Chapter 65: The Strange Mist City

Near noon, the enveloping mist gradually dispersed.

This was also the time when the crowds were largest; people who had been stifled at home all day poured out to get some rare fresh air, making this the most lively moment in Mist City.

It had been a week since the city was sealed off, and people had grown accustomed to constantly guarding against those around them, fearing they would suddenly turn into monsters and "eat" them.

Mist City news had been reminding everyone to beware the mist, beware the monsters within it, and stay away from others, but to avoid causing mass panic, it had not reported the monsters' terrifying images to the public.

Although people had heard there were monsters in the mist, most still did not know what the monsters looked like.

Yang Yi, wearing a mask, walked down the street with Wei Chang'an and Chen Chen Yushu, observing everything in Mist City.

Apart from the tense atmosphere and the panicked crowds, Yang Yi found nothing particularly special, which disappointed her somewhat.

She felt the pressure was a bit heavy.

The earnest plea from Mist City's leaders, Li Jiaoshou's solemn sigh, the hurried pedestrians on the street, and their frantic expressions all pressed a huge stone onto her heart.

It was as if a burden she had never before considered suddenly landed on her shoulders, and she stood there utterly bewildered; without a moment's warning, she was crushed down by this burden.

In her daze, she even had a strange feeling: What am I doing here?

Shouldn't I be working in Haibei City? What time is it now? Shouldn't I be sitting at my computer reconciling accounts? Verifying the entire ledger for that misplaced decimal point?

Why am I here? What am I doing here?

Hasn't it been several days since I returned to my secret base? Are the osmanthus flowers there blooming with extreme fragrance? The purple little flowers of the vitex should have withered long ago...

No one has cleaned the secret base these past few days; has it already become overgrown with weeds? Have new branches grown on my rattan chair?

Countless inexplicable thoughts floated in her mind; walking down the unfamiliar streets of Mist City, she was dazed, unsure of where she was, as if in a dream.

"No leads at all!" Wei Chang'an sighed.

Yang Yi suddenly snapped back to awareness, realizing where she was and what she was doing.

She suddenly understood her inner thoughts: she was thinking of the secret base again, merely to escape.

Whenever the pressure became too great, she wanted to run away.

She was accustomed to detaching herself from the present moment, going to a safe, peaceful place known to no one, to soothe the sense of ungroundedness that always floated in her heart and to shake off that feeling of drifting helplessness.

She had never thought of becoming the "First Awakened One," or a "God of Humanity," to bear a responsibility she had never dared nor wished to bear; her greatest dream had once been to be forgotten, to blend into the masses, to hide among the ordinary people, and become a single drop of foam in the ocean's waves.

Now, however, she had been forcibly lifted by the waves and surges, becoming a bright moon on the sea's surface.

Does anyone care whether I actually like this or not? She thought in her daze.

But another thought rose up: Given you such power, if you don't do it, who will? This responsibility isn't given to you; it is given to the lottery ticket on your person. Unless... you can hand the lottery ticket over to someone else...

"Are we just going to search aimlessly like this?" Wei Chang'an sounded a bit impatient.

The three of them walked to a park where vegetation was lush, few people were present, and the mist was denser than elsewhere.

Suddenly, Yang Yi's expression shifted; she froze in place: "Careful! There's something in the mist!"

Wei Chang'an and Chen Chen Yushu stood ready as if facing a great enemy.

Rustling sounds came from the woods, as if countless insects were moving rapidly, or like countless snakes slithering across the sand.

In a moment, a long black shadow burst violently from the mist and lunged at the three of them.

Even though they were prepared, they were still startled by the monster's appearance.

It was a long, centipede-like monster—a centipede made of human bodies, with countless arms, hands, legs, and feet jumbled together to form its legs.

And along its long body, countless eyes were scattered everywhere, tangled and growing chaotically with mouths, nostrils, ears, navels, hair, and other organs, forming an image more deformed and more unsettling than any postmodern painting.

Before it even attacked, merely seeing its form caused a psychological pollution.

A cold, numbing sensation invaded Yang Yi's body.

She felt her neck stiff; lifting her head felt like moving a long-neglected puppet, and all the blood in her body seemed to have congealed.

Even her thoughts became rigid.

Hurry! Once it gets close, you will be fused and become part of it!

Yang Yi screamed internally; her form within her sea of consciousness twisted, and the cold numbness on her body instantly vanished.

A flash of psychic power passed; the human centipede was severed into two pieces and fell to the ground.

Having cut off the monster's mental attack, Chen Chen Yushu and Wei Chang'an recovered as well; countless blades and wind blades danced wildly in the air, and in an instant, the human centipede was chopped into a pile of rotten flesh.

"This thing... it was originally all people..." Wei Chang'an said heavily.

The minced meat on the ground continued to wriggle incessantly; countless flesh buds swayed and grew like sprouting grass in spring, connecting with one another, showing signs of reassembling.

This powerful vitality shook all three of them simultaneously.

"Old Chen! Your arm!" Wei Chang'an shrieked, his voice cracking.

Yang Yi looked closely and saw that a small finger had somehow crawled onto Chen Chen Yushu's elbow; now, that small finger was frantically burrowing into his flesh.

"Swish!" A flash of cold light passed; half an arm fell to the ground, and Chen Chen Yushu cried out in pain.

It turned out that Chen Chen Yushu had used his metal ability to sever his own arm.

Such decisiveness startled Yang Yi.

"Quick! Yang Yi! Take him to the hospital! I'll clean up the mess!" Wei Chang'an shouted.

The situation was urgent; Yang Yi swept up Chen Chen Yushu and the severed arm with her psychic power and rushed quickly toward the hospital.

It was her first time in Mist City, and she was completely unfamiliar with the geography; while frantically checking her phone for the nearest hospital address, she watched the severed arm gradually being eroded and deformed.

She understood that Chen Chen Yushu would likely be disabled this time.

Although she knew the casualty rate for Awakened Ones on the front lines was high, seeing it suddenly happen to someone beside her, and to her own companion, was something she could not accept at the moment.

If only I had been a bit more careful...

"Do you know?" Chen Chen Yushu looked at the scenery rushing by below and said softly, enduring the pain: "How much I envy you!"

Yang Yi looked at him in astonishment; this man, who was always taciturn, this man who in her eyes was even somewhat overly arrogant, was telling her in this situation that he envied her.

"I envy your talent! I envy that you don't need to try hard, yet you possess such powerful power from birth! Things that require us to fight desperately to achieve are, for you, just a matter of a single thought." Chen Chen Yushu looked at her, an emotion suppressed in his eyes.

"When I awakened, I was Grade C—how excited I was then, thinking I had transcended ordinary people and become a unique exception. In my twenty-five years of ordinary life, I finally was no longer a mediocre person, but became a superpowered being!"

"Then I was absorbed into the Awakened Management Bureau. Here, I met many other excellent Awakened ones. I found I was rated Class C—but I was full of confidence. I knew that as long as I relied on effort, on giving my all, on breakthrough after breakthrough, I would eventually become Class B, and even possibly become the one and only Class A. I would become the very top among the Awakened."

His severed arm was firmly clamped by Yang Yi's telekinesis, preventing excessive blood loss, yet his face remained pale, with cold sweat dripping from his forehead.

"Stop talking. We'll talk when you're better," Yang Yi said softly. She had already found the hospital's address; now that the direction was confirmed, she flew forward at high speed.

Chen Chen Yushu ignored her and continued venting: "But then you appeared. You might not even know what shock your scene of punching the sea monster back into the ocean brought to the Awakened at that time... Especially the Fire Demon incident—you shattered the hopes of many Awakened for the future. Your talent is a mockery of those who strive and struggle; your existence is a mockery of other Awakened!"

Yang Yi was speechless, momentarily not knowing what to say.

She had never thought about the problem from this angle before.

Seeing her innocent, even somewhat at a loss appearance, Chen Chen Yushu suddenly grew agitated:

"Yes! What I hate most is this look of yours, as if all this is nothing to you—you want to say, 'I didn't want it to be this way either,' right! Why be so pretentious? With such immense power, you should act superior! You should be arrogant, even looking down on all heroes, despising everyone! The more ordinary you appear, the more it highlights how incompetent, mediocre, and foolish we who rely on effort to rise a level are..."

After handing Chen Chen Yushu over to the doctors, Yang Yi almost fled in panic.

Returning to the place where the monster appeared, Wei Chang'an had already burned the monster to ashes.

"How is Old Chen?" Wei Chang'an asked; it was clear he truly cared for this taciturn colleague.

Thinking of the already twisted severed arm, "He'll probably be disabled..." she said dejectedly.

Wei Chang'an's mood was heavy, and he spoke no more.

The two continued walking along the direction of the thick fog. Yang Yi carefully observed the surroundings while thinking about Chen Chen Yushu's matter.

Finally, she couldn't help but speak: "Chen Chen Yushu said he is very jealous of me, jealous of my talent, because I can easily get everything without effort... while others need to give their all to break through a level..."

Wei Chang'an looked at her in surprise, then smiled openly and shrugged: "Isn't that obvious? Who isn't jealous of you?"

"You too?"

"Of course." Wei Chang'an deliberately spoke in an amazed tone: "Class S! Awakening as Class S right away. With such talent, how could it not make people jealous?"

He shrugged, making the atmosphere seem less solemn, and said humorously: "You haven't even tasted the flavor of effort... Do you know what it feels like to be stuck at a bottleneck, desperately absorbing dark matter, yet your body is like a sieve that can't store energy? Do you know what it feels like to desperately purify energy, trying to reduce impurities in your body to make your moves slightly stronger, only to achieve half the result with twice the effort?"

Yang Yi had never thought of this; she hadn't even realized these problems existed.

Absorbing and purifying dark matter energy was as ordinary for her as eating and drinking; she never thought of it as a problem. How could anyone find eating and drinking difficult?

"I once asked Professor Wu at the Awakened Assessment Institute. I asked him how likely an ordinary Awakened is to reach Class S. I remember, he patted my shoulder and told me that sometimes talent is more important than effort.

"I wouldn't give up, so I asked him again, what kind of state is Class S roughly? He said you've never asked him any questions about dark matter absorption, conversion, and usage; it's probably like an instinct. This might be the state of Class S."

"You see, everyone longs for Rome, but some people are Rome itself. How can this not make people jealous?"

Yang Yi fell silent. She didn't know that to other Awakened, she was such an existence.

$$

After patrolling the hilltops with Wei Chang'an, she vaguely felt the fog seemed somewhat sticky—not physically sticky, but in sensation.

This sensation persisted until nightfall.

At night, the city completely became a "ghost city"; only the light shining through the windows of various residential compounds proved that people still lived in this city.

On the empty highway, on the deserted streets, the streetlamps lonely emitted cold light amidst the swirling fog. Occasionally, one or two barks of a dog came from afar, breaking the silence of the night.

Yang Yi stood in the fog condensed high in the air, overlooking the city.

If all causes originated from the fog, then personally plunging into the densest fog was the only solution she could think of at present.

Her telekinesis slowly spread out like flowing water, extending and retracting soft tentacles to probe into the fog.

More telekinesis flowed along with the movement of the fog. Gradually, the entire urban district was within the coverage range of her telekinesis.

Even if she couldn't temporarily find the cause of the monsters' formation, solving the monsters that had already taken shape could make the city a bit safer.

Thinking this, she spread her telekinesis even faster.

But in a place she couldn't notice, an invisible slime seeped out from the fog, wriggling like something alive, approaching her body suspended in mid-air.

The slime silently crossed the telekinetic barrier and gradually seeped into her skin.

Yang Yi was originally focusing intently on spreading her telekinesis across the entire urban district, searching for the monsters' traces. Suddenly, her expression froze, and her mind became momentarily dazed.

She seemed to see the fog instantly become extremely dense, twisting and forming countless strange images.

For a moment, it was deformed monsters formed from various human tissues; for a moment, it was the desperate curse of the Fire Demon before death; for a moment, it was countless dried corpses crawling towards her from beneath the altar; for a moment, it even formed the image of a little boy wearing a red T-shirt...

Oh, it was that little boy beneath the altar in the Misty Town—she vaguely remembered who this was.

After a moment, the little boy began to wriggle again. A hand extended from his body, gradually a head emerged, and as if it were a parasitic fetus, an adult figure grew out of the child.

Yang Yi's heart shook; she had a bad premonition.

She stared intently at that just-grown figure. She saw him slowly turn around and reveal a sincere yet shy smile to her.

It was Chris.