Chapter 5: Infection

The school bell rang, and students filed out of the campus one by one.

Luo Zhengxin, with cotton balls stuffed in his nose, slipped into the back seat of a Mercedes S-Class, closed the door, and leaned against the window in silence.

"Oh my, Xinxin, what happened to your nose? Did you bleed?"

Luo's mother, dressed in mink, frowned with concern as she stroked her precious son's face.

Luo Zhengxin pulled away from his mother's hand, unwilling to answer, and muttered, "From playing basketball."

"Can playing basketball cause this? Your nose skin is scraped off—it'll leave a scar! Tell Mom who bumped into you; I'll report it to the school board! This is outrageous!"

Luo's mother, who never took a loss in business, couldn't bear to see her beloved son bullied; she immediately pulled out her phone and called the homeroom teacher to find out what happened.

Luo Zhengxin was already used to this family atmosphere; he leaned against the car window, eyes vacant, his mind replaying every moment from the basketball court.

Why didn't I catch that slow ball?

Why didn't I catch it?

Meanwhile, Li Cheng, the very person constantly on everyone's mind, was riding his bike happily, turning into an alley and stopping in front of Zhao's Dessert Shop, beginning his part-time job.

A few hours later, after his regular shift ended, Uncle Zhao told Li Cheng to dispose of the remaining ingredients.

Cakes, desserts, breads—all perishable, with very short shelf lives; if unsold, they had to be thrown out.

In the past, Uncle Zhao couldn't bear to waste them and gave the leftovers away, but the results weren't pleasant.

Li Cheng carried a bundle of cakes to the back alley, then suddenly stopped.

That same hunger from the morning returned, like a tide, each wave stronger than the last.

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After hesitating a moment, Li Cheng looked up at the top of the alley and saw no surveillance cameras; he opened the cake box and devoured it greedily.

His stomach seemed insatiable, feeling no sense of fullness; after eating enough sweets to spike his blood sugar to dangerous levels, he still wasn't satisfied. After bidding his boss farewell, he rode to the night market and bought several boxes of fried pork cutlets and fried chicken cutlets.

"This hunger is definitely abnormal. In the morning, several people's breakfasts satisfied me; now I need massive amounts of cloying sweets and pork cutlets. If this keeps increasing, even gorging on compressed biscuits won't be enough."

His thoughts grew heavy as he calculated how long his hard-earned savings would last.

Back home, his aunt Li Zhao stood in the kitchen with a grave expression, talking on the phone with colleagues about the new executive being sent down to the company in a few days.

Her husband, Xue Jingming, lay on the sofa watching a sports program on TV; her nephew Xue Lingyu and niece Xue Luomeng were studying TOEFL exercises in the study, preparing for possible study abroad.

"I'm back." Li Cheng called out casually as he changed his slippers; only Uncle Xue responded.

Fine, he was used to it. Li Cheng returned to his bedroom and plugged the USB drive given to him by Yuan Zhixia into his computer.

Yuan Zhixia truly deserved her reputation as a genius; her program was strikingly simple in interface and powerfully practical.

After thinking for a moment, Li Cheng completely deleted nearly all software on the computer, including the input method, then covered the webcam with sticky notes and stuffed sound-dampening cotton into the speakers.

Only then did he climb the ladder, log onto the foreign web, and begin his search with Prometheus Laboratory.

Prometheus Laboratory, founded ten years ago, was originally an obscure auto parts company in Maine, USA.

Five years ago, a new, energetic CEO took over and suddenly unveiled an industrial robot named Daedalus.

This eight-axis industrial robot was inexpensive, equipped with mature intelligent programming, and capable of handling all tasks—including welding, assembly, painting, material handling, sealing, and inspection.

It could reduce the number of workers needed on an assembly line by 20% to 70%.

More crucially, given sufficient raw materials, Daedalus could replicate itself!

With this robot, Prometheus Laboratory overtook its competitors, swiftly surpassing the four industry giants—FANUC Corporation, ABB (formed by Sweden's Asea and Switzerland's Brown Boveri), Germany's KUKA, and Yaskawa Electric Corporation.

A year later, it acquired Yaskawa Electric and officially entered Japan.

Since then, Prometheus continued its rapid expansion, repeatedly acquiring, growing, and acquiring again, expanding into ever broader fields.

Automobile manufacturing, electronics manufacturing, aircraft manufacturing, food and beverage processing, mining, energy, housing construction, infrastructure development, aerospace, brain-machine interfaces.

Worse still, Prometheus maintained its own police force and prisons—through contracts with the U. S. government, it deployed armed personnel into Birmingham, New Orleans, Memphis, Baltimore, Detroit, and other cities to combat crime and maintain order. A real-life version of RoboCop.

In war-torn regions outside the U. S., it directly trained local armies to protect its regional branches.

If Samsung Group was a monopolistic entity entrenched in South Korea, where ordinary people could live their entire lives within its ecosystem,

then Prometheus was a colossal octopus, its tentacles reaching every corner and domain across the globe, sustaining its technological and industrial dominance through astronomical annual investments in R&D.

"No wonder that suited man called August could carry a gun in the city."

Li Cheng rubbed his chin and searched for Perez. He found Perez was not a senior executive at the Yinzhou branch, but a mid-level head of security, with a security manager above him.

"Try searching for Special Affairs Bureau?"

This search yielded far less; whether Li Cheng entered the term in Chinese or English, using its abbreviation or full name—Special Affairs Bureau—he could find no detailed information.

But when he searched for 【Shadow Realm】, 【Godspawn】, and 【Lord of Insects】, he accidentally found several chat screenshots on a niche, anonymous foreign forum specializing in urban legends.

OP hacker: Look what I caught! Mothman!

The attached photo showed a blurry, hunched silhouette taken at dusk, with enormous wings on its back.

hacker: Last night, my father and I were driving home to our farm and captured this thing. When it saw our headlights, it dropped the deer and fled into the woods.

calvo: This photo is so blurry—did you take it with your front door lock?

barkle: This blur reminds me of 9/11. I was standing right under the World Trade Center, photographing people losing their lives. My uncle was among them.

calvo: Brother, I'm sorry for your loss. May your uncle rest in peace.

barkle: Thank you. He was once the best pilot in the Middle East.

calvo:???

hacker:???

hacker: Forget it, I'll keep going. I swear this photo is 100% real. Mothman really does appear near our farm. Dead insects keep appearing mysteriously in the fields, a sheep vanished without a trace, and today, a cow's back bore wounds like those left by a vampire's bite.

calvo: You're making it sound convincing. Too bad it's not fifty years ago—otherwise this photo might've gone viral on TV.

david:. OP, if I were you, I'd hide in the basement right now. It's nighttime there, right?

hacker: Yeah, so what?

david: Outside Earth, there exists something called 【Lord of Insects】. Imagine it as a dying god from another world—the 【Godspawn】. Half its body shattered into countless fragments, falling through rifts into our world. Any organism infected by a 【Lord of Insects】 fragment enters a state of 【Genetic Hunger】: it must periodically absorb different biological genes and consume massive amounts of food to digest them, then absorb new genes and eat again, repeating the cycle endlessly.

david: Any measure that delays, prevents, or breaks the cycle will cause the victim's body to undergo significant mutation. They turn into mindless monsters that seek out other victims and spread the infection.

david: The so-called Mothman you filmed was probably a wild wolf or black bear at first. It was infected by the 【Lord of Insects】, and its body kept mutating—first absorbing genes from small insects, then mammals like rats, then sheep, deer, and even cattle. And finally, humans.

david: You said earlier you live on a farm, so you probably don't have any neighbors nearby, and it's the dead of night, so the FBI's Special Incidents Division definitely won't make it in time. Hide, quick.

david: It's coming for you.

(End of Chapter)