Chapter 34: Peach Blossom Calamity

Chapter 34: Peach Blossom Calamity

"System?"

Shen Ji tried calling out to the system, but received no response. Only the hyphae clung to him, whimpering and putting on a pitiful act.

"Alright." Shen Ji patted their small mushroom heads. "It's normal for the system not to dream. As for you..."

"Next time, no matter what happens, don't hide anything from me."

The small mushrooms cheered up instantly, transforming into a hyphae army brandishing their tools and charging toward the peach tree. In the blink of an eye, they swarmed the tree, trying to strip it bare.

Shen Ji: ...

He didn't sense any contamination from this peach tree. It was normal for a fully grown Contaminated Seed planted by the gardener to have some special abilities. Shen Ji let them search for the source of contamination, hoping they would successfully locate the gardener's position. He vowed to turn the gardener's garden into farmland!

Just then, Shen Ji suddenly heard commotion from the long queue.

People at the back of the line craned their necks to see what was happening at the front. There, the familiar bleach-haired guy was confronting the faceless figure.

Judging by his position... he had even cut in line.

Cutting all the way to the front—typical Li Zhiyan.

Since it was a bit far, Shen Ji couldn't hear what they were saying, so he took a few steps forward.

It was then that Li Zhiyan spoke.

His tone was full of disdain. "...So fake."

What?

The thing opposite him remained silent for a few seconds. The next moment, it raised the axe in its hand. The blade pointed directly at Li Zhiyan, giving every indication that it intended to chop him to death. But the axe suddenly halted mid-air.

Upon closer inspection, a blue butterfly, slightly larger than a fingernail, was supporting the blade of the axe.

The faint blue glowing butterfly flipped the axe out of its hand. Li Zhiyan reached out, and the butterfly landed on his fingertip.

"You shouldn't refuse me."

The faceless thing finally spoke. Its voice was genderless, carrying the hazy quality unique to dreams. The entire long line of people clasped their heads, swaying dizzily before collapsing to the ground unconscious.

"I am the master of this dream. Don't even think about escaping its control." The thing pointed at Li Zhiyan, its body twisting like writhing rubber.

"Scum, die!"

This might have been the first time Li Zhiyan was called scum in his life. His eyes held a trace of astonishment. He dodged the new axe swung at him, his white hair brushing against the blade as a blue butterfly landed on the edge.

The next moment, the axe slipped from its grasp and crashed heavily to the ground.

Unlike ordinary Talents, Li Zhiyan's Talent was quite special.

S-Rank Talent "Mimic Butterfly": Though called a butterfly, it was merely a metaphor for "Zhuang Zhou's morning dream." He didn't manifest as a winged butterfly form but rather as an extremely terrifying psychic weapon.

In other words: he was the bane of nightmares. Any nightmare would be defeated in one encounter at his hands.

Li Zhiyan's silver long hair stirred without any wind, catching fire from the ends. It was shimmering with blue flame, and glowing butterflies emerged from the fire. They filled the air, instantly pouncing on the faceless figure before them. The faceless thing screamed, dropping the peach blossom branch in its hand and clutching its head as it let out a wretched cry.

Li Zhiyan's pupils glowed.

Shen Ji had noticed earlier that although Li Zhiyan's eyes were both blue, they weren't the same shade of blue. One of his eyes resembled a blue stained glass window, with patterns etched upon it, as if sunlight refracted through the glass to scatter prismatic light—precisely the best evidence that Li Zhiyan's Talent possessed a corrupting nature.

The faceless man crouched on the ground, unable to move, until its entire body, covered by butterflies, transformed into a piece of wood. The wood clattered to the ground, still carrying the fresh scent of peach blossoms.

"Not the real body," Li Zhiyan remarked as he walked over and nudged the wood on the ground with his foot. "Wasn't peach wood supposed to ward off evil? How did it become a decoy?"

Shen Ji tutted. "Pretty things are always the deadliest."

After this reflection, he turned to leave, only to find a blue butterfly fluttering right in front of him as soon as he turned around. The little creature flapped its wings before him, its tail dusted with flecks of light.

Unable to resist, he reached out a finger, and the little butterfly obediently landed on his fingertip.

It even seemed to show it off, slowly fluttering its wings to let Shen Ji get a clearer look.

So pretty. He wanted to find a transparent box to keep it in, and after it died, he could have it mounted as a specimen to hang on the wall.

"They really do like you," a voice said.

Shen Ji’s head snapped up.

Huh?

The voice behind him added, "It seems you prefer these glowing little things more than me."

Shen Ji didn't want to turn around.

But not turning would be against his image, so he steeled himself and turned. The butterfly remained calmly on his fingertip, completely unafraid. As Shen Ji turned, he finally saw Li Zhiyan standing behind him, less than three meters away. Those pale blue eyes stared directly into his.

Was this white-haired freak really not some random NPC? The moment you look away, he pops up.

'Discovered. What now?' Shen Ji habitually asked the system.

No answer came after several seconds. Then it dawned on him—right, the system hadn’t synced this time because it couldn’t dream.

Once he got out, he’d have to demand an upgrade for the system, installing a dreaming program.

It felt strangely unfamiliar not having the system in his ear, ranting about the protagonist.

"Shen Ji?" Li Zhiyan looked at him thoughtfully. "What a coincidence. We really do run into each other easily."

"Mr. Li," Shen Ji nodded. "Fancy meeting you here, again."

"Not a coincidence," Li Zhiyan felt like he’d said this many times, but every time he encountered Shen Ji, he had to say it again. "Why are you here?"

This was indeed something difficult to explain.

Shen Ji had been forcibly yanked in by the hyphae, though he had also wanted to come. Territorial instinct was a fundamental trait of every high-level contaminated being; he couldn’t allow the Gardener’s seeds to invade his turf.

Even though he knew perfectly well that Li Zhiyan could handle this seed.

If Li Zhiyan found this suspicious and started to doubt him... then he’d really have to consider using the Undertaker’s Talent to stage his death and bolt.

"What does Mr. Li think?" Shen Ji’s expression was cold.

Having been pulled in not long after returning to his dorm after work, Shen Ji was dressed casually in a white jacket and a black high-necked sweater underneath. He wasn’t wearing glasses, and his dark eyes were soft as water. His aloof features made him appear particularly distant, yet utterly captivating.

His expression seemed to say: 'I don’t know either, I’m irritated too, could you stop asking me? I’m already too lazy to blow you off.'

Li Zhiyan stared at him for a beat before saying,

"Did you confess to anybody? Did they agree?"

Right, there's this trick—people who successfully confess are likely to appear in dreams. Should I make up somebody to confess to?

Before Shen Ji could come up with a suitable target, Li Zhiyan spoke again.

"Do you know this behavior of yours is called two-timing somebody? I literally just confessed to you this afternoon."

Shen Ji: ...

"My first confession target went and confessed to someone else. I'm so heartbroken."

"To make it up to me, how about considering joining the Guard Team?"

Shen Ji: ...

"No." Shen Ji refused expressionlessly. "Mr. Li, don’t push it. I don’t know why I appeared here either—maybe it’s because Mr. Li confessed to me."

Li Zhiyan looked puzzled. "How did it suddenly become my problem?"

"Because in my dream: it was Mr. Li under the peach tree. This is also why I had reservations when Mr. Li first contacted me."

"But thinking of all the victims, their lives/safety on the line, I couldn’t let things worsen because of my own concerns and allow more people to die. So I agreed to Mr. Li's suggestion, never expecting to end up 'swept up' in all this because of it."

Shen Ji closed his eyes, wearing an expression of noble self-sacrifice, even carrying a faint, bookish melancholy.

"Mr. Li, don’t blame yourself. This was my choice. I was already prepared."

So what if he’s turning the tables? He’s an expert at this.

Li Zhiyan: ...

Though he didn’t know why Shen Ji had entered the dream, based on what little he understood of Shen Ji, it definitely wasn’t out of selfless sacrifice or because he was implicated.

He hesitated for a moment, then rested a hand on his chin.

"So, does that mean we’re both into each other?"

He genuinely seemed puzzled. "Since we’re both into each other, why haven’t you accepted my invitation yet?"

Shen Ji: ...

Good thing the system isn't around. If it heard this, it would start screaming and scheming to assassinate the protagonist again.

"Mr. Li, you're joking," Shen Ji said politely, his gaze gentle. "Director Wen told me that who people dream about aren’t limited to specific people but rather whoever one has been paying attention to lately. Mr. Li is a major benefactor to the shelter, having guaranteed the Handover of the Undertaker’s body, so aside from me, many others have dreamed of you, including our Director Wen."

"Thinking about it, both Mr. Li and Director Wen are on the front lines in this war. You’d make great partners."

Li Zhiyan once again marveled inwardly at how smooth-talking Shen Ji was.

The way he said it made it sound like he dreamed of Wen Jingyu, not Shen Ji.

When it came to avoiding any connection to himself, Shen Ji could always find countless reasonable excuses.

Getting him to join up was going to be a tough sell.

"Although the Guard Team and the shelter may be colleagues, we're in different lines of work."

Li Zhiyan casually replied, "Even if we die, I doubt our photos would be hung together."

...He even beat him to the punch by assuming his own death to prevent Shen Ji from hypothesizing about it again.

They locked eyes, and after a few seconds of silence, Shen Ji was the first to look away.

He changed the subject, "Has Mr. Li found any clues so far?"

Up to now, the small mushrooms haven't detected any traces of pollution. They've been scratching and poking around, from the sky to the ground, constantly tearing at minuscule pollution particles in the air, but found nothing.

Agitated by other pollutants encroaching on their territory, they were almost on the verge of crying loudly to Shen Ji.

Poor little things.

"The Guard Team has identified a suspected dreamer."

Li Zhiyan dropped a bombshell right away.

"Really?" Shen Ji's eyes lit up. "Does that mean this pollution incident will soon be over? And everyone can be saved?"

"Not quite."

Li Zhiyan snapped his fingers, and blue butterflies assembled in his hand like a shattered screen reassembling itself. They formed the faces of two people.

Mimic Butterfly, the pollution talent of S-Class Mutant Li Zhiyan, possesses exaggerated mental pollution no less than that of pollutants. It can fabricate illusions out of thin air, like a mirage, something dreamlike. Some even speculated in the original work that Li Zhiyan's butterflies might not actually exist but are purely condensed forms of pollution.

Li Zhiyan simply uses his pollution characteristics to mimic them into a visible form of pollution.

After all, in the entire book, only Li Zhiyan's pollution talent can separate from its main body and be exposed in front of people.

"Female A and Male B, don't ask me what their names are, I forgot," Li Zhiyan said matter-of-factly.

"They were residents of Q City's central district. Not long ago, they got their marriage certificate at the Marriage Department of the Pollution Prevention Center. They went missing together in a minor pollution incident just before the major pollution event in Q City and were later found by the Guard Team."

"Since then, they often had loud arguments late at night. Their neighbors called the police multiple times, claiming they were in violent fights, with the sound of things being smashed everywhere."

"Later, Male B was caught cheating by Female A."

Li Zhiyan waved his hand, and the male's face moved forward. "That night, there were no more sounds of arguing from upstairs. The neighbor wanted to check on them but put it off due to the lockdown in Q City."

"It wasn't until today during the day that Jiang Ying led a team to open their door."

Dark red blood splattered across the entire bedroom, with bloody handprints stamped on the floor. It looked as if someone, after being slashed, struggled to crawl to safety but was caught up to and had their neck severed, with blood even splattering onto the ceiling. Due to the time that had passed, the metallic smell of blood was particularly strong.

However, Jiang Ying did not find the victims' bodies, nor could she locate any trace of the killer.

It was as if they had vanished into thin air together.

Jiang Ying pulled every string until Director Wen brought Chen Guo over. To avoid affecting the child's mental and physical health, she wasn't allowed inside and only did her sensing from the doorway.

Chen Guo detected a faint pollution aura. She marked the areas that felt wrong on a floor plan Jiang Ying had prepared in advance.

The Guard Team followed the directions and found a withered peach branch.

"Peach blossoms hold special meaning for them," Shen Ji said, looking at the peach tree before them. "So the breakthrough still lies with this peach tree."

"In legends, peach blossoms are used to symbolize love, right?" Li Zhiyan asked. "Meeting someone you fall in love with at first sight and end up together is called 'encountering peach blossoms.'"

"All the victims so far have been dismembered. Our Guard Team members confirmed that the dismemberment wounds on everyone were inflicted with an axe."

"The peach tree of pledged love, and the axe that can chop down the peach tree."

Shen Ji and Li Zhiyan exchanged a glance.

In that instant of eye contact, they confirmed that the other person had the same idea as themselves.

Li Zhiyan increasingly felt that Shen Ji's comprehension skills were truly high; he understood what he intended to do with just a few words. If it were Zhou Ye here, he would have to ask eighteen questions.

The blue butterflies levitated the axe from the ground; it was something left behind by that faceless person before disappearing.

The axe chopped viciously into the peach tree labeled 'Scum.' With one chop, the peach tree blanched, and red sap-like fluid oozed from the wound as if bleeding.

With another chop, the heads hanging from the branches opened their eyes all at once.

With the third chop, a human face actually emerged on the trunk of the peach tree—his features twisted and savage. Shen Ji took a moment to recognize it as the face of 'Male B.'

It opened its eyes, filled with terror and agony.

"It hurts so much!" it began to cry out.

Then the heads on the branches joined in, crying out.

"It hurts so much! Please spare me! Spare us!"

It howled, its voice pitiful and piercing, "I was wrong, I'll never cheat again! I was just tempted by evil!"

"It was her who seduced me! Not me, not me! It hurts so much! Stop chopping me with the axe!"

"I really love you! Please forgive me! Forgive us!"

An intense pollution aura washed over them; with each cry, the pollution grew stronger. The hyphae burrowed into the ground, eyeing the entire tree menacingly, while Li Zhiyan's butterflies circled around the tree. They were all observing this pollution.

Finally, the hyphae couldn't take it anymore.

They were hungry and angry, utterly incapable of letting this bastard who invaded their territory go!

The hyphae swarmed up from the roots and into the tree all at once. Li Zhiyan frowned slightly; he had clearly noticed something. As the one known throughout the story as the 'walking pollution detector,' he could sense that an unfamiliar pollution aura seemed to have suddenly appeared.

It felt close, yet he couldn't see anything.

The hyphae pounced and began tearing at it, trying to rip the seed apart.

It was at this moment that Shen Ji sensed something from the hyphae.

"No, he's still alive." The hyphae abruptly stopped, agitatedly milling about without taking a single bite.

Li Zhiyan looked at Shen Ji. "What?"

"He's still alive, Male B." Shen Ji gazed at the agonized face before him. "He was dismembered, but because of the pollution, he didn't die. Instead, he was forcibly fused into this peach tree."

"Everyone who comes here will share sensations with the peach tree. Each time someone is killed, Male B is dismembered again, but he's still alive. Even his pollution level is only at Phase III."

Li Zhiyan didn't ask how Shen Ji had discovered this; he only felt that this pollution characteristic was very familiar.

So familiar that it almost instantly made him feel slightly nauseous.

After a long moment, he finally spoke. "The Planting Field."

Shen Ji abruptly turned to look at Li Zhiyan. "Li Zhiyan?"

"Implanting a person into a tree, then making humans share sensations with the tree, killing this person through cruel means—all to cultivate stronger and more bizarre plants." Li Zhiyan's eyes turned cold, his blue pupils finally becoming as icy as hard ice.

"S-class Pollutant 'The Gardener,' and its Planting Field."

Li Zhiyan utterly despised the Gardener.

He even hated the person who named the Gardener 'Gardener' because of it. Every time he ran into this person at the Contamination Prevention Center, Li Zhiyan would curse at him.

Naming such a vile pollutant 'Gardener' was a complete insult to the gardening profession!

Although on the surface, Li Zhiyan and the Gardener both liked plants, they were completely different!

Li Zhiyan loved natural plants—whether flowers, grasses, or trees. Even if they carried a trace of pollution, as long as they were naturally formed, Li Zhiyan would like them. Because he was a butterfly, and butterflies had an affinity for nature.

But the Gardener was not.

It did not like natural plants; it merely took pleasure in perversely merging plants and humans together to create terrifying monsters. The stronger and more twisted the monster, the more it liked it.

The first time he dealt with the contaminated seeds it had scattered, Li Zhiyan knew that one day he would have to raze this bastard's Planting Field to the ground.

If it weren't for the fact that he couldn't find the exact location of the Planting Field, he would have already gone to kill it.

What awful taste!

Li Zhiyan asked Shen Ji, "Can he still be treated?"

"Impossible. The peach tree has already completely merged with him." Shen Ji shook his head. "He's only alive because of the pollution. Once the pollution disappears, he'll die."

This wasn't pollution mutation but species grafting—directly grafting a living human head onto a peach tree.

No ordinary person could survive having their head chopped off.

"Then we'll eliminate him directly."

Li Zhiyan snapped his fingers, and the blue butterflies' tail ends all turned into flames. The blue butterflies transformed into butterflies of fire, encircling the peach tree.

"The Gardener has a pollution connection with its seeds. It can briefly manifest within polluted areas through the seeds. We must kill him before the Gardener causes a greater disaster."

After saying this, Li Zhiyan seemed to catch himself and looked at Shen Ji. "You have no objections, do you?"

Shen Ji was a doctor at the shelter. Regardless of his nature, since he worked as a doctor there, he would have compassion for the contaminated. Plus, Li Zhiyan still wanted to recruit him, so he had to appropriately ask for Shen Ji's opinion.

Even if Shen Ji disagreed, he would still proceed.

"Of course, no objections." Shen Ji said, "He's past saving. No amount of effort would make a difference."

Li Zhiyan nodded. The fire butterflies pounced on the peach tree, and in an instant, it began to burn fiercely.

Those twisted, savage heads shrieked incessantly in the flames, a scene straight from hell.

"No, don't... stop chopping me." The distorted face on the trunk continued to cry out in agony.

"Sorry, I didn't..."

"I won't dare... anymore."

The flames completely incinerated the pollution. This was the second effect of Li Zhiyan's Talent: he could burn away all pollution entirely. In the source material, Li Zhiyan's greatest achievement was burning a pollution rift for seven days and seven nights, completely rendering that rift useless.

From then on, Li Zhiyan was recognized as the strongest S-class Mutant.

As the flames died out, the charred face finally relaxed from its agony.

"Thank you... thank you both."

Crack—the great tree collapsed with a thud, leaving behind only a mixture of black ashes.

The moment the peach tree fell, a voice rang out simultaneously in Shen Ji's mind.

"Bing bing bing! Your system is now online!"

"I successfully upgraded my own dream program and followed the traces left by your small mushroom to get here! You should praise me!"

"Huh? Who's this?"

After bragging loudly about itself, the system suddenly became aware of the person standing beside Shen Ji.

A few seconds later, it panicked.

"The protagonist?! What's he doing here?! Wait, no—he was supposed to be here all along; no, no! How did you two meet?!"

"Shen Ji, have we been exposed?! Is it time to activate the death escape plot?!"

"Aww, I’m actually kind of attached to the shelter—after we fake our deaths and go incognito, should we go to another shelter under different identities?"

Shen Ji thought: ...

Quiet, we haven’t been exposed yet!