his eyes dangerously. I couldn’t tell if he wanted to go back to take a look, or if he wanted to slice and dice the bastard who created something as dangerous as Thirteen and feed him to aberrants.

In the end, he just grated one word: “Go.”

Originally, I’d wanted to say that further delays would put the lives of the soldiers in danger, but on second thought, if we didn’t deal with those numbered aberrants, everyone’s lives would still be in jeopardy. So we were better off figuring out their abilities, which would greatly help with the upcoming battle.

We headed back to that large research laboratory. Wu Yaojin looked around but didn’t see any signs of his brother—or perhaps he couldn’t tell which pile was his brother. His face was pale and twisted in pain, so it did seem like there were some familial feelings left, and he hadn’t turned completely unfeeling due to that whatever syndrome thing.

“Get that information out now!” Jiang Xiaotian snapped irritably, his temper as black as Blackie’s. Both the adult and the kid glared at Wu Yaojin, and it was a miracle that they hadn’t started threatening him with guns.

Wu Yaojin stared at Jiang Xiaotian and asked curiously, “So the potential you uncovered was intelligence?”

Potential he uncovered? I stilled. Could he mean ability?

Jiang Xiaotian said with narrowed eyes, “Yeah, and you?”

Wu Yaojin smiled as he waved a hand. Although he didn’t touch anything, all the litter on the table was swept off. Then, he dropped his hands and said, “That’s all I can do. My record is moving only one kilogram, and I can only do that if I concentrate my entire mind on it. And after moving it, I feel more tired than if I had run five kilometers. This power of mine is nothing compared to those experiments.”

I hesitated and ended up not asking if he knew about the crystals. The fact that he had appeared here of all places was still a bit strange, and he was reacting far too calmly. I need to keep my eye on him for a bit longer.

Wu Yaojin started operating the computer and really was able to generate the files on the three aberrants, and the information was now displayed in all its glory before our eyes.

005, the “Maternibaby” that Jiang Xiaotian had been talking about, looked horrific. Even after living for ten years into the apocalypse, I still got the chills looking at her.

Her expression was one of sorrow and tears—the corners of her eyes and mouth turned exaggeratedly downwards, the snapshot of the moment a mother lost her child. Except that it was frozen into permanence on her face.

Her stomach was frighteningly large, to the point where her limbs looked spindly in comparison. If I had to describe it, it was like seeing a meatball with four toothpicks sticking out of it. What was most terrifying, however, was the jagged, saw-like line that ran between the meatball. It looked like it could open up. To the side, there was even a picture of a scan, showing that inside the stomach was a cluster of baby hands and legs. But because the meatball had never opened up, no one knew how they moved.

042, Asura looked like a tall, slender man, but a quick glimpse at the height data said otherwise. Yup, he was 2.9 meters tall. He wasn’t skinny at all; his entire body was covered with a layer of muscle, except his height made him look like a stretched paper man. But this was all a “lie”!

013, Thirteen, compared to the previous two, seemed perfectly normal. He looked like a man of around thirty, and he looked very gentle and elegant. However, his face was sheet white and there was exhaustion etched deep between his brows—he was the perfect picture of an office worker who had worked way too many hours of overtime, except for the fact that his finger tips ended in claws, he had a tail, and he had some scales on his body. No wonder Wu Yaojin said he was very ordinary and wasn’t the focus of their research.

So this is the guy who’ll butcher all of Asia… Oh wait, in this life, it’s Meisia. This overworked office guy will one day decimate the whole of Meisia and become the man-slaughtering aberrant elite?

Even if you can’t judge someone by their looks, surely you don’t have to take it to this extreme?

This data was frankly useless. Frowning, I said, “Pull out info on their abilities, particularly their fighting capabilities.”

But Wu Yaojin’s response was, “We only have this type of information for Asura. His combat skills are just like this child said. He can grow spikes all over his body, which are the ‘swords’ you were talking about. Maternibaby is as immature as a baby and doesn’t understand speech, not to mention she throws fits every so often. So there’s no way to get her to obey something as complex as ‘fight.’

“As for Thirteen, he wasn’t even meant to be in our research center. He was only transferred here because another city had fallen, and the research center there was abandoned.”

“How did you transfer him?” I found this all unbelievable. It must take considerable effort transferring between research centers, and there was no way you could sneak around the same way as if you were traveling by yourself. Just how many people did they have to mobilize to enable this transfer?

Suddenly, I remembered that the soldiers had mentioned that they only had to drive the vehicles provided by the research center and aberrants would keep away. I asked quickly, “How do you keep the aberrants from approaching?”

“With Maternibaby. Most experiments refuse to be anywhere close to her, and even the smell she leaves behind has this effect for a short period of time. Before sending the army into the city, we would make Maternibaby sit on the vehicle for a day, then let the army drive the vehicle away.”

“When did this research start?” Jiang Xiaotian asked in icy tones.

Wu Yaojin responded with surprise, “Of course after June twenty first. Where on earth would we even get these experiments beforehand?”

I hmphed coldly, “So what, are you going to tell me those glass cylinders were used for making pickles?”

“We were originally conducting human experiments, but they…” Wu Yaojin stopped abruptly, before resuming somewhat bashfully, “They were illegal human cloning experiments, but they had been unsuccessful. After the black fog, we lost quite a few research centers. Our superiors spent a few months rescuing what they could and patching things together, and we were only able to resume research recently. Our research focus has also switched from human cloning to experimenting on the mutations. A lot of these experiments were originally employees of our research centers.”

I immediately retorted, “Bullshit. A lot of people coming into the military zone vanish—isn’t that the work of you guys? Who else could it be?”

Wu Yaojin frowned as he said, “Really? I never heard about this.”

“Of course you know.” Jiang Xiaotian said coldly, “Or has the thought never occurred to you brilliant researchers about how the research center feeds so many experiments?”

My mind went blank. I finally realized that the reason they were catching people from outside wasn’t for research, but to be used as food!

Aberrants were able to evolve by eating any flesh of the non-mutated. In order to trigger their evolution, the research center absolutely needed to feed them this food. But compared to the increasingly dangerous plants and animals out there, the large crowd of “humans” outside presented themselves as the most convenient food source.

This time, Wu Yaojin neither affirmed nor refuted his words.

Blackie rushed forward to grab Wu Yaojin’s collar and raged, “So many have died already, and you bastards are still feeding people to monsters? Are you fucking mental?!”

Wu Yaojin sighed and said, “If we don’t do this, how can we obtain a better understanding about these experiments? Don’t you want to know why people will turn into these monsters? Or whether we can reawaken the minds of the people who were transformed into monsters by the black fog? If we know this, won’t we have solved this apocalypse?”

Blackie froze. I was equally surprised. Can we really reawaken the human consciousness of those man-eating aberrants?

“We’ve already made progress. A lot of them are slowly developing intelligence, and some even have memories of the past. If we continue experimenting, they might even regain their senses!”

Blackie opened and shut his mouth over and over, but didn’t make any sounds as he vacillated. I completely understood his feelings—perhaps from an emotional standpoint, feeding humans to aberrants was very cruel, but from a rational point of view, we knew all too well that there was no humane way of finding out how to end this apocalypse.

“They’re not who they used to be!” Jiang Xiaotian suddenly burst in with an angry growl, “Absolutely not! The memories you are talking about are just impressions left in the brain. Yes, some aberrants will be able to recall those memories, but they’re no longer the humans they used to be! Humans only turn into aberrants after they die, so since they died, how can they possibly be the same person?!”

Wu Yaojin retorted uncomprehendingly, “If they have the memories, why aren’t they the same person? An ego is formed by experiences.”

This guy really must have that ass-whatever syndrome. How else do you have the balls to continue speaking like that when someone’s holding onto your collar?

There was something wrong with this guy, but the same could be said about Jiang Xiaotian. He was too agitated—it was painful seeing that little face twisted by rage and the two little fists gripped until the knuckles turned white. It was like if Wu Yaojin continued insisting that aberrants could turn back into humans, he would turn him into an aberrant with his own two hands, to see if he could then turn back human again.

“The potential you have expressed doesn’t seem like it’s intelligence.” Wu Yaojin stared at Jiang Xiaotian with an expression of interest of all things. And as usual, he continued to pay attention to the wrong thing.

I hugged Jiang Xiaotian. His body was as stiff as a rock.

“Hey, let’s cut the chatter already. Do you have the data or not?” I spoke in a cajoling manner, “Blackie, let go of this guy. We need to get going. Otherwise, we’re gonna be helping you pack your buddies into body bags.”

Blackie immediately released him.

Wu Yaojin breathed a sigh of relief, quickly worked the computer, pulled out a flash drive, then declared, “Done.”

“Let’s go.” I lifted Jiang Xiaotian to my chest and walked out of the research laboratory. This time, I walked much faster, disregarding whether the two were able to catch up to me. Yup, I wanted to put some distance between us.

I said quietly, “Dàgē, don’t believe him. There’s no fucking way aberrants can recover their minds!”

The little body in my embrace finally relaxed a little, but he mumbled unhappily, “But some aberrants do remember fragmented memories from when they were human.”

“So what? They’re just using human brains and human bodies, like a thief invading someone else’s house. Just because they can describe what’s in the house doesn’t mean the house is theirs!”

Here, I came to a stop.

Yes, even if I dreamed back all my memories, am I really Jiang Shuyu?

No, I can’t afford to get confused! But…

“Shuyu?” Jiang Xiaotian lifted his small face to look at me, and asked, “What’s wrong?”

I looked down at Jiang Xiaotian and strained a smile. “Nothing. You know me. I lost my memories and lived ten years in the apocalypse as another person, so I get a bit confused every so often.”

Jiang Xiaotian stared at me silently, making me bemused, then scared. I remembered that he often mentioned that I didn’t act like Shuyu…

In the end, he patted my shoulder and said, “Don’t dwell on it. What’s most important now is to deal with Thirteen, once and for all. Put me down, or you might not be able to react in time if something sudden happens.”

I quickly went “okay” and put him down.

The two behind us caught up, panting and wheezing. Blackie even said irritably, “You wanna ditch us?”

I replied in annoyance, “If I wanted to ditch you guys, you wouldn’t be standing here and talking to me now.”

Blackie looked a bit stung by my words.

Everyone remained in a bad mood for the rest of the journey and lapsed into a heavy silence as we progressed forward. The closer we got to the control center, the more corpses littered the floor.

Aside from soldiers from the research center’s private army, Blackie recognized some of his own. Although they had all been gnawed on, he was able to identify them just from the clothing and equipment. His eyes turned red, and he had long disregarded the fact that Jiang Xiaotian and I were crazy or something, since he was almost halfway there himself.

Blackie gave a soft “ah,” then murmured in a choked voice, “Fatty, why you too…”

I looked over. A corpse was lying against the wall—it was that rotund and smiley guy who had told me to call him Fatty-gē—except he’d already been devoured to the bone and was no longer fat anymore. But for some reason, half his face was left, making it easy to identify who he was.

Blackie started crying at the sight of his brother-in-arm’s remains. He didn’t start wailing, but released a few very suppressed sobs, which at the same time made the scene all the more heart-breaking. I didn’t know what to do. Should I say a few words of comfort?

At this moment, the child’s voice of Jiang Xiaotian rang out. “Hurry up. You still have many more brothers waiting for your rescue. The Lieutenant, Ah Nuo, Old Guo, and Ah Qing—they’re still waiting for us. We don’t have time to cry now.”

Blackie wiped his face and his tears were no more, but his eyes became even redder. “You’re right. Let’s go.”

Rather than consoling him, why not give him an even more important goal? I gazed at Jiang Xiaotian with admiration. As expected of the boss of a mercenary troop. There was much for me to learn, but I wasn’t too worried about it. With two Dàgēs, wasn’t there plenty to learn from?

Blackie’s memory proved to be quite impressive. Just a few glances at the map just now were enough for him to confidently guide us to the control center. He never once hesitated about the route. He was a talent for sure, but unfortunately he seemed quite content to follow the Lieutenant. It might be hard to take him with me… Okay, how on earth did I turn into a pervert uncle who wants to kidnap people on sight?

Shaking my head, I split my concentration between walking, keeping an eye on the surroundings, and continuing to compress ice onto the dagger. After rising to tier two, I didn’t feel much in the way of change, but it was certainly easier to compress the ice crystals now. My body felt lighter and stronger too.

As I recalled, after Guan Weijun rose to tier two, she wasn’t particularly happy or excited. At the time, tiers and the like hadn’t been established, so she only felt that her vision and her physical capabilities had improved a bit, and was grateful that she could now spot aberrants from far away and make a speedy escape.

Thinking back to my cowardice in my previous life, where I only got stronger so I could run away faster—this was all just five months ago. I think I’ve changed a lot now?

Come to think of it, I really have changed a lot. In a short span of time, I’ve turned from the hunted to the hunter. Is it really okay to undergo such a dramatic change? Is it my death that completely transformed my thinking, or am I being influenced by the echoes left by Jiang Shuyu?

As I dreamed back more and more memories, I was becoming increasingly confused about who I was. Although I hoped more than anything that I was Jiang Shuyu, returning to the early stages of the apocalypse with my memories of my previous life replaying one after another, only now did I realize that Guan Weijun, who had always prioritized fleeing, who I had thought to be weak, had actually done a lot of things. There had been many people behind her—even that boyfriend and that crowd of mistresses had stood behind me. That was definitely a sort of accomplishment!

“Your ice dagger is going to turn into an ice stick soon if you don’t start to compress it into diamond ice?”

I snapped out of my reverie and discovered that Jiang Xiaotian was frowning at my hand. I looked down—okay, he was being polite when he said it’s an ice stick. It’s practically a lump of ice frozen to my hand… Wait a sec, did Xiaotian just say “diamond ice?”

So the name of compressed ice really is diamond ice! Fine, Xia Zhengu does get things spot on every once in a while, or maybe I just don’t get guy speak? I’d thought that only women love diamonds, but it seems men are just the same!

As I compressed the ice crystals, flicking aside excess layers of ice, I listened to Jiang Xiaotian start lecturing the class on “how to make a weapon.”

“You aren’t compressing it enough. You need to do it at least another three times. If you are able to, five times more is even better.”

I almost wanted to burst into tears on hearing that. Seems like I really have to keep working on making a weapon until ten years into the apocalypse. Dàgē, how long did you have to work on your ice long sword for? Actually, I’m pretty sure the one time I saw you using that weapon, you had only just finished making it, right?!

“In the future, you need to make a divine weapon out of pure diamond ice. You can’t freeze a regular weapon. It’ll just make the weapon brittle.”

Don’t I know it? Even a bird was able to bust it. I said a little dejectedly, “I know. I wanted to make a spear and a dagger, and I’d originally made some basic ice weapons using a stick and a dagger as a base. I’d originally thought they’d last me a year or two so I’d have time to slowly craft my weapon, but both of them were destroyed when I was fighting against the carrion-bloom birds.”

“A spear and a dagger?” Jiang Xiaotian nodded as he said, “Good choice. You are fast and nimble. Those weapons suit you.”

“So these…” Blackie hesitated before asking tentatively, “’Abilities of yours? Do you use that word like that?”

“Yup. What’s your special ability?” I felt it was probably good to ask him. Even though he hasn’t undergone training or eaten any crystals, so his ability is probably useless, there’s always a chance that it’s a unique power?

Blackie hesitated again before replying, “If I concentrate, I can see through some things. Um, I don’t really ‘see through’ them. It’s more like I somehow get a sense of what’s going on inside stuff. It’s pretty handy for finding my way and fixing machinery. So I can tell where the problem is without opening up the machine. Thing is, I can’t use it all the time. At most, I can last ten seconds or so.”

Take him with us!

I became extremely excited. No wonder he was able to fix the computer so quickly when we were in the hall just now, and he was able to find his way around so quickly. If he had trained this ability, he could probably cover the whole of the research facility. And if we paired him up with Auntie’s ability to sense living things—damn, things like having to storm fortified facilities are things of the past. All we have to do is walk right in and walk straight out again. We wouldn’t get attacked by any enemies!

Jiang Xiaotian also looked Blackie up and down a fair bit, giving him the creeps.

“I got it.” Wu Yaojin suddenly spoke up, “This child knows what’s going to happen in the future, right? So this is a kind of a special ability as well? So there are powers like these as well. They really are much more useful than mine.”

Oops, did we get a bit too over-excited? We’d been blabbering non-stop in front of these two. I’d originally thought to hide the crystals from them to avoid exposing too much information, but now they even knew what weapons I used.

I glanced at Jiang Xiaotian. He didn’t seem to care the slightest. As expected of the Ice Emperor, he couldn’t care less about small fry like them. Just as I thought that, Jiang Xiaotian flicked a gaze up at Wu Yaojin, his expression cool and his eyes even colder—he didn’t have any intention of replying to him.

Oh, is he planning to kill one and take the other? This is a perfect plan! I’m blown away!

Wu Yaojin, on the other hand, wasn’t fazed by Jiang Xiaotian’s coldness. He examined the child closely, almost as if he was an excellent specimen.

The way he looked at him ticked me off. We were probably better off killing folks who didn’t think of people as people. What was more, these scientists had created the aberrant elite, Thirteen, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths. Even if we revived them and killed them a thousand times over, it wouldn’t be enough to repay their crimes to humanity.

I rubbed Jiang Xiaotian’s head, as a reminder to keep the fact that he wanted to murder the guy a secret! Dàgē, you’re too used to showing off your might. If the Ice Emperor wanted to kill someone, that person would probably commit suicide first. And even if he didn’t commit suicide, there would be a whole crowd of people falling over themselves to help kill him, which meant the Ice Emperor pretty much never needed to take matters into his own hands. So it was only natural for him to never hide his intentions.

“Ugh…”

Suddenly, we heard a voice coming from the corner. I immediately raised my gun and dagger, whereas Blackie dashed over and pulled up a person from the pile of minced meat and blood—he actually looked whole.

“Ah Qing!” Blackie yelled, “Wake up, Ah Qing!”

I took a closer look. That blood-drenched guy really was Chen Yanqing. I quickly put away my weapons and moved in to check his injuries, only to be astounded. His injuries weren’t too bad. Of course, it was hard to avoid bruises and scratches all over, and he might even have a fracture or two. Still, he was way more fortunate than the poor piles of flesh to the side. So enviable!

He had been sprawled against the wall, covered in bits of flesh and blood. He had probably been hit and had passed out after smacking into the wall, where he was then camouflaged by the following shower of blood and flesh by his comrades. He had pretty much survived the same way as Wu Yaojin had, except that one had actively chosen this survival method, while the other had had it bestowed upon him by the will of the heavens.

Chen Yanqing lifted his head, and just as I was able to ask where he was hurting, a savage look suddenly entered his eyes, and he let out a blood curdling roar, like a dying beast mustering the last of its strength to rage in anger—

“AHHHHHHH—”

He lifted his gun and pointed the pitch-black muzzle at my forehead.