Evil As Humans, page 122
The compensation wasn’t much, nor was it too little. If they were in the pre-development era of Gengsheng Town, most likely the villagers would’ve accepted it with enthusiasm. But the villagers of the current Gengsheng Town only showed confusion and despair.
Is it over just like this?
It was unknown who was the first to take up arms, but the project staff was eventually driven out—there was a mixture of desperation and hope on the faces of the townspeople, as if the town could be saved by driving away this person.
The mayor hurriedly came out to dissuade them but was surrounded by the out-of-control townspeople.
“Mayor, think of a way.”
“Do something…”
Countless eyes looked at him.
“This is our home.”
“I can’t live without my home!”
Countless hands stretched out to him.
“You’re so powerful. Look at the great city we have built.”
“If we all work together, there are no obstacles that we can’t overcome, don’t you think?”
Countless mouths were speaking to him.
Chaos and sorrow were like echoes, lingering in the crowd endlessly. The faces of the townspeople had stiff and uneasy smiles, but their eyes, which were no longer young, showed a little sadness.
…Familiar people, familiar scenes, but not familiar emotions.
Surrounded by the group of townspeople, the mayor vaguely saw the day when the first mine was successfully mined.
Every family set off firecrackers. Men, women, and children walked out of their low adobe houses, and laughter filled the town. They said that their future would definitely get better.
Perhaps it was because he didn’t take painkillers tonight that the pain inside him was burning like a prairie fire, heating him so hot that it made his brain boil.
“This is all temporary, right? Mayor… Mayor?”
Accompanied by huge sadness, countless fragments of information flooded the mayor’s mind. Something seemed to have broken in his body, and cold mucus flowed freely from his chest and abdomen. His internal organs seemed to be frozen and twisted into a ball.
The world was spinning, and everything in front of him melted like cream.
Countless thoughts converged into a torrent, whispering frantically in his head. They formed a cold and heavy stone mill, and the mayor could feel that his sanity was slowly being crushed by it.
I want to go back to the past. Such a good life has just begun… Slightly younger voices were buzzing.
Our ancestors were born here and died here for generations. Our roots have been entrenched here for hundreds of years… The thoughts of the old people were sticky and churning in his mind endlessly.
Yes… They watched their adobe houses turn into brick houses, and the brick houses turned into high-rise buildings that were only prevalent in the cities. The railway was opened, and the circular line was built. Gengsheng Town was like a teenager who was changing every year.
Everything was clear… It shouldn’t be like this…
Why?
Helplessness, confusion, pain, bewilderment, and despair all rolled into a chaotic mess, eventually culminating in great sadness.
[I don’t want to disappear.]
They eventually merged into one voice. The voice was tormented and lost, sounding like his own, yet completely out of his control.
[I don’t want to disappear. I don’t want to disappear. I don’t want to disappear.]
The mayor who fell to the ground was supported by the townspeople. His eyes were extremely dull and the depths of his pupils were dimly red. He just looked at the land under his feet steadily, then suddenly vomited dirty blood from his internal organs.
The “Living Evil” was born.
For some reason, the mayor sensed something. There was something underground. Something rare and powerful, but extremely ominous.
It didn’t matter. As long as he could use those powers… As long as this place didn’t disappear…
The mayor closed his eyes. His hands became cold and were no longer human-like.
“We can go back in time.”
His thinking almost stagnated and his vocal cords vibrated of their own accord. His consciousness seemed to be divided into thousands of pieces and scattered among the villagers.
“As long as everyone… work together.” He heard himself say this.
In the hazy consciousness, the conversation continued out of his control. “I’ll let everyone live like they used to.”
Countless consciousnesses were entangled, and the expressions of the townspeople gradually became blank. Emotions of sadness and paranoia surged from all sides, blending with his own emotions.
It was like some of their emotions had been opened up and continued to circulate in this land, and he had become the heart of this huge cycle.
He could direct the flow of emotions and the strength and weakness of those emotions, slowly integrating the newly joined people—as long as they believed in him, respected him, and agreed with him.
A strange sense of peace of mind swept over the mayor.
Just like a drop of water that merged into the sea, relying on this common grief, they condensed into a huge, sturdy, and uncontradictory group.
No one could tear it apart.
This was a miracle, he thought in a daze. “Gengsheng Town” would definitely continue to exist.
……
“I see.”
The pen Zhong Chengshuo was holding didn’t stagnate, and he didn’t raise his head.
“Divine Descent happened, and the former mayor was severely corrupted by its Evil Force, turning into a half-evil thing. On the basis of being ‘widely known’, the people have placed a unified emotion… The birth method is somewhat similar to that of a ghost.”
“You in turn use this emotion to influence the evil things around and achieve the result of ‘driving them’.”
“But at that time, you didn’t look like this, did you? Did Sunken Society come into contact with you?” Zhong Chengshuo paused.
“They’ve been… observing me. Those painkillers I’m taking… What’s in them…” The old man said with difficulty.
“When I went underground to look for Yellow Millet, Sunken Society approached me… They told me a lot of knowledge… In exchange, I must continue to take medicine… and don’t interfere with… their actions…”
Zhong Chengshuo remained silent and wrote in his notebook: [Under the condition of Divine Descent, long-term use of Evil Force from a corruption source.]
The situation was clear.
Most of what the mayor found underground at the beginning were “dangerous evil things” that would be left behind by Sunken Society. As long as Yellow Millet used a little cognitive interference, naturally, the townspeople would see the “prosperity of the past” and continue to live in their fantasy.
As for the silent and sluggish evil things above ground, they were just by products of high concentrations of evil qi, which could then be used to raise the underground “army of evil beings”.
The underground was a research institute while the above ground was a breeding farm. The people in the meantime were probably the most insignificant part of this experiment.
“I just remember… this…”
Tears gushed out of the old man’s eyes again. The tone of his words was chaotic, as if he had suddenly forgotten how to express them.
“Hometown… My… hometown… My… I don’t want to disappear…”
Zhong Chengshuo closed his hardcover notebook. “26 minutes and 37 seconds.”
“Are you going to… kill me…”
The old man wrapped himself tightly in a blanket, but he couldn’t cover his rotting, weird limbs. They were scattered all over the ground, oozing sticky pus.
“But I still… don’t want to die… Everything just started… just… started…”
He didn’t know if this was the collective will or the mayor himself who was talking.
Those aging eyes flickered with a dim, hopeful brilliance. Through the decaying shadow in the mist, those eyes seemed to be staring at the past, revealing a trace of innocence belonging to the young.
Zhong Chengshuo remained silent.
He knew he should kill this thing.
When facing some evil things, he occasionally had a… strong intuition. It wasn’t derived from a biological instinct to seek profit and avoid harm, but more like some kind of subtle impulse.
Zhong Chengshuo put the notebook back in his backpack and replaced the Evil Fruit with an ordinary blade. Using the blade, he took part of the tissue from a relatively fresh strange limb. The evil thing sat stunned, without resisting.
When he finished all this, Zhong Chengshuo clenched the Evil Fruit tightly, but in the end, he let go.
Behind the lens, Zhong Chengshuo lowered his eyes and stretched out an empty hand.
The weak monster turned its head and looked at him in bewilderment.
“You used too much power that your cognition is unstable.” Zhong Chengshuo stared at an upside-down yellow talisman. “As a human, you’re too old. As a monster, you’re too young and unrestrained… You know your ending.”
For twenty-eight years, it lived here, slowly losing its human form. It lived clumsily, maintaining a deceptive illusion for its “believers”.
It was strong, but broken. It was collapsing silently, just like “sorrow” itself.
“Even if I don’t kill you, you’ll die soon.” Zhong Chengshuo calmly said his conclusion.
“…” The evil thing didn’t answer.
Its fighting spirit had long since disappeared, leaving only a tired gasp, like a weak little animal.
“If you’re really uncomfortable, you can hold my hand.” Zhong Chengshuo opened his hand and showed his palms. “…You used to be human, so it should have some effect on you.”
“I don’t want to disappear…”
“I understand.”
“I don’t want to disappear…”
“You will not disappear.”
“The people who live here will die and be forgotten, but you will always be here, and I will always remember you. Perhaps in the near future, countless people will know you, and you’ll be turned into data forever.”
“Maybe one day, someone will see your case and remember, ‘My ancestors lived here’.”
Zhong Chengshuo rubbed hard on the leather book with one hand as he explained solemnly.
“I don’t want to… disappear…”
In a weak gasp, a trembling strangle limb climbed into Zhong Chengshuo’s palm. It was dry and wrinkled, and it still had a trace of human temperature.
“Eventually, one day, this planet will be destroyed. All things are classified as nothingness and become other things again. You, and me too—we’ll all be scattered everywhere, existing in everything.”
In the rumbling sound of the rain, Zhong Chengshuo closed his hand.
“Your traces will always exist. You will not disappear.”
“No… I want to… Ah…”
The evil thing swallowed with difficulty for two breaths. The power of its body suddenly ignited like a flash, but it didn’t take this opportunity to attack.
It just turned its head with all its strength, and on its thin body, the oversized head turned to Zhong Chengshuo.
“…You…”
For so long, it made the first action that was close to “human”.
It smiled with difficulty.
“Ah… You… You are…”
The next moment, its sound dissipated in the air.
Zhong Chengshuo’s eyes widened suddenly.
He didn’t know when, but at some point a round hole appeared in the carriage window behind them. Before the evil thing could finish speaking, it was suddenly sucked away by the mouth of the hole, leaving only flesh and blood behind around the hole.
The turbid droplets slowly slid down the window glass, and the talismans in the carriage burned at the same time, turning into fine paper ash.
The two zombies standing quietly lost control and let out a hoarse roar. The brilliance of the Evil Fruit flashed. Zhong Chengshuo kicked the edge of the round hole, causing the window glass to shatter in response.
At the same time.
Yin Ren on Yellow Millet suddenly got up, and Fu Xingchuan in the ruins opened his eyes.
The mist gradually thinned, but the evening sky darkened. A huge black vortex gradually formed.
“…A sense of peeping.” Under the red cloth, Yin Ren bit his thumb nail.
“Tsk.”
Fu Xingchuan half sat on the ground, glanced around at “his companions” and took a deep breath.
“Why are there two missing?”
Evil As Humans Ch105
Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong
Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/
* * *
Chapter 105: Hunting
Time reversed a little.
Haigu, Shian Campus.
Lu Xiaohe kept moving the miniature screen, looking at the jumping data on the screen with her face covered in sweat.
“Hao Wenzhe, Lu Xiaohe, continue to investigate and try to locate the controller.”
Before they left the Ant Nest, Li Nian had instructed them.
The real-time judgment of the front line was handed over to Hao Wenzhe, while Lu Xiaohe’s head swelled up to the size of a basketball as she assisted with the data. The reaction screen of the evil qi in Gengsheng Town became like a sieve, with dense red dots pressing against each other on the terrain map, enough to make someone with agoraphobia faint on the spot.
They varied in size, flickering on and off and disappearing one or two at a time, making the entire screen chaotic and disorderly. Lu Xiaohe stared at it for a few minutes and felt her eyes blur.
“It’s the usual methods of the technical department from Sunken Society. Stimulate specific large-scale evil things, causing chaos in the evil qi to throw all the evil spirits into disorder.”
Hao Wenzhe wiped his nose and stared at the screen with both eyes.
“At this level of confusion, only close-range detection is reliable. Satellite images can only reflect part of the situation—you have to make your own guesses.”
Lu Xiaohe “Nn” twice.
She did have aspirations for promotion and salary increase, and she was also willing to challenge difficult problems, but since the establishment of Special Investigation Unit 9, she had a feeling of “over-eagerness” as if fate were pulling her scalp towards the sky.
The difficult tasks in recent months were almost more than her previous years combined.
Lu Xiaohe looked at the screen numbly. On the black screen, those blood-bead-like red dots were still leaking out… What was the C-level investigation team next door doing? Oh, right, they were investigating a mysterious blockage of the sewers in the community.
She thought the execution mission would be tricky, but she was too naïve.
Suddenly, a huge red dot disappeared.
Lu Xiaohe rubbed her eyes, thinking she had read it wrong. The dispersal of evil things required a process. Even if Fu Xingchuan personally took action, he couldn’t just make the enemy disappear instantly.
In less than ten minutes, the next one also suddenly disappeared.
Lu Xiaohe’s back went cold as she slid a chair to Hao Wenzhe’s side. As a result, before she could speak, Hao Wenzhe blocked her again without raising his head…
“It may be that the evil qi index exceeded the limit, causing the instrument to malfunction. Those evil things are too powerful. The only thing that can reach this kind of effect is to change the limit, ahem, Evil Fruit.”
“But the Evil Fruit must be paid with a human life. It’s impossible for us to miss such a group of ‘suiciders’. Shian’s operation is nearby. It’s meaningless to show up at this time.”
Lu Xiaohe opened her mouth.
…Maybe the other party has calculated this?
But this wasn’t the time to delve into things. She rubbed her temples, and the ever-changing data crackled in her eyes.
By simplifying the model of the change in evil qi concentration and the movements of the evil things, along with using AI-assisted analysis, she could probably determine the approximate direction of the impact. It was just that it took time for her to get a relatively certain value.
Lu Xiaohe adjusted the communication channel. Considering the battle of the top powerhouses couldn’t be distracted, she tried her best to remain silent.
But wasn’t it too quiet now?
A group of people in Gengsheng Town broke through the ground, and the sound of distorted signals could be heard endlessly. During this period, there was the whistling sound of wind brought by the levitation spell, and there were small noises from the activities of the crowd.
But after a jolt just now, the wind stopped.
While Lu Xiaohe was still reacting, Hao Wenzhe had already mercilessly applied electrical stimulation—of course, mainly targeting the three members of the Emergency Management Department.
“Headquarters, answer!” he yelled, furrowing his brows.
No one answered.
Hao Wenzhe poured half a cup of coffee fiercely as he tapped his fingers on the keyboard. Lu Xiaohe turned the chair around and saw that he had changed the indicator under the words “Fu Xingchuan” to the highest level and pressed the electric stimulation button again.
Lu Xiaohe: “……”
Under the extremely strong electrical stimulation, Fu Xingchuan’s channel made a few rough gasps.
“Headquarters,” Hao Wenzhe repeated.
Fu Xingchuan didn’t answer. He was short of breath, and his body temperature rose abnormally. After a while, the noise disappeared again, and Shian’s “#1 Ghost General” seemed to have lost consciousness again.
“Fu Xingchuan has fallen… The unsuspecting ultra-close range enemy attack started quickly, hitting all the staff. Fu Xingchuan woke up but didn’t say a word. This is good news—at least they aren’t dead yet.”
Hao Wenzhe’s eyes were glued to the electrical stimulation level.
