A faint⁠​​​‍​‍​‍‌​‌‍‌​​⁠‍​‍‌‍⁠‍ ringing in his ears grew stronger.

An Yu could feel a layer of sweat between his finger and the trigger as his index finger began to slip, as if it was threatening to pull the trigger. This realization instantly made his barely controlled heartbeat race, and he immediately released his grasp as if shocked by it.

The hand holding his tightened and the leather glove rubbed along his fingers. Qin Zhilu’s steady voice spoke close to his ear, “Clear your mind. Remember, this gun is your authority. The barrel is aimed at the person you intend to kill.”

An Yu took a deep breath, looked at the bullseye a hundred meters away and tried to pull the trigger.

“Good,” Qin Zhilu slightly eased his grip, giving him space to bend his finger. “Be decisive when you pull it, don’t hesitate.”

Through a layer of sweat, An Yu once again felt the small metal component. But the moment his touch connected, his hand stiffened. His muscles twitched wildly beneath his skin, twisting into an intractable cramp.

“Cramped,” Qin Zhilu said, completely releasing his hand and instead gripping his wrist. “Relax. Transfer the gun to me.”

An Yu couldn’t make out what the Commander was saying. The ringing in his ears became a sharp, continuous line. His limbs felt weak, cold sweat drenched his entire body, and his heart pounded wildly and erratically in his chest.

Qin Zhilu’s left hand stroked his head while his right hand pried open An Yu’s fingers.

The gun spun flexibly against the leather glove, and his palm enveloped the barrel.

He calmly wiped the gun clean and put it back in its place.

Then he glanced at An Yu’s terminal on the table. “See, your survival situation and mental state haven’t fluctuated. A gun in someone else’s hand is a threat; in your own hand, it’s just a tool. This time you held it for 4 minutes and 12 seconds. Next time will be better.”

An Yu braced his hands on his knees and gasped heavily. It took a long time before the ringing in his ears began to subside.

He said tremblingly, “I’m sorry, Commander… But I… I don’t want a next time…” He couldn’t overcome his fear of guns because it was the most unreasonable way to kill.

Qin Zhilu’s hand rested on his head and didn’t move. After a long moment, he sighed softly. “Is this the shadow I left on you?”

An Yu remained silent for a long time before looking at the ground and nodding gently.

“Are you afraid of me?”

An Yu hesitated, as if he wanted to shake his head, but then wavered. “My feelings for you are complex. Before, I was a little afraid.”

He wiped the sweat that accumulated on his jaw with his wrist. His legs were still trembling. He could only look up at the Commander with some difficulty. “But after knowing you were also a gene induction subject, I’m not afraid at all.”

Qin Zhilu raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

“Because I completely believe you never intended to kill me from the start. You experienced it firsthand; you know what kind of challenges the test poses to the recipient’s mental power, yet my mental power never dropped during the test. On a fundamental level of will, I am indeed the highest order that you’ve always believed in.” An Yu’s tone was as cautious and subdued as ever, but when those still trembling golden eyes looked at Qin Zhilu, they were filled with certainty.

He trembled slightly, but as he looked up, he met Qin Zhilu’s gaze as an equal.

After a long pause, Qin Zhilu chuckled softly. He turned, pulled out a gun from his waist, chambered a bullet, and aimed directly at the target 800 meters away at the farthest end. His movements were fluid and instant. As he pulled the trigger, he said casually, “Your mission is to protect the target.”

An Yu’s thoughts hadn’t yet fully cleared. Hundreds of meters away, the air seemed to subtly fluctuate for an instant. When the gunshot landed, the target was completely undamaged, still standing perfectly fine in the distance. And on the wall slightly to the right, a deep bullet hole appeared.

“See, your use of spatial folding is already instinctive, and your instinctive speed can outrun a bullet within an 800-meter range.” Qin Zhilu glanced at him calmly, casually swapped to a quieter training magazine, and turned towards the 700-meter target. “Training plan has changed. We’ll go target by target. Let’s measure your instinctive limit for outrunning a bullet.”

An Yu didn’t quite understand the Commander’s intention, but Qin Zhilu didn’t give him a chance to think carefully. He bent his finger and fired another shot.

The gunshot landed yet the 700-meter target was unharmed.

The entire facility echoed with the aftershocks of the gunshot. An Yu was still shaken and panting heavily, but he saw the Commander’s lips gently curve. Then that straight arm continued to turn to the side. “Next target, 600 meters.”

When he walked out of the shooting range, the sound of gunshots still seemed to echo in An Yu’s ears.

The distance at which he finally lost to bullets was between 100 and 110 meters. Based on bullet speed, his reaction time for using spatial folding was about 0.13 seconds.

Qin Zhilu suddenly said as he exited the gate, “0.13 seconds is already hard to surpass, unless you slow down the flow of time or temporarily stop it. This is harder than accelerating time, because acceleration is pushing entropy increase, following the laws of the universe. But time stop is entropy cessation, and time reversal is entropy reduction, both going against the current.”

An Yu thought the Commander was consoling him for his failure and was about to say he didn’t care at all. Unexpectedly, Qin Zhilu glanced back at him and said casually, “In future missions, you need to continue exploring your abilities. Although humanity has never been able to explain where the destructive power of Super-aberrants over time-space order comes from, those things can do it. There’s no reason why you should be worse than them.”

An Yu: “…”

The physical training and shooting practice were seamlessly connected. When Xi De casually loaded 100-pound plates on each side of the empty barbell, An Yu was still pondering the Commander’s words.

First, he felt the Commander had let something slip—he indeed always saw himself as a Super-aberrant.

Second, he felt the Commander was not quite human—at least on a moral level.

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He stared blankly at himself, kneeling in the mirror, as large patch of red spread from the skin behind his neck.

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Xi De was a bit thinner than when An Yu last saw him, which made his eyes brighter and sharper. He looked down at An Yu in confusion. After a while, he suddenly burst out laughing and casually placed the barbell on the ground, as casual as An Yu placing down chopsticks. “No wonder Law replaced Jiang Xiao. What did he train you in?”

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An Yu looked at him silently. He thought for a while. “Actually, practicing muscles is meaningless for you. You’re just a fragile human; no matter how much you train, you’ll stay that way. Why not practice physical endurance? Improve your explosive power and stamina.”

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Twenty minutes later.

“Hoo—hoo, hoo, hoo—” An Yu lay on his back on the ground, his eyes unfocused as he stared at the mirror on the ceiling. There was a dead dog in it. The dead dog’s heart kept trying to poke out of its throat.

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The Commander had said that Xi De was a rare individual who intensely recognized and relied on his aberrant identity. Therefore, he never deliberately restrained his aberrant features. When he was in a bright mood, clusters of flame-like red would emanate from him with his breathing as he walked. Although he didn’t manifest wings, the subtle movement of his shoulder blades made it seem as if a pair of giant wings were expanding and contracting with his breath.

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The cracked chocolate shell suddenly slid down half an inch, and the rich milky liquid dripped down. An Yu immediately caught it with his mouth. His golden eyes suddenly widened in surprise and his pupils slowly dilated.

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An Yu gently bit off a piece of the chocolate shell with his tongue, chewing quietly. “Delicious,” he said softly, staring intently at the ice cream with a missing corner. Contentment spread through his eyes.

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An Yu took small bites of the ice cream, mumbling, “Bo seems to be your age, and An and Ning too. They just came two years later.”

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Xi De’s radiance was too powerful; it truly did diminish people’s perception of his age.

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Although the ice cream was also expensive, it was still a few points cheaper than that drink.

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“Oh, right,” Xi De’s displeasure vanished in an instant, replaced by a cheerful smile. “To welcome Codex’s arrival, there’s a high-level officers’ dinner party the day after tomorrow. Did Law tell you? We’re going to Codex’s floor for a hot pot. It’ll be nice and hot, a proper housewarming for him.”

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An Yu was perplexed. “What’s a blackout?”

“It means cutting the power and energy, severing all signals and networks. All activities stop, and everyone goes home to sleep,” Xi De yawned. “Two of the Bait Cities in the innermost circle, very close to the Main City, experienced an aberrant invasion. As is customary, the Main City will run the dome system at maximum power and implement a city-wide blackout. Fortunately, there were no Super-aberrants this time, just some aberrants causing trouble. The military has pretty much cleaned them up already.”

“Cutting the power?” An Yu paused. “Do we have to turn off the lights?”

“Yeah, what’s wrong?” Xi De crushed the empty can in his hand and casually tossed it into a distant trash bin. “It’s nighttime anyway. Just turn off the lights and go to sleep. It won’t affect anything.”

An Yu looked at the bare ice cream stick and hesitantly managed out an “Oh.”

At nine o’clock in the evening, nine warning chimes sounded over the main city, and then the entire world went dark in an instant.

There was still some moonlight outside.

An Yu felt his way in the dark to the top of the tower and looked out the window—

The entire Main City was nearly invisible under the night sky. The brightly lit skyscrapers seemed to have vanished, and the people on the streets appeared to have disappeared in a flash.

Even though it was just a power outage, the sounds of the Main City had also ceased abruptly. A vast sense of an empty city pressed down in the silence.

Footsteps came from behind him. He turned his head and saw Bo coming up the stairs, carrying two cans of cola. He froze for a second when he saw him. “You’re here, sir?” Bo paused his steps. “Then I’ll just…”

“I was just leaving,” An Yu said quickly, vacating the spot by the window where the moonlight was faintest. “You can have it.”

Bo bowed his head respectfully. An Yu walked a few steps down the stairs before Bo called out to him again.

The entire Spire was silent, and Bo had unconsciously lowered his voice. “I heard the Commander gave you a lesson today. How was his mood?”

An Yu thought for a moment. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t tell if there was anything unusual about him.”

“That’s good.” Bo smiled silently and casually tossed the other can of cola to him, raising his own in a toast from a distance. “Please talk to him more during your lessons. Thank you for your trouble.”

“Okay,” An Yu nodded. “He bought me an ice cream.” He paused, then added, “With my money.”

Bo let out a long sigh of relief. “That’s very good. Thank you for telling me.” He bowed to An Yu again, then turned to face the window, drinking his cola while lost in thought.

An Yu lingered for a moment longer, but sensing no intention from the other man to reimburse his Commander, he could only trudge resentfully back downstairs.

His terminal had no signal and was offline. He used the faint light of its screen to find his way back to his door. On the floor outside was a new box. It contained the new gloves he had purchased for the Commander.

The entire 199th floor was pitch black. The Commander’s door was tightly shut, and not a sound came from within. An Yu hesitated for a moment, then pushed open his own door and went back into his room.

In the darkness, Qin Zhilu lay quietly on his bed. His new terminal had already run out of battery. His supervisee, who had no common sense when it came to electronics, had clearly fiddled with it for a long time after receiving it and had forgotten to charge it.

At this moment, there was no light source in the entire room. He could only close his eyes and listen to the sound of his own breathing.

The familiar scent of medicinal ointment wafted from beside his pillow. Qin Zhilu, with his eyes still closed, turned onto his side, pulled off his glove, and unscrewed the lid of the ointment, scooping out a dollop to apply to the broken skin at the base of his palm. The gene induction experiments caused extensive subcutaneous bleeding throughout the body. Although the medical staff at Brain would properly care for the wounds after the experiment, some bruises would rupture the skin with a delay, often causing small wounds to suddenly burst open in the days following the test.

Previously, Qin Zhilu had thought this was a natural phenomenon, but after meeting An Yu, his opinion had wavered. In District 53, he had kept a close eye on the large bruises on An Yu’s abdomen. The terrifying purple-red was separated by only a shockingly thin layer of skin. He had expected An Yu to burst into a bloody mess at any moment, but he had held on until the very end.

All the wounds on his body had been from falls and blows during combat. That human body, just like the soul within it, looked exceedingly fragile, yet possessed a transcendent resilience. He closed his eyes and turned back to lie flat on his back, recalling the quiet, animal-like “Fuu… Fuu…” sound An Yu made when he was fast asleep. He tried to ignore his headache and coax himself toward sleep.

A tentative knock suddenly sounded at the door.

Knock, knock.

Qin Zhilu, his eyes still closed, furrowed his brow deeply. For a fleeting moment, his consciousness blurred, and he thought he was back in the laboratory.

“Commander,” a low, breathy voice came from outside the door, as if afraid of being heard by others.

Qin Zhilu paused for several seconds, then abruptly sat up, staring at the door in astonishment.

“Are you asleep?” The little animal outside seemed to press its ear against the door; a rustling sound came from its surface.

Qin Zhilu got out of bed and pulled the door open. An Yu was standing in the doorway holding a candle. In his other hand, he held a huge black box, and tucked under his arm was the octopus plush doll.

“Commander, I can’t sleep.” The candlelight wavered gently in his golden eyes, making him look as innocent as ever. He asked in a small voice, tinged with a hint of pleading, “Can we stay together for a little while?”

If Qin Zhilu had met him for the first time, he would have believed it.

Author’s Note:

A small step for An Yu, a giant leap for Qin Zhilu’s heart. (Just kidding.)