“I’m not.”
The disease-changed man’s voice was tight through the walkie-talkie speaker. “You’re really not with the Black Blood Group?”
“I’m not.”
“Then you’re Eastern Theater Command?”
“Survivor from another region.”
“You’re the one who just drove that big vehicle past? You’re really not with the rat-catching unit?”
“All of you, come up. I have questions. Stop stalling — my patience has limits, and you don’t want to find out what happens when it runs out. Answer my questions and you get supplies. That’s as generous as I get within those limits. Understood?”
The carrot-and-stick approach seemed to land. Or perhaps they simply knew they couldn’t stay hidden. Either way, they emerged from the subway station one by one, slow and reluctant.
Then they saw Great Vajra. And Shen Cong standing beside it in the Half-Activated Armor, dark-silver and imposing. The area was clear — no threats visible, only six disease-changed individuals who posed no danger whatsoever.
He put the toy car away.
“I need to ask you some questions,” he said, facing the six of them.
The one who’d been speaking — apparently the leader — said immediately: “Do you have any food? We haven’t eaten in two days.”
“Answer the first question, then you get food.” Shen Cong looked at the six of them — skeletal, barely holding together — and kept his voice even. “Names. What you did before the apocalypse.”
“Me first.” One of them stepped forward. “Huang Muxi. I’m from Nanjing. I was a senior high school student. Third year.”
The rest followed. The leader’s name was Gao Jinyue — had worked at a securities firm before the apocalypse, originally from Jiangxi Province working in Nanjing. The other four: Yao Jiang, Xu Yadong, Xue Hu, Li Haiwei — ordinary people with ordinary jobs before everything ended.
Questions answered. Shen Cong went to the vehicle and brought back cooked evolved meat — it was effectively unlimited for him; even in this abandoned district, the drone had already spotted evolved beasts in several locations.
The six of them weren’t just disease-changed. They were also desperately unwell, weaker than ordinary humans even accounting for the mutation. Li Haiwei in particular looked like he might not last through the next day.
He waited for them to finish eating — they ate fast, the way people eat when they haven’t seen food in two days — then held up a water bottle.
“Next question gets this. What’s the rat-catching unit?”
Gao Jinyue answered in that harsh crow-rasp of a voice: “The Black Blood Group’s rat-catching unit. They hunt ratmen. And people like us — lymph-laggards.”
Shen Cong frowned and tossed the water over. “Ratmen — those are the bipedal mutated rats, correct? Then what is the Black Blood Group? And what does lymph-laggard mean?”
Gao Jinyue passed the water to the others and kept talking. “Ratmen are those big rats that walk on two legs. The Black Blood Group is a ‘death-eater’ organization.” He paused on the word, as though even saying it cost something. “Lymph-laggards — that’s what they call us. People who got exposed to the radiation but didn’t mutate. The research lab on Baguazhou studied it — they said our lymphatic fluid developed an anti-mutation response, which blocked the mutation process. The technically accurate name is ‘lymphatic anti-mutation patients.’ But most people just call us lymph-laggards.”
Shen Cong kept asking. An hour and a half later, he had extracted everything these six people knew.
The picture that emerged was this:
When the apocalyptic storm hit, Nanjing’s experience had been similar to Juchao District and Hefei — devastation, then roughly a hundred thousand survivors, including a portion of the Eastern Theater Command’s military personnel, who had sheltered in underground bunkers and come through intact.
When the storm passed, the Command reorganized quickly and efficiently. They began systematic evolved beast suppression across the city, located and rescued survivors, and eventually established a major settlement in Nanjing’s Qixia District. Reconstruction began. Research into the disaster’s cause started simultaneously.
The Command’s leadership established a research facility on Baguazhou — an island in the Yangtze — called the Radiation Laboratory.
Their terminology differed from New Hefei’s across the board. Evolved beasts became “metal radiation beasts,” shortened to jin beasts. Activity cores became “radiation nuclei,” shortened to jin cores. Evolved trees became “metal radiation trees,” shortened to greening trees — with some optimistic implication that they might eventually help restore the barren landscape. Mutants, half-beasts, and disease-changed individuals were all collectively called “radiation mutation” patients.
Under the Command’s organization, reconstruction proceeded steadily. Significant evolved beast hunting operations cleared the surrounding areas. The Command began extending its reach toward Yangzhou, Chuzhou, Ma’anshan.
Then, around early August, a military advance reached Zhenjiang.
They encountered something that stopped them entirely.
The creature the Command named Xuanwu — a mutated snapping turtle, roughly a hundred meters in size, patrolling the Yangtze and hunting along its banks. Missiles struck its body and failed to penetrate. The Command’s forces suffered serious casualties and withdrew to Nanjing.
The Qixia District settlement continued growing. Eventually around two hundred thousand survivors had gathered. But the pressures were mounting: ammunition production lines had been destroyed, metal was corroding across the board.
“But we all thought we’d get through it. And then—” Gao Jinyue’s crow-rasp voice carried something colder than the words. “—the Radiation Laboratory announced something.”
The something that Gao Jinyue described as “accelerating human extinction.”
Through sustained research, the Radiation Laboratory had unlocked a partial understanding of the mutation mechanism.
“A doctor explained it to me,” Gao Jinyue said. “The meteor shower brought some unknown substance that affected metal, causing it to emit radiation outward. That radiation triggered biological changes — divided into beneficial changes they called ‘mutation,’ and harmful changes they called ‘anti-mutation.’ We’re anti-mutation cases — lymphatic anti-mutation specifically.”
Mutation referred to the standard process: radiation stimulating biological tissue to transform and condense a jin core. In humans, individuals who successfully formed jin cores were called natural mutation humans — and, to correspond with the jin beast terminology, also called jin people.
Among jin people, one particular mutation type stood out: individuals who bonded with large mechanical equipment during the transformation process. The Radiation Laboratory’s explanation for this was incomplete — something about mutual induction between the mechanical device and the changing individual during mutation, producing an unknown combined transformation. These were called induced mutation humans, distinguished from jin people by the shorthand iron people.
The same terminology collision as New Hefei. Different origin, same word.
Among jin beasts, the analogous phenomenon had also been documented — creatures that had bonded with vehicles or machinery during mutation. The Command called them induced mutation radiation beasts, shortened to iron beasts. Another terminology collision.
Corresponding to mutation was anti-mutation.
Anti-mutation covered half-beasts, disease-changed individuals, and failed mutations among evolved beasts. The Radiation Laboratory’s research indicated that disease-changed individuals were cases where the lymphatic fluid had developed a resistance response during radiation exposure — actively blocking the mutation process rather than accepting it. Hence “lymphatic anti-mutation patients.” The social slur was cruder: lymph-laggards. Half-beast cases, where cerebrospinal fluid had developed the anti-mutation response instead, were called “cerebrospinal anti-mutation patients” — and the social slur for those was brainless.
The mutation and anti-mutation discoveries, taken alone, were not what Gao Jinyue meant by “accelerating human extinction.”
What he meant was something else. Something the Radiation Laboratory had developed next.
A drug.
C1 Mutagen.
A compound capable of inducing mutation in ordinary humans — converting them into powerful mutated individuals.
(End of Chapter 219)