Chapter 97 - 92: Yi Zhi’s Last Words

Chapter 97: Chapter 92: Yi Zhi’s Last Words

Read this as if I were speaking to you face-to-face.

By the time you receive this scheduled letter, I will likely have already been captured. I’ll no longer be able to bite my nails, agonizing over what excuse to use just to ask you out.

Whatever you do, do not come to save me! Don’t worry whether I am dead or alive, and don’t step into any traps because of me. I’m not writing this to win your sympathy, much less to ask you to risk your life for me. It’s just that there are things weighing heavily on my heart; if I don’t say them, I don’t think I could ever rest in peace.

You know I am from Huaxia. My hometown is on the southeast coast. Twenty years ago, on the day the Blood Plague broke out, I was still in my university laboratory, researching a new anti-cancer drug. My mom had told me she’d stewed my favorite seafood soup and urged me to come home early. I knew she had definitely invited someone over, waiting for me to go back for a blind date. She did that every time.

The sudden outbreak of the Blood Plague shattered my entire world.

My slumber was brief; I was among the very first batch to awaken. The whole world had turned blood-red. Those who woke up early were tearing into the people still lying unconscious by the roadside. The scent of blood was so alluring, but reason told me I couldn’t do that. I went home and saw my parents and grandparents all in a deep slumber. They had no heartbeat or pulse, yet they weren’t dead either.

By a stroke of chance, I learned that this plague had spread from the other side of the ocean. I didn’t know anything back then; my only thought was to find a cure and wake my family up. It just so happened that Victor was returning to the other side of the ocean to find his sister and niece. Without overthinking it, I hid my slumbering family in a secret location and boarded that ship with Victor, not even knowing if we would make it across.

That journey was too bitter. We drifted at sea for three months. I was so starved that I started biting my own flesh, nearly turning into a member of the Fallen Species. Victor beat me black and blue, tied me up, pried my mouth open, and poured human blood down my throat. Only then did I survive.

In truth, I knew what Victor and that gang of vicious thugs were hiding beneath the deck. Human blood had to come from somewhere. Every day, I could hear desperate cries, growing fainter by the day. But I also knew I had to live. I had to find a cure, and I had to return to Huaxia to save my family and my hometown.

Only when I arrived in Night City did I realize this place was even more like Hell.

In the beginning, there was no artificial blood plasma. The upper-class nobles wanted to create living blood sources, and I was forced to participate in the research and development of cloning Blood Beasts.

Do you know what that feels like? To look at the living Clones in the incubation pods every day—they had heartbeats, they could feel pain, yet from the moment they were born, they were strapped to blood-drawing tables until their very last drop of blood was drained. Every time I drank blood plasma, it felt like swallowing a handful of needles, piercing my insides until every organ ached.

I am an unforgivable sinner with hands drenched in blood!

During those first few years, I broke down countless times. I pressed a gun to my temple more times than I can count. Every time I was about to pull the trigger, I would remember the sea back home, my mom’s stewed soup, my slumbering family, and everything I loved about Huaxia. I told myself I couldn’t die. If I died, there would truly be no one left to save them.

Relying solely on this tiny sliver of obsession, I endured twenty whole years in the Saint Group, changing from the fiery-hearted Yi Zhi into the current, emotionless Ian. I thought my heart had died long ago—died in the Blood Plague, died in those cloning pods, died in the day-to-day sins.

Until you appeared. To be precise, until the first time I clearly laid eyes on you.

Back then, you had just crawled out of the culture dish, drenched from head to toe, as skinny as a stray cat caught in the rain. You stood there, watching those executed test subjects. None of them noticed that besides fear, there was also anger in your eyes—anger directed at the person who treated you as nothing more than expendable material. I lacked that anger; all I had left was exhaustion. I envied you so much for still possessing such vibrant emotions.

Your uniqueness captivated me from that very moment.

You were a Source Series test subject, the company’s most valued product. Everyone treated you all as emotionless tools. I was the only one who, through the surveillance screens, saw how different you were.

On the training ground, you wouldn’t numbly endure like the majority of the other test subjects. You would fight back. You would clench your fists with red, furious eyes, refusing to bow your head even when you were outmatched. That tenacity in you struck a chord within me. It was so much like the fishermen in my hometown. The stronger the wind and the fiercer the waves, the straighter they would stand. They never lacked the courage to brave the storm.

I couldn’t help but notice you.

I started secretly following your training data. I watched you go from being unable to stand, to knocking out opponents with a single punch. I watched you calmly counterattack when facing the Fallen Species, and I watched you find a way to survive time and time again in desperate situations.

In this lightless world, I thought that ’falling in love’ was something that only existed in novels. That was, until the incident at the drilling platform. My heart, which had been dead and silent for twenty years since I became a member of the Blood Clan, suddenly began beating wildly. Blood rushed to my head, my palms sweat, and even my breathing grew chaotic. This was caused by an excessive secretion of phenethylamine in the brain—what the secular world calls falling in love.

But I hid it incredibly well. I told myself it was just the suspension bridge effect from encountering danger, that I would be fine once I calmed down. I shouldn’t have such thoughts; it was inappropriate. But after returning that day, I suffered from insomnia all night. The moment I closed my eyes, I saw that exact instant. Those eyes—I couldn’t erase them no matter how hard I tried.

This feeling was very unfamiliar, and reason kept telling me it was wrong. I shouldn’t be feeling this way.

The secrets you carried held a fatal danger, yet they also exerted a fatal attraction on me. I couldn’t help but wonder: once the Blood Plague ended, could we reintroduce ourselves and get to know each other anew?

I wanted to take you to the alleyway in my hometown to eat the oyster omelets pan-fried by the old granny. Crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, drizzled with sweet chili sauce—that is the flavor I miss most in my entire life. I wanted to take you to the seaside to feel the evening breeze and listen to the sound of the waves crashing against the sandy beach. There are no filthy Mutants there, only little kids digging in the sand everywhere. I also wanted to take you to the night market to eat all kinds of street food, taking you to experience everything I loved eating and playing with when I was a child.

I don’t know if I’ll ever have the chance or the honor to do so.

Too many things have happened over the past few days. I feel with increasing clarity that this world is utterly absurd, as if an invisible hand has been manipulating me. At the same time, I have a growing premonition that my time of death is drawing near. Perhaps out of rebellion, those uncertain, inappropriate feelings—I have become increasingly convinced that they aren’t wrong. They are my only truth.

So, I wrote this letter in advance and set it on a three-day timer. As long as I didn’t manually cancel it, this letter would automatically be sent. I believe you will definitely see it.

Remember, do not save me!

Victor has suspected me for a long time. It was only a matter of time before he caught me; this is my long-destined fate. What you truly need to do is destroy the core laboratory located in the deepest underground levels of Saint. The source of the Blood Plague is hidden there. Only by destroying that place can you achieve true freedom and put an end to all these sins.

If they use me as bait, that will be your best window to act. I hid the laboratory route map and a cloned access card inside a hollow brick—the third row on the wall behind the dumpster downstairs from my apartment.

My life has been too much of a failure. I couldn’t save my family, I couldn’t return to my homeland, and I couldn’t even confess my feelings to the person I like in person. My only wish is that you all survive, break free from all your shackles, live exactly how you want to live, and walk in the sunlight!

If there is a next life, I want to turn back into an ordinary human. I want to return to my hometown, take you to eat all the street food in the alleys, and watch the sunrise by the sea. There will be no more Blood Clan, no more experiments, and no more life-and-death separations.

My dear girl, don’t look back. Keep moving forward, and after dawn breaks, forget this place.

—Yi Zhi, his final words.