After Bystander A Bound to JJ Literature City – CH110

Chapter 110

Doctor Qi instinctively tried to shake his right hand, but the eyeball had grown on the back of his hand. Not only could it not be shaken off, his movement instead made it roll around in its socket.

The sensation of the eyeball moving was bizarre. It didn’t hurt. He could clearly feel its presence and its motion—yet he had no way to control it.

It felt like a foreign organism parasitizing his hand, gradually devouring his brain’s control over his body.

A strange sensation surged up within Doctor Qi. He felt as though that hand no longer belonged to him.

Once the body was contaminated, reason was impacted as well. Thoughts were eroded. Mental pollution accelerated at an extreme rate.

He watched helplessly as the normal skin beside the eyeball suddenly bulged. The swelling split open—and in the blink of an eye, a second eyeball burrowed out.

Both eyeballs were staring at him.

Silently staring.

Doctor Qi froze in place. His mind went completely blank.

“Doctor Qi—”

A clear voice suddenly rang out by his ear like a clap of thunder, instantly pulling him back to his senses.

Doctor Qi shut his eyes, took a deep breath, pulled out a knife with his left hand, and viciously stabbed it into the eyeball.

The instant the blade pierced in, there was a wet squelch. Blood splattered out, and searing pain spread through his right hand.

“Hiss—”

His face turned deathly pale. Even his lips lost their color. His left hand trembled as he forced himself to twist his wrist and gouge the eyeball out alive.

Before he could even use his ability to heal, a powerful force suddenly yanked him backward.

A dark shadow brushed past the tip of his nose and crashed heavily onto the ground.

Bang—

A contaminant had fallen from upstairs. Its limbs were twisted and deformed, convulsing on the ground in a grotesque posture as it struggled to crawl toward them.

Yu Zhi aimed at its head and fired several shots in succession.

Bang, bang, bang—

After emptying an entire magazine, the contaminant’s skull was completely blown apart—but the body below the neck was still twitching and writhing.

Contaminants were already dead to begin with. They wouldn’t die a second time.

Bullets couldn’t completely destroy their bodies—only temporarily restrict their movements.

Seeing that they had somehow violated the pollution zone’s rules and fallen into danger, the users in the livestream chat excitedly flooded the screen with comments.

[User “Cyber Bodhisattva” looks forward to you being contaminated and tipped 10 universal coins.]
[User “momo” looks forward to your actions and tipped 20 universal coins.]
[User “World’s No.1 Cute Girl” is waiting for you to find your long-lost temporary lover and tipped 20 universal coins.]
[User “Scarecrow’s Straw” sternly reminds you that evil begets evil.]

Yu Zhi had no time to pay attention to the chat. He didn’t even have time to wipe away the sweat dripping onto his eyelashes.

While changing magazines at top speed, he ran, panting heavily, and scanned his surroundings, wary of contaminants that could charge out from any corner at any moment.

After running for a stretch, Yu Zhi noticed that the contaminants’ movements had slowed. They were no longer chasing them as frantically as before. The speed at which eyeballs grew on their bodies had also slowed. The thudding sounds of things falling from above had stopped at some unknown point.

Yu Zhi let out a heavy breath and immediately looked at Doctor Qi.

After being contaminated, Doctor Qi was slightly sluggish. At the moment, Lu Li was dragging him forward as they ran.

His right hand swayed in the air with each step. The torn, mangled wound gushed blood continuously, dripping along the path.

Yu Zhi was just about to remind them to treat it first. Before he could finish the first word, another bloody eyeball grew out of Doctor Qi’s wound.

Thud—

Rustle… rustle…

The contaminants caught up again.

Yu Zhi cursed under his breath and rapidly told Lu Li, “Dig out the eyeball on Doctor Qi’s hand. Heal him immediately!”

“Got it.”

Lu Li responded quickly and snatched the dagger from Doctor Qi’s left hand.

Doctor Qi had just understood Yu Zhi’s meaning when he looked up and saw Lu Li’s blade flash down—directly slicing off the eyeball on the back of his hand, along with a large chunk of flesh.

The pain made him unable to suppress a scream. Yet the agony jolted him instantly awake.

“Is this—how I usually teach you?!” Doctor Qi’s vision darkened in waves.

Lu Li hurried to heal him. “This is faster. Special circumstances, special methods.”

Yu Zhi stood in front of the two of them, firing at the contaminants rushing over.

One of them had only the upper half of its body. A burst of bullets forced it back repeatedly before it collapsed onto the ground and was trampled underfoot by the next contaminant charging forward.

Bang, bang, bang—
Bang, bang, bang—

Gunshots echoed through the air. Eyeballs on the contaminants’ bodies burst one after another, spraying foul, putrid blood.

Yu Zhi’s face was pale. His stomach churned violently.

His body felt terrible—but his thoughts were incomparably clear.

A pollution zone centered around its source. The contaminants acted according to the source’s logic.

In this zone, killing contaminants was reasonable.

Doctor Qi being contaminated was unreasonable.

They could kill contaminants—but they couldn’t be contaminated…

Yu Zhi blinked away the sweat on his lashes, his heart sinking deeper and deeper.

This was the kind of logic formed by people who had spent years eliminating pollution sources and contaminants. An ordinary person encountering a pollution incident would only think of escaping.

The pollution source—was an ability user from the Bureau.

“Brother Yu, he’s healed!” Lu Li shouted.

Yu Zhi snapped out of his thoughts and looked around at the contaminants.

The ones charging at them had slowed, but they weren’t standing still like before. They continued moving about. The dense clusters of eyeballs on their bodies rotated 360 degrees, as if searching for something.

Yu Zhi cautiously took a step back. The contaminants didn’t rush over—but the speed at which the eyeballs rotated visibly increased.

Not only that, the contaminant that had been shot down earlier stood up again. On its sunken face grew a massive eyeball as large as its face, with a fist-sized black pupil constantly scanning the surroundings.

They were searching for new contaminants.

Yu Zhi resisted the urge to keep firing and gestured to Doctor Qi and Lu Li.

The three retreated together. After backing into the narrow passage between a residential building and a wall, they finally could no longer see the eyeball-covered monsters.

Walking at the rear, Yu Zhi said bluntly, “The pollution source is probably an ability user.”

Doctor Qi’s steps halted abruptly. He stared at Yu Zhi with widened eyes. After a moment, realization dawned, and he murmured, “No wonder… no wonder I was contaminated, and the contaminants chased us.”

“But an ability user’s resistance to contamination far exceeds that of ordinary people… What exactly is Meteorite Biotech doing in there?”

“What could they possibly be doing to kill so many people within minutes—and even turn an ability user into a pollution source?”

Yu Zhi took out the remaining half bottle of water from his pocket and drained it in one gulp, washing away the stench of blood and rot from his mouth and nose. The cramping in his stomach eased slightly.

He glanced at the time. “Forget Meteorite Biotech for now. We need to find the pollution source quickly and lift the instance restrictions.”

“We’ve been in this instance for over half an hour. The people from Meteorite Biotech haven’t shown up. Either they’re not in the pollution zone, or like before, they’re observing us from the shadows. They probably won’t make a move against us for the time being.”

“Compared to them, the pollution source and the contaminants are the bigger problem.”

If the source didn’t die, the contaminants would keep coming endlessly.

And Doctor Qi had already been contaminated.

Yu Zhi tossed aside the empty water bottle. “Also, after all this time, no other ability users have entered. That probably means they have a way to block entry.”

“The pollution source deliberately let the three of us in.”

Doctor Qi frowned. “Why the three of us? Does he know us?”

Yu Zhi nodded, then shook his head. “He definitely knows us. But that’s not the reason he let us in.”

After Fu Suxi had cleansed the internal mole within the Special Operations Bureau, everyone there knew He Hanhai and the others were A-class ability users from the headquarters.

If the pollution source let people like He Hanhai enter—but only allowed the three of them into the instance—there had to be another reason.

This instance’s pollution rules targeted the contaminated. That meant when the ability user turned into a pollution source, he hadn’t completely lost his sanity.

In other words, he hadn’t let them in simply to kill them.

Yu Zhi suddenly thought of something. His eyelashes trembled sharply.

A translucent interface popped up before his eyes.

[Instance Mission: Raise Your Head and Gaze at the Moon.]
[Objective: Eliminate or purify the pollution source in the current area. Defend S City!]
[Reward: 5000 universal coins; Random blind box ×1.]
[Failure: Unknown.]

Doctor Qi said, “I know the ability users who entered, but I’m not very close to them. I only know their abilities—”

Before he could finish, Lu Li interrupted, “Brother Yu, Master Qi, look.”

“The words on that window—aren’t they the same as the ones we saw in Unit One?”

Yu Zhi lifted his eyes and saw several large, twisted, blurry characters on the window glass.

They didn’t look carved. The glass surface was smooth and reflective, without a single scratch.

Yu Zhi looked at it twice, then took out his phone and pulled up the photo he had taken earlier of the iron gate, comparing the characters one by one.

Doctor Qi murmured, “Be… careful… eyes.”

“It does look the same. Even the hidden marks are identical.”

Lu Li muttered, “Master Qi, you really do need to be careful. You’ve already grown three.”

Doctor Qi: “……”

His right hand trembled again. The back of it began to ache.

After finishing the comparison, Yu Zhi put away his phone. “Yes. Exactly the same. Not a single difference.”

It didn’t look like it had been written by the same person. It looked more like it had been copy-pasted.

Lu Li looked confused. “I don’t understand, Brother Yu. You mean… it was left by Yu Yi?”

“No,” Yu Zhi paused, explaining, “What I mean is—it might be—”

Creaaak—

Inside the room behind the window, a door suddenly opened without warning.

Yu Zhi instantly fell silent. Doctor Qi and Lu Li also held their breath.

The next second, a head poked out from behind the door.

A normal little girl’s head.

At a glance, completely different from the contaminants. Her face was full of terror. Her eyes were red and swollen, filled with fear and panic.

When she saw the three adult men’s heads lined up outside the window, she trembled violently and turned to run.

Yu Zhi immediately slipped inside with a swift step, grabbed her by the collar, aimed his gun at the back of her head, and said coldly, “Don’t move.”

The little girl froze, not daring to move at all. Then she burst into loud sobs.

Yu Zhi paused slightly. He pressed two fingers to her neck and felt her pulse beating. Perhaps from fright, her body was icy cold and stiff.

He immediately put away the gun, stepped in front of her, and recognized her face.

She was the little girl he had comforted at the gate that morning.

Yu Zhi pulled two candies from his pocket and placed them in her hand, softening his voice. “Don’t cry. Those monsters like to eat people who cry.”

Her sobs stopped abruptly. She pressed her lips together tightly.

Yu Zhi glanced at the tears on her face. “What’s your name?”

“I—I’m Hongtao,” she sniffled.

Yu Zhi let out an “oh.” 

“I’m Honey Peach.”

The little girl: “……”

Yu Zhi: “Are you here alone?”

“N-no,” she shook her head, still sniffling. “A pretty big sister brought me here.”

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