Chapter 26

Chapter 26: A Gaping Maw in the Sky

“Big brother, is something bothering you?”

The next day at work, Lin Jianyuan still found himself unconsciously dwelling on what had happened yesterday. Pei Shuo’s question made him realize something was off with his mood.

Bottling things up was never healthy—Doctor Cen had said so himself.

So, following his doctor’s advice, Lin Jianyuan replied, “It’s not exactly a big deal, just a bit irritating.”

“Yeah?” Pei Shuo immediately scooted over, his big, sparkling puppy-dog eyes practically glittering, every bit of his expression saying, “Go on, I’m listening.”

Lin Jianyuan recounted to Pei Shuo the most aggravating things that had happened between him and his roommate so far.

Once Pei Shuo finished listening, a thoughtful look crossed his face.

Lin Jianyuan asked, “Ever run into something like that? Oh, you always lived on campus, right? Sharing a dorm with classmates must be easier—you head out to class together every day, so there’s at least something in common.”

It was nothing like that with Xie Yu. The two of them had nothing in common; one worked, one went to school. They hardly even saw each other.

The more he thought about it, the more he realized he knew absolutely nothing about Xie Yu. He didn’t know where he was from, what school he attended, or even his major.

Xie Yu, for that matter, knew nothing about him, either. They’d never talked about any of it.

Sometimes, Lin Jianyuan felt that Xie Yu was… like a castle in the sky—untouchable, untouched by worldly concerns.

But come to think of it, Xie Yu was actually quite a good eater.

And his appetite was nothing to sneeze at.

So, maybe not a castle in the sky after all.

More like a gaping maw in the sky? Ha!

“Big brother, honestly,” Pei Shuo suddenly interrupted Lin Jianyuan’s wandering thoughts, “I think you might be misunderstanding him.”

“How so?” Lin Jianyuan asked.

Pei Shuo said, “Let me show you something.” He pulled out his phone and began scrolling through his WeChat contacts.

He scrolled and tapped away diligently.

After a moment, he opened a contact and said, “Look, this guy hardly ever posts on Moments, and he’s set it to ‘show only the last three days.’ If you tap in, you’ll see this.”

Lin Jianyuan looked and found the Moments feed completely empty, except for a message: [This user only displays Moments from the past three days to friends].

Pei Shuo tapped on another contact. “But if someone blocks you from seeing their Moments, it looks like this,” he said.

This time, there was no message—just a blank page.

Lin Jianyuan immediately caught on. “So, as long as someone has posted Moments, even if you can’t see them, you can still tap into their feed?”

“Exactly.”

“Isn’t that even weirder?” Lin Jianyuan said. “There are actually people who’ve never posted a single Moment?”

A hesitant look crept onto Pei Shuo’s face.

Lin Jianyuan said, “Just spit it out if you’ve got something to say.”

Pei Shuo relented. “Alright. Big brother, I suspect the account he added you with is a burner.”

“…What?”

Pei Shuo explained, “Look—he’s never posted, and his profile picture is still the default. This could really be a newly registered burner account.”

Lin Jianyuan was momentarily speechless. “What for? Why would he go to the trouble of making a burner just to add me?”

Pei Shuo quickly replied, “So, it might not be that, either. Maybe, uh, he just doesn’t really use WeChat?”

“He doesn’t use WeChat—what, does he use a Little Genius smartwatch or something?” Lin Jianyuan deadpanned.

Pei Shuo burst out laughing.

“What is it? Who’s using a Little Genius watch?” Qin Shi sidled over, eyes gleaming with gossip.

Lin Jianyuan replied with, “You don’t know them,” then turned to his work.

The company was a mystical place: every time you thought you could slack off for a while, things just came crashing down on their own.

Lin Jianyuan dove into his work, as if dragged by something heavy into a swamp—before he knew it, he’d sat in front of his computer all morning.

He felt like his ass was about to disintegrate.

Catching a glimpse of the squirming Eye Vines charging his phone, Lin Jianyuan decisively stopped working and strolled to the window for a breather.

Soaked in goji berry, chrysanthemum, and cassia seed tea, the Eye Vines thrived—lush green tendrils now shrouded the office’s inner walls, even squeezing through the window frames and creeping out, slowly taking over the building’s façade.

They were growing with astonishing vigor.

Had he not tasted it himself, Lin Jianyuan would have suspected they weren’t actually mint, but devil’s ivy.

But devil’s ivy couldn’t possibly grow this fast, could it?

Never mind—he was half out of his mind anyway. Why not let mint and ivy shoot up ten meters a day?

Besides, this stuff used to grow in people’s eyes.

Standing by the window, Lin Jianyuan gazed out over the city through the glass.

Not that there was much of a view—just a jungle of high-rises, flashy and ornate, yet pressing down with the suffocating weight of big-city life.

He absently pulled out his phone and tapped into his Moments feed out of habit.

An unexpected photo appeared before his eyes.

A potted plant.

It was the Eye Vines potted plant he’d brought home yesterday.

The tiny pot looked familiar, placed on the dining table by the window.

The window was open, white curtains fluttering, and those lush green leaves unfurled in a surge of vitality.

It radiated a feeling that was the very essence of summer.

Lin Jianyuan froze for a moment.

Just then, Jiang Chen came downstairs, rapped on the table, and announced to everyone, “Meeting at twelve thirty sharp.”

“Another meeting?!”

“It’s always twelve thirty! Can’t you pick another time? We need our lunch break, man!”

A chorus of wailing lamented this announcement.

Only Lin Jianyuan’s eyes lit up.

……

…

Across the city, in an utterly nondescript part of town—

In the depths of a vast underground structure, a man cloaked in black strode briskly along.

A custom combat mask shadowed his face, but could not conceal the bold bridge of his nose or the deep, commanding eyes beneath.

This was what it meant to have striking bone structure.

His boots rapped an impatient rhythm against the floor.

After a while, he could not hold back any longer and urged, “Can you hurry it up? I still have an event to get to after the screening.”

The guide ahead hesitated. “Should we run?”

“Run!” Shi Shaoning snapped.

So the two of them pounded through the cavernous underground building at a gallop.

After a stretch, Shi Shaoning suddenly caught a familiar scent.

The sound of boots halted in the dim corridor.

The guide, panting, asked, “What is it, Captain Shi?”

Shi Shaoning didn’t answer. Brow furrowed, he drew his keycard and swiped open a blood-red door at the side corridor.

The guide exclaimed in alarm, “Red alert? Captain Shi, that’s S-class—!”

“I know, S-class Delirium,” Shi Shaoning cut him off, annoyed. “If you have low resistance, stay out—achoo!”

A wave of thick insect repellent hit him full force, making him sneeze violently.

Shi Shaoning slammed the security door shut, wincing at the scene before him.

A… swimming pool.

A swimming pool filled not with insect repellent—well, technically, yes, but more accurately, with a solution of anti-delirium agent.

In the pale green water, someone stood in the dead center.

Or rather, “stood” was generous; “floated” was closer to the truth.

The pool was deep—two meters at least. Though the figure was tall and slender, they could not reach the bottom.

The anti-delirium agent suppressed Delirium, preventing it from spreading mass contamination and sapping its mobility.

His skin was still deathly pale, almost glowing in the water. Hands and feet, thin and limp, drifted like a bundle of malnourished waterweeds.

Worst of all was his face.

To be honest, it was not an ugly face.

Porcelain skin, features sharp as if carved.

Matched with that dazed, empty look, he’d get tagged as “ethereal” if he ever entered a talent show.

Ethereal, yes—utterly broken.

Mentally shattered.

Delirium had no intellect. It could not speak.

Everything it did was driven purely by instinct.

…There it was again—wrong pronoun.

Not “he”—it.

The higher the class of Aberrant, the more human they appeared.

Take this Delirium in front of him—who would guess it was an Aberrant just by looking?

Anyone would just take it for a fool.

—No, not “he”—it!

Shi Shaoning stood at the edge with his arms folded, watching coldly as the thing in the pool flailed in place.

Delirium, clearly unable to swim, simply “walked” in the water.

Its random flapping kept it bobbing in place, never advancing.

If by sheer luck it drifted forward, the area’s surveillance cameras immediately detected the movement, and jets of water forced it precisely back to its original spot.

A stunningly simple—and stunningly idiotic—containment method.

…And the pool still reeked of insect repellent.

Just thinking of the smell, Shi Shaoning’s mind went blank with disgust.

He’d had enough of this idiocy for one day, so he stopped watching the flailing imbecile and turned to leave.

He was here for a routine checkup—and to report last night’s utterly absurd experience.

“The results are all clear—sanity value normal, contamination within healthy range.”

In the director’s office, his supervisor announced after reading the report, “It seems yesterday's Aberrant didn’t hit you with any psychic contamination.”

Shi Shaoning nodded. “That was my guess, too. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be standing here in one piece.”

Supervisor: “So who was it? Did you get its mark?”

Shi Shaoning replied, “No idea—I wasn’t carrying any equipment. But it was definitely S-class: humanoid, and it handled two A-class like nothing.”

His supervisor looked shocked. “Why were you out without gear?”

“Because I was off duty!” Shi Shaoning shot back.

Supervisor: “…”

Supervisor: “Fine. Then I need a formal report on last night. Format it properly, no cutting corners. Describe every detail with precision—five thousand words, minimum.”

Shi Shaoning: “…”

He wanted to die.

Shouldn’t have reported a damn thing.

Goddamn it, another report.

Maybe he’d just have AI draft something.

Supervisor: “You’ve basically got ‘maybe I’ll just have AI bullshit it’ written across your face.”

Shi Shaoning said, “So?”

Supervisor: “So, no AI. Use the internal computer network—write it here.”

Shi Shaoning: “.”

Didn’t want to die anymore.

Wanted to quit instead.

Forget this damn job!

To hell with the side gigs!

Just as Shi Shaoning was about to flip the table and quit, both their communicators buzzed.

“Director!” came an urgent voice over the line. “Delirium is showing abnormal activity!”

Delirium?!

Table-flipping on hold—Shi Shaoning and the director huddled before the monitor.

Onscreen, Delirium—previously flailing aimlessly in one direction—suddenly froze. Its neck jerked awkwardly, like a malfunctioning robot hunting for Wi-Fi.

At last, having “found signal,” it extended an arm and then a leg in a new direction.

The pale anemone writhed anew in the insect repellent pool, straining forward. Forward.

Then—squelch—

A jet blasted it straight back to its starting place.

It was absurd—a masterclass in stupidity.

But both Shi Shaoning and the director immediately saw the critical difference.

“It changed direction?!” the director gasped.

“And earlier than usual?!” Shi Shaoning frowned.

—Since Delirium’s capture, it had followed a strict “nine-to-N” rhythm: flailing south at nine in the morning, and at some unknown point in the evening (usually before midnight), switching to flailing north.

But today, Delirium had suddenly broken its routine!

Why?

Delirium had no intellect. All its actions were governed by instinct.

—So, what was its instinct?

What was the meaning behind this S-class Aberrant’s bizarre cyclical rhythm—and its abrupt disruption?

Both the director and Shi Shaoning’s faces turned grim.

A few seconds later.

Shi Shaoning asked, “What do you think?”

The director replied, “You’re not quitting anymore?”

Shi Shaoning: “…”

Shi Shaoning snapped, “I’m leaving right now!”

Elsewhere, at 700 Jiangchuan North Road—

Lin Jianyuan stood in front of the hospital’s security checkpoint, staring uncertainly at the orange net bag in his hand.

“Are you coming in or not?” the security guard barked.

Dozens of frogs crowded together in the orange net bag, piling atop one another.

Cramped and uncomfortable, the frogs fidgeted and leapt agitatedly.

The ever-shifting bag of frogs looked just like a squishy, animated slime.

A clementine-scented one.

Lin Jianyuan had been wrangling with himself at the checkpoint for five full minutes. At last, he decided to hell with it and shoved the net bag through.

He had expected the security guard to cuss him out, but to his surprise, the clementine slime sailed through without a hitch.

“Of course,” boasted the squish toy thief, “normal people can’t see Aberrants!”

Lin Jianyuan glanced at the squish toy, then at his net bag, and nodded. “Gotta hand it to myself—my worldview is watertight. Maybe I should moonlight as a web novelist.”

Squish toy: “??”

“Rent, three thousand. Daily expenses, over two thousand. My health card’s drained, two hundred out of pocket each time, once a week, four times a month—that’s nearly a thousand right there.”

Lin Jianyuan rattled off the numbers. “Normally I net seven thousand a month, but with all the sick leave lately, they’re docking five hundred for lost attendance…”

Squish toy: “…”

Lin Jianyuan stared at his dwindling account balance, then at the income that had held steady—lifeless as a turtle—for years.

“I really do need a side hustle,” Lin Jianyuan muttered.

So damn broke!