Chapter 397: Side Story 1 - Sheep Horn (Bai Mu Yun Chapter)

Side Story 1 - Sheep Horn (Bai Mu Yun Chapter)

【This chapter is a personal biography of the character Bai Mu Yun, set for his birthday on March 20, so it's released as an extra.】

【The content mainly fills in the character's background, not closely related to the main text.】

1. Wool

Bai Mu Yun died in spring.

That day the weather was fine; the March wind blew the hem of Bai Mu Yun's khaki coat, making it flutter.

He stood on the outer passage of the cloud cotton sheep breeding area, clutching a sketchbook, his pencil tip continuously drawing design drafts on it.

Herds of cloud cotton sheep moved slowly under the sunset, like a large patch of dandelion seeds blown by the wind onto the ground.

「Xiao Bai, how do you feel? This place isn't bad, right? 」

The voice suddenly came from behind him, carrying an excessively eager greasiness.

Bai Mu Yun turned his head and saw the senior who nominally led the team for his field trip.

This senior has hardly any notable works in recent years, but relying on his father being the owner of the Dome's largest cloud cotton sheep farm, he holds considerable status in the industry.

Cloud cotton sheep are a rare low-rank Aberrant Species that can be called docile, and their wool is a source for many high-end fabrics; this senior also always gets the best raw materials, often appearing in the joint credits of major design projects under the pretense of 'providing materials'.

At that time, Bai Mu Yun had just become a promising designer favored by nobles, with various invitations flying to him like snowflakes, yet he alone accepted this field trip invitation from the 'senior'.

He had just accepted a design commission related to this, and indeed wanted to gain some inspiration from it.

But Bai Mu Yun at that time had not yet learned one thing: how to receive all praise without hurting anyone.

「The environment here is great; I feel the inspiration in my mind is endless. 」

「Really? Then you ought to check every place. 」

Bai Mu Yun thought that as long as he was sincere enough, hardworking enough, and humble enough, he could dispel all hostility.

But he was wrong.

Called a field trip, it was actually a carefully designed trap.

Bai Mu Yun was brought into the core area of the cloud cotton sheep pen; the cloud cotton sheep have extremely low aggression, but they are still Aberrant Species, and moreover, those sheep had been pre-injected with a drug to make them go mad.

When that senior pushed Bai Mu Yun into the cloud cotton sheep pen, he heard that person's sinister voice.

「The cake is only this big; if you eat it all by yourself, what will we eat? 」

Bai Mu Yun's shoulder was sliced by a sheep's horn, getting smeared with mucus containing mutation factors.

2. Mutation

Bai Mu Yun did not die, but it was worse than death.

An indescribable burning sensation spread from the wound on his shoulder, as if someone had shoved a red-hot iron wire through his shoulder and pushed it along his blood vessels toward his heart.

Bai Mu Yun gritted his teeth and staggered toward the other side of the sheep pen, trying to get away from this flock of mad Aberrant Species.

But as the smell of blood spread, more cloud cotton sheep gathered around.

Bai Mu Yun's vision began to blur; the symptoms of mutation progressed much faster than recorded in literature, and he had no suppressants, so it seemed he could only wait to die here.

His limbs grew heavier and heavier, his heartbeat raced almost to the point of bursting his chest, and his ears filled with the roar of rushing blood.

He collapsed.

Was it the third or fourth time? He could no longer remember.

But this time he did not get up again; his body curled up in the muddy ground, his fingers spasmodically digging into the soil, blood seeping out from under his nails.

The cloud cotton sheep flock closed in, the one in front lowering its head and touching his nape with its moist nose.

Soft wool, warm breath, and the deadly contamination lurking beneath it all constituted Bai Mu Yun's final complete perception as a human.

3. Self

He spent four months among the sheep, on all fours, nibbling moss, curling up overnight in the mire.

He remembered those days; he remembered a day when a newborn lamb stumbled and fell into the mud, and he nudged it up with his nose.

He watched as the surrounding cloud cotton sheep were sent to the slaughterhouse, carefully avoiding each capture, scraping by in the sheep pen.

Occasionally, large Aberrant Species would forcibly break in, but they were always killed on the spot by specialized units, and their corpses were then transported elsewhere.

Until that day.

That was probably in the fourth month after infection, when the farm workers opened a side gate of the sheep pen and drove the flock to another area for wool collection.

Bai Mu Yun followed behind the flock, head down, on all fours, indistinguishable from the other cloud cotton sheep.

He knew he wouldn't die, although he hadn't bothered to hide.

As he passed a small shed filled with miscellaneous items, Bai Mu Yun's peripheral vision caught a broken mirror on the ground, shards of glass scattered in the mud, the largest piece about the size of a palm.

Bai Mu Yun walked over, his body moving without his control, head lowered like the other sheep, gaze down.

Then he saw what was in the mirror.

White curly wool, black spiral horns, golden horizontal pupils.

It lay on the ground, its limbs slender yet sturdy, its body covered in mud and grass fragments.

That cloud cotton sheep was looking at the mirror, knowing that the reflection was himself.

And it knew this was not how he ought to be.

Bai Mu Yun's consciousness was like a spring pressed to its limit, and in that instant it sprang back.

His brain broke free from unprecedented chaos within a few seconds, all perception suddenly becoming extraordinarily clear, clear to the point of almost driving him mad.

He could smell the earthworms deep in the soil, and hear the workers' voices from several hundred meters away.

He tried to stand up on two legs.

His muscles resisted him; the musculature and bone structure rebuilt for quadrupedal locomotion were forcibly ordered by him to perform a task they had been 'designed' not to excel at.

But he didn't care.

He wanted to stand up, to stand up like a person.

That night, Bai Mu Yun dragged his wounded body and disappeared into the wilderness outside the farm.

Four, Resentment.

He spent three whole weeks learning to walk steadily on two legs; each step felt like his Achilles tendon was being torn, the hoof-like structure on his soles prevented him from sensing subtle ground changes, he fell countless times, and the wounds on his knees and palms never healed.

He then spent two months relearning how to use both hands, but he could no longer control a pencil with his former precision, and he could not even pinch a button.

His language ability recovered the slowest; his vocal cord structure had permanently changed, the sounds he made were at first entirely the bleat of a cloud cotton sheep, then gradually became a broken syllable somewhere between a sheep's cry and a human voice.

In the miners' barracks, he muttered to the wall, over and over reciting his own name.

"Bai—Mu—Yun."

He had chanted it no fewer than ten thousand times, yet his molten-gold horizontal pupils burned with pure hatred.

Hatred, too, is a human emotion.

Five, Dome.

It was a gloomy afternoon when someone found his hiding place.

"Don't be nervous," the person behind him said in a calm voice with an unusual frequency, "I won't hurt you, but your aura is very special."

"I'm Fang Zhiyan," he said without reaching out, apparently noticing Bai Mu Yun's tense physique, "from the Mutation Department of the Dome."

Bai Mu Yun remained silent, unsure whether his voice would lose control in this situation.

"Do you know the Dome?" Fang Zhiyan asked.

Bai Mu Yun nodded; of course he knew—it was a powerful company that had risen only in recent years, with many nobles flocking to it.

"We've noticed you for a while—are you infected by a cloud cotton sheep? But you've retained full human consciousness, which is extremely rare among those infected by the cloud mutation; in fact, according to our records, you're the only case so far."

"We can help you return to human form, reclaim everything that was originally yours, and even make those who harmed you pay their due."

"So, would you consider joining the Mutation Department?"

Six, Obsession.

Bai Mu Yun stayed a long time in Fang Zhiyan's lab; he was the first, and currently the only, being who retained human will after becoming an aberrant species.

He felt his body cut open countless times with a scalpel, while Fang Zhiyan continually injected him with unknown substances, yet he truly gradually became more human.

Only when he saw his hands return to human hands, felt no pain from walking upright, and could speak normally did Bai Mu Yun finally feel it was real.

So, he was still alive.

Fang Zhiyan's experiments never ceased, and he grew more and more like a person.

He gradually mastered his power; perhaps it aligned with his wish, his ability could perfectly conceal the aberrant traits on his body.

When not needed for experiments, Bai Mu Yun would pick up a paintbrush.

Seven, Return.

Bai Mu Yun's return caused a huge stir in the industry; he entered the Dome's design competition with a brand‑new work.

Industry commentators used words like "metamorphosis," "rebirth," "breaking the cocoon," but no one truly understood what lay beneath those embroidered patterns.

On the third day of the exhibition, a young woman lingered long at his booth.

"Mr. Bai, your work is beautiful."

She wore a sharply tailored black coat with a hwamei brooch at the collar—it was not part of the display.

"Especially this one," she raised her hand, "this pattern reminds me of a predator's stance when chasing prey—it's elegant yet dangerous."

Bai Mu Yun's gaze fell on her face.

Meanwhile, that senior stood in a dark corner, watching Bai Mu Yun chat happily with nobles he could never hope to join, his eyes full of fear.

In the end, Bai Mu Yun merely used the Dome's power to send that senior to Fang Zhiyan's lab.

He had wondered what tortures to inflict on him, but once the Dome tore away his sole protection, Bai Mu Yun lost any desire to do so.

He knew Fang Zhiyan hoped to produce another aberrant species that could retain human reason, so the lab would be the best fate for that senior.

There he would fully undergo Bai Mu Yun's experience, and as mere consumable material he would suffer even more cruel, inhumane treatment under Fang Zhiyan.