Zhou Heng finally let go of the doorknob. If he’d only been involved in these things indirectly, he might’ve been able to pretend none of it had happened.
But Zhou Heng still clearly remembered the taste and smell of the thing that bug had shoved into his mouth.
There was no way he could pretend this had never happened.
“Um... You and Su Mo are alike, right? You’re not ordinary people?”
The kid had made the right choice.
Mu Yuan gave Zhou Heng a silent thumbs-up, then spun his chair around to face him. Zhou Heng hurriedly backed away a few steps.
Fear and apprehension were plain on his young face.
Mu Yuan let out a soft sigh.
He could tell that the fear on Zhou Heng’s face wasn’t just from watching him perform that autopsy. It was more complicated than that—a wary unease toward unknown powers and unknown things.
Humans really were a strange species. Before they had any power, they dreamed of having it every day, desperate to be different from everyone else.
But once they truly gained power and were separated from ordinary people for good, they found themselves feeling an indescribable attachment to the very people they’d once taken for granted.
“We’re all human. You don’t have to be so afraid of me.”
Mu Yuan deliberately put extra emphasis on the words. He’d said this to plenty of people before, but every one of them had reacted like Zhou Heng was now: laughing awkwardly and backing away even faster.
After facing the same thing for so long, Mu Yuan had grown used to people keeping their distance out of fear. Still, he didn’t think Zhou Heng had any right to distance himself from him.
He and Mu Yuan were fundamentally the same.
“Young man, you’d better rein in those little schemes of yours. When I say ‘we,’ I don’t just mean Su Xi, Su Mo, and me.”
Mu Yuan pointed at Zhou Heng, the corners of his mouth curling into a smile.
“You’re one of us, too. Congratulations. As of today, you’re a proud Mutant.”
Zhou Heng froze for a moment, then asked:
“Because I swallowed what that bug fed me?”
Mu Yuan propped his chin on one hand, looking amused.
“It has nothing to do with what the bug fed you. You were already a Mutant. Actually, before now, you’d be called an Unawakened.”
An Unawakened was a Mutant whose ability wasn’t particularly striking or didn’t show itself in any especially extraordinary way, and who still believed they were an ordinary person.
Mu Yuan had met several ordinary people who didn’t find their superhuman abilities strange at all. One Unawakened, for instance, loved swallowing all kinds of metal and glass. Before anyone discovered that his stomach could digest metal, glass, and all sorts of other elements, he’d simply thought he had pica.
There was also someone who could look at a person once and describe their physical condition from head to toe, including every illness they’d ever had, without getting a single detail wrong. Before their ability was discovered, people just thought they had an excellent grasp of logic.
Society had become almost too tolerant. Add to that the news and all kinds of gossip showering geniuses with wildly exaggerated praise, and plenty of abilities far beyond human limits ended up being dismissed as special cases.
The emergence of the Unawakened had become all but inevitable.
Mu Yuan explained all this to Zhou Heng, then summed it up:
“Well, you’re more or less like all those Unawakened who go about thinking there’s nothing unusual about them. Until someone points out that you have abilities ordinary people don’t, you don’t think you’re any different from them.”
Mu Yuan paused at just the right moment, letting his gaze linger on Zhou Heng’s face.
“But the truth is, you’ve belonged to our world from the very beginning.”
Zhou Heng scratched his head in confusion. How should he put it? Mu Yuan’s words felt a little far-fetched to him.
An Unawakened?
A superpowered person who didn’t know they had powers?
Was that really a thing?
Zhou Heng ran his hands over his body, making sure nothing seemed wrong. Then he held out a hand and imagined fire, flowing water, a tornado, and all sorts of things he might be able to control. Still, nothing happened.
Zhou Heng tried a few more tests for superpowers.
He still couldn’t find anything different about himself.
Zhou Heng stared blankly back at Mu Yuan, who had tilted his head to one side.
“Are you messing with me?”
Mu Yuan burst out laughing.
“Who tests their powers like that? I told you, you’re Unawakened. If your ability were that easy to test, wouldn’t someone have discovered it already?”
