Good evening to the living. Want some candy?

"Are you here to kill me?"

The enormous Polluted made gurgling noises. Rather than speaking, it seemed to be mimicking speech with the sound of water, its pronunciation indistinct and wrapped in watery echoes.

But Ye Jiang heard it clearly. Her expression shifted slightly, a ripple stirring in her eyes as she asked, "Do you want to die?"

Her reaction seemed to say that if it answered yes, she would act the very next second to help it achieve its dream. She was just that eager to help.

The Polluted: "..."

The sorrow in its left eye receded a little. As one side waned, the other waxed: the malice in its right eye surged like a raging fire fed an accelerant. Hatred, disappointment, dejection, anger, and all manner of other negative emotions poured out, tinged with pitch-black ill will.

"You want me dead too."

"Even you want me dead."

Its furious roar sounded as though it were trapped inside a ball of water, oppressively muffled and suffocating.

"There was only one chance to live, and nobody chose me."

"It hurts so much. I want to live too."

"Only one can live. Only one can live."

"I was never one of the choices."

"One lives. One lives."

"I want to live."

"Because I'm not good enough, I don't get to live."

"Only outstanding people get chosen."

"Nobody told me. From the very beginning, nobody told me the conditions for living."

"No, no..."

The Polluted voiced its anger in a confused jumble, and the contamination flowing over the white jade steps writhed and churned incessantly, as though driven by its emotions.

"No..."

"No..."

It muttered, seemingly sinking into confusion. Suddenly, it raised its head slightly, its two enormous hollow eyes fixing on Ye Jiang.

As though Ye Jiang were its father, its older brother.

It said hatefully, "You only ever treated me as a living set of organs. When I got sick, you despised me for being useless!"

In a luxurious private hospital room, he lay on a bed, suffering unbearable pain. Hugging his body, he rolled back and forth. Thud-he accidentally rolled off the bed.

A pair of feet appeared before his eyes. He looked up along them and met a pair of indifferent eyes.

Someone had been standing beside the bed all along, watching his agonized struggle without emotion.

He reached out to grab that person's foot. The pain made him especially dependent, his hands desperate to hold on to something. "Dad..."

But the portly man moved his foot away, his disgust plain to see.

"Why is this one sick too?"

"Raised him all this time, and he's no use at all."

Memories surged abruptly: hatred, disappointment, and... hurt. Its massive body swelled further out of control, pressing against the walls and ceiling. Under the pressure, they gave teeth-grating creaks, plaster raining down.

"You too! You want me dead!"

Water arrows shot straight at Ye Jiang's neck. Countless monstrous hands crawled toward her, filled with resentment and rage, trying to seize her feet and drag her into the abyss of hatred and resentment where it dwelled.

A hit! The sharp water arrows struck her slender neck!

Splash-they became harmless puddles of water, trickling down her pale skin.

The monstrous hands beneath her feet scrambled to seize her ankles, piling over one another as they climbed her legs!

As though finding it a little ticklish, she shook a foot covered in monstrous hands, stirring the water below. The hands valiantly climbing upward paused, then shattered the next second, pattering back into the water.

"I told you, stop playing with water all the time."

The ordinary human spoke as though the Polluted trying to kill her with water arrows were merely a somewhat unruly child squirting a water gun. Because it was truly harmless, it could be forgiven, and her spoken reprimand carried little weight.

The Polluted: "..."

There it was again.

That feeling had returned: the other party was clearly very weak, yet something about her seemed to suppress it invisibly. Even the depths of its soul trembled for no apparent reason. That trembling drove back much of its malice, forcibly restoring its clarity for a moment. The contamination froze for that instant, and a trace of struggle appeared in the Polluted's left eye.

And yet.

And yet the bloody aura of its closest relatives still lingered, provoking its already fragile reason. In just an instant, it was dragged back into the abyss of resentment and rage.

"Hrr-"

A growl escaped its throat. Its body twisted and expanded painfully. Crack-a fissure appeared in the ceiling. Crack-the wall split too, and the space shook unsteadily.

The floor beneath Ye Jiang's feet shook along with it. Seeing that her fellow patient was about to tear the house apart, her eyes flickered. "Um..."

"I hate them so much!"

"I hate them so much!"

The Polluted ignored her completely, going on and on about its hatred.

Ye Jiang: "..."

The Polluted's swelling head was squeezed out of shape as it crushed the steps, crushed the walls and ceiling confining it, and continued to expand amid the falling rubble. Larger, larger... Its shadow enveloped Ye Jiang. The Polluted swelled right up before her, and she had to tip her head far back to see its hollow eyes.

Ye Jiang sighed silently. Now she was a little angry.

Her fellow patient, who had once listened to advice, had become so stubborn, nothing like before.

Words alone won't do anymore, she thought.

So the next second, she raised her hand, loosely curled it into a fist, lifted it high, and punched her fellow patient in the forehead. It was not a hard blow, more of a reminder.

Fellow patient, stop tearing the house apart.

That was mainly what she wanted to remind it of.

Yet the Polluted's enormous body abruptly froze, the resentful words in its mouth catching.

"Urgh."

A pained groan escaped its throat. Its massive body seemed to have suffered an immensely powerful blow. Like the walls it had crushed, a crack appeared across it, followed by a second, a third. Countless cracks spread all over it until it reached a breaking point and fell apart.

Water rushed out like a flood being released.

The surging water scoured the living room, forming several whirlpools. After a long while, the current subsided, leaving only a tiny Polluted in the water.

It had been forcibly slimmed down.

The sorrow in the Polluted's left eye and the malice in its right both froze for an instant. It seemed bewildered, confused as to how its powerful body had suddenly shrunk so much. A second later, it realized what had happened and shuddered.

It shrank back, still reflexively muttering, "I hate them so much," as though a KPI target had been implanted in it and it had to repeat the phrase a certain number of times. But its voice was much, much quieter, as faint as a mosquito's buzz. As it muttered, it stole glances at Ye Jiang, its eyes holding less hatred and more stupidity.

It looked like her old fellow patient again. Satisfied, Ye Jiang lowered her hand.

Having lost its cumbersome, enormous body, it had less contamination gathered within it, and the Polluted's reason seemed to be slowly returning too.

Ye Jiang lowered her gaze and stared at it quietly.

The Polluted trembled, stammering a little under her gaze. "Uh, I h-hate them so much."

Ye Jiang stared at it and interrupted, "When are you going to return the books?"

"Huh?" The Polluted stalled. What books?

Ye Jiang said, "You stole the books you gave me from the hospital, didn't you? Did you sneak away because you wanted me to take the blame?"

The Polluted choked. Its mind filled with miscellaneous concerns, leaving no room for any KPI task.

"I wasn't thinking that. I-I'll return them when I get back." Water droplets formed on top of its head as it denied harboring bad intentions, but-

"Do you really not want to be a poet?"

It plucked up its courage to ask.

Ye Jiang: "."

"What about a mathematician? A musician? I can get you a different kind." The Polluted muttered, sounding somewhat earnest and insistent, "You still need to make something of yourself."

Although it now understood that its father abandoning it had nothing to do with whether it was useless, it had also thought things over after this incident. To live meant to work hard, strive forward, and become someone useful. Life was precious; it had to be put to good use.

Ye Jiang: "."

Her face was expressionless.

The Polluted: "..."

Ye Jiang: "..."

The two stared at each other, neither able to persuade the other.

Amid the silence, Ye Jiang suddenly spoke. "Do you still hate them?"

The Polluted froze.

The human opposite it looked at it, her face expressionless. She stared at it and asked it, a being unlike herself, "Do you still hate them now?"

As though someone cared about it.

Its thoughts mattered to a human who naturally stood on the opposite side from it.

The Polluted: "..."

This human was always like this, occasionally saying things that made it feel strange. What kind of feeling was this?

It shook its head. "It's over now."

Ye Jiang glanced at it and said, "You have too much weighing on your mind. How will you ever get better like this? Don't you want to live a good life? Then let go of those thoughts and focus on recovering."

The Polluted: "..."

What kind of feeling was this?

As though something on the verge of drying up had been infused with life.

In that instant, its murderous intent toward humans vanished. It drew all its contamination deep into its body, letting not a trace escape.

Polluted naturally released contamination. Because it was special, it had not completely lost its reason after becoming Polluted. While staying in the hospital, it had kept some of its contamination restrained most of the time, but it had never been able to contain all of it. Yet at this moment, it completely mastered how to release and withdraw its contamination.

At the same time, Qin Daichuan, who was fighting the birdman Polluted at the front entrance, paused. A flicker of surprise crossed his pale eyes—what had happened inside the villa?

A thought flashed through his mind, and an approaching sound wave sliced through a corner of his suit.

He stopped letting his mind wander and quickened the pace of his attacks.

Boom!

Lightning blazed.

Ye Jiang left through the back door with the fellow patient from next door. She waited there for a while, but no ride came along for her to hitch, and her spirits rapidly sank. Pressing her lips tightly together, she walked unhappily into the night. The invisible person immediately followed close behind.