Prelude to Contamination

Chapter 5

Shen Wang needed Pollutants.

This wasn't a joke. It was a physical need, the kind he had to satisfy.

He was born with a Genetic Disease. When it flared up, he'd fall into an extreme state of hunger and thirst, and his aggression would spike too. The Hospital had treated him for ten years and still had no idea how to bring him out of that state. Most of the time, all they could do was lock him alone in an isolation room.

But Shen Wang knew the Hospital had figured out one pattern after watching him for more than a decade: whenever he had an episode, he attracted Pollutants and Distorted Humans with unusual ease, and risked slipping into Distortion.

That year, when a high-level Pollutant attacked the Hospital, Shen Wang happened to be in the middle of an episode. He'd been locked in an isolation room behind layers of security, waiting for it to pass, but that high-level Pollutant tore through all those barriers and appeared right in front of him.

Anyone normal would've assumed he was as good as dead. The truth was the exact opposite.

In that hyper-aggressive state, Shen Wang ripped apart the high-level Pollutant that had barged in. His dried-out body thrilled at its death, then quickly Devoured the parts of the Pollutant he could eat.

Yeah. He ate the Pollutant. And once he did, the hunger and thirst eased, his body went back to normal, and the aggression stopped ruling him.

That was the moment Shen Wang finally understood why Pollutants and Distorted Humans were drawn to him when he had an episode. He was like an old-world Venus flytrap, giving off a sweet scent to lure prey in. He needed that prey to keep his body functioning normally.

That was the only real way to treat his Genetic Disease.

The second he understood that, Shen Wang decided to leave. Because this was obviously wrong. No normal human could eat Pollutants, right?

He was easygoing by nature and played fast and loose. He wasn't afraid of death, and he wasn't afraid of causing trouble. But he wasn't stupid. There was no way he was letting himself get hauled off to the Academy for research.

Better to let that identity be buried with the Hospital.

Over the past three years, Shen Wang had gone to a lot of places. Outside the High Wall was the world's real face. Pollution Sources and Pollutants cropped up one after another without end, and the six great contaminated zones stood fixed in different directions. Shen Wang had been to two of them.

He'd never undergone Distortion from entering a contaminated zone, and he'd never shown even the slightest symptom of Mental Pollution.

He'd eaten plenty of Pollutants too. Thanks to that, he'd gotten through these past three years of flare-ups fairly smoothly.

Just a few days ago, he had another episode. Class B Contaminant [Meiyu] was drawn to him and trapped him in its cage. Shen Wang killed it instead and Devoured it, but at the very end he failed to hide his tracks in time and was spotted by the action squad that came to deal with Class B Contaminant [Meiyu]. So he went with the flow and made his way back inside humanity's High Wall.

Life outside the High Wall wasn't exactly nice. Surviving in the wild for three years already meant he was tough as hell. As a human, of course he preferred places where humans gathered. At the very least, there were beds, transportation, and hot water.

But his episode still wasn't fully over, so he'd still need to find time to hunt a few Pollutants as snacks.

Sure, a Class D Pollutant wasn't that strong. But since it had practically delivered itself into his hands, why not?

/

By dusk, the sunset glow lay high across the walls of the tall buildings, throwing a streak of bright yellow light into the dim atmosphere around them.

The man kept his head down. His hands and feet were shaking from fear. Wrapped in a blanket, he shuffled across the rooftop one step at a time. The evening sky looked just like his state of mind — only the last light of a dead end, and after that, endless black.

At last, he made it to the edge of the roof. His eyes were full of despair.

‘I can't take it anymore,’ he said. ‘Stop following me.’

‘...I have to, I have to get rid of you.’

‘I'm really so scared!’

The man muttered to himself, despair churning in his eyes. He was panicked and pitiful, driven onto a dead-end road in just a few days.

Most people hit by Mental Pollution ended up like this. They sank into negative emotions that weren't even theirs to begin with, got controlled by them, and kept sinking until they broke down and died. That was why humanity treated Pollutants like a deadly plague. For ordinary humans who suffered Mental Pollution, the survival rate wasn't even ten percent.

The man stepped up onto the roof's edge, swaying.

At that dangerous moment, out of a dim, gloomy corner below, a clown walked out in a jaunty little skip. It wore a red hood, a bizarre smile painted across its mouth in red pigment, and a bunch of red balloons tied to its wrist.

Its mouth was stretched into a grin, but in the eyes coated in white paint was frozen terror — exactly the same terror as the man pacing upstairs waiting to kill himself. The lower half of its face, though, wore a smug smile, like it was preening over another successful catch.

That total mismatch between the upper and lower halves of its face made it look horribly contradictory and terrifying.

The clown let go. The red balloons floated upward into the heavy dark. The smile on its face widened as it eagerly waited for the moment the balloons reached the rooftop — and the person above fell down with them.

Like they were rushing toward each other from both directions. Red above, red below.

The wind pushed the balloons onto the rooftop. They didn't keep drifting upward with the breeze. Instead, they hovered there, clinging around the man, and he let out a shrill scream of terror.

The clown downstairs looked more and more terrified, while the smile on its mouth grew more and more savage. It was waiting for its prey to walk right into its palm.

But in that instant, a hand caught the clown by the wrist.

The clown's smile froze.

‘Long time no see,’ a voice said from behind it.

Shen Wang appeared at its side just like he had that morning. His black eyes were like a dark Abyss. He was smiling, the beauty mark at the corner of his eye especially striking. Just that smile alone was enough to drown in. There was something strangely bewitching about it, a pull that didn't feel human.

He said, ‘Actually, maybe I shouldn't say long time no see. We did meet this morning, after all.’

Even a low-level Pollutant with no reason left could sense that something was wrong. Real panic started to hit it. The clown's mouth tore all the way back toward its ears, and strands of white thread spilled out from the split wound. Those red balloons that had floated away were yanked back by the white threads, until dozens of red balloons were hovering around the clown.

It decided to attack the man who made it afraid.

‘Wuu, wuu.’

‘Mom, I'm so scared. It's right here.’

‘Stop following me!’

‘There are monsters everywhere, blood everywhere! Someone save me!’

The instant the balloons returned to the clown, they changed. What floated in the air now were bloody severed heads, each hanging from a string. Men and women, old and young. Every single face was frozen in terror. Bloody tears streamed from their eyes, and muffled screams pushed out of their mouths.

Shen Wang counted the balloons with mild curiosity. There were exactly thirty of them — the same as the number of dead victims.

The clown's body stretched and twisted, warping bit by bit into something beyond what a human could understand. Then the twisted clown raised an arm and pointed at Shen Wang. At once, the floating heads above it, all frozen in terror, shot toward him. They opened their mouths at Shen Wang, and every mouth was lined with sharp fangs.

A scene horrifying enough to give any normal person nightmares didn't make Shen Wang frown even once. The quiet man looked at the flying heads with open disgust, like he was looking at garbage.

‘I already told you this.’

Shen Wang said, ‘I hate balloons mixed with human blood.’

As the words fell, his pupils looked like clear water touched by red ink, the color spreading little by little until his eyes turned fully red. Thorns pushed out from his sleeves, like bone spurs growing straight from his body. Vines wound around his waist. One branch quietly slipped into his hair and bloomed into a vivid red flower.

As the thorns grew, his face changed with them, becoming less like a human and closer to a high-level Pollutant.

If someone from the Pollution Control Center had been here with a detector, they'd have been shocked to see Shen Wang's Contamination Level shooting up at terrifying speed. In no time, it climbed to 91% — and stopped there, at that horrifying number.

A Contamination Level that high was enough to get someone locked up in S-Zone until they died.

In the three years outside the High Wall, Shen Wang had killed a lot of Pollutants. Among them, there had been one and only one Class A Contaminant: Blood Thorns.

Killing it hadn't been easy. Back then, it had already been badly injured and could only use half its strength. Even so, Shen Wang had nearly lost and ended up as fertilizer.

But after killing it and Devouring it, Shen Wang was surprised to find that he could use part of Blood Thorns' abilities. Even his appearance would change along with them, his body drawing infinitely closer to that of a Pollutant.

After that, for the first time ever, he went three straight months without an episode. For the first time, he could use a Talent ability — even though this should've been a Pollutant's Contaminated Talent.

That's when he realized he could seize a Pollutant's talent. But only from a Class A Contaminant or higher. The higher the rank, the easier it was to ease the flare-ups of his Genetic Disease. And on his own, killing Class A Contamination was hard.

That was the biggest reason he was willing to come back inside the High Wall.

Pollutants fought alone. They had no reason and no way they'd ever band together. No matter how strong they were, they still couldn't withstand overwhelming numbers.

Humans were those overwhelming numbers.

Infiltrate the Pollution Control Center. Get into the Dispatch Team. Wipe out high-level Pollutants... then sweep up what was left behind.

That was the plan Shen Wang came up with in an instant, right after he was accidentally discovered.

And right now, this was only a tiny little Class D Pollutant.

Shen Wang's lips curved slightly as he smiled at the clown.

‘Ready to pay me back yet?’

The thorns pierced the first balloon-head that lunged at him. It let out a miserable scream and exploded at once into a wet mass of gore. More heads surged forward, but none of them could break through the dense layers of thorns. The clown opened its mouth, but with its split lips, it couldn't smile anymore.

Its balloon-heads were incredibly tough. Even bullets couldn't burst them. But in front of Shen Wang's thorns, they had no resistance at all. One light stab and they shattered.

After losing half its balloons, the clown finally realized it had messed with someone it never should've touched.

It turned to run, only to find even more thorns behind it. The flowers blooming on them looked swollen with blood, red to an almost shocking degree.

The clown was reflected in Shen Wang's red pupils as he said, ‘Where do you think you're going?’

A wet ripping sound.

Countless thorns burst out from inside the clown's body. Its eyes flew wide. It tried to move, only to realize the thorns growing through its body had already punched through its legs and rooted into the ground. They were like vampires feeding on blood — wherever the blood flowed, the thorns grew, until even the tips of the spikes had turned a brilliant red.

The clown let out a miserable cry. It was a Pollutant, mindless and thoughtless, but instinctive emotion still remained.

It was afraid, like a lone lamb surrounded by wolves.

Every balloon was pierced. Pools of red splattered across the ground. The thorns covered the clown's body, and only after there was no movement left inside did they finally stop growing.

At the end, Shen Wang slowly drew the thorns back into his body. They shrank into his sleeves, then gradually slipped back beneath his collar until they vanished completely.

Shen Wang lifted one hand to cover his mouth, looking fragile and harmless, like a willow branch in the wind.

This man, who looked completely incapable of threatening anyone, sighed and said, ‘That tastes awful.’

‘Like chewing rubber...'

Shen Wang looked up at the sky. Night had fully fallen now, and the streetlights outside were already on. But this was an abandoned Derelict Building, so all he could see were dark, hollow windows.

He raised a hand to his forehead, like a child peering into the distance.

Of course, what he was looking at wasn't the sky, but the rooftop above, now so dim it was almost impossible to make out.

Shen Wang smiled.

‘Now I can promise nothing's going to chase you anymore.’

‘Though if you still think someone's following you, that's not my problem.’

‘I'm not a psychiatrist, after all.’