Please don't question multi-week players

Chapter 321. If I could foresee my own birth, why was I born? (Part 321)

At this time, Black Eye Pharmaceuticals...

"Splash... gurgle gurgle..."

The excrement swirled in Chi Piao's nostrils, the foul-smelling, viscous liquid washing over his mouth and nose in waves, teetering on the edge of suffocation for a moment before slowly receding to his chest.

She resembled a bloated corpse, her limbs bound to the damp steel bars of a cage by rusty chains.

Each labored breath was accompanied by a musty smell like rotting flesh, mixed with the pungent, sour odor of fermented feces.

His wounds festered and ached in the mixture of feces and blood, the deep, bone-revealing wounds like countless tiny mouths tearing at his nerves as he soaked in the fecal water.

Chi Piao huddled in the corner, choking on blood and foam, the taste of blood filling her mouth.

Rewind to a few days ago—

At that time, she was still on the front line of the battle against Green Abyss. The Rainbow Witch was powerful, and she was caught off guard and was seriously injured by the golden waves that rippled out. After resting for a few days, she went back to the battlefield.

However, misfortune never comes singly. Later, the geographer, a henchman of the TV station, came to their aid. With the hum of the [Navigation] ability, all the shells fired by the long-range firearms changed direction in mid-air and poured back like raindrops.

Chi Piao hurriedly deployed a gravitational field to intercept the out-of-control missiles at high altitude.

But who would have thought that these missiles, forced to remain suspended in the air, would trigger an even more violent explosion in the clouds? Amidst the towering flames, Black Pupil Pharmaceuticals' elite forces suffered heavy losses, and she was also thrown back by the shockwave, severely injured and unconscious.

When she woke up again, she had been sent back to the headquarters of Black Eye Pharmaceuticals. Her new boss—a well-behaved young man from the mind control branch—was standing at the head of her bed with his hands in his pockets, smiling at her.

After that, everything started to spiral out of control and go mad.

Her former boss was transferred from the intensive care unit back to the emergency room, and her new boss, as expected, was a freak.

During the time Chi Piao was back at headquarters, he was taken to the organ park in the northern part of Haidu, where he mechanically completed his new superior's tasks despite his still-healing injuries.

Every day, a large number of talented individuals are captured here, and every day, some people try to escape.

Chi Piao's mission is to capture every person who escapes and then crush them into a pool of blood and gore.

Under normal circumstances, this task would not be difficult, but the key is that Chi Piao had just come down from the front line, and her serious injuries had greatly reduced her mobility and reaction speed.

During a disturbance in the park, she was reprimanded by her new boss for failing to suppress the unrest in a timely manner.

The latter thought she was too loose and disobedient, so he began a training method that mainly involved abuse, which was a form of mental control.

During these days, Chi Piao had experienced most of the mental abuse that Feng Shiman had gone through—she had been whipped, injected with drugs, and her brain had been forcibly stimulated by mental forces while she was sleeping, making it impossible for her to rest normally.

After experiencing all of this, Chi Piao finally understood why Feng Shiman was always envious when he looked at her, and why he became more and more silent and more and more insane.

—The doctors in the mind control branch don't treat their thugs like human beings at all.

Sometimes Chi Piao felt that her new boss looked at her like she was an animal or a weapon, but definitely not like she was looking at a person.

Chi Piao felt like she was about to collapse, but she could only grit her teeth and persevere.

Given her strength, Chi Piao was certain that her new boss wouldn't be willing to kill such a high-level combatant.

"Ta...tat..."

Footsteps echoed through the empty water dungeon, the crisp sound of leather shoes buckling on the ground.

Chi Piao felt that the unhurried pace sounded somewhat familiar. She strained her neck and stubbornly looked up.

Outside the water dungeon, the figure draped in a black coat stood out prominently.

Beneath the brim of a gentleman's hat adorned with two feathers, her long, black, curly hair cascaded down. The most powerful strategist at Black Pupil Pharmaceuticals looked down at her with unfathomable eyes.

He was followed by a group of obsequious followers and advisors, resembling a group of shadows awaiting inspection.

Chi Piao saw a different kind of eye color palette in her former boss's eyes than she had ever seen in a domineering CEO.

There was seven parts disdain, two parts incomprehension, and one part indifference.

Xu Huan gently pinched her nose with her fingertips, shutting out the stench of the rotten and sour excrement.

He glanced down at the water prison, slightly raised his hand, and spoke in a voice as cold as if it were covered in ice:

"Guards, release her."

After days of tension, Chi Piao's back relaxed for the first time. As if she had been freed from some heavy shackles, she allowed the two guards to lift her up and drag her in front of Xu Huan.

Xu Huan pinched her nose and gave her a few disgusted glances, thinking she looked like a rotten fish that had been pulled out of a dirty ditch.

He patiently asked in a slow voice:
"How did you end up here? Didn't I tell Alain to tell you that as long as you stick to the story that you're my direct subordinate and that there are other arrangements in the pre-set plan, headquarters won't touch you?"

Chi Piao shuddered, the stinging pain from her wound being soaked in cold water shooting up her nerves. Hearing these words only spurred her to perk up, and she cried out in a wronged voice:
"Nobody told me that!"

"Ok?"

Xu Huan deftly turned her head, her gaze sweeping over the male strategist following behind her.

The man, who had been holding his back straight, was now visibly collapsing.

His shoulders trembled violently, his knees slammed to the ground with a thud, and he collapsed as if all his bones had been pulled out. Cold sweat rolled down his forehead and into his collar, soaking the dark fabric with a dark stain.

Alain's Adam's apple bobbed a few times, but he couldn't produce a complete sound, only managing to squeeze out words intermittently:
"My lord... I didn't expect... I didn't expect..."

Xu Huan smiled gently, his slender fingers lightly stroking the strategist's sweaty scalp. The faint warmth of his fingertips felt like soothing a dying cat or dog.

"You didn't expect... I'd actually walk out of the emergency room alive, did you?"

"So you took it upon yourself to conceal my instructions?"

Xu Huan, hands in his pockets, bowed slightly, his warm breath mingling with the faint stench of rotting excrement, brushing against the strategist's ear—

"Ok?"

The strategist's pupils suddenly contracted, and he exclaimed in alarm:

"I was wrong, sir! I truly know I was wrong!"

He suddenly fell to the ground, his forehead slamming against the earth with a thud, each impact kicking up a cloud of dust.
"I'll never do it again! I'll never do it again!"

His voice was choked with sobs, like a fish thrown ashore, struggling in vain to grab onto the last piece of driftwood.

"puff--"

A sharp, stabbing sound rang out as the female strategist behind the man suddenly made her move. With a flick of her finger, the pen she carried precisely pierced the man's back, the force ruthless, the tip penning its way through his chest.

Before the man could even scream, his eyes bulged out, his hands futilely grasping at the air behind him, and then he fell forward like a puppet with its strings cut.

Xu Huan glanced at her approvingly, then slowly looked away and turned back to look at Chi Piao.

His feigned gentle expression instantly transformed into genuine, intense disgust:
"If you haven't received a message, why don't you go to the strategist department to ask? How could I not have considered you?"

Chi Piao's eyes instantly welled up with tears, her voice choked with disbelief: "...I...I really didn't expect you to still be thinking of me!"

"..."

Her strategist boss had a terrible reputation. Cold-blooded and ruthless were always among his labels. It was said that he would deal with traitors without batting an eye, and subordinates who made mistakes always faced only death. He liked to go to extremes in his strategic planning and tactics, doing whatever was most ruthless.

Chi Piao had always thought of herself as nothing more than a disposable tool, someone who, even if thrown into the hands of a mind-control physician and tortured to death, would be of little consequence. But she never expected—

Surprisingly, the notorious boss actually had a conscience towards his own people.

Xu Huan could tell what she was thinking just by looking at her barely concealed expression of surprise.

—I guess he sees himself as a cold-hearted person by nature.

Xu Huan gave her a few cold looks, and finally said with a forced, vicious smile:
"Notify the inpatient department to find her a private room, use the best medicine, and cure her within ten days. If she can't be cured—just wait for the strategist department's impeachment at the next meeting."

After saying that, he turned around and left in a grand procession with his advisors and followers.

……

After leaving the water dungeon, Xu Huan walked steadily back to the strategist's office.

Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, dusk is bathing the cityscape of Haidu in a dark blue hue.

He unbuttoned his coat and sat down, tapping his fingertips rhythmically twice on the solid wood desk to signal his subordinates to begin their report.

"...The TV station has officially declared war on Black Pupil Pharmaceuticals."

The subordinates switched the light screen projection to the real-time battlefield monitoring interface, where countless red dots on the map formed a chain of defeat.

"After geographer Jing Wei publicly joined the war, the ultra-long-range firearms in the rear were unable to lock onto targets, and all those that had already been launched were intercepted and returned, resulting in multiple gaps in the front lines..."

Upon hearing the familiar name of geographer Jing Wei, Xu Huan took out her phone and squinted at her following list on the Ping An Forum.

Aside from the official accounts he follows for work purposes and to keep track of his influence, he only follows two personal accounts.

One is the anonymous person with the blank profile picture at the top of the leaderboard, and the other is a verified blogger in the travel section.

Next to the certification icon for "Geologist Jingwei" above, a silhouette of a young man trekking through the rainforest with a backpack is used as the background image, with sunlight filtering through the leaves and casting dappled light on the plaid shawl on his shoulders.

Xu Huan squinted at the verified account and scrolled to its latest video.

"I am Jing Wei."

The screen suddenly lit up, and a young man with short blond hair leaned out from behind the camera; the sound of his trekking poles digging into the soil was clearly audible.
"Thank you for our meeting in this vast sea of ​​people."

In the picture, Jingwei is wearing faded khaki overalls, a plaid shawl with tribal totems draped over her shoulders, and an old-fashioned binoculars casually hanging around her neck.

Behind him lay scorched earth, the ground burned by artillery fire. Crooked, withered tree branches pierced the leaden sky, and a few clumps of weeds stubbornly peeked out from the edge of the shell crater, stained with undried blood and mud.

"Since the last time we explored the rainforest's gray fog—"

The young man grinned, his eyes gleaming.

"This time I have come to the chaotic battlefield of the strangling Green Abyss."

The camera followed his gesture, panning to a distant, smoke-filled valley where the wreckage of armored vehicles could be vaguely seen twisting and deforming in the heat.
"I will support the Rose Transportation Armed Forces and, incidentally, survey the actual terrain near the strangulation of the Green Abyss."

Xu Huan rested his knuckles on his chin, watching the sporadic gunshots coming from afar in the video. Jing Wei's smile was serious and firm, as if those explosions were nothing more than celebratory cannon fire in a distant celebration.

"Why do you, a geographer, insist on getting involved in this battle, Mr. Jingwei?"

Xu Huan smiled and said softly.

"The irises on the Ivar Plateau are about to bloom. If you don't go see them now, you might not have another chance to see them later... who knows?"

Xu Huan tapped his fingertips lightly on the solid wood desk. He lowered his eyes and stared at the densely marked battle line map. A dark light flowed deep in his pupils, as if he could see the smoke of war thousands of miles away through the paper.

The subordinate continued the report:
"The Rose Group's external aid, the Rainbow Witch, slaughtered a large number of our undead troops."

The screen displays a video of the Rainbow Witch in battle.

Xu Huan's fingers suddenly stopped.

On the charred ruins of the battlefield, a black figure leaped up, stepping on the rubble.

As her hood billowed up, golden, wave-like beams of energy erupted from the tip of her broom-like weapon, and wherever they passed, the roaring, charging army of undead fell in droves.

Xu Huan's breath hitched almost imperceptibly for a moment. He was certain that this person was the same resurrected prophet he had encountered last year in the polluted area of ​​Tingyutan.

But... when did she, a person of light, acquire such high combat power?

"Cut the video back to the frame where she swung the weapon."

Xu Huan stared at the video quietly for a while, then suddenly spoke in a dry voice.

The light screen froze precisely. When the image was magnified, the matte black broomstick gleamed with a cold metallic luster, clearly made of extraordinary material.

Xu Huan stared at the object quietly for a long time, and finally seemed to have figured something out, and smiled faintly.

"So that's how it is... No wonder, no wonder..."

His laughter was so soft it almost dissipated in the cool air conditioning, yet it carried a certain sense of relief after weathering many storms.

No wonder you're still alive.

Xu Huan felt that she should be resentful, after all, she had been suppressed by this person for more than ten years without being able to breathe. She was a brilliant talent, proud and outstanding in the world, and could have swept across the world and made a name for herself in history, but she was always overshadowed by this person and became a mediocre supporting role.

But when he glanced at the calendar on the table, the bright red numbers pierced his eyes—there were only a hundred days left until his inevitable death in the future story she had predicted.

Xu Huan looked away from the calendar and slowly leaned into the leather seat, making a slight creaking sound as his spine met the backrest.

The last rays of sunlight outside the window were swallowed by the evening clouds, and the office was plunged into a dark blue shadow. Only the Rainbow Witch on the screen continued to roam freely on the battlefield, golden waves illuminating her eyes and brows that were faintly visible under her hood.

Xu Huan's Adam's apple bobbed, and his voice was so soft it sounded like a sigh:

"So be it, in this life, I am ultimately no match for you in skill."

He closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again, his eyes held a deep, calm sea.

"If there is an afterlife, then I will have foresight..."

"Don't give birth to me."

　I'm posting this in advance that it's a double update for today, because I'm going out to play this morning. Tomorrow at noon there should be a single update, since the author is going out to play.

　　In addition, most of the characters in the book have a gray personality, with no absolute good or evil. Once a character dies, his or her merits and demerits are left for others to judge.

　　(End of this chapter)