Chapter 31

Holding the handle, An Zhe wondered, “I’m not guilty of committing an indecent assault now?”

“No.” Lu Feng turned back to the bedroom. “The crime of indecent assault is based on the will of the victim.”

This man had enough shamelessness to call himself a victim.

An Zhe had seen through this man. He pulled the box home and placed it in the most inconspicuous corner of the room. He wouldn’t let the Lu Feng inside see the sun.

At this time, the news on the TV finished broadcasting and it became the weather forecast for tomorrow. The sweet host said the plains where the base was located would usher in a rare windy day so please close the doors and windows.

When he was initially a mushroom, he was afraid of the wind because the wind would blow a mushroom away. Later, after his body changed from the breakage, he gradually became less afraid of the wind. Rather, he liked the feeling of being blown by the wind.

After washing, he went back to the bedroom and read the textbook for a while. As night started to deepen, An Zhe planned to go to sleep.

Just then, a low strange noise entered his ears. It was long and undulating, like the wind echoing in the narrowest canyon. Sometimes it was a vey low whine and sometimes it was sharp. It sounded like the window outside was blowing in the room but he couldn’t find the source of the sound.

It wasn’t the first time An Zhe heard such a sound. For many nights in this room, the low and distant sound accompanied the sound of dripping water in the kitchen in a strange harmony. The combination of these two sounds often made him imagine that he was still in the Abyss. Outside his cave, the wind would blow from the deep forest while the mucus and saliva secreted from plants and animals dripped on the mossy stones. Sometimes the structure of the cave and the wind produced a type of strange resonance, causing low sounds to come from all directions.

However, tonight’s sound was louder than ever before. An Zhe could finally be sure that the source of the sound was in his room.

He frowned, closed his eyes and carefully perceived the surroundings. Apart from the wind outside the window, the sound was coming from near his body.

An Zhe opened his eyes and got up from the bed. He stood barefoot on the floor and picked up a flashlight on the table. He turned it one, kneeled down and opened the sheets, shining the flashlight at the bottom of the bed.

A dark round hole appeared in front of him. It was on the wall the bed was resting against, where it met the floor. It was the size of a person’s skull and was like the opening of a man-made pipe. There was a black hole and he couldn’t see anything. He could just feel the wind blowing from it.

After looking at the opening for half a minute, An Zhe lowered the sheets and crawled back into bed. A human’s room always had some weird structures. He had to go to bed early tonight. Tomorrow was a very important day.

***

“Your body

Still struggling

Wants to return.”

“The nameless wildflower

it is already blooming abundantly.”

An Zhe watched Bai Nan silently write a poem on the test paper. Today was the final exam for this group of children. He was responsible for patrolling the examination room to prevent cheating.

The low sound from last night was also heard in the classroom but everyone seemed accustomed to it. An Zhe had also found a hole in the corner of the classroom. It seemed to be a common thing in human architecture. He hadn’t noticed it before because it was too noisy during the day and this covered up the sound. Today, the windy weather made the windy sound even louder.

He walked past Bai Nan’s position and moved forward. Jisha’s paper was a mess, full of smears and changes. Only the English questions had neat words. An Zhe looked down at them and it seemed that a few weren’t correct.

Most of the children were in the same position as Jisha. Some of them didn’t even make efforts to change their answers and the papers in front of then were almost blank. Of course, there were a few children who completed their papers well.

An Zhe walked around and came to a corner of the classroom next to the indifferent child called Sinan. Sinan’s papers had all been completed. It had only been 30 minutes since the exam started and he was faster than everyone else.

At this point, he wasn’t even checking them nor was he in a daze. Instead, he used a black pen to draw in the blank space of the test paper. It wasn’t appropriate to call it drawing. There were just some irregular black lines that were tangled in a chaotic manner, like vines in the Abyss. There was a type of madness that broke through the paper. By the end of the one and a half hour examination, the frantic lines had covered the entire test paper and only the handwriting of the answers could still be seen.

After collecting the papers, the children were taken back to their bedrooms by the life teacher. An Zhe took the papers back to the office where Lin Zuo and Colin were inside. Lin Zuo had just finished the mathematics and logic test paper. He saw An Zhe come in and said, “You and Colin share the task.”

An Zhe obediently responded and came next to Colin. Colin read out the name and grades of the children while An Zhe entered the grades into a computer form.

“Sinan,” Colin read. “100 points.”

An Zhe entered the score and whispered, “He is good.”

He had read the mathematics and logic rest papers. Addition, subtraction, multiplication and division were the simplest content in them. There were also geometric and logic questions that An Zhe thought he couldn’t necessarily answer.

At this time, Lin Zuo spoke up from where he was marking the language and literature test papers. “Sinan is a very rare genuis.”

“En.”

Lin Zuo continued, “However, I’m going going to promote him to Class A.”

After this one month, An Zhe had learned the rules of the children’s education.

The life teacher had a form for adding and subtracting points. There was also a record of the points in class as well as the usual assessment scores. Finally, there was the final examination scores. The two children with the best results in this class would be promoted to Class A and continue to receive education in the main city. They would grow and enter various institutions in the main city according to their specialties. Other children would enter the military base for training and assessment. One month later, the military would also select a dozen or so Class B children to continue training according to the situation. Once the children grew up, they would become military soldiers. The remaining children were classified as Class C and would be sent to the outer city for adoption by the residents there. Without adoption, they would continue to live collectively in the areas allocated by the outer city and become residents of the outer city.

Yet Lin Zuo said he had no plants to let Sinan enter Class A.

An Zhe wondered, “Why?”

“He has a problem with his character,” Lin Zuo explained. “He also isn’t suitable for entering the military. He is personally lacking in emotions and sometimes hates the base. The result of his evaluation is that he will be placed in Class C. I will have to trouble the two of you later.”

“…Okay.”

“He is a very strange child,” Lin Zuo muttered. “The life teacher told me he would frequently wake up at night and sometimes tremble, but the teacher couldn’t find the cause. I heard the caregiver who took care of him before he was three years old say that he lost a friend. This might’ve left a psychological shadow on him.”

One morning passed and the final grade was calculated. Five children, including Bai Nan, were selected. They and the outstanding children of other classes were sent to the seventh floor of the Garden of Eden for education while Lin Zuo was rotated to the third floor to take new children. An Zhe and Colin officially became the class teachers for the remaining children. Their task was to take the children to a military base and take care of them during the military training and assessment.

The main city was very efficient. In the afternoon, they took a shuttle bus to a military training ground in the city along with the children from other classes.

The wind on the training ground was very strong and brought fine sand, but the children were very excited as they ran around in the open field. The personnel from the military responsible for screening them came over and An Zhe and Colin were left idle. They could look around.

Sitting side by side on the iron bench, Colin suddenly spoke. He and An Zhe hadn’t communicated with each other all month.

“I’m willing to let go of my hatred for the Judge,” he said.

An Zhe glanced at him and found that Colin’s gaze went through layers of buildings and stared at the grey Eden in the distance with a very cold expression. Colin looked over there and continued, “It is because the entire city is as cold and callous as the Judge.”

An Zhe asked, “Why?”

“Have you seen the Garden of Eden? It is like a hive.”

Garden of Eden was a huge hexagonal building and it was indeed similar to a hive. An Zhe didn’t say anything and Colin kept talking to himself.

“Garden of Eden is the queen bee who produces tens of thousands of children every year. From the age of three, they are subjected to difficult assessments to select a small number with the highest IQ, letting them stay in the future for scientific research or something else. These children are useful to the main city and are the male bees, so they can get the superior living conditions of the main city. The others are worker bee who are assigned to the outer city with poor conditions. The base controls the food and water supply and the worker bees can only become mercenaries, desperately going out into the wild to bring supplies back to the base to survive. These supplies are used by the base to benefit the main city.”

He sneered, “This is how the entire base operates. The people valuable to the main city are the talented ones. They bombed District 6 without any distress at all. It is because the people of the outer city were originally what they discarded.”

An Zhe, “However, the main city is only big enough for a few people to live in.”

Colin turned to him. “Do you think they’re doing the right thing?”

An Zhe hesitated for a moment before nodding.

“You think they are doing the right thing because you survived. You are standing here in the main city.” Colin was agitated and his chest moved up and down a few times. “Human interests take precedence over everything else so everything they do is right. However, those who died, those who were killed by them, your loved ones and friends, what did they do wrong? Aren’t they human?”

An Zhe didn’t speak. He wasn’t confused by Colin’s questions because the Abyss also had groups of creatures. Based on his long-term observation, it was most important for the group to live than a single animal. He didn’t think that Colin was wrong but this type of person might be better suited to live in the Virginia Base.

Colin stared into his eyes and finally said, “I see. You have no feelings at all.”

Their conversation stopped.

An Zhe turned his eyes back to the children, who were much more adorable than Colin. However, at this time, the children were in chaos because some of them were fighting. An Zhe stood up and walked to the children, Colin following. It was Sinan and another strong boy who fought. Sinan’s eyes were a bit red as he pressed the boy to the ground.

“Let him go,” Colin ordered. “Sinan, points deducted.”

Sinan still didn’t let go of the boy. Colin could only step forward and forcibly separate them. After all, adults were much stronger than children. Sinan stood to the side with a cold face. An Zhe looked down at him and asked, “What happened?”

Sinan didn’t say anything but the other boy yelled, “When you talk at night, you call out Lily’s name! Lily has been taken away and locked up. You can’t find her!”

An Zhe saw Sinan clenching his fists.

Lily, this sounded like a little girl’s name.

“Who is Lily?” he asked.

Sinan finally answered. “My friend.”

“Where is she?”

“Garden of Eden,” Sinan’s voice was as cold as ice. An Zhe remembered Lin Zuo mentioning that Sinan lost a friend and guessed the cause of the dispute. The boy had brought up Sinan’s sadness.

“I’m not angry.” He knelt down and stared at Sinan, patting the boy’s shoulder gently. “I will tell him not to mention this thing later.”

Sinan’s expression didn’t change. He was clearly a child but there was an indifference to him that was different from other children.

An Zhe could only touch his hair and stand up. The children in the training field were a mess while Colin was educating the other child. His education was much more successful than An Zhe. As long as he mentioned the word ‘penalty’, the child was obedient.

An Zhe was inspired and said, “Next time you aren’t allowed to fight or points will be deducted.”

Sinan only said, “You don’t want me to stay in the main city anyway.”

While other children stumbled over their words, this child knew everything. An Zhe felt helpless but no one could help him.

Just then, a black car stopped and three people got off it. An Zhe looked over and met the eyes of the person in the middle.

He blinked.

Lu Feng also saw him. This person slightly raised his eyebrows before coming this way.

An Zhe wondered, “You’re here too?”

“I have a meeting.” Lu Feng answered. “What’s wrong with you?”

“There are two children fighting,” An Zhe explained with a bit of helplessness in his tone.

“It is good to fight.”

He made An Zhe involuntarily smile. Then he leaned down to Sinan, “The next time you fight, I’ll hit you.”

Lu Feng stared at him.

“You talk so well,” he stated coolly. “Not only will they continue to fight, they will hit you.”

An Zhe, “……”

He adjusted his expression and tried to make himself look a bit fierce. If he was fierce then he would educate the children and everything would go well.

Lu Feng’s lips curved up before he moved his gaze to Sinan. The eyes stopped sharply.

“Stay away from him.” The next moment, Lu Feng coldly ordered. An Zhe didn’t understand and almost reflexively listened to Lu Feng’s words, taking two steps back.

Lu Feng took two steps first and separated An Zhe and Sinan. He put on gloves and grabbed Sinan’s jaw, forcing the child to look at the sun. The sunlight stung and the pupils shrank.

“He has a problem.” Lu Feng held onto Sinan. “Contact the Lighthouse.”