Pollutant Disguise Plan (POLLUTANT)
Zhou Ye descended the stairs where Li Zhiyan waited below.
That was typical of the captain—he never interfered with tasks his team could handle, especially for something as routine as a Level D Pollutant.
"Same type of rat." Zhou Ye dragged the fallen rodent's corpse out of the residential building. "But surprisingly, the pollutant wasn't the tenant—it was the landlord."
Li Zhiyan nodded, then crossed out "Shen Ji" from the list.
"What are the specifics?"
"No contamination level detected on the person, but the room's contamination level was a bit high—probably due to being attacked by this thing. Environmental contamination reached 57%."
As he spoke, Zhou Ye pulled an evidence bag from his pocket but accidentally dropped his work badge onto the floor in the process.
Li Zhiyan glanced at the fallen badge and remarked dryly, "If you lose your badge again, I won’t approve a replacement. Go to Jiang Ying for approval yourself."
"No way!" Zhou Ye hastily picked up the badge and seized the opportunity to wail, "Deputy Captain Jiang will kill me!"
"So, what's this?" Li Zhiyan pointed at the evidence bag in his hand.
Zhou Ye quickly raised it. "Mushrooms. Found in the tenant’s room. They're oddly fresh."
"Take them back for the Science Division to examine."
Contamination didn’t just affect people. Take that rat from earlier, for example—it carried a large amount of toxins. These toxins could not only corrode surrounding objects but also evaporate into the air. As contamination spread through air currents, so did the toxins. The first things affected were harvested fruits and vegetables.
In the victim’s home from the neighboring complex, even the dairy products in the fridge had spoiled, emitting a foul stench. Yet here, there were these unnaturally fresh mushrooms.
Li Zhiyan studied the mushrooms thoughtfully before turning his gaze to the rat carcass on the floor. After a few seconds, he strode out of the residential building.
"Captain?”
"I'm a little hungry. Let’s skip work and grab some mushroom soup."
"...Boss, you really do whatever comes to mind."
The two placed the carcass in an airtight containment unit, waiting for specialized retrieval, then continued inspecting the reported individuals.
The rain grew heavier.
Droplets pattering loudly against the transparent panels of the specialized equipment.
In an unnoticed corner, white mycelia—finer than strands of hair—slowly crept out from the seams of the containment unit. They stretched into the air while sprouting translucent caps.
Rainwater mixed with contamination dripped onto the caps, and the mycelia swayed happily in response.
Meanwhile, upstairs.
Shen Ji locked the door from the inside again.
[The timing of our transmigration isn’t great. The Containment Breach Incident has already happened. Soon, the protagonist will find traces of you, and then we won’t even have a place to run.]
[Before we’re completely exposed, we need to come up with a plan.]
"Got it." Shen Ji gathered the mushrooms on the table and stuffed them into the fridge before responding half-heartedly, "Got any ideas?"
Truthfully, he didn’t. If he did, he wouldn’t have been idling around here all this time.
When he first woke up in this world, the system had explained its purpose: it brought Shen Ji here to ensure the novel progressed normally and reached its true ending.
According to the system, every world had its own inherent logic—even one derived from a novel. They would automatically fill in gaps and continue evolving. In other words: this was a real world.
Now, the author’s rushed ending had disrupted this world’s development, and it needed to be corrected.
In short, they absolutely couldn’t let the antagonist die so casually at the story’s botched conclusion.
However, the nature of Pollutant Hui is extremely radical and extreme. Binding with Hui would only make things worse, which is why the system chose Shen Ji, whose life had ended as poorly as a botched novel, to help.
Shen Ji was speechless. "Sorry my life turned out to have a bad ending."
[Now I think choosing you was the right decision. As long as we survive this arc, we'll be free.]
"Easier said than done. Hui has already triggered the final major event of the entire story, and the protagonist will inevitably discover him during this disaster. It's all set in stone." Shen Ji closed the fridge door and walked to the mirror to check if mushrooms were still growing on his forehead, all appearing utterly calm.
"Alternatively, we could oppose the protagonist and kill him outright. That would prevent our exposure."
[...]
[Truly befitting of a villain, jumping straight to killing the protagonist. I approve.]
"Is that delinquent really that strong?" Shen Ji asked curiously.
Although he had finished reading the novel, his busy work schedule meant he’d only skimmed through it intermittently. By the end, he barely remembered the plot—only that the botched ending left him feeling mentally and physically violated, leaving him resentful rather than nostalgic.
[Li Zhiyan isn’t your typical protagonist from power-fantasy novels. His personality is striking, and he lacks the self-sacrificial tendencies of conventional heroes. His immense power and extreme self-centeredness make him polarizing. Some readers argue he shows no growth, acting purely for amusement—even letting high-level Pollutants go in the story.]
[But his strength is undeniable. His innate ability, 'Mimicry Butterfly,' possesses a contamination effect even stronger than Pollutants, capable of directly disrupting the minds of both humans and Pollutants. The impact is absurdly potent.]
[Even if this novel hadn’t ended poorly, your one-on-one odds against him would only be 50-50.]
"Then there’s no way." Shen Ji flopped onto the bed. "Guess I’ll just die."
[Don’t give up!]
"Maybe I’ll fake my death. If the mastermind is dead, humans—including the protagonist—won’t keep investigating, right?"
["You think this is a novel?"]
"Isn't it just a novel?"
Well... it really is a novel.
So the system began considering the feasibility of this suggestion and silently exited the chat.
Seeing that it had stopped talking, Shen Ji lay down on the bed and opened his phone to continue browsing the forum from earlier.
It seemed tonight was far from peaceful—most people didn’t dare sleep, and the forum posts were refreshing at an alarming rate. Many were reporting their surroundings in real time.
"What type of pollutant is this?"
OP: I heard gunshots outside. Through the peephole, I can see people in Guard uniforms knocking on doors for inspections. There’s definitely a Pollutant out there, right?
1F: Half an hour ago, the Q City Anti-Contamination Control Center branch issued a notice. Although this is a large-scale contamination incident, most of them are Level D Pollutants.
2F: That’s a relief. Level D isn’t too dangerous.
3F: I saw a huge rat—so massive that it was almost as tall as a person—dart past my door with guards chasing it. Scared the hell out of me.
4F: That’s one of the newly announced Pollutant types—Level D Pollutants [Black Rat]. It’s venomous, its blood is corrosive, and it’s omnivorous. It’ll prioritize attacking people it has grudges against. Don’t engage it up close—its fur is sharp, and getting pricked means poisoning.
5F: …There seem to be other Pollutants too. I saw my neighbor go out late at night. I wanted to warn him not to leave, but then I noticed his face had turned bluish and his skin wrinkled—like, like tree bark.
6F: Tree bark?
7F: He kept muttering things I couldn’t understand and saying he was so thirsty, that he desperately needed water. Then he ran out of the hallway. I looked out the window and saw him standing in the rain with his arms raised and laughing as the water poured over him. I immediately called the Anti-Contamination Control Center to report it.
[This post included a photo—dark and blurry, but under the dim streetlight, a figure stood with their back to the camera, with their arms raised overhead. On their limbs, faint branches could be seen sprouting, defying autumn with tender green shoots. The plants were ecstatically drinking in the rain.]
8F: Are you okay, OP? You got that close to a Pollutant?
9F: I don’t know… I just suddenly feel… really thirsty. Can I go downstairs for water? I promise I’ll come right back.
10F: ……
"What a horror story."
A professional habit made Shen Ji instinctively long-press to save the photo.
Only when the "save complete" notification popped up did he remember—he wasn’t a journalist anymore. He didn’t need to be this sharp about news.
Sighing helplessly, Shen Ji tossed his phone onto the bedside table and curled up in bed. The movement left his hair slightly disheveled, adding to his naturally cold demeanor an allure that made one want to mess him up even more.
"Gotta get used to it, gotta get used to it," Shen Ji muttered to himself as he closed his eyes.
In the end, he decided sleep was the best way to clear his mind. So he turned off the light and, on a night when countless others lay awake, drifted off peacefully.
…….
[Hey, wake up.]
[What the hell, Pollutant, how can you sleep so soundly? Pollutants don't need sleep, do they?]
[Shen Ji, Shen Ji, wake up!]
Shen Ji groggily stretched out his hand and forced his eyelids open.
The first thing he saw was the floor-to-ceiling mirror, which seemed to be covered in a hazy mist, making even his own sleepy reflection indistinct.
What? Humidity season?
But this is the north, isn't it? Why would there be a humidity season?
With a buzzing sound, Shen Ji suddenly opened his eyes wide and jolted upright in bed.
His room was densely packed with white mushrooms, large and small, and crowding every corner. Even the floor-to-ceiling mirror was draped with mycelia—white, downy strands hanging from the ceiling, as if affectionately brushing against his face.
"What's going on?" Shen Ji got out of bed and immediately stepped on a mushroom, but nearly slipped from the strange sensation underfoot.
Even the refrigerator had been forced open at the seams with its gaps filled with plump, white mushrooms, their caps trembling precariously.
This was practically a mushroom paradise!
[It's the corpse the Guards moved out—that giant rat!]
[You withdrew too suddenly back then, leaving some mycelia inside the corpse. They followed it downstairs. The Anti-Contamination Control Center was artificially raining to wash away the pollution, and they secretly fed on it. Now that the artificial rain has stopped and they can't find food, they've come back to you.]
[Don't worry, they haven't been discovered.]
Shen Ji dug his shoes out from the sea of mushrooms. "Didn't you say that once they left my body, they'd just be ordinary mushrooms?"
[That was Hui's pollution. This is yours now—mutations are normal.]
[By the way, your phone rang three times. Want to call back?]
After putting on his shoes, Shen Ji retrieved his phone from the bedside drawer and indeed found three missed calls from an [Unknown] number.
Unknown number? A stranger? Or some special department?
Shen Ji pondered this.
Before he could reach any conclusion, the [Unknown] number called again.
"Hello?" Shen Ji answered.
"Finally picked up," the voice on the other end sighed in relief. "I don't know if you remember me, but I was the staff member who received you at the Containment Facility. Five days ago, you volunteered there but it overlapped with the Containment Breach Incident. For your safety and others', please come to the Anti-Contamination Control Center for a thorough pollution screening."
"But don't worry—if there were any issues, you would've mutated last night already."
Shen Ji: ...This person really has a way with words.
As a journalist, Shen Ji always remembered his duty—to appear earnest and approachable, and never provoking interviewees' displeasure. If undercover, he'd subtly guide subjects to reveal hidden truths.
Wait a minute? Did this person just say something terrifying?
"What did you say?" Shen Ji countered. "I volunteered at the Containment Facility five days ago?"
"Yes," the voice sounded even more surprised than Shen Ji. "Given the circumstances, you're still alive—you should buy a lottery ticket."
Shen Ji fell into speechless silence, while the system voiced the thought he couldn't articulate.
[Working at the Containment Facility—Hui really has some nerve.]