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| Descend from the Stars (STARS) |
Xu Rongchuan stepped out of the infirmary to find everyone gathered around the massive transparent containment pod. The entire Sixth Warehouse was eerily silent and the air so heavy it felt like it might freeze into ice.
The wound on his shoulder throbbed painfully, and the wait for the painkillers to take effect seemed endless. Standing a few steps behind the crowd, his gaze swept over the interior of the pod—and then his footsteps halted.
A familiar face sat atop a massive steel platform, his mutilated body meticulously clad in a police uniform and clutching a still-beating black heart that dripped blood incessantly. Beneath him, six blood-red eyeless orbs overlapped into a lotus-like pattern, and he sat precisely at its center, like a freshly formed, with a bloodstained pupil in the midst of those eyeless orbs.
It took Xu Rongchuan a few seconds to recall—that was the young intern who had been assigned to the Sixth Warehouse just two months ago.
On his first day, he had saluted him so enthusiastically that he knocked over his freshly poured coffee. The next day, Xu Rongchuan had been sent on an urgent mission and hadn’t returned until today.
What happened? They’d finally been assigned a new recruit—how had he ended up as a volunteer for the "Suicide Experiment"?
He walked to the front of the containment pod. The person inside had already slit his own wrist, and blood flowed along the pattern of the eyeless orbs, swiftly outlining the entire sigil.
The moment the blood completed the circuit, the air seemed to churn as if stirred by an invisible hand, even the light distorting. Indescribable changes unfolded behind the pod’s reinforced glass—the black, pulsating heart in the intern’s hand vanished into thin air!
Through the distorted air, he seemed to glimpse something utterly terrifying. He began screaming and stumbling backward, trying to flee—but his body ballooned like an overinflated sack, with every vein bulging like thick, green serpents—
BANG.
Chunks of flesh splattered against the pod’s transparent glass, shrouding it in a mist of blood.
The room was dead silent. After a moment, everyone removed their hats and bowed.
The atmosphere was heavy—heavy with a kind of numb resignation.
Xu Rongchuan exhaled slowly and walked over to the quiet man in a white lab coat and glasses, frowning as he asked, "Who was in charge of him?"
The man took off his glasses, slowly wiping them on his coat. His face was pale, his gaze still fixed on the blood-fogged pod as he answered hoarsely, "Me."
After a pause, he continued, "I wanted him in the lab, but he insisted on fieldwork. On his first mission, they ran into an aberrant spider. Sister Xia couldn’t keep an eye on him, and before she knew it, the thing had scratched his hand."
"When he came back, his stomach swelled up—full of spider eggs. By the time I operated on him, the eggs had already fused into that black heart—the one he signed the volunteer waiver for today, the one he was going to offer in the ritual."
"I didn’t agree to the sacrifice at first, but he told me… living like this was no different from being dead. Might as well take the gamble…"
The two stood in silence for a long moment before Xu Rongchuan patted his shoulder. "Lao Du… my condolences."
The man he called Lao Du—Du Ruo—was barely in his thirties, one of the chief scientists of the Pangu Project. He and Xu Rongchuan had known each other for ten years. His name sounded like a girl’s, and with his delicate features, he even looked like one. Once a staunch materialist, ever since certain mysterious forces had begun stirring in the shadows, he’d found himself neck-deep in the occult.
Currently, he remains one of the few materialists in the project team. He puts his glasses back on, watching his colleagues record data and clean up the bloody scene, and says, "No matter how many times I see it, I can't help but try to explain this phenomenon with known scientific knowledge."
"Any conclusions?" Xu Rongchuan asks.
"None," Du Ruo replies, his face pale. "This is... for now, unknown. Let's call it a miracle for the time being."
Xu Rongchuan looks at him, sensing that he's probably on the verge of vomiting but holding it back because of the many colleagues present. Sympathetically, he pulls out a cigarette and offers it to Du Ruo: "You should get used to it."
"During the two months you were away on field duty, ten volunteers attempted to sacrifice themselves to the anomalous cores. Only one survived, gaining enhanced ocular abilities. They were transferred to Warehouse Two, becoming a new superhuman. But in just two months, 'that power' has reached unprecedented levels of activity. Mysterious incidents have doubled, and many ordinary people have started noticing clues. We simply don’t have enough personnel to handle it all—if we don’t find a safer method of mutation soon, a nationwide loss of control might be imminent."
Xu Rongchuan responds with a nonchalant "Mm-hmm": "Looks like we should have a good meal tonight. Oh, by the way, Old Du, about that egg of mine..."
Du Ruo is momentarily speechless and his many anxious words all choked back, nearly suffocating him.
He pulls out an egg the size of his palm from his white coat and shoves it back into Xu Rongchuan’s hand. "Others return from missions with anomalous cores or occult research materials, but you—you bring back an egg. I tested it. It's just an ordinary egg. Wasted two hours of my time. Take it back and boil it for protein."
Xu Rongchuan exhales in relief, quickly tucking the egg into his pocket. He then casually ruffles his messy, weed-like hair and waves his hand. "I’m heading back to sleep. Haven’t had a full night’s rest in two months. See you tomorrow."
Du Ruo watches him leave.
The captain of Warehouse Six is handsome, young, and always appears lazy and indifferent. Yet, after years of dealing with the occult, every muscle in his body has been honed into that of a killing machine, exuding an inexplicably intimidating aura—like an unsheathed dagger soaked in blood. It’s easy to forget that he’s just an ordinary man.
Xu Rongchuan, captain of Warehouse Six, is the only ordinary human captain in all of Pangu.
Du Ruo gazes at his retreating figure, then turns back to look at the lingering blood mist in the chamber. He sighs softly and murmurs, "You’d better stay alive..."
Xu Rongchuan goes home and sleeps like the dead for twelve hours straight. When he wakes, it’s already 2 a.m.
The house is silent, like a block of concrete cast in darkness.
For some reason, he finds himself wide awake.
Staring at the ceiling, the ever-present tension from years of living on the edge stirs within him.
He sits up abruptly, doesn’t turn on the lights, and pads barefoot to the window. He pulls back the curtains, letting the moonlight spill inside.
Tonight, the moon is hazy, its light listless.
The room is as he left it—cluttered with unorganized junk and dirty clothes. His eyes slowly scan every familiar object, finding nothing out of place. He has a good habit: never keeping anything related to the occult in his own room.
Except... His gaze finally lands on the egg sitting on his desk.
An ordinary egg, bathed in moonlight, appeared exceptionally white under its shell. Before going to bed, Xu Rongchuan had seriously considered using it for a late-night snack while cooking, but unfortunately, he couldn’t be sure whether it was a chicken egg, duck egg, or something else entirely—Captain Xu was picky and would only eat chicken eggs.
Though Du Ruo had determined it to be just a normal egg, this egg had quite the backstory.
During his recent mission, Xu Rongchuan had infiltrated a cult in City A that worshipped an unknown deity—their object of veneration being this seemingly unremarkable egg. Every morning and evening, all members would gather before it, comically prostrating themselves in worship, while higher-ranking members would even slit their palms to offer blood sacrifices.
Xu Rongchuan spent two months dismantling the cult, and the egg, as the sole artifact recovered, was brought back to Warehouse Six. He had assumed it would at least have some connection to supernatural forces, but it turned out to be nothing more than an egg.
Now, standing face-to-face with the egg under the moonlight, he felt both doubtful and uncertain. After a moment, he walked to his desk, picked it up, and tossed it up and down a few times like a ping-pong ball. Then, he spun it on the desk, balancing it on its sharper end.
Thump, thump, thump. The egg spun quite well.
Xu Rongchuan shook his head, deciding he must just be exhausted. He tossed the egg back into the kitchen and returned to bed.
In less than a minute, he was fast asleep again.
The curtains had been left open, and the room was no longer shrouded in thick darkness. Moonlight flowed in, casting its glow over Xu Rongchuan’s sleeping profile.
After a long while, a faint sound came from the other side of the room. The egg, which should have been in the kitchen, began rolling silently, making its way to the edge of his bed. It bumped against the bed frame, hesitated for a few seconds, then—defying gravity—rolled up onto Xu Rongchuan’s bed.
Finally, it came to rest beside his pillow.
Under the moonlight, something inside the shell flickered—like a pair of blood-red eyes, flashing for just an instant.