Fan Shuwan attempted to force Jian Weiwei to apologize, but the girl ducked under her captain's hand and bolted.
Seeing the stiff expression on the man standing before him, Xin Ye politely changed the subject. "Are you a supervisor for this round, Senior?"
"I am," Fan Shuwan sighed, rubbing his forehead as his other hand tapped the ID badge pinned to his chest. "Our team was originally supposed to be on the judging panel, but because Weiwei’s punishment was to serve as a field safety officer for the full five days, the rest of us followed along... But let’s not dwell on that. You’re looking for the materials in this area, right?"
He paused, then added, "Perhaps I have some clues that could help you."
Leng Xianye was so startled by this direct show of goodwill that he broke into a fit of coughing.
"Ah..." Xin Ye pointed to the screens overhead, which had shifted to mimic the morning sky. "Aren't there cameras everywhere? Is this... okay?"
Fan Shuwan smiled at the question, and a book with a complex sigil on its cover appeared in his hand.
He looked slightly embarrassed to be helping someone "cheat," yet he didn't hesitate to flip through the pages. "If it’s just a mission, there’s nothing wrong with friendly teams helping each other out, is there?"
Xin Ye: "..."
*So that’s how this game is played.*
Fan Shuwan’s slender index finger tapped a specific line on the page. A moment later, he received a message from a teammate.
"The material you need is on the northwestern edge of the Living Area," he said, closing the book. "Rest assured, this is my teammate’s A-rank ability, 'Critical Perception.' After being boosted by my own ability, its accuracy is one hundred percent. There will be no mistake."
"As for Weiwei... please don't take it to heart. She’s usually a good girl; she just got a bit emotional seeing her old friend, Miss Xing."
With that, Fan Shuwan turned and departed.
Hearing her name mentioned, Xing Yue lowered her head.
The description "good girl" reminded her of the look in Jian Weiwei’s eyes as she sat on the lower bunk, watching Xing Yue pack her bags to leave their shared dormitory at the research institute.
She had asked softly, *"Xiaoyue, can you take me with you?"*
That had been their only conversation during their entire time working together. The girl’s tone had indeed sounded very "good" back then.
But Xing Yue’s answer at the time had been only two words: *"I can't."*
***
The northwest corner of the Living Area was a cluster of schools, mostly combined junior and senior high campuses.
Massive swathes of Boston ivy grew from the corners of the buildings, sprawling across the grounds and covering the school names mounted on the outer walls. Stepping through the gates, one was met with the inevitable rustling of leaves pressing and swaying against one another.
Xin Ye crouched down to examine the suckers the ivy used to cling to the ground.
He remembered that the common evolutionary path for mutated Boston ivy involved the suckers and the newly grown tips, which developed a stronger ability to find anchor points to increase survival rates. However, the ivy in this school looked perfectly ordinary, aside from being particularly lush.
Tang Qiuqiu pawed at the leaves for a while and sniffed the air. "These feel like mutated species, but I can't see anything special about them."
"Maybe they're a harmless variant?" Leng Xianye even made a show of trying to pluck a leaf, but the vines didn't react at all, so he gave up.
Xin Ye was about to call his three teammates to check inside the teaching building when Xun Yin stopped him.
【Are you really not going to look closer? For instance, why not cut a small section of the vine and see?】
This was practically a direct hint. Xin Ye followed suit, drawing the combat knife strapped to his leg. "Let's see, then."
He grabbed a handful of new shoots that hadn't yet gripped the ground firmly, intending to slice them in half.
Suddenly, the green plants began to writhe.
Realizing something was wrong, Xin Ye tried to strike quickly with his knife, but he hit nothing but air. The Boston ivy in his hand slipped away like an eel, leaving only a slick liquid on his palm.
He caught a faint scent of pine.
【Correct. As you can see, the first material is resin produced by a specialized type of mutated Boston ivy. After the apocalypse, the pine trees planted in the school were drained dry by the vines climbing them, and the ivy usurped the trait of producing resin.】 Xun Yin explained. 【Since it managed to occupy an entire school district and emerge as the victor among mutated species, it’s obviously no pushover. If you want to truly obtain the yellow material, you’ll have to work for it.】
The green plants that had been lying quietly on the ground just moments ago were now all in motion.
As if a switch had been flipped, they scattered away from Xin Ye. Their tiny sucker "feet" were incredibly agile, kicking and crawling forward with force.
A wave of green dispersed—a sight so spectacular that Lian Muyun, who had just climbed the school's clock tower to look down, was momentarily stunned.
Xing Yue was shocked by the collective movement of the ivy, which resembled a mass of slithering snakes, but she reacted quickly, using her silk threads to snag the branches that hadn't yet escaped. Leng Xianye and Tang Qiuqiu also tried to restrain the ivy, but these mutated plants possessed a low level of intelligence and high adaptability; they simply severed the caught portions like a gecko shedding its tail and continued their flight without pause.
The severed branches left on the ground only leaked a tiny amount of resin from the wounds, nowhere near enough to meet the collection requirements.
In a matter of moments, the ivy in the school had gathered at the walls, leaping over to the neighboring campus like students cutting class. The school’s front plaza was left completely bare.
Lian Muyun set up his sniper rifle as fast as possible and fired a shot at the last batch of ivy that hadn't yet made it over the wall.
However, the bullet made of energy was blocked by the seemingly fragile, obovate leaves. A split second before contact, the density of the cellulose forming the cell walls increased more than a thousandfold, ensuring the bullet didn't leave so much as a scratch on the leaf's surface.
The youth cursed under his breath and decided to fire again.
This shot missed the plants entirely.
Through his high-powered scope, he saw a pattern on the far edge of the wall—patterns that had previously been completely hidden by the green leaves.
Lian Muyun used his multi-function watch to zoom in, took a photo, and sent it to Xin Ye. Xin Ye opened the image and saw the Headquarters logo printed on the wall.
A ring with pointed tips at the top and bottom was entwined with olive leaves, shielded by a mechanical wing that curved down to protect the pearl in the center—the symbol of surviving humanity.
The large-scale pattern indicated that this was an experimental zone belonging to Headquarters. Naturally, the Boston ivy in this area was the source of the material they were looking for.
They had found it, but for now, they couldn't catch it.
Now Xin Ye understood why that other team had come up empty-handed after six hours.
【I suggest you pursue them toward the junior high section rather than the adjacent senior high,】 Xun Yin said, shaking his head as he imagined the consequences of the two teams meeting too early. 【The team from the Fifth Branch has also scouted their way to the northwest corner. You’d best stay away from them.】
On this point, the two were in agreement. Xin Ye didn't hesitate to lead his team toward the junior high section.
The junior high campus was only half the size of the senior high, and the entire school looked clean and tidy, with no sign of the Boston ivy.
Xun Yin: 【The most dangerous place is the safest place. All the ivy that ran this way is hiding here.】
【But they can sense the aura of Ability Users. If you all go in together, they’ll definitely run again.】
Xin Ye caught his drift. He responded to a guess Leng Xianye made about the ivy's hiding spot while making a small gesture behind his back, pointing to himself. "Then what if a D-rank like me goes in alone?"
【Then there’s no problem... just remember to hide all your weapons inside the mirror shards first.】
Xin Ye: "Got it."
How to rationalize the information he received from Xun Yin had always been a headache for Xin Ye. This time, he decided to let his Mirror Image take the fall for everything.
He told his teammates that his Mirror Image had sensed something and asked them to stand guard outside. Tang Qiuqiu wanted to follow, but Xin Ye politely declined. He entered the junior high administration building alone and found the passage leading to the underground parking lot.
【Have you ever watched a documentary on silkworm rearing?】 Xun Yin suddenly asked.
"My elementary school teacher showed us one," Xin Ye replied, clutching the mirror shard in his hand as the rustling sound in his ears grew clearer. "Why?"
【It’s good that you have. It’ll make the upcoming scene a bit easier to stomach.】
When he reached the stairs and peered around the door of the parking lot, he couldn't help but think that it did indeed look like a silkworm documentary.
Except beneath the serrated leaves, there were no plump white silkworms—only bare stalks and countless little "feet."
The leaves overlapped and shifted. A thin stem emerged from the edge, and a tributary branched off from the green river, winding its way toward Xin Ye.
Xin Ye thought the mutated species had perceived him as a threat and considered retreating to find another entrance, but a tender green vine brushed against his arm. It treated him as part of the path and crawled right over him.
【Excellent. Now they don't take a weakling like you seriously at all.】 Xun Yin typed, telling Lian Muyun—who had moved to the rooftop—to sit down and rest for a bit. 【Move forward slowly. The suckers on your arm will release on their own.】
【Because the system is so massive, there are many convergence points for the branches of the mutated Boston ivy. You just need to cut one of those, and you'll collect enough yellow material.】
【Don't worry, only the leaves can control their cellulose to harden. The stems are very fragile.】
Xin Ye walked forward slowly. Just as Xun Yin said, the vines treated him as nothing more than a moving rock. One sucker would make brief contact with his body before moving on, and the next would follow immediately after.
【Ten steps forward, turn right, then four more steps. Then, strike.】
His footsteps grew lighter and lighter. On the fourth step after turning right, the toe of his boot touched a convergence point of the branches.
The moment contact occurred, the busy Boston ivy froze.
A weak self-preservation instinct was triggered within milliseconds. The overwhelming sea of green was propped up by stalks, rising like a giant mask directly above Xin Ye, casting a massive shadow.
At the same time, the tender green stems that had merely treated the low-level Ability User as a temporary resting point coiled around Xin Ye’s neck, arms, waist, and legs, pinning him in place to prevent his escape.
Looking at the inescapable net that had been built in an instant, Xin Ye twitched his finger.
The cold mirror surface melted into liquid in mid-air, enveloping him within the Mirror World. In the space controlled by the Mirror Image, the entity brushed the new ivy shoots off Xin Ye and handed him a knife.
Xin Ye crouched down and plunged the blade into the center of the thick stalk. Resin flowed out in a steady stream. He brought out the composite crystal bottles he had prepared to collect it, letting the excess spill onto the ground.
Xun Yin felt that Xin Ye’s method was much better than the violent solution he had anticipated, letting out an appreciative "Oho."
Then, he saw a line of text appear on the screen.
Xin Ye asked the Mirror Image for a grenade. He pulled the pin, then closed the space and escaped back to the real world just before it detonated.
By the time the Ability User’s boots touched the ground, the green sea of Boston ivy in the underground garage was gone. There were only charred leaves and a floor covered in ash.
Two minutes later, Xin Ye returned to his teammates with the bottle, shaking the full container of resin.
"Done."
***
| Chinese | English | Notes/Explanation |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| 关键感知 | Critical Perception | An A-rank ability used for sensing specific targets or information. |
| 变异地锦 | Mutated Boston Ivy | A mutated plant species that has usurped traits from pine trees. |
| 松脂 | Resin | Specifically pine resin, the "yellow material" required for the competition. |
| 镜像空间 | Mirror Space | The pocket dimension controlled by Xin Ye's Mirror Image. |
| 复合材料晶瓶 | Composite crystal bottle | Specialized containers for collecting materials. |
