“You aren’t afraid of me at all anymore, are you?”

“I’ll go‍‍⁠‌‍‌​⁠⁠⁠‍​‍‍‍‌​‍​‍⁠‌‌⁠ with you to the swamp.”

Lumen stood straight before Flame, his gaze lowered, fixed on the tightly wound bandages around Flame’s chest.

On his robust chest and broad back muscles, large flaps of skin and flesh were torn open. The aberrant’s ripping and gnawing had been utterly frenzied and the image of dripping blood blooming on the black rose tattoo was impossible to erase from one’s mind after seeing it just once.

Blood loss made Yan’s face pale, but his hawk-like eyes remained dark and sharp. He looked up at Lumen. “You can’t go.”

“Why?” Lumen immediately asked.

“New recruits can’t participate in forbidden-level missions.”

Lumen frowned. “Forbidden-level?”

“The Advent Swamp has long been designated as an extremely high-risk wild distortion zone. If it weren’t for the severe anomalies in the neighboring Bait City, we wouldn’t intervene in the swamp. Missions like these are only permitted for high-level personnel,” Flame finished quickly, then asked back, “You are being abnormally proactive. Is it because I saved your life during the mission?”

Lumen pressed his lips together, silent.

Flame’s finger traced the bandage. “That’s a Commander’s duty. Besides, these are just minor flesh wounds. I don’t need you to repay me.”

“I don’t like ow people,” Lumen said quickly. “Especially ingyou.”

Flame smiled. “Then be good.”

“In your dreams.” Lumen’s gaze sharpened. He turned to leave, saying coldly, “I will apply to Law. Based on my experience in the previous few missions, I believe he won’t refuse.”

“It seems the new junior kids among the higher-ups have gotten used to doing things their own way,” Qin Zhilu sighed, sitting at his computer. “Lumen is insisting on joining the swamp mission. He submitted nine application reports this afternoon.”

An Yu looked up from the data Black Tower had sent. “You seem to be implying something about me too… But I’m much easier to manage than Lumen, right?”

“He has a temper on the surface; you are docile on the surface.” Qin Zhilu chuckled softly and replied to the email with a casual tap.

“Did you approve it?”

Qin Zhilu hummed. “He asked me a question I couldn’t answer. Since An Yu can participate in forbidden missions, why can’t he go to the swamp?”

An Yu immediately retracted his gaze and continued staring at the mission data on his terminal. “Oh…”

But Qin Zhilu still said, “I replied with four words.”

The room fell silent. Qin Zhilu continued processing his work. An Yu, however, stared blankly at the dense text on his terminal. After a good while, he finally couldn’t help looking up. “Which four words?”

The instant the question left his mouth, An Yu clearly caught the smile spreading across the Commander’s lips.

He has bad character, he thought.

Qin Zhilu didn’t even look up, articulating clearly, word by word, “Learning the wrong things.”

The night before, An Yu had insisted on going to District 99 with him. Qin Zhilu had rejected him three times. The fourth time, Qin Zhilu agreed.

After agreeing, he sighed and looked at An Yu. “Becoming more and more unmanageable.”

“Your evaluation’s very subjective,” An Yu’s expression was indifferent. “Zhu Tao said, under any circumstances, firmly accompanying your Commander will definitely make you be liked by your Commander.”

“Liking and approving are two different things,” Qin Zhilu looked up at him. “District 99 will be very dangerous. You see me as a protective umbrella, yet you put yourself in danger for me. Don’t you think that’s putting the cart before the horse?”

“I will be very careful, Commander.” An Yu retracted his gaze, scrolling through his terminal screen, before saying in a low voice, “Life’s important, but I’m also afraid the umbrella will break.”

The surroundings returned to silence. This time, he finally managed to read the words on the screen.

The situation in District 99 was much more complex than expected, not because of mysterious phenomena, but because it had always been a specially managed Bait City.

“District 99 is the human Bait City closest to the Yug Snowfield. Even before the calamity arrived, it’s covered in frost and snow year-round. The vast majority of people in District 99 are natives who lived there for generations. 27 years ago, they were all directly or indirectly exposed to the radiation in the Mysterious Advent. After the disaster, the highly exposed groups underwent years of monitoring at Brain. After being sent back to District 99, they were still assigned permanent personnel for lifelong monitoring, called ‘Partners’. Additionally, the military has a separate branch in District 99, monitoring the entire city’s population for anomalies and reporting closely.”

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“We suspected District 99 is a recurrence of District 95 back then, primarily based on the abnormal frequency.

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As High Peak began listing the currently known aberrant types, An Yu turned his head to look at Qin Zhilu.

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“Commander.” An Yu softly called him back to reality. “If District 99 is similarly unsalvageable, will it be cleared with a thermal bomb like back then?”

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Qin Zhilu glanced at the microphone and finally spoke. “Part of the failure in District 95 was my responsibility. I mistakenly infected the Super-Aberrant with my own genes, which instead granted it infinite chaos and abilities. This time, we will not repeat the same mistake. We will find it as soon as possible and make it disappear cleanly.”

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“Sienna. I assume you haven’t forgotten her,” High Peak said.

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Back when Tang Ru and the others were staying at the guesthouse on the Yug Snowfield, Sienna had been the owner’s adopted orphan, only four years old. On the day of the Mysterious Advent, she had also been nearby, less than a kilometer away in a straight line. She was considered the person with the highest exposure risk besides Tang Ru and Zhan Xue.

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In the photo, Sienna wore a dashing brown long coat and riding boots, chatting with patrons from a high stool behind the bar.

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“Hm?” Qin Zhilu snapped back. “What concerns?”

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He said meaningfully in a deep voice, “During those years, besides the people Black Tower implicitly allowed me to interact with, I have never spoken to anyone else.”

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“The military’s branch team in District 99 will arrange for someone to meet you. There’s one fortunate yet strange thing: District 99 still has communication signal coverage. Although the signal quality is poor, it has never disappeared. That Bait City has not shown any very obvious signs of chaos so far.” High Peak paused, then sighed. “Perhaps under the snowstorm, everything became silent.”

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“An, Ning,” An Yu said. “We can leave anytime.”

Black Tower and Brain held meetings for a day and a night. With the lesson of District 95, no one was optimistic about how many humans would survive in District 99.

After dinner, An Yu sat in his room packing his gear. He had accompanied Qin Zhilu on countless missions. His personal weapon was still only the [Order] dagger he had first acquired. Besides that, there were the bandages he habitually wrapped around his neck and wrists. For previous missions, the Commander had also bought him mechanical wings for mobility, but they wouldn’t be needed on the snowfield. An Yu carefully stored them in the cabinet.

Quietly sleeping in the cabinet was a flame heavy sniper rifle: Ling Qiu’s [Dawn].

“Are you taking it?” Qin Zhilu asked casually from the sofa. “You’ve never used this gun before, except for smashing the aberrants in District 53, right? Want to give it a try?”

“I don’t dare shoot. By carrying it, I can only use it as a club,” An Yu sighed. “Forget it. We need to be low-key on this operation.”

Qin Zhilu didn’t press him. He put on a new pair of leather gloves.

Through the open front of his trench coat, An Yu glanced at the holster strapped to his outer thigh. “Are you still only bringing this gun?”

Qin Zhilu gave a casual nod. “It’s enough.”

An Yu’s gaze shifted downward, landing on the backpack tossed by Qin Zhilu’s feet. “You rarely carried a backpack on missions before.”

“I brought a few extra magazines, spare gloves, and—” Qin Zhilu’s voice paused. He kicked the bag slightly with his foot, turning the open mouth towards An Yu. “There are fewer people this time, so I brought you some rations.”

Inside the bag’s opening, a large number of colorful wrappers were visible. They were the common energy bars from the Spire, along with the chocolates and small breads An Yu usually liked.

An Yu opened his mouth slightly in surprise, his gaze flickering back and forth between the backpack and the Commander’s face.

Qin Zhilu raised an eyebrow. “What now?”

“You—” An Yu paused. “Really haven’t realized?”

“Realized what?”

“You and 716 are becoming more and more alike,” An Yu said, his voice unconsciously dropping. “716 wasn’t wrong. It just accelerated the deduction of what you will become…”

Qin Zhilu frowned upon hearing this. “Don’t compare me to an AI. Even the slightest deviation in an AI’s precision will be amplified through deduction. It already possesses too many things that don’t belong to me.”

An Yu didn’t argue further, lowering his head and continuing to wrap the bandage around his wrist.

Qin Zhilu watched him with a frown. “If you have something to say, just say it. Don’t always act like I’m bullying you and you don’t dare speak up.”

“There’s nothing to say,” An Yu said calmly. “It just expressed many things you suppressed. You won’t admit it, so I won’t say it.”

The person on the sofa suddenly stood up and strode towards An Yu.

Qin Zhilu stood before An Yu. His towering posture naturally created a sense of pressure. He switched to crouching down and asked softly, “You aren’t afraid of me at all anymore, are you?”

An Yu thought seriously for a moment, then nodded. “Not afraid anymore.”

“Since when?” Qin Zhilu recalled. “The orphanage? When I became your support?”

An Yu shook his head.

“Too many missions together?”

“That’s not it either.” An Yu looked up, meeting the dark eyes opposite him. “I just understood you more and more, and also understood the operating rules of this human Main City.”

Based on Black Tower’s risk control principles, the execution order for him back then must have been real, and it must have been a secret execution, just like Zhan Xue’s. The executioner would be randomly selected from the personnel on duty that day. That person wouldn’t know who they were killing, nor would they ask why.

That person could absolutely not have been Qin Zhilu.

“On the snowfield, you didn’t decide to temporarily spare my life only after investigating. From the very beginning, you had already been thinking about how to save me from Black Tower,” An Yu stated peacefully. “I’ve seen too much of your past. You’ve never trusted Black Tower, nor Brain. Your relationship with them is merely one of cooperation and exploitation. If there’s anyone in this world you truly trust, perhaps it’s only me.”

After he spoke, the room returned to silence.