Chapter 1 – Disaster is coming

Editor: Xinghe

Translator: YuQiChen/Churen

[The eighth typhoon of the year, ‘Jonah’ has made landfall on the east coast of our country with super typhoon strength and maximum winds near the center reaching fifteen levels.]

[Data from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center shows that a series of underwater earthquakes have occurred in the Pacific region, posing a serious tsunami threat to the coast. Submarine optical cables and power cables have been damaged, affecting numerous tourist islands…]

[The United Nations has issued a warning due to scarce rainfall in the southern hemisphere over the past month, leading to drought conditions…]

…

On June 14th, what should have been an ordinary summer day, the college entrance examination ended, high school students began to enjoy their hard-earned summer vacation, and working individuals continued their busy routines, groggily riding the 7 AM subway to work.

However, starting from three in the morning, underwater earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, typhoon landfalls… natural disasters struck without warning. Both the subway display screens and news pop-ups on phones seemed like clockwork, with a new disaster update appearing almost every hour.

Despite it being summer, by 8 AM, the sky remained dark and overcast.

Almost everyone instinctively paused their hurried steps, looking up at the gloomy sky.

—As if the sky would shatter and collapse at any moment.

On the Weibo trending list, a term quietly began to rise, despite repeated attempts to suppress its popularity, it inevitably climbed to the top of the trending list without obstruction.

At the same time, in the desolate and sandy mountains of the northwest, deep underground, there was complete silence, unlike the outside world.

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven…”

Jiang Que sat against the stone wall underground, earnestly counting.

This was a space of less than thirty square meters, surrounded by indestructible stone walls, with unknown darkness above.

Jiang Que’s voice didn’t even echo, completely swallowed by the darkness, only the complex array on the ground where he knelt emitted a flickering white light.

Clearly, besides Jiang Que, there was no other life here.

Perhaps due to lack of sunlight for a long time, the young man’s skin appeared to be of an unhealthy pale colour, but his features were exquisite and delicate, as if meticulously measured, almost too beautiful to be human.

“…ten.”

As Jiang Que counted the last number, he sighed, looking at the withered black tentacles in front of him.

These tentacles displayed a grey-black colour like dried tree branches, shrivelled and twisted, but it was not hard to imagine their original appearance: black, with white circular suckers on top, fierce and thick.

A tentacle that had not yet withered poked out from behind him, shaking and counting seriously:

[“Ten, eighteen minus ten… is eight?”]

Jiang Que tilted his head after hearing the tentacle’s words, counted again, and firmly said:

“Um… it’s eight.”

“I only have eight tentacles left.”

Realizing that the number of his remaining tentacles was significantly less than those that had died, Jiang Que hugged his few remaining tentacles in disappointment.

“I’m all alone now.”

Hugging his knees, one tentacle bent and poked him, mimicking a human gesture, and comforted:

[“It’s okay, Xiao Que, eat well, and they will grow back.”]

The tentacle that spoke and the one that counted earlier were the same, both growing from Jiang Que’s back. Compared to the dead tentacles on the ground, these tentacles moving behind him were darker and larger, appearing sinister like legendary evil creatures.

They were all part of Jiang Que, extensions of his consciousness, just with a slightly more immature mentality than Jiang Que, mostly acting on instinct.

Jiang Que obviously didn’t find anything abnormal about creating many “selves” to talk to himself. Maintaining his curled-up posture, he whispered a few words to the tentacles, rubbing his face against his small tentacle like a small animal, before lifting his head again.

His gaze swept over his bent knees, then continued to look at the ten withered tentacles on the ground, muttering to himself:

“Anyway, as long as the humans are all dead, you won’t continue to die, right?”

If there were normal humans present, they would probably see that Jiang Que’s psyche might have some issues. Whether it was calmly counting his “body parts” or his repetitive self-questioning behaviour and callous attitude towards human life, these were not things a normal person would do.

But Jiang Que didn’t know.

Because he didn’t quite count as “human.”

Jiang Que had been here since he had consciousness.

At first, the flow of people here was constant, wearing strange Taoist robes, speaking in an unfamiliar language, marvelling at him in amazement. He panicked and bumped into things everywhere, but those people just watched him like small sparrows who bit off more than they could chew.

Later, fewer people came here, with only a few individuals visiting at fixed times each day to teach him to speak, read, and eat. Occasionally, they would ramble on in a long string of words he couldn’t understand.

Although Jiang Que couldn’t comprehend, he painstakingly memorized everything, slowly piecing together the meaning over the years until he finally understood what those people were saying:

The outside world was the realm of humans. Because human resentment was growing, disrupting the balance of the world, those people condensed the resentment into arrays, causing it to fall to this place. His task was to deal with this resentment.

In other words, what those people referred to as “eating.”

The resentment was congealed into a sticky black porridge-like substance, with a variety of strange tastes, bitter, spicy, and some even like overnight spoiled rice.

Of course, Jiang Que, who had never eaten overnight spoiled rice, had no idea how awful this resentment tasted. He only knew that after consuming it, he would feel uncomfortable, his tentacles would ache, and his shoulder blades would feel like they were being torn apart.

After eating, he could see scenes within the resentment, or rather, scenes from the human world.

The human world was chaotic, with people he saw always screaming, emitting sharp noises. Some scenes depicted a wife covered in wounds killing her husband with a bottle, others showed a twisted murderer dismembering bodies late at night, and there were even images of a naked girl crying while leaping from a tall building, hitting the ground with a loud thud and a splash of red.

At the moment of a human’s death, the scene would abruptly end, leaving Jiang Que pondering why they had to die, ultimately concluding:

Humans were a species that died quite easily.

He feared that those people might accidentally die as well, so he never shared his conclusion with them. However, those people disappeared once he had learned everything.

Before disappearing, they patted their own heads and called him “Xiao Que.”

Jiang Que thought, those humans probably died as well.

From then on, this place was filled with a deathly silence, and Jiang Que had no idea how long he had been here.

“To be honest, I quite like it here.”

Jiang Que spoke to the withered tentacles in front of him.

The long silence had made him accustomed to speaking whatever was on his mind, so he would always blurt out some nonsensical words.

The small tentacle nodded:

[“Yes, it would be even better if the food was changed more quickly.”]

He was quite willing to eat those dark grievances at first, after all, the more times he endured the pain, the less uncomfortable it became. He was very interested in the strange world he had never reached before, and he would watch with the little tentacles, commenting as if watching a movie.

Until one day, one of the tentacles behind him died as if it had withered.

The dead tentacle looked like a dried-up branch, shrivelled up, and Jiang Que was stunned holding a tentacle fragment that broke off with a slight twist.

Those people were bad, locking him up here, and causing one of the little tentacles that talked to him to die.

He was left with only seventeen tentacles.

Things escalated beyond Jiang Que’s control, with the tentacles behind him wilting and falling off one after another like dried vines. Up to now, in just a short half month, ten tentacles had died.

“I won’t eat anymore, won’t deal with grievances anymore, let the grievances and imbalance be, let humans die if they want.”

As long as all of them died, there would be no more grievances for the little tentacles that could harm him, and as long as there were no humans, new species would emerge, providing him with a new source of food.

At this moment, Jiang Que curled up in the cold, hard corner with his tentacles. He didn’t think he was wrong. From his observations and conclusions over the past eighteen years, even if he didn’t deal with these grievances, fragile humans would die for various reasons on their own.

He recalled the scene he saw after consuming a bit of resentment to observe the progress of human extinction, where numerous people screamed and tried to escape an erupting volcano, only to be engulfed by lava. The scorching red lava cooled rapidly, turning into the dark black that he disliked the most.

The magnificent red, a sight he had never seen before. Jiang Que tried to repeat slowly what he heard amidst the screams:

“Volcanic eruption…?”

“Is that called a ‘volcanic eruption’? It’s red, so beautiful.”

Jiang Que patted his little tentacle and puzzled, “Why is it so beautiful, yet they have to die?”

He didn’t know that the submerged humans couldn’t breathe, just as he couldn’t understand why humans would die in a “snow avalanche” as beautiful as a volcanic eruption.

After a moment of thought, the tentacle behind him made a classic conclusion:

[Perhaps it’s just very easy for them to die.]

“Click.”

In the midst of his words, a voice he had never heard before suddenly sounded beside him.

It wasn’t the sound of resentment falling on the stone floor. Sticky resentment wouldn’t make such a crisp sound. Jiang Que almost instantly used his intact tentacles to curl up the ten withered tentacles behind him as soon as the sound rang out, carefully hiding them in a dark corner before standing up cautiously.

[Something fell down.]

[What fell?]

[Jiang Que, be careful.]

The tentacles behind him slightly arched and, speaking all at once, assumed an attacking posture.

Jiang Que, who had spent years in darkness, felt a sense of crisis for the first time brought on by the “unknown.” He recalled countless ways humans had died, and in that moment, he had already planned how to kill the other party.

He walked forward cautiously.

One step, two steps, three steps…

Due to the limitations of the formation, Jiang Que could only move within a very small area next to the wall. He couldn’t step out of this semicircle and most of the time had to feel around with his tentacles.

Just as he was about to reach the limit of his movement, he finally stepped on something strange.

Jiang Que jumped back suddenly and his tentacles smashed down on the ground, allowing him to see clearly what was there.

Square and pink with a rose red cover, shining with highlights, quietly lying on the ground, an innocent and harmless inanimate object.

His tentacles stopped in mid-air, touching each other and murmuring in confusion:

[What is this?]

[Is it a book?]

[A book?]

[It’s a book! Some humans in the picture really liked to read this.]

Jiang Que remembered that there were a few humans who particularly enjoyed looking at such things, but unfortunately, the image never showed him what was actually on the “book.”

He had speculated that perhaps there were things on the book similar to what he saw, which fascinated humans so much.

Now that he no longer consumed resentment and couldn’t see the outside world, maybe he could try reading a book?

Thinking this, Jiang Que retracted his tentacles with a slightly excited heart and bent down to pick up the book on the ground, slowly reading the shiny characters on the cover.

‘Revenge of the Three Princesses vs. The Three Icy Princes’

Jiang Que blinked in confusion, his small tentacles also expressing a questioning expression.

“Humans… like to read this?”

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