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Chapter 22
“Goodbye, little brother.”
Basel, Switzerland.
International Supervision General Administration.
“Shenhai has lifted the Level 1 alert status across the region; there’s no need to worry. This time it was just an accident…”
Fritsch Nielsen stood by the window in the conference room, a cigarette held between his fingers, exhaling a thin stream of smoke. With his phone in hand, he gazed at the sky.
His impeccably silver-gray hair was combed back, and his ice-blue pupils resembled the windswept snow on the Nordic ice fields. A subtle smile appeared on his handsome and deep-profiled face, interrupting the report on the phone:
“I understand, as long as you’re okay.”
No one could have dreamed that the world’s top-ranked evolutionist, the “Wolf of Odin,” could be so gentle. Compared to his usual authoritarian demeanor, it seemed like two different people. He continued, “Yue Yang called from the Central District Supervision Office, telling me that you are unharmed. I was very worried, waiting for your call. Knowing that you’re awake puts my mind at ease. The other losses can be ignored.”
Shen Zhuo’s rather apologetic voice came from the other end of the phone, “I didn’t expect such an incident to suddenly happen in my jurisdiction. This time, it was thanks to Mr. Bai’s assistance…”
“The severity of this assassination attempt is unprecedented globally. In other jurisdictions, it might have already caused disastrous consequences. However, the response from the Shenhai Supervision Office was perfect. It’s all because of your excellent supervision.”
Nielsen interrupted Shen Zhuo, expressing praise mixed with no doubt, “As for Mr. Bai, as an S-class evolutionist, assisting in such situations is his duty. After handling all the affairs of the General Administration here, I will personally go to Shenhai to express my gratitude.”
There was a moment of inexplicable silence on the other end of the phone.
“Then I’ll trouble you.” Shen Zhuo held the phone and stood in the hospital restroom, squinting at himself in the mirror. There was a small, blood-red spot at the inner corner of his lower lip where the skin was broken from the canine teeth of someone surnamed Bai in the chaos.
He had thin skin by nature, and the physical strength of an S-class evolutionist was just too immense, making it difficult to control the force used.
On the phone, Shen Zhuo seemed to be smiling, and no one could detect the hint of gritted teeth in his tone: “After all, Mr. Bai and I… are not familiar with each other.”
“Rest well, Shen Zhuo. I will follow up on that evolutionist named Rong Qi,” Nielsen said with a smile. “Don’t worry, I will always stand by your side.”
Shen Zhuo said: “I understand.”
The call ended, and Nielsen put down his phone, turning around.
The conference room behind him was filled with people.
In fact, none of those present were physically there; they were all three-dimensional virtual projections of officials from the United Nations Security Council. Everyone had a strange expression, yet no one spoke, and the air was filled with an indescribable tension.
“What?” Nielsen smirked; his demeanor was filled with elegance and mockery. “I thought upon hearing the news of Shen Zhuo being safe and sound, you gentlemen would stand up, weeping and embracing each other, thanking God.”
“…”
“Don’t you feel pleased, Cameron?” Nielsen turned to look at the conference table and asked with a smile.
Cameron was probably sitting in his official residence in New York, thousands of miles away. He had his two long legs crossed, fingers casually interlocked. This man always exuded the courteous yet sarcastic demeanor of a diplomat, regardless of the situation: “I’ve always had confidence in Shen Zhuo’s tenacious vitality and inexplicable luck. Instead of worrying about him being assassinated, we should be concerned about whether his rusty brain can still go back to continue researching the HRG plan; after all, that’s his only value.”
“Allow me to correct you, Mr. Cameron,” Nielsen said calmly. “Shen Zhuo is now the chief supervisor of us evolutionists. There is no possibility that he will go back to research your HRG plan in this lifetime…”
“He has long been abandoned by you and fallen into our hands.”
The scene fell into complete silence.
Fortunately, it was a three-dimensional projection; otherwise, some officials might not have been able to resist rushing up to strangle him.
“Oh, is that so?” Cameron smoothly replied, patting the cuffs of his royal blue suit.
“Now that it’s confirmed that Shen Zhuo isn’t dead, at least today’s purpose has been achieved,” he said, looking around the conference table with a smile. “Gentlemen, let’s adjourn the meeting.”
The virtual three-dimensional projections on either side of the long table disappeared one after another. Cameron pressed the exit key, and in the next moment, he was back in the garden of his official residence.
The unique, salty, and humid mist of the rainy season hit him in the face.
He sat in a lounge chair on the covered porch. The sky was pouring down with torrential rain. The treetops swayed back and forth in the wind, and the fountain’s surface splashed countless ripples into the downpour.
An assistant, holding a stack of documents, bent down respectfully to change his cup of hot tea: “Mr. Cameron.”
Cameron always wore a three-part counterfeit smile on his face, but his eyes were a cold grey-green. Whenever he stopped smiling, the icy demeanor would emerge from behind the mask, revealing a glimpse of a cold-blooded truth.
“Shen Zhuo is completely under the control of Fritsch Nielsen now.” He gazed at the heavy rain outside the corridor and murmured, “We must find a way to put Nielsen in a dire situation, or we won’t be able to reclaim the lifeline of the HRG plan.”
The assistant looked somewhat concerned: “But… are you sure it’s that serious? After all, Dr. Shen has high intelligence, and his personality is very tough…”
“Tough?” Cameron chuckled, as if he had heard an incredibly absurd and foolish statement.
“You don’t understand Shen Zhuo. He is weak, sentimental, and easily yielding. He is inherently prone to attracting control freaks. That’s why he always attracts people like Fu Chen, Nielsen… and recently, someone like Bai Sheng. If it weren’t for the global human regeneration plan, he would be an unbearable burden and waste—”
Cameron’s words paused, and he looked down.
His arm rested on the chair’s armrest. Perhaps due to the dampness of the rainy day, an ant crawled onto the back of his hand, causing an almost negligible itch.
So humble and insignificant.
Simply vulnerable.
“…”
Cameron’s gray-green pupils stared at it, watching its fragile body and aimlessly waving antennae, unmoving for a long time without a hint of expression.
“…Rain… melted, molecular heat, diffusion…”
He heard the little boy clumsily gesturing, squatting on the soil before the torrential rain, using melted honey to attract ants. There was a pale futility on the child’s innocent face.
The six-year-old child was soaked through by the heavy rain, and then that rain gradually turned into blood, dripping from the wide-open eyes and seeping into the hospital bed, with countless medical instruments emitting a faint ticking sound.
“…There were already issues with language development, and due to exposure to unknown radiation in this incident, it may result in irreversible genetic damage…”
“Both parents tragically died before his eyes, causing immense psychological stress, which, based on the current situation, seems to have affected the development of the brain and nerves…”
“Perhaps he will be in a vegetative state with open eyes for the rest of his life. The family should be mentally prepared…”
In the special care ward, it was quiet. The shiny floor reflected the pale light.
Cameron squatted down, staring at the pupils of the little boy on the hospital bed, and whispered:
“Do you know that this world operates on the survival of the fittest? The weak should be abandoned, right?”
Those eyes showed no response.
Like inanimate glass, they stared motionless at the floating specks in the air.
Young Cameron had bandages on his forehead and hands, with faint traces of grim blood. He stood up, looking down at this soulless, small puppet. It seemed like he wanted to say something, but his mouth opened and then stopped. After a moment, he let out a small sigh.
The lingering sound of the sigh instantly dissipated in the quiet air.
“Goodbye, little brother,” he said in a low voice.
—Never to be seen again.
He turned and walked out of the ward. In the moment the door closed, it seemed as if the little boy on the hospital bed moved, as if trying to reach out toward him. However, on a closer look, there was nothing.
The ward was quiet and empty, with only a thin and small figure sitting there, like a statue.
…Just an illusion, right? Cameron thought.
The metal door slid silently closed, and he didn’t look back. Turning away, he walked toward the outside, the bright light casting a long shadow behind him, gradually dissolving into another entirely new world.
That was their final intersection.
From that moment on, they went completely separate ways, heading toward different horizons.
……
The heavy rain roared as if it had never ceased for a second, and Cameron opened his eyes.
Raindrops fell in strings from the eaves of the pergola, and his assistant maintained the posture from a moment ago, not daring to move.
Cameron wordlessly reached into the rosebushes, plucked a leaf, gently scraped off the ant from the back of his hand, and placed it on the nearby dry windowsill, letting the tiny black dot quickly crawl toward a crevice.
“If you give ants too much honey, they won’t appreciate you. They’ll become greedy, ferocious, ruthless, disregarding everything, and ultimately drowning in the honey in swarms…”
The assistant stood there, unsure of what to do.
Cameron stared ahead, his gaze seemingly penetrating through everything, through the pouring rain and the whistling spacetime, looking toward the lonely and small figure in the distant garden.
“—Those humans and evolutionists are all ants, Shen Zhuo,” he murmured softly.
“Don’t be the savior of ants. Don’t become a saint nailed to the cross.”
Time spiraled upward, crossing the vast sky.
Under the traffic lights, amidst the bustling crowd of cars and people, like ants rushing in swarms, they were carried by the torrent of evolution, heading toward the tiny and unknown distance.
[End of Volume 1]
Translator’s Note:
Here ends the first volume. Please support the author by purchasing the raw. The link to the raw is on the “TOC” page.
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For every Ko-fi received for a perticular novel, I will release a new chapter!
Holy – what a first volume. I felt like I didn’t take a single breath the whole time because I was so enraptured. Thanks so much for your translation.