Pollutant Disguise Plan (POLLUTANT)
"System?"
Shen Ji tried calling out to the system, but there was no response—only the mycelium clinging to him that was whimpering pitifully.
"Fine." Shen Ji patted their tiny mushroom heads. "It's normal for the system not to dream. As for you guys..."
"Next time, no matter what happens, don’t hide anything from me."
The little mushrooms immediately perked up, transforming in an instant into a swarm of mycelium, sharpening their metaphorical blades and charging toward the peach blossom tree.
In the blink of an eye, they had entangled themselves around the tree, attempting to gnaw it to nothing.
Shen Ji: "..."
He didn’t sense any contamination from this peach tree. As a fully matured seed of Pollutant, the Gardener possessing some special abilities wasn’t unusual. Shen Ji allowed them to search for weak points in the contamination, hoping they’d also pinpoint the Gardener’s location. He was determined to turn the Gardener’s botanical garden into plowed fields!
Just then, Shen Ji suddenly heard a commotion from the long line of people.
Those at the back craned their necks to see what was happening at the front, where a familiar white-haired punk stood facing the faceless figure.
Judging by his position... he had even cut in line.
Cutting straight to the front—classic Li Zhiyan.
The distance was too far for Shen Ji to hear what was being said, so he took a few steps forward.
At that moment, Li Zhiyan spoke.
His tone dripped with disdain. "...Your acting is so fake."
What?
The shadow opposite him fell silent for a few seconds before suddenly raising its axe. The blade pointed directly at Li Zhiyan, creating the unmistakable impression that it intended to chop him down—yet the axe froze midair.
Upon closer inspection, a tiny blue butterfly, no larger than a fingernail, was holding up the blade.
The faintly glowing butterfly effortlessly flipped the axe out of the shadow’s grip. Li Zhiyan extended his hand, and the butterfly alighted on his fingertip.
"You shouldn’t have refused me."
The faceless creature finally spoke, its voice neither distinctly male nor female was carrying the hazy quality unique to dreams. The entire long line of people clutched their heads and swayed before collapsing unconscious.
"I am the master of dreams. Don't even think of escaping the dream's control." The figure pointed at Li Zhiyan, its body twisting like writhing rubber.
"Scumbag, drop dead!"
This might have been the first time Li Zhiyan was ever called a scumbag in his life. His eyes flickered with something almost amused as he sidestepped the newly swung axe. White strands of hair brushed against the blade, and a blue butterfly alighted on its edge.
The next moment, the axe slipped from the creature's grip as if weightless and crashing heavily to the ground.
Unlike ordinary talents, Li Zhiyan's ability was exceptionally unique.
S-class talent [Mimicry Butterfly]—though called a butterfly, it was merely a metaphor drawn from "Zhuangzi's Dream of the Butterfly." He didn’t grow wings or take flight; instead, it was an extremely terrifying mental weapon.
In other words: he was the natural nemesis of Nightmares. Any Nightmare Pollutant would perish in a single encounter with him.
Li Zhiyan's silver hair stirred without wind, igniting from the tips in a shimmering blue flame.
Luminous butterflies emerged from the fire, swarming in overwhelming numbers before surging toward the faceless figure. The creature shrieked as it dropped the peach blossom branch it held to clutched its head in agony.
Li Zhiyan's pupils glowed.
Shen Ji had noticed earlier—though both of Li Zhiyan's eyes were blue, they weren’t the same shade. One resembled stained glass and patterns were etched upon it as if sunlight refracted through, casting prismatic light. And this was precisely the clearest proof that his talent carried contamination.
The faceless figure crouched and immobilized, until its entire body, beneath the swarm of butterflies, turned into a piece of wood. With a clatter, it fell to the ground while still carrying the faint scent of peach blossoms.
"Not the real body." Li Zhiyan nudged the wood with his foot.
"Wasn’t peach wood supposed to ward off evil? How did it become a decoy?"
Shen Ji clicked his tongue. "The more beautiful something is, the more poisonous it is."
With that remark, he turned to leave—only to find a blue butterfly fluttering right before him. The tiny creature beat its wings, its trailing edges dotted with light.
Unable to resist, he reached out a finger, and the butterfly obediently landed on his fingertip.
It even flaunted itself, slowly fanning its wings as if to give Shen Ji a better look.
So beautiful.
He wanted to keep it in a glass box, preserve it after death, and hang it on the wall as a specimen.
"They really do like you."
Shen Ji jerked his head up.
Huh?
The voice behind him continued, "Seems like, compared to me, you prefer these glowing little things."
Shen Ji didn’t want to turn around.
But not turning would be out of character, so he steeled himself and spun on his heel.
The butterfly remained undisturbed on his finger, utterly fearless. When Shen Ji finally faced him, Li Zhiyan stood less than three meters away, his pale blue eyes locking directly onto Shen Ji’s.
Was this white-haired punk really not some random NPC? Disappears for one second and he respawns.
'I’ve been spotted. What now?' Shen Ji reflexively asked the system.
Several seconds passed without a response before Shen Ji realized—of course, the system hadn't synchronized with him this time since it couldn't dream.
Once he got out, he'd definitely demand a system upgrade to install a dreaming program.
It felt strangely unfamiliar not having the system complain about the protagonist in his ear.
"Shen Ji?" Li Zhiyan studied him thoughtfully. "What a coincidence. We really do keep running into each other."
"Mr. Li." Shen Ji nodded. "What a surprise to see you again."
"Not a surprise." Li Zhiyan felt like he'd said this too many times, yet every time he encountered Shen Ji, he had to repeat it. "What are you doing here?"
This was indeed a difficult question to explain.
Shen Ji had been forcibly dragged in by the mycelium—though, admittedly, he had also wanted to come.
Territorial instinct was an inherent trait of all high-level Pollutants, and he couldn’t allow the Gardener’s seeds to encroach on his domain.
Even if he knew full well that Li Zhiyan could handle this seed.
If Li Zhiyan found this suspicious and started doubting him… then he’d really have to consider using the Undertaker’s talent to fake his death and escape.
"What do you think, Mr. Li?" Shen Ji’s expression was cool.
Having been pulled in shortly after returning to his dorm from work, Shen Ji was dressed casually—a white jacket over a black high-neck sweater. He wasn’t wearing glasses either, and his dark eyes were as calm as water. His naturally aloof features made him appear both detached and strikingly eye-catching.
His expression practically screamed: I don’t know either, I’m annoyed, could you stop asking? I’m already too tired to humor you.
Li Zhiyan stared at him for a long moment before finally speaking.
"Did you confess to someone? Did they say yes?"
Ah, right—that was an option. Those who successfully confessed were highly likely to appear in the dream. Should he fabricate a love interest?
Before Shen Ji could come up with a suitable candidate, Li Zhiyan spoke again.
"Do you know what this behavior is called? Two-timing. I just confessed to you this afternoon."
Shen Ji: "…"
"My first confession target immediately went and confessed to someone else. I’m heartbroken."
"To make it up to me, how about you consider joining the security team?"
Shen Ji: "…"
"No." Shen Ji refused flatly. "Don’t push your luck, Mr. Li. I don’t know why I’m here either—maybe it’s because you confessed to me."
Li Zhiyan frowned. "How did this suddenly become my fault?"
"Because in my dream, it was you under the peach blossom tree. That’s also why I had reservations when you first contacted me."
"But considering how many victims there are and with their lives at risk… I couldn’t let my personal concerns allow things to worsen and more people to die. So I agreed to your proposal. And yet, in the end, I was still dragged in here because of it."
Shen Ji closed his eyes, adopting the demeanor of someone sacrificing himself for a greater cause, even exuding a faint air of delicate melancholy.
"Don’t blame yourself, Mr. Li. This was my choice. I was prepared for it."
Playing the victim? He was an expert at this.
Li Zhiyan: "…"
Though he didn’t know why Shen Ji had entered the dream, based on what little he understood of him, it definitely wasn’t out of some selfless sense of martyrdom.
After a pause, Li Zhiyan rested a hand on his chin.
"So… does this mean we’re mutually in love?"
He genuinely wondered, "Since we both have feelings for each other, why won't you accept my invitation?"
Shen Ji: ...
Thankfully the system wasn't present—if it heard this, it would start screaming again and consider assassinating the protagonist.
"Mr. Li must be joking," Shen Ji replied politely with gentle eyes. "Director Wen told me that the subjects of our dreams aren't limited to specific individuals, but rather reflect who we've been thinking about recently. As the benefactor who guaranteed the Undertaker's corpse for our Containment Facility, many others besides myself have dreamed about you—including our Director Wen."
"Thinking about it this way, Mr. Li and Director Wen are both frontline figures in this war—they’d make quite the pair."
Once again, Li Zhiyan inwardly marveled at how well Shen Ji could phrase things.
The way he said it, it was as if the person he’d dreamed of wasn’t Shen Ji but Wen Jingyu instead.
When it came to avoiding any personal connection, Shen Ji could always find countless reasonable excuses.
Recruiting him into the team was going to be an uphill battle.
"Though the Guard Corps and the Containment Facilities are colleagues, we operate in different fields."
Li Zhiyan replied nonchalantly, "Even if we died, our photos probably wouldn’t be hung together."
…In fact, to preempt Shen Ji from hypothesizing about his death again, he’d gone ahead and done it himself first.
They locked eyes, and after a few seconds of silence, Shen Ji was the first to look away.
He changed the subject. "Have you found any leads, Mr. Li?"
So far, the little mushrooms hadn’t detected any traces of contamination. They kept scratching and clawing at the air, tearing at the microscopic contamination, but found nothing.
Agitated by the invasion of other contamination in their territory, they were practically on the verge of bawling to Shen Ji.
Poor little things.
"The security team has identified potential dreamers."
Li Zhiyan dropped a bombshell right off the bat.
"Really?" Shen Ji’s eyes lit up. "Does that mean this contamination will end soon? That everyone can be saved?"
"Not exactly."
Li Zhiyan snapped his fingers, and blue butterflies coalesced in his palm like fragments of a shattered screen reassembling. They formed the faces of two people.
Mimicry Butterflies—the contamination ability of S-class Mutant Li Zhiyan. Possessing mental contamination no less terrifying than that of actual contamination as they could fabricate illusions out of thin air and dreamlike as a mirage. Some even speculated in the original work that Li Zhiyan’s butterflies weren’t real but pure condensations of contamination.
Li Zhiyan merely used his contamination trait to morph them into a visually tolerable form.
After all, in the entire story, Li Zhiyan was the only one whose contamination ability could manifest outside his body and remain visible to others.
"Female A, Male B. Don’t ask me their names—I forgot." Li Zhiyan said shamelessly.
"They were residents of Q City’s Western District. Not long ago, they registered their marriage at the Marriage Bureau. Before the major contamination in Q City, they went missing in a minor contamination incident but were later recovered by the Guards."
"Ever since then, they’ve frequently argued late at night. Their neighbors called the police multiple times, reporting violent fights and the sound of things being smashed."
"Later, Male B was caught cheating by Female A."
Li Zhiyan waved his hand, and the man’s face shifted forward. "That night, no more arguments came from upstairs. A neighbor wanted to check on them, but due to Q City’s lockdown, it was put on hold."
"Until today, when Jiang Ying’s team broke into their apartment."
The bedroom was splattered with dark red blood, and bloody handprints smeared the floor—as if someone, after being slashed, had crawled desperately to escape, only to be caught and have their throat slit. Blood had even sprayed onto the ceiling, and the stench of decay was overwhelming due to the passage of time.
But Jiang Ying found no corpses, nor any trace of the killer.
It was as if they had all vanished into thin air.
Jiang Ying pleaded desperately for Director Wen to bring Chen Guo over. To avoid affecting the child's mental health, they didn't let her enter but had her sense the situation from the doorway.
Chen Guo detected a faint trace of contamination. On the floor plan Jiang Ying had prepared in advance, she marked the areas that felt off to her.
Following her indications, the security team found a withered peach branch.
"Peach blossoms hold special meaning for them," Shen Ji observed while staring at the peach tree before them. "So the breakthrough still lies with this tree."
"In legends, peach blossoms symbolize love, right?" Li Zhiyan asked. "Meeting someone you fall for at first sight and end up together is called 'encountering peach blossoms.'"
"All the victims so far have been dismembered. Our security team confirmed the tool used was an axe in every case."
"A peach tree representing love... and an axe capable of chopping it down."
Shen Ji and Li Zhiyan exchanged glances.
The moment their eyes met, they knew the other shared the same thought.
Li Zhiyan grew increasingly impressed by Shen Ji's sharp instincts—just a few words had been enough for him to grasp the plan. If it had been Zhou Ye here instead, he'd have needed eighteen questions to understand.
The blue butterflies lifted the axe from the ground—left behind when the faceless man vanished.
The axe struck hard against the peach tree marked "Scum." With the first blow, the tree turned pale as red sap oozed from the wound like blood.
A second swing, and the severed heads hanging from the branches snapped their eyes open in unison.
With the third strike, a human face emerged from the tree trunk—twisted in agony. It took Shen Ji a moment to recognize it as "Male B."
Its eyes flew open, filled with terror and pain.
"It hurts!" it wailed.
The heads on the branches joined in the screaming.
"It hurts! Please spare me! Spare us!"
Its shrieks were piercing and raw with suffering. "I was wrong! I'll never cheat again! I was bewitched!"
"She seduced me! It wasn't me, it wasn't me! It hurts! Stop hacking at me with that axe!"
"I really loved you! Please forgive me! Forgive us!"
A thick wave of contamination surged forth, and intensified with every scream.
The fungal hyphae burrowed into the soil, circling the tree hungrily, while Li Zhiyan's butterflies hovered nearby—both observing the spreading contamination.
Finally, the hyphae could take no more.
Starved and furious, they refused to let this invader of their territory escape.
They plunged into the tree roots en masse. Li Zhiyan frowned slightly—he had clearly noticed something. As the one dubbed the "human contamination detector" in the story, he sensed an unfamiliar taint suddenly appear.
It felt close, yet nothing was visible.
The hyphae lunged, tearing at the unseen presence and trying to rip its essence apart.
It was then that Shen Ji sensed something through the hyphae.
"Wait—he's still alive." The hyphae abruptly stopped, writhing restlessly but refusing to bite down.
Li Zhiyan turned to him. "What?"
"Male B—he's alive," Shen Ji said while staring at the agonized face. "He was dismembered, but the contamination prevented his death. Instead, he was forcibly fused into this peach tree."
"Everyone who comes here shares a connection with the peach blossom tree. For every person killed, Male B gets dismembered all over again, yet he remains alive—his contamination level barely reaching Stage III."
Li Zhiyan didn't ask how Shen Ji had discovered this. He only felt an unsettling familiarity with this contamination characteristic—so familiar it instantly churned his stomach.
After several seconds, he finally spoke. "The Plantation."
Shen Ji whipped his head around. "Li Zhiyan?"
"Planting a person inside a tree and forcing humans to share sensations with it, then brutally killing them—all to cultivate a tougher, more grotesque plants." Li Zhiyan's gaze turned icy and his blue pupils hardening like frozen steel. "Level S Pollutant: The Gardener, and its Plantation."
Li Zhiyan despised The Gardener.
He even resented whoever had named it 'The Gardener'. Every time he encountered that person at the Anti-Contamination Control Center, he'd curse them out. Giving such a vile Pollutant a name that sullied the honorable profession of gardening!
Superficially, Li Zhiyan and The Gardener both loved plants, but their affinities were fundamentally different.
Li Zhiyan cherished natural flora—flowers, grass, trees and even slightly contaminated species—as long as they grew naturally. Because he was a butterfly, and butterflies held an innate preference for nature.
The Gardener was nothing like that.
It didn't care for natural plants. It took perverse pleasure in merging plants with humans, creating horrific monsters. The stronger and more twisted the abomination, the more it delighted in it.
From the first time Li Zhiyan dealt with its contaminated seeds, he knew he'd eventually raze its Plantation to the ground. If only he could locate the damn place—he'd have stormed in long ago.
What a terrible taste!
"Can he still be treated?" Li Zhiyan asked Shen Ji.
"Impossible. The peach tree has fully fused with him," Shen Ji shook his head. "He's only alive because of the contamination. Remove it, and he dies instantly."
This wasn't mere contamination mutation but forced species grafting—a living human head grafted onto a peach tree. No ordinary person could survive decapitation.
"Then we dispose of him immediately."
Li Zhiyan snapped his fingers.
The blue butterflies' tail wings burst into flames, transforming into fire butterflies that encircled the peach tree.
"The Gardener maintains a contamination link with its seeds. It can briefly manifest through them in contamination zones. We eliminate this before it causes greater devastation." Only then did Li Zhiyan seem to remember Shen Ji's presence. "You don't object, do you?"
As a Containment Facility doctor, regardless of his true nature, Shen Ji would naturally feel compassion for contaminated patients. Since Li Zhiyan wanted to recruit him, he had to at least pretend to consider Shen Ji's opinion—though he'd proceed regardless.
"Of course not," Shen Ji replied. "He's beyond saving. No amount of effort would change that."
Nodding, Li Zhiyan directed the fire butterflies forward.
Instantly, the peach tree erupted in roaring flames.
The twisted, agonized faces embedded in the trunk screamed relentlessly, creating a scene straight from hell.
"No, please... no more cutting..." the distorted face on the trunk wailed in torment.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..."
"I won't dare... anymore."
The flames completely incinerated the contamination—this was the second effect of Li Zhiyan's innate ability.
He could burn away all contamination completely.
In the original story, Li Zhiyan's greatest achievement was burning a contamination rift for seven days and nights, ultimately rendering it completely inert.
From then on, Li Zhiyan was recognized as the most powerful S-class Mutant.
As the flames burned to their last flicker, that charred face finally relaxed from its agony.
"Thank you... thank you all."
With a crack, the great tree collapsed with a thunderous crash, leaving only mingled black ashes in its wake.
The moment the peach blossom tree fell, a voice simultaneously echoed in Shen Ji's mind.
[Ding ding ding! Your system is online!]
[I successfully upgraded my dream program and followed the trail left by your little mushroom to get here! Praise me!]
[Huh? Who’s this?]
After shamelessly boasting, the system suddenly noticed the person standing beside Shen Ji.
A few seconds later, the system panicked.
[The protagonist?! Why is he here?! Wait, no—he’s supposed to be here. No, no! How did you two meet?!]
[Shen Ji, have we been exposed?! Do we need to trigger the fake death arc now?!]
[Wahh, I’m actually kind of attached to this facility. Should we go incognito and join another one after faking our deaths?]
Shen Ji: …
‘Shut up, we haven’t been exposed yet!’
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