Starting with the Herrschers, I Cut Down All — Chapter 36

Elysia: "Aggrieved cat face.jpg" ×9

Elysia: "Ghost geisha.jpg" ×13

His sister's messages came in at an average rate of six per minute. When An Yu switched back to the chat window, another sticker popped up right on cue: a pitiful, helpless face wailing its eyes out.

An Yu: "Silent cat face.jpg"

An Yu: "I just recruited a band member. She came over and told me a whole bunch about her dreams and future, so I didn't notice the messages."

He was still confused about why Kiana had come over.

No, seriously, sis!

An Yu had no thoughts about Bronya at all. Koko's personality had made him certain of one thing: Bronya had never been divorced—only widowed.

She was even scarier than his own sister. His sister could at most have the occasional crazy spell, but pursuing the boss would mean being tied down for life...

Though, in a sense, it was impossible to trigger the -50% option anyway.

Elysia: "Is she the lively type?"

That was fine. Elysia liked outgoing friends, since she was pretty outgoing herself.

An Yu: "...Too lively."

Elysia: "Then I'm logging off first. Work hard! I'll go home and cook tonight! Cat face diving.jpg"

No denying it was her.

Come to think of it, she had no idea who was in her little brother's company. And someone close enough to be recruited into a band at that... so annoying.

"Did he reply?"

Mobius brought over two cups of coffee, then sat beside her and took a light sip. Her brewing was as terrible as ever, but because she had been overly meticulous about it, it was at least passable. As long as it was drinkable...

"He was chatting with a girl just now. What a bad kid, neglecting his family."

"Your future sister-in-law?"

"How could that be! He's still so young, and I haven't even rushed to find myself a boyfriend yet."

The corners of Mobius's lips curled up slightly, and she took another sip of coffee. Her delicate face immediately scrunched up again.

It was still so awful! She should've just kept buying instant coffee. She could've saved the money she spent on the coffee machine too.

"Regarding the dreams, first of all, I recommend that you get a job."

"Second, this may be related to genetic inheritance."

"Before I explain, let me ask you something. What score did you get in biology on the college entrance exam?"

Elysia answered with immediate confidence, "I passed!"

She really had passed. Her little brother had hoped she would study hard and get into the same university as him, but Elysia simply couldn't manage it.

It was too hard, too hard! She couldn't understand any of it!

On the day the results came out, An Yu had been so desperate from teaching her that, after studying hard for three years, he hadn't chosen to strangle himself. Instead, he had been relieved that his older sister had performed beyond expectations and gotten into a decent university.

Elysia still hadn't forgotten the relieved tone in An Yu's voice or the gratified look on his face.

Mobius fell silent for a long while. You merely passed? Even Griseo could score over seventy, and she was a special admissions student.

"It's fine. As long as you have the basics."

She shook her head.

"Each of us has a human genome made up of twenty-three pairs of chromosomes. Twenty-two pairs are regular chromosomes, and one pair consists of sex chromosomes."

Elysia nodded. She remembered that much, since it was among the easiest things to learn.

Mobius took another sip of coffee and calmly set it down. She had decided to sell the coffee machine on a secondhand marketplace.

"Now let me correct something. That is what textbooks say to make things easier to understand. More accurately, there are twenty-one pairs of regular chromosomes, one pair of sex chromosomes, and one pair of special chromosomes."

She lazily curled up on the sofa, hugging a fluffy green pillow. When was the bitterness of this coffee going to fade? It was making her a little nauseous.

Elysia lifted her head in confusion. Was that really how it worked?

"And under normal circumstances, that pair of special chromosomes can simply be lumped together with the other twenty-one pairs of regular chromosomes. But under special circumstances..."

"For instance, when subjected to intense stimulation, those special chromosomes release genetic information that modern science has difficulty comprehending."

"The effects are completely unpredictable. At present, humanity truly cannot decipher the mysteries of this chromosome in terms of genetic inheritance."

"However, given the current level of technology, these changes generally do not have much social impact."

"Such special manifestations come in many forms. For example, Durandal, the second young lady of Schicksal's Kaslana Family."

"Born with white hair, after this pair of chromosomes released special genetic information, she not only gained strength far beyond that of ordinary people, but also acquired a head of golden hair."

Mobius did not continue explaining. After all, Schicksal had only urgently sought help during the initial mutation. Later, everything about that 'young lady' had been tightly protected.

"So does that mean I'll gain powers too?"

A second before Elysia was about to drink her coffee, she instantly set it down, enthusiastically slapped the table, and propped half her body over it.

Power! The power to restrain evil, save the world, and restore the dignity of older sisters!

"...These special genetic traits can manifest in many different ways as well."

Mobius spoke unhurriedly. As a leading expert in biology, quantum physics, and artificial intelligence, the years when they had lived together had been the lowest point of her life.

Still, she had indeed gained a sincere friendship from it. For example... Elysia, who understood nothing. At the very least, she truly did not care about status when making friends.

"For example, when we lived together in Golden Garden back then, the shared dream of thirteen people."

"There are many reasons for these special genetic traits to be released: extreme stimulation, normal growth, or encountering beings with similar genomic manifestations and awakening through long-term interaction."

That was probably it. Mobius had not taken it too seriously anyway.

She did not force anything in the dream. She treated it as just a dream. She had piles of research to do during the day; where would she find time to think about a dream?

Elysia blinked. What did that mean?

Mobius sighed, looking as though she truly had no idea what to do with her.

"To put it plainly, perhaps pheromones, which were only verified to truly exist a few years ago, are at work. Or perhaps it is something even more mysterious, like the soul."

"The thirteen of us did form some strange connections while living together. This special genetic trait released genetic fragments that were extraordinarily close to one another."

Seeing Elysia's eyes beginning to spin, Mobius tilted her head back and stared at the ceiling, thinking of a simpler explanation.

Then she had it!

"Do you know about genetic sexual attraction?"

Elysia shook her head.

Mobius was silent for a long time before suddenly asking, "Do you believe in fate?"

Elysia nodded hard!

Mobius became even more helpless. This girl...

"You can understand everything in the dream as a kind of failed fate."

"Failed fate?"

Mobius spoke calmly. "Because these are fragments released by genetic inheritance."

Perhaps these fragments had not originally been like this. They had only gradually evolved into this after thirteen people came together. After all, while genetic information was rather stable in human inheritance, it always changed somewhat over long spans of time.

The dream was indeed real. It even gave her a sense of temporal dislocation, letting her see what the others had looked like when they were young, as well as a brand-new world.

But as a biologist and physicist, Mobius distinguished these things very clearly.

Elysia fell into thought.

She carefully asked, "Then was Little Yu a bad person in there?"

"Maybe it's because you always use An Yu's name when telling ghost stories." Mobius paused. "Or maybe it is the possibility you least dare to imagine."

For instance, perhaps the version corresponding to An Yu in the past really had been a bad person. But that was all in the past. She shook her head. "In the end, these are only my guesses. Don't take them to heart."

As for a solution? Mobius had already said it: she recommended that Elysia get a job. Life was a continuous process of restraint, learning, and suppressing one's natural impulses.

Elysia immediately deflated, hugged the coffee alone, and gulped it down...

After drinking it, she felt even worse. She subconsciously sniffled, her big eyes forced to become watery.

What was this? Bitter melon and lotus seed core blended into juice?

"Professor, is your coffee expired...?"

"If you want to throw up, go ahead. The bathroom is over there."

Mobius pointed toward the restroom beside them. This coffee machine truly needed to be sold on a secondhand platform.

After organizing his work for the day,

An Yu was just about to clock out when he noticed Ling, that lively little girl, slumped over her desk with a numb expression.

"Your code stopped working again?"

"Hey, hey, hey~ Senpai~ I think the feng shui around here might be a little off."

Her coding had been perfectly fine in university. The company's work had indeed been a bit more difficult, but why had everything suddenly become wrong?

It had to be the feng shui's fault.

An Yu leaned over from behind, casually nudged Ling to the side, and began scanning through the code at a glance.

"This can't be changed—uh."

Uh, An Yu stared at the incomparably bizarre character expression for a long moment, then glanced at Ling.

"If you want to laugh, just laugh, Senpai."

Perhaps she had recovered a little energy. Ling's speech immediately became much more normal, though she still looked listless.

Although she could use Ghost Possession, her sister had already gotten off work, and it would be inconvenient on the road.

An Yu went through the code once more.

"Consider yourself lucky. If you were someone outside the company, I'd charge you for helping."

The problem was not serious. The girl had probably worked all day until her mind had gone muddled. It was a syntax error, or rather, a data-processing error.

Later in the code, she was supposed to delete one preceding character, but Ling had written it to delete everything before it. So it did not throw an error, but the animation that ran turned out absurdly strange.

"Senpai... pfft, Senior, I admit my impression of you has improved quite a bit now." Ling pressed her palms together, putting on an especially touched expression.

Her sister was the one who had lied to her. She had actually said Senior was petty.

"After all, we both got in through connections."

Ling's pink little face instantly froze. She had not gotten in through connections!

But she was too lazy to argue over something like that anymore. After saving her work, color returned to Ling's face, and like a high school student after class, she instantly became full of energy.

"By the way, Senior, I passed by Boss Bronya's office today. Guess what I heard?"

"Why were you passing by her office?"

"Oh, don't worry about that. Guess what I heard."

An Yu: ...

It was not good to pry into a superior's affairs, but who could resist?

"Something about my promotion?"

"No, but it was about you, Senior."

An Yu's expression did not change, but his heart twitched. Kiana's muddled question earlier had left him confused.

Even now, he did not dare determine whether Kiana had been having one of her crazy spells or probing for information.

"What did the boss say?"

"She praised you for having backbone."

He did not need her praise.