RHWHEG – Chapter 59 Azure Catastrophe

Half a year ago, in a scorching July under a blazing sun, the sun let out a full belch.

Within twenty-four hours, meteorological satellites observed countless streams of high-energy electrons mixed with harmful radiation sweeping across the entire Earth.

Widespread power outages followed. Faced with public concern, the experts’ answers were unexpectedly chaotic: “This is a very complex issue. Scientists around the world are studying it right now—across disciplines, across borders, all of us are researching it. In fact, inside the sun’s belch there is… a large mass of energy… a cloud, an electromagnetic cluster? They’re approaching rapidly… Oh, I mean, the sun’s belch is very complicated, but citizens need not panic.”

Later, people learned that what had flown out from the sun was precisely the terrifying “Catastrophes.” Social order quickly collapsed. The Supreme Academy of Sciences launched shelter capsules across the world via intercontinental missiles, hoping to preserve the last sparks of humanity.

“We still don’t understand the evolutionary mechanisms of the Catastrophes. They seem to evolve by devouring one another, yet also grow through other mechanisms… Yu Qunqing, are you listening!”

“Don’t think that just because you’re the strongest in the Shelter you can do whatever you want. Today, the Shelter will assign you a team. Of course, you’ll be the leader and hold the highest authority over the team. But if anything goes wrong, the Shelter will immediately revoke that authority.”

Yu Qunqing glanced at She Lulang as he entered the room, then said to the Shelter staff, “I don’t want to be a babysitter.”

She Lulang replied coldly, “Being with this kind of person is a different level of mission difficulty.”

“Hello, everyone—” Han Shuzhu burst in. “Sorry I’m late, I’m—”

Yu Qunqing cut in, “Missions are indeed much easier when you team up with me.”

She Lulang said, “The difficulty of the mission lies in calmly getting along with him.”

Han Shuzhu stammered, “Um, um, my name is—”

“Only people who always drag others down waste their thoughts on interpersonal relationships,” Yu Qunqing said. “There aren’t so many twists and turns when dealing with me. Strength is all that matters. Right, little She?”

She Lulang’s jaw tightened. Everyone knew Yu Qunqing ran rampant in the Shelter. He himself had only just gained some mission experience and indeed couldn’t beat Yu Qunqing. Feeling stifled, he could only reiterate to the Shelter, “I don’t want to be on a team with him!”

“Um… my name is Han Shuzhu. I’m the green-mark recorder for this team…” Han Shuzhu hugged his notebook tightly, acutely aware of how hard it was for civilian staff.

Yu Qunqing glanced at him, his gaze lingering for a few seconds on the green-mark insignia on Han Shuzhu’s shoulder. He then turned to the Shelter staff, his voice colder: “Don’t stuff ordinary people into my team. I won’t collect my companions’ corpses.”

It was Han Shuzhu’s first time seeing the Shelter’s famed powerhouse. Hearing such blatant disdain directed at him, he couldn’t help shrinking back. He was a green-mark individual—meaning his radiation level was stably below 10%, with no abilities. Someone like him could secure a safe job at the Shelter’s research center, but facing these powerful ability users always filled him with fear. He wanted to become strong too. Why look down on him like this?

The Shelter staff hurriedly stepped in to smooth things over, appealing to both emotion and reason. Only then was the three-person team reluctantly formed. Yu Qunqing and She Lulang were the main combatants, while Han Shuzhu served as the battle recorder. Yu Qunqing knew Han Shuzhu was there to monitor him, but since it wasn’t Han Shuzhu’s own choice, his attitude didn’t change. Whenever he went on missions, he would find a safe spot to stash Han Shuzhu away, then bring him back intact once the mission ended.

“Do ability users really look down on people this much? Yu Qunqing and She Lulang hardly ever get injured. The missions shouldn’t be that hard—why won’t they let me go watch…”

Han Shuzhu felt pent-up and resentful. Watching Yu Qunqing and She Lulang paired off—eating together, living together, inseparable; locking eyes with palpable tension; arguing by day and making up by night; even wearing each other’s clothes the next day and accusing the other of being blind when getting dressed—he felt even more depressed. With a long sigh, he could only seek romance in Domineering Beloved Wife: 99 Divorces. His one guilty pleasure was reading angst-filled romance novels.

One day, he picked up a book-shaped variant disaster stone. Driven by his craving for power, he secretly kept it.

Disaster stones had many uses, the most important being sharpening weapons and farming. Variant disaster stones were rarer, with extremely high radiation values, and were usually used to evolve abilities.

However, there was a hypothesis that disaster stones were actually larvae produced by Catastrophes in times of crisis, rich in toxins and nutrients. But no one had ever seen a Catastrophe hatch from a disaster stone, so it remained only a hypothesis.

Han Shuzhu, however, witnessed with his own eyes a variant disaster stone cracking open, a tiny, ugly Catastrophe being born—and then hopping straight onto his face.

Han Shuzhu screamed and fell over.

Half an hour later, he woke up clutching his head and cried out in horror, “I actually transmigrated into a book—into Domineering Ability Apocalypse Love: 99 Divorces as cannon fodder!”

Recalling the plot, he added, “So Yu Qunqing is the villain. What a pity—his relationship with his family isn’t good, and I missed the best time to攻略 the villain. Do I really have no choice but to cling to the protagonist’s thigh…”

Han Shuzhu shook his head. A mysterious force told him that as long as he followed the plot, he would grow and evolve. When that time came, even G, H, I, J, or K-class Catastrophes would be nothing! The parasitic book showed him future plotlines through inference, and Han Shuzhu happily embraced his transmigrated life.

By now, he had grown very close to Yu Yanlan. Yu Yanlan treated him well and trusted him deeply. Han Shuzhu grew rapidly. Before long, he tore out a page from the parasitic book and stuffed it into Yu Yanlan’s brain. From then on, Yu Yanlan would follow the script, plunging into a deeply anguished romance with Jiang Qiwen—he chased, she fled, he couldn’t escape no matter how hard he tried. Han Shuzhu loved watching such scenes; after all, the suffering wasn’t his. He was just cannon fodder—he didn’t need that kind of “blessing.”

Han Shuzhu felt himself becoming much smarter. He sensed the subtle balance between the Shelter and Yu Qunqing, so he used his abilities to enter the Shelter’s management and push Yu Qunqing toward complete ruin.

Sometimes Han Shuzhu thought that even without him, Yu Qunqing’s fate wouldn’t have been any different.

It was just that with him, Yu Qunqing’s ending became even more tragic. The climax of the story, of course, lay in the villain’s death.

As a civilian, Han Shuzhu would not take part in frontline combat. He stood at the edge of a city-level trap, calmly listening to messages from others.

“Yes. That sniper, the doctor Li Yuebei, and the one surnamed Tang—all confirmed dead. Toxins have already been injected into their bodies, eliminating any possibility of resurrection.”

“Lin Luyi is still barely clinging to life. His undying trait and mental abilities are both very strong. If our ‘Evil Totem’ hadn’t died, she would definitely have been able to deal with Lin Luyi. But we’ve already found Lin Luyi’s weakness and prepared enough gasoline. We’ll start the fire attack in an hour.”

“That leaves only Yu Qunqing and She Lulang at the center…”

Han Shuzhu thanked the messenger. He took out a black cat from the side, said several guilty apologies, then rolled the cat into a ball and threw it at the courier.

“Using a Klein bottle to make people unable to speak really is effective.” Han Shuzhu picked up the shapeless black slime that no longer resembled a cat. The black cat was wearing a suppression ring made from a Class-I calamity stone, leaving it at the mercy of human hands.

After dealing with all of the shelter’s eyes and ears one by one, Han Shuzhu decided to secretly head toward the center of the trap. His intuition told him that as long as he devoured Calamity Qunqing, he would complete his evolution!

At the trap’s core, after the bombardment of heavy weapons came the coordinated assault of highly trained ability users. Elemental users supplied power to the heavy weapons. Long-range attackers gradually tightened the encirclement. Defensive users stood like bedrock, protecting their companions. Environmental-alteration users turned the trap center into purgatory. Behind these abilities were all kinds of constructed physical traps—toxic gas, swamps, landmines… Outside the physical trap zone, all kinds of individual offensive ability users stood by. They stood in silence, forming a human wall, the encirclement stretching for thousands of miles.

Such a massive trap existed for only one purpose—

to hunt Yu Qunqing!

“Second round—mercury swamp, throw!”

“Heavy-weapon formation, thermal engines ready—continue suppressive fire!”

A thousand suns rose behind Yu Qunqing, illuminating the land and stretching his blue shadow long across the ground.

Amid the heat waves, Yu Qunqing’s mind stirred, and he handed his house keys to She Lulang. He had already dismissed all his teammates, yet the vice-captain still came to save him at the critical moment, extending the time before his death. He had nothing to repay him with—this was the only thing he could give.

She Lulang gritted his teeth and asked, “You’re not even thinking about staying alive?”

Yu Qunqing said, “I don’t think about things that far ahead.”

His hand slid from She Lulang’s collarbone down until it finally clasped She Lulang’s hand. Both of their hands were at an extremely high temperature from burns; hold on any longer and blood would split through the thin skin. Yu Qunqing gently squeezed She Lulang’s hand. For reasons he couldn’t quite explain, he only said at last:

“Don’t lose it. It’s starting.”

Blue.

As long as it was blue, it fell within Yu Qunqing’s control.

At first his domain extended only one meter, later ten meters; after he stopped being human, it finally reached a hundred meters. No one dared to wear blue clothing in front of him, use blue weapons, or anything related to blue. People thought this was enough to deal with Yu Qunqing, but they didn’t realize that Yu Qunqing’s experience killing people was as rich as his experience handling calamities. Wails covered the trap center.

Yet the blue that belonged to Yu Qunqing gradually faded. People regrouped, sent in the eleventh batch of reserves, and charged again with shouts.

She Lulang leaned against the ruins to rest. On blood-soaked soil, Yu Qunqing found a blue calamity stone. This stone had a strange shape, like a small handheld game console produced by Polar Bear Corporation—the kind that could only play Tetris and match-three games, the favorite of elementary school kids. But foreign calamities came in all kinds of bizarre forms, and Yu Qunqing was used to it. He casually made the game-console calamity stone float against gravity, preparing to smash a few people with it.

Then he saw Han Shuzhu. By the predatory instinct of calamities, he knew there was an enemy hidden in Han Shuzhu’s mind, so the moment they met, they fought.

—As long as they devoured each other, they could evolve!

Yu Qunqing commanded the blue calamity stone and smashed straight through Han Shuzhu’s head.

In that instant, the radiation level here soared to 101%, reaching the theoretical-only K-class. Legend said that K-class calamities could ignore all physical laws and annihilate the entire Earth. No one knew what happened in that moment. After reaching 101%, the radiation level slowly fell, and everything vanished without a trace.

Time and space flowed back from nothingness.

The parasitic book appeared in Han Shuzhu’s mind, several of its pages soaked through with blue ink. It exerted all its strength to seize memories related to Yu Qunqing. Now, it finally had time to recuperate.

“What?! I transmigrated into a book?!” Han Shuzhu clutched his head and shouted in shock.

She Lulang woke up inside the shelter, the keys on his body sliding to the floor. He stared blankly at his surroundings, trying to find a familiar figure.

Yu Qunqing woke up in a residential complex in the city center. His ability had inexplicably changed from “Blue Rules” to “Lightning Element.”

Without his knowledge, the tiny blue calamity stone quietly let out a burp.

So full…

Time returned to the present.

Above the steel ruins of Shajia Ancient Town, the blue shadow had already faded, revealing Yu Qunqing’s human form.

With a wave of his hand, the floating blue game screen in his palm extinguished. He walked over and picked up the radiation monitor. The liquid in the test tube was a vivid red, indicating that Yu Qunqing was a G-class calamity, with radiation above 60%.

He was Calamity Qunqing—so the system was actually…

“Hello, player. I will now explain. I come from the universe. My first identity on this planet was a second-generation handheld console commemorative children’s edition. Because my memory was relatively small, I could only play casual mini-games. The system’s motto is: casual mini-games are the most fun.”

“Based on your existing knowledge, you may refer to me as: K-class Calamity—Game Console, currently occupying memory space of 13,044 square meters.”

At the trap center, Calamity Qunqing and the parasitic book battled each other. The small blue calamity stone benefited by sheer coincidence, evolving all the way into K-class.

K-class calamities ignore classical physics, cross dimensions, and transcend time. That was why the system could “format” time—and incidentally snatch many game rewards from other universes.

A K-class calamity does not necessarily possess offensive power. And the instinct of the “Calamity Game Console” was to be played by people, to eat calamity stones, and to push microtransactions.

“‘Formatting’ can only be used once. Thank you for providing me with energy via the ability—Blue Rules. Your current ability—Lightning Element—is leftover energy that the system did not finish consuming. As long as you continue to upgrade the system, it will be able to expel more energy. However, ‘Blue Rules’ cannot be restored. The system sincerely apologizes for the inconvenience to your life.”

Yu Qunqing couldn’t help asking, “Where did you learn this way of saying a bunch of useless things like customer service?”

System: “Of course—from every game company’s innate nature.”

Yu Qunqing felt that made some sense.

After learning the truth about the system, he was only briefly surprised. Soon after, he felt bored. Where exactly was the boundary between humans, calamities, and other life on Earth? And on which side should he stand?

Yu Qunqing casually asked the system, “Why follow me?”

“The meaning of a game’s existence is the player,” the system answered firmly.

“According to system detection, player Yu Qunqing is not only the user, but also the energy provider. The form of energy transfer matches the way ‘we’ reproduce.”

“So, after you fully logged in, the system relearned human ethics and morality, and reached a conclusion…

I am your—child!”

Yu Qunqing looked around blankly, thinking he was hallucinating. A deliberately tuned mechanical voice surged from the depths of his soul, earth-shattering and deafening, as if it were about to burst through his limbs and bones! Yu Qunqing instinctively tried to stop those two words he could not accept—but it was too late. He could only let the system’s voice smash through all barriers and beep loudly in his ears:

“Fa—ther—”