Heavenly Music 7

Chapter 58

The Hound sat on the ground and shut his eyes, trying to sense the 'ticket' Lan had mentioned.

This was really an unreasonable demand.

The prison was crawling with Contaminants, forming a dense web of obstacles. Finding a specific target among them was already hard enough, and The Hound couldn’t just pinpoint anything he pleased. He couldn’t lock on out of nowhere; he needed to first familiarize himself with the scent of the thing he was looking for.

That was exactly why the Science Academy had spent so much time forcing him to memorize the aura of every high-level Contaminant.

'Ah!' The Hound opened his mouth and shouted, 'Can't find it!'

Lan frowned slightly at the noise. 'The ticket is a proxy created by her ability. It's different from a Contaminant.'

'Of course I know there's a difference, but the point is, even if there is, all I can see in front of me is a thick wall of Contaminants.' The Hound pointed at the cellblock ahead. 'You're asking me to find a single numbered white ball in a sea of a thousand blank ones—it's impossible!'

And honestly, even with Lan by his side, the effects of his claustrophobia hadn't fully faded. His Contamination Sense was still picking up a chaotic mess of signals beyond his control.

'Fine.' Lan picked up the precognitive book from the ground, walked over to stand in front of The Hound, and directly flipped his hood over his head.

The sudden move caught The Hound off guard, nearly making him fall on his ass. The ferocity in his blue eye dissolved into blank confusion.

'What are you doing?'

'Wait here,' Lan said. 'Cover your ears.'

'Huh?'

One warning was already the extent of Lan's kindness. He rose from his crouch and turned to face the countless layered prisons behind him.

The book in his hand flipped open on its own, and Lan’s pupils instantly turned a deep glacial blue. His hair, matching that color, stretched and lengthened, while a black tendril extended from his sleeve. Dressed in that same black robe, the gloom around him became even more eerily mysterious.

Lan reached out, and the words on the pages streamed into his palm along the blank paper. The Hound’s eyes widened slightly.

This time he saw the text of the precognitive book with his own eyes. Even though he still couldn’t understand what the words meant, he could clearly feel Lan’s Talent threshold and Contamination aura rising—like a normally placid stream that turns into a raging storm under a typhoon.

The old walls between those cells were partitioned by countless transparent, invisible spatial intervals. The next moment, ice spread out from Lan’s feet, and in an instant froze most of the cells in front of them into a mountain of Glaciation.

Crack—the iceberg shattered. Amid faint screams, half of the dense Contaminant auras in The Hound’s mind vanished in a blink.

A piercing ringing drilled into The Hound’s ears. He instantly slapped his hands over them. Overly sensitive, he was thrown into momentary discomfort, and he now understood exactly why Lan had told him to cover his ears.

But…

The defector Lan, Grade S dual-talent Mutant, the Science Academy’s most successful experimental subject, the Strongest Mutant who aimed to surpass Zhou Xiangzhe.

His power went far beyond what he had shown.

Lan lowered his hand and turned to The Hound, his ice-blue eyes filled with coldness. 'Obstacles reduced. Can you find the ticket now?'

The Hound took his hands off his ears and suddenly burst into loud laughter.

'What are you laughing at?'

'Whenever I think about how the Science Academy lost you, how they're pulling their hair out in regret, I just have to laugh.' The Hound cackled so hard he collapsed on the ground, nearly rolling around clutching his belly. 'The stronger you are, the more frustrated they get. The more frustrated, the more they regret it.'

'Serves them right, serves them right!'

Lan watched him and walked over to where he was sprawled out laughing. 'Find the ticket first. Laugh after.'

'Haha, I'll laugh all I want. I'll laugh and then find it when I'm done!' After all, he was still The Hound—even when he was in a good mood, he’d mouth off when he felt like it.

But the laughter died down quickly. The Hound began sensing the surrounding Contamination. Because Lan had wiped out most of the Contaminants in one sweep, and the remaining survivors were still isolated in their separate cells by his spatial ability, The Hound soon picked up on something strange.

It gave off an odd aura, but it wasn’t Contamination. And while the other Contaminants in the same cell had all been killed by Lan, this thing stood stubbornly in place.

'Found it.' The Hound got up and pointed to the front right. 'Over there.'

They hurried over. As they neared the cell, a very faint, delicate floral scent reached them.

Before they could open the cell door, a tiny yellow flower poked through the bars and quietly bloomed on the outside.

Lan reached out and unlocked the cell door, revealing the scene inside.

After the earlier culling of Contaminants, the cell was steeped in a cold, gloomy chill. The dead Contaminants had been reduced to nothing, leaving only a couple of puddles of water. Deep within the cell, a bouquet of yellow flowers as large as a person huddled together, still bearing traces of frost, yet even encased in a transparent layer of ice they remained vivid and lovely.

Lan stepped into the cell, leaving The Hound at the door. But before he could get far, The Hound grabbed his hand.

'Hey.' The Hound's voice was full of displeasure. 'Don't just ditch me here.'

Lan looked at him, his gaze as always brimming with gloom and apathy. But he said nothing, nor did he express any opinion.

Letting The Hound cling to his hand as he pleased, Lan walked further into the cell and, amid the yellow blossoms, picked out a yellow-backed ticket.

Unlike the ugly flyer Drifting Fish had cooked up, this ticket was exquisitely made. You could tell at a glance it had been meticulously designed and took a lot of time, even with gilded accents and an envelope that looked like a gift box.

Lan opened the envelope and took out the admission ticket.

On the blood-stained card, the tear-off stub was still attached, along with the concert date.

[May 27, 2037]

'What does that date mean?' The Hound asked.

Having been born after the apocalypse and spent his entire life locked up in the Science Academy with a patchy memory, The Hound didn’t really understand the significance.

'The old era, the years before the apocalypse, used a calendar with years. 2037 was the last year before the end. In 2038 they officially switched to the Doomsday Calendar, starting from Doomsday Year One.'

'If the apocalypse hadn't happened, it would be 2068 right now.'

'Oh, I see.' The Hound wasn't very interested.

'When are we leaving?' That was the only thing he'd been wanting to ask.

This place was seriously fraying his nerves. The fear that had been soothed was slowly stirring again, and the angry aura radiating from him was growing heavier.

If we don’t get out of here soon…

The Hound raised his hand to his mouth again and bit down on the spot he had bitten before, out of pure reflex.

This time he bit down harder. His palm split open in an instant, and a faint scent of blood drifted up.

Lan glanced at him, then at the hand still gripping his own wrist.

'Now.'

Lan walked out, one hand held fast by The Hound, the other flipping through the precognitive book for the way out. The Hound trailed along passively, but his grip tightened more and more. Even so, he couldn’t stop the trembling, and his breathing grew ragged.

'The weak surrender to fear; the strong overcome it.' Lan was still speaking calm, unruffled words. 'As long as you're human, you will feel fear.'

'No, none of that has anything to do with me.'

The Hound retorted.

He lifted his head, the rims of his eyes slightly red from his intense physical reaction. The look in those eyes, however, was unyieldingly stubborn.

'No one can oppress me with fear. No one can enslave me with fear. I won’t become weak because of fear, and I won’t become some strongman because of it either.'

The Hound said, 'I am myself.'

Even while acting erratically, many people considered The Hound remarkably perceptive and emotionally intelligent, because he was someone who understood himself so deeply and held to himself so unwaveringly.

He didn’t need validation from others, nor outside logic to tell him how to be. He decided his own way of surviving.

That was why he was The Hound—the sole surviving third-generation experimental subject of the Science Academy, a powerful Grade S Mutant.

After they exited the prison, The Hound threw up right at the entrance. He hadn't eaten much, but everything he’d forced down came back up. The vomiting made his eyes even redder, like a miserable rabbit, but after he finished, he laughed again, even louder than he had been vomiting.

Lan was already used to his random, inexplicable outbursts and paid no mind to the logic behind his behavior.

'So hungry,' The Hound wailed. 'I want to eat eggs.'

Lan remained silent.

Sure enough, his mental stability was unmatched—stronger than anyone else's.

/

Over on the other side, Shen Wang was still waiting for Lan and The Hound to bring the ticket back.

When it came to finding things, Lan and The Hound had a much better edge than they did. And based on the communication between Lan and Shen Wang, they all agreed that this ticket should be in the prison—if not the prison, then the public security bureau. That was the most likely place she would be.

Shen Wang’s side only had an abandoned concert hall, while Lan’s side was exactly inside a prison. So leaving it to them made the most sense.

Zhou Xiangzhe leaned against Shen Wang’s shoulder, fiddling with his communicator. But no matter how he looked at it, the screen was frozen. All the apps were inaccessible, and the time display was stuck on the moment he entered the Labyrinth City. So Shen Wang handed his own communicator to Zhou Xiangzhe.

Grasping the now-functional device, Zhou Xiangzhe first tried contacting the outside world—no surprise, no connection at all. In the end, he just returned it to Shen Wang.

'Can't the Science Academy ever develop a communicator that works inside a Nest?' Shen Wang sighed, staring at his device. 'Do they blow all their budget on human experiments?'

Zhou Xiangzhe shook his head. 'No idea, but the Science Academy is already in a very dangerous position.'

Shen Wang looked at him. 'What do you mean?'

‘The defection accident of Second-Generation Experiment Subject Lan really hurt the Science Academy’s reputation,’ Zhou Xiangzhe said. ‘They stirred up intense negative public sentiment, and even triggered a few small-scale Contamination incidents. That’s why they took the risk and experimented on the third generation, trying to restore their name.’

Too bad the third-generation test subject, The Hound, was completely disobedient, got lured away by Lan, and Lan even took the opportunity to wipe out Xianji, directly causing the Vanishing Project to fail.

If the full story and failure of the Vanishing Project ever got leaked, the entire Science Academy could just shut its doors for good.

'If the Science Academy were shut down, what would happen?' A bit more interest crept into Shen Wang’s voice.

'Not much.' Zhou Xiangzhe’s tone was calm. 'If one Science Academy closes, another one will always open. In this era, science is also a way to prevent and control Contamination. The Science Academy doesn’t just run human experiments—their research on high-Contamination Level Mutants within Sector S is also critical.'

'They won’t just exterminate every last member of the Academy because of the human experiments.'

That sort of thing, only Lan would do. Lan made no distinction at all—anything connected to the Science Academy had to be annihilated.

Shen Wang nodded.

Right then, two dark silhouettes approached from the distance. The one in front carried a book and walked at a steady, unhurried pace, while the one behind was listless and stumbling, clutching the first one’s hand for support.

Shen Wang stood up. 'They’re here?'

'Mm.' Zhou Xiangzhe watched them, their figures reflected in his golden eyes. 'To answer your earlier question: if Lan and The Hound stir up another major incident, the Anti-Contamination Center won’t even need the public to speak out before they’ll kick the Science Academy out and find someone else to rebuild it.'

Shen Wang looked at him. 'So you’re saying: an organization like the Science Academy will always exist, just with a different name and different people and policies?'

'If Lan harbors the idea of completely wiping out the Science Academy as an institution, then all I can say is he won’t succeed.' Zhou Xiangzhe stood up as well, his voice soft. 'But if he just wants to destroy the current Science Academy, that’s actually very simple.'

'Simple?'

'If he’s willing to come back, the Anti-Contamination Center is willing to handle all of this for him.'

Zhou Xiangzhe had always been gentle. As an adult, his voice was cooler, he didn’t smile much, always looking aloof. But in front of Shen Wang, he remained the warm, kind Xiao Qi who could admit his mistakes and correct them. Only occasionally, like now, would he reveal the presence of a high official from the Anti-Contamination Center Leadership.

'On one side, a Grade S Mutant with Talent: Foresight; on the other, a Science Academy that’s lost its power. Everyone knows which to choose.'

As long as it ends up benefiting humanity, so what if he’s a defector who once betrayed mankind? So what if he’s on the Wanted List? He’s only targeted the Science Academy, never humans in general, right? What does that mean? It means his conscience isn’t entirely gone, he still has a chance to mend his ways.

In ancient times, the imperial court would offer amnesty too.

Shen Wang raised an eyebrow slightly. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Zhou Xiangzhe was hinting at something…

Lan and The Hound arrived. Lan looked the same as always, but The Hound seemed worn out. As soon as he saw them, he wilted, plopped down on a bench, and immediately lay flat.

'What’s up with him?' Shen Wang asked.

'Didn’t eat breakfast,' Lan replied calmly. 'Ignore him. He’ll be fine once he eats after we get out.'

Shen Wang: ...Huh?

Lan pulled the ticket he’d found in the prison from his pocket. 'Here’s the ticket.'

Shen Wang reached out to take it, but before he could, a strange sensation struck him.

It was a surge of intense agitation and an ineffable dull ache. Shen Wang yanked his hand back.

'I’m hitting the restroom. Wait here for me.'

With that, Shen Wang turned and hurried off.

Lan watched the direction Shen Wang had gone, put the ticket back in his pocket, and opened his book to read.

Zhou Xiangzhe found it a bit odd and glanced at the reading Lan.

With Shen Wang around, they could barely tolerate being together, since Shen Wang was the lubricant between them. But left alone face to face, there was nothing for them to coexist peacefully over.

He turned, about to go find Shen Wang.

'Stop.'

Lan looked up, languid and ominous. 'Shen Wang went to the bathroom. What are you going for? To go with him?'

Zhou Xiangzhe turned back to face Lan, no trace of fear in his eyes.

'First, we’re lovers. Even if we did go to the bathroom together, it’s none of your business. Second, in what capacity are you criticizing how I interact with my lover in front of me?'

'If you can’t give me a decent reason, I’m not going to listen to a word you say.'

Nearby, sprawled on a chair, The Hound propped his chin on his hand, watching with keen interest.

Oh my, oh my. He’d said it before: someone as smart as Zhou Xiangzhe, how could he not guess the relationship between Shen Wang and Lan?

He was just pretending not to know so he wouldn’t put Shen Wang in a tough spot. But Lan was different. Instead of making things difficult for Shen Wang, he’d turn and make things difficult for Lan.

A deeply concealed bad apple himself.

Meanwhile, Shen Wang, who had left, knew nothing of the conflict between Zhou Xiangzhe and Lan—and even if he had, it would have been hard to handle.

He leaned against the concert hall wall, brow furrowed, hand pressed to his chest.

His black eyes turned pale purple, his hair lengthened considerably, and in an instant Shen Wang took on the appearance of Hundred Eyes. The moment he became contaminated, several paintings fell from his chest. Staring at them on the ground, his brow furrowed.

After all, Hundred Eyes was only a Grade A Contaminant, but Moon Thief was a pseudo-Grade S that had gone berserk and stolen a piece of shadow from its mother.

So Shen Wang had divided it into multiple segments, sealing each in a different painting to suppress its powerful Contamination.

He’d planned to consume it quickly, but then the wall suddenly collapsed and he was caught in person by Zhou Xiangzhe with no chance to devour it. So he had to carry these paintings into Walking Corpse Village. At first, there was nothing unusual, but the moment Lan brought out the concert ticket, the paintings started rebelling.

Moon Thief’s remaining love for her kept surging, madly trying to break free of these paintings.

If he didn’t leave right then, he’d either end up revealing his Hundred Eyes form in front of Zhou Xiangzhe, or watch Moon Thief’s remnants spill out of the paintings.

Shen Wang coughed once and crouched down, his pale purple pupils cold.

'What a pain.' He grabbed the paintings on the ground. 'Looks like I need to deal with you soon.'

Locking them in paintings wasn’t safe. Swallowing them whole would be safest.

The paintings trembled, the separated parts constantly asserting their presence. All of Moon Thief’s fragments were trying to escape—but not to flee. They wanted to see her, to ask if she ever loved them, and why she refused to see them.

Shen Wang pressed his hand onto the paintings. The next moment, thin, thorny vines crept out from his sleeve, plunging into the artworks in a cluster.

At first, the paintings writhed, but a few seconds later, they stilled.

By absorbing and devouring each painting in small increments, Shen Wang felt Moon Thief’s power gradually filling his body. Yet he still hadn’t fully adjusted to it.

'Cough, cough.'

Shen Wang coughed and clutched his throat. 'Tastes awful.'

'Like eating a mouthful of foam.'

But when you thought about it, wasn’t Moon Thief just foam?

It lived by stealing, and only by stealing her shadow had it managed to advance to pseudo-Grade S. Even so, it was torn to pieces, reduced to a puddle of rampaging power. If that chaotic, insubstantial thing wasn’t foam, what was it?

Slowly, Shen Wang got up from the ground and leaned against the wall, breathing in small sips.

The pale purple faded from his pupils, and his hair returned to its original look. He double-checked himself for anything out of place.

Just then, a voice came from outside.

'Shen Wang?'

It was Zhou Xiangzhe.

'Are you here?'

Shen Wang looked toward the voice. 'Hey, aren’t you being a little too clingy? You’re following me even to the bathroom?'

'...That’s not what I meant.' Zhou Xiangzhe’s tone noticeably stumbled—it sounded way too shameless to say it like that. 'This is the Labyrinth City, and we just entered Walking Corpse Village. We don’t even know if it’s safe here yet. Don’t go off on your own.'

Shen Wang chuckled.

Once he was sure nothing was amiss, Shen Wang stepped out from behind the wall.

'What could possibly be dangerous?'

Zhou Xiangzhe stood about three meters away. 'I’m just worried we might get separated because of it, like when we first came in.'

'Oh, so you don’t want to be separated from me.' Shen Wang smiled playfully.

'If that’s how you see it, then yes, I don’t want to be apart from you.' Zhou Xiangzhe’s tone was serious.

Hearing that, Shen Wang couldn’t help but laugh again.

Why did Zhou Xiangzhe always take his jokes so seriously?

But every time Zhou Xiangzhe earnestly said things like that, Shen Wang couldn’t help feeling a flutter he could never refuse. The only one who’d consider every word he said with such seriousness was Zhou Xiangzhe, wasn’t it?

'Let’s go,' Zhou Xiangzhe said. 'They’re going to check the ticket.'

'Got it.'

Shen Wang came over, took Zhou Xiangzhe’s hand, and the two left together.

On the way back, Zhou Xiangzhe kept his gaze fixed on Shen Wang, his golden eyes never leaving him.

'What’s up?' Shen Wang noticed his stare. 'Why are you looking at me so much?'

'I feel like you look even more handsome than before,' Zhou Xiangzhe said.

Shen Wang tilted his head, surprised. 'Who told me that Team Zhou of North Star doesn’t know how to talk?'

'Aren’t you pretty smooth with the compliments?'

Zhou Xiangzhe blinked and placed a hand on his chin as if pondering something. But when Shen Wang pressed him on exactly what was more handsome, he just smiled and didn’t answer.

Because Zhou Xiangzhe realized that if he actually answered seriously, Shen Wang would get angry.

Shen Wang’s hair was about one centimeter longer than before they’d gone in.

Shen Wang was extremely good-looking. He had a pair of peach blossom eyes brimming with affection, as if he could see right into your soul just by looking at you. He always seemed to be smiling, radiating a gentle, comfortable aura. Everyone liked him, and no one ever felt uneasy around him.

His hair was black, kept short but not buzzed—a soft, gentle layered cut.

Zhou Xiangzhe was a meticulous person, and observing his boyfriend had become part of his daily routine. He often zoned out looking at Shen Wang, sometimes pondering whether to add some small decorations he fancied to Shen Wang’s look—though he’d never actually suggested it.

So Zhou Xiangzhe knew Shen Wang’s every little detail better than anyone imagined, and was far more likely than anyone else to notice the slightest change.

Like him being more handsome, like... his hair having grown about a centimeter in just a few minutes.

An almost imperceptible difference that no one would ever catch.

But it was still a difference.