Chapter 74: Redundant Person

Darkness.

There is no light in the rented room.

The curtains are drawn tightly, cutting off even the city's last lingering warmth.

Liang Chao sits on the cold floor, his back against the mottled wall.

He does not move, does not speak, and even his breathing is barely audible.

The phone screen has long gone dark, lying silently a few meters away like a cold tombstone.

Yet that maliciously distorted face, those two blood‑red huge characters, repeatedly scorch his retina.

【Redundant】

Redundant......

You are redundant.

Mother's cold, disdainful face, and her sharp, grating voice echo in his mind over and over.

"You are a redundant burden!"

He was sold because he was redundant.

He was bullied because he was redundant.

He succeeded in finding his parents, yet was abandoned again because he was redundant.

His very existence in this world is a redundant thing.

Time has lost its meaning.

After an unknown amount of time, Liang Chao finally moves.

He rises like a wind‑up puppet, his movements stiff, and turns on that battered second‑hand flashlight.

The screen lights up, reflecting his pallid face.

He creates a new document.

Then, he begins typing on the keyboard.

He is calm, calmer than ever before.

Over ten thousand words.

He condenses his brief and tragic life into over ten thousand cold characters.

He writes how his biological parents sold him for fifteen hundred yuan, merely to meet a dowry.

He writes that his adoptive parents died in an accident when he was four, leaving him to live under others' roofs.

He writes that at school classmates stole his lunch and he was trapped in a bathroom and beaten, simply because he had no parents.

He writes how that woman teacher in her forties, under the pretext of "extra lessons," repeatedly molested him, leaving an indelible lifelong shadow.

He writes down the truth about his origins that his grandmother told him before death, reigniting his longing for a "home."

He writes the briefly absurd happiness when he found his biological parents.

He writes about their loving faces in front of the camera and their cold faces behind it.

He writes that sentence, "You are a redundant burden."

He writes how the sentence "I don't want a house; I just want a home" was twisted into greedy extortion.

Finally, he writes:

"I have exhausted all effort to stay alive; I only crave a Sanctuary, a place that can be called 'home.' But it turns out I was wrong."

"From beginning to end, I have been a redundant person."

"A redundant person should never have existed in this world."

After writing the last character, he pulls a plastic bag from under the bed, containing dozens of multicolored pills.

He doesn't use water, and just one by one, he dry‑swallows those pills that bear his final release.

After doing all this, he posts the ten‑thousand‑word essay with his own account on a short video platform.

Then he lies back on the bed, on his side, facing the wall, curled into a ball.

Like a baby in the Mother Body that was never expected.

The internet, at three A. M., completely exploded.

Liang Chao's suicide note, like a deep‑water torpedo, detonated all the night‑surfing netizens.

"WTF! WTF! WTF! Something big happened!"

"He's dead?? Really??"

In the comment sections and shares, at first there was overwhelming shock and sorrow.

Yet that voice lasted less than half an hour.

When the initial shock faded, the blood‑thirsty vultures smelled the scent and came.

"I'm just eating melon, what's it to me? His own mental endurance is low, who to blame?"

"Don't be a troll, maybe it's a new hype? Waiting for a resurrection armor."

"So? Dying makes you great? Dying gives you the right? Occupying public resources, unlucky!"

"LOL, now his parents' house is fully secured, the world lost a scourge, win‑win, folks!"

Voices of sympathy and reflection were soon drowned by more mockery, jokes, and "rational objective" analysis.

His death became another traffic‑driven frenzy.

The accusation he wrote with his life became fodder for others' idle chatter and jokes.

Like a stone thrown into a cesspit.

Apart from splashing a few dirty ripples, nothing changed.

Time passes.

The air in the rental room was completely icy.

The body on the bed had already become rigid.

At that moment.

In the darkest corner of the room, a pure black Shadow slowly peeled away from the wall, like a pool of flowing ink, silently coalescing into a human shape.

The Shadow had no facial features, yet it lifted its head and looked at the corpse on the bed.

In the next second, the consciousness of the "God" descended.

His gaze swept across the extremely shabby rental room, finally landing on the curled, icy corpse.

He could "smell" a thick, unbreakable resentment permeating the air.

It was despair utterly abandoned by the world.

It was the deepest hatred toward one's own existence.

It was the ultimate loneliness of being "unneeded".

"Truly… material perfect enough to be called a work of art."

Chu Che's Shadow clone whispered, with a hint of appreciation and a hint of admiration.

The resentment contained within this young body was pure and clean, without a trace of impurity.

A virtual screen popped up in Chu Che's view.

【Weird Editor】

【Current available karma: 6250 points】

"A spectacular performance always needs an equally spectacular new character to open."

Chu Che's Shadow clone rapidly manipulated the editor.

【Please name the new Weird...】

In Chu Che's mind, those two blood‑red characters floated up.

He smiled faintly and pressed the confirm key.

【Weird naming succeeded!】

【Weird name: Redundant Person】

【Please set Murder Rule:】

Chu Che began to script the posthumous play for this pitiful soul.

【Stage One: The Redundant Person is extremely lonely; it longs for a Sanctuary. Thus it will select a group and disguise itself as a member through cognitive contamination.】

【When any individual in the group, by any means, perceives that the Redundant Person is a disguise, a Fake Person not belonging here, the second‑stage Murder Rule will be triggered.】

【Stage Two: To protect its Sanctuary, the Redundant Person will kill the perceiver and proliferate a new individual, completely replacing the perceiver's existence. Thus it is no longer 'redundant'.】

【As time passes, to individuals with higher karma, the Redundant Person's disguise becomes increasingly clumsy, with more and more 'non‑human' traits appearing, until its Weird essence can no longer be ignored.】

【Special Rule: The Redundant Person's individuals will periodically self‑proliferate, and the proliferated individuals will seek new groups to integrate into;】

【The Redundant Person always possesses the ability to kill and replace original members of a group.】

【Consuming 4000 karma points, rule setting complete......】

【Generating Weird......】

The text on the editor transformed into countless data streams, surging madly into the cold corpse on the bed!

Kak......

A faint sound of bones creaking rang out in the dead silent room.

On the bed, the corpse that should have been lying on its side facing the wall had its neck twisting backward inch by inch at an angle defying human anatomy.

Kak...... Kakda......

One hundred eighty degrees!

That face, turned blue from medication, was fixed straight toward the ceiling!

The next moment!

Those tightly shut eyes suddenly opened!

Only the whites of the eyes and grayish pupils.

Ho......

A non‑human, accordion‑like roar burst from its throat.

Immediately, its already rigid limbs, in an extremely twisted posture, braced the bed frame.

Its body, like a marionette with its strings cut, and like a malformed spider, slowly rose from the bed.

Dad, Mom.......