Shuttle Bus Attack
by M1zushiThe first was on the winter solstice of 2148, later hailed as the Eve of Humanity’s turning point against disasters.
As for the snowstorm on the winter solstice of 2149, it quietly vanished into the long river of time.
Oh yes, the winter solstice is also his birthday.
[Winter Solstice, 2148]
The shuttle bus crossed the snowfield, heading from the outskirts of Bait City’s District 53 towards the bustling Main City.
There were only about a dozen passengers scattered sparsely in the shuttle bus; their expressions were dull, and their clothes showed long time use, with only three soldiers looking somewhat spirited in the corner.
By the window, a little girl held a collection of poems, reading in a tender voice:
Through its eyes as delicate as dewdrops,
They gaze into the vast sky.
The poet’s name was printed on the spine of the book: Eye.
“Even the poems talk about rabbits,” the girl murmured, “The new super-terrible distorted rabbits that have recently appeared are so terrifying. They look so weak, but they can run so fast! They can even blow people to pieces with a boom! Even humans haven’t caught them yet!”
The shuttle bus’s broadcast echoed: “Entering an exposure-prone area ahead, this shuttle bus has been silenced; please rest assured.”
The little girl turned to the middle-aged woman beside her and asked, “Mom, what does ‘silenced’ mean?”
The woman replied, “It means not letting the monsters in the wilderness find us.”
“Then, if we’re found, will we die like Dad did?”
An Yu, who was sitting across from them, opened his eyes.
It wasn’t the word ‘die’ that triggered him, but the faint scent of flour that had been lingering in the shuttle bus, preventing him from falling asleep.
Among the group of paupers in the shuttle bus, An Yu stood out the most—his white hair concealed his pale complexion from prolonged malnutrition, and his sack-like white clothes were full of loose threads and holes. It seemed quite comical against the backdrop of the howling snowstorm outside.
His golden eyes were as clear as mirrors, yet they reflected the indifference peculiar to the slums. As he looked at the poetry collection, there seemed to be a dazzling green thing flashing through the cracks of the book.
I’m hallucinating from hunger again.
He lowered his head and rubbed his eyes.
The woman gently warned, “Don’t mention Dad to your brother.”
“I remember,” the little girl continued flipping through the poems. “Brother is having a hard time alone in the Main City. If he asks, just tell him everything is fine at home.”
“Yes,” the woman said, looking at the air, lost in thought. “It’s a great blessing for our family to have someone in the Main City. Xiao Xi, at only twenty years old, became a researcher in the Brain. Without him, our days in District 53 would have been even harder.”
“Brother doesn’t have time for video calls lately. Does he know we’re going to celebrate his birthday?”
“If he knew, it wouldn’t be a surprise. It’s rare to catch a shuttle bus.” The woman fidgeted with the lunchbox beside her, “I wonder if he still remembers this taste…”
The scent of flour came from that lunchbox.
“Did Brother also eat bean bread when he was little?”
“He did. This time, Mom specially made sweet red bean bread. They’re quite sweet, but of course, they can’t compare to the food and drink in the Main City.” The woman hesitated suddenly, “When he was little, he used to find the breads not sweet enough. He probably looks down on them even more now…”
Upon hearing this, An Yu looked away from the lunchbox.
This year’s snowstorms have been extremely frequent. The snowstorm is a sign of trouble, and the supplies allocated from the Main City to the Bait Cities have been downgraded repeatedly. Nowadays, even dreaming of having a bite of coarse bread to eat is unrealistic. At such a critical juncture, someone actually dared to complain about bean breads.
They were both paupers from District 53, but obviously, poverty also has its own levels.
This year marked the 26th year since the strange distortion descended upon them, and humanity’s former grandeur has long since turned to foam. To preserve their strength, the leaders gathered genetically superior individuals in the Main City, with the Main City as the core while one hundred dilapidated Bait Cities spread outwards like onion rings, accommodating the majority destined to be abandoned.
An Yu’s genes were among the lowest of the low, and coupled with his sleeping sickness, he couldn’t stay awake for more than a few days a month. Years of incurable sleeping sickness have completely disconnected him from society. If it weren’t for his kind neighbor, Ling Qiu, who kept working for him, he wouldn’t even have enough to receive social welfare.
“Are you hungry?” The woman interrupted his contemplation.
An Yu looked up; it took a while to realize she was actually talking to him.
“Young man, your eyes quite resemble my son’s. How old are you?”
He rarely conversed with anyone besides Ling Qiu so he replied somewhat unskillfully, “Eighteen.”
“So young.” The woman sighed, “We’re almost at the Main City. Looking forward to it?”
“Mn…”
Looking forward? Yeah sure. He was forced to make this journey out of necessity.
Two months ago, Ling Qiu was recruited by the military—the only way for inferior genes to enter the Main City. An Yu thought he had a backer in the Main City, which would make his survival more stable. However, a few days ago, District 53’s housing supervisor suddenly went crazy and wanted to check labor records. Anyone with even the slightest debt had to roll out of the welfare dormitories and fend for themselves.
An Yu, this hidden pauper from the slums for many years, was finally exposed. If he wanted to keep his dormitory, he had to ask Ling Qiu to go through the adoption procedure and turn himself into “the younger brother of a Main City soldier.” But new recruits were prohibited from communicating during training. With only 48 hours left before eviction, he had no choice but to reluctantly board this shuttle bus.
Before Ling Qiu left, he admonished An Yu that living alone inevitably meant dealing with people. If paupers wanted to live peacefully, they must humble themselves to the utmost degree—such as by maintaining gentleness and courtesy, learning to observe and please the powerful, and striving to make use of them.
But An Yu’s social skills were too poor. Ling Qiu was his only bridge to the outside world, and he felt lost facing the prospect of losing that connection.
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‘The last two sentences should be accompanied by a smile. Sincerity is the cornerstone of building friendly relationships,’ Ling Qiu said.
An Yu came back to his senses and slowly lifted the corners of his mouth. “You’re right. I’m looking forward to it,” he said, then lowered his head as if he had completed a task, his gaze uncontrollably slipping towards the lunchbox.
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“Yes, I made quite a few.”
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When the engine suddenly braked!
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“What’s going on?!”
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A soldier commanded, “Everyone stay where you are! Cooperate with us to investigate the anomaly!”
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The wind swirling around the snowfield suddenly brought an acid smell, a muted buzzing entered everyone’s mind, and a shadow enveloped the shuttle bus.
“Aberrant! There’s an aberrant!! Officer!!”
Aberrant?
An Yu clutched the bread he finally got hold of and belatedly turned around.
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At this moment, the mantis opened its eyes.
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“Officer…”
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The triangular head of the mantis kept turning, its scythe-like limbs harvesting the lives of the scurrying humans mercilessly.
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Being blind didn’t hinder the mantis from hunting. Soon, the last unfortunate person was hacked to pieces. The moment the screams vanished, its head abruptly twisted towards the rear of the shuttle bus.
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The mantis paused for a few seconds, seeming hesitant, but still dragged its forelimbs towards that side.
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Bang! A gunshot rang out!
A soldier hidden at the front of the shuttle bus seized the opportunity and shot at its hindbrain!
However, the bullet embedded itself in the exoskeleton, but there was no explosion as imagined.
The mantis suddenly turned around, striking and severing the spines of two people, blood spraying everywhere. The third unfortunate person was flung to the rear of the shuttle bus, crashing into the blind corner diagonally opposite An Yu.
He was a young second lieutenant with a short hair stubble; his left shoulder was only a gaping hole, and arteries spurted clusters of blood.
At the other end of the shuttle bus, the mantis scavenged the food on the ground—the entire bus was infected, with several corpses already forming shells on their limbs. It excitedly sliced open those semi-abnormal bodies, filling the shuttle bus with sticky and crunchy chewing sounds.
The second lieutenant’s life was quickly ebbing away. He slowly raised his remaining hand and made a hushing gesture towards An Yu.
An Yu noticed that the second lieutenant’s hand was somewhat stiff, like an arthropod’s limb. Transparent liquid started to ooze out from his left shoulder, and he no longer resembled a human.
He turned his head away, avoiding eye contact with him.
After a long few minutes, the mantis finally finished eating and slowly dragged its massive body away.
The second lieutenant on the opposite side, who was continuing to mutate, gradually closed his eyelids. Only An Yu remained in the shuttle bus, burying his head between his knees, his sweat-soaked body shivering in the cold wind.
The outside world was indeed dangerous. He needed to finish his business quickly and return to his doghouse…
Suddenly, a burst of ringtones rang abruptly.
The ringtones pierced through the snowfield, and the second lieutenant, who was about to go into shock, twitched his eyelids. Before he could even reach for his terminal, a massive shadow appeared before him.
It only took a few seconds for the mantis to turn back.
This time, it opened its eyes—inside its eye sacs were already more than a dozen blood-red eyeballs, violently crashing against each other, making people instantly think of the poor people who had just been eaten.
An Yu held his breath, shrinking into the blind angle behind it, and was forced to witness this aberrant feast on people real time.
But just as it tore open the second lieutenant’s chest, it stopped.
It seemed to be deeply sniffing something, its antennae rotating around. The fluorescent head slowly twisted back 180 degrees, directly facing the direction where An Yu was hiding!
Its chaotic eyeballs converged towards the center in that moment, overflowing with astonishment.
It was a kind of ecstatic joy akin to finding delicacies in a garbage bin.
Although highly inappropriate, An Yu couldn’t help but recall his feelings two days ago when he accidentally unearthed a piece of coarse bread from under Ling Qiu’s bed—it’s so absurd. He was usually apathetic to human emotions, but now he seemed to deeply empathize with this aberrant.
Its panting became frantic, and the mantis completely turned around, its scythe trembling and emitting an unbearable groan towards him.
“…”
Insanely hungry.
Every cell in An Yu’s body screamed to run. He stuffed the bread into his pocket under its fervent gaze, slowly edging towards the aisle. The moment he charged and jumped, the cold, hard scythe hooked him from behind, effortlessly slamming him to the ground like a pancake!
Agonizing pain pierced into his marrow.
In an instant, mysterious whispers traversed through his entire nervous system, stirring up shocks in his consciousness that he had never experienced before.
The wind suddenly sped up, howling across the snowfield.
The piece of bean bread rolled into a corner, and the small crescent-shaped bite mark was smeared with black mud.
—That was the final scene An Yu saw before he lost consciousness.
[01 Snowstorm]
Since the onset of disasters, the world’s backdrop has gradually turned into a vast expanse of white.
Whenever the snowflakes dance, disordered frequencies and energy will be detected in the environment, and people firmly believe that they are the cause of distortions.
Over time, white has become an ominous color.
If you see someone with white hair on the street, they are likely antisocial lunatics. Stay far away.
But if they’re wearing all-white clothes, then you can relax.
He might just be poor.
Author’s note:
The small theater in this book has three series:
[Loose pages from an Useless Book] is worldbuilding information; [Snowflake Fragments] is character information; [An Yu’s Bread Diary] is the daily life of the protagonist.
M1zushi: hello everyone it’s me again~~ This time I’m picking up a novel with aberrants, distortion and superpowers! Similar to little mushroom, it deals with humankind’s struggle against the force of nature, which is undeterred by our whims. All the characters have their backgrounds explained in the [Snowflake fragments] and it’s really my favorite part because you get to know them better and it show how much the author cares
some words will have long translation notes which you can skip bcs it’s fiction! and things don’t really have to make sense. but I really like works of fiction based on real life physics and nature laws, so I did my best to search the explanations and show them in an easy “short answer long answer” format. sometimes i’ll also add videos related to the topics if I find it interesting
now that i’m re-reading this novel, i finally understand some choice of words from the author and their worldbuilding, so I put tons of tl notes hoping to enlighten you, but don’t worry too much if it seems confusing because when I first read it, just the fact that MC kicks ass is already a very enjoyful reading ^^
I’d recommend waiting for the first arc to end and binge read it for a great experience~
Happy reading ~~
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