Chapter 25

Chapter 25

Shen Wang never thought he'd misjudged—he really had killed this Pollutant.

Even if he'd misremembered, his thorns wouldn't have let edible food slip away. Both he and his little thorns were starving; why would they pass up a Pollutant they could eat?

So, Shen Wang had definitely killed her. But she was still alive and well.

Zhou Xiangzhe had also been observing the female Pollutant. He figured his guess was about 70% right—this female Pollutant was definitely connected to the entire painting.

The delicate woman walked over step by step, her eyes red from crying. Her slender hand reached out to grab Shen Wang's.

Shen Wang avoided her hand, looking utterly heartless.

So she cried again, and this time she ran upstairs weeping.

"What does that mean?" Shen Wang asked.

Zhou Xiangzhe shook his head.

"She's gone to get a tool." A strange voice sounded behind them.

Shen Wang and Zhou Xiangzhe turned at the same time. They looked toward the living room behind them, at the hanging birdcages. Among the stacks of cages, a bird dressed in black clothes stood up from the bottom of one. Its feathers were clipped, a chain was bound to its foot, its tiny eyes were just bloody sockets. It wobbled as it stepped onto the cage's perch.

"A bird?"

"A former Mutant," the bird answered.

Its voice was hoarse, not like a person speaking—more like a parrot mimicking, the tone blurry and unclear.

"Hello." The caged bird greeted them in its raspy voice. "Are you Mutants?"

Zhou Xiangzhe and Shen Wang exchanged a look, then Zhou Xiangzhe spoke. "We're members of a Dispatch Team."

"Then you are Mutants. Dispatch Teams only take Mutants." The caged bird began to introduce itself. "Hello. My original name is Kong Zehua. I was a Dispatch Team member from Chenmo West City, a former Class B Mutant. I've been trapped here for five years."

"You don't look trapped," Shen Wang said, a hint of teasing in his voice. "You're completely a bird."

"I am a Class B Mutant. Even though I've turned into a bird, I haven't been fully contaminated. It's just a high-level Distortion." The caged bird retorted. "The fact that I can communicate with you normally is proof."

Zhou Xiangzhe thought for a moment. "The Pollution Control Center's key suspect handbook does have that name."

Shen Wang looked at Zhou Xiangzhe in surprise. "You memorized all the names in that handbook?"

"Pretty much." Zhou Xiangzhe nodded.

...Such terrifying memory.

"This young man is good. Now you believe me!" The caged bird flapped its wings once, its eyeless little head facing them. "I've been here for five years. People come in almost every so often. I've always tried to give them clues to leave, but they never believe me."

Zhou Xiangzhe looked at it for a moment before speaking. "We're Dispatch Team members from Central City, both Class C. We accidentally fell in here on our way back to the city."

Shen Wang glanced at Zhou Xiangzhe, a bit surprised. He hadn't expected Zhou Xiangzhe to lie.

Of that information, aside from being Dispatch Team members from Central City, not a single word was true.

"Then you're really unlucky." The caged bird said. "This place is controlled by the Contaminated Talent of a Class A Contaminant. It's inside a painting. You accidentally stepped into a Class A Contaminant's trap."

"How can that be?" Zhou Xiangzhe's face was perfectly calm, but his tone sounded a bit panicked. "There's no such Class A Contaminant around Central City!"

"Of course not. Because it's a Flowing Pollutant. It doesn't stay in a fixed location. It's like an art exhibition that opens in different places to attract different guests." The caged bird said. "She constantly moves the Gallery to obtain different eyes."

"It's never been recorded, because everyone who observed it died. It swallows every human who passes by and digs out their eyes!"

Zhou Xiangzhe watched the bird, a chill in his golden eyes. He didn't seem to trust it.

"How terrifying." Zhou Xiangzhe said. "A Pollutant of that level must be reported to the Pollution Control Center."

"Exactly, that's what I think too!" The caged bird hopped forward once. "So, for the sake of those left behind, I'll help you get out of here."

Zhou Xiangzhe sized it up for a while, then spoke. "That would be a great help."

"If we can leave, we'll definitely take you with us!"

Shen Wang watched, utterly impressed.

He knew perfectly well that Zhou Xiangzhe didn't trust this bird one bit—his expression was even cold—yet he could still say those things in a happy tone.

Wasn't this just like him, taking advantage of the fact the other couldn't see?

"Do you know what's going on with that woman?" Shen Wang took the opportunity to ask a question.

"She's a special Pollutant in this painting. You two Class C's shouldn't provoke her." The caged bird said. "In the story of this painting, she's a cowardly mother. Her husband cheated, abused her, and brought his mistress home to divorce her, so she brought her child here to live."

"But she was too cowardly. She couldn't fight back against her violent husband, so in the end she could only vent her resentment onto her child."

"Never become a bird, because she'll dig out the eyes of all birds." This sentence was directed at Zhou Xiangzhe.

"And never become her child, because to her, her child is a bird in a cage." This sentence was directed at Shen Wang.

"I see." Shen Wang clicked his tongue. "I have another question for you. How did a Class B Mutant like you end up as a bird?"

Hearing Shen Wang's question, the caged bird's wings drooped, as if it had touched on a sad memory.

It said sorrowfully, "Because there's another hidden rule in this painting."

"If you kill that female Pollutant, the Contamination Level intensifies. I didn't know this. I killed the woman several times, and so I turned into a bird, locked in a cage and unable to leave."

"Remember, you must avoid her at all costs!"

As it spoke, it even let out chirping bird sounds, the pitch fluctuating as if it were crying.

Zhou Xiangzhe agreed, acting completely obedient. Then he pulled Shen Wang away to check the surrounding clues. Shen Wang and Zhou Xiangzhe exchanged a glance and turned to leave together.

On the way out, Shen Wang spoke. "Is any of what he said believable?"

"The hidden rule matches the conclusion I reached. The caged bird's story also fits the nature of the Pollutant. Even if he wants to deceive us, he'd start by giving us believable information. So the accuracy of what he said is above eighty percent."

Zhou Xiangzhe resumed his cold tone. "But he didn't tell us how to leave. He just told us to avoid that woman. He's not very trustworthy."

A person who genuinely wants to help others wouldn't even care if the other side believes them. They'd tell them where to go right from the start. Self-justification in a life-threatening situation is just a troublesome, time-wasting waste of effort.

"At least we confirmed one clue: that woman can't be killed." Shen Wang sighed. "I wish I hadn't killed her."

"It made the feathers on you grow a section longer."

"It's not your fault." Zhou Xiangzhe didn't mind. "Any Mutant's first reaction upon encountering a Pollutant is to deal with it. Even I'm the same. Your actions were normal."

After saying this, Zhou Xiangzhe seemed to remember something. He fished another piece of candy from his pocket and handed it to Shen Wang.

Shen Wang, who had just about finished his candy: "..."

Was he timing it?

"Why don't you just give them all to me at once? How long are you planning to keep handing them out one by one?" Shen Wang took the piece of candy.

"No." Zhou Xiangzhe refused.

When they were kids, he really had given Shen Wang a lot of candy all at once—all saved up by him.

But that one time left Zhou Xiangzhe with psychological trauma.

Because with so much candy, Shen Wang couldn't control his appetite. He'd bite through the pieces and eat them as fast as possible. Shen Wang ended up choking on a piece of candy. If the Principal hadn't found him, he probably would have passed out from difficulty breathing. Afterwards, the Principal criticized Zhou Xiangzhe, and Zhou Xiangzhe never dared to give Shen Wang large amounts of candy at once again.

Every time he gave him candy, he'd watch Little Fifteen, afraid something would happen again.

"Sometimes I wonder if we knew each other before. You seem to understand me." Shen Wang unwrapped the candy and put it in his mouth. "Because you know, you don't ask me about some things."

Zhou Xiangzhe looked at Shen Wang calmly. "Polaris's unwritten team rule: trust your teammates 100%."

"I don't ask you because I believe you have reasons for everything you do."

"I trust you."

That's a lie. Zhou Xiangzhe thought silently.

Although mutual trust in the team was standard, Polaris didn't have that unwritten rule. He didn't ask because he knew Shen Wang had some issue himself, but he couldn't expose himself.

His Little Fifteen had grown into a capable person. Even though he was still sick, he was strong enough to protect himself and others. The adult world had so many unavoidable compromises. He didn't know why Shen Wang wanted to abandon the past, but he couldn't coldly rip open the things Shen Wang wanted to discard.

Occasionally, when Shen Wang talked to him, he'd mention childhood friends, the shared memories they had. Shen Wang didn't seem to reject him as a friend.

Zhou Xiangzhe thought: That's good enough.

At least he hadn't become something Shen Wang wanted to throw away.

"I won't choke on candy anymore." Shen Wang suddenly spoke.

Zhou Xiangzhe stopped walking. He looked at Shen Wang. Shen Wang didn't look back at him, nor did he stop. He just kept walking forward.

"When I was little, my friend would bring me candy. Because of his illness, he couldn't stay long either. Once he gave me a lot, so much I couldn't hold it all in one hand." Shen Wang said as he walked. "I was too hungry back then, so I ate in a hurry and choked on a piece of candy. After that, he didn't dare give me a lot of candy again."

"Actually, after that, I did control myself. I didn't want to see him get punished either."

But unfortunately, within two months the Orphanage had an incident. Shen Wang also lost his reason to control his appetite, and stopped caring if others got hurt because of him.

"I wonder what kind of person he grew up to be."

Zhou Xiangzhe stood behind Shen Wang, watching him. He looked away and smiled very faintly. The smile was extremely shallow and brief. After smiling, he was still that outwardly cold person, Central City's strongest Mutant.

He caught up to Shen Wang, then fished three pieces of candy from his pocket and handed them to him.

"Since you won't choke anymore, I'll give you a bit more." Zhou Xiangzhe said. "Don't ask for more. This is my emergency food supply."

Shen Wang glanced at him. "You're the one who wanted to give them to me."

But he still took the three pieces of candy.

/

They walked around the place and finally determined it was a three-story house. But there was nothing noteworthy inside.

Every window was sealed with red bricks. Only the room Shen Wang first appeared in had various simple drawings, and everywhere was covered in dense clusters of birdcages.

No clues at all. Aside from that woman, there was only the caged bird in the first-floor living room, who was neither clearly human nor ghost.

This place was even more abstract than the first painting. At least in the first one, they knew it was a hospital, and there was a doctor trying to operate on them.

So after walking around, they came back.

When they returned, the caged bird in the living room seemed to have curled up again, but that woman was sitting on the sofa.

In front of the woman was a television set—an old-era TV, a wide, thin-screen wall-mounted model. After the apocalypse, all survivors lived within the High Wall. The housing allocated to each person was small, and entertainment had long since stopped developing. A TV like this had lost its purpose.

And the TV in front of the woman had no picture either. It flickered with static, emitting a crackling noise.

Seeming to hear the sound, the woman turned her head to look at Shen Wang.

"Come watch TV with Mother?"

"This is your favorite channel. Mother will watch it with you."

Shen Wang glanced at the static on the TV. "I don't want to watch TV right now."

"How could you not want to? Isn't this your favorite channel?" The woman frowned slightly, her melancholic eyes carrying a hint of impatience.

"Everything on TV is fake."

"What do you mean?! Are you mocking that Mother's love for you is fake?!"

The woman stood up abruptly, smashing the remote control in her hand.

"How could you become like this? You're Mother's child. Why aren't you on Mother's side?!"

The woman looked like she was about to go mad with anger. "Mother has always, always protected you. But you? You never understand Mother's feelings!"

Mid-rant, she suddenly stopped. "I know. There's a problem with Mother's parenting method."

She turned her head and stared gloomily at Shen Wang. "Mother shouldn't have raised a disobedient child."

She walked step by step towards Shen Wang, holding a fruit knife. "Bad children need to be punished."

Shen Wang frowned. He remembered the caged bird saying at the beginning: the woman had gone to get a tool.

Was this her tool?

Shen Wang began to retreat. The woman seemed deranged. She stared fixedly at Shen Wang's eyes, the fruit knife in her hand aiming unerringly for his eyes. She wanted to gouge out Shen Wang's eyes.

Under normal circumstances, Shen Wang would never let something like this happen, because he hated people directing malice at him.

Anyone who showed him malice had to bear his malice in return.

But this time, he couldn't. He still remembered that killing this woman would cause more feathers to grow on Zhou Xiangzhe. For those three pieces of candy, Shen Wang decided to endure it once.

She couldn't die yet.

Shen Wang kept backing away. Avoiding this woman's knife was actually easy, because in the setting, she was cowardly and powerless. She only vented her resentment on weak birds and her own child. All her bad temper seemed designed to provoke their anger, best to kill her a few more times to make the Contamination erupt faster.

This kind of setting was really annoying.

Shen Wang frowned and dodged her knife again, but right then he felt himself bump into someone.

Someone was behind him, holding him steady. The person behind him let out a very soft sigh.

Zhou Xiangzhe raised his gun beside him.

Bang. The bullet hit the woman's forehead. She flew backward, the fruit knife clattering to the floor with a crisp metallic sound. She was too fragile; just one bullet was enough to kill her once.

"Zhou Xiangzhe." Shen Wang looked at the dead woman. "You shouldn't have killed her."

"What else could we do?" Zhou Xiangzhe's voice was very light, sounding a bit helpless. "You couldn't keep circling with her forever."

Shen Wang glanced at him. White feathers drifted down from his sleeve, like a shedding cat.

The feathers on his body had grown again, right at the moment the woman died.

"You killed her?!"

After the woman died, that hidden voice suddenly rang out.

The two looked towards the living room. The caged bird, lying at the bottom of its cage, poked its head out.

Zhou Xiangzhe let go of Shen Wang and put away his gun. "She was easy to kill."

"That's not the point! I told you before, killing her will intensify the Contamination! So you can't kill her." The caged bird hopped onto the perch. "You'll grow feathers. The feathers will gradually cover your whole body, and then you'll turn into a bird like me, and then that woman will gouge out your eyes!"

Shen Wang tapped the birdcage. "Why didn't you warn us earlier?"

"I couldn't." The caged bird said. "That woman is the bane of birds!"

"She gouges out the eyes of all birds. Birds that aren't dead yet are her toys. She'll cruelly dismember birds that aren't dead. If I appeared in front of her, she'd dismember me immediately!"

"You two are way too reckless!"

After listening to the caged bird, Zhou Xiangzhe seemed thoughtful. A few seconds later, he spoke with a panicked tone.

"I think I feel feathers growing on me. What do I do?!"

"What should we do to avoid turning into birds?!"

Shen Wang: …

He was acting again.

Zhou Xiangzhe tugged Shen Wang's sleeve and pointed to the side.

Shen Wang followed his gesture. The woman Zhou Xiangzhe had just killed was gradually disappearing, like a projection.

Last time was like this too. Shen Wang killed her, and soon the corpse vanished.

"The woman can be reborn!" The caged bird spoke up. "She doesn't die; she only revives after being killed. She'll lure you into killing her, but after you kill her, your Contamination Level will get higher and higher. The way to end this is to stop her from reviving."

Shen Wang looked at the caged bird. "How do we do that?"

"She revives from within the painting. On the second floor, there's a self-portrait of the woman." The bird lifted a wing and pointed upward. "Just find that painting and destroy it. Then the woman won't revive anymore. A woman who can't revive won't increase the Contamination Level by dying repeatedly."

"That's really great." Zhou Xiangzhe's gaze towards the caged bird turned cold. "We'll go destroy that painting now."

"But, only one person can enter that place." The caged bird added. "It's rare for two people to be swallowed in here together."

Zhou Xiangzhe paused. He deliberately hesitated for a moment before speaking. "Shen Wang, let's discuss who goes."

Shen Wang watched his performance lazily, only responding after hearing this. "Okay."

They moved away from the caged bird to the nearby staircase.

"Trustworthy?"

"Better not. There's probably nothing good up there." Zhou Xiangzhe said. "That woman is weak, easy to kill, but that's for the hidden rule—increasing the victim's Contamination Level after killing her. Even if there really is a painting, her true form is at least Class B."

"What we told that thing was that we're two Class C Mutants."

Whether Mutants or Contaminants, there was a huge gap between each level.

Forget two Class C Mutants; even ten Class Cs would have a hard time dealing with a single Class B Contaminant. That was the massive gap between levels.

The caged bird deliberately didn't mention the level, precisely to make them mistakenly think the true form was as weak as the woman they killed.

"What do you plan to do next?" Shen Wang nodded and asked him.

"I'll go up and take a look." Zhou Xiangzhe said. "You keep an eye on that bird down here. Even a Class B shouldn't be too difficult for you. Don't act too compliant. Your personality is already bad; it's fine to mock and taunt it a bit more."

Shen Wang: …

"What kind of image do I even have in your mind?"

"Nothing. I think someone like you is very lively." Zhou Xiangzhe tried to salvage it, poorly. "That's it."

That was worse than not salvaging it at all.

Shen Wang sighed. He watched Zhou Xiangzhe walk up the steps, then turned and went back to the living room. Since Zhou Xiangzhe had said so, he wasn't planning to pretend to be a good person either.

So he just sat directly on the sofa, adhering to the principle of sitting whenever possible, never standing.

"Your companion went to the second floor?" The caged bird suddenly spoke. "You're the one left behind?"

Shen Wang glanced at it. "Has anyone ever told you your voice is annoying?"

"Too shrill. I hate shrill sounds."

"Oh, so it's you who stayed." The caged bird swayed in its cage. "Aren't you worried about your companion? Letting him go to the second floor alone?"

Shen Wang leaned back calmly on the sofa. "Not worried."

Who'd waste their time worrying about a Class S Mutant? Forget a Class B — even if [Hundred Eyes] itself showed up here, it couldn't do a thing to harm Zhou Xiangzhe.

"How did you two decide?" The caged bird asked again.

"Rock-paper-scissors." Shen Wang answered absently. "He had bad luck. He threw scissors and lost."

Caged bird: …

That casual? How was it supposed to continue the conversation like this!

"I know you're worried about him." The caged bird could only force out the next line. "I have a way. I'm a Class B Mutant. Even though I can't see, my ability is still there. You help me open the cage, and I'll go keep an eye on him for you. If there's any problem, I'll notify you immediately."

Shen Wang calmly pulled out a shoujo manga from the coffee table drawer and flipped through it casually.

"Forget it." Shen Wang said. "Let him die."

"I've been sick of him for a while. Once he's dead, I'll get a new partner. That guy has a screw loose, stubborn and won't listen to advice. So annoying."

Caged bird: …

What the hell is with this guy?! Just talking shit about his teammate right in front of it?

Weren't they a Dispatch Team?

Weren't they comrades-in-arms who loved each other and entrusted their backs to one another?!