ID No. 019 - Chapter 13.1

Lin Yue curled up, clutching her stomach, and looked up at the young man coldly. “You knew I wanted to kill you and acted like you were interested in radishes on purpose.”

Chen Yang nodded. “To make you let your guard down, make you think I was easy to handle.”

Lin Yue glanced at the young man with a crutch approaching behind him, then back at Chen Yang. Even an idiot could see it now—they had been working together right under her nose. Her breathing grew unsteady. “Since when did you two get so in sync?”

Chen Yang didn’t answer and simply said, “You’re afraid of him, so I gave you what you wanted and didn’t bring him. I came alone to meet you.”

Lin Yue lowered her eyes. “How did I give myself away?”

Chen Yang replied, “Killing intent.”

“I thought I hid it well enough,” Lin Yue chuckled.

It was the first time Chen Yang had ever fought a woman. He asked, “Why?”

“Why?” Lin Yue’s face twisted in mockery. “This is a survival mission and you’re asking me why? Don’t tell me you still don’t know where we are?”

Chen Yang kept his cool. “How does my being alive clash with your survival?”

“It didn’t, originally.” Lin Yue paused and did not continue. Chen Yang looked over just as she suddenly opened her mouth wide, coughing up a small black seed. It seemed to belong to a plant.

Chen Yang pursed his lips.

Lin Yue’s face twisted as she glared intensely at the seed. She’d been resting on the grass, but the moment she felt the urge to lie down in the soil, she realized she was mutating.

Maybe she’d been cursed the moment she set foot on the island and it had just been lying dormant in her body until now, waiting to erupt.

Once the curse broke out, her craving for fertilizer became terrifyingly intense.

She had resisted eating fertilizer, fearing Chen Yang would pick up on the scent and realize she was cursed, thus avoiding her trap.

And then there was that cripple! Even though he could barely walk, there was an aura about him, like he was shrouded in dark mist, that still made her fearful. She had no choice but to find a way to separate him from Chen Yang.

In the end, she had underestimated Chen Yang’s vigilance. She’d been careless.

Lin Yue picked up the seed and crushed it, muttering. “When I started coughing these things up, I thought I was doomed, until I killed two fishermen. When they died, they didn’t turn into plants—they just dissolved into plant juice.”

She coughed up another seed, her pale face twitching slightly as if trying hard to suppress something. “They’re another kind of mutation — monsters that will live on indefinitely unless killed by human hands.”

Tears streamed from the corners of Lin Yue’s eyes as she continued. “The way you reacted to the liquid on me means you’ve probably guessed as much.”

Chen Yang was staring at the small seed on her chin. It clung there, coated in mucus.

It was reddish-brown, like a Sichuan peppercorn.

“You’re probably wondering if there’s more I haven’t told you, right?” Lin Yue’s breathing was uneven. She took a deep breath and said, “Yes, there’s more. And you know very well that the reason they turned into those monsters is because they ate human flesh and drank human blood.”

She turned, then added, “And there’s something else you don’t know—or maybe you do. I used to think you were simple, but I was wrong. Your thoughts run much deeper than I thought.”

Chen Yang neither confirmed nor denied it.

“Ah Wu told me that what they ate weren’t ordinary humans but people who were sick, just not yet mutated. That’s why they ended up like that,” Lin Yue’s voice lowered, as if afraid of startling a small animal. “But if they eat a real human, then their ailment will be cured.”

Seeing Chao Jian approaching, Chen Yang quickly moved to stand beside him.

“If I’m not mistaken, all the fishermen on this island were no longer human by the time we arrived. At some point, they were all cursed.” Lin Yue suddenly laughed, her expression one of frivolity. “But what Ah Wu doesn’t know is, there’s still one real human left. Chen Yang, where do you think that person is?”

Chen Yang felt as if his protective shell had been pried open and a vengeful spirit had fixed its gaze on him.

Lin Yue wiped her mouth, then lay flat and said, “It’s funny when I think about it. Zhang Yan and I, all of us, were complete idiots. Back then, the moment you said you could smell the scent of fertilizer from the mutated ones’ breath, we thought you were cursed and kept our guards up in case you mutated.

“We were the ones cursed, not you,” Lin Yue said, staring at Chen Yang with a smile. “You figured it out long ago, didn’t you?”

Chen Yang’s expression didn’t change. “And how can you be so sure I wasn’t cursed? Maybe I just mutated differently than you all.”

“Oh, right, sure, that’s Zhang Yan’s line, isn’t it? You’ve used it plenty by now,” Lin Yue sneered. “Ah Wu overheard a little secret from the family elders. Apparently, before he was even born, the island had a similar outbreak of this strange disease. Old Madam Qi told everyone to stockpile fertilizer because without it, those with the disease would waste away.”

She shot him a furious glare, her chest heaving beneath her deep purple coat. “Have you ever eaten it? Not only do you not eat it, but the sight of it disgusts you!”

Chen Yang thought to himself, Ah Wu again. Lin Yue’s mind is really slipping. She’s so deranged that she’s letting herself be led by the nose.

Ah Wu had hit her where it hurt the most. He knew exactly what she feared and what she desperately wanted. In her current state, it’d be easy to draw more information out of her mouth.

Chen Yang asked, “Are you and Ah Wu sworn siblings now? You seem to trust him a lot.”

“I don’t trust him, hah.” Lin Yue flipped the metal piece in her hand and sliced her palm open, then held it out to Chen Yang. “Look at this—this is what my blood looks like.”

The blood was still red, but its color was off, mixed with some kind of unknown slime.

It oozed between her fingers, refusing to drip to the ground, stretching into long, sticky threads.

Chen Yang felt like vomiting.

“And you,” Lin Yue said, looking at the gash on the back of his left hand. “You don’t eat fertilizer, you haven’t wasted away, and you’re still alive. If that’s not proof enough, why don’t you cut yourself open and show me your blood? Don’t dare to?”