Moth Chasing the Sun 17

When Tan Yiyuan followed Feng Tao across the ocean, he had imagined all sorts of futures, both good and bad, but he never expected it to come to this.

The two-tiered bunk beds were covered with mattresses thinner than a change of clothes, and he shared a mixed-gender dorm meant for four with his companions.

Every single day brought training so grueling it made you want to drop dead on the spot.

Weighted long-distance runs, human ladders, long jumps, pole vaults, marksmanship, and hand-to-hand combat—they were being trained like soldiers.

And given the current head of the Bolov family, it was hard not to suspect he had simply copied the military's entire playbook.

The recruits came from all walks of life: ex-soldiers, mercenaries, and people like themselves who had worked in gray industries.

There were plenty of troublemakers among them, but after a few days, they were all beaten into shape, ground down until they were obedient.

On the way here, Tan Yiyuan got to know his companions. Besides Feng Tao, there were two others: Ji Han and Xu Zhen.

Ji Han was a scrawny fellow, so small it was hard to believe anyone could be that short in this day and age. He stood just over five feet, with barely any meat on his bones, dry and shriveled like a shrunken old man. But his movements were incredibly agile, like a monkey—even the drill instructors couldn't catch him.

That's why Ji Han had earned the nickname Skinny Monkey.

Xu Zhen, on the other hand, was a strikingly beautiful woman with deep honey-colored skin and a tall, perfectly proportioned figure. Her features were striking, with long limbs and a waistline that reached almost as high as Skinny Monkey's.

She was like a priestess, a dancer, a leopard stretching its lithe body.

Her eyelashes were a rare white, which she said was due to a genetic disorder, and her hair was the same.

Her eyes, though, were a fierce gold, like a beast's—two prosthetic eyes. Xu Zhen's original eyes had been removed and replaced by herself because she found them unsatisfactory.

But compared to her beauty, what really drew everyone's attention was her cold ruthlessness.

The camp was co-ed, and with suppressants handed out to everyone, no one could tell genders apart at a glance, so they went by looks.

Eighty percent of the recruits were no good, and word of Xu Zhen's beauty spread like wildfire the very first day.

But they weren't fools. They knew anyone who passed the screening was no pushover, so no one made an aggressive move; instead, they stuck to verbal harassment.

After all, teasing and spouting dirty talk wasn't illegal—if they couldn't get a feel, they could at least get a rise.

Xu Zhen, however, wasn't one to swallow her pride. The moment she heard the first line, she swung her fist, breaking the man's nose and cutting off the rest of his filth.

The lunchroom quickly turned into a free-for-all brawl.

But the instructor didn't intervene. Only when barely anyone was left standing did she saunter in, called out Xu Zhen's name, and made her a squad leader.

Xu Zhen, still standing, wiped the blood from her knuckles with a detached expression and kicked one of the fallen men, sneering, "Worthless."

She made no effort hide her alliances, naming the four of them on the spot. The instructor didn't care about cliques—she wanted competition.

If this were a game, Xu Zhen would be the damage dealer, Feng Tao the tank, Skinny Monkey the scout, and Tan Yiyuan himself was logistics.

He was a jack-of-all-trades, having wandered alone for so long that his survival skills were maxed out—he knew a bit of everything and could even fix broken machines.

The four of them quickly passed the trials and officially joined Bolov's personal guard.

They were transferred to new quarters, still training, but the treatment was a few levels up. The food and lodging were far finer than the previous cell-like conditions.

The officer in charge of their drills brought in a new device—a gadget that could temporarily boost combat power.

Each of them had a chip implanted in their heads, which supposedly released electrical signals to stimulate the brain and unlock potential. But the cost was higher physical exhaustion, so they had to train even harder to build their stamina, or they'd end up weak and useless after the boost wore off.

Tan Yiyuan experienced it once. When that sonic wave was released, it felt like a bull seeing a red flag—restless and agitated.

His brain boiled, his thoughts boiled, his bones, his blood—every fiber of his being was burning, and his mind had only one goal: destroy the pillar in front of him.

After the test, his destructive power had doubled.

Tan Yiyuan collapsed onto his face, weak from overexertion, drenched in sweat. The instructor made him inject another vial of what was supposed to replenish his energy, and after the liquid entered his body, he did feel better, his hands and feet regaining strength.

Time stretched on, the ranks growing larger. After a few snowfalls, the instructor called them together for their first real combat—cleaning out the underground gangs of Kurtzli City.

Their strongholds and personnel were laid out in plain sight. The instructor split everyone into teams, each handling a district, with one goal: kill them all.

It was a one-sided slaughter.

It wasn't a real battle, not with back-and-forth.

The guards, well-equipped and trained, could each take on ten men. These gangs knew nothing about them, while they knew down to what color underwear these people wore.

Distinguishing friend from foe was equally simple.

Gang members' information had already been logged into the system, marking them in red. Anyone marked red—man, woman, young, or old—was to be shot on sight.

Some begged for mercy, others wept and wailed, but Tan Yiyuan's gun hand trembled.

Killing without restraint wasn't satisfying, especially in a scene like this, a meat grinder that was hard to stomach.

He asked himself: were all these people truly irredeemable villains? Probably not.

Surviving at the bottom meant needing a powerful patron, needing to ride someone else's coattails. How many had joined out of desperation, just to stay alive and make a living?

He lowered his weapon, and the next moment, a blood blossom bloomed on the beggar's forehead.

Xu Zhen reloaded with a blank expression, then raised her gun and mowed down another group.

"You've got too much kindness in you," she said, her voice cutting through the staccato gunfire like a sharp blade of ice through the scorching smoke. "We're all machines of vengeance, sinners scraping by. Maybe they had their reasons, maybe they're innocent—doesn't matter to me."

"I only know one thing," she said coldly, "anyone standing in my way dies."

The slaughter went on for three days. During that time, one gang fought back desperately, and everyone had to activate their potential boosts to survive, barely escaping with their lives instead of being blown up along with that lunatic.

Tan Yiyuan had seen his share of life and death, but even as he climbed onto the truck leaving the stinking alleys, his face was pale enough to scare anyone.

Blood lodged in the cracks between his fingers refused to wash out, leaving a brownish-red stain.

Xu Zhen sat on a chair, bandaging a wound on her arm. Her expression was calm, and with her lashes lowered, she had a kind of sorrowful beauty.

But no one in the truck dared to crack a joke at her expense, because they all knew the kill count on everyone's record, and this woman, beautiful as a leopard in solitude, was leagues ahead of everyone else.

Lewd teasing was the privilege of the strong over the weak, fundamentally condescending disrespect. But at that moment, no one dared to disrespect her—though she was extraordinarily beautiful.

The Federation's peace had lasted over two hundred years. Looking across human history, endless war, conflict, and oppression had bloomed in every era.

It seemed people were born to die in the slaughter.

This hard-won peace was so brief, like a flower that blooms but once.

When the incident suddenly occurred, no one could have predicted it—it came without warning.

Azbeto had rebelled.

Azbeto announced publicly, "The people need not panic. This is not poison gas, but a threshold—a gateway to a new world."

The insurgent leader wore a black military uniform, his cap brim shadowing the sky's overcast gloom. The storm brewing in those clouds seemed to gather in his lead-gray eyes as well. "There are too many people in this world, and most of them are low-intelligence, drifting through life in a daze, like goldfish in a tank, numb until they die, contributing nothing to life itself, to society, or to the human species. Worse, their inferior genes are dragging us all down."

"Survival of the fittest—that's the beauty of evolution."

"But natural selection is too slow," Azbeto's thin, pale lips curved slightly. "So we're taking a shortcut."

"There's no need to fear or panic. This is just a necessary step toward the new world."

The same poison gas shells exploded simultaneously over five different cities.

His forces dropped one on Withered Winter City. Changqing City and Withered Winter City—those twin stars—one was still green, and now the other had turned green too, but that was the green of condensed poison gas.

It was the same in other cities.

The green unfurled like blooming fireworks, settling heavily to the ground.

By the time Azbeto's speech hit the internet, no one in those cities had the leisure to watch it.

The suffocating, searing agony—as if every cell, every strand of DNA were being shattered and rebuilt—instantly seized all minds.

Abandoned vehicles careened down the streets, and the number of deaths from the crashes was impossible to calculate.

This was no natural disaster—it was man-made catastrophe.

Meanwhile, Yan Xianchuan was playing in the snow downstairs. The fresh snow was like cotton wadding, sticking together at the lightest touch. She was planning to craft a little cat to show Lu Mingqiu.

But she never got the cat finished—instead, she got a call from Lu Mingqiu first.

Every news outlet was broadcasting live coverage of the cities: the screaming people, the writhing green gas, and Azbeto's cold, manic declaration.

Lu Mingqiu recognized the abnormality immediately and said in a low voice, "The behavior of these people after being gassed reminds me of Walnut Town."

Could Azbeto's hatred of the low-intelligence really run so deep that he had actually contacted the Church and released the Mutation Serum indiscriminately, almost obsessively—all just to grind out the supposedly 'quality genes' on a massive scale and pick who deserved a ticket to the 'new world'?