Welcome to Ability Store

Chapter 358: Chapter 358: Yuyan

Yeah... the time we were apart wasn’t actually that long, but his memories of her had still gone a bit blurry. Chen Xuan held his breath, carefully examining every detail of her. Her eyebrows, the corners of her eyes, her cheeks, her lips... all of these were quite different from what he remembered. His brain was like a high‑speed editor, automatically correcting them one by one until she overlapped perfectly with the image in his mind.

In the end, his brain reached a conclusion: she really was Lin Qing. Unless there existed in this world a twin or clone who matched her this perfectly.

He said "matched" instead of "similar" because Lin Qing clearly was no longer the same Future Warrior as before.

Her hair had turned pure black, no longer that dazzling gradient of pink, purple, and blue. Her face was dull and ashy instead of the perpetually smooth, fresh synthetic skin from before, but she now looked more like an explorer who had trekked a long, long road.

The rest of her was the same story.

For example, her eyebrows were no longer carefully groomed, her lips were dry and even blistered and cracked—things you would never see on the old Lin Qing’s face.

She had shed a full set of augments and become an ordinary person.

Of course, calling her literally "ordinary" wouldn’t be accurate either. At least on her wrists and neck he could still see the traces of modifications, similar to Sha River’s.

That wasn’t surprising. If you relied on a purely natural body, running into a nano-living body meant a dead end. She’d been out in the wild for a long time; getting augmented was basically mandatory.

It was just that the level of augments in this world was far inferior to that of the pre‑Fluctuation future, so Lin Qing changing like this made perfect sense.

No wonder he’d spent so long asking around and turned up nothing.

If he weren’t extremely familiar with her, one glance probably wouldn’t have been enough for him to recognize her.

"Everyone, hiding inside a subway shelter does give people a kind of false sense of security, like we can hide here for the rest of our lives, have kids and keep hiding after they’re born. But that’s not how it really is!" She waved her arms, using her loudest voice to fight the roar of the crowd. "The number of Evangelicals is still rising, the Celestial Patrol is appearing more and more often, our world is getting more and more dangerous. If we don’t fight back with everything we’ve got now, this place will sooner or later turn into a city for non‑humans!"

"But how are you gonna destroy the ghost subway? None of our weapons can even scratch it!"

"We have to send a team onto the train and dismantle it from the inside." she replied. "You all know this: nano-living bodies are very special. When they haven’t entered hunting mode, they retain all the functions of the object they’ve mimicked... and that naturally includes the carriage‑separation system!"

"You’re insane. When people run into a nano-living body, they can barely run away in time, and now you want us to walk up to it on purpose?"

Boos broke out at once.

"Yeah, wouldn’t we just get swallowed by the ghost subway in a second?"

"Do you mean... get enough people to feed it first, and only then climb on?"

"Of course not! We have a workable plan, we just need help from each stronghold, preferably Ability Users!" Lin Qing was completely unfazed by the boos. "Maybe a lot of people will die, maybe we’ll even fail completely, but we don’t have a better option. Dragging this out is just waiting around to die!"

"And you? You planning to die too?" someone shouted.

Lin Qing blinked. "If it’s necessary, I absolutely won’t turn tail and run at the last minute!"

That caught Chen Xuan off guard.

He knew her way too well. Other people wouldn’t notice that quick blink, but to him it was obvious that Lin Qing had hesitated a little when she said that.

But she had never been someone who feared sacrifice.

Especially not when she was calling on others to join her in completing some important mission.

"Anyone willing to join our plan? Or who at least wants to know more?" Lin Qing looked around. "Where are the Ability Users in the Sha Jiang District stronghold? Don’t we even have one person willing to think about the future?"

"Oh please, you’re not just trying to trick people into dying, you’re tricking Ability Users on top of that. Does Fireline Band really take us all for idiots?"

"Exactly. If your plan actually worked, why not go talk to the Survivor Mutual Aid Association? Let them send a strike team to support you!"

"Spare us. Nobody’s gonna mess around with their head on the line for you."

"I say next time don’t come back to Sha River Station. Go die quietly out in the wild instead!"

Chen Xuan pushed straight through the crowd and walked up to the statue. "I want to join."

For a moment, the area went dead silent.

Everyone’s eyes snapped to him in unison.

Even Lin Qing looked pretty surprised, because from the atmosphere around her she could feel a strong shock, not that gloating or "let’s watch the show" kind of ridicule.

Which meant the young man who’d stepped out was no ordinary person.

"You’re... an Ability User?"

"Yeah, I am." Chen Xuan bared his teeth in a grin. "Everyone here can vouch for it."

Lin Qing looked around and found that no one spoke up to deny it.

"Mr. Chen... are you serious?" Sha River squeezed in at this point, his face full of worry. "Even if you’re very strong, going up against the ghost subway is way too dangerous..."

"Yeah, you don’t have to take risks with them."

"Please just stay in the subway station. We need your protection..."

Once Sha River took the lead, everyone suddenly changed their tune, switching from laughing at Fireline Band to trying to talk Chen Xuan out of it.

"Thank you all for your concern, but I know what I’m doing." He waved a hand, signaling them to relax. "These people came a long way; it’s not like they came all this way just to die. So hearing their detailed plan doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me."

Chen Xuan turned his head to Lin Qing. "What do you think?"

...

The Fireline Band camp was out on the street outside the subway station—a flat, wide four‑lane road in both directions, very suitable for setting up camp. It was still within the effective range of the shielding device, but without barbed wire and auto‑turrets it felt just that little bit less safe.

When asked why they didn’t live in the subway station, Lin Qing’s answer was that it cost money.

Chen Xuan casually counted the tents—roughly twenty‑two of them. Assuming three people to a tent, the entire band still numbered under a hundred.

Compared to the usual two‑Searcher squad formation, their team was indeed large. But if they wanted to challenge a large nano-living body, this headcount was a bit underwhelming.

"It’s not that we value Credit Points more than our lives, it’s that this expense is completely meaningless." She walked ahead leading the way as she talked. "Evangelicals rarely launch direct attacks on camps. Our main threats when we set up outside are wild boars and lion prides; a few hunting rifles are enough to deal with that."

"What about places without a shielding device?" Chen Xuan asked.

"It gets a bit more dangerous. You have to arrange the tents properly, use the protective suits to form a fairly complete detection blind zone. And you need lookouts and hidden sentries to guard against Evangelical raids."

"I see." He put on an expression like he’d just learned something.

"You’re not from Jiang City?" Lin Qing asked.

For a moment, Chen Xuan felt a faint pang of loss—he’d already understood, from the second their eyes met, that the Lin Qing standing in front of him had completely forgotten he existed, or rather, that the experience of becoming a Future Warrior and coming back to the past had never happened from her point of view. But he still harbored a sliver of hope that she’d suddenly remember him.

"No." Chen Xuan smoothed out that ripple in his heart and curved his lips in a smile. "I’m from a small town near Bamboo City and only just got here. How’d you tell?"

"You’re out here without a protective suit, which means you basically have no awareness of defending against nano-living bodies. People this careless in Jiang City have been dead for a long time."

"Uh... we’re still inside the shielding range of the stronghold anyway." Chen Xuan bullshitted.

"Do you know how big the current shielding range is?" Lin Qing shot back.

"No. But you guys definitely do... so as long as we don’t leave the camp we should be fine."

"We don’t know either."

"Huh?" Chen Xuan froze.

"Would the range be the same when the shielding device is running at 50% power, full power, and overload?" Lin Qing looked at him like he was an idiot. "Maybe we are within the shielding range right now, but take a few more steps and we could be outside it. The difference is I’m wearing a protective suit, and you’re not. So the one who dies would be you."

Chen Xuan almost couldn’t keep a straight face. "Then should I go back, put on a protective suit and come again?"

"No need. The minimum coverage of the Starplate A350 system is 350 meters. I don’t know the current shielding range either, but the camp is definitely within its minimum effective radius." Lin Qing sighed. "Which is why I said... you’re not a local."

Yeah, she was clearly just picking at him.

Instead of getting annoyed, Chen Xuan actually felt a kind of bantering thrill well up. "All right, I admit you’re right. Let me reintroduce myself: my name’s Chen Xuan, a traveler from out of town, currently the number‑one ranked Ability User in Sha Jiang District. You?"

There was no way anyone had a test reading above 999 anyway, right?

Hearing the "number one" bit, a strange look flashed across her face, but in the end she just shrugged and said, "Just call me Yuyan."