Totem Parasitism
Ying Yungui looked at Reid, who had slumped unconscious against the wall, opened his mouth, and then turned to look in the other direction. There stood a man, tall and straight, yet faintly sickly, with long, tangled black and purple hair, glaring at Reid.
As if sensing he was being watched, the man finally turned around, revealing a face identical to Ying Yungui's. He frowned and asked in a low voice, "You actually let him get close to you? Is this part of your quest to track Nuo's whereabouts?"
Ying Yungui, or rather, the clone of Ying Yungui under Shi Youchen's control, was helpless. "How is that possible? I know you're nearby and you won't just sit there and watch." He stood up from the bed and stood in front of Ying Yungui, preventing him from getting close to Reid. "When did you come?"
Ying Yungui had no choice but to give up and hugged Shi Youchen instead, whispering bitterly in his ear, "When he expressed his deep affection for you." Shi Youchen quickly corrected him, "Stop, he expressed his deep affection for you, not me. Don't be so mad at me."
"Is it me? Why don't I remember begging Nuoer not to put him in solitary confinement?" Ying Yungui said with a bit of grievance, "And I don't even remember rejecting him a long time ago. I didn't even know this guy liked me, oh, if he really knew what love was."
Shi Youchen knew that he was very jealous and that if he really brought up the past, it would take a long time to resolve, so he quickly brought the subject back on track: "Now is not the time to discuss this. What you just said is correct. This is part of my plan, and it is the most important part."
...
Night fell upon the Holy Land once again, but the laser tower remained dark tonight. In the exchange's private room, Shi Youchen pulled Ying Yungui to a seat. Seeing that he still looked distraught, he reached out and pinched his cheek, saying, "Well, it's been over a year since we last met. Even if my appearance does seem a little strange to you, you don't have to be so disgusted."
Ying Yungui pursed his lips: "I don't dislike you, I just... I just don't dare to look at you. When I see you like this, I will think of... you on the altar. I'm sorry." He said the apology in a low voice, not because he was insincere, but because he felt that perhaps he was not even qualified to apologize.
Shi Youchen adjusted his voice back to his normal tone and chuckled, "Then don't look at me, just listen to me." He checked the time and cleared his throat, "Yun Gui, how long do you think we have left to be together? This is the last totem. Even according to the original prophecy of doom, we don't have much time left, maybe one or two years at most."
"Excluding the night, sleep, and necessary separations, the time you can see me is actually very limited. According to the plan, our time will remain at this age forever." This is a known ending and death, and Shi Youchen said it without any heavy feeling. "But you have already seen me with white hair. So, can we also be considered to have grown old together?"
Ying Yungui had never expected him to comfort himself in this way, this way of not caring about tearing open the pain and exposing it bloodily. But on second thought, this was indeed the way Shi Youchen's personality would act.
The words "even though we'll be together forever" sounded a hundred times more appealing to him than any promise. Compared to this, Red's rather unpresentable confession was nothing but a joke. Ying Yungui hummed a little, admitting in his heart that, as expected, people are easily moved to tears by unrealized things.
"So, you don't have to think of it as a fault. You should treat it as a precious gift, a unique gift in the world that only you have."
"Ahem." A very deliberate reminder came from outside the door, and Ying Yungui hurriedly cleaned up the mess on his face. The door opened, and Lin Zhouze walked in with a roll of his eyes. He looked at the two identical faces on the sofa and said, "Excuse me, have you finished crying? Have you finished catching up? Can I come in and work now?"
Ying Yungui looked at him, then at Shi Youchen, and then at him again. Lin Zhouze curled his lips at him and said, "It seems you are the real one." Then he walked over and poured himself a glass of water, then sat down next to Shi Youchen.
"I've arranged everything." Before Shi Youchen could speak, Lin Zhouze said, "Red is already where he should be, just waiting for that person to come."
Ying Yungui then remembered to ask, "What does Red have to do with the plan?" He suddenly remembered that the previous carrier, Kulin, had been dragged into this without his knowledge. He paused, "The carrier of the power of the Snake Totem... is he?"
Shi Youchen remained silent, and Lin Zhouze knew the burden of explanation fell on him. He began to think about where to begin. Then, with a flick of his finger, a chip the size of a fingernail landed on the table in front of Ying Yungui.
Ying Yungui recognized it; it was the central chip that had been used by Lin Zhouze as Subject 8001, and the source of most of his previous abilities. "You took it out? Then how did you..." He immediately recalled that when the Holy Land, Area S, first appeared, it would cause the energy of those with special abilities to disappear.
This is so wrong. After something like that happened, how did this place develop into a "holy land" where only people with special abilities live?
Lin Zhouze finally explained the situation. "First, I must tell you that no traces of energy remain here." He pointed a finger at the ground below, not at the exchange, but at this continent. "This is the price psychics pay for coming here without experiencing energy loss. Therefore, naturally, all the equipment the association previously developed for psychics, including the bracelet, is ineffective here."
Suddenly, darkness shrouded the window, as if enveloped by something passing by. Lin Zhouze's pupils flickered with golden light in the darkness. "The Holy Land is a place of absolute freedom for those with special abilities. There is no longer the surveillance, supervision, or hierarchical divisions of the past, and no one has the right to punish anyone. Everything here is determined by strength."
"That's why they flock to it, and that's why the holy land can become the home of all people with special abilities." This is the true meaning of what Shi Youchen mentioned before, that all people with special abilities in the world belong to the holy land.
Lin Zhouze pointed his finger towards himself. "Of course, I'm here because I've awakened my special ability. Leading Red directly to the opposite side of Noah is the best option my special ability, 'Dissociation', sees."
Shi Youchen put down his teacup and continued, "Red isn't the bearer of the totem. He's a parasite of the totem's power, the snake totem itself." Ying Yungui's surprise was within his expectations. "I didn't tell you the location of the snake totem before because I wasn't sure at the time."
"What does parasite mean?" Ying Yungui asked, "Is the snake totem alive?"
Perhaps no one in the world besides Shi Youchen could answer this question. "It's alive, or rather, all totemic forces are alive. They all have their own consciousness and choices. But the snake is a little special. It doesn't like the image of a stone tablet, nor does it like staying in one place forever. Therefore, it has evolved characteristics different from other totems."
Lin Zhouze followed his narration and opened the data projection, which was filled with densely packed photos. Ying Yungui found many familiar people in those photos. It was an atlas of Ryan's entire family.
Starting from Noah's photo, there were more and more people's heads framed by black lines. Ying Yungui took a closer look and found that the black lines were the shape of a constantly swimming snake with its head and tail connected.
Shi Youchen said, "The snake totem will be passed down through the bloodline of the Ryan family, randomly parasitizing one individual in each generation. This person will then become the next head of the Ryan clan. Do you know why Noah is so averse to being addressed by his name? It's because he doesn't like people to think of him as 'Noah Ryan.' He only wants to be remembered as the eternal head of the Ryan clan."
"To put it another way, he wasn't Noah Ryan anymore, but a carrier of the snake totem in this world."
Ying Yungui saw that the framed photo of Noah on the projection gradually faded and finally disappeared, leaving that position empty. Then slowly, those photos framed by snakes faded one by one, and finally all disappeared.
Disappeared, as if these people had never existed.
"In this sense, every successive head of the Rui En family is no longer a human being, but a shell, a shell that carries the snake totem," Lin Zhouze said. "It's not just Nuo'e. Starting from him, it has long been an unwritten rule in their family not to address the patriarch by his name."
Ying Yungui thought for a moment and said, "So you mean that Red will become the next leader of the Ryan clan. Then what criteria does this parasite use to select him?"
Shi Youchen shook his head. "I don't know. We can't use human standards to judge the choices of this kind of power. Even I can't 'foresee' his future." "Even the power of time can't be used? Then how do you know he's a parasite?"
Lin Zhouze coughed. "It's me. Dissociation can ignore life forms and energy forms. I've discovered the law of inheritance between each parasite—the previous parasite will feel an irresistible and extreme disgust towards the next one. This is the parasite's own way of retaining the totemic power."
"The sign that the parasite begins to transfer is the exhaustion of the previous patriarch's energy and the spiritual awakening of the next patriarch."
Spiritual awakening? Ying Yungui fell into deep thought over this word.
Shi Youchen knew what he was thinking and explained, "As the next head of the family, the most indelible thing in Reid's mind for a long time is you, whom he regards as his goal and the object of his pursuit."
Ying Yungui was stunned: "Me?" He thought that Reid's joking "like" was shocking enough, but he didn't expect that things were even more outrageous than he imagined, and even escalated to this level.
But why? How could this happen?
Before he could delve into the details, Lin Zhouze summarized their actions so far. "So, Youchen and I used this to our advantage and devised a plan to capture the Snake Totem. Luringing Red out is the first step. The next step is to awaken his spirit and allow the power of the Snake Totem to truly enter his body."
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