Chapter 38: A Nonexistent Past (Two-in-One)
After hearing about Yiming’s miserable situation from my roommate, I finished tidying my desk and logged onto the manga website from my computer.
The color page for the new chapter featured an unfamiliar man.
Golden hair, jade-green pupils, bangs meticulously combed back, wearing gold-rimmed glasses.
He had a mature face with sharp features—just the type to look like a refined scoundrel.
His left hand held a scalpel, his right cradled a skull.
Half of the skull and his face were shrouded in shadow, his lips curved into a slightly maniacal smile.
A white lab coat with a nameplate on the chest, the text too blurry to read.
But I looked closer and matched him to the sloppy neighbor uncle from the previous chapter.
This was Yue Shan.
“Can’t tell,” I said flatly.
Meticulous and even fanatical at work, but usually a slob.
The sudden style change almost made me miss who he was.
Just based on the cover face, some readers were already saying this was their type.
This also showed Yue Shan was indeed a significant supporting character.
With the white coat and scalpel, and given the spoilers I already knew, I could naturally guess who wanted to dissect Yiming.
I kept flipping through.
The manga’s main perspective was still on Yiming.
After two days of fruitless searching, Yiming and Yu Xiao had realized something was seriously wrong.
They had practically turned Four-Way City upside down, even clashing with bounty hunters during the process.
This part was skimmed over, but in the end, while Yu Xiao was feeding white pigeons in the square, he noticed red bloodstains under one pigeon’s wing.
Two words were written there: ‘Twinborn.’
“This is definitely a signal left by Tang!” Yiming recognized Tang’s handwriting at a glance.
Because of Tang’s healing ability, he didn’t care about injuries to his body and was entirely capable of leaving a message in blood.
Yu Xiao, whose luck had suddenly spiked, stood by, stunned. “But we don’t know where ‘Twinborn’ is.”
At that moment, Yiming recalled what happened when they got separated from Tang.
The bounty hunters chasing them had mentioned an information broker among the bounty hunters.
“Let’s go to the Ability Guild to find the information broker!” Yiming said.
On the third day, they finally made progress and arrived at the Ability Guild, just in time to run into Le Caille, who was about to leave.
By some stroke of luck, they didn’t run into Li Baige.
Le Caille was an honest merchant who was easy to talk to as long as you had money.
Seeing their young age, he chuckled, “What a coincidence. Someone asked about this a few days ago, so I can give you the info now.” Then he named a price.
The amount was exactly all the money the two boys had.
They exchanged a glance, gritted their teeth, and handed it over.
Outside the manga, I clenched my fist.
“Nice one, Le Caille. You charged me so much, but gave Little Corgi a discount?!” Even if it was the manga world’s currency, it still stung. “Is this the difference in treatment between a protagonist and a villain?”
Swindler!
Le Caille, who played favorites, counted the bills with his chubby hand and repeated the address he’d given me to Yiming and the others: “‘Twinborn’ is in the Ding suburbs. If you see a lot of people in blue robes, you’re not far from their headquarters.”
After getting the information, the two boys headed back, passing through the square toward the Ding suburbs.
But while passing the square, Yu Xiao noticed a pigeon staring at him motionlessly.
He crouched down to touch it, but the pigeon flew off.
Then Yu Xiao chased after the pigeon.
By the time Yiming reacted, Yu Xiao was already gone.
Little Corgi, suddenly abandoned, had a face full of question marks.
He maintained his posture of looking back for someone, took a deep breath, and said, “It’s fine, I’m used to it.”
Then he went off alone to find the Twinborn Research Institute.
I specifically checked the comments, and sure enough, the fans of the “Flipping Fish” character were screaming, “Treasure, we just praised you, how did you drop the ball again?”
Flipping Fish often didn’t know what he was doing, and Yu Xiao was no different.
The number of times he dropped the ball at critical moments was almost too many to count.
The next scene shifted to evening.
Yiming had found the Twinborn Research Institute’s stronghold.
It was a concealed door installed in a dilapidated wall.
If Yiming hadn’t noticed the unusual thickness of the wall, he might have overlooked it.
He touched the door and breathed a sigh of relief: it was still metal.
Yiming used his ability to open the door as he had before, cautiously crouching and descending the stairs behind it.
Inside and outside the door were two different worlds.
Outside was desolate and decayed; inside, even the walls were thick metal, coated with a gray substance.
The incandescent lights illuminated the entire passage, including the underground platform connected to it.
In the manga, Yiming carefully descended the steps, leaning against the wall to scout ahead.
The research institute was underground, with rooms arranged like small boxes.
You had to open a door to leave one box and enter another.
There were three floors: the first had nine small rooms, the second had eight, and the third had nine.
In total, there were 26 rooms, each exactly four meters by four meters by four meters.
In the manga, Yiming dodged passing people and scouted the first floor.
He had started in the central room after descending the stairs and found that only this room had a massive metal framework beneath it.
It seemed to connect to something.
I pondered the layout, feeling it was oddly familiar.
But with just this, I couldn’t figure out much, so I kept reading.
After reaching the second floor, Yiming wanted to head to the central room, but descending the stairs brought him to a room in the western corner.
He didn’t know what this place was.
There were no researchers around, only a room full of white objects.
Gray frameworks, gray wind chimes, gray statues.
This place gave Yiming a bad feeling.
He approached the nearest gray statue, his fingers lightly brushing its surface.
In a speech bubble, a term surfaced in his mind: human bones.
The walls here were entirely covered in bone ash, and everything in the room was made of bone ash products.
Yiming straightened up, looking at the endless gray-white expanse, a trace of pity in his eyes.
And at that moment—
“These are all failures.”
A shadow stepped forward from behind.
Yiming turned around, his eyes widening, pupils shrinking, as if reflecting a man’s gold-rimmed glasses glinting with white light and the malicious smile on his lips.
“I hope you don’t end up joining them.”
The next page shifted back to two days earlier, when Tang and Momo were still at the square.
I gasped, flipped back to the previous content, and muttered, “How many experiments has Yue Shan conducted? How many people has he killed?”
I fell silent for a moment, then continued reading.
Two days ago, although Tang had met the neighbor uncle, she inexplicably felt a sense of vigilance.
In the previous chapter, the manga artist’s focus was mainly on Tang and Yue Shan, sidelining Momo.
In this chapter, the artist depicted Momo’s appearance.
She kept her head down, staring at her feet, trembling all over.
Yue Shan noticed Momo’s unease but twisted her reaction: “Little Tang, is your friend sick? She’s shaking so much. Uncle Yue has medicine. For old times’ sake, I won’t charge you. Want to come to Uncle Yue’s place to hang out?”
Tang silently hugged a white pigeon that hopped to her side, saying nothing.
In the panel, she used a sharp fingernail to slice her index finger, drawing a line of blood.
“Twinborn…”
Momo, clutching her head, her trembling dialogue bubble showing her fear: “He’s the director of Twinborn!”
As Momo spoke, Tang quickly wrote the message and pulled Momo to flee.
But in the next panel, they had already collapsed at Yue Shan’s feet.
After that, the perspective returned to Yiming.
He was now strapped to an operating table, bound by a biological material, not metal.
His clothes had been changed, a blue cloth draped over him.
He couldn’t break free from the restraints binding his limbs.
At the same time, Yue Shan pushed a cart over, lowering a spotlight above Yiming’s head.
“What are you going to do?” Yiming asked, a single hair falling from his head, slipping into the shadows.
“As you can see, I’m going to dissect you,” Yue Shan said.
He wore a mask, his bangs meticulously combed back, exactly as on the color page.
The room was still four meters by four meters, but it was filled with equipment.
Many researchers, like Yue Shan, stood around the operating table, their eyes gleaming.
They were all fanatical researchers, with Yue Shan being the most fanatical of all.
While Yiming used a thin blade to cut at the biological restraints, he stalled for time: “At least let me know what my death will contribute to your research. I don’t want to die completely useless.”
“Plundering,” Yue Shan said, his face sinking into shadow under the harsh light.
He seemed to agree with Yiming’s reasoning and explained what his death would achieve: “As an ability user, you should know what plundering is.”
“Plundering is the crudest way to acquire abilities. During the transfer, the ability degrades, its rank drops, and even the ability itself weakens. I want to purify it, making it like bloodline inheritance—zero loss during transfer.”
"And you can let us attempt to transfer mimicry-type abilities." Yue Shan pointed to the corner, "Your ability will transfer to it, merging with it as one."
"One body, twin souls." He showed a fanatic expression, "This is a connection surpassing blood ties!"
Yiming turned his head, unable to conceal his anger in an instant.
Lying there was Momo.
...
The manga ended here, with small text on the side: Would Yiming and the others survive Yue Shan's scalpel?!
And Li Li's response was: "Shonen manga protagonists don't die."
But she had to think about which identity would be suitable to use.
Li was still on cooldown, and Heige would just attract aggro, making Heige the big boss again.
Li Baige wasn't a bad choice, but the Bounty Hall had no bounties related to Twinborn, so Li Baige would need a reason to go.
Revenge? That was Heige in the eyes of the nobles.
Li Li closed the page, her index finger tapping the desk, lost in thought.
Soon, she curled her lips into a smile.
She had a plan to kill two birds with one stone.
"Little Corgi..." she sighed leisurely.
She just hoped Little Corgi wouldn't be too hurt; she would go easy on him.
...
Time quickly turned to night, and amid the system's broadcast, Li Li chose her landing point.
The suburbs, where Twinborn was located.
[Channel opened. Wishing you to become a highly popular character, bringing new vitality to the manga.]
The moment she landed, Li Li continued the actions from before she left last time, manipulating the illusion.
Back then, she wasn't sure how Yue Qing and An Heyu would investigate whether she was the real body, and An Heyu seemed to know about her connection to Li Baige.
So, she took advantage of the midnight directional shift to turn the Li Baige walking out of the Ability Guild into an illusion, while her real body became a crow.
If An Heyu was tracking her, he would think Li Baige was the real body.
This was her preemptive move, but in the end, An Heyu's ability couldn't precisely lock onto a living entity in a specific area.
So, he mistook the nearby crow—her real body—for Heige, who was talking to the fake Li, and assumed Heige was the real body.
This way, Heige was considered the real body, and no matter how An Heyu investigated, he would confirm it. The crow became the illusion.
With this, she performed a doppelgänger act.
Before she left, Yue Qing was still chasing that illusion.
Now, she casually waved her hand.
"You showed me something interesting."
In an instant, the illusion wandering among icy blades in the city curled its lips, vanishing on the spot amid Yue Qing's furious shouts.
"I praise you, but today someone deserves more praise than you."
Those were the illusion's final words, undoubtedly making Yue Qing even angrier.
He was practically livid.
A foolproof plan had lured out the real body, yet Heige still played him like a dog all night.
Yue Qing took a few breaths and turned around.
He was about to unleash his trump card.
Meanwhile, Li Li, now in the suburbs, quickly found the door from the manga.
She was still dressed as Heige, unchanged.
The familiar scene leaped out from the manga's black-and-white lines, appearing three-dimensional and real before her eyes.
Yiming was probably still stalling, talking with Yue Shan, whose ability hadn't been activated.
A perfect opportunity.
At that moment, An Heyu's message came through.
This world naturally had communication tools, like phones.
Before leaving the manga world, Li Li had asked An Heyu to investigate Yue Shan, and now his text arrived.
Li Li remembered she had said "before tomorrow," meaning before midnight of that day, but perhaps she wasn't clear enough, causing a misunderstanding.
An Heyu thought it was before midnight of the previous day and hurriedly sent a text to the number Heige left.
[Sorry for the few minutes' delay, but time was tight, so I'll tell you what I know first.
Yue Shan is an A-rank domain-type, ability [Rubik's Cube].
Current residence is in the western suburbs.
He was a former member of the Former Ability Guild, expelled twelve years ago by the Prophet for conducting large-scale human experiments, unrelated to the changes six years ago.
After the Former Ability Guild's higher-ups were purged, he formed a chain with former members Yue Qing and Qing Yu Chen.
Yue Qing needs to quickly bolster the noble family's foundation, so he has a high demand for abilities.
Yue Shan needs to research abilities, requiring money and ability users for his experiments.
Qing Yu Chen needs money and protection, and he provides ability users.
Heyu]
Li Li stared at Yue Shan's ability name, her brows relaxing.
She finally remembered why it felt familiar—the structure of Twinborn's underground research institute was a Rubik's Cube!
Twenty-six small boxes with an empty central framework.
From this structure and ability name alone, Li Li could deduce a lot.
Li Li felt like it was her first time entering the manga world—urgent but fully aware of what kind of person the boss, Hua Yizhi, was.
Her previous opponents lacked detailed info in the manga, but now she finally enjoyed the thrill of having complete information.
An Heyu was truly useful. She sincerely praised him.
Then, without stopping, she sent a reply.
[What about the survivors of the human experiments twelve years ago?
Ge]
An Heyu replied quickly.
[Adopted by the Prophet, but most didn't live long.
Heyu]
Li Li gently curled her lips.
Her script was complete.
Li Li stepped forward, arriving at the spot where Yiming once stood.
The silver moon hung quietly in the sky, dark clouds gradually blown away by the wind, revealing the hidden moonlight.
It shone on the silver-white mask and those crimson pupils.
At the same time, An Heyu sent another message.
[Thanks for your honesty, Heige.
Heyu]
It was obvious he had imagined something again, but this time it was the result of her deliberate guidance.
Li Li put away her phone and slowly raised her hand.
Her fingertips twirled, and she used the back of her hand to make a knocking motion on the door.
During this motion, she spoke, her tone carrying a smile: "Knock, knock."
She had politely knocked, after all.
Ability, Illusory Reality.
In the next instant, the ground collapsed, and the false scene covering the real ground became reality!
"Rumble"
The ground beneath her feet cracked and fell into the empty basement below, with dust rising and once again shrouding the cold moon.
Amid this dust, a low, hoarse voice hummed a tune, and the black figure leaped down from above.
Black boots landed on the floor of the central room in the basement's first level.
She walked unhurriedly toward the staircase leading to the next level, her gaze not sparing the panicked researchers who were either stumbling or screaming.
The door was opened, and a group of blue-robed bodyguards rushed into the room with its ceiling blown open.
They had no expressions, like robots with frozen faces.
But now, these emotionless blue-robed people seemed to see a monster.
The uninvited guest in the dust stood with her back to the bright moonlight, a flicker of flame trembling in her crimson pupils, her lips curling into a terrifying arc.
"Anyone there?"
Her tone was drawn out, the ending note rising with delight.
Her steps were steady, calm, and forceful.
The dull sound of her footsteps was like the countdown of Death itself.
And at this moment, Death was approaching.
...
"This is a connection surpassing blood ties!" Yue Shan's face glowed with fervor, as if proclaiming some grand truth.
Yiming took a deep breath, suppressing his anger, while the small knife cutting the restraints on his wrist moved even faster.
He couldn’t truly fail here.
No matter how angry he was, he had to think calmly, not act on emotion—he had to stay calm!
Without Li telling him how to be rational now, he had to calm himself down!
"How do they merge as one?" He gritted his teeth and started talking, though he had no interest in understanding.
He couldn’t directly turn his hair into blades, as he didn’t know how many ability users were nearby.
With his movements restricted, even if he shaved his head bald, he still couldn’t escape.
Yue Shan turned his head, his gaze on Momo completely devoid of seeing her as a living being.
"Abilities are rooted in the human body and soul. By linking your body to hers, you can merge as one."
"How marvelous," Yue Shan said in an enraptured tone, his scalpel rhythmically slicing through the air as he spoke. "Twelve years ago, I conducted research on externally activating multiple abilities in a single person. Just when I felt I was about to succeed, the Prophet stopped my experiments and destroyed my materials. But now I must thank him. By abandoning past thinking, I finally found the true path!"
The small knife Yiming controlled moved even faster, its sound masked by Yue Shan’s excited speech.
"By connecting your bodies, your souls can reside together, and abilities can be transferred with zero loss! As long as enough connections are made, we can create a multi-ability user with every ability at its peak!"
The researchers nearby clapped as if inspired, and amid the clatter, a drop of cold sweat slid down Yiming’s forehead.
Yiming thought, Almost there, almost there, I’m almost free.
"It has already absorbed two abilities. With yours, that makes three. If balance is maintained, we can attempt a fourth." Yue Shan closed his eyes in ecstasy, placing the scalpel before his chest. "You are an important test subject. You all are. You will bring tremendous change to this society!"
Almost there, almost there!
Yiming could feel that the biological material strap was only as thick as a pinky.
But at that moment, the fervor on Yue Shan’s face paused.
He slowly lowered his head, the scalpel gesturing before Yiming’s eyes: "So, where should I take from?"
"Eyes? Already used. Arms? Legs? Not compatible enough with her."
Then the scalpel stopped at his chest.
"The heart, then," Yue Shan said.
The restraint was three cuts away from breaking.
Don’t panic, Yiming thought.
In the next instant, the scalpel tore through the blue fabric, its sharp edge about to pierce his chest!
"Boom"
A massive sound reached the third basement level, and at the same time, Yue Shan’s movement stopped.
At that moment, Yiming, whose ability-formed blade was about to cut through the wrist restraint, paused.
He watched Yue Shan retract the scalpel, adjust his glasses, pinch his nose, and chuckle softly: "Hahaha, someone actually dared to invade my domain."
He put down the scalpel and turned to leave: "I’ll go meet them."
Yue Shan left.
Yiming concealed the now-broken restraint on his wrist, looking at the incandescent light above.
This was his chance.
...
The Rubik’s Cube ability activated, and the western vertical column rotated.
Yue Shan moved directly from the room next to the third basement laboratory to the first basement level.
The room’s partitions slowly descended, and he saw the massive hole in his ceiling and the blue-robed figures lying scattered on the ground.
"Truly powerful, ability user." Yue Shan clapped his hands, as if applauding.
"These things are merely byproducts of research, but they excel in obedience and fearlessness." He continued, "The lowest are F-rank, the highest C-rank, and yet you took them all down."
"You’re very powerful, ability user," he said again.
As if this was his highest form of praise.
Dust swirled, and a black shadow approached at the sound.
The sound of boots grew closer on the ground, and the shadow of an adult man gradually shrank, lowering, until it emerged from the dust.
Yue Shan saw a child.
Black hair, black pupils, a child of seven or eight years old.
A completely harmless and adorable child, soft, like a little black kitten.
A black choker hung around his neck, and he wore a black little jacket and petite Martin boots.
"Do you remember me?" The child looked up at him, quietly waiting for his response.
Yue Shan's movements froze.
He stared intently at the child standing outside the dust, his hands trembling, his back slumping.
In the almost stagnant air, he suddenly burst into loud laughter.
"Hahahahaha"
"I was wrong, terribly wrong!" He laughed until tears streamed down his face. "Are you here for revenge, Li? I wasn’t involved in the Former Ability Guild’s mess. You’re seeking personal vengeance. As expected, you’re my creation! Right, Qing Yu Chen said during his investigation that you might have multiple high-rank abilities, but he later dismissed it himself."
"The research direction twelve years ago was correct! The Prophet cut off my path to success!" He gazed at the delicate figure ahead with even greater madness. "Multiple high-rank abilities, a lifespan extended over a decade, outliving that thing."
"What’s your number? Tell me your number!"
"My child, my most perfect creation!"
But his questions received no answer.
The black-haired child, who had shown little expression until now, suddenly curled his lips into a smile.
"You don’t remember me."
Yue Shan didn’t remember how many people he had killed.
Naturally, he didn’t remember test subjects known only by numbers.
Author’s Note:
The current information is that six years ago, the Former Ability Guild’s higher-ups, including the Prophet, were nearly all wiped out.
There are no other surviving higher-ups in the outline, and the Former Ability Guild only needed one leader, one belief—anyone could take that role.
So this lie won’t be exposed.