Chapter 11
The moment they stepped out of Li Zhibo’s home, Little Yi clutched her chest and exhaled in a series of deep, heavy gasps.
“That was terrifying. Thank goodness you came with me, Brother Bai.” Little Yi recalled the spine-chilling sights she had seen on the balcony, already dreading the nightmares she would have tonight. “Their balcony was packed with all kinds of bizarre, sinister deity statues. Horror movies wouldn’t even need to look elsewhere for props. They must be up to something deeply twisted. We need to call the police right away.”
Little Yi had been completely oblivious to the clash of powers that had just unfolded right in front of her.
Which, all things considered, was probably for the best.
“In the future, don’t just enter an Evolver’s home alone. If you need to go, just call me,” Bai Hewei said after a moment’s thought. “A massive, sweeping screening might be necessary very soon.”
“Most Evolvers are perfectly reasonable. We’ve just been visiting the uncooperative ones today,” Little Yi smiled. “But if you’re willing to accompany me door-to-door, Brother Bai, I’m definitely not going to say no.”
They promptly contacted the local neighborhood cops before heading off to inspect the remaining Evolver households.
Fortunately, though the other two Evolvers were equally unpleasant, neither harbored any thoughts of violence. Their mission for the day was successfully concluded, and tomorrow’s problems could wait until tomorrow.
By the time Bai Hewei returned home, it was already past 9:00 PM.
This hour was no longer appropriate for door-to-door visits; residents would file complaints for disturbing their rest.
Sometimes, Bai Hewei actually wished there were more of these complaints—that way, he could get a bit more rest himself.
Sigh. If I go to bed at midnight, I can still squeeze in two hours of studying.
Bai Hewei booted up his computer, opened his online prep videos, and began reviewing, casually memorizing the latest current events and political hotspots. In public institution exams, current affairs and political theory were the easiest sections to score points on, provided one was willing to engage in rote memorization. Of course, they were also the easiest sections to lose points on; if an item wasn’t memorized, it was a guaranteed zero.
Yet, as he studied, Bai Hewei found himself instinctively picking up his phone. He began scrolling happily, thoroughly enjoying himself even as he despised his own lack of willpower.
“Ahhhhh, no, this is unacceptable. I can’t go on like this.” Bai Hewei thrashed wildly on his bed. The older he got, the harder it was to absorb information, and his attention span was nowhere near what it used to be. After forcing himself to study diligently for half an hour, he would instinctively reward himself with a break. By the time his break ended and he opened his books again, everything he had just reviewed was completely wiped from his memory.
The classic internet meme about immediate forgetfulness wasn’t a joke to civil service exam-takers—it was a brutal, bleeding reality.
Just as Bai Hewei was sinking into a pit of severe self-doubt, his phone rang.
It was an unknown number.
He hesitated for a second before answering. Surely it couldn’t be a scam call at this hour.
“Hello, this is the Special Operations Department.”
“Oh, hello. May I ask what this is about?” Bai Hewei checked the time. It was past 10:00 PM, and the Special Operations Department still hadn’t off shift. Instantly, his dissatisfaction with the public institution position he was about to apply for grew by another fraction.
This level of overtime was a bit too aggressive.
“Mr. Bai, an Evolver named Li Zhibo has come to turn himself in. He claims he was deeply moved by your personal influence and has voluntarily offered to hand over information regarding several members of an overseas organization,” the voice on the other end chuckled. “If you have time, could you come coordinate with us to log a official statement?”
“I have door-to-door visits tomorrow, so my schedule might be a bit tight,” Bai Hewei said, sounding somewhat conflicted.
“That’s completely fine. We work through lunch breaks and after-hours as well,” the caller continued. “It won’t take up much of your time—about an hour should do it.”
Talk about a grueling work life, Bai Hewei thought.
“Alright, I’ll come over tomorrow at noon then.” Not wanting to make things difficult for them, Bai Hewei agreed on the spot.
“Excellent. Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Bai.”
Bai Hewei hung up the phone. After a moment of consideration, he logged back into the “My Fate is in My Own Hands, Not the Heavens” WeChat group and couldn’t resist dropping another question.
[When Will I Pass the Civil Service Exam]: “Excuse me, does anyone know exactly how brutal the overtime is in the Special Operations Department? There’s a position in this upcoming municipal public institution recruitment that fits me perfectly. It has a ton of restrictive criteria, and I meet every single one of them.”
[A Withered Rose]: “Oh, look, it’s the exam bro again. Overtime in the Special Operations Department? Hahaha, you’re asking the wrong question. You should be asking about their shift rotations.”
[A Hardcore Corporate Slave]: “…Take it from someone who knows—there’s no such thing as ‘overtime’ in the Special Operations Department. There are only shifts. Three rotations a day: morning shift, night shift, and the graveyard shift. It runs twenty-four hours a day, completely uninterrupted.”
[Striking It Rich Overnight]: “Don’t do it! Avoid it at all costs! Once you enter this unit, you’d better prepare yourself for a hair transplant. I’m a clerk in the department, and I’m practically dead from exhaustion! If you’re in a field deployment role, even if you get injured, you still have to sit in your hospital bed compiling incident reports. It’s a truly miserable life.”
[Wife, Please Give Me More Pocket Money]: “The Special Operations Department is a job suited for single bachelors. If you’re willing to do heavy field duty and handle complex cases, your bonuses and subsidies will be astronomical. The downside is, you’ll have the money but zero time to spend it. The moment you finally get off shift, all you’ll want to do is lie down and play dead.”
[Stop Nagging I’m Not Having a Second Child]: “…Actually, it has its perks. Since I passed the exam and joined the Special Operations Department, my wife and I haven’t seen each other’s faces in six months. I head to work when she gets off, and she heads to work when I get off. Our schedules are completely inverted—my oldest kid barely recognizes me anymore.”
[Admin 01]: “Ahem, watch what you say, everyone. This group was established by the Special Operations Department itself, you know.”
[A Hardcore Corporate Slave]: “Don’t sweat it. The department’s internal group features far more vicious cursing than ours. Every single person is practically overflowing with resentment. If it weren’t for the massive allowances keeping everyone afloat, people would have jumped ship long ago.”
[Newborn Mommy]: “Sigh, @When Will I Pass the Civil Service Exam, just apply if you can. A permanent position is better than anything else. Secure your spot first, and you can always figure out a way to transfer out later. Years ago, getting into the Special Operations Department just required being an Evolver—they couldn’t even fill the quotas back then. But look at how insane the competition has become in just five short years. With the number of Evolvers skyrocketing, the industries they dominate are even more cutthroat than ordinary ones. If you don’t secure a permanent post now, what are you going to do when you grow old? An Evolver’s evolutionary factors can regress, you know!”
[Little Heart]: “Agreed. I’m in the Special Operations Department myself, and I wouldn’t dare resign. Just look at those external rogue organizations—every single one treats Evolvers like fools to be exploited. Eating from the state’s bowl at least guarantees you won’t be swindled, and if you truly make the ultimate sacrifice, a massive payout will go to your family. As for the illegal Evolvers I’ve captured, once they’re caught, having their family members barred from civil service applications is considered a lenient outcome. Some of those psychopathic organizations will actively target a member’s family just to suppress information. I absolutely cannot allow my loved ones to fall into a predicament like that!”
[Monthly Salary of 3,800]: “Are you talking about that male-only position requiring Civil Engineering and Accounting? It looks like you and I are going to be direct competitors, @When Will I Pass the Civil Service Exam. I’m planning to apply for that post too. I thought the applicant pool would be tiny, but who would have thought I’d run into a rival this quickly?”
Bai Hewei’s heart instantly leaped into his throat.
[When Will I Pass the Civil Service Exam]: “Yes, that’s exactly the position I’m targeting, @Monthly Salary of 3,800. What a coincidence. I also assumed there wouldn’t be many applicants for this specific post.”
[Monthly Salary of 3,800]: “Oh, there will be plenty. I’m with the Architectural Design Institute, and from what I gather, practically all the eligible Evolvers in our institute are going to apply for this post—at least a dozen or so. Sigh, you guys have no idea how tragic it is for us at the Architectural Institute. Even before Evolution Day, we were already on the brink of survival. After Evolution Day, quite a few of us awakened as Evolvers, and we thought our luck was finally turning around. Well, guess what? Every single one of us manifested abilities related to hair growth—either growing our own hair or making someone else’s grow.”
[Crying in a BMW]: “??? Can’t you Evolvers make a fortune entering the hair transplant industry? Especially you guys doing concrete work and architectural design—there are so many in hair restoration, and a single procedure costs tens of thousands!”
[Monthly Salary of 3,800]: “The problem is that for the majority of these Evolvers, their initial, deep-seated obsession was simply to make themselves grow hair!!! The ones who can trigger hair growth on others are a rare breed, and they left long ago to open high-end salons. Those of us who can only grow our own hair can only wait for it to grow long, cut it, and sell the real hair to subsidize our income. The market price has been driven down completely. By now, the wig industry has practically become our primary subsidy pool; otherwise, we’d have starved to death long ago. Now that a position like this has finally opened up, we’re absolutely going to apply.”
[Crying in a BMW]: “True. I actually think those so-called ‘labor-type Evolvers’ who merely possess enhanced strength aren’t the most tragic; at least they can make more money moving bricks than normal people. It’s the Evolvers whose abilities can only impact their own bodies who have it worst. Abroad, they’re hauled off to be researched, and domestically, they can only pull in a meager two or three hundred yuan from the Evolver subsidy.”
…
Before long, the WeChat group shifted back to analyzing and envying various supernatural abilities.
Bai Hewei powered down his phone.
This is bad. He hadn’t expected the competition to be this fierce. He couldn’t afford to waste time wallowing in self-pity anymore; he needed to start hammering out practice questions immediately.
Inside a briefing room at the Special Operations Department.
Huo Ling looked over the transcript of the statement his subordinates had delivered, feeling somewhat speechless.
Normally, he wouldn’t bother reviewing the statement of a low-level Evolver like Li Zhibo, but since it involved Bai Hewei, this document had become exceptionally valuable.
He would need to have a copy sent over to the Research Institute to assist them with their analysis of Bai Hewei.
“Xiao An, what exactly do you think is going on inside Bai Hewei’s head?” Huo Ling rubbed his forehead. “The world’s strongest Evolver simply tags along with a community worker for a door-to-door survey, and manages to unearth an extremist foreign organization? How long has it been since he awakened, and how many global factions has he already dragged into the light?”
Following Li Zhibo’s surrender, the young man who had tried to recruit him had vanished without a trace.
According to Li Zhibo’s statement and intelligence already secured by the Special Operations Department, the group was an extremist faction named the [Holy Infant]. It was a relatively new organization established just last year, yet its expansion speed was terrifyingly swift. Based on their data, the organization was likely backed and funded by several mega-conglomerates, actively recruiting disgruntled, low-achieving Evolvers across the globe.
The explicit objective of this organization was to require these Evolvers to mate with one another to continuously produce offspring. They would then use supernatural catalysts on these children to trigger early awakening, searching relentlessly for their designated “Holy Infant.”
Of course, that was merely the propaganda used to deceive those foolish, desperate Evolvers.
In reality, the children produced by these Evolvers served as prime raw materials.
Scientific research had long since proven that evolution was catalyzed by external factors and carried no correlation to inherent genetics. However, the offspring of Evolvers did possess slightly superior physical baselines compared to ordinary children. And these children would become the perfect organ donors.
The high-ranking politicians and ultra-wealthy elites abroad had always harbored a profound terror of aging and death—but things were different now.
They could employ foreign healing-type Evolvers to utilize these children as donors, using their vibrant, pristine organs to replace their own failing ones, thereby artificially extending their lifespans. Any existing tissue rejection could be suppressed to an absolute minimum under the illogical, reality-bending catalysts of a healing-type Evolver’s ability.
Consequently, in the eyes of the state, the [Holy Infant] was an absolute, malignant tumor that had to be completely eradicated.
The only issue was that the members of this organization were incredibly slippery. They exclusively targeted bottom-tier Evolvers who were struggling in life, and once these individuals were manipulated, they would actively cooperate with the group to mislead official investigations. Thus, catching a concrete trace of them had proven exceptionally difficult.
Who could have anticipated that Bai Hewei would uncover a direct lead on this group simply by stepping out of his apartment for a routine walk?
“I think it’s fantastic,” An Tingyu said, her eyes brimming with a burning desire to accumulate merit and advance her career. “He simply needs to stand there to drag those organizations hiding beneath the surface straight up into the light—think of how much workload that saves us. Personally, I think he’s doing great at the grassroots level. If he were stationed here at headquarters, those organizations would probably stay hidden forever.”
Huo Ling was left entirely speechless.
Sure, it makes things easy for you guys. The issue is that I’m the one who has to file reports and coordinate with all the various departments. Do you have any idea how exhausting it is to constantly negotiate with those old foxes in administration?
“When does registration for the exam begin?” Huo Ling asked, already impatient for Bai Hewei to pass and join the system.
“Very soon.”
