Xie Lincheng loosened his grip on the gun.
Bai Luwei was equally popular at school, exactly the kind of campus goddess most people imagined.
She had excellent grades and good social connections. Wearing a simple white dress, she was stunning enough to shine without the need for elaborate makeup.
“Weiwei, you’re so pretty. So pretty and so outstanding. How can a girl as perfect as you exist in this world?”
“Weiwei, you’re amazing.”
“Weiwei, you’re just too kind. It’s best to keep as far away from that kind of person as possible.”
Bai Luwei responded to everyone with a friendly smile. Yet the moment she turned her face, “Slap!” Her palm struck a girl hard across the face.
The girl was short, with very dark skin. She habitually ducked her head, revealing a cringing demeanor. Her clothes were old, faded, and worn pale. The soles of her canvas sneakers were separating from the uppers, faintly exposing the toes within.
Standing next to Bai Luwei, she was utterly out of place—one on cloud nine, the other the muck everyone shunned.
For some, a sense of superiority is only achieved by stepping on others. The girl’s very existence seemed to provoke the darkest malice in certain hearts.
Bai Luwei rescued her from others’ violence, only to use her as a target for her own.
Presenting a perfect image in public, acting exactly as everyone expected—this caused Bai Luwei’s inner rage and malice to constantly build up. She needed an outlet.
Physical violence was her preference: slapping—an act carrying strong humiliation—was her favorite method.
Verbal abuse, degradation, and scorn: “Ugly freak, you’re not even fit to tie my shoes.”
“Look at yourself. Don’t you look like a bitch licking scraps off the floor?”
“You should be grateful to me. Without me, who would even spare you a glance?”
After inflicting violence, she would express regret and apologize, saying she hadn’t meant it, explaining her difficulties and stress. Then she’d offer various benefits as compensation for her victim.
It was a system of dual control, mental and physical.
This blatant cruelty and undisguised malice, twisted and amplified, almost suffocated Xie Lincheng.
He was experiencing this from Bai Luwei’s perspective, yet he felt as if he were also bearing the brunt of the malice she dished out.
This was no illusion. As these misdeeds of Bai Luwei’s were unearthed, the twisted figures surrounding her multiplied, and the venomous comments from their mouths increased.
“Go die already! How can scum like you have the face to live, let alone be a star!”
“Rotten whore! Why don’t you just die! DIE!”
“Death, death, death, death, death, death, death to Bai Luwei!”
This time, the scandal was even bigger than the last. The evidence was solid—not just recordings from the victim but also medical certificates for injury verification.
Some people abandoned Bai Luwei. The rage and panic of being cast aside drove her to a desperate, terrible move.
She would apologize to the girl from back then. As long as she showed guilt, regret, and anguish, as long as she obtained her forgiveness and they reconciled, she could film the encounter and post the video online. People would understand her.
Who hasn’t made mistakes?
Should one error result in a lifetime condemnation?
If the person involved has forgiven her, what right do others have to criticize?
Bai Luwei did indeed manage it. Many fans left her, but many others supported her with even greater fervor.
The situation was barely suppressed, but some fans harbored immense resentment towards that girl.
If she hadn’t refused to keep her mouth shut, how could this have blown up? It caused their Goddess to be cursed at and lose several endorsements.
Look at the two people in the video—one as beautiful as a celestial being, the other a crude country bumpkin. How dare she?
Was she trying to ride her coat-tails and get famous?
They dug up everything about the girl from that past incident, scrutinized and mocked her cruelly. They took her video clips and photoshopped them into malicious parodies. A new wave of violence began.
This time, it was violence from faceless strangers on the internet.
Once a person’s roots are rotten, if you keep pulling, you’ll drag up a whole string of rotting, stinking filth.
Xie Lincheng followed Bai Luwei from university back to high school, then middle school, then elementary school. Similar instances of bullying were abundant. And her public persona remained flawlessly curated throughout.
Finally, Xie Lincheng stood before the gates of an orphanage. He saw the young Bai Luwei, about six or seven years old, looking so well-behaved and endearing.
What happened to Bai Luwei inside the orphanage, Xie Lincheng did not see. This was merely where the dredged-up past ended.
He stopped here because the digging stopped here.
Bai Luwei’s persona had utterly collapsed.
The internet was flooded with curses against her. Nauseating packages were sent to her door. Malicious, anonymous calls and texts poured in. Everything she had once inflicted on others, she was now experiencing herself.
“Stop living. Just die.”
“Are you a maggot from a cesspool? You’re that rotten!”
“Human trash! Bitch! Why don’t you die?!”
Bai Luwei faced this almost daily. She couldn’t understand how things had gotten to this point. She’d always done this, she’d always executed it so perfectly. The feeling of plummeting from the heights into the mud nearly drove her insane.
Every day, she asked herself why, why, WHY!
Didn’t everyone live behind a shell? She had painted her shell in the colors everyone adored. She was so meticulous, worked so hard… why had she come to this?
Why! Why!
She was terrified to leave the house, terrified to look at her phone. Even so, she still heard the endless torrent of curses in her ears. She always drew the heavy curtains shut and huddled in a corner, feeling she was being watched from everywhere.
Her mind was on the verge of collapse.
One day, another person appeared in her home. He claimed to be her most fanatical and loyal fan.
He fought for her, believed everything she said.
But even the most fanatical and loyal person can be disappointed.
“You lied to me.”
“I’m going to strip your skin clean off.”
He took the tools from his case and, as he said, began to flay her.
In the unimaginable agony, Bai Luwei did not die instantly. She saw a fire lit. Through the smoke and flames, that person became a twisted black shadow.
The shadow’s mouth moved, but Bai Luwei could no longer hear it clearly. There were too many sounds buzzing in her ears, like flies.
The inferno consumed her.
Huff.
Xie Lincheng panted, his legs nearly giving way.
He had lived through a person’s entire life, yet no more than twenty minutes could have passed. Carrying so much emotion and pain in such a short time made Xie Lincheng’s thoughts sluggish.
Was this the bottom?
He gathered his focus and pulled away from Bai Luwei’s perspective. The Anomalous Phenomenon vanished, and he was back in the dark room.
This time, he saw the real Bai Luwei. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, expressionless, watching him from just an arm’s length away.
What was wrong?
Xie Lincheng’s gaze sharpened. Something was eluding him.
He could detach from a Pollution Source’s Anomalous Phenomenon at such close range. Then, earlier, it would have been even easier. The reason it had taken him so long to get here wasn’t because the Pollution Source was hard to approach; it was because he needed to witness Bai Luwei’s sins.
Those whose sins were exposed under the Camera Lens lost sensation in their hands and feet. This rule applied to them, and it applied to Bai Luwei too.
Because they were all characters within the Script.
The Pollution Source’s… the Pollution Source’s very nature was to become an existence that caused its own collapse.
Bai Luwei wouldn’t see herself as Bai Luwei. She was the Skinner.
The Pollution Source itself met the chaotic condition of being unable to distinguish itself. If one could see the world through her eyes, it must be filled with countless twisted black shadows, and she was but one among them.
A chaotic entity that couldn’t even recognize itself, a history of sins fully exposed—the conditions were met. Bai Luwei shouldn’t be in this state. And her operating logic was to contaminate others, to make more beings like herself, while simultaneously unable to suppress her skinning urges.
Had Bai Luwei ever revealed such a craving?
Maybe not during the day. But even at night, Bai Luwei had shown no overt signs.
Something was definitely wrong.
It was the Script!
Xie Lincheng’s mind jolted. He realized he’d overlooked a fundamental issue.
The Camera Lens… filming would only capture the Script’s content, naturally. And the Bai Luwei in the Script was a pure victim.
“Hehe~”
Bai Luwei suddenly let out an eerie laugh. She stood up and walked towards Xie Lincheng, staring straight into his eyes. “Deceiver! Rapist! Xie Lincheng, you’re a liar, a rapist!”
Xie Lincheng’s gaze flickered, unfocused for a moment.
Voices erupted around him. Voices mentioning Zhuo Heng, mentioning Li Sha, mentioning Lou Hao. They were all hypocrites, all deceivers. He should strip off their skins, let people see their true faces!
But Xie Lincheng currently lacked the Skinner’s power. He couldn’t even lift his hands. If he were going to skin anyone, he’d skin Bai Luwei first.
Thirty minutes hadn’t passed yet. Wen Danning wouldn’t come for a rescue. And the issue wasn’t his lucidity now, but his immobility.
Accept defeat?
Xie Lincheng was unwilling.
He wasn’t needed by his family. He had no close friends. He looked like a wanderer enjoying life, but in reality, he was rootless, drifting duckweed.
Xie Lincheng was the one never chosen.
His parents divorced early. His mother went abroad and chose to give up custody of him.
His father, disregarding his feelings, immediately found him a stepmother. After the new wife came a new son. Between him and his younger half-brother, his father would always choose his brother.
Xie Lincheng was first dragged into a Contaminated Zone at the age of twenty. Dragged in with him were his father and that younger half-brother.
It was a D-Class Contaminated Zone. Compared to the silent, subtle mental confusion of high-level zones, low-level zones presented more visible dangers.
His good father chose to use him as a shield to protect his precious little brother.
People who enter Contaminated Zones below C-Rank can have their memories wiped through Hypnosis afterward. Xie Lincheng didn’t want to forget that scene. As it happened, the Security Administration Bureau took an interest in him, and he joined them.
Xie Lincheng’s Sanity Value was very high, but he never became an Ability User.
Ability Users were one in ten thousand. To this day, no definitive conclusion existed on exactly what triggered the awakening of an ability.
What was certain was that the higher the Sanity Value, the longer the duration an ability could be sustained.
Sanity Value was like a reserve of energy. Xie Lincheng had plenty of potential energy, but no switch to release it.
Tch. He wasn’t chosen by his family. Couldn’t he be chosen just once by this other world?
Xie Lincheng was growing a bit obsessive.
He took missions more frequently. He sought every means to stay in the Underworld, kicking off his own marriage proposal spree—though, of course, no Anomaly had yet chosen him.
He paid extreme attention to changes in his Sanity Value, his perception of Spiritual Power nearly reaching a microscopic level.
He wanted to know the exact difference between an Ability User and a non-Ability User.
So, how could he be willing to just die like this?
Under Bai Luwei’s gaze, Xie Lincheng collapsed weakly to the ground. The Anomalous Phenomenon had captured him. He saw those black shadows closing in, saw their razor-sharp mandibles.
Staring upwards, on the very brink of being butchered, Xie Lincheng actually smiled.
A smile of genuine fulfillment, the joy of achieving a long-held desire.
He looked up again, mentally tracing his own gaze.
The moment he’d entered the room, he had sensed a subtle change. Something had touched his Spiritual Power.
He initially thought it was caused by the Anomalous Phenomenon. But even so, he hadn’t ignored the feeling.
And now he was certain. Someone was watching him.
A very peculiar kind of observation.
It wasn’t from the Anomalous Phenomenon. It was simple, unadulterated observation, devoid of malice.
Drawing upon that faint thread of difference, Xie Lincheng began very slowly, very carefully, to mobilize his own Spiritual Power. He was clumsy at it—it was his very first time sensing another.
Vast, pure, pristine… this was what he perceived.
Besides the swarming black shadows, there was only darkness above him.
Darkness… Xie Lincheng’s mind instinctively thought of one person.
Lu Ren.
Wasn’t the feedback from the other party remarkably similar to Lu Ren? Except for the ‘vast’ part.
After perceiving him, Xie Lincheng tried to send a message on the mental plane. He even subconsciously moved his lips: 【Come here.】
No response.
Xie Lincheng tried again: 【Darkness, come here, okay?】
Still ignored. But he knew the entity existed.
He hadn’t left.
【Lu Ren.】
He switched to a different form of address.
Finally, this time, the reaction was different.
He was such an idiot. He’d used the name that idiot Lou Hao came up with and applied it directly to this being. No wonder he was ignored at first.
Lu Ren’s voice appeared directly in his mind. Or rather, it was a direct exchange of information. 【You know it’s me?】
【I know. You were watching me.】 Xie Lincheng’s smile deepened. He even felt his sanity clear a few degrees. He flickered between the Anomalous Phenomenon and reality, and the encroaching black shadows slowed down.
Xie Lincheng didn’t receive an immediate reply to this. He sensed the other party’s Psychic Threads twitch playfully. The feeling was like a child caught during a game of hide-and-seek, who then swats at you in a little huff of defiance.
【I was the first to discover you.】
To perceive another, to transmit information—wasn’t this kind of manipulation of Spiritual Power a Special Ability in its own right?
Xie Lincheng let out a breath. In this moment, he didn’t feel like a paralyzed man on the floor. He felt like he was lying in a grassy field, basking in the sun.
This feeling was wonderful.
He hadn’t been chosen by the Underworld, but at least he’d been chosen once by Lu Ren, this peculiar Anomaly.
He’d delayed his death, fulfilled a wish. Not bad.
【Thank you.】
Xie Lincheng suddenly felt like saying that. And indeed, he did.
Xu Xiye’s reaction cycled from a startled “!” to a puzzled “?”, leaving him somewhat bewildered. He didn’t quite understand this Outlander’s thought process. Why the sudden thanks?
【You’re welcome.】 Well, the guy had said thank you. Regardless of comprehension, replying this way was always correct.
He thought back to the previous conversation and decided to answer now.
He emphasized: 【I was looking at a mental patient’s world.】
He paused, then translated it into terms the Outlander would understand: 【Looking at the world through the eyes of the contaminated.】
【That’s right, you are the first to discover me.】
【You can see? No, you’re using my eyes to see.】
【Mm, will you let me?】
Xie Lincheng, still breathing heavily, managed a faint grin. He was already looking; the other hadn’t shown any sign of leaving. Why ask for permission now?
But he replied: 【Go ahead. Do you want to keep watching?】
Xu Xiye mentally shook his head: 【No more.】
He’d already determined who the mental patients were. He’d confirmed that places with increased Black Energy corresponded to one more person going mad, or someone’s condition worsening.
Xu Xiye: 【Your condition has worsened.】
It was true. Xie Lincheng’s mind could still cling to reason, but the burden on his body was intensifying. His breathing had definitely become panting.
Suspended between reality and illusion, the black shadows, though slowed, were still drawing closer.
And Bai Luwei… she remained beside him, but she was no longer staring at him. Instead, like him, she was looking up. The contamination continued, yet her previously expressionless face now showed signs of an internal struggle.
【Lu Ren, come here, okay?】 Xie Lincheng said again.
Xu Xiye still didn’t understand this line: 【I’m already above your head.】
【No, I want to grab hold of you.】
【Help me… can you?】
Xu Xiye hesitated. He felt a sense of urgency emanating from Xie Lincheng, as if he would literally die if he didn’t go over.
Xu Xiye went over. The black, unknown substance in the air began to churn. A portion of it dipped downwards, reaching Xie Lincheng’s hand. To ensure he could actually grab it, he willed a tangible tentacle into existence and placed it right in his palm.
【Grab it.】
A cool, soft, springy sensation touched his palm. Xie Lincheng struggled to move his fingers to grasp it, but failed.
His control over his hands was already extremely poor.
Xie Lincheng didn’t try again. Instead, he said: 【Control me.】
Xu Xiye: Huh?
