Chapter 67

Chapter 67: Remorse

Of course, the Bureau’s field team wasn’t just Lin Jianyuan and his little toys.

There were also members who’d been stationed here long before.

Strictly speaking, they were Lin Jianyuan’s seniors.

But now Lin Jianyuan was an A.

That meant he could command all Bureau members in the area.

He rushed straight to the Bureau’s hidden office on Taoran Street.

On the surface, it looked like a X Xing Café. In reality, it was also a X Xing Café.

When there was nothing to do, they sold coffee.

Most of the field team worked part-time.

They really did sell coffee on normal days.

But today was different.

Lin Jianyuan burst into the nearest X Xing. Inside, chaos reigned.

The baristas in aprons looked nothing like their usual selves.

They moved at lightning speed, faces grim and focused.

They expertly evacuated the crowd, spraying those affected by mental contamination with—wait, not floral water, but a sobriety agent.

But even with all their training, it was overwhelming.

The tiny café couldn’t possibly hold this many people.

Lin Jianyuan charged inside and shouted, “I’m A! What’s the situation?!”

The fighters: “?”

Fighter A: “Another one?”

Fighter B: “Why’s his chant different? Isn’t this Remorse, not Delirium? Whatever, just spray first, talk later!”

Fighter C: “I can’t take it, we’re swamped!”

Seeing the fighters coming at him with ten bottles of insect repellent, Lin Jianyuan snapped, “I’m an A-class combatant! The senior A!”

What, do they not understand abbreviations?!

The fighters: “?”

Oh, that A. We thought…

Lin Jianyuan didn’t need to worry about exposing secrets. Right now, only the fighters were lucid. Every other customer was out of their mind.

They’d all turned into broken records, muttering, “I was so foolish, if only I’d known, I never should have…”

Lin Jianyuan quickly got the rundown from his colleagues.

They’d already received the emergency alert about Remorse’s possible appearance, but the signature was so brief, it might have been a false alarm.

It was Sunday, the tail end of summer break, and Taoran Street was packed with festival crowds.

Trying to clear out so many people without warning would only cause panic and more negative emotions.

Now look.

It had gotten even worse.

But decisions came from above. The frontline just did their jobs.

Just days ago, Lin Jianyuan was a corporate drone himself. He felt for these overworked grunts.

He said at once, “Keep evacuating the crowd. Clear the whole street as fast as you can. Leave Remorse to me.”

The baristas nearly stumbled at his words.

“Leave it… to you?” Barista A switched from “you” to the formal “sir” in a heartbeat, shock written all over his face. “But that’s S-class! Lin, Lin…”

He looked like he wanted to call Lin Jianyuan “Captain Lin”—A-class fighters usually led teams.

But Lin Jianyuan had no team. He’d come alone.

So Barista A said, “Brother Lin, be careful! S-class contamination is too much. Even if we’re drenched in sobriety agent, we can’t handle it!”

He wasn’t exaggerating.

When Lin Jianyuan first walked in, he’d heard Barista A mutter, “Damn, if I’d known, I’d never have taken this job.”

But it was only a moment of weakness.

The well-trained fighter snapped back, doused himself in three liters of repellent, and carried on.

That brought him back to his senses.

Lin Jianyuan said, “I know you can’t handle it. That’s why I’m here.”

The baristas all looked at him in silence.

But only for a second. Then they dove back into their urgent tasks.

“Understood!” Barista A barked.

The others echoed, “Understood!”

Lin Jianyuan turned and left the café.

The old-fashioned pedestrian street was ablaze with electric red lanterns, casting a festive glow.

Field agents and police officers, now regaining their senses, were hustling the crowd away.

Now and then, someone staggered by, muttering nonsense as they were helped or dragged along.

So this was what they called “large-scale mental contamination.”

Lin Jianyuan had never seen anything like it.

Yet somehow, he adapted easily.

Maybe it was all the overtime.

After all, with Jiang Chen as his idiot boss, their company’s livestreams were often utter chaos.

The scale was smaller, that’s all.

But the chaos? About the same.

A faint smirk tugged at Lin Jianyuan’s lips.

He strode against the flow of people.

He had a few problems to solve.

First, the evacuation. There were too many civilians on the street. Even with the Bureau and police working together, it would take time to clear them all out.

At least half an hour.

Next, communications. He’d just tried—signal interference blanketed the whole area. He couldn’t reach the Bureau.

Luckily, his mobile terminal still had local comms.

Within the pedestrian street, he could still contact other members nearby.

But to reach the Bureau, he’d have to get to the X Xing at the street entrance.

Also, the interference meant Remorse was still close by.

It hadn’t just dropped contamination and fled. Regular pollution wouldn’t cripple Bureau comms.

So Remorse itself had to be nearby.

The solution was clear.

Find Remorse.

Beat it down.

Contain it.

Take out the source, and everything else would fall into place.

Lin Jianyuan glanced at the panicked crowd.

Many carried contamination. As they rushed out, they reinfected each other, sending those freshly revived right back into their loops of regret.

This wouldn’t do.

His own people would be lost this way.

He stopped, grabbed his comm, and ordered, “Get the Bureau to send a helicopter! Spray insect repellent!”

Barista A on the other end: “Huh?”

A second later, “Oh! Got it!”

Barista A was efficient. Thirty seconds later: “The Bureau’s on it! Helicopter in position in fifteen minutes. Mass spraying ready!”

Lin Jianyuan grunted his approval and kept scanning the area.

The pedestrian street was still the same, lights blazing, shops and stalls lining the road, a bustle of activity.

But this was a different kind of bustle now.

Some people snapped fully awake, screaming, “What are you doing? Who are you? Where are you taking me?”

The chaos around them only made it worse.

Things spiraled further.

Still, the crowd was thinning.

The street stretched two kilometers, with plenty of side alleys.

Lin Jianyuan had never been here before. He didn’t know the layout.

Luckily, there was a map sign nearby.

He tossed out his Angel Eyeball.

The eyeball understood, flapped its wings, and projected a copy of the map onto the upper left of his vision.

“Smart,” Lin Jianyuan said with a faint smile.

The eyeball fluttered in delight.

Meanwhile, elsewhere—

The Bureau’s operations office was ablaze with light.

Everyone was swamped. Keyboards clacked, phones rang, printers whirred nonstop.

It was obvious no one was going home tonight.

A lot of people.

A whole lot of people.

The containment division was just as busy.

Most of the fighters stationed at headquarters were gathered in containment.

For one reason.

Two S-classes were fighting.

Xie Yu versus Hesitation.

Xie Yu was much stronger, but both were S-class, both nearly indestructible.

In short, they could only beat each other half to death, never all the way.

And that’s why Xie Yu was furious.

Couldn’t kill, couldn’t devour.

Xie Yu’s rage was almost tangible.

Everyone was on edge, terrified they’d bring down the whole Bureau.

So they were fully armed, on high alert.

As for the field team…

“Director!”

A subordinate put down the phone and reported, “Helicopter loaded with sobriety agent is en route! ETA eleven minutes!”

The director said gravely, “Send ten more teams!”

“Ten?!” The subordinate was shocked. “That many? But containment…”

The director cut him off. “Nothing can happen to Lin Jianyuan.”

The subordinate remembered the chaos in containment. “Understood!”

He rushed to send more teams at once.

Lin Jianyuan was still pondering how to find Remorse.

He’d never met it.

He didn’t know it. The Bureau didn’t know it. None of these A-class rookies knew it.

No one knew what Remorse looked like—human, ghost, animal, plant.

“It’s probably humanoid,” the squish toy piped up from his pocket. “Didn’t your Bureau’s training say, the higher the class, the more human they seem? So Remorse should look human. Like Delirium.”

Lin Jianyuan: “Then what about my wife?”

The squish toy was stumped.

Right. Why was Xie Yu always a digestive system?

Honestly, the squish toy didn’t know much about S-classes. The gap was just too wide.

They never even saw one.

In fact, before Xie Yu, it had never seen any S-class at all.

It only learned “the higher the level, the more human” while sitting on Lin Jianyuan’s desk during class.

The squish toy wiggled its antennae anxiously. “So what do we do? Your terminal’s useless…”

It was a tough problem.

Lin Jianyuan glanced at his mobile terminal.

Pollutant level: zero.

Just as Xie Yu had said—if an S-class wanted to hide, the terminal would never detect it.

But.

Lin Jianyuan glanced at the squish toy. “Did I ever need a terminal to catch you guys?”

Squish toy: “…”

Little Stone and the other Aberrants: “…”

Fair point…

Nobody knew why, but Lin Jianyuan could take down A-classes barehanded.

Lin Jianyuan walked the entire street.

The crowd was nearly gone.

But there was still no sign of Remorse. Nothing looked remotely Aberrant.

He checked his terminal again.

Comms were still down. Remorse was still here.

Where the hell was it?

Lin Jianyuan frowned, slowed his pace, and started back.

Thanks to the Bureau and police, the main street was now empty.

Shops and stalls still glowed, but the people were gone. Only cigarette butts, half-finished drinks, broken flip-flops, and trash littered the ground.

It was as if humanity had been selected, cut, and pasted.

Pasted somewhere safe.

Lin Jianyuan walked slowly toward the X Xing at the entrance.

Passing the central fountain, he glanced over.

There were several bronze statues—two adults, three children—a happy family of five.

And one dejected middle-aged man, face buried in his hands, sitting at the fountain’s edge.

He had no idea what the artist meant.

A middle-aged office worker struggling to feed his family?

Why was he still thinking about office life?

Maybe because he was working overtime.

Maybe because his wife was, too.

Fine.

Guess he’d rubbed off on her.

Lin Jianyuan smiled wryly and started to move on.

But then he heard a low, hoarse muttering.

“I shouldn’t have come here, shouldn’t have done this. If only I’d known… but if I didn’t come, where else could I go…”

Startled, Lin Jianyuan turned.

It was the bronze office worker by the fountain!

No wonder he seemed so familiar!

It was the scent of overtime!

So he was a street performer painted bronze, not a statue!

Lin Jianyuan called it in: “There’s someone by the central fountain! A street NPC dressed as a bronze statue! Come get him!”

“Copy!” came the reply.

Not wanting to waste time, he kept moving after giving the order.

But he finished the rest of the street and found nothing.

Where was Remorse hiding?!

What kind of lunatic comes to mess around at a night market instead of sleeping?

Why were Aberrants always so free? Why not get a real job?

Making him and his wife work overtime.

Lin Jianyuan checked the time and felt his anger spike.

One o’clock!

One in the morning!

Damn it! First day on the job, and he was working past midnight!

Both he and his wife, stuck in overtime!

And still not done at one AM!

Was this job cursed?

First day! Was this even humanly possible?

He glanced at his left palm.

His fair skin showed a faint bite mark.

How was his roommate doing?

If he hadn’t come, things weren’t over there.

Was Hesitation really that tough?

Wasn’t it just a matter of grabbing and smashing, Hulk versus Loki style?

Why wasn’t it over? Had something gone wrong?

Enough already…

Why was this so hard?

His roommate was finally tasting the misery of work.

It was almost funny, but Lin Jianyuan felt awful.

His roommate used to be so free…

He wasn’t even human—why suffer human misery?

So frustrating.

If only he hadn’t answered that first call, maybe none of this would’ve happened.

So damn frustrating.

One thing led to another, never-ending. He should’ve just let his roommate smash the terminal.

So damn frustrating.

In the end, it was all his fault.

If he hadn’t said it was too hot and wanted to eat out, if he hadn’t picked that mall, if he hadn’t coveted a stable job and agreed to work for the Bureau…

If not for him.

His roommate would probably still be happily nibbling his head.

And they’d be asleep together.

If only…

If only he had…

Lin Jianyuan stopped walking.

Without realizing it, he’d returned to the central fountain.

He looked up and saw the bronze statue NPC still sitting there.

Hands covering his face, head bowed, sobbing quietly into his palms.

“I shouldn’t have come here… but if not here, where else? What can I do? No, whatever I do, I’ll regret it. Maybe it’s better to do nothing… but doing nothing is a waste too. What should I do… Ah, just sitting here worrying is a waste. I can’t go on like this… I shouldn’t have come, I’ve been sitting here half the day, I should’ve done something else. Anything would be better than this…”

The NPC’s muttering made Lin Jianyuan’s blood boil.

He strode up and grabbed the man, snapping, “Why are you still here? What are you doing? Get out! Didn’t you hear the evacuation—”

He didn’t finish the last word.

A sudden shock jolted his palm.

Lin Jianyuan’s heart skipped a beat. He stared at his right hand in disbelief.

His arm went numb.

The numbness spread through his right side.

But that wasn’t the strangest part.

The real shock—he’d involuntarily stepped back.

He’d been repelled.

At the same time, the toys in his pocket erupted in a frenzy.

“I never should’ve had evil thoughts about Xie Yu’s human!”

“Why did I go to that studio? If I hadn’t, none of this would’ve happened…”

“It wasn’t me, I can’t help it, I was born to be a stumbling block… Why would I regret it? I don’t regret it. My fate was always to be in the way…”

Lin Jianyuan’s pupils contracted. He stared at the man in front of him, stunned.

That wasn’t a bronze statue, or a street performer.

It was Remorse!

The man by the fountain, face buried in his hands.

That was Remorse!