Chapter 62: Two Chapters Combined Into One

Could this be the fabricated identity Prometheus created for her? Just to cover up the lie Zhu Ning had told?

No, impossible. The Cleaning Center conducts investigations with extreme caution, utilizing multi-party verification and cross-referencing. If any single detail failed to align, Yue Kaiyuan would certainly have noticed. Prometheus is not capable of reaching that level.

This was her genuine past—or to be precise, the genuine past of the original body's owner.

She felt as though she were observing herself in another parallel universe.

If parallel universes truly existed, the Zhu Ning of that universe had been judged defective since childhood, struggling to grow up in an orphanage.

The real Zhu Ning had grown up in a single-parent family. Her mother, a strong-willed career woman, had been too busy with work to look after her. Later, upon discovering her shooting talent, she threw her directly into a training camp without a second thought.

Similarly, both of them possessed exceptional shooting talent and were discovered at an early age.

After that, they would make their mark in the shooting arena and win their own honors.

The original owner's personality, methods of handling matters, and talent were identical to her own.

Zhu Ning sat in the chair, feeling as though the person opposite her was not Yue Kaiyuan, but another version of herself.

The two Zhu Nings were identical, gazing at each other across a rift in space and time.

They were so alike that they were practically the same person.

The first time Zhu Ning had fired a gun using the original body, she had sensed an extraordinarily high degree of compatibility, feeling almost as if it were her original equipment.

Zhu Ning was a professional athlete, and all her training had been geared toward cultivating muscle memory.

She encountered no obstacles when firing; every single muscle operated to perfection. At the time, she had thought that the original owner must have been a gun specialist as well.

Furthermore, she must have reached the level of professional competition; ordinary players simply did not possess such superb physical fitness.

Thus, she had no fear of telling Li Nianchuan that she was a shooting athlete.

However, Zhu Ning remained puzzled. Exactly how had the original owner died, and what had she been involved in?

Having lived for another month, not a single old acquaintance from her past club had come looking for her, nor were there any traces of the club left in her home.

Just as she had felt previously, her home was remarkably clean, as if it had been deliberately scrubbed by someone to erase every single trace.

The Fire, Prometheus—what connection did the club have with Prometheus?

There were cameras watching her, and Yue Kaiyuan was watching her from across the table. Though tumultuous waves churned within Zhu Ning, she revealed not the slightest flaw on the surface.

Generally speaking, when someone initiates a conversation by laying out your entire biography, it is either an attempt to test you or serves a single, distinct purpose: to showcase their sense of power.

I can pull up your files, investigate your entire life down to the smallest detail—even knowing which elementary school you attended, who your desk mate was, and when you joined the club.

Therefore, you had better behave and refrain from lying.

That is for the best for both of us.

Yue Kaiyuan's attitude implied precisely this, and many people would feel pressured by it.

Zhu Ning raised her eyes and glanced at Yue Kaiyuan. "Is there a problem with that?"

She appeared thoroughly calm and collected, acting as though Yue Kaiyuan were simply discussing ordinary matters. After all, when someone reviews your life story, a normal person would not exhibit any drastic reactions.

Because this was simply the life you had ordinarily lived.

Yue Kaiyuan's gaze never left Zhu Ning. "This explains a portion of my doubts."

"Your shooting talent, your superhuman composure—they all now have answers. I suppose there are simply some people," Yue Kaiyuan said, looking directly into Zhu Ning's eyes as he spoke slowly, "who are born to be the finest hunters."

In the natural world, all animals can roughly be divided into two categories: predators and prey.

Zhu Ning's performance demonstrated that she was a born predator.

This had nothing to do with her environment; no matter what world she was placed in, she would survive until the very end.

"Thank you," Zhu Ning said.

There was not a trace of false modesty on her face. When faced with praise, she always offered nothing more than thanks.

To her, life consisted of shooting. Training and competing were parts of her life, and standing on the podium to gracefully accept everyone's admiration was also a part of her life.

She felt neither shame nor humility on account of it.

Yue Kaiyuan probably had not expected Zhu Ning to be so candid, though he could understand it given her defiant expression since childhood. Yue Kaiyuan asked, "I have a question. May I ask what your reason was for joining the Cleaning Center?"

Why abandon a career as a professional shooting athlete to enter the Cleaning Center?

Without the slightest hesitation, Zhu Ning replied, "Because I love money."

Although she did not know the income of professional competitions, she figured the Cleaning Center would definitely pay more than professional sports.

After all, across all professions, danger and income are directly proportional.

Zhu Ning's logical framework remained entirely self-consistent from beginning to end; even in the most critical moments of a mission, she had still remembered to ask Xuan Qing for a twenty-fold bonus.

Behind the massive screen, hidden from view, was another monitor where Xuan Qing and Lu Qiqin watched from behind the scenes, with Fang Ying standing close behind holding a stack of documents.

Zhu Ning's eyes were magnified to the utmost, occupying the entire screen.

They say a person's pupils change when they lie, but Zhu Ning showed no such reaction whatsoever. She was speaking the truth.

Yue Kaiyuan had clearly come well-prepared. He tapped on a screen, which began playing the complete footage of Zhu Ning purifying the aquarium.

"Because your performance was so brilliant, I watched this video nineteen times over." When watching it, Yue Kaiyuan had turned on slow-motion playback, refusing to miss a single frame or a single detail.

Therefore, Prometheus had no way of providing her with any cover whatsoever.

Yue Kaiyuan pressed the play button in front of Zhu Ning, utilizing fast-forward mode at quadruple speed.

Watching the video felt to Zhu Ning like watching a game replay. She felt she had acted with extreme caution, yet leaving behind flaws was inevitable.

Everything she had done was subject to everyone's review.

Yue Kaiyuan pressed the pause button. The footage became blurry right after Zhu Ning entered the mechanical jellyfish exhibition hall, where a mechanical tentacle crawled onto her helmet.

Under immense pressure, her helmet cracked, and spiderweb-like fractures spread across the camera lens.

The water source in the mechanical jellyfish hall was pitch black, and even high-definition footage could not capture it clearly, making it look like a first-person horror movie.

The entire purification process was bizarre. Upon seeing the giant mechanical jellyfish, Zhu Ning had simply stopped in her tracks, appearing frozen in fear of the colossal entity.

As for Lin Xiaofeng, since she was completely transparent, she never appeared in the footage at all.

"I have some questions," Yue Kaiyuan paused the video and asked. "Could you explain what method you used to purify the contamination source?"

This was also the point of contention for everyone. Zhu Ning had used neither weapons nor supernatural abilities, and the contaminated area afterward did not look as though it had been purified.

Rather, it resembled a contamination source losing its vitality.

In truth, even Zhu Ning herself was not entirely clear. "Did I give her last rites?"

Yue Kaiyuan's face stiffened.

Outside the glass wall, Xuan Qing burst out laughing, Lu Qiqin wore a grim expression, and Fang Ying beside him let out a soft cough.

Lu Qiqin muttered, "Does she think she's a bodhisattva? Why didn't the bodhisattva get up and do it herself?"

Yue Kaiyuan prompted, "Could you express yourself more clearly?"

Zhu Ning answered, "The training courses taught us about the formation of contamination sources. New contamination sources generated within six hours have unstable internal development, and we can intervene manually. But it was only briefly mentioned at the time without much elaboration; I only caught the general idea."

Zhu Ning continued, "Later, I suspected I had been contaminated, and my teammates said that contamination might turn someone into a pollutant—though of course, it was also possible to become an Esper. I was wondering what the difference between the two was, and whether a contaminated zone could be reversed."

"The contamination source holds control over the contaminated area, so I attempted to let Lin Xiaofeng regain control."

Xuan Qing had been listening intently and expressed approval of Zhu Ning's approach: "Theoretically speaking, this method is feasible, but Demon Hunters rarely adopt it during actual operations. If there had been no transparent person in the mechanical jellyfish hall that day, our standard approach would have been direct brute-force suppression."

In the eyes of most Demon Hunters, pollutants were no longer human; they were more akin to "demons," and no one wished to understand the causes behind the formation of "demons."

If something could be blown up, it was blown up. That was also the most efficient method.

Under the circumstances at the time, Zhu Ning needed to purify the contaminated area to buy the Gray Eagle team some breathing room, making her actions quite logical.

Xuan Qing's words were transmitted to Yue Kaiyuan through his earpiece. Yue Kaiyuan asked, "How could you be so confident that you would succeed?"

Zhu Ning replied, "Given the situation at the time, did I have a choice?"

Time was of the essence, and Zhu Ning had no choice but to take a gamble.

Yue Kaiyuan asked, "Did you consider the consequences if you lost the gamble?"

Zhu Ning answered, "We all would have died there together."

To Zhu Ning, this was not an unacceptable outcome. In the wasteland world, a contaminated zone at least gave you time to slowly solve the puzzle, whereas the zombie world was far more cruel—from discovering danger to being forced to deal with it, you usually had only five minutes.

You had to make an immediate decision, otherwise everyone would die.

The reason Zhu Ning had managed to survive for so long afterward was largely due to gambling. In fact, she believed that in an apocalyptic environment, a person's survival rate was related to their personal qualities, but not nearly to the extent people imagined.

Luck played a far greater probability.

Much like other animals in the wild, half of their ability to survive relied entirely on fate.

Losing the gamble meant death, while winning meant survival.

It was an exceedingly cost-effective wager.

Zhu Ning answered swiftly without hesitation, as though dying together was no big deal.

Yue Kaiyuan pressed on, "You so arrogantly decided the lives of your other teammates?"

This was a trap question.

Zhu Ning retorted, "I don't think so. They agreed to my plan. I feel that I am better than an artificial intelligence; in a crisis, I would rather entrust my life to my teammates than hand it over to an AI."

Rejecting smart technology, possessing a pioneering spirit, and refusing to rest on one's laurels—Yue Kaiyuan mentally labeled Zhu Ning accordingly.

He had heard that Zhu Ning carried two lucky cards with her; perhaps she genuinely enjoyed gambling in private.

Yue Kaiyuan asked, "Would you have felt guilty if it failed?"

Zhu Ning asked, "Why should I feel guilty?"

Yue Kaiyuan persisted, "You wouldn't feel guilty?"

Zhu Ning countered, "Honestly, would it be better to let an AI decide who lives and who dies? Because humans are incapable of making their own choices, they would rather surrender their authority than bear the consequences of failure—is that what you call progress?"

The situation at the time was that the Class A program had been initiated, and the worst-case scenario had already been predetermined. Since Zhu Ning's actions proved effective, there was no problem.

In professional competitions, she constantly had to face success and failure. Success was naturally wonderful, but failure was something one had to experience as well.

If she failed, she had to accept it.

Yue Kaiyuan asked, "When you did it, did you preset in your heart that Lin Xiaofeng would definitely succeed?"

The dialogue increasingly resembled a psychological consultation. Zhu Ning admitted, "Yes."