Chapter 37

Large-scale memory alteration? No, it's not memory alteration—if it were only memory, it couldn't fool surveillance cameras.

It's more like cognitive contamination.

Is that even possible?

Li Cheng unconsciously slowed his steps, cold sweat suddenly breaking out on his forehead.

The more he tried to think, the more his memories of the spider blurred, until he briefly forgot why he was standing here, or why he was walking forward.

"When someone is eaten by the giant spider, their family and friends forget them entirely, as if they never existed. People fabricate a plausible explanation."

The small spider creature, its head covered in white gauze, murmured to itself: "A child's parents were taken and eaten, so adults all believe the child has always been an orphan with no mother or father—even the child believes it too."

"A factory worker was taken and eaten, so adults all believe the factory has always been short-staffed, no matter how hard it tries to hire."

"I secretly saved many people in the mall. But after they left, they forgot the giant spider—and forgot me too."

"."

Perhaps because the tone was too familiar, Ye Jiaying suddenly stopped, her voice trembling: "Yang Yang Ling?"

The small spider creature froze mid-step, then slowly turned its legged body around.

Hum—

A subway train roared past, its wind lifting the white gauze from its head, revealing its face.

On the left side, its head was indistinguishable from a normal spider monster: four single eyes, chelicerae, mouthparts.

On the right side, half a human girl's face—about seven years old—was unmistakably familiar.

Boom!

Li Cheng felt as if a thunderclap had exploded inside his skull.

Lately, the fifth-grade classroom has been filled with a mysterious rotting stench.

Students and teachers keep tripping over something on the right aisle.

Homeroom teacher Yang Hui suddenly changed her personality, becoming irritable.

A flood of fragmented memories surged into his mind. Everything now made sense.

Her name was Yang Ling, daughter of homeroom teacher Yang Hui.

Her father died young while performing a heroic act; her mother, to care for her, had her wait after elementary school dismissal in the high school classroom, sitting in the seat to the right of the podium.

Every day after class, Li Cheng and the other students loved to tease her; if she was in a good mood, she'd sweetly say, "Goodbye, big brother, big sister."

The moment he recalled her, Ye Jiaying's related memories began vanishing rapidly, like a receding tide.

She could only press her palm to her forehead, desperately repeating the name: "Yang Ling, you're Yang Ling! I remember you."

"Big sister Ye,"

Yang Ling's half-human face smiled sadly: "How is my mother lately?"

"Your mother? Your mother is Yang Hui? She, she's fine lately, just a bit irritable. Wait—you're Yang Ling? Your mother is Yang Hui?"

Ye Jiaying slapped herself hard across the face to prolong the memory in her mind: "I'll remember you. I'll call the police and get help for you."

"Thank you, Big Sister Ye, but it's useless. My 'existence' has already been eaten. I can't leave here."

"It won't be useless!" Ye Jiaying tore off her hairpin and carved Yang Ling's name into her wrist with its metal edge.

"Even if you carve the name, you'll forget it once you leave."

Yang Ling whispered: "Even if you see the name, you won't remember anything about me."

She stopped walking and led the three of them to the subway platform.

The platform bustled with people; pedestrians, each shrouded in shadow, waited silently for the train.

Ding-dong.

As the indicator light lit up, a train arrived. If the three boarded it and traveled a few kilometers, they'd escape the Shadow Realm and return to reality.

And forget all of this nightmare.

"Meeting you big brothers and sisters, knowing my mother's doing okay—I'm already so happy."

Yang Ling stood before the train doors, smiling: "Go now."

"."

Li Cheng stood motionless, right hand pressed over his face, fingers digging deep into his scalp, expression unreadable.

"Mr. Da Zai Zhi?" Yuan Zhixia asked, puzzled.

"Give me money," Li Cheng suddenly spoke, holding out his palm toward Yang Ling: "One yuan."

"I have it." Ye Jiaying hesitantly pulled out a one-yuan coin from her purse, but Li Cheng didn't move.

Yuan Zhixia snatched the coin and handed it to Yang Ling, who extended two legs to pinch it and place it in Li Cheng's warm palm.

"Thus, the pact is sealed."

Li Cheng took the one-yuan coin, nodded, then sharply turned and strode back along the path toward the mall.

"Mr. Da Zai Zhi, where are you going?!"

"She saved my life, so I gave her a ninety-percent discount—I returned her life."

Li Cheng said without looking back: "If leaving the mall means forgetting everything about that spider, then here—I'll kill it."

Blood boiled hot, heart pounded violently, gums bled furiously, tongue once again tasted thick, sweet blood.

The infection of the Lord of Insects and the gene suppressant—two mutually exclusive forces—clashed within Li Cheng, suppressing his body.

Until now.

He pulled from inside his clothes a metal cylinder, slightly smaller than a thermos, filled with wood shavings, containing the pupa of the long-horned rhinoceros beetle, still over a month from hatching.

He removed the pupa and pressed a drop of blood amber onto it.

Upon contact with living tissue, the blood amber instantly dissolved, seeping into the pupa.

Powerful energy surged within the pupa, drastically shortening the normally long pupal stage; the soft chrysalis first hardened, then cracked open.

Li Cheng held the rhinoceros beetle, just emerging from its pupal shell, in his palm.

Cold wind blew through the subway tunnel; the newborn beetle's soft, pure-white elytra rapidly hardened and changed color, taking on a black metallic sheen.

Its long horn was massive and sharp, its carapace solid and thick, its body nearly thirty centimeters long—far exceeding the species' individual limits, like a miniature tank. A worthy bearer of the name Heracles.

The hierarchical bond in its bloodline made the beetle docilely prostrate itself on Li Cheng's palm.

Li Cheng no longer suppressed the effect of 【Gene Hunger】, letting the skin of his palm sink in as he began absorbing the genes of this mutant long-horned hercules beetle.

Hunted by monsters, infected by the Lord of Insects, transformed into a non-human form, then learning his lifespan was only two months left, and being treated by the corporate organization as a rare experimental subject worthy of a live dissection.

From childhood on, he had been constantly indoctrinated by teachers, society, and the media to believe in the official ideology.

But in the face of naked cost-benefit calculations, the Special Affairs Bureau would never spend astronomical resources to rescue someone who wasn't even a Player.

All he could get was a bullet that would blow his skull apart.

He was a monster in the Special Affairs Bureau's eyes, yet the Special Affairs Bureau hadn't even managed to clean up the real monsters right under its nose.

"Fuck them."

Brand-new genes reshaped his body's shell; black armor-like carapace grew on Li Cheng's cheeks, forehead, chest, spine, and other areas, sharp barbs extended from his elbows, and a sky-piercing horn sprouted from his frontal bone.

Boom!

He kicked the mall's employee corridor door; with a loud "Clang!", the iron door slid ten meters across the ground before slowly crumbling into flying ash.

The enormous noise startled the entire demon nest; all the spider-fiends stopped moving and looked downward.

Crack.

Li Cheng rolled his neck, shook his arms, and popped out his mantis-arm bone blades, now much longer than before.

(End of this chapter)