The second after the operator finished speaking, Lu Feng's countenance changed.

He turned on his heel and left, and the Lighthouse researcher quickly followed. One of the Trial Court's cars was parked outside the City Defense Agency, and a young Judge came running over. "Colonel!"

"You all will stay and assist the City Defense Agency," Lu Feng said.

"Colonel, do we need to convene the Trial Court?"

Lu Feng's gaze swept over the thin streams of people on the road. "Close the city gates and gather in District 5."

"Yes sir," the Judge said. "Stay safe, Colonel."

Lu Feng didn't say anything as he slammed the car door shut and started the engine. He turned the steering wheel hard, and the black car made a swift U-turn before heading towards the Dispersion Center in District 1 like an arrow leaving its bowstring. Following closely in its wake were Howard's car and the City Defense Agency's heavily armored vehicles.

In the back seat, the researcher was holding a communicator and holding a conversation as well. He was being questioned.

"We're currently heading to the Dispersion Center," the researcher said. "We must prepare for the worst-case scenario.

"For now, it's suspected that the special frequency used by the ultrasonic dispersers to drive off arthropods and birds is simultaneously attracting underground worms. But there is also no doubt that this was a premeditated attack.

"Yes, we are currently contacting the other disperser locations."

At the same time, in the middle of the city, the sound of the alarm tower abruptly rang out. Its constant shrill wail was deafening. After hearing it, the countenances of the people sparsely scattered on the early morning streets changed dramatically, and after looking at each other, they bolted towards the nearest buildings as the sustained sound meant "find emergency shelter".

At the same time, the street broadcast began to play and a pleasant robotic female voice said, "Alert. Due to a breakdown of the ultrasonic disperser, insects, birds, and worm-class monsters may appear in the city in the near future. Before repairs are confirmed, please immediately close all doors and windows and refrain from going out. Upon discovering a suspicious situation, please immediately dial the emergency line and contact the City Defense Agency. The base's military will do all it can to protect your safety."

"Alert. Due to a breakdown of the ultrasonic disperser, insects, birds, and worm-class monsters may appear in the city in the near future..."

The sounds of windows slamming shut came in an unbroken succession from the residential buildings all around, and the City Defense Agency's workers and prisoners were swiftly transferred to the nearest residential area. Steady streams of armored vehicles emerged from the City Defense Agency's various garrison points within the base and dispersed all over the roads.

An Zhe, Mr. Shaw, and Poet were in the same room. The City Defense Agency had its hands full with its own matters, and of the three of them, one had committed the crime of incitement, one had committed the crime of illegally stealing the Arbiter's information, and one had been charged with some strange accusations by the Arbiter—in short, they posed no lethal threat, so no soldiers kept watch on them and they were only locked in.

"The Dispersion Center remotely manages all the dispersers in the outer city." Poet looked out the window. "In the air of the wilderness, even a tiny flying bug may infect humans. Only by using special frequency ultrasound to disperse them can the base maintain the residents' absolute safety. Not even a fly can get into the base. If something really has happened to the Dispersion Center, then the entire city is exposed to the possibility of infection. To insects in the midst of breeding season, human flesh and blood make the best breeding grounds for their eggs."

An Zhe sat on the bare bed board, hugging his knees. He asked, "What will happen?"

Poet reached out and pinched the nape of An Zhe’s neck. "Supposing that a little bug laid its eggs beneath your skin last night, the bug genes and your human genes will fuse. In another three days at most, you'll be a bag of skin wrapped around up to a hundred million insect eggs. The little bugs will fly out from your eyes and windpipe onto other people, and very soon—"

"Don't scare the kid.” Mr. Shaw said, clearly disgruntled by this exchange.

Poet leisurely retracted his hand. "I'm speaking the truth."

The xenogenic whose stomach Lu Feng had cut open that day at the supply depot square suddenly appeared before An Zhe's eyes. His abdominal cavity and windpipe were full of small translucent bugs.

He asked, "Then what can we do?"

Poet shook his head.

"We can only pray that nothing major happened to the Dispersion Center or that the disperser can be quickly repaired soon after, otherwise..." He sighed softly. "Otherwise, either there will be a base-wide outbreak or... Judgment Day will repeat itself."

An Zhe frowned as he looked at the deserted streets through the window.

But he heard Mr. Shaw ask, "You know about Judgment Day?"

"I've heard a bit about it," Poet said.

Mr. Shaw sighed. "I thought that so long as I obediently stayed within the base, I could live until I died of old age."

"The base has been safe for too long." Poet was still looking into the distance. "I always forget that safety is what's temporary while danger is eternal. Life isn't something we're owed. Life is a gift."

An Zhe didn't really understand, nor did he know how to ask about it.

He only had one question. "What is Judgment Day?"

But Mr. Shaw glanced at him. "I forgot to ask you. What's the story behind your clothes?

An Zhe was at a loss for words.

Lu Feng's coat was still draped over his shoulders, and in the coat's pocket were Lu Feng's work notebook and ballpoint pen.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Mr. Shaw narrowed his eyes.

"Last night, when Poet and I were in the tents, where were you?" he asked. "Did you sleep with him?"

"No." An Zhe always felt that Mr. Shaw was interrogating him. He replied in a small voice, "He didn't sleep."

Mr. Shaw let out a huff of laughter. "How did you know he didn't sleep? You did sleep with him. How was he? 'Fess up."

An Zhe knew that he couldn't outspeak anyone, so he pretended to not hear his question. Instead, he repeated his own. "What is Judgment Day?"

"Then do you know how the Arbiter's Code was proposed?" Poet asked him.

"I don't," An Zhe said.

Poet looked at Mr. Shaw. "The elder must know."

Mr. Shaw said with a lift of his eyebrows, "I do."

Poet said, "How old are you?"

But Mr. Shaw didn't reply. He said, "When I was young, everyone greatly supported the bill."

Poet sat down on the corner of the bed right next to An Zhe. His gray prison uniform was worn out in some places, his black shoulder-length hair was tied at the back of his head in a simple manner, and his facial expression was very calm. When he spoke, it was with a contrived cadence that was perhaps the tone commonly used by those in Poet's line of work. "The Arbiter's Code has lasted for almost seventy years. I think the Northern Base is very grateful towards it. I don't know much about that thing in particular, because the base has too few old people."

Mr. Shaw's interest seemed to have finally shifted from the question of how An Zhe slept. As he played with small mannequin parts he had taken out from his pocket, he said, "I also heard it from others when I was young."

"Do tell," Poet said.

"After the Southeastern Base met its doom, everyone was very afraid. In those days, the xenogenics' degree of mutation was not yet as severe as it is now. When people returned to the base from the outside, they only needed to pass a full-body examination. Which was fine, as long as they didn't have wounds or other abnormalities. There were soldiers everywhere within the base, and as soon as a mutant was discovered, it would be immediately killed," Mr. Shaw said. "The ultrasonic dispersers hadn't been invented yet either, so insects flew around within the base. The soldiers killed the big ones with obvious mutations, but the small ones couldn't be caught, so insect-catching lights were hung up everywhere within the base. Minors weren't permitted to leave the base, so they formed insect-catching teams and stamped out insects everywhere."

Poet said, "The Turmoil Age."

"Pretty much," Mr. Shaw said. "I was even an insect-catching team captain in my youth. It wasn't until more than ten years later that we had the ultrasonic dispersers and not even a single bug could fly into the base."

"At that time, the Arbiter's Code had already been enacted," Poet said.

"Correct," Mr. Shaw said. "But the enactment of the bill wasn't because of the bugs, but because of a surveillance recording. When a supervisor was making a routine inspection of the water tower footage, he saw that something had happened in one corner, but the spot was too dark and not clearly captured on video, so nobody discovered it at the time. The moment the supervisor saw the footage, he was scared out of his wits. You guys can't imagine the sight."

Mr. Shaw's story piqued An Zhe's interest, and he saw that Poet was also listening with rapt attention.

Then he heard Mr. Shaw continue. "He saw a person with a very strange posture walk to the edge of the circulating pool. Then that person sat down like they had no bones in their body. I heard from the people who recorded the footage that the person was like a human-shaped leech. After sitting down, he stuck his legs into the pool."

"He was a xenogenic and using his secretions to pollute the water source?" Poet asked.

Mr. Shaw smiled. "Hah, that wouldn't have caused that much fear."

Poet raised his eyebrows.

"Then that person's legs turned into something translucent and whitish. As if they had exploded, a large patch diffused into the water. There's no way to describe it." Mr. Shaw shook his head and continued. "And after that, the person's entire body also flowed into the pond, and the water level immediately rose by a lot. I heard people say that it was like it had been stuffed full of white minced pork. That water was a part of the base's water circulation system.

"And after that, it flowed away through the outlet along with the water, which was the base's drinking water," Mr. Shaw said. "What made it even worse was that it was a recording from more than twenty hours prior already."

Poet frowned slightly, seeming somewhat nauseated. Only after his Adam's apple had bobbed a few times did he say, "The whole city was exposed."

"Correct," Mr. Shaw said. "The Lighthouse gave out its investigation results. It was a soft-bodied aquatic xenogenic, and diffusing into the water may have been a reproduction method. In short, the entire base was at risk of infection, and nobody was safe. That bill was urgently enacted soon afterwards."

"There's a saying," Poet said, "that the initial generations of Arbiters and the Trial Court did not belong to the military but were subordinate institutions of the Lighthouse instead."

"That's also correct. After the aquatic xenogenic invasion, amongst the Lighthouse's scientists, some studied humanoid xenogenics and understood quite a lot about their characteristics. They formed the Trial Court, and in ten days, they organized for everyone in the base to be examined one by one. Nobody was wounded, but anyone could have been infected. They also did not have any methods with which to perform inspections, so it was entirely dependent on observation by the naked eye and intuitive judgment. Although you've done nothing but drink a mouthful of water, if the Trial Court wanted you to die, you had to die." Mr. Shaw sighed. "Those ten days were truly a bloodbath. It's said that half of the entire base died."

"It's roughly the same as the information I collected before," Poet said. "Those ten days were the legendary Judgment Days."

"Only those of you who fiddle with your pens, all mysterious-like, say that those ten days are 'Judgment Day' and talk about God and whatnot—" Mr. Shaw said with a frown.

Poet smiled. "On doomsday, everyone on Earth will be judged before God and either ascend to Heaven or be cast down into Hell. That is Judgment Day."

"Who knows?" Mr. Shaw brushed the dust off his sleeve cuffs. "After the Virginia Base caught wind of it, they cursed out our base's strategic decision, dispatched a scientific research team over so that we could have devices that differentiate xenogenics on a scientific basis, and circulated opposition leaflets everywhere with drones, denouncing the Northern Base for its loss of humanity and violations of human rights. And the result?"

Poet said in a low voice, "Three years later, humanoid marine xenogenics invaded, and the Virginia Base was completely infected and declared fallen."

"With the idiots of the Virginia Base as an example, the Arbiter's Code was formally extended. Any Judge could shoot people. Those whom the Judges couldn't make decisions on were given over to the Arbiter to make a decision with their full powers, and they would bear no responsibility for manslaughter. The Arbiter is God." Mr. Shaw grinned. "Unfortunately, it's easy for God to go mad. After killing too many of their own people, they won't be able to stop. The Lighthouse's scientists who were responsible for the Trials were switched out batch after batch. In ten years, three went mad and two committed suicide. Nobody else was willing to do it, so the military took over.

"People in the military are stationed in the wilderness for long periods of time, have seen many monsters, have a decent ability to distinguish xenogenics, and are psychologically strong. The speed at which Arbiters were replaced finally changed from one going mad every three years to one going mad every five years. Lu Feng wasn't even twenty years old when he became the Arbiter. I think he's too young, and I even bet with others that he wouldn't last past three years." Mr. Shaw shrugged. "I've lost no small amount of money. This year will be his seventh. Hubbard said that the number of people he's killed is several times the amount of the previous Arbiter. Moreover, in each of these past three years, the number kept doubling. Everyone knows that he's not far off from going mad."

"Between the Arbiter and the person being judged, it's hard to say whose psychological pressure is greater." Poet leaned against the wall. "But since Colonel Lu still has the frame of mind to sleep with our young friend, it looks like he's still far away from losing control."

"No, that's wrong." Just as he finished speaking, he frowned and corrected himself. "On the contrary, for a cold and heartless person like Colonel Lu, this is one of the omens of madness."

He sidled up to An Zhe, a look similar to Mr. Shaw's in his eyes. "How was he? Did he hurt you?"

An Zhe tightly wrapped himself in the coat and shrunk into the corner, reluctant to talk to them.

Thump.

The sound of an impact.

The atmosphere in the room instantly tensed, and all three of them looked at the source of the sound.

A colorful beetle had struck the window.