A sheet of paper lay in front of Zhou Heng, covered in tightly packed fields waiting to be filled in.

Once they’d finished talking about Mutants, Mu Yuan handed the sheet to Zhou Heng.

According to Mu Yuan, whenever a wild Mutant was discovered, their identity had to be registered with the government agency that managed Mutants.

As luck would have it, Mu Yuan had a bit of a connection with that government agency. So Zhou Heng didn’t have to drag himself to a government office to fill out an identity form and go through a long, tedious registration process. He could just fill it out here, and Mu Yuan would take care of the rest.

Filling out the form wasn’t easy.

After the straightforward fields for name, height, weight, race, place of origin, contact information, home address, and ID number came a string of things Zhou Heng couldn’t make heads or tails of.

For example, after the heading “Human Mutant,” there were options for Black Iron Rank, Bronze Rank, Silver Rank, Gold Rank, King Species, and Transcendent Rank.

Below that, under “Nonhuman Mutant,” the options were Mutant Rank, Fantasy Rank, Danger Rank, Disaster Species, Taboo Species, and Untouchable Rank.

Zhou Heng pointed to that section.

“What does this mean?”

Mu Yuan, sitting nearby, glanced over.

“Exactly what it says. It’s your ability’s rank. Just put down Silver Rank.”

Zhou Heng checked the box for Silver Rank.

The ability options below left him just as confused.

There were six choices: Control, Transformation, Summoning, Mental, Enhancement, and Unclassifiable. Zhou Heng looked them over again and again, but had no idea which one to pick.

He gave Mu Yuan another questioning look. Mu Yuan replied,

“Put down Unclassifiable.”

A moment later, Mu Yuan simply pulled the form over to himself.

“Never mind. You’ve filled in the basic information, anyway. I’ll take care of the rest.”

Zhou Heng frowned. He’d already been wary when Mu Yuan first brought out the form and asked him to fill it in. Now that Mu Yuan was offering to do it for him, his wariness shot straight to the breaking point.

It wasn’t that Zhou Heng was ungrateful. It was just that he’d only met Mu Yuan today. Was it really wise to trust him without reservation?

Zhou Heng took the form back.

“How about I go fill it out at the Mutant management agency you mentioned? I don’t want to trouble you with it.”

Mu Yuan’s slightly raised eyes glinted with amusement.

Zhou Heng’s scalp prickled.

“N-no, I just think an official agency would be more…”

“That’s fine.”

Mu Yuan waved a hand.

“If you don’t mind the hassle, then I’ve got nothing to say. Everyone should respect other people’s choices.”

“But, young man…”

Mu Yuan sat up straight and crossed one leg over the other, placing both hands on his knee. There was no mistaking how serious he looked.

“If anything happens to you in the future that you can’t understand or believe, come find me.”

Mu Yuan slipped his right hand, which had been resting on his knee, inside his coat and took out a phone.

Zhou Heng stood up, trembling with excitement, and asked,

“Isn’t that… mine?”

Mu Yuan nodded.

“Yeah. It’s your phone.”

Back when they fought the insect, Mu Yuan had spotted the phone while cleaning up the battlefield after the creature was beaten down.

He didn’t even need to turn it on and check anything. Su Xi had already told him who the phone belonged to.

Mu Yuan handed the phone to Zhou Heng and repeated,

“I’ve already put my contact info in your address book, and we’ve even added each other on WeChat. Just a reminder: if anything comes up, contact me anytime.”

“I’m a doctor, after all.”

Grinning, Zhou Heng took the phone. After thanking Mu Yuan profusely, he left the treatment room.

Once Zhou Heng had left Mu Yuan’s house, Mu Yuan got up, walked out of the treatment room, and headed to the end of the corridor.

There was a closed door there. Mu Yuan sighed, then tapped the wall beside it a few times. With a click, three black lines appeared in the wall, which had looked no different from the rest. When the lines met, the wall swung inward.

Mu Yuan looked at the door beside the hidden entrance in the wall with a wry smile. It was a door that not even the world’s best lockpicker could open.

Because from the moment it was built, opening it had never been an option.

“Well, I’ve never been one to follow the rules.”

With a chuckle, Mu Yuan stepped through the hidden entrance. Beyond it was his biological laboratory.

Most of the time, Mu Yuan spent his days in this lab, passing the long years of his life as he pleased.

But today, he hadn’t come to see the test subjects that usually thrilled and fascinated him.

He walked up to a human-sized specimen tank. A brain with a structure utterly unlike a human’s floated in the nutrient solution.

It was the insect’s brain.

Mu Yuan hadn’t killed the insect he’d defeated. But to satisfy the government’s Mutant management agency, he’d split the creature in two. Half its body had been handed over to the human government. The other half—the complete brain—was here in the nutrient solution.

“How are you feeling?”

Mu Yuan rested his palm against the tank, looking almost entranced. Among all the Mutants in the world, fewer than a handful could completely remove the brain of a nonhuman species and keep it alive.

Mu Yuan was one of them. He had every reason to be proud.

“Have you killed our Mother?”

Mu Yuan was taken aback.

“I thought the first thing you’d ask when you woke up was what I’d done to you.”

“Our bodies and lives are not as important as the Mother.”

Mu Yuan applauded, impressed.

“I suppose that’s what you’d expect from an insect. Your loyalty puts humans to shame. But that child…”

The insect’s voice suddenly sped up.

“What happened to the Mother? Did you kill him, hand him over to other humans, or…”

“No. I let him go.”

Mu Yuan narrowed his eyes.

“That child is fascinating. And it’s not just because he devoured an Upper-Tier Taboo Species Insect Mother. It’s his body, too.”

“Do you know what I found? Beyond the basic physiological changes you can see with the naked eye, my instruments also showed that his skeletal proportions and structure, as well as his estrogen levels, aren’t what you’d expect in a man. You might not understand what that means. In human terms, he’s gradually turning into a woman.”

The insect fell silent, but the mind-link device clearly conveyed its confusion. In the Insect Race’s way of thinking, gender didn’t exist. The insect naturally had no idea what the difference between male and female meant.

As for a man turning into a woman, it was as baffling as asking someone who’d never seen coffee whether they wanted sugar or milk in it.

“I don’t understand what you mean when you say he’s turning into a woman.”

“But are you saying you’re interested in our Mother and won’t kill him?”

Mu Yuan sighed. This was what it meant to talk to a brick wall. If he were speaking to a biology professor, they could be discussing how changes in human genes and chromosomes might shape the future of medicine.

“More or less. There’s something about that child I want to see. For now, I don’t intend to do anything that would harm him. But you’d better not get your hopes up too high, either. His ability devoured the Insect Mother you mentioned, so he’s no longer an Insect Race Mother in the traditional sense. In fact…”

Mu Yuan couldn’t find the right words to describe Zhou Heng. There was so little information on Upper-Tier Taboo Species like the Insect Mother that he couldn’t accurately explain the changes happening to Zhou Heng or predict how he might develop in the future.

“That is the way of nature.”

The insect’s reply left Mu Yuan stunned.

“Our previous Mother told us that evolution and mutation are Eternal. Those who cling to their existing form and desperately worship the ideas of the past as unchanging truths will eventually become dust in history.”

“That child may not be a Mother in the traditional sense, and his form is vastly different from what our species used to be. But that doesn’t mean he can’t be the catalyst for our next evolution.”

“He will become our Mother in the end, no matter how much he changes.”