Chapter 567: Happy Smile

3:07 a. m.

Pollution Isolation Zone 01.

Former Dongdao capital, Ginza Commercial Street.

Outside the Federation's Blockade Line, twelve unmanned watchtowers were still operating.

Searchlights swept across the sea, across the broken bridge, across the thirty‑meter‑high alloy isolation wall.

Warning signs in three languages hung on the outer side of the wall.

No approaching.

No filming.

No disseminating images from inside the zone.

Violators will be treated as Quasi‑S‑level contamination exposure.

This rule is not just a scare.

A year ago, an overseas influencer crew sneaked a boat close, and for clicks, used a telephoto lens to capture half of a smiling face poster inside the wall.

After returning, the seven people laughed for seventeen minutes in the livestream.

In the end, the livestream was shut down and the servers were physically destroyed.

Seven corpses remain locked in the North American Union's Seventh Containment Depot to this day.

Their faces were split all the way to the ears.

After that, the name 'Pollution Isolation Zone 01' became an unsearchable term on the global internet.

Ordinary people only remember that Dongdao is gone.

The Investigation Bureau's files put it more bluntly.

Dongdao — total failure.

Inside the isolation wall, the city still looks as it did on the day the disaster broke out.

The mall doors stood open, glass shards covering the floor.

Vending machines lay overturned by the roadside, their drink bottles deformed long ago, labels faded.

The subway entrance was sealed with tape, the tape covered in smiley stickers.

Those stickers were not put up by people.

Sometimes they appear on the wall.

Sometimes on a car window.

Sometimes they stick to the face of a desiccated corpse wearing a school uniform.

Along both sides of the street, posters are piled thick.

Red, white, yellow.

All of them show grinning faces.

Some are in a child's drawing style.

Some feature advertising models.

Some are political propaganda.

Some are real human faces cut out from old photos.

They sway gently in the night wind.

The paper rubs, making a fine rustling sound.

This urban area has no living creatures.

Not even rats.

Not even insects.

But at a street corner in a surveillance blind spot, a person suddenly appeared on the inner side of the isolation wall.

The man wore a pure white long robe.

The fabric was clean and draped well; walking through the dust‑covered ground, he stayed spotless.

His hair hung to his shoulders, the ends tied with a white cord.

His face was young and tranquil.

It was not the doctor‑like gentleness of Chu Che.

Nor the mad elegance of Sai Men.

He resembled more the deity statues enshrined in a temple.

He felt distant from people.

Lu Dou walked past the first row of shops.

A smiling‑face poster peeled off the rolling shutter and drifted to his feet.

The woman on the poster wore Dongdao's old‑era work attire; black lines crawled from her eye sockets, and the split in her mouth had stretched past her ears.

The paper barely touched the tip of Lu Dou's shoe before stopping.

Lu Dou lowered his head.

"Are you still in pain?"

No reply.

The smile on the poster began to contract.

The torn flesh‑like lines slowly closed, the black lines retreated from the eye sockets, and fine white scraps drifted from the paper's edges.

Those scraps spun in the air a few times, turning into smile‑shaped petals.

Those fragments spun a few times in the air, turning into smiling-face petals.

They fell to the ground and dissipated.

Lu Dou continued forward.

He walked very slowly.

Each step was not hurried.

But the area he passed through, the smiling faces stuck on the walls began to turn pale, as if dirt had been erased by an eraser.

Resentment offered no resistance.

They would originally attack anyone who perceived them.

But in front of Lu Dou, they became very obedient.

Obedient to a somewhat pitiful degree.

Behind Lu Dou, a black shadow followed.

The shadow was long, moving close to the ground, its head position stretched high, without a fixed form.

It sometimes resembled a person, sometimes a beast, and at times split into many arms.

At the end of each arm was a smiling face.

Those smiling faces had no skin, only cracked patterns.

The shadow stopped three steps behind Lu Dou.

Lu Dou stopped at the entrance of a movie theater.

Half of the movie theater's outer wall had collapsed.

The ticket window still had a movie flyer from three years ago posted.

On the flyer, the male and female leads showed a businesslike smile, their teeth very white.

After the disaster broke out, those two faces were contaminated and rewritten, the smile stretched, the eyes turned into two holes.

Lu Dou raised his hand, fingertips pressing on the flyer.

The paper surface began to heat up.

The contamination receded.

The two actors returned to their original appearance.

But the next second, new black lines seeped out from beneath the flyer.

Lu Dou withdrew his hand.

"Even happiness has to rely on advertising sales."

He looked at that faded flyer.

"No wonder it ended up like this."

The shadow emitted a hoarse hiss.

That wasn't language, yet it conveyed a clear meaning.

It was seeking credit.

This island was indeed its earliest paradise.

Visual transmission.

Image transmission.

Audio transmission.

Smiling face infection.

Self-harm.

Attack.

Military counterattack.

Rule mutation.

Finally, the entire Dongdao was crossed out by the Federation.

The shadow remembered that period.

Laughter filled the streets everywhere.

People, while crying, slipped blades into their mouths.

The broadcaster slit his own face, yet still told the screen, "Thanks for watching."

A mother held her child at the edge of the rooftop, saying, "Baby, don't be afraid, it won't be sad soon."

The shadow liked that scene.

It ate pain from every face.

That pain was chewy.

Lu Dou, however, did not praise it.

He merely turned his body, looking toward the shadow.

"This is your original masterpiece, right?"

The shadow lowered its body.

A hoarse response rolled from its throat.

Yes.

Lu Dou nodded.

He was not angry.

He felt no disgust.

He raised his hand, closing the jawbone of a white skeleton collapsed at the theater entrance.

The white skeleton's lower jaw was pulled wide open, three teeth missing.

Lu Dou's movements were very light.

This world is full of internal strife and misfortune.

Humans are always fighting.

Fighting for money, fighting for power, fighting for a bed, fighting for a spot, fighting over who lives, fighting over who deserves to die.

They pass their pain on to the next batch of people, then say they can't help it.

The black shadow didn't understand these.

It only understood the two words 'pain'.

Then the smile on its body opened.

Lu Dou looked at it.

You're the same.

The black shadow stopped.

You made them laugh, but you didn't make them happy.

You just repackaged the pain.

It's too crude.

The smiles on the black shadow's body closed one after another.

It began to feel afraid.

This wasn't fear on the level of battle.

It was suppressed by a more complete idea.

Lu Dou did not continue blaming.

He walked up the steps in front of the movie theater and stood under the half-collapsed sign.

All the smile posters on the street turned toward him.

There was no wind.

Yet the paper surfaces all lifted at once.

Countless split smiles stared at the man in white.

Deep in the quarantine zone, a TV tower suddenly lit up.

Fragments of old news footage flashed across the broken screen.

The host's face split down to the ears, still broadcasting the evacuation notice from the day of the disaster.

Please, citizens, remain calm.

Please do not view any smile images.

Please do not answer calls from strangers.

Please do not believe rescue videos from friends and family.

After listening, Lu Dou lightly shook his head.

They can't even believe a plea for help.

This is how humans survive.

Suspicion, isolation, scrutiny, blockade.

Those who survive are also trained to not dare trust others.

The black shadow crouched low, motionless.

It wanted to escape.

But the smile pollution covering all of Dongdao was gathering around Lu Dou.

Black-red patterns crawled out of the cracks in the street.

Billboards fell off.

Smile stickers on the car windows flew up.

The seals on the subway entrance were lifted.

One after another, faces emerged from the darkness.

Those were the people who died here back then.

They had no complete consciousness.

Only the emotional remnants left after the Laughing Demon gnawed at them remained.

Lu Dou opened his arms.

The cuffs of his long robe drooped.

He stood there, accepting the gaze of the entire city.

I don't like what that hidden deity is doing.

He treats pain as medicine.

He makes humanity learn order through fear.

It's very effective.

And it's very cold.

The black shadow heard the name Chu Che, and all the smiles on its surface twitched.

Lu Dou continued, 'I also don't like the Gospel Church.'

'That Sai Men, he's too noisy.'

'He constantly turns others' tragedies into a show, and his commentary is overly dense.'

Speaking up to this point, Lu Dou paused.

However, he is right about one thing.

Humans indeed need to be pushed.

But the direction of the push shouldn't be greater endurance.

Lu Dou raised his head, gazing at the broken red warning light atop the TV Tower.

I will reorganize this cruel world.

Let humanity live in endless happiness.

No internal conflict.

No betrayal.

No hunger.

No signature sheets at the sickbed.

No parents kneeling in the corridor begging for help.

No children becoming statistics in the news.

The black shadow raised its head.

For the first time, it sensed something from Lu Dou.

Not pity.

It is resolve.

Lu Dou's tone remained gentle.

For this, a little bodily sacrifice is necessary.

The whole city fell silent for half a second.

Afterward, all the smiling faces opened simultaneously.

The wall plaster peeled off.

Papers rose into the air.

Posters, photographs, phone screens, advertising displays, newspapers, and the already blackened barcode scanners on convenience store counters all lit up.

On every screen appeared the same smiling face.

Lu Dou reached out.

Palm facing down, he pressed lightly.

Those smiling faces were compressed.

Not destroyed.

They were organized.

The originally chaotic resentment was wrapped in a layer of white rules and gathered toward the center of the street.

The black shadow let out a hiss.

The smiling faces on it were also sucked away.

It wanted to retreat, but there was no way behind it.

Lu Dou looked at it, his tone light.

Don't be afraid.

I am not punishing you.

I am improving you.

The black shadow's body was stretched, then pressed back.

Its limbs split into more branches, each tip sprouting a new smiling face.

Those smiling faces were no longer merely split.

They began to become neat.

Eyes curved upward.

Teeth aligned neatly.

The expression was so standard it felt uncomfortable.

Lu Dou compressed all the lingering smiling-face resentment on Dongdao into a white ring.

In the middle of the ring, the black shadow writhed in pain.

It was originally the remnant of Lingmu Jianer's wish.

Now, it has been seized by Lu Dou and rewritten into a higher goal.

Happiness.

Obedience.

Unity.

No longer sorrowful.

No longer contemplating pain.

No longer creating contradictions.

The black shadow burst into wild laughter.

Laughter squeezed out from each of its faces, piling up across the whole street.

Its body rapidly expanded, the skeleton turned outward, and from beneath the black skin layer countless white faces emerged.

Each face smiled very standardly.

Too standard.

Lu Dou withdrew their hand.

A white circular ring fell onto the black shadow's head, turning into an invisible crown.

The black shadow lay on the ground, panting, twitching, undergoing metamorphosis.