Sacrifice of dignity

The drop‌‍‍⁠‍‌‌‍​‌​‌⁠‍‌⁠‍‌​‍⁠⁠​‍ in his health value triggered a deep fear in An Yu.

If he is the only one who can enter the broken mirrors, it meant his maximum health value would continue to decline, and by the time he reached the fourth layer, it might drop to just 70%.

An Yu glanced at his two healer teammates from behind. Jiang Xiao was a halfway-decent “healer” prone to mental instability, and it was still unclear how reliable his abilities were. Fengjian’s healing was slow and likely couldn’t keep up with the sudden, heavy health loss from the broken mirrors.

The wound on the back of his hand had now completely vanished and the skin was smooth, as if it had never been cut at all.

Maybe his self-time acceleration could compensate for Fengjian’s shortcomings.

Qin Zhilu suddenly warned: “Use time acceleration with caution.”

An Yu looked up. “Why?”

Qin Zhilu gave him a knowing look. “It can speed up your healing, and also your injuries. Be careful unless you want to end up playing yourself to death.”

An Yu suddenly froze.

“Remember, the key to any ability is control. You have to learn to make it fully obey you.” Qin Zhilu rubbed the candle Chen Nian had left behind through his gloves, then added, as if to comfort him: “I brought you on this mission, and I’ll make sure you return safely. We have enough healers.”

Maybe it was because it was still early morning, but the roads here were emptier than before. The group walked for a long while without encountering anyone.

Jiang Xiao asked, “Is that noisy sound still bothering you?”

“Yeah.” An Yu gently touched behind his ear.
The sound wasn’t actually coming through his ears, it was implanted deep within his consciousness. Still, it created a strange sensation behind his ear, and it was only when his fingers touched it that he realized the odd feeling came from the scar he’d had since childhood.

Qin Zhilu glanced at the area behind his ear. “Try using your mind to ignore the noise.”

“No need, sir,” An Yu replied softly. “If it can stimulate new abilities, I can endure it.”
Chen Nian had said it would only get more dangerous later. He wanted to develop his abilities as early as possible.

Qin Zhilu asked, “Is the mirror-shattering sound from someone’s death louder?”

An Yu thought for a moment. “Yes, but the triggering of abilities doesn’t seem to correlate with the volume. It depends on how great the threat to life is. The sound of a mirror breaking when someone dies is loud, but my health value didn’t drop much and my ability was only slightly awakened. The broken mirror’s noise is quieter, but its triggering effect on abilities is stronger.”

Qin Zhilu said quietly, “The price is instantaneous heavy damage.”

An Yu nodded. “So, to play it safe, let’s figure out how to kill more of those aberrants.”

“Are you sure? When the sound gets loud, you look like you’re in a lot of pain.”

“I’m not afraid of pain,” An Yu said softly. “Didn’t you already know that?”

The teammates around him exchanged subtle glances.

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Qin Zhilu pondered aloud, “I wonder if there are enough aberrants on this floor.”

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His trait of attracting aberrants seemed to have failed in the orphanage. He had wandered around the first layer for quite a while without drawing any extra attention. Only Chen Nian mentioned that he gave off a chilling presence.

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Qin Zhilu suddenly leaned in and whispered in his ear, “Let me go inside later.”

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“Inside the folds of your bandage, your wrist or your throat works.”

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A trace of confusion flashed across An Yu’s eyes.
Why did it feel like he was being used as a transportation device?

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“……” Really.

An Yu wanted to protest, but after a glance at the Commander’s expression, he swallowed his words.

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Pat gave a grunt of acknowledgment. His antelope-like mutation made his black pupils nearly fill his entire eyes. With those jet-black orbs, he scanned the path ahead. “The little darlings here don’t seem as innocent as the ones on the outer edge.”

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He didn’t have much combat experience, but the strange, ominous fluctuation lingering in the air was unsettling even to him.

They turned a street corner, and a warehouse-style building came into view.
—It was the orphanage’s physical examination facility, looking exactly like he remembered.

Because there were so many children, the weekly check-up schedule meant the physical examination rooms were always busy. No matter when you passed by, there was always a long line at the entrance.

Children lined up in a row, holding their medical forms in hand, swaying slightly in a sickly manner as they slowly shuffled forward with the group.
The long line moved in complete silence.

On the other end of the examination rooms, people came out one by one. Their wrists were wrapped in bloody bandages, and their faces were plastered with exaggerated smiles.

“How creepy,” Fengjian said warily as he watched the long line. “It’s like something out of a horror movie.”

An Yu had never seen a horror movie. He replied softly, “It’s always been like this here.”

In his memory, physical exams required them to strip completely naked and pass through checkpoint after checkpoint. While he himself didn’t feel much shame, others clearly did. He’d once heard someone say the exams were a constant reminder that they were monsters feared by humanity.

The children in the orphanage lived freer lives than many people outside, but the one thing they couldn’t escape was the weekly physical exam. Over time, just standing before the examination rooms seemed to drain them of the desire to speak. Only when they left did they return to normal. Each time they stepped out of that door, they would deliberately laugh and make noise, pretending as if nothing had happened.

From the back of the line to the front, the genetic entropy displayed on the terminal remained in the safe zone.
The mutation rate on the second layer was much lower than the previous one, which was at odds with the intense, unsettling feeling in the air.

Suddenly, a familiar metallic smell appeared in the cold wind, and An Yu’s eyes snapped toward the examination room door.

— A “staff member” came out.

The creature had a hunched back, its knees were grotesquely bent backward, and its head scraped against the top of the doorframe. If it stood straight, it would be over three meters tall.

Its entire body oozed a glowing green slime, with vivid blue markings spreading across its arms and inner thighs, like a venomous lizard hiding among jungle leaves. Although it retained some human features above the neck, its eye sockets were now as big as fists, dangling on either side of its cheeks, and its eyeballs looked like buckets of cheap red paint.

It spoke with great difficulty and there was a weird vibrato in its voice: “Over there. New arrivals? Who’s in charge?”

Qin Zhilu murmured to himself, “A mature aberrant. It can’t hide its traits anymore. Its human language systems are almost fully degenerated. If time hadn’t frozen in this orphanage back then, it might have already turned into…”

“A giant mantis like the one on the shuttle bus,” An Yu said quietly, staring at the creature. “It no longer has any human characteristics or thoughts.”

“Mm.”

According to Bai Jing’s memories, not long after the chaos began, time in the orphanage froze. But the time freeze didn’t affect everything, only the children’s growth and mutation. Food still rotted over time, but the progress of mutation was halted at the exact moment the mirror descended. Those who weren’t infected would never be. Those with slow aberrations had their transformation forcibly suspended and still behaved like human children. The ones who mutated quickly… became things like the one before them.

On the first layer, the strange part was humans caring for aberrant children. On this layer, it was even more absurd—

Jiang Xiao’s shoulders tensed, and his tone turned icy. “This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen.”

Aberrants supervising humans.

Humanity once sacrificed equality and freedom but it never bowed down to aberrants.
Yet here, in this orphanage, that sacrifice of dignity had already been quietly unfolding for ten years.