Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Mother Nest

Deep in the night, the crumbling old district lay under a silence so thick it felt like the place had already died.

Half a year ago, aberrants descended, and Qing Jiang City was stamped as a high-risk zone. After dark the streets emptied—no footsteps, no chatter, not even a drunk swaying home on stubborn habit.

Feng Ling cut through the narrow alleys with a bag of last-minute convenience-store markdowns, then climbed the stairs of her aging corridor tenement.

Her key turned with a sharp click.

Something in the room flinched at the sound. From a corner came a faint, wet rustle—sticky, rotten tentacles shifting in the dark.

Feng Ling didn’t react.

She flipped on the light, went straight to the fridge, and stacked instant meals and fruit with neat, practiced precision.

At the bottom of the shopping bag sat a new boning knife.

She tore off the packaging, tested the weight in her palm, and lifted her eyes to the wooden table against the wall—where a bound creature lay waiting.

It was almost human, in the loosest sense of the word. You could still make out arms and legs.

It was also unmistakably not human. There was no real head—only twitching limbs spread and strapped down, and a belly swollen to a bruised purple-red. From that distended abdomen, dozens of tentacles writhed out, oozing pus, blood, and slime that ran down the table legs and dripped to the floor. The stench hit the back of the throat, thick enough to gag on.

A dying aberrant.

She’d found it by accident last week and hauled it home on impulse, curiosity winning out over common sense. Since aberrants invaded Earth, the news had become a steady loop: aberrants killing people, or aberrants getting killed. The internet was even worse—posts, videos, rumors, dissected screenshots, endless arguments. The noise only fed her interest.

After several days, she’d confirmed something was wrong with this one.

It rotted more with each passing day, yet its vitality was obscene. Even as flesh sloughed off, new meat kept pushing through—like it refused to die, but couldn’t heal either.

Maybe it sensed her closing in. The creature’s sluggish writhing snapped into a frantic struggle, tentacles twisting like worms in a bucket.

Feng Ling raised the knife and drove it straight into the swollen belly.

The high, taut sac collapsed instantly. Tentacles jerked and snapped toward her, trying to strike back, but they were too rotten to do much. Feng Ling worked the blade without hurry, stirring and shredding until the twitching turned ragged.

When it finally “settled,” she pulled on plastic gloves and started the dissection.

First, she removed the limbs.

Then she peeled away the outer layer of skin studded with jagged teeth.

She cleared the clammy tentacles, cut into spoiled flesh, and opened the abdominal cavity.

There were no organs.

Nothing but a wet, pulsing mass—wrong anatomy held together by stubborn life.

Feng Ling rummaged through it with quiet focus until she found something higher up, near where a chest should have been: fleshy membranes layered like petals, opening and closing with slow, strained breaths. At the deepest point, wrapped in the center, was a blood-slick eyeball.

“They say an aberrant’s Ability Card can grant superpowers,” she muttered. “So where are you hiding it…?”

She aligned the tip of the knife and stabbed down.

Blood surged up in a violent rush—black, stinking rot; fresh red; thin green-purple slime that didn’t look like anything that belonged in a body. It all mixed together and ran down in reeking streams.

Feng Ling pushed harder.

A wet crunch split the air as the eyeball ruptured.

The creature’s body snapped rigid, then sagged as if the strings were cut. The remaining flesh softened fast, collapsing into rot. The last traces of life winked out for good.

Feng Ling blinked, then watched as something rose from the gore.

An Ability Card.

It was blood-red and faintly translucent, floating in midair as if it weighed nothing. The surface was carved with the image of an eye—clean lines, razor detail.

She’d read enough threads to know most people swore Ability Cards were silver. This one wasn’t.

“Why are you red…?” she murmured, and reached out.

The moment her fingers touched it, the card liquefied. The crimson seeped into her skin through her fingertips and vanished into her body like it had never existed.

Text surfaced in her mind, crisp and unmistakable:

[You obtained the ability card “?:#?????”.]

[You are the Source of Life. You are the World Mother. You possess a powerful body and strength without end. As long as a single thread of life remains, you are nearly impossible to kill.]

The card’s name was corrupted—garbled symbols that refused to resolve into anything readable.

Feng Ling was still staring at the strange message when it suddenly fractured. In its place, huge red warnings slammed into her mind:

[WARNING: Unknown error!]

[WARNING: Unknown error!]

[WARNING: Unknown error!]

The alarms made her skull ring. The words jittered, freezing and stuttering like a screen on the verge of crashing.

“What the hell…?” Feng Ling pressed her palm to her temple, nausea climbing her throat. Then the text shifted again:

[WARNING: You are not a player.]

[WARNING: Ability card genetics undergoing unknown mutation.]

Pain detonated through her body.

It wasn’t one wound. It was everywhere—every cell flaring, twisting, remaking itself. Feng Ling cried out, teeth clenched so hard her jaw ached, and braced herself against the table as sweat burst across her skin.

Within seconds she was soaked.

Then her muscles and bones screamed like they were being crushed from the inside. She collapsed to her knees, hands clawing at the floor. Cold sweat poured down her face. Her vision spun. Breathing hurt. Her heartbeat hurt. Everything hurt.

Every nerve, every cell, howled.

Time became a blur of white pain.

When it finally eased, Feng Ling lay there like she’d been dragged out of deep water. She opened her eyes and stared at her hands, dazed and shaking.

No visible change.

No lightning. No glow. No sudden sense of power.

Only the quiet room—and the puddle of dissolved aberrant sludge on the floor, as if none of it had been real.

Feng Ling exhaled slowly, then rasped, “That hurt like a motherfucker.”

In a pitch-black sewer, a girl in a skull mask staggered forward. A blue-glowing virtual screen suddenly popped up in front of her.

In a silent mountain forest, a man dressed like a Daoist set down a strip of bamboo slips and stared at the same kind of screen, sinking into thought.

In a city KTV private room, the music kept blasting—yet the guests fell silent all at once, each staring at their own message panel as if someone had poured ice into the room.

At that moment, every player invading Earth received the same notification:

[Global Message: Hidden Boss Mother Nest (juvenile form) has been born. Threat level unknown. Players, locate Mother Nest and eliminate it as soon as possible.]