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Chapter 5 Infection
The school bell rang and the students filed out of the campus.

With a cotton ball stuffed in his nose, Luo Zhengxin got into the back seat of the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, closed the door, and leaned against the window without saying a word.

"Hey, Xinxin, what's wrong with your nose? Is it a nosebleed?"

Luo's mother, who was wearing mink fur, had a distressed look on her face and stroked her precious son's face.

Luo Zhengxin broke away from his mother's hand and didn't want to respond to the question. He said in a loud voice, "I played ball."

"How can you be like this when playing basketball? The skin on your nose is scratched and there will be scars. Tell your mother who hit you, and I will tell the school board! It's unreasonable."

How could Luo's mother, who had never suffered a loss in business, endure her precious son being bullied? She immediately took out her mobile phone and dialed the head teacher's number to find out the situation.

Luo Zhengxin has long been accustomed to this kind of family atmosphere. He leaned against the car window, his eyes blank, and his mind was filled with memories of the scenes on the basketball court.

Why didn't I catch the ball so slowly?

Why didn't you catch it?
At the same time, Li Sheng, who was repeatedly talked about in his heart, was happily riding his bicycle into the alley, stopped in front of Zhao Ji Dessert Shop, and started his part-time working career.

A few hours later, after get off work, Uncle Zhao asked Li Sheng to dispose of the remaining ingredients for the day.

Cakes, desserts, bread, etc. are not shelf-stable and have a short shelf life. If they cannot be sold, they have to be thrown away.

In the past, Uncle Zhao couldn't bear to waste and chose to give the remaining food to others. The consequences were not so wonderful.

Li Sheng walked to the back alley carrying large and small bags of cakes, and suddenly stopped.

The hunger that I felt in the morning came again, like a wave, each wave getting stronger and stronger.

"."

Li Sheng hesitated for a moment, looked up at the height of the alley, and saw that there was no surveillance in the alley, so he opened the lid of the cake and ate happily.

His stomach seemed to be full, and he couldn't feel full. After eating a large amount of desserts that could make my blood sugar explode, it was still not enough. I said goodbye to the boss, rode to the night market, and bought several boxes of fried pork chops and fried chicken chops.

"This kind of hunger is absolutely abnormal. In the morning, a few people can be satisfied with breakfast, but in the evening, you need a lot of boring desserts and pork chops. If it continues to increase like this, even eating compressed biscuits will not satisfy you."

His thoughts were heavy, calculating how long the savings he had worked so hard to save could last him.

After returning home, Aunt Li Zhao was on the phone in the kitchen with a solemn expression, discussing with her colleagues how the company would bring in a new leader in a few days.

Uncle Xue Jingming was lying on the sofa watching the football game on TV, while cousin Xue Lingyu and cousin Xue Luomeng were doing TOEFL exercises in the study to prepare for possible study abroad in the future.

"I'm back." Li Sheng shouted casually while changing his slippers, and only his uncle responded.

Okay, get used to it. Li Sheng returned to the bedroom and plugged the USB flash drive Yuan Zhixia gave him into his computer.

Yuan Zhixia is indeed worthy of the name of genius. The program she wrote highlights the simplicity and practical functions of a page.

After thinking for a moment, Li Sheng completely deleted most of the software in the computer, including the input method, and covered the computer's camera with sticky notes and covered the computer's speakers with sound-absorbing cotton.
Then I hung up the ladder, logged into the external network, and started checking the Prometheus company.

Prometheus Laboratories, founded ten years ago, was just a little-known auto parts company located in Maine, USA.

Until five years ago, a young and powerful company president suddenly came up with an industrial robot invention called Daedalus.

This eight-axis industrial robot is low-priced and has mature intelligent programs that are suitable for all tasks including welding, assembly, painting, handling, gluing, and inspection.

It can reduce the number of workers required on industrial assembly lines by 20%-70%. More importantly, as long as the Daedalus robotic arm is given enough raw materials, it can copy itself!

With this industrial robot, Prometheus Laboratories achieved overtaking in corners and quickly surpassed the four giants on the same track - FANUC Co., Ltd., ABB (comprised of Sweden's Assia Corporation and Switzerland's Braun Baffari (formed by the merger of companies), KUKA Germany, and Yaskawa Electric Co., Ltd.

And a year later, it acquired Yaskawa Electric and officially entered Japan.

Since then, Prometheus has continued to advance rapidly, repeating the process of acquisition, expansion, and re-acquisition, covering an increasingly wider range of fields.

Automotive manufacturing, electronics manufacturing, aircraft manufacturing, food and beverage processing, mining, energy, house construction, infrastructure construction, aerospace, brain-computer interface.
Not only that, Prometheus also has its own police and prisons - they sign contracts with the U.S. government to send armed personnel to cities such as Birmingham, New Orleans, Memphis, Baltimore, and Detroit to fight crime and maintain law and order. It can be called a realistic version of "RoboCop".

In war-torn areas outside the United States, they directly train troops and protect local branches.

If Samsung Group is a monopoly organization entrenched in South Korea, ordinary people can spend their time in the group from birth to death.

Prometheus is like a huge eight-clawed octopus, with influence in every corner and every field of the world. It uses astronomical investments in scientific research each year to maintain its technological and industrial hegemony.

"No wonder the man in the suit, known as August, can possess a gun in the city."

Li Sheng rubbed his chin and searched for Perez. It was discovered that he was not a senior executive of the Yinshi branch, but a middle-level security director, and even higher up there was the security manager.

"Try to search the Special Affairs Bureau again?"

The search results this time were not so rich. No matter whether Li Sheng entered Chinese or English, whether it was the abbreviation of the Special Affairs Bureau or the full name of the Special Affairs Administration, it was difficult to find the details.

On the contrary, when he was searching for [Shadow Realm], [Godly Evil], and [Lord of Insects], he accidentally saw a few chat screenshots in a niche anonymous forum for urban ghost stories abroad.

Posted by HaccKer: Look what I captured, Mothman!
The accompanying picture is a blurry, rickety figure taken in the evening, with huge wings on its back.

HaccKer: My dad and I were driving back to our farm last night when we photographed this thing. As soon as he saw our headlights, he grabbed the deer in his mouth and fled into the woods.

CaLvo: The photo is so blurry. Did you take it with your door lock?
BarKLe: This photo is so blurry that it reminds me of 911/. At that time, I was standing under the World Trade Center Building, holding a camera to take pictures of people who lost their lives, and my uncle was among them.

CaLvo: My condolences, bro. May your uncle rest in peace in heaven.

BarKLe: Thank you, he was the best pilot in the Middle East.

CaLvo:? ? ?
HaccKer:? ? ?
HaccKer: Forget it, I'll continue. I guarantee this photo is 100% authentic. There really is a Mothman infestation near my farm. A large number of dead insects appear inexplicably in the farmland, a sheep disappears inexplicably, and just today, a wound similar to a vampire bite appeared on the back of a cow.

CaLvo: It sounds like that. It's a pity that it's not fifty years ago now, otherwise this photo would have been popular on TV for a while.

DaVid: .Owner, if I were you, I would hide in the basement immediately. It's night where you are now, right?

HaccKer: Yeah, what’s wrong?

DaVid: Outside the earth, there is something called the "Insect Lord". You can think of it as the dying god in another world, that is, [the evil god]. Half of its body shattered into countless pieces and fell into our world through the cracks. Any creature infected by the fragments of [Lord of Insects] will enter a state of [gene hunger] and must absorb different types of biological genes every once in a while and eat a large amount to digest the genes. Then absorb new genes and eat a lot. The cycle goes back and forth.

DaVid: Any attempt to slow, stop, or disrupt the cyclic process will result in significant mutations in the victim's body. Transform into irrational monsters, seeking other victims and spreading the infection.

DaVid: The so-called Mothman you photographed might have been an animal like a wild wolf or a black bear at first. It was infected by the [Lord of Insects], and its body continued to mutate, first absorbing genes from small insects, then mammals such as mice, then sheep, deer, and even cattle. Finally, people.

DaVid: You said before that you live on a farm and you probably don't have many neighbors nearby. Now it's dark again and the FBI's Unusual Incidents Unit is definitely too late. Hide now.

DaVid: It's coming for you.

(End of this chapter)