This was the second time Qiu Shi experienced the life in the inner city, which seemed like another world.
The room where he was arranged to rest was clean and tidy, the bed was very soft, and there were many lights—on the desk, in the corner of the wall, on the ceiling, and there were even several paintings on the walls.
There was also a bathroom in the room, which was great for a corpse collector who had to bathe in the hot springs near the corpse hole in groups of three, while taking turns to stand guard.
However, Qiu Shi didn’t go in to take a shower. He didn’t trust anything in the inner city now and didn’t want to get too involved in this kind of life.
After walking around the room, he leaned against the head of the bed, and to his surprise, there was a small pet on the bedside table.
He picked up the small pet and gently tossed it. The small pet blinked its lights.
“Contact…” He wanted to see if this thing could contact the outside. Just as he was about to mention Captain Xiao Lei of the Security Bureau, the small pet interrupted him.
“You do not have permission to make external calls.”
“Then get lost.” Qiu Shi slapped the small pet back onto the table and turned to open the room door.
Outside the door stood two soldiers with guns, wearing full protective suits.
“Thank you for your hard work.” Qiu Shi closed the door.
Time passed very slowly. Qiu Shi lay back on the bed. He originally wanted to sleep for a while, but the dense information from this mission kept his mind in a state of excitement. As soon as he closed his eyes, all he could see were the shaking biotic entities, the black forest, the black human flesh fungi, and Xing Bi’s smile when he walked into the box…
He could only stare wide-eyed, waiting for his rest time to end.
When Curator Wu brought the technical team into the room, his eyes were already somewhat bloodshot.
“We need to take you for a comprehensive examination now,” Curator Wu said. “Don’t worry, it won’t cause any harm to your body.”
Qiu Shi got up and followed them out of the room. It wasn’t until they turned a corner into the corridor that he realized he was still in the same hospital as last time. The room he had just been in was at the very end of a corridor.
Besides these people, it seemed there was no one else on this entire floor.
Qiu Shi changed into the hospital clothes and walked into the examination room. The examination was similar to resting, just lying there while various machines scanned him back and forth, and at the end, they drew a few tubes of blood.
“You are not infected, you can…” Curator Wu walked into the changing room and was stunned, “Why haven’t you changed your clothes yet?”
Qiu Shi sat on the chair, wearing only underwear, with a set of combat uniform in front of him, which was for him to change into for a meeting later.
“Where are my clothes?” Qiu Shi asked.
“You need to wear this today,” Curator Wu, being a technical person, spoke without much tact, “Just change into it, don’t wear your own…”
“Why?” Qiu Shi asked rudely.
“Because it represents a different meaning,” Li Feng walked in from outside.
“What’s the difference,” Qiu Shi said, “Do you think that by putting on this combat uniform, I become one of you?”
“Them, them,” Li Feng corrected him.
“Do you think that by putting on this combat uniform, I become one of them?” Qiu Shi said.
“Not really,” Li Feng said, “To them, this uniform represents obedience. They just don’t want to see a corpse collector.”
We are not under Yun City’s jurisdiction.
Qiu Shi remembered he had instructed Zhao Lü before he left.
“Change,” Li Feng nodded to Curator Wu and his team. Curator Wu took his people and left. As Li Feng was about to leave, he turned back and whispered, “Don’t be stubborn over such trivial matters. Learn from Xing Bi.”
“Eh?” Qiu Shi looked at him.
Li Feng didn’t say anything else, closed the door and left.
“This meeting will be chaired by me,” Colonel Xu sat at the end of the round table, with a simple whiteboard behind her, “The main purpose is to go through this mission, fill in the missing parts, and summarize and analyze the mission content and some questions…”
Colonel Xu looked at the people sitting around the table, “You all are direct participants in the mission, please maintain strict confidentiality…”
“If you have any questions, you can ask me,” Li Feng, sitting next to Qiu Shi, whispered, “Be cautious when speaking.”
“Got it,” Qiu Shi responded, looking at Xing Bi sitting opposite, also in a combat uniform, with a gaze towards Colonel Xu that was calm and somewhat indifferent.
“The people here include those from the General’s combat department, and those next to Xing Bi are from the company’s emergency affairs department, a department personally managed by Mr. Long,” Li Feng whispered to Qiu Shi.
“Won’t Colonel Xu throw us out of the project for whispering like this?” Qiu Shi whispered back, “Don’t need to leave you a way out?”
“I specially requested this,” Li Feng said, “She doesn’t want you to be too unique in this meeting either.”
Apart from the people present at the start of the mission, a few more people had joined the meeting. Colonel Xu briefly introduced the action.
Two years ago, there was a biochemical invasion in the inner city, but it was officially declared as a refugee impact incident caused by a security loophole. After this incident, to ensure the inner city’s safety, Mr. Long and the General decided to reactivate the long-sealed hidden guards…
“That’s fake,” Qiu Shi whispered to Li Feng, “Weren’t they activated before?”
“Level-one hidden guards,” Li Feng said, “The art of language.”
“Until small nests began to appear outside Yun City…” Colonel Xu said.
According to Colonel Xu, two hundred years ago, due to increasingly harsh living conditions and a large population loss, humans created biotic entities to assist in production and life. For a long time, they were friends with humans.
Until the infected appeared.
The terrifying fungus that humans couldn’t resist, but biotic entities could be immune to. After the initial panic and chaos, humans began to clean up infected areas with the help of biotic entities, but during this process, disagreements arose between the two sides, eventually leading to an irreconcilable conflict and war…
“What kind of disagreement?” Qiu Shi asked.
“The extent of the cleaning, whether preventive cleaning should be done, all the cleaning work was done by biotic entities,” Li Feng said, “But for them, cleaning healthy humans in polluted areas was against their principles.”
Qiu Shi frowned.
“There were disagreements among humans too,” Li Feng said, “Of course, without disagreements, they wouldn’t be humans. Some thought maybe coexistence should be tried.”
“Eh?” Qiu Shi was stunned, recalling the infected he had cleaned up, “They’re not humans anymore, how can they coexist?”
“They think that without what we consider human thoughts and emotions, they’re not human and should be eliminated,” Li Feng said, “What about biotic entities? Most of them don’t have human thoughts or emotions either… yet they were called ‘friends’…”
Qiu Shi said nothing.
That’s how chaos began. Some believed that since biotic entities wouldn’t get infected, they would eventually replace humans. Others thought that by such criteria, most biotic entities would never be human and could be cleared like the infected… while possessing purer and nobler emotions compared to humans…
The ultimate result was that some level-one biotic entities began to ‘awaken’. They were not friends of humans and chose to betray, aiming to replace humans.
And humans had to raise their knives against their former friends.
“Is this what happened back then?” Qiu Shi asked.
“This is the history written by humans, nothing else matters,” Li Feng said, “Humans don’t need ‘friends’, they just need to face ‘enemies’ constantly. In such a world, survival is brutal for everyone.”
Qiu Shi looked at Xing Bi. These historical, somewhat vague, and detail-lacking stories, like legends, had long lost their truth for many people. But what did they mean to Xing Bi?
Did he experience it?
Did he remember?
“It was also when nests began to appear near Yun City,” Colonel Xu said, “that we discovered biotic entities could choose to coexist with the infected. Unlike human infected, coexisting biotic entities’ thinking and actions weren’t affected. Therefore, understanding the relationship between nests and coexistence is one of the key tasks of this mission.”
Qiu Shi was still looking at Xing Bi. Xing Bi hadn’t looked his way at all; he simply turned his head and listened attentively to Colonel Xu’s briefing.
“The urgency of this operation, aside from the nests growing and expanding,” Colonel Xu said, “is also because we have lost contact with the two nearest towns, Donglin and Xingchuan. We have reason to suspect that those areas have already fallen. Everyone, I’m not exaggerating—another war is upon us…”
…It turns out these seldom-mentioned places were not fabricated by Yun City to create the illusion that humanity still had allies.
Qiu Shi normally didn’t ponder too much about things. The world he lived in didn’t seem to offer much to think about either. While listening to Colonel Xu’s words and Li Feng’s supplements, he began to feel drowsy from his brain running too fast.
It wasn’t until Li Feng poked him twice that he realized he had fallen asleep. Colonel Xu was sitting across from him, looking at him.
“She’s asking about the mission status during the communication blackout,” Li Feng said, “Any additions?”
“No.” Qiu Shi saw the whiteboard behind Colonel Xu projecting their previous mission’s video records, which must have already been reviewed.
“So, what we can basically confirm now,” Minister Liu of the Emergency Affairs Department lightly tapped his fingers on the table while looking at Curator Wu, “is that we need to evacuate the wall construction workers first. They are the nutrients for the nest. Can we understand it that way?”
“Yes.” Curator Wu nodded, “Judging by the skulls, they were absorbed bit by bit. Near the center, the fungal layer is significantly thicker, and underneath should be… human bodies.”
“But according to the Security Bureau’s statistics, the numbers exceed the reported missing persons,” Director Zhang said, “There must be other sources. Whether the biotic entities are feeding them requires further investigation.”
“The Number One nest showed signs of decay. What’s the cause of that?” Minister Liu quickly jotted down notes in his little notebook.
Curator Wu glanced at Xing Bi.
“Only a symbiont can have such a nest,” Xing Bi said, “If the symbiont disappears, the nest will decay and disintegrate.”
“Disintegrate?” someone asked.
“Return to its original size,” Xing Bi said.
“Which generation of level-one hidden guard are you?” someone from the combat department asked.
“Second generation,” Xing Bi replied.
“Then you… experienced the early infection stage.”
“Yes,” Xing Bi said, “I have some infection-related memories.”
“Only some related to the fungi,” Curator Wu added, as if to emphasize Xing Bi’s controllability again, “Apart from the parts of his memory we reactivated this time, we currently have no means to unlock the previously locked memories.”
“How many years ago was the second generation?” Qiu Shi whispered to Li Feng.
“Over a hundred years ago,” Li Feng said.
“Show some respect to your great-grandfather in the future,” Qiu Shi said.
Li Feng glanced at him.
“Does he rust?” Qiu Shi asked.
Li Feng remained silent.
“Do his joints need lubricating oil?” Qiu Shi asked again.
Li Feng remained silent.
“Does he have spare parts?” Qiu Shi continued to ask.
“No, no, and no,” Li Feng said, looking at him, “What are you trying to say?”
“Can the symbiosis experiment be reversed?” Qiu Shi turned his head to look at him, “You saw the symbiont we brought back, right?”
“Yes.” Li Feng looked at the people discussing around the table.
“Xing Bi is the only controllable level-one hidden guard,” Qiu Shi whispered, “but not the only level-one hidden guard. They’re going to activate more, right?”
“Did I slip up somewhere?” Li Feng asked.
“Colonel Xu slipped up,” Qiu Shi said.
But it didn’t matter much whether it was slipped or not because the purpose of the symbiosis experiment was just that.
“The General hopes we have a team capable of fighting crises. Xing Bi and Qiu Shi alone are not enough,” Colonel Xu said, “We need more forces, with higher obedience and stronger combat capability…”
This sentence was clearly referring to Qiu Shi. He glanced at Li Feng, whose eyes seemed to say, “Thank you for not retorting her.”
“Selecting controllers from our well-trained soldiers is more reasonable and will be more efficient…”
Qiu Shi couldn’t help but look at Xing Bi again.
Xing Bi was looking at him. When Colonel Xu said this, Xing Bi smiled slightly.
Qiu Shi didn’t know how he could still smile. Emotional stability must indeed be the greatest advantage of biotic entities. They are definitely not human.
“Currently, only Qiu Shi can be immune to the infection,” Minister Liu said, “How should our soldiers cooperate?”
“The symbiosis experiment on Xing Bi has already begun,” Curator Wu said, “He is already infected…”
As soon as this sentence came out, the scene became somewhat chaotic.
“Please calm down, calm down,” Curator Wu quickly stood up, “The infection exists only within Xing Bi’s body. The wound at the infection site has already closed. As long as he doesn’t get injured, there’s no risk of infection for those in contact with him.”
Colonel Xu signaled for him to continue.
“The specific experimental process is not convenient to disclose,” Curator Wu said, “But it can be roughly understood that the symbiont utilizes the connection between fungi for perception and control. If this direction is correct, a level-one hidden guard can control multiple lower-level hidden guards. Our soldiers just need to use short-term inhibitors to establish connections with partners and complete tasks within a fixed time…”
“Feeling the crisis yet?” Li Feng leaned close to Qiu Shi’s ear and whispered.
“Are inhibitors already available?” Qiu Shi asked Curator Wu.
“In the final stages,” Curator Wu replied.
“Not yet,” Qiu Shi whispered back to Li Feng.
But he knew very well that previously, being “unique” was his protective talisman, but now, “unique” could be his greatest danger.
“At the same time, the symbiosis experiment might help us understand why biotic entities are appearing in large numbers outside Yun City,” Curator Wu said. “Whether biotic entities can be powered through symbiosis, allowing them to operate for longer periods or even without needing to recharge.”
“If this is confirmed,” Director Zhang frowned, “we’ll be facing an enemy that never tires.”
The meeting finally ended. Sitting with Li Feng in the exhibit hall’s car, Qiu Shi looked out the window and realized the meeting room was underground in the city hall.
“Has the Security Bureau gone bankrupt?” Qiu Shi said. “We have to hitch a ride with the exhibit hall’s car.”
“If you have any questions, now’s the time to ask,” Li Feng glanced at Curator Wu, who was sitting in the front with the driver, “He can’t hear.”
Qiu Shi glanced at the box next to him and lightly tapped it with his fingers: “Can my partner hear?”
Two taps echoed from inside the box.
“No, it can only feel vibrations,” Li Feng said.
“Where did I come from?” Qiu Shi asked.
Li Feng turned to look at him: “A refugee, probably escaped from a small outpost destroyed by biotic entities or infection.”
“I’ve known you since I was a teenager,” Qiu Shi said, “and I’ve never seen you pay any attention to another refugee child from a destroyed outpost.”
Li Feng sighed.
“Once I ask something like this,” Qiu Shi leaned back in his seat, eyes still looking out the window, “it means there’s no need to hide anymore.”
“Didn’t the old man on the second floor tell you?” Li Feng asked.
“Who?” Qiu Shi turned to him.
“He brought you here, barely able to walk, injured with a head wound, and left you at the tunnel entrance,” Li Feng said.
“Director Li?” Qiu Shi stared at him, “Don’t make up stories about someone who’s been missing.”
“My predecessor said it,” Li Feng said. “How old was I when you were brought here? I was just a teenager, still in school, dreaming of becoming a city defense patrol officer.”
“I don’t remember any of that.” Qiu Shi said. “My earliest memory is being alone outside the city.”
“Yes,” Li Feng nodded, “since the injury was to your head.”
Qiu Shi glanced at him.
“Stating a fact, not an insult,” Li Feng said. “When I approached you, it was under the old director’s orders. At that time, I didn’t know where you came from or that you were immune to infection.”
“What happened to the old director?” Qiu Shi asked.
“Died a long time ago,” Li Feng said.
“Did you kill him to get your position?” Qiu Shi said.
“Do I seem like that kind of person?” Li Feng frowned.
“To me, you do,” Qiu Shi said. “What about the old man?”
“Don’t know, can’t find him,” Li Feng said. “I’ve been looking for him but there’s no news.”
“The biotic entities didn’t kill him,” Qiu Shi said. “Why?”
“Maybe he’s like you,” Li Feng said. “In these times, anyone who lives to his age isn’t an ordinary person.”
“If,” Qiu Shi suddenly sat up, “he’s like me, could there be others like me? If so…”
“If so, you’re the hope to save the world?” Li Feng laughed. “Don’t be naive. You’d just become medicine.”
Qiu Shi didn’t respond.
“You’d better hope Curator Wu’s short-term inhibitors succeed, at least for emergencies,” Li Feng said. “Otherwise, you’ll end up like this too.”
“I won’t have a good end either way,” Qiu Shi smiled and looked back out the window. “Director Li, do you feel sorry for me?”
“I don’t know,” Li Feng was silent for a long time, “Probably not.”
The car drove directly into the exhibit hall, taking them and the vehicle straight to the lab through the transport compartment.
“Qiu Shi,” Curator Wu got out and took the work clothes handed to him by a staff member, putting them on as he walked around to Qiu Shi’s side of the car, “You can’t go back for the next two days.”
“Hmm?” Qiu Shi looked at him.
“Xing Bi’s experiment has started. We need you to do some simple tasks with him and have conversations like you do during missions,” Curator Wu said, “to compare the data with your usual interactions.”
Qiu Shi no longer felt like saying much. He wasn’t even annoyed or upset; he just looked at Li Feng and said, “I want to talk to Xiao Lei.”
“Director!” Xiao Lei’s excited face appeared, “Do you have work for me?”
“Me.” Qiu Shi waved at him.
Xiao Lei, upon seeing the screen clearly, was momentarily stunned, then stood up excitedly, “Qiu Shi! It’s you! You’re alive! They all said you might be dead! Wait, I’ll call Zhao Lü!”
A group of brothers who think you’re dead every day.
Xiao Lei ran toward the shelter tunnel, shouting back, “Everyone’s fine!”
“Why did you send this fool to me?” Qiu Shi couldn’t help asking again.
“I’m not sure yet, but he’s reliable,” Li Feng said.
Qiu Shi looked at him, figuring that if anything happened to Xiao Lei, Li Feng would still say, “Probably not.”
“Brother Shi!” Zhao Lü and Hu Xiaoling’s faces squeezed into the screen.
“Stand up, let me see!” Hu Xiaoling said. “Are your legs okay? Why are you sitting?”
Qiu Shi stood up and even jumped twice.
“Is Lord Li beside you?” Zhao Lü asked.
“Yes,” Qiu Shi said, “Save the insults for when I get back. It’ll be a few days.”
“Okay.” Zhao Lü nodded.
“How’s it going today?” Qiu Shi asked.
“Same as usual, but everyone’s quite pent up,” Zhao Lü whispered. “There are soldiers outside, so we don’t have to go out, just staying in the shelter.”
“Find some fun for yourselves,” Qiu Shi said.
“Can we go for a walk outside the city?” Hu Xiaoling leaned in.
“Sure,” Qiu Shi said, “I just told you not to get involved with the soldiers, not that you couldn’t leave.”
“I’m going too,” Xiao Lei said.
“What’s it got to do with you?” Hu Xiaoling said.
“I’m buying,” Xiao Lei said.
“We’ll call you when we’re about to leave,” Zhao Lü immediately said. “Dayan reopened and we haven’t been there yet. We can bring back a couple of bottles for Brother Shi to drink when he returns.”
“Go ahead,” Qiu Shi said.
“Don’t work too hard,” Zhao Lü stood up. “I know something big must be going on, but you need to apply that advice to yourself too. We’re not under Yun City’s jurisdiction. Don’t risk your life. Worst case, we leave with you. It’s not like Yun City is the only place with survivors in the world.”
“Yeah.” Qiu Shi smiled and nodded.
Author’s Note:
This chapter is basically the “biotic entities and Humans: Past and Present Manual” (Human Revision Edition). Some unclear parts will be gradually revealed later. After all, expanding everything at once would really make it a manual, and that would be super boring [┐’_’┌].
For every Ko-fi received for a perticular novel, I will release a new chapter!
