LABMY CH91.1 [Arc 4]

The world seemed to have turned gray and hazy, with a foul stench of decay lingering in the air. In the summer of June, the outdoor temperature had reached an unprecedented few degrees below zero.

The streets were empty, with no pedestrians in sight. The wind swept up fallen leaves from the ground, making the entire city desolate and bleak.

Suddenly, a figure finally appeared. His walking posture was strange, like a toddler learning to walk, stumbling and swaying, yet his stature was clearly that of an adult.

Step by step, he slowly moved forward on the deserted street, constantly sniffing the air as if trying to track something through the scent.

The man paused, then took two large strides forward. He stumbled and fell to the ground but quickly climbed back up, ignoring the bloodstains on his knees. He dragged his leg and hurried toward an inconspicuous little supermarket at the corner of the street.

“Bang! Bang! Bang!!!” He pounded on the door like crazy. The glass door trembled more and more violently under his strikes. “Open the door! Let me in!”

The man shouted desperately, pressing his face tightly against the glass door, his eyes wide open and darting around nervously.

Inside the supermarket, five people of different ages and genders exchanged glances and whispered cautiously. A short-haired girl asked, “What should we do? Should we open the door?”

A small, timid boy shook his head, “Who knows if he’s human?”

A tall and muscular man said in a low voice, “This glass door won’t hold up against his pounding. Either we open the door, or we barricade it.”

A middle-aged woman, who seemed panic-stricken, asked, “What should we do now? Someone needs to check.”

The woman hugged the small boy and looked at the others, “One of you should go and see if he’s human.”

The man outside continued to knock frantically, shouting like a madman. Yet, the people inside debated whether he was human as if he were some terrifying monster.

“I’ll go check,” the strong man said.

The woman, eager to avoid danger, grabbed the man and said, “Why not let Shen Nian go?”

Her eyes subtly glanced toward the young man leaning against the shelves, her tone dripping with sarcasm, “It’s already the end of the world, and he still acts like some young master.”

“Standing there all calm and aloof, thinking he’s better than us.”

The strong man tried to persuade her, “Enough, Aunt Liu. I’ll check.”

“I’ll do it.”

The young man by the shelves, Shen Nian, spoke up. Without hesitation, he walked toward the supermarket door. He appeared calm, but his palms were already sweating.

Shen Nian stood before the glass door and softly asked, “Are you human?”

The man outside nodded frantically, “Yes, yes, I am! Look at me, I can talk, walk, run, and jump. I’m really human!”

Suppressing his fear, Shen Nian pressed himself against the glass door. His eyesight was poor, and he had lost his glasses while escaping. He had to get close to make out the man’s features.

Fortunately, the man’s face was practically plastered against the glass, allowing Shen Nian to barely make out the details.

Those were eyes that trembled with madness, darting back and forth at an inhuman speed. On his face, there was a pale, hard, scale-like piece — like fish scales.

Shen Nian calmly took a step back, “You’re not human.”

That sentence seemed to trigger the man’s fragile nerves. His eyes bulged as if they would pop out of their sockets. He smashed his fist against the glass door and roared, “I am human!!!”

He pounded the glass door more and more violently, and cracks began to spread across the glass.

Realizing the danger, Shen Nian turned and ran.

The man’s fury exploded as he saw Shen Nian trying to escape. He lifted his leg to kick the door, but at that moment, his leg transformed into a rotting fish tail that slammed against the glass door.

With a loud crash, the glass shattered, and countless shards rained down along with the decaying, scaly fish tail, crushing Shen Nian beneath it.

The man grinned wickedly and leaned in closer, his face nearly touching Shen Nian’s. His waist bent at an unnatural angle as he sneered, “Look closely. I am human. I really am.”

The stench of rotting sewage filled Shen Nian’s nose as the weight of the fish tail pressed the glass shards deeper into his flesh. His chest felt suffocated, and his head spun.

There was no other entrance or exit in this supermarket. Shen Nian knew those people were still hiding behind the shelves, but none of them dared to come out.

Cold sweat drenched his body. Yet, at this critical moment, Shen Nian forced himself to remain calm. Staring at the deranged face before him, he spoke in a steady voice, “I made a mistake. You are human.”

“Sorry for the misunderstanding. Could you let me go now?”

“You’re scaring the others.”

The man froze, his crazed expression turning blank. He mumbled, “Oh… oh…” and slowly lifted his rotting fish tail. He even reached out to help Shen Nian up, as if expecting him to run. He wanted him to run.

The urge for chaos and destruction burned within him. However, Shen Nian took his hand, stood up, and even said, “Thank you.”

Shen Nian asked, “What’s your name? I’m Shen Nian. From now on, we’re friends, okay?”

The man stammered as he tried to recall, “I… I’m Yu… Yu…”

He couldn’t remember. Panic and confusion crept back into his face as he repeated, “What’s my name? What’s my name?”

“A’Yu, right?” Shen Nian quickly interrupted, flashing a smile. “What a great name.”

The man froze. “Yes… I’m A’Yu. Is that my name?”

His words were disjointed and incoherent, like someone whose mind had broken. Yet Shen Nian kept the conversation going.

Through the gaps in the shelves, Shen Nian saw the others nervously watching. He subtly shook his head, then turned to A’Yu and said, “We were just about to go out to find medicine. Would you like to come with us?”

A’Yu echoed, “We?”

Shen Nian nodded and boldly led A’Yu toward the shelves. They bumped into the terrified group.

“See? They’re my companions,” Shen Nian said with a smile.

The woman’s voice trembled with fear and anger as she hissed, “Shen Nian!”

Shen Nian knew that when they had just made eye contact, they had shown him a pleading expression, hoping he would lead the monster away, draw it away so they could escape.

But why should he do that?

He wasn’t noble enough to sacrifice himself to save four people who had pushed him out and coldly watched him face danger.

Shen Nian expressionlessly thought to himself—sorry, but he was highly nearsighted. He really couldn’t see their pleading expressions.

The man who might be called A’Yu could no longer be considered human. He was gradually turning into a monster, and no one could say for sure why. People simply called this process “pollution,” and those who turned into monsters were called “pollutants.”

Getting injured by a pollutant could also lead to contamination. Even a tiny, insignificant wound could turn a person into a man-eating monster.

No one knew when this strange pollution had swept across the entire world, but from A’Yu’s reaction, Shen Nian vaguely sensed that in the early stages of infection, a person still retained their consciousness. It was only later that they completely lost it and became mindless creatures.

He reached behind him and lightly touched his back, feeling the sharp glass shards embedded there. With such a large area wounded, there was a chance—at some unknown time—Shen Nian might also turn into a mindless monster.

He glanced discreetly at A’Yu’s disgusting, rotten fishtail and expressionlessly thought—when that time came, he’d rather die. It was too ugly. So ugly that it hurt the eyes. He couldn’t accept turning into something so hideous.

Meanwhile, A’Yu was already greeting the others. He stretched out a hand covered in fine gray scales, grinning widely to reveal sharp teeth. “Hello, my name is A’Yu.”

The stronger man reluctantly shook his hand, cold sweat dripping, but he still introduced himself, “I’m A’Li.”

His full name was Wang Li. Before the apocalypse, he had been part of Shen Nian’s family security team.

A’Yu nodded. As he did, the scales on his face flaked off. His scales had no beauty at all, looking exactly like the rotten, shedding scales of a dead fish. With that kind of face, he reached his hand toward Aunt Liu. “Hello, my name is A’Yu.”

He tirelessly introduced himself, as if he needed this handshake and introduction to confirm something.

Aunt Liu frantically looked around, trying to seek help. Her hands trembled as if she had Parkinson’s, shaking visibly. Even so, she still hadn’t reached out to shake A’Yu’s hand.

A’Yu suddenly asked, “Why won’t you shake my hand? Are you afraid of me?”

“Why are you afraid of me? Am I that strange?”

As soon as he said this, everyone’s faces changed drastically. Wang Li couldn’t help but warn her, “Aunt Liu!”

Aunt Liu hurriedly reached out and grabbed A’Yu’s hand. The moment she touched it, it was like grasping a cold, slimy dead fish—disgustingly sticky. She lowered her head, not daring to look at A’Yu’s face, and stammered, “I-I-I am Aunt Liu… No, no, I mean, I’m Liu—”

How could she let A’Yu call her “Aunt”? But before she could say her full name, she heard A’Yu’s voice above her head:

“Aunt Liu, are you afraid of me? Your hand is shaking so badly.”

“But I’m also human. Why are you so afraid of another human?”

A face with gills suddenly enlarged before her eyes.

A’Yu grinned, the smell of fish overwhelming her as he spoke. “Why, Aunt Liu?”

Aunt Liu could no longer hold back—she let out a terrified scream. The tension in the air reached its peak.

A strange laugh escaped A’Yu’s mouth. His bulging eyes protruded even more, eerily resembling dead fish eyes. His exposed skin was visibly being covered at an alarming rate by hideous scales. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. His lips repeatedly opened and closed, as if he were trying to breathe.

“Run!”

Wang Li roared, knocking over the shelf next to A’Yu. The five of them made a split-second decision and frantically ran toward the supermarket entrance. But how could a small shelf block a mutant monster?

Aunt Liu yanked the scrawny boy with her and ran, but at that moment, A’Yu’s massive fishtail came crashing down on her. Aunt Liu stumbled, yet she used the force of the impact to run even faster.

Shen Nian’s back wound was still bleeding profusely. The excruciating pain had already been suppressed by sheer willpower, so naturally, he couldn’t run as fast as the others.

As Aunt Liu passed by Shen Nian, the sixteen-year-old boy she was pulling suddenly shoved Shen Nian toward A’Yu.

Faced with a completely deranged monster, Shen Nian’s fate seemed predictable.

Suddenly, a pair of feet clad in high-top black boots stepped into the supermarket entrance.

A’Yu’s movements halted instantly. He looked as if he had just seen his greatest predator—terror-stricken, he turned and fled.

As he rushed past the man who had entered, A’Yu moved at the fastest speed he had ever mustered in his life. His fishtail dragged across the floor, leaving behind a trail of blood and shed scales, silently testifying to his panic.

The others, who had narrowly escaped, stared at each other in shock. Then, Aunt Liu suddenly gasped at the man and blurted out a name, “Mr. Bai?”

“Mr. Bai, weren’t you and Madam…?”

Shen Nian looked at the man. Even with his severe nearsightedness, the vaguely familiar figure and Aunt Liu’s form of address made him instinctively call out a name: “Xiao Ba?”

No one noticed that for a brief moment, the man who had walked in stiffened.

Jian Yuanbai was utterly stunned, his mind echoing with the words: I’m his Xiao Ba?

Even the system was dumbfounded. It had only received a small portion of the story and couldn’t determine whether Shen Nian was really calling him that. It could only judge based on the fact that everyone else’s expressions remained normal. “Maybe?”

In this world, Jian Yuanbai had completely lost his memories—so thoroughly that he didn’t even consider himself part of this world. But now, tricked by the system, he had come looking for his designated target.

And just as he stepped into the supermarket, he heard someone call him “Xiao Ba.”

Moreover, judging by Aunt Liu’s reaction, this “Xiao Ba” wasn’t just a casual nickname. Jian Yuanbai’s voice trembled as he cautiously asked the system, “Did I… have an affair with his mother?”

He sounded utterly terrified, his voice filled with the fragile hesitation of someone fearing a brutal truth.

The system didn’t even have to think. “Impossible. You’re just playing a role. You’re not actually using this person’s body, nor do you have his past experiences.”

“But you can test it out and see exactly what your identity is in this world.”

At first, the system had assumed Jian Yuanbai was inhabiting the body of someone from this small world, just with a different soul. But after Jian Yuanbai kept shifting into various bizarre forms, the system realized—he had never used anyone else’s body. He had always been using his own.

It had no idea how Jian Yuanbai managed that, but one thing was clear: his power was unfathomable.

After hearing the system’s explanation, Jian Yuanbai visibly relaxed. “That’s good. I still need to remain pure for my future wife.”

System: ……

This phrase—was it engraved into his soul?

He lost his memories in every world, yet he still remembered to “stay pure for his future wife.”

Really… The system wanted to cry.

While Jian Yuanbai remained silent, Aunt Liu and Wang Li took a closer look and realized—this man wasn’t actually Mr. Bai. Mr. Bai bore some resemblance to him, but it was the kind of resemblance between an original product and a low-quality knockoff.

The man who had appeared was the one meticulously crafted by the heavens—the real thing. Mr. Bai, on the other hand, was merely a cheap counterfeit.

Just as Aunt Liu was about to apologize for mistaking his identity, the man suddenly spoke. “Sorry, I have amnesia. The ‘Madam’ you mentioned—who is she?”

He has amnesia?!

In that instant, Aunt Liu and Wang Li exchanged glances, a silent understanding passing between them.