Chapter 132: Little Rabbit x Archon

Wen Chu felt that his emotions were so strange perhaps because he was still ill.

He tried hard to hold back his tears. Before he could figure out how to speak, he heard Xiu’s voice coming from above.

“In the past… did they say you were a rabbit?”

“Mhm.” Wen Chu nodded.

Xiu continued to ask, “Aside from that, what else did they teach you?”

Wen Chu couldn’t answer.

His daily life in the laboratory was just eating and sleeping. If he was sick, he had to eat a little more. If asked what he had learned, he only knew that he had to eat when he was sick.

Seeing the Little Rabbit looking bewildered, Xiu changed the question. “What did they do to you? My examination showed that you’ve had bone fractures before. Do you remember that?”

“Ah, that,” Wen Chu realized. “Because they were doing experiments, saying there was a virus that could rapidly repair the human body, and I was the control group for bone fractures.”

He was relatively lucky; it was just broken bones, and he could survive by eating more. The rabbits that were cut open were not so lucky.

Xiu froze.

The medical report showed that Wen Chu had only been infected with the plague virus. He quickly connected the two pieces of information and formed a bold conjecture.

But now was not the time to focus on that. Xiu suppressed the speculation in his mind. Looking at the little lop-eared rabbit who still had one ear sticking up, forgetting to put it down, he coaxed softly, “Turn back into a human first, okay?”

“Okay.” Wen Chu obediently transformed back into his human form.

He was being held in Xiu’s palms, so when he turned back into a human, he naturally nestled into Xiu’s embrace.

Because of malnutrition, the child was only the size of a seven or eight-year-old, and he was completely enveloped by Xiu.

He looked up at Xiu, waiting for what he would say next.

But Xiu didn’t speak. He just held him silently for a long time, patting his back rhythmically.

“It’s all in the past,” Xiu finally said.

“Wen Chu, you are no longer a little rabbit. You are a human now, a person with a household registration and an identity. You can do whatever you want; you don’t have to force yourself to do things you don’t like.”

No… not a rabbit anymore?

Wen Chu was stunned.

Telling a rabbit that he wasn’t a rabbit but a human caused a shock no less severe than suddenly telling a ten-year-old human that he wasn’t a person but a rabbit.

Wen Chu felt like his worldview was experiencing an earthquake.

His cheek was pressed against Xiu’s collar, smelling the cold fragrance on the other person. He thought that being a human seemed okay, too.

Wen Chu whispered, “I’m not forcing myself. I just want to help you…”

“Help me?” Xiu asked.

“Yeah. You are very busy, and you have to use me for propaganda. Either way, it’s more beneficial if I get better faster. Besides, testing the medicine has no side effects, and it won’t hurt,” Wen Chu said.

As soon as his voice fell, he felt Xiu’s arms tighten around him.

He was almost being crushed into the embrace.

Wen Chu struggled to lift his head from Xiu’s chest to breathe, only to see Xiu staring at him with that gaze he couldn’t understand again.

Wen Chu’s heartbeat skipped a beat. He looked away in panic, not daring to look into the Archon’s eyes anymore.

“No,” Xiu’s voice rang out.

Wen Chu’s eyes widened. “Why?”

Xiu sighed. “You’re too young, you don’t understand. You shouldn’t be making this decision yourself.”

Wen Chu felt that Xiu was being unreasonable. Just a moment ago outside the door, he said he would ask for his opinion, but now it had turned into him being too young to understand.

He was so angry he wanted to stomp his feet. “I’m not small, I understand! You can’t just ignore my thoughts!”

Xiu pursed his lips, fighting back an inappropriate urge to laugh. Finally, he raised his hand and pinched Wen Chu’s face. “Then let me ask you again, are you a human or a little rabbit?”

Wen Chu thought for a moment. “You said I am a human.”

Xiu lowered his eyes to look at him. “We don’t have a custom of humans testing medicine in place of animals here.”

Wen Chu changed his answer. “Then I’m a little rabbit.”

Xiu: “Little rabbits don’t have the right to decide.”

Wen Chu: ?

Wen Chu understood now. Xiu just didn’t want to do what he suggested and was tricking him like a child.

In a fit of anger, without thinking much, he opened his mouth and chomp—he bit right onto Xiu’s collar. “You’re bullying people!”

“Pfft…” Xiu finally couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

Feeling the vibration from the other person’s chest, Wen Chu ground his teeth hatefully while clamping onto Xiu’s collar.

Wicked adult.

When he finished grinding his teeth and let go, a clear bite mark was left on Xiu’s collar.

Xiu looked at the bite mark and couldn’t help laughing again.

It wasn’t until Wen Chu turned bright red with embarrassment and anger, transformed into a lop-eared rabbit, and turned his back on him, that Xiu managed to stop laughing.

He tapped the ear that the little lop-eared rabbit still hadn’t put down. “You forgot to put your ear down.”

“Oh.” Wen Chu lowered his ear and rubbed his fluffy ear with his paw.

He almost forgot he was a lop-eared rabbit.

“Alright, let’s not talk about this for now. When I came over, I heard the nurse say you can eat some simple liquid food in a few days. Is there anything you want to eat?”

Wen Chu didn’t turn around. “Timothy hay.”

Xiu explained helplessly, “You can turn into a human now, so you need to consume normal human food. Eating just grass won’t provide enough nutrition.”

Wen Chu suddenly realized why the nurse sister had gone to get a menu.

He remembered the aroma he smelled when he woke up last time and swallowed his saliva. “Then can I eat what you ate last time? That fragrant stuff in the metal bucket.”

Xiu recalled for a moment before remembering that Wen Chu was talking about the meal Secretary Li had brought from the cafeteria that night.

Xiu said, “That was potato stew with meat. You can’t eat that yet. You can only eat soups and watery things for now. Shall I have the cafeteria make you some meat porridge?”

Wen Chu had never eaten it. He slowly turned around and asked curiously, “Is it tasty?”

Xiu: “I’ll have the cafeteria make it tasty.”

Wen Chu was happy.

His fever hadn’t broken yet, so he had been groggy these past few days. Being able to stay awake for so long today was all thanks to the nurse playing origami with him and Xiu’s arrival.

He started to get sleepy. Yawning, he couldn’t be bothered to stay mad at Xiu and transformed back into a human.

The child curled up obediently in the hospital bed, rubbing his eyes while one hand didn’t forget to grab Xiu’s sleeve. “I want to test the medicine.”

Xiu: “…”

How had he not forgotten about this yet?

Who on earth leaked the news to Wen Chu? It couldn’t be Secretary Li, could it?

“We’ll see,” Xiu said evasively, trying to delay.

Wen Chu stared stubbornly at Xiu, looking as if he wouldn’t sleep unless Xiu agreed.

He repeated, “I want to test the medicine. I want to help you.”

“Why do you insist on helping me?” Xiu couldn’t help but ask.

Wen Chu’s consciousness began to blur. He yawned sleepily again and mumbled softly, “You saved me, you are my… adoptive father, Mom…”

He fell asleep completely before finishing his sentence.

Xiu looked helplessly at the soundly sleeping child.

He had said he wasn’t “Mom.”

He carefully extracted his sleeve from Wen Chu’s hand and left the ward holding the paper rabbit Wen Chu had given him.

As soon as he left the ward, he saw Secretary Li holding up a camera.

Xiu: “…”

Secretary Li: “Hehe.”

Xiu was speechless. “When did you take that? How much did you shoot?”

Secretary Li handed over the camera. “Just now, when the kid told you he wanted to test the medicine. What touching material! Once released, it will probably shake not just the Lower City, but the Upper City as well.”

Xiu took the camera. He intended to delete the photos and video, but he paused upon hearing this.

He narrowed his eyes. “You’re right.”

Secretary Li puffed out his chest.

Xiu handed the camera back. “Contact The Times Evening News and Interstellar Headlines. Publicize what just happened. Focus the promotion on Wen Chu: ten years old, dedicated to humanity.”

Secretary Li was dumbfounded.

Wasn’t that the wrong focus? Shouldn’t the focus be on how Xiu’s charismatic personality won the child over?

Xiu carefully placed the paper rabbit into the breast pocket of his uniform. While walking forward quickly, he said, “Wen Chu is too special. After his identity as an experimental subject is exposed, he may never be able to integrate into society normally in his lifetime. We really need to build momentum and pave the way for him in advance.”

“Call all the doctors here. Our research direction might have been wrong all along. This may not be a plague virus, and the original Archon couldn’t have been crazy enough to want to kill everyone in the Lower City.”

Secretary Li hurried to keep up, completely confused by his words. “Not a plague? Then what is it?”

Recalling Wen Chu’s words just now, Xiu said softly, “This might be an evolutionary experiment.”

Survival of the fittest. And those who ultimately adapt might be new humans they have never seen before.

Rapid healing, no fear of pain, no need to consume food.

Secretary Li was stunned.

Before he could speak, the adjutant rushed over.

“Archon, there’s a new situation! Traces of Little John have appeared in Sector E, where the plague first broke out. He’s rebelled with a group of people!”

“…So, is the bad guy in jail now?”

In the ward, Wen Chu drank his porridge spoonful by spoonful, listening to Xiu slowly tell him about the situation outside, and asked curiously.

The exhaustion on Xiu’s face was even more pronounced, with dark circles under his eyes, but he still smiled gently at him. “Of course. It was just a trivial disturbance. Little John was captured that same day and thrown into prison—but what about you? Today is the third day of testing the new drug. Do you feel uncomfortable anywhere?”

Wen Chu blinked. “No.”

He just felt more and more awake; that didn’t count as uncomfortable.

Xiu sighed. “That’s good. As long as you are okay.”

It was his tenth day in the Lower City, and also the tenth day since the outbreak of the “plague.”

The “evolution” idea Wen Chu provided was completely correct. By the sixth day, a very small number of people had broken their high fevers and gained strange powers instead.

Some could release weak streams of water, some could light small flames, and some could even heal wounds less than two centimeters deep.

Although these abilities were weak, they were genuine superpowers.

Coupled with the fact that the Upper City’s garrison had disrupted countless original industrial chains in the Lower City, people’s minds were wavering everywhere for a time.

Fortunately, with Wen Chu’s reminder, Xiu reacted in time. After quickly suppressing the fleeing Little John and publicly executing him, these people had been fairly well-behaved these past few days.

Of course, there was no need to tell a child about things like beheadings.

Wen Chu looked at the IV drip on his hand and sighed. “I saw on the news that half of the people have woken up. When will I get better?”

“Soon,” Xiu forced a smile. “After all, you were infected so many times, it’s normal to recover a bit slower.”

“Really? But I heard on the news that the slower the recovery, the greater the risk,” Wen Chu asked in confusion.

He couldn’t read, so he relied on listening to the news during the intervals he was awake to understand the situation outside.

Xiu’s face always appeared on the news, either on the front lines of the disaster or at press conferences.

He also saw himself. The scene where he told Xiu he wanted to test the medicine had been filmed at some point and even made the news, becoming a touching story.

Wen Chu felt embarrassed watching it, so he would change the channel whenever he saw himself.

“That is true, but that refers to cases of high fever and coma. You are special.” Xiu rubbed his eyes.

He had just worked through the night. Before he could rest, he heard that Wen Chu had woken up again, so he rushed over to see the child. His eyes were sore, and his forehead throbbed with pain.

“You should have seen it already. A very small number of people who have recovered from the fever have awakened weak abilities. According to our speculation, those who haven’t recovered from the fever might awaken more powerful abilities. Conversely, those who fail to awaken won’t just simply recover from a fever.”

Xiu said indifferently, “They might die.”

This was also the reason why the Upper City had remained silent until now.

A mortality rate exceeding fifty percent, a probability of one in hundreds of thousands—except for the former Archon of the Lower City who didn’t treat human lives as lives, no one dared to make such a choice.

Moreover, the current superpowers were barely better than nothing—little streams, little flames, barely enough to light a match. Overusing them could lead to death.

Hearing this, Wen Chu paused and looked at Xiu with concern. “Then you aren’t infected, right? I don’t want you to die.”

Xiu smiled. “We estimated wrong before. This isn’t a plague, so naturally, it’s not contagious. Aside from those who drank the contaminated water, we haven’t seen any other infected patients.”

Only then was Wen Chu barely reassured.

He pulled at Xiu’s sleeve and whispered, “Then when the Lower City is governed well, will you leave?”

Xiu: “The porridge is getting cold.”

He was obviously changing the subject.

Wen Chu lowered his eyes in disappointment, looking at the porridge bowl, and whispered, “Then can you still be my adoptive father?”

He had been bedridden these past few days. Although he hadn’t gained any weight, his complexion was much better. With his head lowered, his fair skin showed a pale pink hue, and his long white eyelashes drooped like a small cub seeking shelter uneasily.

And he was indeed a human cub, a lop-eared rabbit cub.

Xiu said gently, “Of course. Even if we have no relation, I was the one who saved you. As long as you are willing, you can certainly see me as a father.”

“Always? Even if you go to the Upper City, will that change?” Wen Chu asked.

Xiu looked at him and said half-jokingly, “As long as you are willing, I’ll take you with me to the Upper City and raise you. I’ll raise you for your whole life.”

Wen Chu was very serious. “Okay.”

He thought for a moment and added, “You don’t have to support me; I can earn money myself.”

Xiu tapped his forehead. “Children shouldn’t worry about such things.”

Wen Chu puffed out his cheeks and stopped talking.

Xiu was indeed tired. He had rushed over to talk with him for over an hour. After watching him finish eating and fall asleep, he left.

Wen Chu lay in bed, his thoughts wandering.

Not a plague, but evolution.

Evolved people could possess superpowers, even if they were weak.

What about him? Would he possess abilities? Or would he just recover from the fever and become an ordinary person?

The sharp, cool figure of the Archon appeared before Wen Chu’s eyes. He secretly thought: I want special abilities.

That way, he wouldn’t always be treated as a child by Xiu or protected behind him.

The IV drip by the bed fell drop by drop. Because he was using the experimental drug, several more recording instruments had been added to his body, and the nurse sister came to draw blood every day.

Everything was so similar to the laboratory.

But it was also completely different.

Wen Chu savored the taste of the vegetable and lean meat porridge he just had, looking at the Timothy hay provided as a snack at his bedside. He was starting to forget how he spent his days in the laboratory.

Anyway, every time he woke up there, there was no Xiu who would definitely appear to talk to him, no nurse sister to teach him origami, and no delicious porridge.

Tomorrow is pumpkin porridge. What does pumpkin taste like?

Just as Wen Chu’s thoughts were gradually drifting, a loud boom suddenly exploded in his ears.

Such noises had been common in the past few days, but they were always far away. This time, however, the entire hospital began to shake.

Alarms blared, red lights flashed everywhere, and the hurried footsteps and panicked voices of doctors could be heard.

Obviously, the Archon’s residence was under attack this time.

Wen Chu’s sleepiness vanished, and he sat up abruptly.

The nurse sister had told him there was a hidden door in his ward. If they were attacked, he should hide inside and wait for the doctor to knock a secret code on the door to get him.

But before Wen Chu could pull out the needle in his hand, another roar came from the door.

Bang—

The door was smashed flying.

Wen Chu stared blankly at the doorway as a group of people wearing cobbled-together equipment poured in.

The leader had immense strength. He reached out and yanked Wen Chu down, choking him by the neck while looking at him with a faint smile.

“Found him. This is the little rabbit the Doctor wanted, right?”

The person next to him mumbled, “Definitely. He’s been on the news so many times. Let’s go quickly before the Archon comes to kill us.”

Wen Chu couldn’t breathe from being choked. He wanted to turn into a little rabbit to escape, but before he could react, he felt a pain in the back of his neck.

Then his vision went black, and he completely lost consciousness.

Ten minutes later.

Xiu, who had barely been asleep for half an hour, looked at the destroyed ward door and the empty hospital bed. The low pressure radiating from him made even Secretary Li tremble with fear.

The medical director was practically on his knees, wanting to cry but having no tears. “These people came straight for Wen Chu’s ward. None of us expected them to attack the Archon’s residence directly, or that they would have evolved a strength-type superpower user.”

Xiu spoke slowly, his voice cold. “Who was it?”

Secretary Li handed over the surveillance data with trepidation.

The surveillance showed a patchwork squad. It was clearly similar to the rebel army formed by Little John a few days ago—a mix of various people in the Lower City who had awakened abilities.

But when he saw the leader, Xiu’s transparent blue eyes turned completely cold.

“Are the people in the Upper City trash?” he cursed aloud. “They still haven’t caught all the researchers on the laboratory list?”

“T-Then what do we do now…?” Secretary Li asked tentatively.

Xiu lowered his eyes and pulled out his handgun, his black leather gloves reflecting the cold glint of the firearm.

He sneered. “Go save him.”

“For all hostage-takers, if they resist, shoot to kill on the spot.”

To avoid causing panic, everyone he brought was equipped with air guns.

But that didn’t mean he hadn’t brought real thermal weapons.

They just evolved a little flame, and they have the guts to snatch people from bullets and gunpowder?

Did they forget how he blew the roof off the laboratory with artillery fire?