Hiding a House in the Apocalypse-Chapter 100.2: Demonic Fiend (2)

He was born in Hong Kong.

During the handover, his family left and settled in the United States. Unlike other Chinese immigrants, his parents never tried to instill Chinese values or culture in him.

His parents ran a business in Hong Kong, one he never fully understood, but it was clear that they had made a fortune.

As a result, he never knew poverty, nor did he care to.

He had no national pride, no sense of belonging.

He was educated in American schools, ate American food, and grew up immersed in American culture.

He was an American. And up until the moment he earned his PhD, he never once considered any alternative.

But sometimes, the blood running through your veins changes your future in ways you never expect.

One day, he felt like an outsider in American society.

The world around him, once familiar, suddenly seemed hostile, condescending, and dismissive.

The trigger was a minor traffic incident.

While driving, he honked at a car that abruptly cut in front of him.

A Black man rolled down his window and shouted a racial slur.

He averted his gaze.

The man stared at him for a while, then finally drove off, and that was the end of it.

A trivial event, nothing worth thinking about.

But it overlapped with other recent frustrations—being passed over for a promotion, harsh criticism of his research presentation, his daughter mysteriously failing her private school entrance exam—and made him start thinking seriously.

He had learned to get along with people of other races, had accepted the unspoken discrimination and limitations that came with being Asian in America, and had resigned himself to it, thinking it was just the way life worked.

But something inside him suddenly stirred, shattering that resignation.

He picked up a pen and wrote down a single word.

Zhonghua

It was strange.

His parents had taught him to speak and write in Chinese, but apart from his early childhood, he had hardly ever used it.

Even at home, his parents spoke English. Their spacious, modern mansion had no Chinese decorations, no books, not even traditional liquor.

They had never deeply discussed this term with him.

Yet he still remembered it—and wrote it down effortlessly.

At that moment, he became aware of his ethnic identity.

And he remembered the Chinese agent who had recently tried to contact him.

Returning to China was not easy.

His wife was against it.

His daughter was against it.

His parents said nothing, but their stance was clear—if he left, they would never want to see him again.

When he grew tired of trying to convince them, he left alone.

The China he saw was even more luxurious and advanced than he had expected.

But it didn’t take long before he began to notice the cheapness, the carelessness, and the hidden flaws behind all that splendor.

There, he met another woman and started a new family.

She wasn’t as highly educated as his first wife, nor did she speak the English he was more comfortable with, but she was beautiful and affectionate.

However, her Hebei-style cooking was simply inedible.

After some time, they had a daughter.

Looking at her pretty face, with sharp, distinct features inherited from her mother, he was able to completely forget his older daughter, the one who had once insulted him and told him to "go back to smelly China."

In China, he was assigned to study the phenomenon of the Awakened.

“...So that’s how it was.”

The document still contained many pages, but we now understood why the Chinese had chosen not to weaponize the Awakened, even as their nation teetered on the brink of collapse.

The Awakened, in a sense, were beings who had transcended human limits.

But they suffered from severely reduced fertility.

When India fell to the Rifts, the Chinese government launched a "humanitarian operation," sending troops across the border to occupy the eroded zones of Indian territory.

Hundreds of thousands of Indian survivors still lived in those areas. A population census was conducted, revealing an alarming discovery:

Most newborns were female.

The birth ratio was 82 females for every 1 male.

Follow-up testing showed that the mothers of these female infants—to varying degrees—displayed Awakened characteristics.

China's definition of "Awakened" was much broader than Korea's.

In Korea, an Awakened referred to someone with immense power, like Cheon Young-jae.

But in China, the standard was much lower.

To the Chinese, any individual whose body exhibited any ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) Rift-induced changes due to exposure was classified as Awakened.

By China’s definition, even Park Gyu could be considered Awakened.

Yet all Awakened mothers gave birth exclusively to daughters.

Anthropologists often argue that the greatest factor influencing population growth is the number of fertile women.

However, these newborn girls were not normal children.

Each one displayed intellectual disabilities, a high occurrence of Down syndrome-like facial distortions, and autism-like mental impairments.

But the most horrifying truth was best left to the words of the scientist himself:

"The female children born to Awakened women lack reproductive functions. In other words, they are incapable of producing ovaries and, therefore, have no reproductive capacity whatsoever."

"The real issue is that Awakened individuals act as carriers of a contagion, spreading their Rift-induced traits to ordinary humans—much like an epidemic."

"Think of the game Othello. In it, you flip black and white pieces, striving to turn the entire board into your color to win. But in reality, the game only flips one way—"

"From normal humanity to the Awakened."

Cheon Young-jae murmured as he read through the report.

“...So if the number of Awakened keeps increasing, humanity will go extinct?”

We exchanged glances.

The claim was difficult to accept.

But deep inside, we all knew it made sense.

“...So that’s why China refused to weaponize the Awakened, even as their country was falling apart.”

"Typical of the Chinese," one of us scoffed. "There's no one greedier than them. Given the choice between preventing their own extinction or securing short-term survival, they picked the former. Classic."

The scientist who called himself Demonic Fiend had revealed the truth to us.

His mission in China had been to ensure the survival of the Chinese race.

More specifically:

"My orders were to create Awakened-born children capable of reproducing."

He was a leading expert in genetic engineering.

He worked with genome analysis, extracting segments of DNA and splicing them into other species to observe their effects.

His most well-known achievement was the creation of self-reproducing pigs, capable of reproduction through egg fusion alone—without fertilization.

Similar experiments had been conducted with mice, but his team had been the first to successfully replicate the process with pigs, which were far closer to humans in biological structure.

This breakthrough had earned him prestige and a professorship.

But the Awakened phenomenon was unlike anything he had ever encountered before.

There were no detectable genetic changes.

Even comparing the DNA of a boy with the potential of Kang Han-min to that of an ordinary human, there was no meaningful difference.

Despite the existence of a Mutation Factor—a clearly documented cause for the transformation of beasts into Mutants—scientists had been unable to pinpoint why the mutation process occurred.

And now, he was expected to unravel an even greater mystery—one with no leads to follow.

It was like searching for a single grain of sand on an endless beach.

He threw himself into the project with enthusiasm.

But soon, he found himself sinking into despair.

"How can I create results when there’s no traceable cause? Monsters—these foreign entities—are fundamentally different from humans. Their very existence is based on principles beyond human comprehension."

"When I reviewed the research, I realized something—I could never solve this alone."

"It was like trying to hunt deep-sea fish with a shotgun."

China’s contradictory treatment of its foreign specialists was well-known.

Many engineers who had once been lured to China with grand promises had experienced the same outcome—there was no middle ground.

At first, they were given everything—a mistress, penthouse apartments in Beijing and Shanghai, and an obscene amount of yuan.

But when they failed to produce results, the Party tightened the leash.

The pressure took many forms, but the most effective was the looming threat of financial ruin.

"That house you’re living in?"

"Yes, Dr. Wang, that’s not yours. It’s a rental property provided by the Party, specifically for our committee members."

"You might not be aware, but we’ve been paying the rent directly to the landlord."

"If you step down from the committee, naturally, you’ll have to vacate the house—so that the next appointee can move in."

Faced with an impossible task, crushed by extreme stress and despair, the scientist found solace in the only thing left to him—his beautiful wife and the daughter growing up to look just like her mother.

By now, his child was nearly six years old.

She attended one of Beijing’s most prestigious kindergartens, mingling with the children of China’s elite.

Losing his salary would have been tolerable.

But losing his home—being forced to live among the ordinary masses he had spent his entire life avoiding—was far more terrifying than any monster.

Standing at the edge of a cliff, he did what many before him had done.

He silenced his conscience.

"...That was when I began forcibly extracting ova."

His tone was matter-of-fact, as if he were reciting a grocery list.

Then, he laid out his sins in detail.

These were not the crimes of an individual.

They were the crimes of an institution, carried out under official orders.

Countless women were forcibly harvested, experimented on, and discarded.

All in the name of "the survival of the human race."

Within the Party, there was a fierce divide—one faction wanted to use the Awakened, while the other insisted they must never be used.

The Supreme Leader ultimately sided with the latter.

But he was still deeply intrigued by the power of the Awakened.

The scientist had become the key to resolving this internal struggle.

The truth was, he had barely done any real research.

He had merely pretended to work, patching together random samples, inserting them into the data without verification, and expanding the dataset by sheer volume rather than accuracy.

And of course, he had also manipulated some of the data.

It was all fabricated, but the ignorant fools in charge were satisfied.

To them, the mere accumulation of data was a positive indicator of progress.

And so, countless children were conceived.

But very few were actually born.

Some were dismembered and repurposed as raw data.

Some were preserved in formalin.

And some were discarded as medical waste, sealed in plastic bags, and incinerated.

In the end, he had created nothing.

He had only built a towering monument of lies—a monument of sin.

Yet, his reputation and the betrayal of his other homeland, America, had bought him time.

But as China’s situation worsened, and as the military began demanding the use of Awakened soldiers, suspicion against him grew.

One of his subordinates, who had been complicit in his crimes, betrayed him, defecting to the faction that advocated for using the Awakened.

That man exposed his deceptions.

Cornered, he found himself staring at the test results his daughter had brought home.

A basic Awakened aptitude test—and the result showed that his daughter was Awakened.

At that moment, his thoughts turned to his other homeland.

He remembered his parents’ mansion overlooking the California coast, the university campus where he had once taught, his diverse circle of friends, the carefree atmosphere, the cameras that didn’t discriminate between faces, and freedom.

For the final time, he chose to lie.

"I presented research data proving that species preservation was possible through the Awakened."

"An absolute falsehood, the culmination of my eight years of deception—a towering lie that would never crumble."

He uploaded part of it to the servers, and then fled with his family, boarding a ship bound for Taiwan.

That night, war erupted.

The smuggler's ship captain hesitated to leave port.

The seas were like a scorching frying pan, teeming with warships.

To venture out now was suicide.

Life aboard the cramped smuggler’s ship was miserable.

The food was atrocious, the water was filthy, and everything reeked.

They couldn’t wash properly and had to relieve themselves over the side of the ship.

Whenever his young and beautiful wife had to do so, he would hold an umbrella to shield her from view.

Yet every time, the crew members would gather on deck, their lecherous eyes peering hungrily past the umbrella.

Amidst this endless torment, his daughter fell ill.

High fever, chills, loss of consciousness, seizures.

She was deteriorating rapidly.

He demanded that the captain set sail immediately, but the man ignored him.

He couldn't take it anymore.

For the first time in his life, he screamed in rage.

"My daughter is dying!"

The captain replied with icy indifference.

"And what about the people you killed?"

“......”

"Thousands? Tens of thousands? How many have you slaughtered?"

The captain smirked, holding up his phone—displaying the scientist’s wanted poster and list of crimes.

"Didn’t you shove medical instruments into underaged girls and extract their ova?"

"And now you want sympathy? Because your daughter is dying?"

The captain turned away.

"I keep my promises. I’ll take you where I said I would."

"But whether a demon like you has the right to beg for mercy..."

"That’s another question entirely."

Soon after, his daughter died.

Her body was weighted down with heavy refuse and cast into the ocean.

His wife lost her mind.

Every night, she cried out for their daughter.

Then, on a night when the full moon hung over the sea, she disappeared.

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He remembers nothing after that.

The captain eventually delivered him to Incheon.

"This is the best I can do," the man had said.

Stripped of everything, he gazed at the unfamiliar land of Korea.

He had nothing left.

Here, he was a total outsider—a resident of the enemy nation that Koreans called ‘jjangkkae’ with disdain.

On his first day in Korea, he witnessed a mob of locals lynching a group of ethnic Chinese—the so-called Joseonjok.

Of course, he was not just any Chinese refugee.

He possessed an invaluable research archive.

With it, he could negotiate with the Korean government and secure a comfortable life.

But he chose not to.

His research was a tower built on the blood of others.

It deserved to collapse.

And so, rather than living as a privileged exile, he became just another nameless survivor in the maelstrom of the apocalypse.

As death loomed ever closer, he stumbled upon a discarded smartphone on a corpse.

Through it, he discovered PaleNet.

And there, he learned something he had believed impossible—

His second homeland had survived.

A smile formed at the corners of his lips.

By then, he had been in Korea for a year and a half.

Using a rudimentary computer he had assembled from scrap, he uploaded his final dataset to PaleNet.

At the same time, he spread rumors about the upload on a forum frequented by exiled Chinese survivors.

"And so, I cast my final fishing line."

"I hope that whoever reads this is someone who shares my blood."

"And now, my final conclusion—"

"There has never been a case where an Awakened individual produced a normal human offspring."

"At least, not in any of the countless samples I have studied."

"Yet, the Rifts continue to create Awakened, and the Awakened continue to erode ordinary humans—turning them into more of their kind."

"In short—"

"The extinction of humanity is inevitable."

That was the final record left by Demonic Fiend.

No—there was one more sentence.

It was placed on a separate page, with no page number, typed in a delicate, fading font—

"For my wife and daughter, who left before me."