Chapter 501
, 481 Subversion
Chapter 501, Section 481: Subversion
The electric arcs at the tip of the stun gun crackled and popped, sounding particularly jarring in the dimly lit living room.
Several police officers gathered around, their shadows stretched out and distorted, casting a shadow over Xie Yan, who was huddled in the corner.
“Come with us, little girl.”
Just as one of them reached out to grab Xie Yan's thin arm, a figure suddenly rushed out from the side, like an enraged cub, violently shoving away the hand, spreading out his arms, and blocking his sister.
"It can't be my sister!"
It was a thank-you banquet.
His face flushed red, his chest heaved violently, and his still somewhat immature eyes burned with the flames of anger and disbelief.
He stared intently at the police officer in front of him, his voice trembling slightly with emotion:
“Our family…our family was fine yesterday! She’s my sister! How could she…how could she possibly hurt Mom and Dad! Look at her, how old is she!”
His question echoed in the empty room, but only earned him deeper silence and approaching footsteps.
Another officer frowned impatiently, and without warning, thrust his stun gun forward, stabbing Xie Yan in the side.
"Ugh—!"
A high-voltage current instantly pierced through his body. Xie Yan let out a short scream, his whole body convulsed violently, and then he collapsed to the ground.
Before he could recover from the numbness of the electric shock, several police batons came crashing down on him, landing on his back and shoulders with dull thuds.
Xie Yan curled up, trying to protect his head and face, and painful groans escaped from his clenched teeth.
"Brother...Brother!"
Xie Yan's pupils suddenly contracted.
The remaining officers ignored the boy curled up on the ground and pressed on towards Xie Yan again.
Just as their hands were about to touch her shoulders, Xie Yan narrowed her eyes slightly.
The wooden floor beneath her, no, something deeper beneath the floor... the "road," began to awaken.
She could feel that familiar wriggling, a subtle tremor traveling up her feet. Power gathered in the soil and foundation, ready to burst forth with a single thought, devouring and crushing these malicious people—
However, at the critical point when that surging power was about to burst forth, it suddenly froze.
It's not that power has disappeared, it's that the world itself... has been put on pause.
The wind stopped, and the dust remained suspended in mid-air, no longer falling.
The swaying of leaves outside the window is frozen in a single frame.
The officer's face, which held a mixture of businesslike demeanor and a barely perceptible glint of greed, froze completely, like a poorly made mask.
The baton aimed at Xie Yan hovered a few centimeters in the air from his back, the electric sparks no longer crackling.
Xie Yan's painfully curled-up posture, the bulging veins on his forehead, and the tears welling up in his eyes all froze.
All sounds are silent.
Xie Yan suddenly turned to the source of the power—the dusty window in the living room.
A figure was suspended in mid-air outside the window.
It was a young woman wearing a neatly tailored gray uniform of an unusual style, neither a local police uniform nor any clothing that Xie Yan had ever seen before.
Most striking was the silver embroidered emblem on the chest of her uniform—a blooming rose.
However, the rose's stem is not a flower stalk, but a winding, intertwined, and highly symbolic "path" that is intertwined and coexisting with the petals.
The most striking feature on the woman's face was the black leather eye patch covering her left eye, with the edges tightly fastened.
Her only remaining right eye drooped slightly, her gaze calmly fixed on Xie Yan.
The man's lips seemed to have a natural, slightly upturned curve, and when he spoke, his voice carried a peculiar relaxed quality, like a sigh from a tipsy afternoon, completely out of place in this stagnant scene of carnage.
“Young lady, killing too many people is not good.”
She gently shook her head, her tone almost soft:
“Having ‘talent’ doesn’t mean you have to go and… wipe out ordinary people.”
Xie Yan's body tensed instantly, her knuckles clenched until they turned white, barely managing to suppress the anger that was almost making her tremble.
She raised her head, her eyes, misty with tears, staring directly at the woman in the air:
“I didn’t harm anyone. It was them.”
She looked at her brother, frozen on the ground, and the police officers:
"They killed my parents, framed me as the murderer, and now they're arresting me and beating my brother... They're the bad guys!"
"I know."
The blindfolded woman's voice remained steady; she even smiled slightly.
“I know your anger is like a fire burning in the ground, making your insides ache. But little girl, you must understand that it was never just this one person or this whole house who killed your parents.”
She extended her index finger and gently tapped her temple:
"It's a 'momentum.' Like an invisible net, or a hidden undercurrent. You swallow these few with your 'path' today, but tomorrow more and more troublesome ones will come knocking. If you anger it, in the end..."
She paused, a subtle, indescribable light flashing in her right eye:
"It won't end well." Xie Yan's breathing quickened.
Beyond the anger, a trace of cold rationality managed to seep in.
She forced herself to think about the woman's words, though her heart was still pounding angrily in her chest. She took a deep breath, trying to make her voice sound steady:
"So... what do you mean? What should I do?"
"To live in anonymity."
The woman spoke crisply and clearly, as if stating a predetermined procedure:
"Then, become stronger. Strong enough to see every single thread of that net, strong enough to... cut it, or weave your own net."
Her tone carried an almost seductive certainty:
"When you become powerful enough, you'll find that many rules will change for you. Just like me now."
There was a moment of confusion in Xie Yan's eyes, but it was quickly replaced by a resolute look.
She didn't answer immediately, seemingly processing the sudden suggestion.
"but……"
The blindfolded woman changed the subject, and that slightly tipsy smile returned to her lips:
"I didn't come here specifically to give you a lecture on the philosophy of life."
She raised her hand, her fingertips casually brushing over the rose and road emblem on her chest, the gesture carrying an air of self-assured authority.
"I am a senior executive of Rose Transportation, codenamed 'One-Eyed'. I have detected that your 'talent' has begun to awaken and stabilize, and the energy fluctuations have exceeded the normal social security threshold. Continuing to stay here will only cause more trouble and... unnecessary casualties, both for you and for the order of this area."
Her only remaining right eye calmly gazed at Xie Yan and announced the verdict:
"You should leave here and go back to where you belong."
"Where should we go?"
Xie Yan repeated the word, which was empty and unfamiliar to her. Her home was broken, the road ahead was uncertain, and where was the place she "should go"?
"Yes."
The one-eyed man nodded slightly.
“It was a completely different world. There, ‘talent’ was not some kind of curse or miracle, but the cornerstone of society. Everyone had an ‘abnormality’ like yours, which we called—talent.”
"It's a place built on the rules of talent, a place where the strong prey on the weak, but also full of infinite possibilities. We call it—the Talent Society."
……
After that day, Xie Yan quietly disappeared from the neighborhood where she had lived for ten years, from the city that recorded the last warmth and the final tragedy of her family.
In the police file, her name was moved to another column, listed alongside her parents, becoming an unfortunate victim in that major murder case that was "brutal and the perpetrator is at large."
When the one-eyed creature departs, time, which had been frozen, begins to flow again.
The police officers and Xie Yan on the ground seemed to have only experienced a moment of confusion. They looked around blankly, their previous memories seemingly cleverly edited, leaving only a vague impression of "the target missing" and an inexplicable chill.
The arrest warrant for Xie Yan was quietly revoked, the case file was stamped with "special circumstances" and shelved.
Xie Yan guessed that this was related to the rose medal on the one-eyed man's chest, but no one confirmed it with her.
After Xie Yan left, Xie Yan became a true orphan.
Having no immediate family members, he was sent to a welfare home in the suburbs.
Because the only younger sister has been legally declared dead, the house that her parents left behind, which was once filled with laughter and joy, has been officially auctioned off by the court.
The proceeds from the auction became a regular source of income for Xie Yan during her long years in the welfare home.
In the noisy yet lonely environment of the welfare home, Xie Yan often woke up in the middle of the night, staring at the mottled ceiling.
He knew his sister was not dead.
That intuition of blood ties, and the blurry gray figure he caught glimpsing outside the window before the time shift that day, all contributed to his conviction.
But he also knew clearly that they might never see each other again in this lifetime.
What separated him from his sister was not just the physical distance, but also the difference in their abilities.
That was a world he, as an "ordinary person," could never reach or understand.
His sister embarked on a path he could neither imagine nor follow.
He, however, could only carry fragmented memories and endless questions, and walk alone on the path that belonged to ordinary people.
(End of this chapter)