Pollutant Disguise Plan (POLLUTANT)
[In the Anti-Contamination Control Center’s archives, even Pollutants are ranked in level.]
[Level E Pollutant: the lowest and most numerous Pollutants. They rarely cause mental contamination, and those infected mostly suffer physical mutations. They’re the easiest to detect, and cleaning them up only requires firearms—no need for mutants to step in.]
[Level D Pollutant: Pollutants with certain obsessions that act accordingly. Their range of contamination is limited, usually affecting single or double-digit victims. Still, they aren’t too difficult to handle.]
[Level C and above are the real headaches. Once they appear, contamination spreads widely that leading to devastating consequences. The Calamity Level will reach C, which is enough to bring an entire city to ruin.]
As the system explained, Shen Ji walked back to his rented apartment.
Night was falling, and the streets were nearly empty, and illuminated only by dim streetlights.
The rain from earlier had started drizzling again. Without an umbrella, Shen Ji picked up a broken transparent one from a nearby trash can. Two sticks were snapped, but it was still somewhat usable.
"Why would he rent a place from a Pollutant?" This was what Shen Ji most wanted to know.
[Maybe it wasn’t a Pollutant when he rented it. It might have been contaminated recently. You know about the ‘Containment leak incident,’ right? It caused severe consequences, including widespread contamination in Q City.]
The novel did not provide a detailed description of the impact caused by Pollutant Hui, likely because the author had already decided to abandon the story and didn't want to put in more effort. Thus, the novel only mentioned that this event caused tremendous consequences, leading humanity to resolve to eliminate the Level S Pollutant Hui at all costs.
Neither Shen Ji nor the system knew exactly how society would change as a result. They could only take things as they came.
In the end, the umbrella failed to shield him from the rain. Half of Shen Ji's shoulder was soaked, his coat clinging damply to his arm, and his glasses were fogged with moisture. He tossed the umbrella into a trash bin downstairs before heading up.
This was an old building. The elevator had been broken for a long time with no repairs, forcing him to take the stairs. The motion-sensor lights in the stairwell were unreliable as it kept flickering on and off, but today they behaved, illuminating his entire ascent.
The old apartment didn’t have a fingerprint lock, and the key was stubborn. The prolonged pause causes the sensor light to turn off.
Just as Shen Ji was about to clear his throat to reactivate the light, it suddenly flickered back on. He turned toward the stairwell and saw a small, elderly man peeking at him from around the corner.
The old man’s bald head gleamed under the light. Wrinkles piled from his forehead down to his chin, with a few long, stray whiskers dangling oddly. His gaze was fixed on Shen Ji with his slit-like eyes eerily lifeless, like a dead fish’s.
The light flickered off and on again. Shen Ji and the old man stared at each other for a full ten seconds.
"You're back," the old man finally spoke.
Shen Ji immediately recognized the voice from the phone call—the landlord?
"It's raining outside. Change your clothes if you get wet," the landlord advised in a hoarse, aged voice. "Starting today, there’s a curfew—no going out. Remember that. And don’t open the door, no matter what sounds you hear."
"What kind of sounds?"
"The sounds of the security teams. They’ll be searching door to door and clearing out Pollutants." The old man scratched at the railing with his nails, producing a strange metallic clinking. Shen Ji noticed dirt and reddish-black stains under his fingernails.
The old man kept staring into his eyes and continued, "Sometimes there’ll be screams. Don’t pay them any mind. That’s just the security teams capturing Pollutants, sending the contaminated to containment centers."
"Everything will be fine by dawn."
With that, the old man turned and shuffled away unsteadily. Shen Ji didn’t dwell on it.
He turned to unlock his door, but as he stepped inside, he glanced back toward the stairwell. There, the eerie landlord was crouched on all fours, silently watching him from the stairs.
Shen Ji closed the door and stood silently for a moment.
Finally, he muttered under his breath.
"Seems like a ghost."
[Pollutants and ghosts aren’t so different—they have special abilities, contaminating properties, and no human sense of morality. They’re man-eating monsters.]
"So what’s the source of this Contamination Disease?" Shen Ji suddenly slipped into professional curiosity. "Ocean radiation? Medical waste? Or some horrific bacterial research leak?"
[...Contamination disease has always existed.]
Shen Ji froze.
He hadn’t expected the system to answer.
The novel never explained where the pollution came from. It began with the protagonist, a member of the security team, setting out to rescue victims captured by Pollutants.
Since the dawn of written records, cases resembling Contamination Disease have existed worldwide, yet most were hastily dismissed as 'mental illness' or 'supernatural affliction.' In truth, authorities had already noticed these incidents and begun investigations—only for the Red Mist to erupt before they could determine the cause.
The Red Mist is the beginning of everything.
Thirty years ago, on an ordinary morning, an eerie crimson mist silently rose. Weather forecasts still predicted clear skies, and people assumed the red hue came from impurities mixed into the fog. Until they discovered online: the entire world was shrouded beneath this blood-colored haze.
Panic spread.
Contamination erupted.
Countless Pollutants that mutated in an instant, attacked others in the cities.
Then the world fell.
Humanity had taken millennia to build its order and technology. But destruction required only a single night.
Shen Ji didn’t speak further.
He needed a shower.
Draping his soaked coat over the nearby rack, he removed his glasses, loosened his tie, and unbuttoned his shirt, revealing smooth skin. He rolled his shoulders with a quiet sigh—no tension in his voice, as if transmigrating into a novel was nothing more than a trivial matter.
Finally, he pushed back his dripping hair with one hand and met his own gaze in the full-length mirror.
Truthfully, he still wasn’t quite used to this version of himself.
The reflection bore an eighty percent resemblance to his original self, though the hair was shorter, and the eyes—once freed from glasses—held a sharper, more aggressive edge.
Shen Ji hadn’t worn glasses at first. He was handsome, but his gaze carried an unexpected intensity. Even a calm stare could unsettle people that sometimes cause communication issues. On his superior’s advice, he’d adopted a pair of plain black-framed glasses to soften the effect.
The habit had stuck.
[Really looks like a villain.]
“I am the villain,” Shen Ji muttered as he lowered his hand to towel-dry his hair.
As he did, his movements slowed. He frowned slightly at his reflection, then pressed his fingers lightly against his right temple.
Strange speckles dotted the skin there—not quite a rash, but odd, scale-like bumps. It was soft to the touch.
What was this?
Before he could examine further, a BANG echoed from outside.
Shen Ji whipped his head toward the window.
Darkness pressed against the glass and rain pattering steadily. The dim glow of a streetlamp barely illuminated anything.
Two more gunshots followed—not too close, not too far. Probably the neighboring district.
No screams reached him.
Maybe the rain drowned them out. Or maybe Pollutants felt no pain, emitting no sound even when bullets tore through them.
Unplugging his freshly charged phone, Shen Ji settled into the landlord’s rickety chair and opened his contacts. He scrolled through while scrutinizing each bizarrely labeled entry.
If the landlord really is a Pollutant… then everyone in this list is one too?
With that thought, he exited the contacts and opened another app—an anonymous forum where ordinary people secretly discussed Pollutants.
Shen Ji, leveraging his reporter’s instincts, had uncovered and infiltrated it within days.
As soon as Shen Ji clicked in, he saw a trending post.
"This pollution incident is more serious than we imagined."
OP: I have a friend who works in the security team. My friend told me that this rain is entirely artificial. The containment facility's pollution leak has already contaminated the entire air. They had no choice but to use artificial rain to wash away the substances in the air, but it's already too late. Even if it rains for days, it won’t help.
1st comment: Really? Don’t tell me—I checked the weather forecast, and there wasn’t supposed to be rain these days!
2nd comment: What the hell is the security team doing?! How could they let this happen?!
3rd comment: Stop imagining things. The weather forecast being unreliable isn’t new. And even if it’s true, what can we do? Just report anyone who looks like a Pollutant, I guess.
4th comment: Speaking of which, I’ve been feeling like something’s off with the apartment above mine these past few days. Who keeps singing the same line over and over in the middle of the night? It’s really weird. Anyway, I’ve already called the police.
5th comment: God, we just had a few peaceful days!
The system chimed in: [It really is artificial rain. The intermittent rain is because the current cloud conditions don’t meet the requirements for artificial precipitation. As soon as conditions are met, they have to immediately start raining to wash the air. Of course, whether this actually works or not, I have no idea.]
[Looks like the protagonist you encountered earlier was urgently dispatched to handle this incident as a mutant. According to the novel’s plot, the protagonist discovers traces of Hui during this event.]
[By the way, do you still want to turn yourself in?]
Shen Ji: "……"
He was just joking—why was the system taking it seriously?
……….
The security team was conducting door-to-door inspections of potentially problematic residents in Q City.
In the rain, Li Zhiyan stood still while wearing a yellow raincoat and staring up at the sky. The rain quickly soaked his hair and clothes, yet he remained motionless.
Until a man with dripping wet hair and humming a tune, dragged a black object toward him.
The man was also wearing a security team uniform, but it hung loosely on him and unbuttoned despite the chilly autumn weather. The black undershirt beneath was soaked through, clinging to his skin and accentuating his figure.
Zhou Ye tossed the black object at Li Zhiyan’s feet and crouched down.
"Captain, stop spacing out and trying to look cool."
Li Zhiyan shot him a disgusted look. "Am I trying to look cool? No, I’m just wondering which idiot came up with the idea of artificial rain."
"Aside from drenching everyone, what’s the point?"
"I know, I know, butterflies are afraid of water," Zhou Ye waved his hand dismissively. "Anyway, it's been dealt with."
Li Zhiyan used his foot to flip the black object over. He stared at it for a few seconds before turning to Zhou Ye. "What is this thing?"
"A rat," Zhou Ye replied while still crouching beside the corpse, his tone oddly excited. "Exactly the kind you're thinking of—black, long tail, long whiskers, a big rat."
"Let Jiang Ying handle the corpse. Don’t let the contamination spread further." Li Zhiyan kicked the body back into place. "Who’s next?"
Zhou Ye swiped through his phone in the rain, searching for the records.
"Resident on the 5th floor of Building 8 in the neighboring complex—Shen Ji, single male and just moved in half a month ago."
Li Zhiyan nodded. "What’s the issue?"
"No job, doesn’t buy anything, suspected of not eating or drinking for over a week."
"His downstairs neighbor thought he was either mentally ill or a Pollutant, so they reported him to the Anti-Contamination Control Center. Ha! A Pollutant that can’t even disguise itself!"
"But it’s also strange. If he’s a Pollutant, why isn’t he doing anything? Just staying in a residential building?"
Li Zhiyan snatched the phone from his hand, flicking the water off the screen with his thumb and middle finger before skimming through the details.
"We won’t know until we check."
"Could just be the Awakening refractory period. Not eating or drinking is normal for Mutants."
"True." Zhou Ye stood on his tiptoes before shoving his hands into the soaked pockets of his jacket.
"In large-scale contamination incidents like this, Pollutants multiply, and so do Mutants.