Dimensional Store: Welcome to the Apocalypse Apartment - Chapter 172

Chapter 172

“My parents were forcibly separated and then forced to spawn for the Aliens.

“My father couldn’t accept the spawning. He suffered a mental breakdown and attempted suicide. The Aliens detained him and forced him to continue spawning until he became catatonic.

“After my mother spawned, she became delusional. She would call out my name to every little Alien that hatched.

“Because of my hatred, I killed several of the young Aliens, so the community isolated me from my parents.

“It wasn’t until I was seven, when the Aliens enacted laws to protect humans, that I was able to leave the Rearing Base and be raised by an Alien instead.”

The Rearing Base was where human children who resisted Alien education were once kept in isolation.

The living conditions there were atrocious.

Children were treated like livestock being fed in a collective, stripped of all dignity.

Lu Beijiu’s voice was incredibly calm.

When he reached the point where he could speak about the past, those events no longer had the power to hurt him.

Time makes the pain fade.

What remains most deeply is the hatred.

Gu Huaiwei listened quietly.

This was his past; she only needed to be a listener.

“I killed my Keeper and drained every bit of Magnetic Value from his body. They threw me in prison and made me attend classes, trying to change my mindset.”

Humans were valuable property.

Aliens would not easily destroy a human.

“Gu Changge found me and bailed me out. If I hadn’t met her, I might have been like other persecuted humans-forgetting past pain within the prison’s so-called ‘humanitarian care,’ becoming numb, slowly adapting to the Aliens’ new rules, and becoming the frog boiled in lukewarm water.”

Lu Beijiu clenched his fists tightly.

Veins bulged on the back of his hands.

He would never allow himself to be tamed.

“Sister Changge provided me with some technology that didn’t exist in this world and helped me establish a Biotech Company. I used the company to earn a massive amount of Magnetic Value, which I then used to fund my colleagues in the Dawn Alliance.”

“What’s the story between you and Chen Liuxiang?”

Gu Huaiwei didn’t truly want to delve into Lu Beijiu’s past; she was more concerned about the connection between him and Chen Liuxiang.

“Chen Liuxiang is wearing my mother’s skin.”

“Huh?” Gu Huaiwei blinked, making sure she hadn’t misheard.

Although she had considered the possibility of human skin, she had touched them herself in the mall; the texture of those Skin Suits didn’t seem like pure human skin.

Lu Beijiu’s lips curled into a mocking smile. He asked, “Do you know where those Alien Skin Suits come from?”

“I originally thought it was some kind of biotechnology, like rubber, pigskin, or some other animal leather…”

The living were more valuable than the dead.

Gu Huaiwei felt that, setting aside emotional factors and looking at it purely from an efficiency standpoint, the Aliens wouldn’t go around killing people just to take their skin.

“Naive.” Lu Beijiu shook his head. “Skin Suits made of rubber are cheap and don’t fit well. When Aliens wear them, their expressions and movements become very strange.”

Gu Huaiwei pursed her lips. She remembered those Aliens with low Magnetic Value; the Skin Suits they wore did indeed look very awkward.

“Even if it is human skin, it should be processed.”

“Yes, those high-priced Skin Suits are stripped from the bodies of the dead,” Lu Beijiu said, his voice dropping a few octaves. “There are no Crematoriums in this world, and no Cemeteries. The bodies of all who die are recycled and then put through a special processing sequence.”
“Where did all those raw materials come from?”

Lu Beijiu’s voice was desolate, his dark eyes heavy. “All these years of war… many people have died.”

Aliens had no reverence for the dead.

He continued, “The dead were buried underground. The Aliens dug up their rotting bodies, tore off the remaining skin, and placed it in petri dishes to cultivate complete Skin Suits.”

At this point, Gu Huaiwei could understand the significance of the Dawn Alliance’s existence.

They were indeed radical.

But radicalism was necessary.

Gentle resistance was meaningless.

If the voice of resistance was too quiet, the Aliens would only think humanity was acting spoiled.

“I first approached Chen Liuxiang because I saw my mother’s face on her. At that time, I didn’t know an Alien’s Skin Suit was made of human skin. I was worried about my mother, so I investigated Chen Liuxiang’s personal information and then sought Gu Changge’s help, asking her to perform plastic surgery on me.”

In this Dimension, no hospital would perform plastic surgery on a human.

Lu Beijiu was deeply grateful to Gu Changge.

Without Gu Changge, he wouldn’t be who he was today.

Lu Beijiu spoke intermittently for a long time. Midway through, he felt thirsty and restless, wanting to grab a bottle of wine from the fridge, but there was no alcohol in Sister Yu’s office, which made his patience fray.

He said that after he uncovered the truth about his mother’s skin, he didn’t leave. Instead, he maintained contact with Chen Liuxiang.

Firstly, it was because he wanted to look at his mother’s face; secondly, because he wanted to exploit Chen Liuxiang’s social resources.

Chen Liuxiang’s family business was massive. After Gu Changge disappeared, many of the projects at his Biotech Company were provided by Chen Liuxiang.

He knew, of course, that Chen Liuxiang was looking at someone else through him.

That was his goal.

He used this face to keep Chen Liuxiang on a hook.

“I will stay entangled with her until the day she dies. Then, the moment she draws her last breath, I will strip that fake skin from her face and bury it in the earth so my mother can finally rest in peace.”

Lu Beijiu’s words were harsh.

As for what he truly felt in his heart, only he knew.

Gu Huaiwei was still thinking about what had happened at the Coming-of-Age Ceremony.

Lu Beijiu likely wasn’t lying.

And Chen Liuxiang probably wasn’t as simple as he made her out to be.

This conversation with Lu Beijiu had bought Gu Huaiwei a significant amount of time.

After he finished speaking, he called Sister Yu out and urged them to begin the Baptism immediately.

Sister Yu took Gu Huaiwei by the arm. “Come with me.”

Then, she turned to Lu Beijiu. “Little Lu, you wait here. Once the Baptism is over, we’ll come back for you.”

Lu Beijiu nodded, his expression gloomy.

Every time he looked back at the path he had taken, he felt his methods were too weak. Simply because Chen Liuxiang wore his mother’s face, he had embraced and kissed her time and time again.

It was wrong.

He knew it, yet he chose to continue down that mistaken path.

Gu Huaiwei followed behind Sister Yu. On their way to the room for the Baptism, they passed through a massive underground Laboratory.

Transparent petri dishes lined the Laboratory, with blurred lifeforms floating inside.

The appearance of these lifeforms was somewhere between human and Alien, their bodies covered in tentacles, looking like little monsters crawled out of Hell.

“These are…” Gu Huaiwei’s pace slowed. “You’ve combined human and Alien genes?”

“That’s right.” Sister Yu acted as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world, her tone flat. “After all, you were the one who taught us how to do this.”