The city’s neon lights seemed to be covered in a layer of eerie colors in his eyes. Occasionally, a police car roared past, making his heart jump.
Finally returning to that small but familiar apartment, He Denghong bolted the door and let out a long sigh.
Fatigue surged over him like a tide—not just physical, but mental as well.
He walked to the bathroom, turned on the faucet, and washed his face vigorously with cold water. His clone performed the exact same action at the same time.
He Denghong looked up. The young man in the mirror was pale, a trace of lingering fear remaining in his eyes.
He sighed and decided to deal with real-world problems first.
He pulled out his phone and, as expected, saw several missed calls and messages. They were payment confirmations for today’s part-time job.
He forced himself to ignore the strange sensation in his body and his mental exhaustion, using his trembling fingers to reply to the messages and confirm the receipt. The meager income gave him a moment of pitiful comfort.
After finishing all this, he and his clone collapsed onto the bed at the same time, staring at the monotonous cracks on the ceiling.
The blood splattered from the clone and the pedestrians had stained his body, making him feel sticky and greasy all over.
Fortunately, the blood on his body was mostly dry, with only a small amount sticking to the bed.
He was simply too exhausted now. He had just experienced such a thrilling scene, and the pain synchronized from his clone left him unable to care whether the blood would stain the bed.
“Ezhu… Hero…” they whispered to themselves, their mouths curling into a bitter arc. This wasn’t the life He Denghong wanted at all.
He just wanted to make some money, survive, and occasionally relax by playing video games. Overlapping universes, anomalous infiltrations—it was all too far from what he desired.
After resting for a while, He Denghong and his clone sat up from the bed and began to undress, preparing to wash the blood off his original body. He planned to shower, eat, and go to bed immediately.
No matter what He Denghong did now, the clone followed suit. After all, he had not yet adapted to the feeling of having two bodies; making two bodies perform different actions at the same time was still a bit difficult.
However, he felt he would get used to it sooner or later. He could clearly feel that the clone also had a brain. In time, he would be able to do two things at once, achieving an effect where one plus one was greater than two.
After undressing, He Denghong walked straight toward the cramped shower in the apartment, not even glancing at the clone. He really could not muster any interest in a child.
He Denghong stood under the showerhead as warm water washed over his original skin, trying to rinse away the blood, sweat, and that sticky sense of fear.
He closed his eyes, feeling the soothing flow of the water.
Beside him, He Jiulu — his clone — also stood naked on the other side of the water flow.
He could feel the difference between the two bodies. The sensation of the water on his original body was clear and direct, while what came from the clone’s side was a sense of detachment.
The water did not seem to be able to fully soak that skin, which looked no different from an ordinary person’s. It was more like a rinsing on an energy level. Hairui was using the moisture to accelerate the repair of the clone’s injuries.
The sharp pain in the clone had diminished to a persistent, skin-crawling itch, as if countless tiny insects were frantically squirming and entangling under the flesh.
He tried to concentrate. ‘Raise hand,’ he said to himself in his mind, and his right hand rose to wipe the water droplets from his face.
At the same time, he tried to give the clone a different command: ‘Don’t move.’
He Jiulu’s left hand, which was halfway raised, froze in mid-air. The movement was clearly uncoordinated, like a lagging image, and the original body’s hand-raising action also stuttered slightly.
“Tsk,” He Denghong furrowed his brows.
Dividing his mind to control two bodies to perform different actions at once was far more difficult than he had imagined.
It felt like trying to draw a circle with the left hand and a square with the right at the same time, requiring a high degree of focus. With the slightest distraction, the two bodies would synchronize again.
He persisted, letting his original body continue showering while the clone stood stiffly and motionlessly under the water.
The mental fatigue intensified, as if a CPU were running two high-load programs simultaneously—heating up and burning.
It took a few minutes before he allowed the clone to lower its hand.
This simple divergent action caused him a wave of slight dizziness.
“Take it slow…” he muttered to himself, his voice muffled by the sound of the rushing water.
After the shower, he dried his original body and changed into a clean, old T-shirt and shorts.
When he looked at the clone, he was stunned for a moment.
The blood spatters on He Jiulu seemed to have faded significantly, as if they had been absorbed by the skin.
Moreover, her eye-catching military uniform, cape, beret, and combat boots had somehow covered her body again. They were dry and crisp, as if they had never been taken off or stained with blood.
“Is even the clothing made of ‘sentient material’?” He Denghong murmured.
This saved him some trouble; at least he did not have to worry about washing the clone’s clothes.
He and the clone walked into the tiny kitchen and opened the refrigerator.
Inside was only half a bag of toast, a few eggs, and a bottle of mineral water that was almost empty.
Hunger hit him as an afterthought. The intense battle and massive mental exertion created an urgent need for energy replenishment.
He took out the toast and eggs, intending to whip up a simple meal of fried eggs.
He lit the stove and poured oil. His movements were skilled, yet somewhat clumsy due to the synchronized movements of the clone — He Jiulu was also mimicking the action of cracking an egg with empty hands.
‘Stop.’ He tried to separate the control again, causing the clone’s hands to stop in mid-air.
The original body’s hand successfully cracked the egg into the pan. With a *sizzle*, the smell of oily smoke filled the air.
He Denghong breathed a small sigh of relief and focused on frying the egg.
He Jiulu stood quietly at the kitchen door, her red pupils gazing over. With her world-weary face, she looked like an exquisite doll.
—
The next day, He Denghong was woken up by gunfire and shouting from outside the apartment. “Ah~~~ which guy is using a homemade gun to settle a score with a neighbor they don’t like now?”
He Denghong was very familiar with these noisy sounds. After all, this was a common occurrence in Yulin City. When people’s mental stress accumulated to a certain level, they would suddenly explode, attacking anyone in sight.
Thick frost had condensed on the edge of the kitchen sink, and the congealed oil in the frying pan had not yet been cleaned.
After finishing dinner yesterday, he had discovered an anomaly that had appeared without warning in the refrigerator. It was a very “cold” fellow, but fortunately, he had handled it perfectly.
As he brushed his teeth, he looked out the window, only to find something even more eye-catching than the corpse that had just been shot in the street—
In the distance, toward the city center, a massive and peculiar building was suspended high in the sky.