Chapter 18

So-called Eden

Juan waited for a long time, yet nothing happened.

Actually, it wasn’t that nothing happened.

It was just that it occurred outside of Eden, and Juan didn’t know.

Around three o’clock in the afternoon, several of the city’s most trafficked billboards and the outer luminous city walls played a video on a loop.

“… I’m sorry, 521533, I don’t like you anymore. Let’s break up! There’s no third party involved; I just don’t love you anymore. It’s always hard to bring it up when I see you, so I can only notify you in this way…”

The person on the screen was Lan, dressed in the uniform of a junior researcher in Eden. He seemed to be in a bedroom, the blue light reflecting off his glasses obscured his eyes as he faced the screen, speaking seriously.

On the streets, both inside and outside the city walls, everyone’s gaze couldn’t help but fall on this video. After all, how many people had seen someone broadcast a breakup advertisement throughout the city in their lifetime?

Advertising is expensive! Although it’s unclear how much it costs, all these billboards are in the busiest areas, which must be costly. Whoever could afford to run a breakup ad in such places must be wealthy! Or maybe their girlfriend/boyfriend is really powerful! Could they be a supernatural being?

People speculated wildly.

Meanwhile, in front of a billboard on the street, several girls were cautiously watching the girl in the center.

She had no extraordinary abilities, nor was she a supernatural being. The protagonist of the video, the girl who had been dumped, was one of their companions…

The girl with two braided pigtails glared at the screen, practically wishing to pierce the boy on the screen with her gaze. After a while, as if venting her frustration, she shouted and angrily walked away.

Everything was laid out in front of the screen.

Whether it was the luminous screens outside the city, the various billboards inside the city, the reactions of the passersby, or the furious braided girl… all of it was displayed prominently on several screens, while the monitoring screen in front captured everything.

And all of this was currently reflected in the eyes of 485321, who was Lan.

Forced to sit in the monitoring room, Lan’s expression went from shock to numbness in just a few seconds.

“It can’t be sent out; everything is under surveillance,” said a scruffy-looking middle-aged man beside him. He wore a somewhat stained white uniform and casually pressed a remote control in his hand. Under his manipulation, the scenes on the screen changed rapidly, showing both the outside of Eden and scenes within.

Lan saw the scene of his usual “work” place; he even caught sight of “that room”!

Then, he seemed to be transported back to that room.

The room that held Mia and many other women.

A dimly lit room, illuminated only by countless cylindrical water tanks…

Including Mia, those women were suspended naked in those water tanks. Several tubes dangled from the tops of the tanks, inserted into the women’s bodies. When he first saw the first person, Lan didn’t understand what was happening. However, as he saw the second and third women with noticeably rounded bellies, the horrifying speculation began to take shape in his mind. When he noticed that all the women’s abdomens were protruding to varying degrees—some even showing visible fetal movements—he tightly covered his mouth.

Then, he saw Mia.

Also trapped in a cylindrical water tank, Mia’s abdomen was similarly protruding. In fact, the movements he had just noticed came from her belly, and for this reason, he instinctively looked up at the woman’s face, and upon doing so, he saw an extraordinarily familiar face.

He had spoken with Mia.

Thirteen years ago, when he was still a child.

He was thin and short, quiet and shy; such a child wasn’t popular among his peers.

The kids he grew up with didn’t want to play with him, and the caretakers often forgot about him, neglecting to give him meals and clothes. When certain resources were scarce, he was always the one being reminded by the teacher that “we’ll make sure to give you some next time.”

During that time, he always felt lost.

It was Mia who told him that studying hard could change his fate.

He did it that way, and he succeeded.

So he had always known about Sister Mia, watching her come all this way. Even after five years without seeing her, he still recognized her at a glance!

But wasn’t she supposed to be a researcher at Eden? How did she end up like this?

Wait, could it be that Sister Mia was seriously injured? Was she just here to recover?

At that moment, he still felt it might be a benevolent arrangement. However, his subconscious probably felt that this reason didn’t make sense; otherwise, why wouldn’t he ask his mentor and instead choose to investigate secretly?

Using his identity as a researcher and light brain technology, he conducted extensive investigations, and the more he dug, the more horrified he became—

Sister Mia had been chosen to become a host, even though artificial womb technology existed! In fact, Eden had long been proud of its artificial womb technology, using it to reproduce children continuously to inject new life into the apocalypse and prevent the extinction of humanity—this had been their long-promoted slogan!

Now it seemed like a brainwashing slogan?

It was merely a commercial company!

The records showed that before the apocalypse, it was a commercial genetic management company ← that was the nice way to say it; to put it bluntly, it was just a sperm and egg bank where you could buy suitable sperm or eggs for money. Similarly, for a fee, you could enjoy services for frozen sperm and eggs.

Occasionally, they would offer those two services for free, but the cost was collecting the other party’s genetic information. This way, before the apocalypse, the company had accumulated a substantial amount of human genetic information.

Then, the apocalypse broke out.

It must be said they were quite fortunate; before the apocalypse, they had chosen a remote location for their company due to lack of funds. After the apocalypse, this place turned out to be relatively safe, and their gene bank was completely untouched. Realizing this, they began their business.

Yes, it was a “business.”

They started producing children.

They first produced children with supernatural abilities.

They found well-known supernatural beings who had stored their genetic samples with them and used their genes to breed children, who had a high likelihood of possessing abilities. After discovering this, they produced a significant batch of children from these genes, leaving the most exceptional ones to serve them, while the less exceptional ones were sold to their “parents.” If the children’s parents didn’t pay up, they sold them to their rivals or to larger survivor bases.

As the apocalypse progressed and human social structures stabilized, they developed a new “business”: they began selling pretty children.

Finally, they had survived and stabilized, and part of this stable population developed a desire for beauty.

At the same time, they also sold organs…

As for these children, they were the byproducts of production, like scraps that hadn’t been sold. They were transferred out of Eden to stay outside, serving to produce living supplies for them while also being kept for later sale.

Whether possessing abilities or not, they used the children in their hands thoroughly and cleanly.

Sister Mia was part of their “latest business.” As research progressed, they felt that children born from artificial wombs still seemed to lack something. So they planned to return to the primitive method and experiment to see if offspring born from women’s bodies under the same genetic conditions would be better…

Lan read through this information in tears.

Then he wiped his tears, recorded a video, and planned to find a way to send it out before he was caught.

“Why not escape?” The scruffy middle-aged man had come up behind him at some point and draped his arm over Lan’s shoulder. He spoke softly, “Even after getting out, you chose to come back?”

“Is it to buy time, to make us think everything is normal? To let everyone know the truth behind this place?” He laughed softly in Lan’s ear, his voice low, like a devil’s whisper: “I must say, Maria has really raised you well in this way.”

“It’s the apocalypse, and you can still be so naive.”

“Naive, idealistic, and a bit of heroism.”

“True, you are still just kids! And you’re born into a happy society that, due to ample supplies, is not much different from the world before the apocalypse.”

“Don’t think that just because you’ve recorded this to reveal to the world, you’ve cut ties with us. In fact, you’ve been raised with our money since birth. You should even thank us for your existence. Without us, without our research, in this chaotic world, you would be nothing but sperm and eggs, not even a basic genetic fragment, and you would never have had the chance to come into this world.”

“Letting you see all this is actually a test. If you watch it and do nothing, you can continue being your researcher. Sigh… We clearly gave you a chance…” the man sighed.

Lan wept bitterly, “We… didn’t voluntarily come into this world either.”

“Bullshit researcher, I quit!”

“Just kill me!”

Standing straight from behind him, the man looked down at him with pity: “If you’re not a researcher, then you’re our product. And as for products, why would we just kill them?”

“Take him away,” the man waved his hand, and two men in researcher uniforms came over to drag Lan away. Just as Lan was about to be dragged out the door, the man took one last look at him and smiled:

“Don’t worry; we’ll get a good price for you.”