ED | Chapter 1

“There are quite a few people to process in this batch, 37 in all. Make a note.”

“Why so many?!”

“Mm. Four killed themselves before they even entered the evolution pod, and two died during the procedure.”

“Too many. Something’s not right. I’m going to notify Mr. Zhou. Come with me.”

There seemed to be a lot of people. Their voices were fuzzy and indistinct, but the sound of shoes striking a floor with a concrete-like texture was shockingly sharp, like chalk scraping across a blackboard.

Breathes coming fast, ugly anger, confusion and indifference intermingled, like listening through headphones to noise surging in from countless directions. It was also like a market without air conditioning at summer dusk, where shouting, the smell of fish, mud, sweat, and sticky air were all twisted together. Clench a fist slightly, and filthy water would seep from between the fingers.

Thud, thud, thud, someone was walking.

Bang. A door was slammed shut.

Beep, beep, beep, beep, the instrument let out a piercing shriek.

Awakened by the chaos, Shi Jiu snapped his eyes open. In that instant, he felt his own violently pounding heart, the body’s sluggish response after a nightmare had jolted him awake, with a slight sheen of sweat on his skin.

Then the scene in that half-dreaming, half-awake state gradually came into focus.

Ahead of him was a sheet of transparent glass. He seemed to be lying inside some sort of pod, his limbs bound by threadlike restraints. Unlike the noisy sensation in his head, the surroundings were actually very quiet now. Aside from the faint, regular sounds of the instruments, there was nothing else.

Shi Jiu’s memory still stopped at the moment he had gotten into bed. Before falling asleep, he had still been thinking about his design draft.

Shi Jiu did not panic. On the contrary, he even tried sitting up with interest, carefully lifting the transparent glass lid over him. Unexpectedly, the moment he arched his body and touched it, it had already opened automatically. So Shi Jiu slowly sat up, and then——

“…”

“…”

They stared at each other. Shi Jiu and the young man standing beside him locked eyes instantly. Both of them held their breath at once. The air froze in silence.

The young man looked very young, and his face gradually turned deathly pale. His thin lips parted awkwardly. After a moment, he spoke with some embarrassment and unease. “Y-you’re awake? How did you open it…”

“Mm?” Shi Jiu asked softly, his gaze sweeping the room.

It was a completely unfamiliar place. White walls, white instruments, white decorations everywhere. Several more pods like the one he had been lying in were placed nearby, and people were lying inside them as well. Even more people were lying on the floor.

“Th-then, do you have any last words you want to leave behind? Maybe, maybe I can help deliver them to your family?” the young man said again. He looked a little afraid, his tone filled with tentative tension. Even his fingers curled awkwardly, gripping the fabric of his pant leg and drawing out several wrinkles.

Shi Jiu was still confused. He turned back, this time focusing on the young man and sizing him up without restraint.

He looked to be no older than Shi Jiu, and fear and endurance flickered in his eyes. He wore white clothes that looked like something a researcher would wear, blending almost seamlessly with the room’s color. A name tag hung from his clothes, with a name written on it: Jiang Sui.

After a moment of silence, Shi Jiu finally found the part of this scene that felt wrong. He licked his lips. His voice was a little hoarse, a little low. “Leave what message? Why would you help me deliver one?”

The young man may have been intimidated by Shi Jiu’s furrowed brow and impolite tone. He opened his mouth, then closed it at once, as if making some decision before opening it again. In a very small voice, he said, “B-because, because you failed the test. Y-you’re about to be sent to the reeducation center. Mm, they went to notify the guards. They should be back any moment.”

Just as he finished speaking, the sound of chaotic footsteps came from outside, growing nearer by the second. Jiang Sui let out a soft cry. “They’re coming back!”

A trace of fear flashed across Jiang Sui’s face. He stepped closer to Shi Jiu, wanting to hide him.

At that moment, the room door was suddenly shoved open. The threads binding Shi Jiu snapped on their own at the same time, and Shi Jiu flipped over to get up, only to be forced down to his knees, his arms twisted behind his back and his body out of control.

A furious roar exploded by Shi Jiu’s ear. “What are you doing?!” A tall man, before Shi Jiu could even react, had nipped all of his possible movements in the bud. Such fast hands!

Shi Jiu let out a pained gasp. “Hiss!”

It looked like everyone here had returned too, and with them came the same jumble of emotions and sounds he had felt at the beginning.

“What’s going on, how did one wake up?” another person in researcher’s clothes asked in a hurry. Shi Jiu could not see who it was.

Jiang Sui lowered his head so far it almost touched his chest, terrified. “I-I don’t know. You had just left for a little while when he woke up. He, he even opened the glass himself. I was startled too, and, and I hadn’t had time to call you yet, then you, you came back.”

Shi Jiu felt his arms hurt terribly, as if any more force, even just a little, would break them. He heard someone above him ask, “You have an ability? It wasn’t detected just now. What is it?”

“What?” Shi Jiu said through clenched teeth, barely holding back the pain.

“The ability to open the glass and break free of double-layer graphene restraints. What is it? Why couldn’t it be detected?” The researcher walked up to the pod and picked up the split ends of the graphene restraints that Shi Jiu had snapped apart. Shock was impossible to hide in his eyes.

The person questioning him slowly moved his shoes in front of Shi Jiu again. Unable to lift his head because of the restraints, Shi Jiu could only see those black leather shoes, their surface polished smooth, though the seams had not been wiped clean.

Every word was understandable on its own, but put together, he understood none of it.

After failing to get a response for a long while, the owner of the half-clean leather shoes also grew impatient. He paced back and forth a few times in agitation, then told the others to handle the rest of the people here while he and the man restraining Shi Jiu dragged Shi Jiu outside.

It was a very long corridor, with a room every five or six meters. The three of them moved forward heavily. From time to time, Shi Jiu would even stumble slightly. He did it on purpose, thinking maybe this would make the towering brute go easier on him. But he had overestimated things.

Shi Jiu had never been here before, and he did not know where this was. But when he was being escorted past a huge pane of glass and saw his own reflection in it, his mind finally cleared completely.

It was a dream. He was wearing the thin mint-green hoodie he had thrown away not long ago.

They walked down a corridor so long it seemed endless, then went up two flights of stairs, only to find the same monotonous corridor again. In the center of the corridor, a huge screen was broadcasting a news report:

“Two months ago, several diseased samples went missing from the biological research institute. Both security guards at the entrance are dead. If anyone has information, please contact us immediately. This news report will be played on a loop.”

“Has the Safety Management Center still not found anyone?” someone muttered quietly. “That shouldn’t be… after all, there’s a person like Mr. Chen…”

In the end, they stopped in front of a door at the edge of the corridor. The person who had been walking in front of him knocked gently without hesitation, putting away the arrogance he had shown when speaking to Shi Jiu earlier, and said in an official tone, “Mr. Zhou Zhifu, it’s me. There’s something strange.”

“Come in.” A voice with an extreme laziness floated from inside, sounding as if it had just woken up.

The researcher with the half-clean leather shoes went in, but came back out less than a minute later. His expression was very ugly when he emerged. He looked up at the room at the far end of the corridor on the other side, then glanced sidelong at Shi Jiu. After taking a deep breath, he walked in that direction.

He was afraid of whatever was at the end of that hall. Afraid? But there seemed to be something else as well. Shi Jiu lifted his head slightly and read that information from the researcher’s eyes.

The walk to the other end of the corridor was obviously much longer, because the person leading them had even slowed his pace considerably. When they stopped in front of another door, the researcher stood there for several seconds before hesitantly raising a hand and knocking.

The door was only half closed. As soon as he knocked, it opened a little. The researcher froze for a second, and could not even bring himself to knock a second time.

“Who is it?” came a voice from inside, somewhat cool and muffled.

The researcher immediately pulled back his hand and, holding his breath, said, “Mr. Chen, I’m Shen Xiangnan.” As he spoke, sweat beaded densely in his palms.

“Speak.” The person inside replied without a trace of emotion, just this one word, flat and unwavering.

Shi Jiu finally caught the emotion besides fear. It was deference, fear mixed with respect, completely different from the emotion directed at the first person they had just gone to see. Though given the situation, that response was understandable. After all, the first door had been opened with a single knock, while the person in this room had no intention of letting him in at all.

The researcher straightened a little, rubbing his palms against both sides of his pants in an attempt to dry the sweat, and said as calmly as he could in an official tone, “During the evolution process just now, we detected an unqualified citizen. He was supposed to be sent to the reeducation center, but then this citizen opened the evolution pod from the inside and broke through the double-layer graphene restraints. This, this is impossible! So I think this is a high-ability individual, someone who may even have fooled our instruments!”

Shi Jiu felt dizzy from listening. There it went again. Every word made sense, but put together, he could not understand a single thing. What kind of dream was this? Had his dreams already begun to surpass cognition and consciousness?

The air behind the door stayed silent for a very long time. The researcher felt sweat begin to seep uncontrollably into his palms again before he finally heard the person inside reply indifferently, “Find Zhou Zhifu.”

The researcher became extremely nervous and immediately answered, “But, but I already asked Mr. Zhou. Mr. Zhou said it has nothing to do with hi…”

“It has nothing to do with me either.” The person inside cut him off quickly, sounding somewhat displeased.

Shi Jiu thought to himself: Fine, today I’m the ball being kicked back and forth. He struggled once, and the people behind him noticed. They immediately tightened their grip and growled, “Don’t move!”

The researcher named Shen Xiangnan did not dare say anything else. For a moment, he was caught between advancing and retreating, unable to go either way.

Perhaps sensing the awkwardness outside, after a moment, the person inside spoke again: “Bring him in.”