RHWHEG – Chapter 79 Transparent Threads

Sun Ming quickly found a dinghy Yu Qunqing had stashed away and modified it so it could carry Dong Changxin’s ammo crates. Rowing across by hand would take far too long, so Dong Changxin lashed an iron spike to the bow and used his ability to accelerate the boat.

The surface of Crocodile River was covered with many layers of ice. They shot downstream with a whoosh, like skating. Crocodile River had turned into the most thrilling, heart-pounding ultra-long slide imaginable.

…

Inside the shelter, Tang Qianjiang finally managed to explain everything clearly. Dr. Chen was suspected of working with the research center on some dangerous project. Jiang Qiwen had returned, and she might make a move against Yu Yanlan.

“Dr. Chen is connected to the ‘Disaster Stone Refinement’ project?” Yu Qunqing looked toward She Lulang. This was something they hadn’t known even in their previous life. Back then, Dr. Chen hadn’t come to the shelter so early; he stayed only briefly before passing away. Yu Qunqing had only made it in time to attend the funeral of this human hero. He still held great respect for the old man.

Tang Qianjiang looked utterly dejected. Yu Qunqing didn’t know what to say. In his previous life, Tang Qianjiang probably hadn’t known any of this either—only later discovering that the research center had poisoned Dr. Chen.

So what was this now? Infighting between two evil forces?

Yu Qunqing had a vague sense that there were still things he didn’t understand, and decided to investigate further later.

For now, his attention was on the news about Yu Yanlan.

After some thought, he said, “I’ll go deal with Yu Yanlan later. I may have to split from the team.”

“Do you actually have memories between the person you’re possessing and Yu Yanlan?” Tang Qianjiang asked in surprise. “Otherwise, what does he have to do with you? Or are you trying to fulfill this body’s last wish or something?” He had long since recognized Yu Qunqing as Qing— the humanoid disaster listed on the wanted notice—so he was even more confused.

Yu Qunqing said, “I’m a disaster—and I’m also human.”

Lin Luyi didn’t seem too surprised. He punched Tang Qianjiang lightly. “The neighborhood itself is one huge disaster. You’ll understand once you get there.”

So that meant they were assuming he’d go to the neighborhood… Tang Qianjiang silently massaged his sore arm.

Tang Qianjiang’s dormitory was a luxurious single room with excellent facilities. Yu Qunqing had planned to rest a bit longer while waiting for the system to boot up, but instead the AI’s alarm blared through the dormitory area.

“Alert! Alert! The neighborhood has been infiltrated by outsiders. Suspected humanoid disaster invasion of the shelter. All residents, prepare for combat—alert—”

“We… forgot to mention one more thing,” Lin Luyi said guiltily. “When we passed the research center, we kind of… tied up two researchers on the roof.”

“I’m used to it.”

The usually silent She Lulang suddenly spoke. “I’m already used to you all stirring up trouble.”

Yu Qunqing nodded in deep agreement beside him. When the deputy captain said “you all,” it definitely didn’t include him. This bunch—occasionally plus Dong Changxin—caused trouble for him every single day.

“After an infiltration, people will come searching. The shelter’s population density is high—it’ll be hard to hide.”

Yu Qunqing immediately changed tactics, switching from solo action to moving as a group. He planned to find Yu Yanlan first, deal with Jiang Qiwen, and then take things step by step. He poked the system, but it still didn’t respond, so charging the system also went onto his to-do list.

Outside, voices clamored as many people ran out of the residential area in all directions. The crowd fell into a new wave of panic, suspecting that unfamiliar faces might be disasters in disguise.

Taking advantage of the chaos, Yu Qunqing and the others reached Yu Yanlan’s residential block. It was a double room, currently empty. Yu Qunqing searched around and found a disaster-stone serum that had already been liquefied. He picked it up, weighed it in his hand, then found a clean syringe and prepared to inject himself.

“What are you doing?!” She Lulang grabbed Yu Qunqing, his fingertips whitening with the force.

“Replenishing my ability strength,” Yu Qunqing said. “It’ll be fine. I tested it before with your serum.”

She Lulang looked at him silently, then gradually loosened his grip.

“Ding-dong! A real-name friend request has been detected. The system will accelerate digestion. Please wait patiently.”

“So it wasn’t that you ran out of energy—it’s because what you took earlier hasn’t finished digesting yet…” Yu Qunqing truly didn’t know what to say about this system anymore.

He put the serum down and said, “I’ll listen to you… You have to protect me, okay, Xiao She.” He couldn’t help teasing.

She Lulang’s face immediately flushed bright red, but he still promised, “I will.” He removed his hood; the wolf ears vanished as he shifted into an attack form.

“Beep, beep, beep!”

Because Yu Qunqing had held the serum for too long, the alarm on the containment device went off and reported to the research center. Their location would likely be exposed very soon.

“It’s about to start!”

As Yu Qunqing and the others exited the residential area, the first to sense something wrong was the guard squad. She Lulang held back as much as possible, only knocking them unconscious. Then the ability-hall support team arrived.

After easily clearing out the small fry, someone who looked like a mid-level boss appeared. He was unusually tall, with pink skin, and his ability was called “Brain-Eating Heart Demon.” He had spent three days and three nights coming up with this exceedingly domineering ability name, and then went around bullying people everywhere.

His ability was loosely related to mental powers. He could lock onto a creature with a brain and manifest that target’s fears within a radius of several dozen meters. It had no direct attack power, but it was excellent at psychological torment.

He blocked She Lulang and the others, flourishing his Tang saber with flair. “You’re the humanoid disaster from the wanted notice? Today will be your day to die!”

Lin Luyi shoved Tang Qianjiang out of the combat zone. “If you get caught, say we kidnapped you!”

Tang Qianjiang was deeply moved.

The Brain-Eating Heart Demon swept his gaze over the three in front of him. She Lulang looked like a powerful villain, Yu Qunqing looked calm and equally dangerous, so he locked onto the seemingly weakest—Lin Luyi.

“Relive your fear. Fire team, prepare!” The Brain-Eating Heart Demon decided to use his ability to slow them down. A halo flew out from his pink forehead and settled over Lin Luyi’s head.

“Let me see your fear…” the Brain-Eating Heart Demon murmured.

Suddenly, his body stiffened and his expression grew strange. His companions were horrified. “What’s going on?!”

“Damn it!” the Brain-Eating Heart Demon shouted in disbelief. “It’s all grass!”

His companions were utterly confused.

“Next one—this time it’ll definitely turn into your fear.” Unwilling to believe it, the Brain-Eating Heart Demon cast another halo over She Lulang.

She Lulang hadn’t even reacted yet when the Brain-Eating Heart Demon suddenly erupted into earth-shaking retching, horrifying everyone nearby.

In agony, the Brain-Eating Heart Demon cried out:

“Ugh—lo—love—brain—!”

Everyone sucked in a sharp breath. Lin Luyi looked at She Lulang, then at Yu Qunqing, then back at She Lulang, retreating step by step. These two were really impossible to understand!

She Lulang clenched his fists tightly. His patience had reached its limit—he was about to cut everyone here down.

Enduring the pain, the Brain-Eating Heart Demon changed targets again. He refused to believe it—surely not a single mind he tasted today could be normal!

So another halo descended over Yu Qunqing’s head.

The next second, the Brain-Eating Heart Demon’s eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets as his expression twisted. Yu Qunqing’s fear materialized before everyone’s eyes.

A mountain of corpses.
A sea of blood.

Flames, eyeballs, tentacles, slime, chunks of flesh, feral laughter and shrill screams—nightmares lurked within the shadows.

Anyone who witnessed this scene felt a wave of nausea, and some were already dizzy and lightheaded.

Only Yu Qunqing stood at the center of the embodied fear, expressionless, as if long accustomed to it.

In fact, what Yu Qunqing saw was a pile of mosaics.

“Hello, Player. ‘Child Mode’ has been activated for you. Under this mode, all imagery with inappropriate guidance will be purified with one click.”

The system had finally finished resting and responded just in time.

Yu Qunqing was full of question marks. “Turn it off. I’m not a child—I’m an adult.”

“But I am!!” After waking up, the system seemed a bit more human. It shouted righteously, “I am a child!! Ahhh, so scary!! This is my nightmare!! I saw scenes like this the moment I was born!!”

Utterly speechless, Yu Qunqing could only raise a hand to his forehead.

To others, this looked like a reaction of fear. The Brain-Eating Heart Demon burst into loud laughter. “Disaster invaders from the neighborhood—are you afraid too?”

“Are you afraid?” She Lulang’s eerie question sounded from behind the Brain-Eating Heart Demon, gripping everyone’s unspoken thoughts. “When death arrives, will you be afraid?”

The Brain-Eating Heart Demon slowly turned its head. What greeted it was a surge of gravity—then the world spun, flipped, and plunged into darkness.

The fear manifestations on the ground faded away bit by bit.

She Lulang walked over and, under everyone’s gaze, took Yu Qunqing’s hand. He said seriously, “Don’t be afraid.”

Yu Qunqing didn’t let go, nor did he explain. He stared at their clasped hands and thought:

Vice-captain, you’ve really grown so much stronger!

The two of them walked forward, like Moses parting the sea—unstoppable.

Behind them, Lin Luyi dragged along the weak-kneed Tang Qianjiang. “So no one cares about me at all?!”

---

On the other side, at the foot of the mountain.

Li Yuebei and the others had already rowed their inflatable boat over. Li Yuebei was exceptionally cautious. He stopped Sun Min and the others from advancing and said, “We need to confirm what the shelter’s current situation is. If it’s a special period, showing up like this would be far too conspicuous.”

He used “Delayed Viewing” to search for people everywhere. When he discovered the bodies here, he let out a long sigh and closed their eyes for them. After searching around, he finally found traces of Yu Qunqing and the others heading up the mountain.

“They really did go into the shelter,” Li Yuebei analyzed rigorously. “There are only three of them. Under normal circumstances, no one would cause too much of a commotion.”

Sun Min nodded in agreement.

However, howls echoed from halfway up the mountain, reverberating through the ravines. It looked like the shelter was in quite a stir.

Li Yuebei remained unruffled and continued his analysis. “This disturbance doesn’t necessarily have to be caused by Yu Qunqing and the others. The shelter itself could be experiencing internal chaos. Many of our food rations are fixed—dissatisfaction is inevitable. There were already plenty of complaints when I left. So there’s only one truth: the shelter is currently in a period of internal strife!”

Dong Changxin hesitantly nodded, then asked, “So what should we do?”

“The safest approach is, of course, to infiltrate,” Li Yuebei said solemnly. “A chaotic period is the best time to infiltrate. We’re dressed nothing like people from the shelter—walking in openly would make us stand out. But if we enter and immediately attack one side, choose our stance, and with access cards in hand, no one will question our identities afterward. We can blend into the shelter openly—and leave openly as well.”

Sun Min praised him. “That’s really airtight.”

Thus, Li Yuebei gave the two of them a crash course in shelter common sense. The three sat in a circle at the foot of the mountain chatting, until Li Yuebei felt everything was stable enough before finally letting them follow.

“Let me think if there are any details I’ve missed…” Li Yuebei muttered as he walked.

“This is a checkpoint, and there’s no one guarding it. Looks like the scale of this internal chaos is pretty big,” Sun Min said as she and Dong Changxin helped Li Yuebei climb over a two-meter-high roadblock.

“Which faction could be fighting internally? The agricultural district? They always stash weapons…” Li Yuebei continued to ramble. “Later, no matter who you see, it’s best if you attack first. That way you can always say you made a mistake afterward. Right—this is the safest plan!”

“Someone really is using abilities!” Sun Min warned. They bent low and climbed upward step by step, and sure enough, multicolored abilities were flying everywhere.

Someone was coming from the forest!

“After all that talk, I still have to be the main force!” Dong Changxin rolled up her sleeves for a fight and stepped forward. “Halt! This is the Shelter Guard! Unauthorized combat is forbidden!”

“Faaa—mi—ly—!”

Tang Qianjiang came sprinting over and excitedly shook Dong Changxin’s hand.

“We finally found you! It’s them—it’s them who took down so many of our ability users! Guard team, I was being held hostage following them! I’m innocent!”

Behind Tang Qianjiang were, astonishingly, the leisurely Yu Qunqing, She Lulang busy giving people physical amnesia, and Lin Luyi who had turned into a literal walking willow of violence.

Sun Min froze. Li Yuebei froze as well. Only after finishing shaking Dong Changxin’s hand did Tang Qianjiang feel she seemed a bit unfamiliar. He laughed awkwardly and went to shake Sun Min’s hand. “Good comrade, when did you join the job? How old are you this year? Young and promising, big brother!”

“Yo,” Yu Qunqing greeted. “Why are you here? Swept over by the flood too?”

Dong Changxin lowered her hand. “You’re all okay? You scared us to death. We rowed over. Doctor Li said we could grab some supplies.”

Tang Qianjiang suddenly froze mid-handshake with Sun Min.

Wait—something’s off about this conversation. These two groups know each other? A flood washing away the Dragon King’s temple?

He looked closely at Sun Min’s face. None of it matched any face he’d ever chatted with! How was that possible? He was the shelter’s social butterfly. That meant this person was from the neighborhood! Tang Qianjiang recoiled in fright, hurriedly letting go and backing away.

“There really are quite a lot of supplies here,” Yu Qunqing said as he walked closer. “Right, Xiao Tang? Who’d have thought you had the makings of a traitor. Guess I misjudged you.”

Sun Min: “Huh? He’s a traitor? Then I’ll help Brother Yu tie him up!”

“No—no, give me another chance, big brother! Next time I’ll definitely be a good person!” Tang Qianjiang was too immersed in his role, eyes brimming with tears, completely forgetting that it was Lin Luyi who had suggested he pretend to defect—with Yu Qunqing standing right there listening.

“Mr. Yu, I’ll keep an eye on him,” Li Yuebei said with a cheerful smile, showing no trace of awkwardness at having misjudged the situation. “The shelter hasn’t been this lively in a long time.”

“Ah—Dr. Li—” Tang Qianjiang exclaimed when he saw him, whispering, “Dr. Li, were you kidnapped by the neighborhood too?”

Li Yuebei whispered back, “No. I’m a real traitor.”

Tang Qianjiang: ? So this is the kind of doctor you are, Dr. Li?

“I’m going to beat people up,” Yu Qunqing said. “Might grab a few people while I’m at it. Once we’re done, we’ll leave. You can take some supplies yourselves—just don’t make too much noise.”

Dong Changxin said tactfully, “You’ve already made a lot of noise.”

“Alright, Dr. Li already gave us a rundown of the shelter’s layout earlier,” Sun Min accepted this explanation happily.

Tang Qianjiang muttered, “Didn’t expect a traitor like you to be so professional…”

Li Yuebei replied, “All accidents.”

And so the seven of them embarked on a thunderous half-day tour of the shelter. At the very front was the combat zone—once Dong Changxin and Sun Min joined the fray, the shelter’s ability users were sent flying one after another. Then came the spectator zone. Yu Qunqing really wanted to fight too, but unfortunately the system was still chewing things over at a snail’s pace—what a spendthrift brat! So Yu Qunqing looked especially relaxed. At the very back was the scenic zone. Upholding the principle that doctors don’t go to the front lines, Li Yuebei, and Tang Qianjiang, who steadfastly upheld his creed of slacking off for a hundred years, both hid far away.

Tang Qianjiang grabbed Li Yuebei. “Dr. Li, aren’t you coming back?”

Li Yuebei stared straight ahead. “I am loyal to the neighborhood.”

Tang Qianjiang felt deeply that this man was truly a master actor. Li Yuebei added, “There’s no going back.”

Tang Qianjiang murmured, “Dr. Chen has come here. Does he know all of this? Is there really no way out?”

“Dr. Chen? He’s here?” Li Yuebei had heard of this human hero and felt some respect as well. He hesitated. “If it’s Dr. Chen, Mr. Yu should try to communicate. Yu Qunqing… doesn’t look like someone on a shelter wanted list. The neighborhood is a very special existence…”

Before he finished speaking, a gust of wind howled in.

A chill crawled up everyone’s backs. Li Yuebei hurriedly put on a specially made cold-resistant suit he’d snagged along the way.

“It’s Jiang Qiwen’s ability!”

The ability users who had been surrounding them suddenly fell silent, scattering to make way for the battlefield.

Wind was invisible, colorless, tasteless, everywhere. Jiang Qiwen’s ability wasn’t merely “wind element,” but a higher-tier “wind sound.” Sound carried information thousands of times over, leaving enemies nowhere to hide. The sound waves hidden within wind force were a terrifying large-area killing weapon. Jiang Qiwen habitually kept three wind blades summoned and on standby—no one could escape his sight, and no one could get close to him.

“With this range of wind blades, it should be something only LV3 can pull off,” Yu Qunqing remained utterly at ease. “This kid’s got pretty good luck.”

He remembered that in his previous life, after completing the “Disaster Stone Enhancement” procedure, he’d had a large volume of blood drawn. He’d thought it was for experimental needs—but it turned out to be for Jiang Qiwen’s safer leveling. Yu Yanlan knew everything, but worried more about his boyfriend’s safety, so he kept it hidden.

Yu Qunqing: Feels like I went too easy on my little brother.

“Ding—”

The system’s notification chimed in his mind. Yu Qunqing suddenly felt his vision sharpen; even distant objects became crystal clear. He saw many hidden ability users around him, each with a long, transparent thread connected to their heads. All the threads converged toward a distant point.

He sensed a fluctuation similar to those cheesy novel ads and guessed it was the parasitic thread of the “Book of Parasites.” He didn’t know why he could see it now.

“If I just kill Han Shuzhu directly, I wonder how much damage these threads would cause…” Yu Qunqing pondered his next move against Han Shuzhu.

“So you’re the humanoid disaster?”

In the distance, Jiang Qiwen stepped forward openly. Behind him stood Yu Yanlan, eyes unfocused. A transparent thread, several times thicker than anyone else’s, connected to Yu Yanlan’s head. His clothes were disheveled. His expression struggled, fear occasionally surfacing—but when he saw Yu Qunqing, his eyes clearly lit up.

And there were no threads on Jiang Qiwen at all. Which meant everything he’d done so far had been his own genuine will.