Chapter 17: “Silkworm¹“

The 9th floor fell within five minutes.

Xia Mi led the charge, spraying her mist the moment she entered the hallway. Several Zhuo-affected humans attempting to crawl up the stairs to the 10th floor inhaled the mist instantly. Liu Yunxia clearly felt them make contact with the water and immediately commanded, “Do not harm me.”

The Zhuo-affected humans fell silent.

“Should we have them help us take the 9th floor?” Liu Yunxia asked.

Xia Mi shook her head. “Our goal is to pacify the residents. How can we incite them to fight each other? Just tell them to stay still.”

Xia Mi skillfully sliced off the Zhuo-affected parts from their bodies and left the individuals in the hallway.

After she moved on, Spider-man and Liu Yunxia’s husband led dozens of Zhuo-affected humans into the hallway in an orderly fashion, using a veteran-leads-rookie system to recruit these new members.

By the time they reached the 9th floor, Xia Mi had already brought it under control.

Having cleared three floors in a row, Xia Mi could no longer carry the collected Zhuo-affected parts. Besides, she didn’t need this much ammunition.

She asked Liao Tianhua how to handle these parts.

Liao Tianhua: [Zhuo-affected parts that haven’t fused with objects are considered unstable energy. They can only maintain their form within the Domain. Once the Domain vanishes, these parts will rapidly decompose and disappear without harming the environment.]

Xia Mi asked: [If I leave them in the hallway, is there a chance “Zhuo” will use them?]

Liao Tianhua: [Theoretically, no.]

Which meant there was a possibility.

Xia Mi looked at the three large bags and Sister Li’s bundle of hair with a headache, unsure of how to dispose of them.

At that moment, Shield told her: [You can turn them into “Zhe².”]

Xia Mi had a good grasp of linguistics. She immediately thought of “Jingzhe³,” the solar term representing the awakening of hibernating insects in spring, describing a state where all things recover.

“Zhe” referred to hibernating or dormant insects.

Shield: [Once they become “Zhe,” they can no longer be utilized, nor can you use them as ammunition. They will simply wait quietly to decompose.]

“How do I make them?” Xia Mi asked.

Shield wrote: [This is something only a “Rong” can do. It requires my physical presence to be achieved. There is a possibility you are a “Rong.” I will tell you the method, and you can try.]

Xia Mi stared at the method Shield wrote down, feeling somewhat reluctant to try it.

What if it actually worked?

But leaving such a massive pile of energy lying around wasn’t an option either. It was the equivalent of leaving a pile of loaded guns scattered about; it was far too dangerous.

Xia Mi had to try.

Following Shield’s instructions, she took off her gloves, removed her helmet, and placed her hands into the wrapped bundles.

Shield had written: [If you are a “Rong,” you will feel a sense of hunger when you make direct contact with Zhuo-affected parts. It is like a person smelling the aroma of food, stimulating gastric peristalsis. You will clearly feel that you can open your pores to absorb these parts. Once you absorb this energy, you will also know when you are full.]

Shield’s description was incredibly detailed, as if It had experienced it firsthand.

Xia Mi’s only prior experience touching a Zhuo-affected part was when she was scraping scales. At that time, the scales were still attached to Liu Yunxia and her husband; it was energy that already had an owner, so it didn’t trigger a “Rong’s” desire to feed.

Only Zhuo-affected parts that had been detached from a body and become masterless could be absorbed.

Shield said the process of absorbing this energy was called “Silkworm.”

The principle of creating “Zhe” was simple. To put it briefly, one sleeps after eating their fill; it was a normal physiological phenomenon.

In other words, one first used “Silkworm” to absorb the unstable energy within the Zhuo-affected parts. Once the body felt full, one would project a strong sense of satisfaction and sleepiness toward the remaining parts.

During the “Silkworm” process, the “Rong” would establish a connection with the energy, allowing for a degree of control over it.

The difficult part was that she had to use “Silkworm” to absorb the energy first.

Xia Mi was hesitant.

She became even more conflicted when, upon touching the Zhuo-affected parts, a powerful wave of hunger hit her and her stomach let out a loud growl.

How could she actually be hungry? Was she really going to absorb this energy?

Xia Mi found the idea quite repulsive.

“Just pretend I’m eating trans fats, additives, preservatives, pre-packaged meals, expired food, or slightly stinky meat skewers that the boss covered up with heavy spices,” Xia Mi comforted herself.

Thinking of it that way, Xia Mi suddenly didn’t find the energy so disgusting anymore.

Feeding was an instinct. Just as a baby knows how to eat from birth, “Silkworm” was an instinct for Xia Mi.

She didn’t need to learn; she instinctively began to absorb the energy.

Her skin, pores, and even her blood vessels generated a powerful suction. Countless white filaments sprouted from the Zhuo-affected parts, wrapping around Xia Mi’s hands and rapidly merging into her body.

As the energy entered her, Xia Mi felt as if she were tasting the finest delicacies. She couldn’t stop.

She closed her eyes in intoxication, failing to see the giant word “STOP” that Shield was writing.

When Xia Mi finally opened her eyes, still craving more, there was nothing left in front of her. Only three large bedsheets lay scattered messily on the floor.

Even Sister Li’s hair hadn’t been spared.

Xia Mi: “…”

Shield: [Don’t look at me. I wrote stop, but you didn’t see it.]

Xia Mi said guiltily, “How much can a normal ‘Rong’ eat?”

Shield: [I haven’t met many ‘Rong,’ but for myself, I’m full after consuming one Zhuo-affected human unit. You just ate… over a hundred units. Are you not stuffed?]

Xia Mi rubbed her stomach, feeling even more guilty. “I’m about thirty percent full…”

It was probably only twenty percent, but she didn’t dare say it.

She felt like she could eat the entirety of Building 6.

Xia Mi gave a dry laugh. “Anyway, those parts have been properly handled.”

Shield: [Do you know how I feel right now?]

“I’m not interested,” Xia Mi said.

Shield wrote anyway: [I feel like helping you keep this secret is equivalent to destroying all of humanity.]

Xia Mi replied, “Don’t think so far ahead. We might not even make it out of here alive.”

Shield: [Yeah, it’s not even certain if “Zhuo” can stay alive. It hasn’t made a move yet; does it really want to save the big feast for the end? Or could it be that it sensed a more powerful existence and doesn’t dare to act rashly?]

Xia Mi decided to pretend she didn’t understand what Shield meant.

She hadn’t officially joined the team yet and hadn’t undergone professional training. It was only natural that her theoretical knowledge was lacking and she couldn’t follow this line of conversation.

Xia Mi stood up and looked toward the crowd. Nearly two hundred people from the 9th, 10th, and 11th floors were huddled together in the corner of the corridor, leaving a massive empty space between them and her.

Even Sister Li and Liu Yunxia were huddled with the rest of the group.

“Why are you all so far away?” Xia Mi walked toward them.

For every step she took forward, the crowd took a step back. They had already retreated to the wall, yet they somehow managed to shrink their collective space even further inward.

“What are you afraid of?” Xia Mi asked, bewildered.

Liu Yunxia said, “Xiao Xia, if you saw a bear eating people, you’d be just like us.”

Xia Mi could only reply, “You saw it wrong. Those Zhuo-affected parts were unstable and decomposed naturally.”

“Oh, right, right!” Liu Yunxia said. “Whatever you say is right!”

Seeing that words were useless, Xia Mi gripped her axe in one hand and her fish-belly knife in the other. “Are you coming downstairs with me or not?” she asked.

Liu Yunxia and Lin Xiaoli desperately wanted to say “no,” but facing the knife in Xia Mi’s left hand and the axe in her right, they could only nod through their tears.

After the Silkworm consumed that energy, Xia Mi felt refreshed and invigorated. Her strength had increased to the point where she felt she could climb fifty floors in one breath without getting tired.

Riding this momentum, she used the same method she’d employed on the 9th floor to quickly round up the Zhuo-affected people from floors nine down to two.

The process went smoothly, though there was one small hiccup along the way.

When they reached the 8th floor, Xia Mi didn’t see the young couple from Room 803.

This couple lived directly above Xia Mi. When they were being affectionate, Xia Mi could hear the rhythmic sounds of their passion through the walls; when they argued, she could hear all their shouting and clamor.

When “Zhuo” first opened its nest, Xia Mi had even heard them fighting so loudly they were smashing furniture.

Xia Mi had always been quite curious about the two of them. Now that she was on the 8th floor, she made a point of looking for them.

Although she had never seen their faces, she was very familiar with their voices. If she heard them speak, she would definitely recognize them.

But she didn’t hear either of their voices during the roll call of the 8th floor residents.

She had the people on the 8th floor report their room numbers one by one, and only then did she realize that no one from 803 was present.

The door to Room 803 was unlocked. Xia Mi went inside to check but found no one. She only saw a cracked bottle in the bathroom. The mouth of the bottle was positioned under the faucet, which hadn’t been turned off; the running water was continuously pouring into the bottle.

Xia Mi remembered the five households with exceptionally high water consumption that Liao Tianhua had mentioned: 710, 803, 416, 1005, and 1127.

Among them, Rooms 1005 and 803 both contained the same cracked bottles and running faucets.

Xia Mi hadn’t known about the eggs when she took over the 11th floor, so she hadn’t performed a focused inspection of 1127. Now that she saw the bottle in 803, she quickly grabbed it and questioned Spider-man.

“I remember you saying you were from 1127. Was there a bottle like this in your home?”

Spider-man opened his mouth but didn’t speak. His eyes shifted nervously, as if he had a guilty conscience.

“Speak!” Xia Mi said sharply.

Spider-man was forced to tell the truth. “I’m not the resident of 1127. I don’t even live in this building!”

“Give me the details!” Xia Mi demanded.

Spider-man confessed everything. “My friend lives in 1127. I often come over to his place to play games, and sometimes I just stay the night. Tonight, I played until it was too late and just stayed over.

“When you came upstairs, he begged me to pretend to be him. You were holding a machine gun and looked like a terrorist. I didn’t want to agree, but for some reason, I just couldn’t refuse his command, so I pretended to be him.

“When you were checking the 11th floor, he was hiding in the closet. You had too many rooms to check and only glanced at 1127 without looking closely, so he managed to hide.”

“What did you just say?” Xia Mi asked, her voice filled with alarm and suspicion.

Spider-man said, “I didn’t mean to hide it from you. I wanted to tell you several times, but I just couldn’t open my mouth, as if I were being controlled. I couldn’t say it until you discovered it yourself.”

Xia Mi shook her head. “I’m not talking about that. I’m asking you, what did you just call me? A ter-ror-ist? How could I be a terrorist? I’m a staff member maintaining order! If you misunderstand me again, I’m going to get angry!”

Spider-man: “…”

Miss, isn’t your focus a bit ridiculously off-track?

Translator’s Notes