[Yes, you can call me the System. Perhaps in your mind, only a system can scientifically explain my existence.]

[I know what you’re thinking, and no, you haven’t lost your mind. I am your talent, or should I say, your ability?]

[After coming into contact with a source of pollution, those who are contaminated are called human-contaminants; those who are not contaminated and instead awaken a talent are called the Awakened. This is something people will come to accept in about a few months. Paper cannot wrap up fire forever… What kind of world did you think you were living in? In fact, you’ve already met an Awakened. Smart… Lin Sinan. By the way, you are one too.]

[Though you’re a bit weak right now. But you have me. I happen to be an incredibly awesome talent, so you’ve struck gold, seriously.]

[It’s not that you possess me; it’s that I chose you.]

…

…

Lu Yan opened his eyes. He turned on the television and switched over to the news channel.

The broadcast still couldn’t avoid the topic of the locked-down H City.

“The deformed individuals have been dealt with. We ask the general public to rest assured. This particular pollution disease is not contagious,”

The reporter flashed a sweet smile in front of the camera.

The audience would never know that she wasn’t actually in the heavily polluted H City, but rather inside a filming studio in her own city.

The world remained a scene of superficial peace and prosperity.

He pulled back the curtains and looked down coldly at the street below. Corporate drones were squeezing onto buses for their morning commute, university students were furiously complaining about their 8:00 AM classes, and everything looked as if nothing had changed at all.

If not for yesterday’s surgery, Lu Yan would have believed that the future would remain unchanged as well.

That fish egg had been buried by him inside a flowerpot.

While he was burying the fish egg, the System’s incredibly noisy and talkative notification prompts kept ringing in his ears.

[Although it’s merely a low-level contaminant, as the egg of a parasitic King Fish, it possesses a very special function.]

[Perhaps you’ve played Hungry Shark Evolution? The hatched King Fish can devour the eggs of other parasitic fish, oh.]

[Can it be that even now, there are still doctors who think traditional medical means are useful against the pollution disease?]

The moment Lu Yan put down the iron shovel, his phone ringtone suddenly rang out with abrupt sharpness.

Lu Yan froze for a moment, then answered the call.

“Dr. Lu, help me…” On the other end of the phone, Dr. Li’s voice sounded hoarse.

Dr. Li’s name was Li Rui, the doctor who had performed the surgery alongside him yesterday.

“I don’t know who else to turn to, I don’t dare to go to the hospital.”

It was currently winter. K City was a coastal city situated at a lower latitude, so it wasn’t particularly cold here.

Beneath his thick coat, Li Rui’s arms had already been scratched into lines of bloody gashes, his fingernails caked with flesh and blood, looking exactly like some sort of self-harm scene. Yet he was entirely oblivious to it, still gouging his skin with fingernails that had grown excessively sharp.

Upon the skin of Li Rui’s arms, translucent fish eggs were embedded one after another like tiny blisters, looking bizarrely red under the staining of blood.

He was sitting on a park bench. Wearing a hat, and piled with a cotton coat, a down jacket, and a windbreaker, yet the cold still felt like sharp needles, spreading from his limbs into the depths of his soul. This was the parasitic eggs frantically plundering the host’s body heat in order to survive.

Probably because his expression looked far too neurotic, the elderly folk doing their morning exercises all stayed far away from him.

Lu Yan asked, “What happened?”

Li Rui lowered his voice: “On my arms, there grew… those things grew on them…”

Yesterday, they had performed that surgery together.

Lu Yan quickly realized exactly what Li Rui was talking about.

Lu Yan frowned: “You should contact the pollution center.”

Six years ago, when the pollution first broke out abroad, the entire world had experienced a small-scale panic for a brief period. Later, it was confirmed by experts to be an infectious disease of the new century, dubbed the pollution disease.

Because of this, Pollution Disease Prevention and Control Centers were established all over the world.

Li Rui shook his head frantically: “Back in university, I did an internship at the A City pollution center. Those people will be gathered and dealt with collectively. Killed with high temperatures… I don’t want to die! Save me, Dr. Lu! We did the surgery together yesterday. You heard what that officer said, as long as those fish eggs are cut out, it’ll be fine.”

Saving the dying and healing the wounded was a doctor’s bounden duty. Li Rui had never seen anyone implement this responsibility and belief more thoroughly than Lu Yan.

This was also the reason why he had sought out Lu Yan.

Before Lu Yan could express his stance, a knock sounded at the door of his house, which usually saw no visitors year-round.

“Lu Yan, I’m right here at Qu…”

“Hold on, I’ll call you back.”

Lu Yan hung up the phone and turned on the smart peephole, and the faces of the visitors appeared on the doorway display screen.

Two men, one of whom was yesterday’s Lin Sinan.

Today, he was dressed in casual clothes. Sneakers, jeans, a light white T-shirt paired with a dark cargo jacket. He was dressed up like the handsome heartthrob of a county high school coming to a first-tier city for university for the very first time.

Lin Sinan spoke facing the peephole: “Hello, Dr. Lu. I am Lin Sinan. We’ve met before. Because yesterday’s surgery carries a certain level of infectivity, I brought a colleague over to help check on you. Rest assured, we are legitimate personnel.”

Lin Sinan fumbled around his body for a long time, and finally managed to find his credentials from his colleague’s pocket.

“K City Pollution Disease Prevention and Control Center,” with a photo on top and an official seal below. The job title was listed as “Inspector.”

Lu Yan opened the door and brought out shoe covers.

Lin Sinan walked into the house, quietly scanning his surroundings without drawing attention.

This place looked exactly like a model showroom house. Almost no signs of daily life could be seen. Inside the semi-open kitchen, even the cutting board was pristine and clean, without a single trace of being used.

Aside from this, Lin Sinan also noticed an interesting detail.

Lu Yan likely knew how to use a bow. An archery target hung on the living room wall, riddled with quite a few punctures.

The inspector opened his briefcase, sat down at the dining table, and said in a gentle, soft voice: “The check requires drawing a little bit of blood. Dr. Lu, do you find it convenient?”

His rectangular briefcase was placed a bit crookedly.

Lu Yan controlled the full strength of his body just to keep himself from nudging it straight, choosing instead to silently extend his arm.

The blood collection was completed very quickly, and this drop of blood was loaded on the spot into an unfamiliar, square-shaped instrument.

A few minutes later, the inspector said: “You have not contracted the pollution disease. If during this period you experience a fever, physical discomfort, or similar reactions, you can contact our Pollution Disease Prevention and Control Center at any time. We will provide the corresponding assistance.”

Lu Yan stared into his eyes and asked, “Is the pollution disease really just an infectious disease?”

“The pollution disease is of course an infectious disease. It is simply a new type of genetic deformity. The pollution disease is highly contagious; a few years ago, it caused tens of thousands of deaths abroad, but under the unremitting efforts of scientists from various countries around the world, this disease has already been brought under control, and pollution disease patients only appear in small, localized areas, so there is no need to be overly anxious.”

Inside Lu Yan’s mind came the System’s disdainful sneer: [That was only because it was all low-level contaminants in the beginning. A C-grade contaminant can destroy a city, and countless lives were cut short to halt that disaster back then. But weakness is inherently humanity’s original sin.]

[By the way, let me give you a reminder, you’d better hurry up and send the guy away. If you don’t want to be dragged into a research institute, that is.]

Seeing that the atmosphere had turned somewhat cold, Lu Yan inquired: “Thank you for answering my questions. May I ask if there is anything else?”

“…No. Wish you a happy life.”

“Thank you.”

A moment later, the two workers from the Pollution Disease Prevention and Control Center left Lu Yan’s home.

Lin Sinan spoke first: “A cleanliness obsession is one of the most common clinical manifestations of obsessive-compulsive disorder. The living environment is normal, with no source of pollution.”

The inspector: “Lu Yan, his father is a pollution disease patient with a history of multiple domestic violence offenses. His mother committed suicide by jumping off a building when he was six years old.”

“Lu Yan suffered prolonged imprisonment and abuse from his father, and was rescued at age 12. Upon diagnosis, he suffered from photophobia, claustrophobia, and split personality disorder. The split personality is an antisocial personality, possessing high aggressiveness.”

“At age 16, Lu Yan fully recovered and was discharged. In the same year, his father became a contaminant and was detained in the research institute under Serial Number 18.”

“In the year 2117, Contaminant 18 escaped from the research institute. This is the only incident of an A-grade contaminant escaping. Although 18’s deformed part was the brain, it also led researchers to conclude that when contaminants grow to the later stages, they will possess an intelligence no inferior to humans.”

Lin Sinan: “Yes, so the research institute once monitored Lu Yan for a long time, wanting to see if 18 would make any contact with Lu Yan.”

“Team Leader Lin, you know what my talent is. I sensed a dangerous aura from him,” the inspector said solemnly.

He was a support-type Awakened, 【Talent – Early Warning】, capable of detecting danger to a certain degree.

“The test results are out, spiritual power threshold 0, deformity degree 0. A normal human. And here I thought he could become an Awakened.” Lin Sinan fished a military sedative out of his pocket and lit it up for himself, “Let’s go. Time to head to the other side.”

According to the Academy of Sciences’ research, organisms with a deformity degree between 0 and 100 still fall within the category of humans. The Awakened are humans who have suffered pollution and possess a talent, but whose deformity degree remains within 100. The strength of an Awakened is determined by their spiritual power threshold.

Once the deformity degree exceeds 100, it is no longer human, and like those animals, plants, and even inorganic matter, it is referred to as a contaminant.

And Lu Yan was a 0.

Li Rui had been waiting all along for Lu Yan’s call.

He sat on the park bench, growing colder and colder. The world before his eyes was gradually losing its color, turning into a uniform sheet of gray.

The weather grew increasingly damp, and a layer of fog began to spread all around.

The high fever caused Li Rui’s consciousness to grow hazy.

It wasn’t until he inexplicably felt someone approaching that he jolted awake and snapped his head up.

Two people nearby, strangers.

Instinct told him that these people were coming for him.

He would be dragged into the prevention and control center, and just like those bizarrely shaped patients he had seen back then, he would vanish inside a several-thousand-degree high-temperature incinerator!

Without any hesitation, Li Rui bolted and ran.

The two men who were currently pulling out their work IDs froze for a second, and then chased after him without stopping for breath.

Li Rui’s physical stamina wasn’t great; usually, doing a few hours of surgery could leave him exhausted enough to collapse, let alone right now when he was dressed exactly like a penguin. However, his speed grew faster and faster, moving like a gust of wind.

During the run, his hearing became exceptionally acute, to the point where he could even hear these men cursing under their breath from far away—

“Isn’t this a parasitic pollution? Why has the host deformed already?”

Deformed…?

Yes, the abnormal physical conditions manifested by a normal human suffering from the pollution disease was called deformity.

Li Rui didn’t run for long before the sound of a helicopter came from the sky.

He looked up and saw the helicopter open its cabin door. At the doorway, strapped with a safety rope and fully armed, Lin Sinan raised a sniper rifle.

Through a loudspeaker, his voice carried a long distance: “The person ahead, please stop your actions immediately and crouch down with your hands behind your head on the spot. We are workers from the Pollution Disease Prevention and Control Center. According to preliminary analysis, you have been infected by a parasite. Please stop moving immediately! We will send you to undergo specialized treatment!”

“If you refuse to accept investigation and treatment, we will adopt emergency special handling measures.”

However, Li Rui turned a deaf ear, still running like mad.

A drop of sweat dripped from Lin Sinan’s temple, and from his earpiece came the command from headquarters: “The patient is suffering from parasitic pollution. He has already deformed and will inherently become a source of infection. Termination is recommended.”

And so, Lin Sinan pulled the trigger.

【Talent – Tracked Shooting】, within effective range, targets are automatically hit.

This place was several hundred meters off the ground, Li Rui was running, and the aircraft was swaying. It was hard to imagine that anyone could score a hit under such conditions.

But the moment the gunshot rang out, a burst of blood exploded from Li Rui’s body.

However, he did not collapse as imagined.

It was a terrifying scene; the head was gone, yet this body was still charging forward.

Lin Sinan frowned and very swiftly fired two follow-up shots. The time gap between them and the first shot didn’t exceed ten seconds.

The sniper rifle he used was loaded with heavy rounds; as long as it hit a person, it was absolute, certain death.

It was naturally impossible for Li Rui to be alive.

But just like a hairworm parasitizing a praying mantis can manipulate the mantis to jump into water and drown itself, the thing parasitizing his body was doing the same.

The sky that had just been overcast suddenly began to pour with rain.

In the torrential rain, this body finally found its destination.

K City’s moat, the Qu River.

It leaped into the river water with absolute ecstasy.

…

…

The corpse was very quickly fished out.

Disregarding the pollution, Lin Sinan stripped off the clothes on Li Rui’s body and examined it carefully.

There were no traces of fish eggs on his body.

But no one was happy because of this. Beside them, the surging river water flowed on endlessly.

Two soldiers lowered their heads in shame: “We’re sorry, we couldn’t catch up to him.”

Generally speaking, deformity consists of three stages, and there would be a buffer period of at least two weeks. Yet for Li Rui, the time from being polluted to beginning his deformity took a mere few hours.

This went against common sense, to the point where even Lin Sinan had failed to anticipate it.

Humans were evolving, so contaminants could naturally evolve as well.

Lin Sinan’s expression became incredibly ugly: “A sudden pollution incident, tentatively classified as B-grade. The C-grade contaminant ‘Parasitic Fish’ has mutated, recovery failed, and the scope of pollution spread is currently unclear. Requesting reinforcement from headquarters.”