Ch 180: The Cannon Fodder Won’t Play Along Anymore [QT]

ARC 11: The First Superhuman

Mu Xing woke up drenched in sweat.

His whole body felt as if it had just been pulled out of water, weak and limp, to the point where even moving a finger was difficult.

He slowly opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was the simple ceiling light above him. Beneath him was the soft sensation of a mattress — he must be in a bedroom.

He turned his head slightly to look around, and even such a simple motion sent his mind spinning, nearly making him faint again.

Suddenly, a flood of story memories surged into his head.

The original Mu Xing had been an orphan, raised by an old Taoist priest. When Mu Xing was eighteen, the priest passed away. After graduating college, Mu Xing stayed in the provincial capital of his hometown and became just an ordinary office worker.

That quiet life was broken a month ago.

That day, after work, he returned to his rented apartment building. While waiting for the elevator on the first floor, he inexplicably heard a quarrel between a couple on the seventh floor.

That made no sense. Mu Xing lived on the seventh floor himself, and the apartments there had good soundproofing. Normally, even if the neighbors argued behind closed doors, he shouldn’t be able to hear it from inside his own unit — let alone from seven floors below.

From that day onward, he began to run a fever.

At first, it went down with some over-the-counter medicine, but soon it came back. Fearing something serious, he took leave from work and went to the hospital. Yet the doctors found nothing abnormal.

Still, everything felt wrong.

His hearing became unusually sharp. His slightly myopic eyes not only recovered, but became so sharp that he could clearly see people a hundred meters away.

If that were all, maybe it could be explained. But one morning, he woke up needing the bathroom. With just a single thought, he suddenly appeared not in his own bedroom, but in the neighbor’s bathroom.

It was like seeing a ghost.

He went back to the hospital for a full-body checkup, but the results showed his health indicators were better than perfect. The doctor almost pulled him aside to ask: Young man, what kind of health regimen do you follow?

He left the hospital in a daze.

Afraid of what was happening to him, he confided in his close colleague Xu Hui.

Xu Hui was his senior, a few years ahead of him, and had guided him since he joined the company. Honest and dependable. Naturally, Xu Hui didn’t believe his story — until Mu Xing phased through the living room wall into the bedroom right before his eyes.

Xu Hui was stunned, even joked: “Is this what movies call superpowers?”

But the original Mu Xing, still feverish and weak, sighed: “I feel like I’m dying. What’s the point of a superpower if I can’t even live?”

In that state, he couldn’t keep working. The company, worried something might happen on site, gave him extended leave until he got better.

Xu Hui would occasionally visit, bringing small gifts.

Then, one day, when Mu Xing was burning with fever and delirious, he woke barely able to move, bitterly wondering if he was about to die.

That was when his door opened.

Two men in black entered, injected something into his arm, and his consciousness slipped away.

From then on, his nightmare began.

He awoke on a white bed, surrounded by people in white coats, countless machines and experimental devices all around.

For a long time after, he never left that bed.

They injected him with things he couldn’t name. His body wouldn’t move, his mind was often foggy, but he felt everything — every invasive test, every extraction of blood, spinal fluid, tissue samples.

Eventually, they even cut away flesh to analyze, strapped strange instruments onto his head. It felt like countless tendrils drilling into his brain — the pain so vivid that even Mu Xing, merely recalling it, trembled in reflex.

Later, they transferred him to a different place — a giant tank, filled with a thick blue liquid of unknown nature.

From overhearing them, he realized his body was collapsing. They didn’t want him to die, so they kept him alive by force to continue their so-called research.

He lost all sense of time.

His only wish became simple: to die quickly, to escape the torment.

Then one day, he dimly sensed chaos erupting around him — gunfire, rushing wind, panicked footsteps everywhere.

At last, silence.

A few soldiers in uniform broke into the room. Mu Xing struggled to open his eyes and met their shocked, furious gazes.

Kill me.

He prayed wordlessly.

—

Mu Xing exhaled deeply, pulling himself out of the nightmarish memories.

After that point, the perspective was no longer the original’s.

It turned out, everything had started with Xu Hui.

One evening, Xu Hui went to a bar to unwind. After a few drinks, feeling tipsy, he mentioned Mu Xing’s strange situation to the people around him.

Of course, nobody believed him.

Xu Hui, indignant, doubled down — describing in detail everything Mu Xing had told him, and even what he had witnessed with his own eyes.

Some listened half-doubtfully. Then, someone behind them suddenly asked:

“What’s your friend’s name? Where does he live?”

Xu Hui’s eyes were half-lidded, and he didn’t even know exactly what he had said.

Later, he passed out drunk.

Two days later, when he went to Mu Xing’s apartment to check on him, he knocked and called for a long time but got no answer. Afraid something might have happened inside, he called the police.

But there was no one left inside.

Mu Xing had disappeared.

Xu Hui was taken to the police station for questioning. He only told them that Mu Xing had been unwell lately, often sick, and that Mu Xing kept saying he had awakened some kind of superpower.

He didn’t tell the police about Mu Xing’s strange ability to walk through walls.

The police couldn’t get any useful information out of him, so they let him go, reminding him that if he remembered anything important, he must tell them immediately.

A day after returning home, Xu Hui woke from sleep in a cold sweat, suddenly recalling the stranger he’d met at the bar that night.

The man’s accent had been odd, clearly not someone from China, and he had asked many questions about Mu Xing.

Cold sweat broke out again. Could Mu Xing’s disappearance be connected to that man?

But in the end, Xu Hui still didn’t say a word.

At that moment, a dark thought sprouted in his heart: perhaps it was better if Mu Xing never came back.

As a senior at the company, both colleague and former upperclassman, Xu Hui had initially been happy to guide this junior.

But the junior was too exceptional. Soon after joining the company, Mu Xing had landed a major project, earning the admiration of leadership.

By the year’s end, a project manager was set to transfer to headquarters. By seniority, Xu Hui should have been the natural candidate for promotion.

But that manager liked Mu Xing very much, and might have recommended him to leadership before leaving.

Xu Hui chose silence.

The original Mu Xing lost his only chance of being saved.

*

Mu Xing quietly watched the missing pieces of the story unfold.

In recent years, ancient ruins had been unearthed around the world. Humanity discovered relics of long-forgotten cultures never recorded in history.

Experts gradually proposed that human history might be far older than what was known. In distant ages, perhaps humankind once possessed glorious civilizations.

Mu Xing’s mutation was only the beginning.

Three months after his transformation, others across China began showing the same symptoms. Soon, similar cases appeared in other countries as well.

After a month or more of lingering fevers and malaise, their senses sharpened, their strength grew, and some awakened supernatural powers—like characters from a science fiction film.

No one was prepared for this upheaval.

As more and more awakened individuals appeared, governments lagged behind, and chaos spread worldwide.

Some awakened saw themselves as chosen beings, superior to ordinary humans. They banded together, forming organizations, ignoring laws and rules, seizing whatever they wanted through violence.

They called themselves superhumans.

A few extremists went further, claiming that ordinary humans were “inferior genes” that should be eliminated. They carried out terrorist attacks, openly declaring their intent to wipe out humanity.

For a long time, human society was thrown into disorder. Ordinary people were afraid to even leave their homes, lest they be robbed—or killed.

Among the nations, China was the fastest to respond, and the quickest to stabilize.

With overwhelming force, the government recruited and organized the awakened, forming a new army to restore order.

While many foreign governments were still battling superhuman uprisings, China had already returned to relative peace.

The original Mu Xing had been the very first awakened in the world. He was three full months ahead of the second person to awaken.

The people who kidnapped him came from a foreign group known as “Zero.”

Its members were all fanatics and outcasts—psychopathic killers, ruthless biologists, rabid racists… there was no one normal among them.

From the moment ancient ruins began to appear, they sensed something unusual and scoured the world for anomalies.

They targeted Mu Xing during his awakening and abducted him.

Using him as a test subject, they gained an early understanding of the superhuman phenomenon. When the global awakening began, they seized the advantage, recruiting a large number of ability users.

Worse still, with the knowledge extracted from Mu Xing, they created artificial “sub-humans.”

These man-made powers were weaker than natural awakened, but still stronger than ordinary people. The price was steep: their powers were fueled by forcibly burning their life force, giving them short, doomed lifespans.

The Zero organization became the world’s greatest tumor when the chaos era began.

*

After seeing the complete story, Mu Xing suddenly realized something.

In the original timeline, the old Mu Xing had been abducted by Zero during one of his fever spells, too weak to resist.

But now…

He held his breath.

He heard footsteps.

On the first floor.

Two men stood silently at the elevator.

Their target… was him.

Cold sweat slid down Mu Xing’s back.

He “watched” as they entered the elevator.

The elevator rose.

It stopped at the seventh floor.

They stepped out, glanced at the apartment numbers, and then… stopped right at his door.

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