“Don’t underestimate people,” Lin Juan flexed his fingers. “Who says you need to be big and tall to hurt someone?”
“You’re right.” Black Bro’s laughter stopped. “Weird, though—everyone’s been swapped out today. Where’s that kid Li Yang?”
“Who knows.” Lin Juan shrugged. “Heard someone from your old cell went nuts. You didn’t know?”
“You’re pretty well-informed. Of course I know—he was screaming his head off in the middle of the night, woke us all up.”
Lin Juan casually started probing for information.
He’d dealt with all sorts from every walk of life, so it didn’t take long to buddy up with Black Bro. Probably starved for conversation after so long, Black Bro spilled plenty.
He boasted about his glory days outside—tons of underlings, with a single call, hundreds responded. Too bad he capsized in the gutter, dragged down by Li Yang, and ended up in the clink.
When it came to Li Yang, Black Bro was full of anger.
“Last night, I was sleeping soundly when this piercing scream woke me. I opened my eyes, and there was Li Yang standing at the foot of my bed, staring right at me. Nearly scared me to death.”
Late at night, moonlight filtered through the window, casting faint light. The moment he opened his eyes, Black Bro saw a figure standing by his bed who looked off at first glance, staring blankly at him. Black Bro jolted awake, nearly pissing himself.
Once he realized who it was, Black Bro cursed furiously. “Li Yang, are you trying to die? What the hell are you doing by my bed in the middle of the night? You asking for a beating?”
Li Yang didn’t react, still staring straight at him.
Black Bro felt his hair stand on end under that gaze. He threw off the blanket, got out of bed, and pressed a hand on Li Yang’s shoulder. “What the hell are you doing, kid? You think your Black Bro is easy to bully?”
Li Yang’s neck twisted slowly, and Black Bro heard the sound of rusty screws turning, as if the thing standing before him wasn’t a living person but a malfunctioning corpse.
It was already the middle of the night, and Black Bro scared himself with his own imagination. Gritting his teeth, he said, “I’m not gonna argue with you. It’s late, I need to sleep, so you go back to bed too.”
He figured Li Yang wouldn’t listen, but as soon as he finished speaking, Li Yang stiffly turned his body and shuffled step by step back to his own bed, moving like an old robot. He climbed onto the bed and went still.
Black Bro swallowed hard, scrambled back onto his own bed, pulled the blanket over his head, and refused to listen or look.
He didn’t know how much time passed before a commotion woke him up. When he opened his eyes, it was already bright outside. Several prison guards opened the door, dragged them out, and asked if they’d encountered anything strange last night.
“That’s how I found out from the guards—Li Yang went nuts in the middle of the night, making a huge racket and calling them over, insisting there were bugs.”
“There really were bugs?” Lin Juan feigned curiosity.
“No!” Black Bro wiped his face. “I asked the other inmates. None of us saw anything.”
That matched the information they’d gotten from the Weird Phenomena Special Office.
The other two guys in the same cell hadn’t even woken up, let alone seen any bugs. The only two who’d been awake in the middle of the night were Li Yang and Black Bro.
They couldn’t get anything out of Li Yang, and Black Bro’s story might not be the full truth. To figure out exactly what happened, they had to wait until nightfall.
The prison had a strict schedule. Li Yang had been moved to the next cell over. They were supposed to take him away to a specialized pollution hospital, but Lin Juan suggested leaving him there. What if Li Yang was a key trigger for the weird phenomena?
They needed to recreate the scene as closely as possible.
Lin Juan slept in the spot where Li Yang had been.
Lights out came early. Lin Juan closed his eyes.
It was too early for him to feel sleepy. After lying there a while, he still couldn’t sleep, so he rolled over.
Soon, snoring came from the opposite bunk.
Black Bro had fallen asleep, his snores thunderous.
Lin Juan felt even less sleepy now.
Prison rules didn’t allow phones, but for communication, Lin Juan and the others had special communicators. He held his up to his face and whispered, “You guys asleep yet?”
After a moment, Lu Yanzhou’s similarly hushed voice came through. “Not yet. Can’t sleep?”
“A little. It’s too early now.” Lin Juan was a classic night owl.
On top of that, perhaps it was true that it was easy to go from frugality to luxury but hard to go back. After getting used to the big bed at Lu Garden, the hard single prison bed felt uncomfortable no matter how he lay.
People really were too easily corrupted by their environment.
Lin Juan scorned himself a bit but had no intention of changing.
When you had the means, you had to make yourself comfortable. Back when he couldn’t save money, he’d still done everything possible to live as comfortably as he could.
Having money and not enjoying it was just asking for misery.
Zhuang Yufeng stayed silent, so Lin Juan figured he might be asleep. Since he and Lu Yanzhou were both awake, he started chatting softly with him.
No particular topic—just whatever came to mind. Neither of them felt bored.
After some unknown time, Lin Juan’s voice grew quieter, then faded away.
From the communicator came his faint, even breathing.
Lu Yanzhou closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep accompanied by that soft breathing.
Rustle rustle.
Rustle rustle.
Click clack.
Strange noises started up, and Lin Juan smelled a foul, fishy stench that jolted him awake.
Before he even opened his eyes, he sensed countless chilling gazes fixed on him, making his hairs stand on end uncontrollably.
There really was weird phenomena.
Lin Juan detected pollution aura. He stayed perfectly still as the rustling grew louder.
It was like countless insects crawling over fabric, coming closer from afar, heading straight for him.
Lin Juan opened his eyes.
In the faint moonlight, he saw a figure standing by his bed.
It was Black Bro.
Black Bro’s eyes were wide open, showing only whites. The black scar across his face writhed like a twisted giant worm, slithering downward.
It wasn’t an illusion.
Lin Juan clearly saw tiny legs sprouting around the black scar, scrabbling at Black Bro’s facial skin with a piercing scraping sound.
The black scar twisted, its upper half arching up and slowly rising. At its tip was what looked like a human face.
After waiting a moment, the black scar-turned-black giant worm probed left and right. Its scarlet eyes flashed as its body extended far beyond the original scar’s length, stretching straight toward Lin Juan.
Lin Juan felt the malice hitting him head-on.
“Li Yang went crazy because he saw you.”
It wasn’t a question—it was a statement.
Lin Juan didn’t move a muscle, showing no sign of fear. The strange bug seemed puzzled and wary, not daring to advance further. Instead, it slowly retracted.
Was Lin Juan the type to let it retreat?
He reached out, grabbed the strange bug’s head, and yanked it outward.
“Aaahhhhhh!!!!!” Black Bro, who had been standing motionless, suddenly clutched his face and let out an agonized scream.
The strange bug thrashed in Lin Juan’s grip, its head whipping around as it opened its maw to bite him.
Its mouth was full of razor-sharp teeth, layered densely enough to trigger anyone’s trypophobia.
Lin Juan instinctively let go.
With a wet slurp, the strange bug retracted into Black Bro’s face, rolling around as he screamed.
The rustling grew even louder.
In the blink of an eye, Lin Juan saw that the floor, walls, and bed were crawling with black bugs.
They were like massive centipedes, the largest ones half an arm long.
Legs sprouted along the sides of the strange bugs’ bodies. The main difference from the one on Black Bro’s face was that these didn’t have human faces on their heads. At a casual glance, they were just oversized centipedes.
With all this commotion, Zhuang Yufeng and Lu Yanzhou woke up too. The three of them were nearly surrounded by the bug swarm. Lin Juan was some distance from Lu Yanzhou, so he chose to subdue Black Bro first.
That was no trouble for Lin Juan—it was what he should have done anyway—but no one expected countless strange bugs to pour out from the restrained Black Bro.
Those strange bugs made a beeline straight for Lin Juan.
Lin Juan found it tricky.
Dealing with one, a few, or even a dozen strange bugs was easy, but these things wouldn’t die.
Even if Lin Juan snapped them in half, they’d regenerate at the break, turning one into two, and keep coming at him.
Lin Juan also had to watch out for sudden lunges from the bugs.
“Doctor Zhuang, got any bug spray?”
With no other choice, Lin Juan wrapped Black Bro up entirely in the bedsheet, tied it tight, and secured him to the bed.
But this wasn’t a long-term solution—the strange bugs would chew through the sheet. Fortunately, Zhuang Yufeng contacted their outside allies right away, and reinforcements arrived soon.
Lin Juan retreated to Lu Yanzhou’s side, keeping the strange bugs away from him.
There were too many strange bugs, so no one noticed that some of the ones buried under layers suddenly lost all vitality and turned to dust without warning.
Sheng Tianzong arrived with backup. His fire ability was highly effective against the strange bugs. Under the extreme heat of Starfire, they writhed and burned to ash.
“Supernatural abilities sure are handy.” Lin Juan took a wet wipe from Lu Yanzhou and scrubbed his hands vigorously.
After wiping, he tossed the wipe in the trash and walked over to Black Bro, who was trussed up like a dumpling. He gave him a kick.
“What’s his deal?”
Scattered strange bugs crawled out from Black Bro’s body. Lin Juan had the vague feeling that Black Bro looked a lot more deflated now.
The kick hadn’t felt right either.
Lin Juan bent down and pulled open the bedsheet.
Inside was only a massive-bellied strange bug with Black Bro’s face.
Strange bugs kept bursting out from the belly of the black giant worm with Black Bro’s face. Black Bro had apparently become an incubator for the strange bugs.
“How did this happen?!” A young ability user exclaimed in shock. “We checked him during the day—his pollution value was barely anything.”
Unless there was close contact with weird phenomena, pollution value couldn’t spike that fast.
“Test him again.” Though Zhuang Yufeng knew full well that Black Bro, now fully mutated, couldn’t have a low pollution value.
An ability user stepped forward with the pollution detector.
Sure enough, the black giant worm that Black Bro had become had a pollution value of eight hundred inside.
It was nearing D-rank anomaly levels.
The strange bugs crawling out of Black Bro were even more centipede-like than the ones Lin Juan had seen before—virtually identical. Their pollution values weren’t high either, like ordinary centipedes.
Lin Juan stared silently at the endlessly emerging centipedes.
“Mr. Lin, is there something wrong with these centipedes?”
“I’m thinking…”
Lin Juan paused. Everyone perked up their ears, expecting some crucial insight and listening intently.
“Are these even centipedes?”
“This…” They didn’t know either.
Several ability users crouched down for a close look. One spoke up. “I raise centipedes at home. These… they really seem just like regular centipedes.”
Lin Juan’s gaze snapped over.
The young ability user blushed under Lin Juan’s unwavering stare. “M-Mr. Lin?”
“I remember centipedes can be sold for money, right? Can we sell these centipedes? There’s so many—gotta be worth a fortune, huh?”
Suddenly, these bugs looked a whole lot more pleasing.
