EDEH Chapter 125

[007 Diary Thirty-Three]

 

[What the doctor loved broadly will ultimately devour what she loved privately.]

 

·

 

“Eden” was being built not far from the manor.

 

The first batch of 200,000 women brought up weren’t all ordinary residents—many were technical personnel related to scientific research. They could be assigned to corresponding positions immediately and adapted fastest.

 

Most of the relatively ordinary women who had always been viewed as “tools” felt somewhat at a loss, not only facing work-related doubts but also contempt and strange looks from passersby.

 

Though their arrival accelerated construction progress as a significant labor force, it wasn’t entirely positive influence.

 

First, city security was much more chaotic than before.

 

This wasn’t the underground city residents’ fault, but rather long-suppressed male hormones finally getting a chance for release. Previously, men wanting to satisfy their needs usually had only two channels: either consume in entertainment districts or develop interest in men.

 

Cases of actually partnering with women were quite rare. According to surveys, registered heterosexual couples in the main city were less than ten percent of the total population.

 

In chaotic times, ‘sexual’ instability’s most direct impact was male crime rates, especially after Huo Yanji disbanded the supervisor organization—some scum began celebrating.

 

In the past few days, the patrol unit had handled over a hundred cases of rape or attempted rape—a quite terrifying number.

 

Secondly, some women had adapted to the underground city’s constant temperature climate with no storms or strong winds. After coming to the surface, nearly ten percent of women experienced mild to severe physical discomfort.

 

This indirectly led to medical personnel and resources running out, with wards overcrowded.

 

Fortunately, these were anticipated results with corresponding measures quickly implemented. Compared to future advantages, the initial constraints and chaos were acceptable.

 

“Bang—” came a sound.

 

Unlike ordinary gunshots, this was more muffled, firing not a bullet but a thin syringe.

 

The target was a deviant causing trouble in the street. His bestial arm had left a huge crack in the wall, while a panicked man dodged: “Are you crazy!? Don’t you know mutation isn’t allowed in the city!?”

 

A panicked woman lay on the ground nearby, disheveled and backing away.

 

“The fucking supervisors are gone—you still want to be little lambs?” This deviant grinned sinisterly. Just as his fist was about to hit the passerby, a syringe shot from afar hit his neck.

 

Deviant-specific suppressant flooded through his subcutaneous blood vessels. The deviant’s body swayed as his bestial arm visibly cracked and retracted to normal appearance.

 

He clutched his neck and turned back. The moment he saw Huo Yanji’s face, his curses stuck in his throat.

 

Most troublemakers in the main city recognized Huo Yanji’s face. The Supervisor Supreme Executive was their former greatest enemy—everyone hated Huo Yanji’s toughness and iron-fisted methods.

 

Especially previously, when Huo Yanji personally patrolled the city one day per week, criminals who fell into his hands received maximum punishment.

 

Huo Yanji’s voice was ice cold: “Take him for detention, classify as B-level criminal, announce judgment together three days hence.”

 

“Yes!”

 

Originally, with the supervisor organization disbanded, city security no longer needed Huo Yanji’s management, and new order departments gradually had new administrators taking office.

 

But seeing the situation these past days, completely letting go simply wasn’t realistic.

 

For stability, there had to be a tough, ruthless administrator to restrain subordinates and maintain order.

 

Crime records were too numerous these days, with inappropriate punishment severity. Huo Yanji spent half a day sorting through everything, categorizing all cases into four levels—A, B, C, D—then announcing public judgments all at once as deterrent.

 

Without strict punishment, security would only get more chaotic.

 

“Are you okay?”

 

The passerby who’d nearly been beaten for trying to help was also a deviant. He got up with lingering fear, instinctively wanting to take off his jacket to cover the nearly assaulted woman, but immediately realized and hesitantly looked at Huo Yanji, wanting to speak but stopping.

 

According to the “Deviant Code,” deviants should maintain distance from ordinary people. Covering someone with a jacket was somewhat sensitive.

 

Despite possessing power beyond ordinary people, most deviants still had natural lower-to-upper level awe toward Huo Yanji.

 

Huo Yanji removed his jacket and handed it to the man.

 

The man was stunned, somewhat shocked. He immediately put the jacket on the fallen woman: “Thank you, sir!”

 

Huo Yanji turned on his heel to leave: “Return it to the Order Department when finished—when uncertain about injuries, deviants and ordinary people shouldn’t have close contact. It’s better for everyone.”

 

“Ah, yes!” The man watched Huo Yanji’s departing figure with surprise: “Not as terrifying as the rumors…”

 

Huo Yanji only led patrols for two hours, briefly conducting deterrence. He had many other matters to handle.

 

The new order management department was temporarily named Order Department, currently conducting employee evaluation and training for both ordinary people and deviants.

 

Training ground deviants were another extreme from outside criminals. Though their lives were numbered, they were still passionate during oath ceremonies, extremely excited.

 

This was deviants’ first time working in official departments besides military service. Many deviants’ grudges disappeared, feeling equally treated for the first time.

 

Liao Te at the training ground saw Huo Yanji arrive and immediately approached, nodding: “General.”

 

“How’s progress?”

 

“Expected to fully begin work tomorrow.”

 

Huo Yanji hummed: “The first few days are especially important. We must establish good authority for the new department—no slacking.”

 

“Yes.” Liao Te paused, seeming to have something to say.

 

“I understand you don’t want to appear in public too much, but recently…”

 

Liao Te shook his head: “Sir, someone wants to see you.”

 

Huo Yanji paused: “Who?”

 

Light footsteps came from behind. Huo Yanji turned to see a girl in black cloak with silver hair all over, extremely slow steps, skin even paler than Sang Jue’s—fragile to near transparency, giving an inexplicably tragic feeling.

 

Looking closely, her gaze was unfocused, vaguely falling in air.

 

This was a blind person.

 

Huo Yanji’s eyes moved: “Lillian?”

 

Lillian spoke slowly: “You know me?”

 

Liao Te beside them tensed momentarily.

 

Huo Yanji said: “I know everyone around me thoroughly.”

 

Liao Te’s horrible face twisted briefly but quickly relaxed, silently standing aside while focusing on Lillian.

 

“What do you want to tell me?”

 

Lillian said: “You might know my relationship with Patrol Officer Liao Te, but you probably don’t know my origins.”

 

Though blind, silver-haired, silver-browed Lillian seemed able to sense all surrounding obstacles, showing no panic about unknown surroundings.

 

She had no expression, eyes slightly downturned, mouth corners naturally curved with indescribable sadness.

 

“You rescued Liao Te near Rift Seven plains. He brought you into the safe zone and arranged identity for you. Your situation was special—fearing you’d be noticed and taken away, he sent you to relatively peaceful District Seven to live. You then entered the prayer house in District Seven’s south city, becoming a prayer master.”

 

“…You know a lot.”

 

Huo Yanji asked: “Then what don’t I know?”

 

Lillian gazed vaguely in Huo Yanji’s direction: “For example, my real name—Bella Eden.”

 

Huo Yanji’s pupils contracted as he almost immediately recalled this name.

 

The Dawn Plan 2 restart had been a month already, with Huo Jiangmian’s thousand-person team’s fate unknown. 007 had pulled all historical data related to the two rift expeditions, which Huo Yanji had read many times over, remembering every registered name.

 

The first rift expedition was led by Dr. Luce, and his research assistant was named Bella Eden.

 

Bella was a genius—not only Luce’s assistant but also his student, only twenty when entering the underground.

 

“Are you telling me you’ve lived over a hundred years?”

 

“You might not believe it.” Lillian’s pale pupils were unfocused as she said slowly: “To me, it’s only been about ten years.”

 

Looking at her appearance, Lillian was just a girl of about twenty. Forget over a hundred years—probably no one would believe she was even thirty.

 

“Before the meteor season, led by Dr. Luce, we went to the rift depths where many indescribable things happened… I stayed in darkness for a long time—countless years by my count, but impossible to be a full hundred years.”

 

Lillian’s pupils were very small with more white showing. When recalling, they would unconsciously contract and her eye corners would twitch—an uncontrollable fear.

 

“During that time, I was unknowingly infected by certain beings underground. Even without eating, I wouldn’t feel hungry, only needing to supplement some special substances. Even my body’s aging slowed to a halt. Affected by constant darkness, my eyes went blind.”

 

“Correspondingly, my other senses rapidly improved—hearing, perception… and my brain.”

 

Huo Yanji’s eyes held some scrutiny. If Lillian had said this before the strange audio from underground appeared, it would seem like a fabricated bizarre story.

 

But after hearing those time-displaced audios, her account actually provided corroboration.

 

Huo Yanji had thought the audio confusion was just magnetic field interference picking up historical remnant sounds, not a time flow issue, but now it seemed otherwise.

 

If Lillian was still alive, did that mean other people who historically entered underground might also be alive?

 

If underground time flow was truly different, even giving human bodies this ‘immortal’ quality, it would surely cause huge waves among human survivors, even chaotic ruptures.

 

After all, in this death-filled era, who didn’t long for immortality?

 

Huo Yanji uncontrollably thought of Sang Jue sleeping at home.

 

He collected his thoughts and asked: “You’ve hidden your identity for years, presumably not wanting to become a research subject. Why expose yourself today?”

 

“As mentioned, after being infected underground, my brain underwent changes—indescribable changes.” Lillian spoke slowly: “I didn’t hide my identity to avoid research, but because I stayed underground too long, causing me to be unable to distinguish reality from illusion for a long time. I couldn’t see things, didn’t know if whoever was speaking to me was human or demon, or monsters wearing human skin? Was I standing on earth or in hell? I couldn’t confirm anything.”

 

“Even when Patrol Officer Liao Te found me at Rift Seven and brought me back to the safe zone, I remained trapped in fear, often unable to distinguish waking from nightmares. Sometimes upon waking, I’d feel I was back in that nightmare place, that the so-called safe zone was just my beautiful dream.”

 

“More than my body, my spirit was contaminated. I… I couldn’t calm down, so I went to the prayer house, daily reciting verses to soothe my collapsed heart.”

 

“…”

 

Liao Te beside them was obviously hearing this for the first time too. His twisted face twitched twice, turbid pupils remaining focused.

 

“Until a few months ago, I saw someone in District Seven… accurately speaking, he probably isn’t human.” When speaking of this, two tears naturally slid from her eyes: “That was the first time… I felt peace in my spiritual world.”

 

Huo Yanji’s expression remained unchanged, but his heart lurched violently.

 

“Approaching him, I felt purified. Those fears, those absurd nightmares began leaving me. The boundary between reality and illusion gradually clarified. I began believing in reality.”

 

Lillian slowly removed her hood, waterfall-like long hair falling. Shockingly, her hair ends were black, distinctly separate from the silver upper portion.

 

“Just being across a crowd, approaching for less than a minute, the contamination that underground had brought to my body and spirit began dissipating.”

 

After speaking, Lillian also showed her hand from her sleeve. The back was rough and dry, covered in wrinkles only elderly people had.

 

“Time that had stopped on my body seemed to start moving again… I was overjoyed.” Lillian said: “But that person only appeared for a minute before being taken away. I didn’t know his name or origins. Until recently, I began frequently dreaming of him.”

 

Huo Yanji didn’t ask who ‘he’ was, only: “What else was in the dreams besides him?”

 

“You were there too.” Lillian’s gaze was empty, as if everything was before her eyes. Her eye corners twitched, hands unconsciously trembling as she slowly said: “In the dream, the entire world was contaminated—plains, forests, ruins, abysses… Tentacles crawled from rifts, snakes and jellyfish intertwined, nightmare petals of lost deer bloomed throughout safe zones, powder-like spores danced everywhere, monster roars filled the air.”

 

“—He held your corpse and learned to cry.”

 

…

 

At the nearby training ground, soon-to-be workers swore oaths with passion, generously sweating while repeating mechanical gun-raising motions, engraving legal codes into their minds.

 

Amid these noisy sounds, Lillian’s calm yet sorrowful tone was particularly jarring, along with urgent “beeping” sounds in their ears.

 

Several communications came in simultaneously. Huo Yanji paused for a long time before prioritizing the one marked “Little Dummy.”

 

“Sang Jue.”

 

“Mm…” From the other end, Sang Jue’s voice was very dejected, tinged with nasal tones: “You said before that human interests above all is always truth to you. Is that real?”

 

Huo Yanji said: “…Yes.”

 

In the earpiece, Sang Jue asked again, voice small: “Even above my interests?”

 

Liao Te’s gaze finally moved from Lillian, because Huo Yanji, who usually didn’t show emotions, suddenly closed his eyes. His slender fingers hanging at his side clenched into fists, temple veins throbbing wildly…

 

His Adam’s apple rolled restrainedly. Finally, he squeezed out one word from his throat: “Yes.”

 

The communication cut off.

 

Huo Yanji’s stalled breathing began flowing again, extremely rapid. Communication requests from several other parties urgently rang out—research institute, old general, communications building control room, Deputy Zhang Min… even 007.

 

Huo Yanji ignored Liao Te and Lillian behind him, striding out of the Order Department and unhesitatingly answering Zhang Min’s call. Without waiting for the other side to speak, he quickly ordered: “Immediately bring people to the manor!”

 

**

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