Pollutant Disguise Plan (POLLUTANT)
[You actually didn’t get exposed—impressive! Even face-to-face with the protagonist, you managed to talk your way out of it.]
[What excuse did you use?]
‘I told him I had a dream, but since he was the one in it, he must have dragged me into it.’
[…What a masterful blame-shift. Luckily, Li Zhiyan is inside the dream. If this were reality, he’d have caught you lying.]
Shen Ji guiltily glanced at Li Zhiyan before asking, ‘What’s going on?’
[The confession targets have developed a new condition.]
[Everyone who accepted a confession has fallen into a coma. They’re in a deep, unresponsive sleep, but machines show they’re in REM—clearly dreaming.]
‘How is that a proof that I lied?’ Shen Ji sighed in relief. ‘They’re unconscious, I’m unconscious. They’re dreaming in REM, I’m dreaming here. The only difference is they don’t know where they’re dreaming, while I ended up here. What’s the issue?’
The system fell silent. A few seconds later, it had an epiphany.
[Oh… you’re right!]
[What a fortunate coincidence! But what’s the protagonist doing? Why isn’t he moving?]
Shen Ji turned to look at Li Zhiyan.
Indeed, he was standing motionless. The butterflies had returned to him, the ashes of the peach blossom tree were slowly dissipating, and he was silently staring at the remnants on the ground.
After nearly a minute, Li Zhiyan finally lifted his head and said, “Still not awake, huh.”
Shen Ji: …
So you thought burning the tree would wake you up and have just been waiting this whole time?!
“Could there be more than one seed?” Shen Ji spoke up. “You mentioned earlier that the missing people were a couple—two individuals.”
“Ah! You’re right.” Li Zhiyan nodded in agreement. “Sharing a single seed between two people would be too stingy.”
“In that case, this must be the other seed.”
Li Zhiyan turned to face the enormous peach blossom tree behind him.
This was the same colossal tree that had abruptly appeared earlier and endlessly releasing pollen that influenced everyone within its range—making them confess to others and dream beneath its branches at night. Whether tracing its origins or analyzing it through other means, this tree was undeniably strange.
It was most likely the second seed planted by the Gardener.
[The Level S Pollutant, Gardener, is known as the cruelest of its kind. Its Plantation houses countless bizarre plants—trees with human heads, seedlings grafted onto living people, even nightmare-borne contaminated species.]
The system promptly pulled up the original text.
[It plants its seeds in suitable hosts and nurtures them until maturity before reclaiming them into its garden.]
[As for the terrifying disasters caused when the seeds grow, it doesn't care at all. It only needs plants—humans are merely soil.]
Li Zhiyan walked up to the giant peach blossom tree and placed his hand on the trunk.
A faint glow lit up in his palm as the butterflies transformed into specks of light and surged into the colossal tree. Shen Ji watched from behind, while little mushrooms stealthily climbed onto his shoulders and perched there to observe alongside him.
Amazed by the sight, the little mushrooms nuzzled against Shen Ji.
‘It looks delicious! Master, let’s eat it!’
Shen Ji: "..."
He’s ferocious! Poisonous mushrooms? He’d devour them raw!
The little mushrooms let out a frightened squeak and scurried away.
"She's still dreaming," Li Zhiyan suddenly said.
Shen Ji asked, "What do you mean?"
"So that's how it is." Li Zhiyan withdrew his hand. "She isn’t the pollutant herself—it’s her dreams that carry contamination. She must have had a pollutant seed forced into her body, just like that tree earlier, causing her mutation."
"After killing the cheating man, she triggered the pollutant seed inside her and fell into a nightmare."
"The Nightmare released contamination, which then grew into this enormous peach blossom tree."
[So that’s it. As expected, there are differences between the novel and the original work.]
[The original work barely described the Level S Pollutant Gardener, but as the strongest S-class Mutant in the Anti-Contamination Control Center, Li Zhiyan undoubtedly understands the Gardener’s traits better than most and spotted the issue sooner.]
‘As the protagonist, he naturally has to be useful—otherwise, what’s the point of him?’
Turning to Li Zhiyan, Shen Ji politely and concernedly asked, "Then what should we do? Wake her up?"
[Sigh, you… Never mind, I won’t say anything.]
"We have to enter her dream." Li Zhiyan turned to Shen Ji. "This place is just the collective dream—the peach blossom tree everyone is dreaming of."
"To wake her, we must go into her dream."
"A dream within a dream?" Shen Ji frowned slightly, a trace of worry in his expression. "How do we get into her dream?"
"The entrance is right here on this tree." Li Zhiyan pointed at the trunk. Blue butterflies rushed into the bark, causing ripples to form until a hollow space opened in the middle.
Li Zhiyan asked, "Do you want to come in with me?"
Shen Ji was taken aback. "I thought you’d tell me to wait here."
"Really?" Li Zhiyan seemed surprised, even a little enlightened. "I could’ve had you wait outside?"
Shen Ji: "..."
"I want to recruit you for the Special Task Force Sixth Team. If I didn’t dare let you face even this much danger, what would be the point of recruiting you?" Li Zhiyan chuckled before gesturing toward the opening. "Since I’m inviting you, it means I’ve never doubted your ability to protect yourself."
"I trust you."
Shen Ji met Li Zhiyan’s gaze. After a few seconds, he looked away with a quiet "Thanks," and the faintest hint of a smile tugging at his lips.
Clearly, Shen Ji was pleased.
‘System, this protagonist really is different from the others.’
In most literary works, protagonists are often selfless heroes who care deeply for everyone around them. They trust but also worry, shielding others from hardship and danger, and handling everything themselves—what authors call ‘protection.’
This kind of protection could be seen as overbearing concern, or interpreted as 'excessive anxiety and control.'
But Li Zhiyan took a glaringly different stance by saying, "Go ahead. I won't stop you under the guise of protection, because I believe in you."
Even without the contamination threat, as a journalist, Shen Ji wasn't someone who needed protection—so he found this attitude particularly refreshing.
[Have you already been charmed by him? Little reporter, he's just deceiving you!]
'Whether it's deception or trust, I'll be the judge of that!'
[We should just assassinate the protagonist to cut off future troubles!]
Li Zhiyan didn't wait for Shen Ji. This wasn't the time for polite waiting. He stepped into the black void first and vanished beneath the peach blossom tree in the next instant.
Shen Ji followed but first surveying his surroundings before poking at the butterflies maintaining the void.
"How did he do this?" Shen Ji asked. "Just casually linking to someone else's dream like that."
[Because his talent is 'Mimicry Butterflies.' Zhuang Zhou dreamed of being a butterfly—in literature, mimicry is often associated with butterflies. Li Zhiyan's ability integrates and fuses these concepts, creating a talent that seems weak at first glance but is actually unimaginably powerful.]
[Not only can he find someone's dream, if he wanted, he could make everyone in Q City sleep forever and never to wake again.]
"Fascinating."
Shen Ji stepped into the black void and immediately felt a breeze.
Opening his eyes, he looked around. The breeze was gentle and not cold—it must be spring.
Not far away stood a massive peach blossom tree. Beneath it were two people: a woman in a pink dress, with her skirt and black hair fluttering in the wind. Her gaze fixed on the man kneeling before her.
"Marry me," the man said while holding out a peach blossom branch with a ring on it. "I'll love you forever."
Woman A and Man B.
[This is Woman A—no, her name is Lu Kexin. To sustain her pain and nurture the seed, she relives her traumatic memories in this nightmare. These experiences accelerate the seed's growth. What you're seeing is her memory.]
"Where's Li Zhiyan?"
[No sign of the protagonist detected. He might be elsewhere, so we don't need to worry about him discovering us for now.]
Lu Kexin was nearly in tears. "I do! I do!"
She extended her hand as the man slid the ring onto her finger, then took the peach branch while radiating happiness.
Shen Ji watched them. "No contamination aura."
[The process isn't complete yet. In the dream, she's still her former self, so the contamination hasn't erupted. It won't fully manifest until she kills her cheating husband. That's also the optimal time for us to extract the contamination seed.]
The couple embraced joyfully, only for the scene to shift to a marriage registration office at the Marriage Bureau, where they pledged their lives to each other and signed a flimsy certificate.
Up to this point, Lu Kexin was happy.
Until one day, when she went to pick her husband up from work.
They boarded their usual bus, but it suddenly changed course, heading somewhere unfamiliar.
[The Mysterious Bus Incident.]
The system pulled up the Anti-Contamination Control Center's archives.
"A mysterious bus with a license plate ending in 7739 suddenly appeared in Q City late at night. It often disguises itself as a staff shuttle bus after work hours. Those who boarded it mysteriously disappeared, with a few being found in abandoned wilderness areas, and all were suffering from varying degrees of mental instability and none remembering what they experienced."
"Lu Kexin and her husband were victims of this bizarre incident."
Shen Ji stood still pondering for a few seconds. "So if we find this bus, could we follow it to locate the Plantation?"
His eyes gradually lit up with excitement. "You know what, System? I once interviewed large-scale plantation farmers. To prepare properly, I even learned how to operate excavators and large agricultural machinery—I could drive it right away!"
[You're planning to follow a bus with an excavator?]
"There's no rule in the apocalypse saying excavators can't be on the road. If I save up a bit more from my salary and bonuses, I can afford one."
[……]
Is that really the issue here?!
Meanwhile, Lu Kexin and her husband got off the bus only to realize they hadn’t arrived at their usual stop. Instead, they found themselves in a strange, pitch-black place where nothing was visible—just thick, dark fog everywhere. In the mist, they stumbled into a tree covered in human heads.
As if awakened, the heads opened their eyes and began wailing like crying infants.
Terrified, the couple tried to flee, but thorned vines burst from the tree roots. In his panic, the man shoved his wife forward, sending her tumbling into the vines.
Lu Kexin was pierced all over by thorns, and one even gouged through her eye, causing blood to stream down. She could only watch helplessly as the man who had sworn to protect her for life fled in terror and vanishing within seconds.
"Ahhh!!" Lu Kexin screamed, her voice filled with agonizing despair.
"Humans again."
A bizarre voice spoke up, startling her. She struggled, but the thorns only dug deeper.
All she could do was listen as the eerie, androgynous voice droned on, dark and unsettling.
"You humans scared it again. It’s very timid, but you always scream the moment you see it. Such a lovely thing, really."
"Humans truly have no taste."
"Hmm? The scent on you… you might make decent soil."
"Since you frightened my darling, you’ll have to compensate me. My new seeds… I’ll leave them to you."
A vine pierced Lu Kexin’s neck, forcing a fist-sized black seed inside. The excruciating pain knocked her unconscious, and the vines dragged her beneath the tree of heads.
Soon after, the vines hauled a man out from the darkness.
"No! Let me go!!" he shrieked while clawing desperately to escape. "Don’t kill me!"
"This human’s quality is poor, but he’ll do as fertilizer." Another seed was shoved into his neck.
The Gardener then tossed both of them out of the plantation. They were later found by the security team with their memories wiped.
Shen Ji knew this was just a memory—the real Gardener wasn’t here—but hearing its voice still made his blood boil.
He shoved his hands into his pockets, gripping the fabric tightly to steady himself.
That damn Gardener! Planting seeds in his territory!
[Actually, I should mention—based on the timeline, the Gardener sowed those seeds before Hui arrived in Q City. By order of arrival, it was here first.]
"I don’t care when those seeds were planted. They’re growing on my turf now, and that’s unacceptable."
[Fine.]
The system sighed. [At this point, ever since the Gardener planted those contaminated seeds, their fate was already sealed.]
[Lu Kexin, who had lost her memories but retained her emotions due to contamination, began harboring inexplicable hatred toward her husband, leading to frequent arguments. Her husband struggled to understand Lu Kexin, yet subconsciously felt guilt and fear toward the woman he had personally pushed toward the contamination. Ultimately, driven by uncontrollable terror, he sought solace in an affair.]
[And so...]
Shen Ji turned to look into the room.
Lu Kexin raised the axe high and brought it down on the man, cleaving halfway through his neck.
Yet even then, the man didn't die. He crawled on the ground, howling in agony.
"I was wrong, Kexin! Spare me!"
"You promised to love me forever, to protect me always," Lu Kexin murmured as the axe descended again. "But you broke your word."
"She seduced me! I made a mistake, I'll be good to you from now on! Please don't—"
The axe severed the man's head.
Lu Kexin set down the axe and knelt before cradling the blood-soaked head in her hands.
"Let's go to hell together."
The severed head viciously clamped down on Lu Kexin's fingers, its eyes filled with malice. Startled, she pulled her fingers free from the biting jaws.
Placing the head on the ground, she picked up the axe again.
Thud—
A green sprout emerged from the nape of Lu Kexin's neck, unfurling its leaves and growing purple thorns.
It burrowed into her flesh, sinking deeper with each swing of her axe.
[It's coming!] The system warned Shen Ji.
The fungal threads erupted from the ground, having waited patiently for this moment.
As the contamination erupted, they swarmed over Lu Kexin in overwhelming numbers and viciously attacked the thorny vine protruding from her neck.
The pungent smell—different from ordinary spice—was so acrid it burned the throat.
But the fungal threads weren't picky eaters, especially when dealing with other contamination invading their territory.
After tearing off the vine's leaves, the threads burrowed into Lu Kexin's neck, attempting to extract the seed that had already taken root. The roots were intertwined with her blood vessels and organs, and the violent extraction made Lu Kexin scream in agony.
Unlike Chu Ye's case, this sprouted seed had completely fused with Lu Kexin.
Forcibly removing it would kill her instantly.
"Continue," Shen Ji commanded, his voice unexpectedly cold and unyielding as he stared at Lu Kexin.
Shen Ji had always been a pragmatic man. His years as a journalist had exposed him to countless situations, giving him greater insight and composure than most. He knew hesitation now would be pointless.
Just like how Li Zhiyan hadn't hesitated to burn that small peach tree—because he too understood some things were better off dead.
"She died the moment the seed sprouted. Now she's just a cultivation vessel for the Gardener's seed."
"The Gardener only cares whether the vessel provides nutrients for the seed's growth—not whether the vessel can be reused. To it, all humans are disposable tools."
For her, death wasn't a sin, but liberation.
With this realization, the fungal threads proceeded without restraint, pulling at the seed to extract it completely—they'd devour this massive chunk of pepper in one go!
Just then—buzz—all the fungal threads were violently repelled.
The previously powerless 'Lu Kexin' slowly rose from the ground, her long hair hanging down to cover one eye while the other glowed with an eerie green light.
A terrifying aura of contamination exploded throughout the room.
[Level S Pollutant: The Gardener. Can briefly manifest in other areas through seeds. It has possessed Lu Kexin.]
Shen Ji snapped his fingers, and a sea of fungal threads surged forth, surrounding the area. They locked onto 'Lu Kexin' in a tense standoff.
"It's you again."
'Lu Kexin' spoke, her voice now elongated and eerily calm. Purple thorns stretched out behind her once more. The severed branches regrowing despite the fungal threads' earlier assault. Aside from her ghostly appearance, the Gardener didn’t seem particularly threatening—almost inhuman in a strangely detached way.
It would question the meaning behind the name 'Gardener,' yet also praise its own plants as beautiful and adorable.
Now, it stared back at Shen Ji with that unsettling green eye.
"I already gifted you the last seed. Why must you bully my little sapling? It was so frightened it cried."
"They're still so young, so innocent. How could you be so cruel?"
Shen Ji met its gaze coldly. "Gardener.”
"It is I." The Gardener's voice was melodious. "Can you not hear the blossoming of life? How precious and wondrous it is. I plant and nurture solely to witness the miracles of existence."
"Journalist, why do you oppose me? Oppose them?"
The system couldn’t help but interject, [He still remembers you called yourself ‘Journalist’ back then.]
'That’s not worth mentioning.'
"I warned you last time—your seed encroached on my territory." Shen Ji’s tone was even, yet razor-sharp with warning. "Clearly, you took it as nothing. In such a short time, you let another seed sprout here."
'Lu Kexin' fell silent.
As a fellow high-level Pollutant, the Gardener understood better than anyone the consequences of invading another’s domain.
But hypocrisy was universal—especially among Pollutants, creatures inherently cruel and selfish.
After a pause, it finally spoke. "We should welcome new life."
"So you expect me to pretend nothing happened? Even return the seed to you?"
"That’s not what I meant. But don’t you find it adorable? It’s already sprouted—it’d be a shame to discard it now."
The Gardener cared for nothing but its seeds.
It sighed, conflicted. "The seed has taken root here. Uprooting it would doom it."
"We should give it a chance."
"No." Shen Ji’s pupils darkened to blood-red. His sharp features turned even more ruthless. Every word is a threat.
"Take your seed and get out of my territory. Now."
"Or don’t blame me for paying a visit to your plantation. I’m not as easily fooled as humans. To me, your precious plants are nothing but trash."
The Gardener remained silent for a long moment. Finally, its gaze turned cold and twisted.
Provoking another Level S Pollutant was unwise—but it refused to abandon its nurtured seed.
Its plantation was missing just one peach blossom tree capable of creating nightmares.
"I don't want to clash with you, but you simply refuse to yield an inch."
A faint peach blossom fragrance surrounded it as the overwhelming aura of contamination continued to expand.
Yield an inch?
Shen Ji's eyes remained cold, maintaining his usual calm demeanor, which only made him appear more terrifying. When silent, Shen Ji was far more frightening than when he spoke.
Not just in this apocalyptic novel, but even in modern times, Shen Ji understood one principle clearly.
One must never compromise their principles for others. The moment you yield an inch, others will push you to yield another, until there's nowhere left to retreat.
Countless interviewees had been driven to life's crossroads by such relentless pressure.
So today, he would uproot this damned peach blossom tree!
•───────•°•❀•°•───────•
Advanced chapters are now available up to chapter 105 (End of Main Text) on my Ko-fi page!
If you appreciate what I do, please consider supporting me on kofi. Thank you!
•───────•°•❀•°•───────•