Help! I Do Not Want to Guide a Disaster

Chapter 139: Eager Volunteers

Within hours, the storm had completely taken over, blowing a heavy blanket of snow across Belium City. Su Zheng and Pei Luo led the group deep into the East District, a sprawling sector where the city’s rawest, roughest elements lived out in the open.

Here, the neon lights buzzed with a harsh glow, red lanterns flickered outside crowded bars, and the low thrum of music bled through the thin walls of concrete buildings.

Despite the freezing chill, people drifted onto the streets, some catching the falling snowflakes with genuine smiles, while others simply stared up at the dark sky with quiet melancholy.

The safehouse apartment they reached was clearly scarcely lived in, coated in a light layer of dust and furnished with the bare essentials.

Once inside, an awkward, heavy tension settled over the room. Instead of blending together, the group naturally cracked, everyone choosing to stand or sit closely with their own partners.

"Does anyone want a hard, tasty drink?" Su Zheng asked, breaking the quiet as she aggressively shook a bottle of glowing, vibrant blue wine.

Pei Luo didn’t answer, silently taking her heavy winter jacket before disappearing down the hallway into one of the bedrooms. When no one else in the room offered a response, a look of exaggerated, fake disappointment washed over Su Zheng’s face.

"Too bad," she shrugged, popping the cap. "More for me."

"As another Disaster-class Esper, who is actually stronger between you and Xinyuan?" Duan Ze asked abruptly.

Sitting right beside him, Kaiwen, who was still visibly pissed off that these two had dared to kidnap his Guide in the first place, shot Duan Ze a look of pure disbelief before letting out a defeated sigh and rubbing his temples.

"Well," Su Zheng said, taking a long swig directly from the blue bottle, "Xinyuan is. Obviously. The rest of us are basically just cheap copies. He awakened naturally as a Disaster-class Esper. We, on the other hand, were just lab rats. They pumped his harvested blood into us, and whoever was lucky enough to survive the mutation ended up as a manufactured Disaster-class."

She dropped the information completely casually, as if she were talking about the weather.

"Were you a willing participant in the experiments?" Duan Ze pressed, his tone deeply curious.

The question made Su Zheng stiffen for a second. Her purple eyes flickered over to the worn couch where Xinyuan was currently sprawled out. The Esper lay completely relaxed, his head resting heavily in Wenzhi’s lap, his face buried deep against his Guide’s stomach.

Wenzhi sat back, one hand idly tracing through Xinyuan’s dark hair while his other hand slowly twisted a lollipop between his teeth, his grey eyes locked onto Su Zheng.

"People like Wu Youran were happy, eager volunteers," Su Zheng said, her voice dropping into a slightly sharper, raspy edge. "But me? I was born into a High Family. My parents wanted me to be something magnificent. They genuinely believed I could be the one to stabilize and fix the world. So, they made sure I was experimented on entirely against my will. The exact second the procedure succeeded... I slaughtered them both and ran like hell."

She took another heavy swig of the blue wine, her expression hardening.

A dark, amused smirk curled the corner of Wenzhi’s lips at her blunt honesty, while Duan Ze blinked in surprise. "Oh."

"So you were originally born inside the Old Blood territories, just like Xinyuan," Kaiwen noted, his posture shifting.

Su Zheng nodded. "Yeah. It’s pretty pathetic, honestly. My parents were top-tier genetic scientists. My father was actually the researcher who first discovered the correlation that Xinyuan’s awakening was the catalyst that tore open the primary Red Zone Rifts. He was also the mastermind who strapped me to the operating table."

She kept her tone airy and detached, though it was glaringly obvious to everyone in the room that the casual attitude was just a deeply ingrained coping mechanism.

The apartment fell into a heavy, suffocating silence. Xinyuan didn’t even bother to turn his head or acknowledge his own blood being used to create Espers, content to remain entirely anchored against Wenzhi’s skin.

The heavy quiet lasted until Pei Luo finally walked back into the sitting room, his heavy boots clicking against the floorboards. "There are three bedrooms down the hall. Everyone can claim one for the night, and—"

"No, no. Shut up. We aren’t having a cozy sleepover right now," Wenzhi cut in instantly, his voice sharp as he pulled the lollipop from his lips. "Cut the shit and tell us exactly what we’re supposed to know, Pei Luo."

Pei Luo stopped in his tracks, his face tightening as he locked eyes with the Guide. He stared at him hard for a long, silent moment before letting out a low grunt.

"You know," Pei Luo muttered, a flash of bitter nostalgia crossing his eyes, "I liked you a hell of a lot better before the whole Jia’ang City Rift attack."

Wenzhi actually found that funny. A faint, sharp smile touched his lips. It was fascinating how clearly he noticed he was a completely different person after returning from that Jia’ang City Rift attack.

Duan Ze, who had been by his side through the aftermath, had smoothly adapted to the change. Pei Luo, who had vanished into the dark, was still stuck trying to reconcile the faction leader in front of him with the friend he used to know.

Pei Luo moved over to stand right next to Su Zheng. Without asking, he cleanly snatched the blue bottle of wine from her hand and took a heavy, burning swig.

"Well, Xinyuan went into a massive berserk state quite recently," Pei Luo said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "It drew a ridiculous number of international investigators and global scientists to the borders because everyone genuinely thought it was going to be the end of the world. But then the surge miraculously stopped. Which was a massive relief for the global grid."

Pei Luo took a deep, heavy breath, his eyes dropping to Xinyuan resting on the couch. "But... right before that happened, we managed to break one of the high-ranking Old Blood scientists. We extracted their data. Xinyuan does have the capacity to fix the world, but according to their calculations, he needs to be in a completely broken state to trigger the stabilization sequence. He has to be entirely shattered."