Chapter 180-I Clean Up Garbage in a Wasteland World
Chapter 180 Another Self (XI)
Zhu Ning saw Li Xin's past.
A door appeared in her mind. Faint white light outlined its edges. This was Zhu Ning's first time using this ability directly—unlike with Bao Ruiming, where she'd simply accessed data files. She couldn't search by keyword here; she could only walk through the memory palace.
This was the door of memory.
When the door opened, Li Xin's past unfolded before her. The most recent memories came first.
From Li Xin's perspective, Zhu Ning saw herself walking into the Red House. They were separated by a thin wall.
Li Xin watched Zhu Ning in silence from behind the wall. Zhu Ning seemed a little lost upon seeing traces of her own life here.
Zhu Ning appeared to have no idea what this place was.
Zhu Ning searched for clues without any awareness, treating this as just another ordinary Contamination Zone.
Memory reading couldn't reveal a person's inner thoughts, so Zhu Ning had no way of knowing what Li Xin was thinking.
She simply stood behind the wall for a long time, the freckles on her face shifting subtly—like ripples spreading across a still lake.
After a long while, Li Xin watched Zhu Ning enter the bedroom. Only then did she raise her hand and gently knock on the wall.
"Zhu Ning?" These were Li Xin's first words to Zhu Ning: "Is Zhu Ning there? Li Xin calling Zhu Ning."
"Zhu Ning here, over." She heard her own reply. At that time, she'd treated Li Xin as just another ordinary Beast, thinking along the Beast's logic, playing a role she didn't understand at all.
Li Xin, too, had only treated Zhu Ning as just another ordinary human—like all the others who'd stumbled into the Red House.
Zhu Ning paused slightly at this point, then continued.
The second door.
Li Xin's memories rewound, like a film playing in rapid reverse.
Eleven years ago, from the moment Zhu Ning entered the Red House, Li Xin had been watching her.
She liked observing humans. Observing enough details was essential for imitation.
But Zhu Ning was clearly different. Zhu Ning could sense Li Xin's emotions—confusion, bewilderment, disdain, amusement.
Non-Natural Humans were fundamentally different from humans, carrying a faint air of a "god" looking down from above.
Some of Zhu Ning's actions seemed ignorant and childish in her eyes.
Several times when Zhu Ning nearly got caught by Mechanical Mother, it was Li Xin who helped her avoid detection. She was like someone tending a little seedling—not especially attentive, but watering it from time to time when she remembered.
The third door.
Time rewound further. Before Zhu Ning entered the Red House, Li Xin's life had been simpler.
From her perspective, Mechanical Mother deteriorated day by day—the skin on her face sagging off, mechanical gears rusting and seizing up.
Mechanical Mother sighed quietly in a corner of the Red House, unable to comprehend the purpose of her own existence.
The Red House Defectives would lie awake at night, thinking about the countdown on their lives. They had no concept of a future.
The accumulated "resentment" attracted a predator. A freckle-faced little girl was sleeping in her bed—the real Li Xin.
Li Xin's eyes were shut tight. She had no idea that a black Ant-Mimicking Spider was climbing up her bedpost.
The spider crawled onto Li Xin's face, slowly feeling its way across. To a spider, a human face was an enormous map.
It navigated for a while before getting its bearings, circling past Li Xin's mouth, crawling over the bridge of her nose.
Li Xin frowned in her sleep. The spider had already slipped into her ear canal, making its way into Li Xin's brain, settling into a comfortable spot and taking hold.
That was when the sleeping Li Xin became aware of something. She struggled desperately. It felt like someone had seized her by the throat—she wanted to scream, but she couldn't make a sound.
Crash. In her thrashing, Li Xin rolled off the bed.
She lay flat on the floor like a corpse. Her pupils were dilated, unable to focus.
A very long time passed. Slowly, the light in her eyes gathered again. Finally, "Li Xin" stood up and climbed back into bed.
From then on, the Li Xin that Zhu Ning knew was a composite being.
The fourth door.
The clock hands turned backward. Time rewound. Following the Ant-Mimicking Spider's past.
Zhu Ning felt as though she were watching evolution in reverse—like watching a human devolve into an ape. She was watching a Non-Natural Human revert to a mindless Ant-Mimicking Spider.
The spider had lived in the Red House. The Red House existed before humans built the High Wall—it had always been an orphanage.
After the High Wall was erected, the Federation "placed" Mechanical Mother inside to raise Defectives.
By comparison, the Ant-Mimicking Spider was the original resident. They lived in the narrow, damp crevices within the walls, normally avoiding humans as they moved about.
The wooden wall cavities were their nests. Their biological instinct was to feed on ants.
They could survive by blending into ant colonies.
For the first time, Zhu Ning experienced the world from a spider's perspective. Everything suddenly became enormous. A single human leg was like a mountain too vast to cross.
A curious child pouring water in could mean an extinction-level flood. A casual stomp could obliterate them without a trace.
Random. Chaotic. Disordered. Never knowing when disaster would strike—that was life as an insect.
The spider crawled along the edge of a drain, its tiny body able to pass through most obstacles, squeezing into an impossibly narrow crack.
The crack seemed bottomless. The spider lost its way in the underground crevice. With no way out, it could only keep going deeper and deeper.
It walked for an unknowable length of time, as if heading toward the earth's core, before it stopped.
An eerie red glow seeped from the crevice ahead, illuminating the mindless little spider. It was deeply unsettling, and yet deeply alluring.
The red light radiated heat. The spider extended its two front limbs, trying to make sense of what lay below.
Wait—
An inexplicable wave of panic hit Zhu Ning. She wasn't physically there—she was only replaying someone's memory. Yet she didn't even dare look directly at it. The hair on the back of her neck shot up instantly. Human instinct kicked in.
Every cell in her body was screaming at her to run.
Don't make eye contact with it! Don't make eye contact with it! Don't make eye contact with it!
Zhu Ning yanked her hand back. Even though reason told her she should continue, instinct told her she absolutely could not.
She immediately pulled out of Li Xin's memories, shoving open door after door in the memory palace, desperately trying to escape.
Zhu Ning's eyes snapped open. She felt something deep inside her brain contracting. A bone-deep chill ran through her entire body. Her mouth hung open, gasping for air.
What had she seen?
Zhu Ning couldn't believe what she'd just witnessed. Her brain throbbed with a strangling pain so intense she wanted to vomit blood.
The stench of death and decay spread. In an instant, Zhu Ning was engulfed by an immense force, as if countless steel needles were plunging into her all at once.
She had just made eye contact with something.
The perspective pulled back—expanding from an insect's view to an underground panorama. Magma churned below. Something colossal lay dormant beneath the earth. From an insect's vantage point, its size was impossible to gauge—it spanned the entire subterranean expanse.
Its skin was writhing. The subtle movements produced a nauseating, viscous sound. Each undulation made her teeth chatter. Delirious whispers echoed in her ears. Gray, twitching lines began appearing in her mind, like a tangled knot of madness.
Frenzied whispers crashed over her. All understanding was shattered in an instant. Memory and reason alike were warped by some alien force.
Her brain was wound tight—like a soda can filled to bursting with pressure. It could easily explode, brains and blood rupturing under the strain.
A Beast. Zhu Ning gritted her teeth, unable to stop shaking. It was the largest Beast she had ever seen.
Buried beneath District 103 was an enormous Beast—stretching endlessly. Its body was absolutely larger than the entirety of District 103.
Zhu Ning was standing right above it. Compared to this thing, she was no different in size from an insect.
It had bestowed power upon "Li Xin" and "Jiang Ping," becoming their creator. It had reshuffled nature itself, blending human genes with animal genes to create an entirely new species.
Beasts would ultimately overturn every system of order humanity had built.
All along, the residents of District 103 had been living directly above this Beast, completely oblivious.
The High Wall project humanity launched eighty years ago had been utterly useless. Apart from the Divine Kingdom, there was no longer a single truly untouched land in this world.
Everyone in every other district was simply waiting to die—the only difference being sooner or later. The moment that thing beneath them awakened, the entirety of District 103 would be annihilated.
When that happened, it would likely form a massive Contamination Zone. Every person would be assimilated into Beasts.
The apocalypse was coming. They were all nothing but insects.
She'd always had a vague sense that she was racing against something, fighting for every second.
From Bao Ruiming's memories, she'd learned about the doomsday countdown. Zhu Ning thought she'd gained an advantage.
Only now did she begin to understand the true meaning of the apocalypse. It was this close—right beneath her feet.
She had found her true enemy. But she didn't even have the courage to meet its gaze.
......
The Sanitation Center.
Huo Wenxi sat in a conference room. The lights were off. The room was dim.
Huo Wenxi smoked in silence. Smoke curled upward, shrouding her face. Her expression was completely hidden.
She'd been like this ever since her conversation with Huo Jinsheng.
The Huo family had told her to make her own choice: whether to abandon District 103, evacuate immediately, and return to the Huo family's main estate—under Great-Grandmother's protection.
Footsteps echoed all around. Employees rushed back and forth in a panic. The entire Center was in chaos. Many people were trying to find the person in charge but couldn't.
Some employees wanted answers. Others had sensed something was wrong and were fleeing the Sanitation Center in the middle of the night.
It was a restless night. Only the surface still maintained an illusion of stability.
Beneath the surface, the Sanitation Center was a roiling sea—something was brewing at every moment. Perhaps an all-out battle.
Zhu Ning had been gone for a long time. It was well past midnight now—only two hours until dawn.
Outside, it was snowing. The snow fell harder and harder, blanketing all of District 103 like a soft, downy quilt.
Huo Wenxi sat in her office smoking one cigarette after another. The ashtray was overflowing with butts.
On her desk lay a document. The Outside-the-Wall Investigation Team she'd dispatched had returned. This was their report.
The team hadn't gone beyond the actual defensive wall. They'd merely retraced Jiang Ping's old route—all still within the wall's interior.
Huo Wenxi had sent an elite squad with the best equipment and weapons available.
But the losses far exceeded her imagination. Yesterday, they'd received the return signal. The team would arrive within two days.
The Outside-the-Wall Investigation Team had numbered fifteen. Only one came back. The other fourteen were gone without a trace. The sole survivor had lost his mind.
The survivor was found by the Garrison Troops stationed outside the wall. He was completely deranged, attacking anyone he saw indiscriminately. The Garrison had nearly put him down with a single shot.
The Garrison waited until he'd burned through all his energy, then sedated him with a tranquilizer. Only after confirming his identity did they realize he was an investigator dispatched by the Sanitation Center.
The Garrison quickly contacted the District 103 Sanitation Center and rushed the investigator and all his materials back via express transport.
The investigator had completely lost his mind. His body was covered in wounds. He tried to kill himself at every opportunity and was currently undergoing psychiatric treatment.
No amount of questioning yielded results, because the investigator could only repeat two words: "Dead."
"Dead!" The deranged investigator clutched his head and repeated: "Dead dead dead dead dead..."
The treating physician said they would do everything they could, but told Huo Wenxi not to get her hopes up.
In the doctor's words: don't count on any useful intelligence. This man was likely ruined for the rest of his life.
He had suffered severe mental contamination. He mumbled ceaselessly, as if praying to something.
Some psychological trauma was reversible. Some was not.
Huo Wenxi's profession was investigating the truth. She'd read countless investigation reports in her career.
This was the first time she'd hesitated. Perhaps it was because her abilities had temporarily vanished, and she didn't trust any of her own judgments in this state.
Huo Wenxi stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray. She opened the envelope. Inside was a chip.
The chip contained internal helmet footage from the investigation team—a complete record of the Outside-the-Wall team's experience. The video hadn't even been reviewed by Prometheus, nor had it been filtered by anyone. It was raw, unprocessed, first-hand material.
Huo Wenxi was the first person to view this chip.
She was about to approach the truth.
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