Chapter 3: Ladder

Familiar ceiling.

The morning alarm rang; Li Cheng opened his eyes and sat up abruptly from bed.

It was a medium-sized bedroom, walls plastered with several game posters, a computer desk at the foot of the bed, and a crumpled backpack lying on the floor.

What happened last night wasn't a dream.

He was still wearing his school uniform; the clothes and pants retained the fishy stench of having been soaked in river water. Looking in the mirror, he saw marks on his neck where it had been cut—though the wounds had already formed a thin scab, invisible unless examined closely.

Why had it healed so fast? Because of the bee monster's sting, or because of that thing called the Divine Corruption fragment?

No time for deep thought; Li Cheng took off his clothes and shoved them into the bottom drawer of the computer desk.

Washing them now was too late, and he couldn't put them in the washing machine—it would stink up the machine.

Then he rummaged from the bottom of the closet, pulled out several packs of desiccant, and placed them with his waterlogged phone inside a sealed bag to dry it out.

He picked out clean clothes and quietly pushed open the door.

The house had four bedrooms, one living room, one kitchen, and two bathrooms, spacious and elegantly decorated. The glass cabinet separating the living room from the dining room was filled with trophies and honor certificates won by his cousins.

Fortunately, his aunt and uncle hadn't woken up yet. Li Cheng rushed into the bathroom and quickly rinsed his entire body, noticing that the wound running through his left shoulder blade had also healed by more than half.

Faint rustling sounds came from the living room—someone in the family had woken up. He turned off the faucet, ready to dry off and put on his clothes to leave.

Hss—

A large number of pale bristles suddenly pierced out from his right forearm. Each was about twenty centimeters long, unnaturally hard, like steel nails.

Caught off guard, Li Cheng involuntarily clenched his hand; with a rip, he tore apart the thick cotton towel that had been soaked in water—no harder than tearing a sheet of paper. His strength far exceeded normal limits.

"Is anyone in there?"

A clear female voice came from outside the bathroom door—his cousin Xue Luomeng.

"It's me, showering." Li Cheng kept the shower running, forcing his voice calm, trying to pry off the bristles on his arm—they wouldn't budge at all.

"Hurry up," Xue Luomeng said, her footsteps retreating from the door; at the same time, the sounds of cooking from the living room grew louder.

Li Cheng absolutely could not leave the house looking like this. His mind flashed again to the taxi driver from last night—growing compound eyes, chelicerae, and membranous wings—finally shot dead by the Special Affairs Bureau.

Wait—something was off. The taxi driver's arms hadn't had anything on them. These pale bristles looked more like the ants that had crawled onto his hand beneath the bridge last night?

What was this? Had he absorbed the ants' genes?

Li Cheng stared blankly at his arm, then suddenly had an idea. He stood on the edge of the bathtub and reached up toward the bathroom heater on the ceiling.

The heater's bright, warm light shone through his arm's skin, illuminating the blood vessels and muscles beneath.

The bristles weren't rootless—they had follicles, and above each follicle was a ring of muscle.

Muscle meant possible control.

Li Cheng focused a strong will, commanding the extra set of muscles to retract the bristles.

Hss—

All the bristles slowly retracted, sinking back beneath the skin. The surface smoothed out as if nothing had ever happened.

Success.

Li Cheng exhaled, slipped the torn towel into his pocket, opened the door with a calm expression—and found Xue Luomeng just about to knock.

"Why did it take so long?"

Xue Luomeng muttered, hugged her clothes, and walked into the bathroom.

Li Cheng's aunt, Li Zhao, was an HR manager at a clothing company; his uncle, Xue Jingming, was a sales manager at a shipping machinery equipment firm. The Xue family was an ancient lineage spanning centuries, with a massive family enterprise and an annual ancestral ceremony.

Both Xue Jingming and Li Zhao were strikingly good-looking; their son Xue Lingyu and daughter Xue Luomeng were textbook handsome and beautiful, drawing stares wherever they walked.

When she was young, Xue Luomeng had clung to Li Cheng, never leaving his side—even closer to him than her own brother. But for some reason, she'd grown cold toward him, treating him like a familiar stranger, just like his aunt.

Even though they attended the same high school, just one grade apart, they only exchanged cold greetings when they met.

Li Cheng had long grown used to his family's attitude. He stepped aside, left the bathroom, returned to his room, and hid the torn towel.

The increased strength wasn't an illusion. Before leaving, he tested it: the originally heavy computer desk, he lifted effortlessly with just his left hand, feeling almost no pressure.

His right hand was even stronger than his left.

————

A breeze brushed his face; Li Cheng took a detour, cycling to the bridge and stopping to gaze far off at the neighborhood he'd passed through last night.

Several old men in white T-shirts played chess under the trees; young men and women in sportswear jogged with earphones on—everything seemed perfectly normal, as if no bloodshed had occurred the night before.

Presumably, the Special Affairs Bureau had cleaned everything up—erased the scene, deleted the surveillance footage.

Li Cheng shivered inexplicably. No human organization could instantly master such skills—they must have gone through a learning and adaptation process.

How many times had the Special Affairs Bureau already performed corpse disposal and information suppression?

Or rather, how long had such anomalies been happening? A year? Three years? Five years?

Li Cheng pulled his scarf up to cover his nose and mouth, silently pedaled off the bridge, driven by intense hunger and itching beneath his arm, and bought ten meat buns and two cups of soy milk at a breakfast stall.

He wolfed them down, still unsatisfied, then went to another shop and bought two steamer baskets of dumplings and a bowl of vegetable-and-pork-noodle soup.

He packed them up, found a narrow alley without surveillance cameras, devoured everything in seconds, and only then did the hunger and the itching beneath his skin subside.

Li Cheng had a feeling—if he didn't eat enough, the bristles would erupt again, just like in the bathroom.

He couldn't go to the hospital; the doctor would almost certainly report the case, and if the Special Affairs Bureau learned of a survivor, they'd likely kill him.

His immediate priority was to understand what was happening.

After careful thought, Li Cheng thought of one person.

————

In the evening, at Zhuoyue Middle School's cafeteria, a petite girl with short hair sat alone in the corner, eating while scrolling on her phone.

She wore a white T-shirt and a gray plaid shirt, thin-framed glasses, and carried a sharp, icy intensity in her eyes.

Logically, a girl this attractive—even without close friends—wouldn't eat alone.

The reason was simple: Yuan Zhixia, from the class next door, was a weirdo.

On the first day of school, while other students nervously introduced themselves, she walked up to the stage and declared loudly: "I'm a genius, and I'm not interested in ordinary humans. If any of you are aliens, time travelers, interdimensional visitors, or superpowered beings, come find me. That's all."

After uttering this cosplay line from Asahina Haruhi, she strolled offstage calmly and began her eccentric life.

Sitting in the last row of the classroom, she never paid attention in class, always wearing earbuds and playing on her phone, yet her grades were always in the top ten citywide; whether it was the Olympiad in Mathematics, robotics competitions, or programming contests, she always won first prize.

The so-called "genius" or "top scorer" were merely other people's limits—not hers.

Many teenage boys and girls admired Yuan Zhixia and wanted to befriend her, but she sincerely lived by her principle of "not being interested in ordinary humans," and remained solitary.

Li Cheng was one of the few people who could speak with her, perhaps because both were members of the school newspaper club and the astronomy club.

He set down his tray beside her and said awkwardly: "Eating?"

"If you've got something to say, say it." Yuan Zhixia glanced at him, then continued tapping her phone, adding the latest wireless radio equipment, metal 3D printers, desktop collaborative robotic arms, and desktop workstations to her Amazon cart.

"Do you have a way to access the foreign internet without being detected?"

Li Cheng asked: "It must completely mask the IP address, block traffic filtering and sniffing analysis, and prevent anyone from tracing or identifying you in any way."

"Oh?"

These words finally caught Yuan Zhixia's interest. She put down her phone and raised an eyebrow. "What do you want to do?"

"Look up some information," Li Cheng replied vaguely.

Yuan Zhixia didn't press further. She reached into her pocket, rummaged through a pile of USB drives, pulled out one, and placed it on the table.

"You know Tor, right? It's a browser package designed to hide your identity and erase traces on the dark web."

Yuan Zhixia said: "This USB drive contains a custom program I wrote. Besides the original anonymity features, it completely patches browser vulnerabilities, blocks traffic analysis, circuit fingerprinting, and any other detection methods—no one can track or identify you."

"Thank you," Li Cheng sighed in relief. "How much?"

"I don't want money," the girl shook her head. "I want you."

"Huh?" Li Cheng's eyes widened in shock.

"What are you thinking? I want you to pretend to be sick in a few days."

Yuan Zhixia leaned back, squinting. "Then hand over the school newspaper's photography duties that day to me."

"What?" Li Cheng seemed to have question marks floating above his head.

The main reason he joined the school newspaper club—beyond his photography skills—was that Ye Jiaying was also in it.

"Wait," Li Cheng suddenly realized. In a few days, the school newspaper's interview subject would be his cousin, Xue Luomeng.

"You're not trying to get close to Luomeng, are you?" he scratched his head, puzzled. "If you want to be friends with her, just go talk to her face-to-face. Why sneak around?"

For some reason, Yuan Zhixia paid special attention to Xue Luomeng, who was a grade below her. At the start of this semester, she had subtly asked Li Cheng if he had any childhood photos of his cousin. Very obvious.

But Li Cheng's sixth sense was certain: Yuan Zhixia was not into girls. Her interest in Xue Luomeng felt more like a pure desire to be friends?

"You sound like an emotional expert," Yuan Zhixia tossed the USB drive to Li Cheng, picked up her tray, and walked off.

(End of Chapter)