No mistakes

An Yu‌​‍​​‍⁠⁠⁠​⁠​⁠‌‍‍⁠‍‍‍‌‌‍⁠ sat in the iron-gray space, panting heavily.

This was the space inside the brooch. Because it had been stretched and deformed, the air was extremely thin. His lungs felt swollen against his thoracic wall; with every breath, he could feel the friction between his ribs and lungs.

The burning pain on his back finally became real. He endured the pain to take off Qin Zhilu’s coat. Blood had soaked the thin inner layer of fabric, seeping from his waist to the front. The terminal showed his survival value at 78%, slowly dropping with the loss of blood and stamina.

An Yu no longer had the strength to adjust his earpiece; he could only listen to the echo of his own heavy breathing in the private channel.

“74%,” Qin Zhilu’s voice was slightly distorted. “Find a way to stop the bleeding. Wait for me.”

“Wait…” An Yu’s voice was weak. “Commander, how are you going to…”

“Don’t worry about it. Just hold on.”

An Yu’s throat burned with pain; he could only blink once as a response, even though he knew Qin Zhilu couldn’t see it.

The private channel was closed by Qin Zhilu. An Yu closed his eyes, haphazardly unwinding the bandages from his wrists and neck to tie them tightly around his shoulder and back. In the coat pocket were supplements and small bread rusks the Commander had brought for him. He stuffed them into his mouth with trembling hands.

After a full minute, he finally opened his eyes, tapped his terminal, and accessed the recorder permissions.

[Your recorder drone is OFF!]

[‘Qin Zhilu’ recorder drone is OFF!]

[‘Jiang Xiao’ recorder drone is OFF!]

Turning off recorder drones during combat was a violation. Only Qin Zhilu had the authority to force-close the drones of all three people.

An Yu suddenly remembered the channel that had been decisively cut off just now—it seems the Commander was deliberately trying to prevent him from knowing what was happening outside. He hesitated for a moment, then sent a command to access the Black Tower’s drone surveillance feed.

Data transmission from an internal space was slow. While waiting for the static screen to change, the space suddenly flipped. Before An Yu could understand what was happening, he fell headfirst. If he hadn’t reacted in time, his neck would have been snapped.

The terminal flew a distance away; he crawled over with difficulty to retrieve it. The image finally flickered onto the screen.

From the drone’s bird’s-eye view, the workers were frantically slapping their pockets, throwing anything with spatial attributes onto the ground—pillboxes, wallets, headbands, helmets, buttons, band-aids wrapped around hands… An Yu stared blankly for two seconds before realizing they seemed to know about his space folding ability and were madly trying to destroy anything that might be hiding him.

A small mountain of objects quickly piled up among the crowd. The drone lens zoomed in; An Yu searched tensely through the items for the brooch, but after a long time, he couldn’t find it—it might have been buried deep within.

Axes began to swing down one by one, hacking at the pile. The flashing blades and shadows made An Yu’s heart feel like it would explode. But soon, the other side of the screen drew his attention.

Amidst the constant gunfire from Qin Zhilu, dozens of crimson snake tails suddenly shot up, piercing straight toward the center of the crowd! The snake tails were longer and more powerful than octopus tentacles, but the octopus transformation allowed Jiang Xiao to grow dozens of them at once. Those sharp snake scales slit the throats and wrists of anyone in his path. In an instant, he had reached the center; the tips of the tails rose like spears, impaling those men through the chest and hurling them high into the air—without needing to lash them, other snake tails immediately coiled around, strangling them to death!

Jiang Xiao’s red eyes were wide with fury, almost bursting with blood. In the Black Tower channel, the High Peak was shouting orders for him to control his mental stability—his overwhelming hatred had caused his stability to plummet toward the 50 warning line.

Just as the number hit the 40s, a bullet pierced the very tip of one snake tail.

The pain caused the madness in his red eyes to scatter. Jiang Xiao turned back in shock, just in time to hear the sound of Qin Zhilu’s magazine clicking empty.

“Fall back.” Qin Zhilu didn’t even spare him a glance.

As the words fell, pitch-black tentacles surged up instantly, knocking Jiang Xiao over and flinging him away.

Immediately after, countless black tentacles wildly grew in an instant, spiraling and curving through the air and across the ground, hoisting Qin Zhilu’s body high into the air, almost eye-level with the drone.

He looked up into the lens. In the center of his pupils, flakes of frost were reflected. His eyes were even more somber than the skies of District 99.

High Peak’s relieved sigh crackled through the channel.

An Yu heard some people whispering about why Qin Zhilu had only just made his move. His heart suddenly skipped a beat. As if sensing an omen, he looked toward the workers—

The Super-aberrant understood him perfectly. It had not only intuited the method to kill him but could even instantly see through his use of small dimensions to escape.

Therefore, it surely understood Qin Zhilu as well. In some respects, it likely understood him better than anyone else.

—For instance, the Qin Zhilu of District 95.

As if in fulfillment of an omen, the workers’ faces simultaneously twisted into successful, eerie grins. Immediately after, their seemingly normal human bodies underwent rapid transformations. Various vines, hideous talons, and teeth sprouted from their limbs, but biological mutation was only a small part of it. More people began to crack; skin fell away in chunks like clay. Someone’s hair turned entirely into electrical wiring; another’s body split vertically into a dozen fissures that stretched open like a fan, connected only by a layer of grotesque muscular sinew. One man’s entire arm solidified into the metal shovel of a mining cart… They frantically grabbed the items that might be hiding An Yu and closed in on Qin Zhilu step by step.

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And at this moment, An Yu finally guessed it too. He stood up abruptly, his wounds tearing as blood soaked the bandages once more, yet he remained oblivious to the pain.

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Within seconds, the thick scent of blood enveloped the snowy ground. The crowded factory was gradually cleared, but the bodies lying in pools of blood seemed to still be twitching. The tentacles coiled and snapped, yet they couldn’t seem to flick away the filth.

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“Impossible, he can definitely clear it, he…”

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Qin Zhilu finally spoke.

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An Yu watched in a daze as strange, fused characteristics grew on the tentacles, spreading upward. Though Qin Zhilu struggled to suppress them, they slowly but surely crawled toward the base.

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The factory was a hellscape. As the remaining enemies dwindled, Qin Zhilu used his clean tentacles to continue purging the filth.

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A few minutes later, the last standing man fell.

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Although the people at the Black Tower were quieter than ever before, their panic had crossed thousands of miles—they were terrified of the infected Qin Zhilu.

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Qin Zhilu came to his senses and touched his earpiece, seemingly letting out a soft chuckle. “Fortunately, these low-level chaotic things grow slowly on me. They don’t rely on genetic replication, so they’re actually easier to deal with.”

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He expressionlessly aimed the muzzle at his own thickest tentacle.

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Before the High Peak could intervene, a bang erupted. The pitch-black tentacle snapped; blood and skin exploded in the air, splashing onto the ground along with the infected parts.

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An Yu quietly listened, counting the shots—it turns out that the sound of gunfire doesn’t just cause fear, but also heartache.

The shots rang out round after round. Qin Zhilu’s movements to swap magazines grew slower. As the last magazine was slotted in, he seemed to suddenly remember something and looked up into the drone lens again.

In that instant, An Yu had the illusion that the Commander was making eye contact with him.

The next second, a thunderous gunshot echoed. An Yu held the terminal, staring in shock at the static on the screen.

A sigh from Qin Zhilu came through the private channel.

“Stop looking,” he said.

But perhaps he was too tired and forgot to close the channel. After that sigh, An Yu held his breath and counted exactly 33 more gunshots.

Then, he heard the familiar friction of Qin Zhilu slowly retracting his tentacles as usual. A moment later, the channel captured the sound of heavy, slow footsteps. Qin Zhilu seemed to be dragging his feet across the snow, stepping over the small objects scattered on the ground as he walked straight ahead.

“It’s not on the ground. Norbert probably took it off his chest and hid it in his coat,” he murmured to himself. “I should thank her for the tip; it saved a lot of time.”

In the channel, a superior hesitated for a long time before asking: “Whose tip?”

“Didn’t you see?” Qin Zhilu’s voice was as light as the wind. “Sienna was mixed in that crowd. I killed those people, but not Norbert. Norbert died from that gunshot a few seconds ago. Sienna ran away after killing him.”

“Sienna?” The superior immediately ordered: “Rewind the combat footage!”

An Yu was stunned for a moment. His memory rewound like a tape; the countless images he had just seen flashed back, and he suddenly remembered something. A woman with long, dark-gray wavy hair indeed seemed to have flashed through the crowd, also wearing work clothes and holding an axe. Back then, his heart was entirely on Qin Zhilu, and he had forgotten to wonder why a woman would appear there.

The superior asked: “How could she just run away under surveillance?”

“Zoom in and play it in slow motion. If my eyes didn’t deceive me, it seems Sienna has awakened an ability that will give you quite a surprise… or perhaps, a fright.”

Qin Zhilu murmured as the sound of fabric rubbing came through the private channel; he seemed to have knelt down. A moment later, the space An Yu was in began to fluctuate again, though the amplitude was small this time and soon stabilized.

He felt as though he were being gently held in the palm of a hand.

“Norbert actually didn’t throw you out,” Qin Zhilu softly said in the channel. “Perhaps a shred of loyalty remained. Or perhaps, he just didn’t want the photo of his daughter to be hacked to pieces.”

The howling snowstorm almost turned Qin Zhilu’s black clothes white. He held the tiny brooch before his eyes, removed the little girl’s photo, and dropped it onto the chest of Norbert’s corpse. Then, he simply stared straight at the brooch.

An Yu could have come out now.

But for some reason, he held his breath, feeling a surge of nervousness.

He couldn’t see what was happening outside; he could only hear the Commander’s weak, long breaths in the channel—breath after breath, clearly right in his ear, yet sounding as if they were drawing closer.

The High Peak activated the drone’s backup lens, finally regaining the surveillance feed. They hesitated: “Law, you’re too heavily injured. You need to hurry…”

Their words cut off abruptly.

Qin Zhilu knelt on one knee in the middle of the blood-stained snow. He lowered his eyes and gently kissed the brooch.

Author’s note

Snowflake fragments
[Qin Zhilu (1/4)]
[Not Allowed to Err]

I have made two mistakes in my life.

The first: Presumptuously using my genes to infect something in District 95.

The second: Ignoring potentially traitorous soldiers because of my wandering thoughts.

The first mistake almost cost me my self.

The second mistake almost cost me him.

Some people, from the moment they are born, are destined to never be allowed to make a mistake.

translator’s notes:
omg the man that you are QZL
btw this chapter had some hugeee chunks of text in one single paragraph that I didn’t split bcs it was that way in the raws, do my dear readers prefer them split in shorter paragraphs or accurate to the raw source?