Chapter 15: Y-057

Xia Mi approached the Lizardman couple, fish-belly knife in hand. “The 10th floor is safe now,” she said seriously. “It is time for both of you to let me scrape your scales.”

After having his tail and tongue severed, the Corrupted Chameleon had regained some clarity. Seeing that the other residents on the 10th floor were in a state similar to his own, he silently accepted his fate.

However, he still spoke up. “Can you just scrape mine? Please don’t touch my wife. Her health is poor, and I am afraid she won’t be able to handle it.”

When the public fails to understand policy, it is the responsibility of the staff to explain it patiently.

“I am not trying to mistreat you,” Xia Mi explained. “Think of this as a surgery, a way to help you remove diseased parts of your body. You are sick, and these extra growths are like tumors. They will drain your nutrients and accelerate your death. Removing them will alleviate your condition. Besides, I perform painless surgery. It really won’t hurt.”

If Xia Mi accidentally nicked their actual skin while scraping the scales, it would still hurt, but she figured it wouldn’t be anything too serious.

Hearing Xia Mi’s grounded explanation, the couple became more receptive.

They didn’t understand concepts like Qing, Zhuo, or unknown monsters, but they understood that being sick required surgery.

The White Lizard spoke in a soft, weak voice. “Little girl, how many times have you performed this surgery?”

Xia Mi felt a pang of guilt. “You will be my first.”

“Then operate on me first,” the White Lizard said. “I have a high pain tolerance. Use me to practice so that when you operate on him, it will hurt less.”

The Chameleon grew anxious, wanting to go first to spare his wife the pain.

The White Lizard persuaded him. “If you want to protect me, you cannot be injured. It doesn’t matter if I get hurt a little.”

The expression beneath the Chameleon’s scales was one of deep conflict. He didn’t quite trust Xia Mi yet and wanted to test the procedure for his wife’s sake while helping Xia Mi gain experience, but his wife’s words made sense.

The long-haired monster standing beside Xia Mi looked terrifying. He needed to preserve his strength to better protect his wife.

Xia Mi felt another wave of guilt at the couple’s deep affection for one another. She declared on the spot, “There is no need to argue. I will run a computer simulation first to increase my proficiency. I will ensure everything is foolproof before we begin the surgery.”

She successfully bluffed the couple and opened her laptop. She loaded the save file from after she had occupied the 11th floor and replayed the 10th-floor conquest exactly as it had happened in reality, saving the game once the plot aligned with real life.

On the screen, Xiao Mi pinned down the White Lizard and scraped her scales for the first time. Because her proficiency was low, the White Lizard lost a significant amount of blood.

Xia Mi reloaded the save. On the second attempt, the White Lizard’s injuries were much lighter.

After repeating the experiment a dozen times, Xiao Mi’s technique finally reached a pinnacle of perfection. She completed the scale-scraping, the detachment surgery, on the White Lizard without a single scratch.

Xia Mi breathed a sigh of relief. She shut the laptop and said with full confidence, “The simulation was a success. We can begin the surgery.”

The couple still didn’t entirely trust her, but under the pressure of the situation, they had no choice but to accept.

Considering privacy, Xia Mi decided to perform the surgery in Room 1005.

She instructed Sister Li and the Spider-man to handle the task of pacifying the residents on the 10th floor. She implemented a one-on-one persuasion system, where each active resident from the 11th floor was responsible for one newcomer to conduct ideological work.

It was a truly time-saving and efficient method.

After handing out the assignments, Xia Mi walked into Room 1005.

Because she entered so quickly, she didn’t see an elderly woman from the 11th floor grabbing the hand of another woman from the 10th floor. “What else can we do besides listen to her?” the 11th-floor woman whispered. “Are we supposed to play tough and let her break our legs?”

As she spoke, the woman from the 11th floor even wiped a tear from the corner of her eye.

Fortunately, Xia Mi didn’t hear her.

Inside 1005, the White Lizard firmly held her husband back, insisting on going first.

The Chameleon still tried to step forward, but the White Lizard whispered, “If she intends to do something malicious during the surgery, and I go first, at least you will still have your strength. You can take the chance to attack her. If you go first, I might not even be able to avenge you.”

The White Lizard’s voice was meant to be a private whisper between husband and wife, but Shield had turned on the helmet’s audio receiver, allowing Xia Mi to hear the conversation clearly.

Xia Mi wasn’t worried. She firmly believed that after the surgery, the couple would understand her good intentions.

Shield couldn’t help but throw cold water on her: Proficiency simulated on a computer is not the same as proficiency in reality.

“I don’t think so,” Xia Mi replied.

During her previous actions, Xia Mi had experienced a very strange sensation.

Stepping out of 703 to defeat the Delivery Man, passing 710 to cut Sister Li’s hair, and accurately striking the same spot in the void countless times on the Rooftop, it had all been too smooth.

Even if Xia Mi had been prepared, her physical reactions were far too practiced.

It was as if she had already trained for it on the computer.

Xia Mi suspected that her physical proficiency was synchronized with Xiao Mi.

It hadn’t been that obvious before, but if she could perform the surgery on the Lizardman couple without a single mistake this time, she could confirm her theory.

To perform the surgery better, Xia Mi even removed her helmet and gloves.

Touching a corrupted person directly without gloves increased her risk of corruption, but Xia Mi already knew from the game that she wouldn’t be infected by this surgery.

“Stand by the door,” Xia Mi pointed at the Chameleon. “Stay away from us.”

She placed her axe horizontally between herself and the Chameleon as a warning.

After all, without the protection of her helmet, her head was just as fragile as any normal person’s. She could easily be killed.

Xia Mi wouldn’t trust the game’s results blindly. Just because the Chameleon hadn’t attacked her in the game didn’t mean he wouldn’t in reality. She had to remain vigilant.

Once the Chameleon was deterred, Xia Mi picked up the fish-belly knife and looked seriously at the White Lizard. “Trust me.”

The White Lizard gazed at Xia Mi with her crimson eyes. In that moment, Xia Mi actually sensed a kind of transcendent beauty on the face of a lizard.

She even felt a sudden urge to do anything for the White Lizard, even to die for her.

Xia Mi shook her head vigorously. Reaching out with the practiced precision of someone removing contact lenses, she extracted a pair of turbid crystals from the White Lizard’s Eye. These crystals had been adhered to her pupils like lenses, making her eyes look exactly like those of a real lizard.

“So a corrupted human actually possesses mental attack capabilities,” Xia Mi remarked.

She realized that the most dangerous person in Room 1005 wasn’t the Chameleon, but the White Lizard.

Once the crystals were removed, the White Lizard appeared very tense, clearly terrified that Xia Mi might retaliate against her.

Xia Mi offered a comforting word. “Don’t worry. I said I wouldn’t hurt you, and I keep my word.”

Her calm demeanor allowed the White Lizard to gradually relax. Xia Mi then began to skillfully wield the fish-belly knife. With movements like scaling a fish, she worked with whirlwind speed, scraping away the white scales that were tightly fused to the White Lizard’s body.

Her actions were so practiced it was as if she had done this many times before.

At this moment, Xia Mi was completely certain that Xiao Mi’s in-game proficiency was reflecting directly onto her own physical body.

Seeing his wife return to her original state without a single injury, the Chameleon wept with relief.

Striking while the iron was hot, Xia Mi performed the surgery on the Chameleon as well.

The two procedures took a total of ten minutes, accomplished with effortless ease.

The couple embraced tightly, feeling as though they had just survived a brush with death.

Xia Mi put away her fish-belly knife, preparing to leave Room 1005.

Just as she reached for the door, the wife called out, “Xiao Xia, your name is Xia Mi, right? There is something I want to tell you.”

No issue concerning the masses was too small. If the people had something to report, Xia Mi was bound to listen seriously.

She turned back to the wife and said earnestly, “If you are facing any difficulties, please tell me. I will do my best to help you solve them.”

The wife of Room 1005 had silvery-white hair and skin that was unnaturally pale. Looking at Xia Mi, who had the face of a young student but spoke like a middle-aged community administrator¹, she couldn’t help but let out a small laugh.

“Xiao Xia, it’s not that I’m in trouble. It’s just that my head is suddenly clear, and I remembered something I think you should know,” the wife said.

“Please, go ahead.”

The wife continued, “Two months ago, a man came to my house. He gave me a sum of money and a white egg the size of an ant.”

“He gave me a special bottle and told me to keep a constant flow of running water into it to raise the egg. He also said it must never be exposed to sunlight.”

The wife went into the bathroom and brought out a small bottle, roughly 200ml in size.

“I was worried about the water bill at first,” she said. “We’re on a commercial rate here, so it’s very expensive. But he gave me a lot of money. He said it didn’t need much water, just a tiny stream to ensure the water in the bottle was always living water².”

“He told me to keep it a secret and promised to give me money every week. If I leaked the secret, the payments would stop.”

“He gave me ten thousand the first week, twenty thousand the second, forty thousand the third, and eighty thousand the fourth. In just one month, he gave me a hundred and fifty thousand. My husband couldn’t earn that much in a year.”

“After I took the money, I kept searching online to find out what it was. I found all sorts of things. Some sites said it might be an invasive species from abroad meant to destroy our environment by breeding insects that could bite people to death.”

“I was terrified, but he just gave so much. A hundred and fifty thousand in the first month, and by the fifth week, he was going to give me a hundred and sixty thousand. I couldn’t bring myself to give up that money.”

“But I was also afraid it would harm national security. I stared at that bottle every day, terrified that the thing inside would hatch.”

“Fortunately, the thing in the bottle stayed very still. Maybe it was because I watched it every day, but I started to feel a sense of closeness to it. I even had hallucinations where I heard it calling me ‘Mama’.”

“One night, I dreamed it told me it was so, so hungry. It said there was food all around it, but it was trapped in the water and couldn’t reach it. It told me that if I turned off the water, it could finally eat.”

“I was scared to death when I woke up. I remembered the man had left a number when he gave me the egg, though he warned me that calling him even once would result in a deduction from the next week’s pay. He said I wasn’t allowed to call unless it was an emergency.”

“That dream was just too frightening. I’d rather lose the money than not know what was happening. I called him, and he told me it was a good thing. He said, ‘Subject Y-057 has come to view you as its mother. This means you will receive a very special power in the future. Don’t worry. As long as the water keeps flowing, it cannot come out. It can only accumulate energy and work toward building a larger nest.'”

“I was panicked after hearing that. I wanted to call the police immediately, but then he sent more money.”

“The balance in my account kept growing. I thought if I could just endure a little longer, I could buy a 150-square-meter house in cash. Life for my husband and me would get better and better.”

“I had nightmares every night. My mental state was on the verge of collapse, but I kept enduring. But then, just last night, the bottle cracked on its own.”

“When I went into the bathroom to check on it, I found the bottle shattered and the white egg gone.”

“Then I turned into a Lizardman. My consciousness became a blur. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“It wasn’t until you took that thing out of my Eye that I remembered all of this.”

The wife of Room 1005 told her story calmly. At this moment, she looked more like a normal person than Xia Mi did.

Translator’s Notes