Chapter 73 Twin Reversal! Twins are the sharing and continuation of life...
"Click".
The hard soles of their combat boots scraped against the ground as they reached the map marker. They stopped simultaneously in the dimly lit sewer, making a sound even fainter than a mutated cockroach attacking a plastic bag.
Cat Whiskers hugged Shen Xijing's neck, the screen of the personal terminal glowing faintly, messages from informants were coming in continuously.
Bian Shaoyan has probably been lording it over things in the upper district for too long, and doesn't understand, or disdains to understand, the survival rules of the lower district.
Although Bian Shaoyan and his group didn't conduct a large-scale search, they had essentially accomplished their goal. How dare a brand-new vehicle from the Upper City District drive into a dark alley? If it weren't for the dozen or so A-level ability user security guards in his car, and the brand-new, AI-managed, automatically targeting weapons, he wouldn't have even managed to salvage a single tire.
While these "rats" in the lower city wouldn't dare openly oppose Quark Pharmaceuticals, they certainly wouldn't hesitate to secretly pass messages to Catwhisker; after all, they were just gossiping with friends. The central AI only monitors the words and actions of the bigwigs; who cares what the rats in the gutter say?
Cat Whiskers looked down at the video taken by an informant.
Bian Shaoyan got out of the car, accompanied by several security guards. He took nothing with him and strolled around a bar as if he were taking a walk. He disdainfully threw away his dusty coat, got into the car, and drove off to the next location.
The process seemed completely unprepared, but as they moved, countless gun barrels gleamed coldly on the large truck in the middle of the three vehicles. An AI-controlled, fully automated weapon system was connected to the nearby local area network, providing a 360-degree, unobstructed view of everything around Bian Shaoyan.
Let alone those few living people, even a few mosquitoes could be blown through by a dozen bullets while sitting more than ten meters away from Bian Shaoyan.
If it weren't for the fact that the lower city was so violent, they wouldn't even be able to stay in the sewers.
Assassination under AI supervision seems impossible, after all, those chaebols who don't treat people like human beings are absolutely capable of launching a gun in the middle of the city.
Even with powerful abilities and diverse traits, superhumans are still mortals. Ten A-level superhumans couldn't withstand the bombardment of firearms.
The pirate gang's activities were no secret in the lower city. Most people, even those who agreed to pass on messages to her, were subtly hinting that she shouldn't court death. Catwhisker's gaze lingered on the gleaming muzzles of guns and cannons for a few seconds before she turned off the video. Her eyes were as calm as still water. She would make her move.
After receiving a message from a teammate.
————
The operations team has arrived at the designated location.
A line of text jumped out under Kou Qingyi's tense gaze. She gripped her sister's hand tightly and suddenly asked a completely unrelated question:
"Do you remember what I said to you when you first awakened your powers?"
"What?"
Kou Qingman's tense emotions faltered, and she looked at her sister with a puzzled expression, subconsciously pondering.
With assisted reproductive technology completely overriding natural reproduction, the social system based on the family as the smallest unit before the cataclysm has completely collapsed. No one cares about blood relations, and a mother and child who are biologically related may not even recognize each other.
Apart from the extremely rare cases of natural birth, people nowadays mostly use terms like "sisters and brothers" to describe those who were admitted to social welfare institutions at the same time and who are close to them.
But those two were exceptions.
They were born through assisted reproductive technology, but at the time, the staff neglected to notice that the fertilized egg underwent nuclear division at the moment fertilization was completed. The abnormality wasn't discovered until a month after implantation when the fertilized egg failed to develop.
In theory, during the process of assisted reproduction, identical twins are considered defective because each individual has poor physical condition and the artificial uterus is overworked during pregnancy. They are screened out and destroyed before entering the artificial uterus.
Even if the fertilized egg, which has not yet divided into two embryos, successfully implanted due to the negligence of the staff, the person in charge at the time should have stopped the loss in time and initiated a curettage procedure to terminate the pregnancy after the error was discovered.
However, the person in charge at the time became interested in the fertilized egg that had successfully implanted but refused to develop. So he reported to his superiors and moved the fertilized egg to his own research project, using experimental funds to provide the fertilized egg with a large amount of energy.
The fertilized egg only began to develop in the second month after implantation, but as the embryos matured, the person in charge was disappointed to find that, apart from having a higher genetic grade and greater growth potential, these two embryos had no outstanding features whatsoever.
After all, the embryos in the same batch as them had very high genetic levels, and they had consumed such a massive amount of resources, yet their development was almost identical to that of embryos in a normal environment.
But when the two sisters turned one year old, Kou Qingman, whose brain had just fully developed, suddenly awakened her superpowers without warning. She was the first superpowered person to awaken in the history of the City of Chasing the Sun!
The person in charge at the time was overjoyed. Even though Kou Qingman's special ability was the rather useless "twin" – she could only share her life state with her sister, who was an ordinary person – this was still the first case in the history of Chasing the Sun City of artificial intervention to awaken superpowers!
It's important to understand that even though the group of scientific fanatics at Academia Sinica invests massive amounts of research funds every year, the awakening of special traits is still a mysterious event that can only be gambled on by probability.
There are rumors that the probability of having superhumans born naturally is higher, but over the years, batches of superhumans in the lower city have died, and the number has not decreased.
As a result, the person in charge's paper caused a sensation as soon as it was published. He and his two sisters were invited to give lectures at various supernatural ability research institutions, and even received an invitation from Quark Pharmaceuticals, which allowed them to enter the Upper City!
But when the hype died down and the experiment of using identical twins to induce superpowers never succeeded again, people concluded that it was just an unrepeatable accident. The person in charge couldn't bear the blow and committed suicide by jumping off a building one night, leaving behind the two sisters who were only eight years old at the time and didn't even have citizen serial numbers.
Quark took in the two sisters who had nowhere else to go, and put them into Quark's own training facility for reserve employees. After they came of age, they were directly assigned to M1-level laboratories, which are laboratories that countless veteran employees have worked hard to get into!
Kou Qingman and her sister are identical twins who grew up together. She also awakened the trait of being able to sense the state of the other person [twin]. Therefore, she noticed her sister's ability as soon as she awakened it. However, when she wanted to report it to the company, her sister stopped her.
"I don't want to commit suicide like her, jumping off a building with my back landing on the ground."
At the time, Kou Qingyi was very tight-lipped, only telling her sister not to report it, without offering any explanation. Now, in this context, she brings it up…
Kou Qingman frowned: "You mean, she was killed by the people of Quark?"
"I have no evidence."
Kou Qingyi took a deep breath. She had very conflicted feelings about the person in charge who had saved her and her sister but then treated them as experimental subjects and beat and scolded them at will: "It's just that my superpower tells me that if I say something, I will die."
【Reversal】, a superpower that is just as useless as 【Twins】.
[Twins] can only share or replace the status of their twin sister, and [Reversal] can only reverse the status of themselves or their twin sister. Their abilities are weak, and both of them are not high-level, hovering around C-rank for many years.
Therefore, in this operation, all the two could do was provide information to the combat team and then anxiously await the final outcome of the assassination.
But Bishop D, sent by the Lord of Listening to help them, after learning the names of the two women's special traits, said a bunch of incomprehensible things like "causal weapon," and after a while, suddenly threw her a bottle of medicine.
There were two green pills in the glass bottle, about 2cm in diameter. The green color was very strange, and the surface of the pills was pitted and bumpy, looking like an unscrupulous product from some unknown manufacturer. However, Kou Qingyi held it as if she were holding some diluted treasure.
【Name: Green Power Pill】
[Grade: A]
[Introduction: Green cleanses the soul, and miracles happen! Eat it, and you'll become the greenest person in the crowd!]
[Instructions for Use: After taking the Power Pill, mental strength will increase tenfold within ten minutes, mental strength recovery speed will double, a random body organ will be sacrificed, and lifespan will be reduced by ten years.]
[Note: Are you seeking long-term survival or a momentary burst of power? Unless you have divine protection, it is not recommended that you take this pill—unless you have carefully chosen 'exploding body' as your method of death.]
...a pill with both terrible efficacy and side effects.
But when Kou Qingyi unscrewed the cap and swallowed the indescribably delicious pill with her sister, feeling the terrifying power rising in her brain and causing blood to spill from her seven orifices, she slowly smiled.
"...Although the side effects can be controlled, you don't have to take it if you don't want to. God will find another way."
Gods are unattainable, gods are unreachable... But what virtue or ability do these two mortals possess to receive such the favor of a benevolent god?
"A time traveler eroding the rifts, a six-winged white dove devouring the riddles of time, a listener overseeing both ends—"
"A time traveler eroding the rifts, a six-winged white dove devouring the riddles of time, a listener overseeing both ends—"
"Your devout yet foolish follower, Kou Qingyi—"
"Your devout yet foolish follower, Kou Qingman—"
"I beseech your favor, and offer you the blood of my enemies as a tribute to your mercy!"
Two prayers, with similar timbres and identical content, rang out almost simultaneously. They finally aligned perfectly on the last sentence, without a single discordant sound. Kou Qingyi reached out and pulled her sister's hand. Where their hands clasped, a burst of intense purple flames erupted, making the sun in the sky appear dim!
The blood had stopped flowing at some point, but Kou Qingyi no longer cared. A faint purple light flowed in her eyes as she spoke, word by word: "[Twins], [Reversal]!"
Kou Qingman groaned, but gripped her sister's hand even tighter. Her eyes shone with a bright pinkish-purple light as she pushed her superpower [Twins] to its limit. However, the superpower she activated suddenly reversed into a completely opposite force.
【Twins】represent the sharing and continuation of life; after 【reversal】, life inevitably and irresistibly faces its final annihilation!
The sharing of life requires love and sacrifice; the arrival of annihilation is without reason or warning.
The light emanating from Kou Qingman's eyes shifted from pinkish-purple to a deep purplish-black, and a profound, enigmatic command, unlike anything an ordinary person could utter, was forced from her throat:
"Objects to be annihilated: all electronic life forms in this place!"
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Author's Note: Although someone hasn't appeared on screen, her legend lives on.
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