Chapter Three: The Ladder

The familiar ceiling.

As the morning alarm rang, Li Sheng opened his eyes and jerked upright in bed.

It was a modest bedroom. Several gaming posters were plastered on the walls, a computer desk stood at the foot of the bed, and a crumpled schoolbag lay on the floor.

What happened last night was no dream.

He was still wearing his school uniform, the fabric carrying the faint, fishy stench of river water. Looking in the mirror, he saw the marks where his neck had been sliced, though they were already covered by thin scabs, barely visible unless one looked closely.

Why did it heal so quickly? Was it because of the bee-monster’s sting, or the so-called fragment of a divine disaster?

There was no time to ponder. Li Sheng stripped off his clothes and stuffed them into the bottom drawer of his computer desk. There was no time to wash them, and he couldn't put them in the washing machine—he didn't want to ruin the appliance with the stench. He then rummaged through the bottom of his wardrobe for desiccant packets, sealing them in a bag with his water-damaged phone to draw out the moisture.

After grabbing a change of clothes, he tiptoed out of the room.

The house was spacious and elegantly decorated, featuring four bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and two bathrooms. In the glass cabinet serving as a partition between the living room and dining area, various trophies and honor certificates won by his cousins were proudly displayed.

Fortunately, his aunt and uncle were still asleep. Li Sheng hurried into the bathroom and took a quick shower, noticing that the puncture wound on his left shoulder had also mostly healed.

A rustling sound came from the living room; his family was awake. He turned off the faucet, ready to dry off and dress, when—

*Shh-k!*

A mass of pale, needle-like hairs suddenly erupted from his right forearm. They were about twenty centimeters long, incredibly rigid, and sharp as steel nails.

Caught off guard, Li Sheng gripped his towel with involuntary force, tearing the thick, damp cotton fabric as easily as if it were paper. His strength was far beyond what it had been before.

"Is someone in there?"

A crisp female voice sounded from outside the bathroom door—it was his cousin, Xue Luomeng.

"It's me, just showering." Li Sheng kept the shower running, forcing his voice to remain calm while trying to snap the needle-hairs; they wouldn't budge.

"Hurry up, then." Xue Luomeng’s footsteps faded, and the sounds of breakfast preparation in the living room grew louder.

Li Sheng couldn't possibly leave the house in this state. The image of the taxi driver from the night before—sprouting compound eyes, mandibles, and membranous wings before being gunned down by the Bureau of Special Affairs—flashed through his mind.

Wait, something was wrong. The taxi driver’s arms hadn't had anything on the surface. These pale needles looked more like... the ants that had crawled onto his hand under the bridge?

What was this? Had he absorbed the genes of an ant?

Staring blankly at his arm, Li Sheng had an idea. He stepped onto the edge of the bathtub and reached toward the heat lamp on the ceiling.

The light was bright and warm, illuminating the veins and muscles beneath his skin. The needle-hairs were not rootless; they had follicles, and surrounding each follicle was a ring of muscle.

If there were muscles, it meant he might be able to control them.

Li Sheng focused his will, straining to command those extra muscles to retract the needles.

*Shh-k!*

The needles slowly receded, pulling back beneath the skin. The surface of his arm was smooth once more, showing no trace of what had happened.

It worked.

Li Sheng exhaled in relief, shoved the torn towel into his pocket, and opened the door, coming face-to-face with Xue Luomeng, who was about to knock.

"Why did you take so long?"

Xue Luomeng complained as she walked into the bathroom with her clothes.

Li Sheng’s aunt, Li Zhao, was an HR manager at a clothing company, and his uncle, Xue Jingming, was a sales manager for a shipping machinery firm. The Xue family was part of a prestigious clan with a history spanning hundreds of years, owning vast family businesses and holding grand ancestral ceremonies every year.

Both Xue Jingming and Li Zhao were attractive, and their son, Xue Lingyu, and daughter, Xue Luomeng, were standard beauties—the kind that drew stares on the street.

When she was younger, Xue Luomeng used to be attached to Li Sheng’s hip, closer to him than to her own brother. He didn't know when it started, but she had become indifferent, treating him like a familiar stranger, just like his aunt. Even though they attended the same high school, only a grade apart, they barely exchanged cold greetings when they met.

Li Sheng was used to his family’s attitude. He slipped out of the bathroom, returned to his room, and hid the shredded towel.

His increased strength was no hallucination. Before leaving, he tested it by lifting the heavy computer desk with his left hand alone; he felt almost no strain. His right hand was even stronger.

***

A breeze brushed his face. Li Sheng took a different route on his bike, stopping on a bridge to gaze into the distance at the neighborhood he had passed through the night before.

Elderly men in white undershirts were playing chess under a tree, and young men and women in sportswear were jogging with earphones on. Everything looked perfectly normal, as if no bloody incident had occurred the night before.

The so-called Bureau of Special Affairs must have cleaned it all up—scrubbing the scene and deleting the surveillance footage.

Li Sheng felt an involuntary chill. No organization in human society could master such professional skills overnight; there had to be a process of practice and adaptation. If the Bureau was this proficient, how many times had they covered up crimes and silenced the truth?

Or perhaps, how long had these "abnormal incidents" been going on? One year? Three? Five?

Li Sheng pulled his scarf up to cover his mouth and nose and pedaled down the bridge. Driven by a powerful sense of hunger and the itching in his arm, he stopped at a breakfast shop and bought ten meat buns and two cups of soy milk.

After wolfing them down, he still felt unsatisfied. He went to another shop and bought two baskets of soup dumplings and a bowl of shredded pork noodles. He took them to a blind alley without surveillance cameras and devoured them quickly. Only then did the hunger and the itching beneath his skin subside.

Li Sheng had a feeling that if he didn't stay full, those needle-hairs would erupt from beneath his skin, just as they had in the bathroom.

He couldn't go to the hospital. The doctors would likely report the situation, and if the Bureau of Special Affairs found out there was a survivor, they would likely execute him.

The most urgent task was to figure out his situation. After much deliberation, he thought of one person.

***

By dusk, in the cafeteria of Zhuoyue High School, a petite girl with short hair sat in a corner, eating alone while scrolling through her phone.

She wore a white T-shirt and a gray plaid shirt, sporting thin-rimmed glasses, her features possessing a cold, sharp intensity. Under normal circumstances, a girl as pretty as she was wouldn't be eating alone, even without a best friend.

The reason was simple: Yuan Zhixia, from the next class over, was a weirdo.

On the first day of school, while other students were nervously introducing themselves, she walked to the front and said bluntly: "I am a genius, and I have no interest in ordinary humans. If any of you are aliens, time travelers, visitors from another world, or possess superpowers, come find me. That is all."

After delivering this Haruhi Suzumiya-style speech, she calmly walked off the stage and began her life as a social outcast.

She sat in the back row, never listened in class, and spent her time playing on her phone with earbuds in. Yet, her grades were always in the top ten of the city, and in every competition she entered—be it Mathematical Olympiads, robot wars, or programming—she always took first place.

"Genius" and "top scorer" were the limits for others, but not for her.

It wasn't that no one wanted to befriend her, but she truly lived by the philosophy of having "no interest in ordinary humans," and she always kept to herself.

Li Sheng was one of the few people she would talk to, likely because they were both members of the school newspaper and the astronomy club.

He set his tray down beside her and said awkwardly, "Eating?"

"Speak your mind," Yuan Zhixia glanced at him and continued tapping her phone, adding the latest wireless equipment, metal 3D printers, desktop robotic arms, and workstations to her Amazon cart.

"Do you have a way to access the foreign internet without being discovered?" Li Sheng asked. "I need complete IP masking, protection against traffic filtering and packet sniffing, so that no one can track me, no matter what."

"Oh?"

This finally piqued Yuan Zhixia's interest. She set her phone down and raised an eyebrow. "What are you doing?"

"Looking up some information," Li Sheng replied vaguely.

Yuan Zhixia didn't push. She reached into her pocket, picked a USB drive from a large collection, and placed it on the table.

"You should know about Tor, right? It's a browser package used to hide one's tracks on the dark web," Yuan Zhixia said. "This USB drive contains a custom-written enhancement program I made. Beyond the original anonymity, it completely plugs browser vulnerabilities and blocks traffic analysis, circuit fingerprinting, and other investigative methods. No one will be able to track or identify you."

"Thanks," Li Sheng sighed in relief. "How much do I owe you?"

"I don't want money," the girl shook her head. "I want you to..."

"Huh?" Li Sheng’s eyes widened in shock.

"What are you thinking? I want you to pretend to be sick in a few days." Yuan Zhixia leaned back, squinting her eyes. "Then, hand over the photography duties for the school newspaper to me."

"What?" Question marks seemed to appear over Li Sheng’s head.

The main reason he joined the school newspaper, besides being decent at photography, was that Ye Jiaying was also a member.

"Wait." Li Sheng suddenly remembered that the subject of the school newspaper’s interview in a few days was his cousin, Xue Luomeng.

"You don't want to get close to Luomeng, do you?" He scratched his head, confused. "If you want to be friends with her, you can just walk up and say it. Why be so sneaky?"

For some reason, Yuan Zhixia had been unusually focused on Xue Luomeng, who was a grade below her. At the start of the semester, she had even tried to hint around, asking if Li Sheng had any photos of his cousin from when she was a child. It was all very... *yuri*-coded.

But Li Sheng’s sixth sense was certain: Yuan Zhixia wasn't a lesbian. Her feelings for Xue Luomeng seemed more like... a pure desire to have a best friend.

"Don't act like you're some kind of relationship master." Yuan Zhixia tossed the USB drive to Li Sheng and walked away with her tray.