Chapter 21
The news that the [Sacred Staff] organization’s S-Class Evolver, Gentleman, had fought a match with the world’s strongest Evolver, lost an arm, and fled in panic was nearly impossible to suppress.
The circle of high-level Evolvers was only so large, and nearly all of them had powerful financial groups or corporations backing them. How could they not be clear about the inside details?
Consequently, when Gentleman went looking for a way to purge the evolutionary particles from his body, he naturally faced a barrage of cold mockery.
“Haha, to be honest, I didn’t think you’d actually listen to my sister and come find me.” A young man with a scarred face looked at Gentleman with a smile. “My sister and I do have the abilities of healing and purging, but if you really want to remove the evolutionary energy from your arm, those folks at the Research Institute are still much better at it.”
“What kind of trash are they? I think you two siblings should know better than anyone,” Gentleman replied bluntly.
They all operated in the same country, so they knew each other’s backgrounds inside out.
The reason this brother and sister possessed such superb healing and purging abilities was that they both came from a church orphanage.
They called themselves siblings, but they shared no actual blood relation; they were simply brothers and sisters from that church orphanage.
Where church organizations existed, there were naturally good ones and bad ones.
Unfortunately, this pair of siblings had fallen into the hands of those malevolent cults.
Some who grew up looking attractive were sent off to unknown high-end banquets, some became organ donors, and some disabled children became pawns for adoptive parents to scam the government out of subsidies.
If it hadn’t been for the Awakening Day five years ago, they would never have staged such a desperate turnaround.
Over the past five years, they used their supernatural abilities to amass massive fortunes, then turned around to hire top-tier Evolvers to assassinate the people who had harmed them. The unknown church and the religious faction behind it had already been completely uprooted by them.
However, past wounds and experiences were not things that could be entirely laid to rest just because vengeance had been served.
“True. My sister was also almost used as a blood-transfusion subject for those people who wanted longevity,” the young man smiled. “A pity for them. They couldn’t do it back then, and they certainly can’t do it now. Top-tier healing Evolvers can cure many injuries, but they can also make a tiny wound bleed relentlessly. Those who want to kill us will ultimately be killed by us instead.”
“Cut the crap. I know you possess a very powerful ability—whether it’s living organisms or inanimate matter, you can forcefully purge it. I don’t believe those people at the research facility wouldn’t try to plant some little toys inside my body while treating me.” Gentleman naturally knew what would attract the young man before him. “The evolutionary particles of the world’s strongest Evolver… do you really not want to test if you can purge that residual energy?”
Hearing this, the young man’s eyes indeed lit up.
“Take off your clothes. Let me look at your arm.”
Gentleman took off his shirt. His stump was tightly wrapped in bandages, yet blood continued to seep out relentlessly, leaving his complexion deathly pale, as if he might completely collapse the next moment.
He had approached several healing-type Evolvers, but all of them had failed to treat him because they couldn’t dispel the evolutionary energy clinging to his stump.
Inside, Gentleman felt nothing but a wave of lingering dread.
If he hadn’t decisively hacked off his own hand back then, Bai Hewei’s energy would have likely spread through his entire body.
What kind of ability did that man actually have? Not only was his physical body phenomenally powerful, but he also seemed to possess the capability to siphon off someone else’s energy. Factor in that inescapable residual energy, and Gentleman grew more and more baffled.
Bai Hewei had clearly only awakened for a short time, yet his baseline was already this mind-boggling. After some time passed, what on earth would he turn into?
“Incredible.” The young man’s eyes were practically glued to Gentleman’s stump. “I have never seen such pure energy. It really wasn’t easy for you to escape.”
He tried to stand up straight, channelling his inner supernatural ability to help Gentleman dispel the energy Bai Hewei had left on his arm.
Ten minutes passed, and Gentleman was beginning to lose his patience.
The young man’s evolutionary energy and the residual energy on his stump were practically treating his body as a battlefield. He felt that after taking pain medicine, the pain which had dulled slightly was now flaring up in full force again.
“Can you do it or not?”
“Shut up!” the young man barked discourteously.
Another two hours passed.
Gentleman was on the verge of fainting when he finally heard a voice.
“Done.” The young man took two steps back. After two hours of work, far from looking exhausted, he actually appeared exceptionally vibrant.
“I won’t charge you for this treatment. You can go back to my sister to regenerate your arm.”
“Then what do you want?” Hearing this, Gentleman didn’t feel happy at all; instead, he grew more vigilant.
Not wanting money meant the other party wanted something far more difficult to acquire.
“I know you have the channels to forge a flawless set of identity documents. I want to go to China to see what kind of person this world’s strongest actually is.” A brilliant smile broke out on the young man’s face. “Just dealing with his residual energy took this much effort. I want to see with my own eyes exactly how powerful he is.”
Looking at the man before him, a bizarre thought surfaced in Gentleman’s mind.
Fine.
Go ahead and look for Bai Hewei, then get beaten into critical condition and come back. When that happens, these Evolvers won’t just be mocking me alone.
The results for the local municipal public institution exam were released remarkably fast.
Barely a week after Bai Hewei finished the test, he saw the older colleagues talking in the group chat.
A Monthly Salary of 3800: I called the examination authority. Apparently, the written exam results for the municipal roles are coming out today!
Miserable Beast of Burden: Wow, that efficient? The grading teachers must have been marking papers overnight.
Winning a Lottery: The teachers are completely burned out. I heard they were paid double to grade the papers.
Stop Urging No Second Child: Probably because they are short on staff. Our city’s administrative establishment is already fully saturated. In fact, because too many units merged, some departments are severely overstaffed and are currently digesting the surplus slowly. Other departments short on hands can only recruit for public institution roles. Anyway, that’s how it is in our unit. We originally had seven or eight vacancies, but they were all transferred to the Special Operations Department. Now that we finally get to recruit two new public institution staff, our department director and the director next door almost got into a fistfight in the secretary’s office over who gets the new hires.
Smiling Face: Yes, even though the new hires haven’t arrived yet, their work tasks have already been arranged. We’re just waiting for them to report for duty.
Can’t Get Off Work Early Today: Our leader said the moment the public notice period ends, we’ll summon them to start working ahead of schedule so no time is wasted.
…
Scrolling through the mountain of messages, Bai Hewei felt his heart skip a couple of beats.
Anyone who frequently took exams knew that the actual test wasn’t the most nerve-wracking part; the moment the results dropped was when the anxiety peaked.
Because he had seen this news first thing in the morning, Bai Hewei remained somewhat distracted throughout his workday. He was even stopped by the subdistrict secretary, Liu Zhong, who passed by and offered a few words of concern, asking if he was exhausted from working too much overtime a while back and suggesting he could take a half-day off if needed, and so forth.
Bai Hewei immediately snapped to attention.
It looked like he was getting a subtle warning from the leader. He had barely managed to slack off for a bit when the leader caught him red-handed. On the surface, the leader claimed he wanted to give him a holiday, but in reality, who knew if he was planning to give him a hard time later.
Otherwise, out of the blue, why would a subdistrict secretary show such warm concern to a contract worker like him?
Could it be that he was now qualified to be caught up in some kind of political struggle?
Bai Hewei immediately told the leader that he merely had a slight cold but it wouldn’t affect his work. He would definitely persevere until clock-out time and just take two pills tomorrow, and so on.
Liu Zhong offered a few more words of encouragement before strolling back to his office.
He didn’t have any good options right now either. Bai Hewei didn’t even have a permanent post within the official establishment. Even if he wanted to give him an excellence evaluation or recommend him to the organization, there was no mechanism to do so.
Furthermore, the salary and bonuses for contract workers were handled by a third-party agency. It was easy if he wanted to raise Bai Hewei’s salary, but doing it without leaving a trace was incredibly difficult. After pondering back and forth, he could only offer some verbal concern for now and figure out other options when an opportunity arose.
At the same time, Liu Zhong felt a wave of helplessness. If Bai Hewei really had a top-tier Evolver relative, why wouldn’t that heavyweight figure find a way to secure a permanent establishment for Bai Hewei first?
Once he had an official status, it would be much easier to maneuver later.
Little did he know, inside the Special Operations Department at this exact moment, Huo Ling and An Tingyu were scanning Bai Hewei’s scores back and forth several times, re-checking the math repeatedly, but there wasn’t a single calculation error.
“How is it only this much? Out of over two hundred applicants, he ranked outside the top thirty? Didn’t he miss passing the civil service exam by just a tiny margin before?” Huo Ling was utterly baffled. In his mind, the civil service exam should be harder than the public institution exam.
“Because the civil service exams for different provincial capitals are held on the same day, candidates can’t sit for multiple tests at once. But the public institution exams are different. If there’s no household registration restriction, candidates from all the surrounding provinces and cities will flock here to take the test,” An Tingyu sighed. “Actually, the main issue is that his Essay score was too low. Bai Hewei’s Vocational Ability Test score was actually quite decent.”
“His Essay score is ten points away from the passing cutoff,” Huo Ling said, feeling thoroughly helpless. “Can’t we just have them alter his score?”
“…The organization’s grading department doesn’t know Bai Wei’s true identity, and the grading teachers certainly have no way of knowing. To alter a score, it would have to pass through an unknown number of hands. Once word leaks, it will turn into a massive scandal. Instead of wasting that kind of effort, it’s better to just add more restrictive conditions to the next exam, or see if we can go down the route of a special talent recruitment initiative.”
“To use the talent recruitment initiative, Bai Hewei’s academic credentials aren’t high enough. But if we go through the path of an Evolver, it conflicts with his desire to quietly live an ordinary life.” As An Tingyu spoke, a look of worry covered her face as well. “We have to keep Bai Hewei’s identity hidden, secure a permanent establishment for him in a completely open and legitimate manner, and do all this without disrupting his existing life—it’s truly a difficult puzzle.”
How could a sugarcane be sweet at both ends? To make everything compliant while ensuring rumors didn’t fly everywhere, they had to rack their brains.
“Forget it, forget it.” Huo Ling also felt a massive headache coming on. “Let’s leave it at that. Next time, add a local household registration restriction. When Bai Hewei’s national award comes down and carries bonus points, I refuse to believe he’ll still fail to pass.”
An Tingyu really wanted to tell her boss that flags like that shouldn’t be planted lightly.
The more one spoke, the more errors one made. As a mature Evolver cadre, An Tingyu chose to remain silent.
As clock-out time approached in the afternoon, Bai Hewei saw messages in the group chat saying the scores were out. He immediately logged onto the website to check his results.
For the public institution exam, the Vocational Ability Test and the Comprehensive Application Test (Essay) each carried a maximum score of 150 points, totalling 300 points. Under normal circumstances, without a score of 210, one shouldn’t even dream about making it to the interview phase.
During his last public institution exam, Bai Hewei had scored 113 on the vocational test and 98 on the essay test, failing to make the cut for the interviews. This time, he felt he had performed significantly better than before.
He entered his admission ticket number and clicked to query.
The smile on Bai Hewei’s face froze instantly the moment his scores appeared.
He had done even better on the vocational test this time, scoring 116 points. But what on earth happened to his essay test?
85?
Was this a joke?
Bai Hewei exited the website and logged back in to check again, but the numbers remained exactly the same.
How could this be?
Bai Hewei carefully reviewed his exam preparation process. Although he hadn’t worked himself to the bone, he had reviewed diligently, as evidenced by his improved score on the vocational test.
He had memorized everything the Great Master told him to memorize, and he had used the subheadings he was supposed to use. Where exactly had things gone wrong?
Bai Hewei began frantically searching for the unofficial answer keys for this exam.
Public accounts, Xiaohongshu, Douyin—any post containing keywords related to the local municipal exam, he clicked into every single one.
When Bai Hewei saw the writing outlines and core thesis points shared by those candidates who scored high on the essay test, a realization hit him belatedly.
The prompt had tested cultural tourism, but he had apparently written about cultural confidence.
He had completely missed the prompt.
And there he had been, grinning like an idiot in pure smugness.
No wonder the Exam God barely spoke to him after hearing his summary; he must have been thoroughly dumbfounded by his stupidity.
Dammit.
Even though his writing had been subpar in the past, at least he had never completely missed the prompt before.
It must have been that wretched Gentleman. He disrupted my exam.
Otherwise, how could I have scored like this?
Bai Hewei instantly found an object to shift the blame to.
If he ever ran into that freak again, he would definitely thrash him mercilessly and lock him up!
“Ahem, Brother Li, are you supposed to be on duty today? Here’s the thing: I have some matters to attend to over the next few days, so I wanted to swap a shift with you… Great, great. Then I’ll handle your shift tonight. Thanks a lot.” Bai Hewei unlocked his phone and cleanly swapped a shift with his colleague.
He really didn’t want to go home early today to face the concern of his parents and grandmother.
If he could dodge it for now, he would.
Escaping might be shameful, but it was incredibly effective.
This period happened to be the peak of the rainy season, making it a critical time for flood-prevention duties. His colleague was more than happy to have someone step forward to take over the shift, so naturally, he didn’t refuse.
By eight in the evening, Bai Hewei received a duty call, requiring him to accompany the duty leader to the riverside to help maintain safety on-site.
Because it had been raining heavily lately, the river was showing signs of rising. As grassroots workers, they had to remain prepared for flood control at any given moment, reporting back to the water conservancy and emergency management departments immediately.
“Director Huang, it’s still raining out. What are we heading over to do?” Bai Hewei asked curiously.
“Apparently, the Evolvers recruited by the water conservancy department are coming over to manage the water levels.” Director Huang was a local whose entire family worked within the system, giving him an incredibly vast network. “Didn’t the water conservancy department start setting up specialized early-recruitment tracks for Evolvers four years ago? They design majors specifically for those Evolvers. As long as their college entrance exam scores hit the vocational school cutoff line, they can enter the institution to study. After three years, they graduate and get assigned directly to positions within the professional technical establishment. This batch of Evolvers is the very first generation of college-educated Evolvers they cultivated themselves, and they’re coming to our sector to gain some practical experience.”
After the mass appearance of Evolvers five years ago, some vocational departments immediately spotted the potential, carving out special tracks in the early recruitment phase for Evolvers.
For parents whose children had become Evolvers at a young age and who terrified that their kids would go astray, this was a literal saving grace.
Those parents firmly made their children apply for the majors set up by these vocational departments. Getting a stable position handed to them upon graduation—what better future could there be?
Consequently, those with water-based abilities went to study water conservancy; those with earth-based abilities went to study civil engineering; and those who could freely manipulate objects entered the mechanical engineering track. Word was, there was even a young kid who possessed an exceptionally powerful information-based ability. The Evolver was a mini-hacker to begin with, and this ability had given him wings. He was currently the most pampered darling of the National Security Bureau. Even if the Special Operations Department wanted to borrow him for assistance, they had to follow the procedures step-by-step, and they even had to pay travel allowances, which left people envious to the extreme.
And for the vocational departments, these Evolver students whom they had personally educated for years were bound to be far more dependable than those rogue elements from society, giving them a significant advantage in subsequent promotion processes.
Bai Hewei and Director Huang soon arrived at the riverbank, striking up a brief conversation with the leader from the water conservancy department.
“Come, let me introduce you. This is Xu Xiaojie, a water conservancy major newly assigned to our District Water Conservancy Bureau. She is a C-Class Evolver who just graduated at nineteen. She can control water. With her around, we don’t have to worry about flood-control issues this year. Our bureau director personally went to the city office to fight for her recruitment; she is exceptionally outstanding.”
“Hello, I am Xu Xiaojie.” She looked quite young and tender, though she remained reasonably composed, carrying none of the arrogance typical of her age.
On the contrary, when she looked at Bai Hewei, she couldn’t help but feel a sudden wave of goosebumps.
The way this man was staring at her felt incredibly bizarre.
Bai Hewei was staring longingly at the official uniform on her body, practically crying tears of pure envy.
Comparing oneself to others really brings nothing but frustration.
Back then, he had studied diligently, grinding through the college entrance exam to major in accounting, only to discover upon graduation that the field was fiercely competitive. To this day, he still hadn’t successfully landed a permanent position.
Yet look at Xu Xiaojie—she came from a water conservancy major, stepped right into a permanent establishment upon graduation without taking a single detour, and hadn’t even suffered much during the college entrance exams.
Bai Hewei naturally knew about these early recruitment tracks.
Systems like healthcare, water conservancy, and civil engineering had been recruiting like this for years, and lately, even military academies had begun gradually recruiting Evolvers.
Catching education from an early age was no empty phrase.
The scores this group had achieved back during the college entrance exams weren’t actually that high, but as Evolvers, they faced almost zero competition, making life incredibly smooth.
Thinking back to his newly failed municipal public institution exam, Bai Hewei felt a wave of profound sorrow washing over him.
If I weren’t an Evolver, it would be one thing. But I am an Evolver too, so why is the disparity this massive?
Thinking about it, his heart practically ached to the point of tears.
“Director, I see the rain is getting heavier. I should start working,” Xu Xiaojie offered.
“Alright, go ahead,” the water conservancy bureau director said gently.
Nineteen years old—three years younger than his own child, barely an adult, yet already this outstanding. It truly made one envious of her parents.
Xu Xiaojie didn’t need to hold an umbrella; before the raindrops could even fall on her, they automatically parted around her body.
She stood by the riverbank, softly channelling her ability.
Very quickly, the water levels by the river receded at a rate visible to the naked eye, dropping straight below the normal safety threshold line.
“Where did all that water go?” Director Huang was thoroughly shocked.
“Xiaojie diverted it underground,” the director smiled proudly. “This water will enter the underground aquifers and flow to other regions. The Evolvers from the Municipal Water Conservancy Bureau, the neighboring city’s Evolvers, and even the Evolvers from the Provincial Water Conservancy Department across different provinces all share a group chat. Every day, they monitor where this water travels. If the vector goes wrong, they step in to intervene, doing their best to direct these streams to the arid northern regions. It can be considered another form of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project.”
The things these ability users could accomplish were completely unimaginable if viewed from five years ago.
But looking at it now, simply spending money to maintain a few specialized Evolvers allowed for cross-regional water diversion—and it was clean, hygienic, and entirely pollution-free. It had drastically reduced the workload for the personnel at the water conservancy bureau.
Every time they thought of this, the leaders of the water conservancy bureau could literally laugh themselves awake from their dreams.
In the past, they had abundant funding but immense tasks and heavy responsibilities, frequently facing accountability audits from the Commission for Discipline Inspection. Things were different now; although their allocated funding had decreased slightly, their tasks and responsibilities had shrunk as well.
Setting up the majors to recruit Evolvers back then was truly the finest decision they had ever made!
“Remarkable,” Director Huang couldn’t help but marvel. “This is the true purpose of an Evolver. Using their abilities to benefit the nation—even if their salaries were doubled again, it would be fully deserved.”
“Haha, don’t worry. Once Evolvers gradually become more regulated in the future, your subdistrict will also get more Evolvers to help out with chores,” the water conservancy bureau director chuckled. “I heard from the organizational department that they are already processing approvals to see if they can allocate some Evolver selected-graduates down to your grassroots units. Previously, they worried about potential friction between Evolvers and ordinary citizens, so they didn’t dare place them at the grassroots level. But now, Evolvers have become very common, and they are all willing to abide by the rules, so we can start trying to let them help out with grassroots work.”
“That would be fantastic. We genuinely need an Evolver to help maintain order. Otherwise, when we encounter unreasonable citizens sometimes, we are truly left completely powerless.”
Standing to the side, Bai Hewei silently stared up at the sky.
I am an Evolver, and I’m already working at the subdistrict office. You guys just don’t know it yet.
But if new Evolvers joined the subdistrict in the future, he might be able to gradually tell his colleagues and family about his identity as an Evolver.
By the time Bai Hewei and Director Huang returned to the subdistrict, it was roughly ten in the evening.
“Xiao Bai, things are under control over at the flood-prevention sector. You can head back first. Thanks for your hard work,” Director Huang smiled.
“Alright,” Bai Hewei nodded. He picked up the duty phone and packed his things, preparing to leave.
When he unlocked his personal phone (after checking his scores and experiencing a mental collapse, he had simply set it to silent), he discovered several missed calls.
And why is it a district area code?
If it were a routine check on duty personnel, they should have called the official duty phone.
Feeling puzzled and somewhat skeptical, Bai Hewei dialed the number back.
The call was answered on the other end.
“Hello, this is the District Government Office. Who is calling?”
As expected of a high-pressure department that logged heavy overtime, they were still working at this hour.
“Hello, I am Bai Hewei. I noticed you called me at 5:30, 7:00, and 8:30 in the afternoon. My phone was silenced so I didn’t see it. May I ask what this is regarding?”
“Oh, it’s Mr. Bai!” the person’s tone grew noticeably cheerful. “It’s like this: you have been awarded the five hundred thousand yuan bounty allocated by the National Security Bureau for reporting spies. Please come to the District Multimedia Conference Room this Friday to attend the official commendation and award ceremony.”
Author’s Note:
Bai Hewei: Failed the exam, don’t want to go home.
Bai Hewei: What? Five hundred thousand yuan? Heading home immediately!
