A contrast between inside and out.

On the third day, he lasted even less time.

On the fourth day, the time he lasted was cut straight in half. He was in terrible shape, and the bloodshot veins in his eyes had never faded.

Worse still, he was lasting less and less time, while those with less aptitude than him were lasting longer and longer. On the fourth day, they actually surpassed him! He left the trial chamber in a daze that day, muttering something as he went. His classmates all noticed something was wrong. They wanted to say something but did not know what. One classmate went up to show concern, only to be shouted at, and after that, no one dared say anything to him.

That night, Jin Hong suddenly woke from a dream with a start. He sat bolt upright, then, after a long while, walked barefoot out of the dormitory.

"How could this happen... how could this happen..."

"I'm the strongest. It shouldn't be like this..."

"Damn it, damn it!"

"I'm the strongest!"

He muttered incessantly in the darkness.

"Have to practice."

"Have to practice."

He swayed from side to side as he walked toward the trial chamber like a wandering soul, muttering as he went, his obsession sunk deep into his bones.

As he passed the supervising teacher's room, a white shadow flashed past. He stopped a beat too late and looked around. There was nothing there.

"Damn it."

"The strongest."

"Practice."

He staggered on.

Whoosh!

Several white threads sliced through the night, springing up from beneath his feet as though out of thin air. In the blink of an eye, they wrapped him into a cocoon.

"Ah!"

He cried out.

"Who's out there?!"

Up ahead, Yan Pei pushed open the door to the supervising teacher's room and stepped outside. The white threads swiftly vanished, leaving the young master of the Jin Family standing there blankly. Yan Pei recognized him.

"Oh, it's you." Yan Pei walked over.

Although Yan Pei was a member of the Ability Control Bureau, he was quite close to the Jin Family, an ability-user family. This time, the head of the Jin Family had also entrusted him with looking after their youngster.

The cold severity Yan Pei wore during the day gave way to a measure of kindness. "What are you doing here, Young Master Jin?"

Jin Hong stalled for a moment, then repeated the same word over and over: "Practice, practice, practice..."

Yan Pei paused, then advised him helplessly, "Don't rush the trials. Practice during the day."

Jin Hong suddenly demanded, "You think I'm not as good as Ming Xia too?"

"What?"

"You people think you can get the better of me too?"

"Wha..."

Yan Pei sensed something was wrong. The young master of the Jin Family suddenly began twitching before him. The bones at his waist seemed to snap clean through, and his entire upper body fell down. Then his limbs rapidly grew amid spasms, becoming thin and long. His fallen upper body was still on the ground, but his neck lengthened like a swaying noodle, rising back into the air. His head was shriveled, his eyes bulging and filled with malice.

"Do you think you're better than me?" the young master of the Jin Family demanded of the human before him, his loose teeth rattling.

Yan Pei backed away several steps, his expression horrified.

Jin Hong, this young master of the Jin Family, had turned into a Polluted right before his eyes!

Chapter 16: A contrast between inside and out.

Boom!

A dull rumble broke the quiet mountain night. In the assistant's room some distance away, Ye Jiang's hand paused with a stone between her fingers. Another rumble followed, as though the earth were groaning. Ye Jiang looked up at the faintly trembling ceiling, confirmed its sturdiness, then lowered her head as though nothing had happened and placed the black stone in her hand on the enormous board.

She was playing Go with someone.

She had already died enough times in online games to be sick of them, and had now moved on to offline games. This thing called Go, a gift from a student, had quickly become her favorite.

Her opponent was Mushroom Man. Neither understood the rules, and after a few games, they had devised a simple, brutal way to play: a pure contest of speed, placing their own stones on the board as quickly as possible, then comparing who occupied more territory once the board was full. To accommodate this method, they had even expanded the board on their own until it was as large as two tables. During Ye Jiang's pause, Mushroom Man opposite her had displayed very poor sportsmanship by taking a large swath of territory. Ye Jiang's brows twitched, and her hand moved faster, leaving afterimages. The black stones in her bowl rapidly dwindled, and before long, black stones covered the board.

Mushroom Man grew anxious and used both hands. A few seconds later, it split off several strands of mycelium to form a second pair of hands, then a third. Ye Jiang glanced up at her opponent without saying anything, so Mushroom Man split off another pair.

Inside the room, the battle was fierce. Their stone-placing hands whipped up a small whirlwind, and even the air seemed to spark from the friction between them. In no time, the board the size of two tables was packed full. Ye Jiang, playing with one hand, won outright.

Boom!

The rumbling outside grew louder, as though a demolition crew had moved into this wilderness overnight.

Before Ye Jiang could reap the fruits of victory,

her attention was drawn away by the noise. A strand of mycelium quietly crept onto the board, swallowed a black stone, and replaced it with a white one. Ye Jiang turned back and caught Mushroom Man red-handed.

"..."

"..."

Two minutes later, a snow-white Mushroom Man stood in the corner of the room. Its teacher had sent it to face the wall and reflect.

Without an opponent, Ye Jiang did not lose interest. She began playing against herself, placing white stones with one hand and black stones with the other. But her hands were nowhere to be seen above the board. Only the white and black stones could be seen tapping down, swiftly occupying the empty territory.

Ye Jiang had been holding back when she played against Mushroom Man.

She could go even faster.

Mushroom Man, facing the wall, had long known this and was not at all surprised by the ability Ye Jiang displayed. It secretly watched her for a while, then drifted into a daze as it watched. It wanted to seal away this room along with time itself: a lamp, someone who would not hurt it, a peaceful night. That was all it wanted.

Yet the agonizing pain it had desperately suppressed fiercely ate away at its body. A momentary lapse was all it took for the pain to sweep through like wildfire, corroding its soul. Its soul gave a piercing shriek, and its snow-white body hunched over.

Hatred, resentment, rage-dark emotions intertwined into intense malice, churning within its snow-white body, clamoring to tear it apart and burst out through bloody wounds to unleash a satisfying slaughter.

Unable to control itself, it sent several strands of mycelium slipping out of the room and traveling into the distance. They emerged from the earth farther away and relished the duel between the human and the Polluted. Its mycelium trembled wildly with excitement.

Blood.

Need to see more blood.

Tap.

The sound of a stone landing pierced Mushroom Man's mind, ringing like metal and jade, like a clear musical note. Mushroom Man stiffened. The black stone hidden inside its body pressed against it, and it abruptly snapped out of its feverish excitement.

Awareness returned, but its heart felt as though a great hole had opened in it, cold wind rushing inside. A wave of sorrow suddenly came over it.

The sorrow of watching itself die while still alive.

It knew more clearly than ever that it was becoming unlike itself, that its true self was dying.

What was it that it wanted?

To watch the mist flowing through the mountains, to see flowers unfurling in the morning sun, to look at the scenery depicted in stone.

Mushroom Man had never suffered like this. Inaudible sobs spilled from its lips.

"Want to play?"

A voice rang out.

Mushroom Man looked up. The human stood before it with a stone in her hand, the lamplight gilding her slight figure with a hazy glow.

"You can move the stones in secret." The human's face was expressionless, and she seemed to be wrestling with herself, compromising. "As long as I don't catch you."

The human returned to her seat, muttering, "Children, honestly... breaking the rules, then crying just because they're told to face the wall..."

Mushroom Man stared blankly. The human looked over at it, her face stern. "Aren't you coming to sit down?"

Mushroom Man: "..."

What sort of feeling was this?

There was clearly no wind, yet it felt a breeze brush past, blowing all the way into the depths of its soul.

Farther away, outside the supervising teacher's room, the rumbling that had broken the quiet night had ceased. Yan Pei stood to one side with a dark expression. His clothes were torn, and a claw wound deep enough to expose bone stretched across his entire chest. His chest heaved as he steadied his breathing and stared at a spot on the ground. There, the young master of the Jin Family, now a Polluted, had been crushed to pieces beneath a massive rock. A section of lower leg stuck out, still twitching stubbornly. Before long, the twitching stopped.

It was dead.

Damn it!

Damn it!

Yan Pei, who controlled the massive rock, cursed inwardly.

The young master of the Jin Family had possessed high potential while alive, and had become a powerful B-Rank Polluted. Fortunately, he had only just transformed and was not yet very adept at fighting, which had allowed Yan Pei to suppress him.

Despite his victory, Yan Pei could not feel happy. His mind was full of curses.

Damn it, the young master of the Jin Family had actually turned into a Polluted under his care!

Seeing that the battle had stopped, the three assistants gathered around. They had come over at the noise long before, but when they saw it was a fight between a B-Rank Polluted and a B-Rank ability user, the D-Rank ability users, who were not skilled at combat, had stayed back rather than get in the way.

"How did a B-Rank Polluted get into the trial grounds?" One assistant came over and crouched before the thoroughly dead young master of the Jin Family, examining its leg bone. "Tsk, when did it get into the mountains?"

He had yet to realize that this B-Rank Polluted was Jin Hong.

Yan Pei stared at him blankly. "That's the young master of the Jin Family."

"Huh?" The assistant froze, staring woodenly at the leg bone in his hand. With a sharp hiss, he flung it away. "Holy shit, no way!"

Yan Pei did not want to speak.

Another assistant frowned. "How? How could the young master of the Jin Family turn into a Polluted?"

Yan Pei wanted to know too.

How did the Polluted come into being? From the findings compiled over three hundred years, they were random mutations caused when humans came into contact with contamination drifting in the air. A normal human showed no warning signs before turning into a Polluted. It could be said that contamination turned humans into the Polluted.

But it was worth noting that the contamination from the Polluted generally did not turn normal humans into the Polluted. The consequences of direct exposure to a Polluted's contamination were mental abnormalities, along with physiological damage to the body. In other words, the contamination from the Polluted was not actually "contagious"—it would not infect humans and turn them into the Polluted.