Lu Yan just opened his eyes to see Lin Sinan with bloodshot eyes, his gun aimed directly between Lu Yan’s brows.

The sky outside was bright; it was three o’clock in the afternoon.

Lu Yan was stunned for a moment, then obediently raised his hands, trying to appear as harmless as possible: “Calm down, we’ve already woken up from the dream.”

Lin Sinan’s hand holding the gun trembled slightly: “Who are you?”

“Lu Yan.”

“Height?”

“181.4 cm.”

“Birthday?”

“November 11th.”

“What was your major in university?”

“Clinical Medicine, Medical Department of Donglan University.”

Lin Sinan gasped, gritting his teeth: “The last ‘you’ answered the same way. How am I supposed to believe you?”

Lu Yan frowned, feeling slightly troubled. After thinking for a moment, he asked: “…Does it have a ‘1’ in it?”

Lin Sinan answered rigidly: “I’m heterosexual.”

“On the Awakener Forum, the person ranked 100th goes by that name.” Lu Yan could tell his mental state was very unstable and softened his voice, “The forum invitation code you sent me is AK134B9184.”

Lin Sinan took out his phone from his pocket, checked it, and found it matched perfectly. And the phone, which had been without signal for a long time, finally received messages. They notified him that on the road from K-City to M-City, an A-rank pollutant “Dream Eater” and an A-rank pollutant “Wall of Grudge” had appeared; the messages were sent two days ago.

Lu Yan: “Back in my dream, you died at the start, but there were still texts from you on the phone. I don’t know what happened to you in the dream, but we have indeed emerged from it now. My guess is that the Dream Eater can access memories in other people’s minds. Since you don’t even remember what happened yourself, naturally, it couldn’t tell you either.”

Lin Sinan finally lowered the gun. He was covered in a cold sweat, slumped in his chair, his voice full of exhaustion: “Is that so… I spent many days in the dream. I dreamt I received orders to bring you back to headquarters. But you were already infected, having brought the parasitic disease to another city. Then I woke up, and you said it was a dream. Then it repeated the same scenario, and Team Leader Tang said I wasted his ability to restart time…”

Lu Yan thought about that scene: “That was indeed quite miserable.”

People like Lin Sinan preferred to attribute all failures to themselves. Previously, during the K-City parasitic fish infection incident, he had believed it was caused by his own professional incompetence and had been filled with guilt ever since. Now that the same thing was re-enacted in the dream, it was no wonder he chose to pull his gun at the first opportunity.

Better to kill by mistake than to let a threat pass. In necessary situations, Lin Sinan was even willing to sacrifice himself.

Lin Sinan relaxed for a moment, still feeling a lingering fear as he took a special oral medication: “Good thing I didn’t pull the trigger immediately. I already had half a year’s salary deducted for a failed recovery mission; if I’d blown your head off, I wouldn’t have even dared to dream about my year-end bonus for the next ten years.”

Headquarters had conducted in-depth research on the status of every Awakener and had developed specific scripts for them accordingly. For instance, Lin Sinan, who grew up in a small county, dreamed in his youth of settling down and buying a house in a big city. Although housing was now provided, he still wanted to earn more money, so headquarters dangled performance bonuses in front of him. Don’t look at how Lu Yan was getting 100,000 a month just for joining; Lin Sinan’s current salary was only 20,000 to 30,000.

It wasn’t that headquarters was stingy. If a person has no goals and no aspirations, they are like a kite with a broken string, unable to find their direction. Hope is the carrot dangled in front of a donkey. The donkey is exhausted, but thinking there’s a carrot waiting for it, it can take a few more steps.

Lu Yan glanced around and didn’t see anyone else. He asked the system: “Where is Lu Jiahe?”

[Gone.]

“Where to?”

[Naturally, to where he is supposed to go. The Wall of Grudge is different from ordinary pollution sources; its purpose in appearing is to screen. Lu Jiahe is the result of its screening.]

[To be honest, I think with his E-rank luck, it was actually unlikely he’d get this opportunity. But perhaps the two koi fish scales he scraped off your neck played a role. The Wall of Grudge chose him… or rather, something chose him through the Wall of Grudge.]

[Perhaps the next time you see him, he will have completely forgotten his current memories; perhaps you will never see him again.]

Lu Yan: “You seem to be talking about new settings I don’t quite understand again.”

[That world is too far from you; you don’t need to know too much, unless you also gain the same qualifications. As for now, just consider it having been a dream.]

[Instead of that, you should care more about the blood you swallowed. This was produced by a genuine A-rank pollution source.]

Most of the time, pollution sources are feared and avoided. But occasionally, there are special circumstances where Awakeners can gain reinforcement through them. In fact, some healing-type medicines are products derived from pollution sources.

Lu Yan: “What use is it?”

System: [There is. At critical moments, you can slash your wrists and bleed. Your blood has two uses: first, it can allow other Awakeners to obtain temporary reinforcement, but it’s useless on yourself. Second, it can influence the sanity of pollutants. It’s erratic, and it only takes effect once on the same pollutant.]

[Because it was a gift voluntarily given by the resentment entity, your body didn’t show any rejection response. You are truly worthy of being a man who will become a koi fish in the future; even your mutation level only rose by 1 point.] The system clicked its tongue in wonder. If others knew Lu Yan had merged with a pollution source so easily, many would likely turn sour with jealousy.

Lu Yan felt the situation had become grave: “Isn’t this the real-life version of Tang Monk meat?”

He could already see a future where black-hearted capitalists were trafficking his blood around the world.

[Yes, and for Awakeners with talents like the Bloodlust Gene, your blood is especially useful. You just have to be careful not to be sucked dry. Hmm, therefore, I still suggest you keep it secret. I feel the day you get dragged into a research institute is getting closer…]

Lin Sinan looked at the navigation map: “By rights, I should have taken you to that mountain village to complete your newbie mission, but because we were delayed on the road for two days, the living dead have already been dealt with. To put the local people at ease, they even filmed an episode of ‘Approaching Science.’ The latest mission I received is to take you back to the K-City Pollution Disease Prevention and Control Center to write a report on this encounter with the pollution source.”

For executive personnel of the Special Action Department, every encounter with a pollution source requires a report. This is also the source of intelligence for the Prevention and Control Center. The report mainly clarifies the time, location, and process, then the document is sent to the research institute for specialized staff to conduct scientific research.

As the dream collapsed and the Dream Eater departed, the fog covering the highway dispersed, revealing its original outline. Occasionally, a few charred corpses lay on the side of the road, faint deep-red flames still burning on them, giving Lu Yan the illusion that he hadn’t left the dream. Just as the system said, things in the dream were both a dream and reality.

According to the latest data update on the Awakener Forum, the danger index of the M-City Third Middle School pollution zone had dropped from orange to yellow. After all, to let his sister return to school, Lu Jiahe had cleaned up quite diligently.

This time, the two didn’t encounter any further danger. Because of the pollution disease, Lu Yan hadn’t walked on the streets of K-City in the daytime for a long time. It had initially regained its vitality, as if the pollution disease had never happened. People were crowding, elementary school students were carrying school bags to school, salarymen were squeezing into the subway, and street breakfast vendors were hiding from urban management officers. Even the technology building in the city center that had been smashed by the salaryman-algae-man had been repaired, with walls and glass patched up. Shiny, polished white-collar workers were weaving through it.

It’s just that the shops selling frog meat and fish-head hotpot in K-City went bankrupt overnight. Fortunately, the City Hall issued a document giving some support subsidies. After all, no matter how the world changes, people always have to continue living.

[Small, ordinary, pathetic, and ignorant humans…] The system watched the bustling streets and sighed, [Yet humans are so lively; I love such humans so much.]

Lu Yan rolled up the car window, thinking to himself that the system’s words were truly ‘chuunibyou’ (middle-school syndrome), but he quite liked such humans too.

K-City Pollution Disease Prevention and Control Center.

A person stood up, then sat down, feeling very restless: “Has that healing-type Awakener not arrived yet?”

This person was wearing a practice suit, with a crew cut, and his muscles were very solid, as if he had just come out of the Shaolin Temple as a martial monk.

“Navigation shows he is still 900 meters away. A bit of a traffic jam.”

Chen Twelve twisted around in his chair: “Can I run out and bring him back?”

A middle-aged clerk pushed the sunglasses on his face: “Be patient. The data shows that ‘Diting’ is very guarded against the outside world. If you scare him away, I’ll send you back to the Shaolin Temple to break your internet addiction.”

“After all, we still want to entrust him with saving someone, don’t you think?”