Player Reload

Familiar ceiling.

When the alarm rang in the morning, Li Sheng opened his eyes and sat up suddenly from the bed.

This is a bedroom of medium size, with several game posters on the wall and a pile of miscellaneous books in the bookcase, including but not limited to mathematics, physics, chemistry, reasoning, astronomy, folklore, computer programming, etc.

There is a computer desk at the foot of the bed, and a wrinkled schoolbag lies on the floor.

What happened last night was not a dream.

I am still wearing my school uniform, and my clothes and pants still have the fishy smell of being soaked in river water. Looking in the mirror, there are traces of wounds on my neck and palms, but the scars have formed a shallow scab, which can't be seen without careful observation.

Why did it heal so quickly? Was it because of the bee monster sting, or because of the fragments of some evil god?

Without time to think carefully, Li Sheng took off his clothes and pants and stuffed them into the bottom drawer of the computer desk.

It's too late to wash clothes now, and I can't put it in the washing machine, otherwise it will stink.

Then he took out several packets of desiccant from the bottom of the closet and put them in a sealed bag with the soaked mobile phone to dehumidify.

Then he picked out some clothes to change and tiptoed to open the door.

The house has four bedrooms, one living room, one kitchen and two bathrooms. It is spacious and elegantly decorated. The glass cabinet between the living room and the dining room is filled with various competition trophies and certificates of honor won by my cousins.

Fortunately, my aunt and uncle's family have not yet gotten up. Li Sheng trotted into the bathroom and quickly washed his whole body. He found that the penetrating wound on the left shoulder of his back had also healed for the most part.

A rustling sound came from the living room. I think the family members woke up. He turned off the faucet and was about to dry his body, put on his clothes and go out.

Sizzle——

A large number of light-colored needle hairs suddenly pierced out from his right arm. It was about 20 centimeters long and extremely hard, like a steel nail.

Caught off guard, Li Sheng's palm unconsciously exerted force, and with a "rip" sound, he tore the thickened cotton and soaked towel apart, which was no more difficult than tearing a piece of paper. His strength was far greater than before.

"Is anyone in there?"

A crisp female voice came from outside the bathroom door, from his cousin Xue Luomeng.

"It's me, taking a shower." Li Sheng turned on the rain shower, trying to keep his voice calm, and tried to pry the needle hairs on his arm, but he couldn't pry them apart at all.

"Then hurry up." Xue Luomeng's footsteps left the door, and at the same time, the sound of cooking in the direction of the living room also became louder.

Li Sheng must not go out in this form. In his mind, the scene of the taxi driver who grew compound eyes, fangs, and membranous wings last night and was finally shot dead by the Special Affairs Bureau appeared again.

Wait, something is wrong. There was nothing on the surface of the taxi driver's arm, but these light-colored needle hairs looked more like the ants that crawled onto the back of his hand under the bridge hole at that time?

What is this, did he absorb the genes of the ants?

Li Sheng stared at his arm blankly, and suddenly had an idea. He stepped on the edge of the bathtub and reached out to the bathroom heater on the ceiling.

The light from the bathroom heater was bright and warm, shining through the skin of his arm, illuminating the blood vessels and muscles below.

Those needle hairs are not rootless trees. There are hair follicles at their roots, and there is a circle of muscles above the hair follicles.

Having muscles means that it may be possible to control them.

A strong will rose in Li Sheng's mind, controlling the extra set of muscles to retract the needle hairs.

Squeak--

All the needle hairs slowly retracted and retracted under the skin. The surface of the skin was as smooth as before, and no traces could be seen.

Success.

Li Sheng breathed a sigh of relief, put the torn towel into his pocket, opened the door with a normal look, and saw Xue Luomeng who was about to knock on the door.

"Why did it take so long?"

Xue Luomeng complained and walked into the bathroom holding clothes.

Li Sheng's aunt Li Zhao is an HR of a clothing company, and his uncle Xue Jingming is a sales manager of a shipping machinery and equipment company. The Xue family is still a large family that has been passed down for hundreds of years. It has a large-scale family business and holds a clan meeting to worship ancestors every year.

Xue Jingming and Li Zhao are both very good-looking. Their son Xue Lingyu and daughter Xue Luomeng are also handsome men and beautiful women in the standard sense. They will attract people's attention when walking on the street.

When Xue Luomeng was a child, she was very close to Li Sheng and never left her side. She was closer to him than her own brother. I don't know when she started to become cold to him, treating him as a familiar stranger like her aunt.

Even though they went to the same high school, they were only one grade apart, and they only greeted each other coldly when they met.

Li Sheng had long been accustomed to her cousin's attitude. She walked out of the bathroom sideways, returned to her room, and hid the torn towel.

The increase in strength was not an illusion. Before going out, he tried it. The originally heavy computer desk could be easily lifted with his left hand, and he could hardly feel any pressure.

And the power of the right hand is even greater than that of the left hand.

————

The breeze brushed across his face. Li Sheng deliberately changed the cycling route, stopped on the bridge, and looked at the neighborhood he passed last night from afar.

Several old men in white sweatshirts were playing chess under a tree, and young men and women in sportswear were jogging with headphones on. Everything was normal, as if the bloodbath had never happened the night before.

I guess the so-called Special Affairs Bureau took care of everything. Cleaned up the scene, deleted the surveillance.

Li Sheng shuddered inexplicably. No organization in human society could master business skills right away. There must be a process of practice and adaptation.

The Special Affairs Bureau was so skilled. How many times had they destroyed corpses and blocked news?

In other words, how long ago did the abnormal incident like last night start? One year? Three years? Five years?

Li Sheng pulled his scarf to cover his mouth and nose, pedaled silently, and drove off the bridge. Driven by a strong sense of hunger and itching on his arms, he went to a breakfast shop and bought ten meat buns and two cups of soy milk.

He ate them all in a hurry, but still felt that it was not enough, so he changed to another shop and bought two trays of steamed dumplings and a bowl of green vegetable and shredded pork noodles.

After packing them away, he found an alley without surveillance cameras and ate them all in a short time. The hunger in his stomach and the itching under his arms subsided.

Li Sheng had a feeling that if he didn't eat enough, the needle hairs would pierce out from under his skin like in the bathroom.

He couldn't go to the hospital. The doctor would most likely report the situation. By then, the Special Affairs Bureau would know that there was a fish that had slipped through the net and would probably shoot him dead.

The most urgent thing was to figure out the situation first.

After thinking it over again and again, Li Sheng thought of someone.

————

In the evening, in the cafeteria of Zhuoyue Middle School, a petite girl with short hair sat in a corner, eating alone and browsing her phone.

She wore a white T-shirt and a gray plaid shirt, and wore thin-framed glasses. There was a cold and sharp look between her eyebrows.

According to common sense, a girl with a pretty face like this would not eat alone even if she didn't have a girlfriend.

The reason is very simple. Yuan Zhixia from the next class is a weirdo.

On the first day of school, when other students were nervously introducing themselves, she walked to the front of the stage and said carelessly: "I am a genius and I am not interested in ordinary humans. If there are aliens, future people, visitors from another world or superpowers among you, come to me, over."

After saying this cosplay of Haruhi Suzumiya, she walked off the stage leisurely and started her weirdo career.

Sitting in the last row of the classroom, she never listened to the class, and played with her phone with earphones on. Her grades were always in the top ten in the city. Whether she participated in the Olympiad, robot wars, or programming competitions, she always won the first prize.

The so-called "genius" and "top scholar" are just the upper limit of others, not hers.

It's not that there are no boys and girls who admire Yuan Zhixia and want to make friends with her, but she sincerely implements the concept of "not interested in ordinary humans" and has always been alone.

Li Sheng is one of the few people who can talk to her, probably because both of them are members of the school newspaper and astronomy club.

He put down the plate beside him and said embarrassedly: "Eat?"

"If you have something to say, say it." Yuan Zhixia glanced at him and continued to click on her phone to add the latest radio equipment, metal 3D printers, desktop collaborative robot arms, desktop workstations, etc. to the Amazon shopping cart.

"Do you have a ladder that can log in to the external network without being discovered?"

Li Sheng asked: "It is required to completely block the IP address, prevent traffic filtering and sniffing analysis, and not be found by anyone in any way."

"Oh?"

These words finally aroused Yuan Zhixia's interest. She put down her phone and raised her eyebrows slightly, "What do you want to do?"

"Look up some information." Li Sheng said vaguely.

Yuan Zhixia didn't investigate further. She reached into her pocket and picked one out of a pile of USB flash drives and put it on the table.

"You should know Tor, right? It's a browser package that is specifically used to hide itself and its traces on the dark web."

Yuan Zhixia said, "This USB flash drive contains an enhanced program I wrote myself. In addition to the original hiding function, it can also completely block browser vulnerabilities, block traffic analysis, circuit fingerprints and other detection methods, and prevent anyone from tracking and identifying it."

"Thank you," Li Sheng breathed a sigh of relief, "How much?"

"I don't want money," the girl shook her head, "I want you"

"Huh?" Li Sheng's eyes widened, his face full of surprise.

"What are you thinking about? I want you to pretend to be sick in a few days."

Yuan Zhixia leaned back and squinted his eyes and said, "Then give me the photography work of the school newspaper that day."

"What?" Li Sheng seemed to have a question mark on his head.

The reason why he joined the school newspaper, in addition to knowing some photography, the most important reason was that Ye Jiaying was also in the school newspaper.

"Wait." Li Sheng suddenly remembered that the interviewee of the school newspaper in a few days would be his cousin Xue Luomeng.

"You don't want to get close to Luomeng, do you?" He scratched his head and asked in confusion: "If you want to be friends with her, you can just say it directly to her face, why do you have to be so sneaky."

For some reason, Yuan Zhixia paid special attention to Xue Luomeng, who was one grade lower than her. At the beginning of this semester, she even asked Li Sheng indirectly if he had any photos of his cousin when he was a child. Orange in the air.

However, Li Sheng's sixth sense was very sure that Yuan Zhixia was not a lesbian. Her feelings for Xue Luomeng were more like a pure desire to be good friends?

"You talk like you are a master of emotions." Yuan Zhixia threw the USB drive to Li Sheng, picked up the plate and left.