Everyone Is Non-Human Except Me [Rebirth] Chapter 29

He had dreamed again.

By the time he woke up, the sun was already high in the sky. Wei Huan turned his ring, and the holographic screen popped up, displaying the school’s vacation notice.

Oh right, it was the holidays.

No wonder his roommate wasn’t around.

Wei Huan got up, tidied himself, and left the dorm to get breakfast. On the way, the little furball on his shoulder was singing nonstop. Though the lyrics were still nothing but “yingyingying,” the tune was cheerful.

“No one but you can know my identity,” Wei Huan pinched it. “Anyway, you can only go ‘yingyingying’ and can’t talk. Even if you wanted to rat me out, no one would understand.”

The little furball let out another “ying” and clung to Wei Huan’s finger.

The lifespan issue of this body was resolved. Now, what he needed to do was find out the truth about what happened back then. The aid petition he had received was indeed stamped by the school, but with his hazy memories, he couldn’t be sure whether the digital stamp was real. Besides, he was now isolated, with low authority—investigating from within Shanhai would be extremely difficult. His biggest fear was that it would all lead to a dead end.

He looked at his own hands.

What if he started with this body?

He thought of Ah Zu and Leah, who had once helped him. If what they said was true, then this body was the only “successful” test subject. Something had to be off about that level of rarity. There were so many vessels in the world—why had his demon soul ended up in this one in particular? It couldn’t possibly be a coincidence.

Wei Huan decided to return to the Dark Zone.

“But I don’t have a demon with me,” he recalled that last time, it was Jing Yun who had helped him. He glanced at the little furball sneakily climbing back up to his shoulder. “I guess you count, but all you can do is ‘yingyingying.’”

The furball suddenly stopped, as if insulted, and in a flash swelled to the size of a watermelon, puffed up with indignation. “YING!”

“D*mn,” Wei Huan could barely lift his arm. “So I’ve finally found your true form. You’ve got to be a pufferfish spirit!” It was just too round. Wei Huan poked it. “If you keep this up, I won’t keep you anymore.”

The little furball instantly let out a pitiful “ying” and deflated like a popped balloon.

“So what should I do now?” Wei Huan stretched lazily—and suddenly remembered that he had formed a pact with Yun Yongzhou.

Since Yun Yongzhou’s blood was now in his body…

Did that mean he was also half a big monster?

But he didn’t know Yun Yongzhou’s clan incantation—how was he supposed to use it?

What would the Golden Crow clan’s incantation even be…?

Just as he tried to think, something flashed across his mind.

It was an incantation—but it didn’t seem to be from the Golden Crow clan.

Wei Huan was shaken.

Normally, when silently reciting an incantation, a corresponding demon sigil would appear in the mind. But what he saw now was clearly a sun totem, not the flame emblem of the Golden Crow clan.

He tried to activate a boundary-crossing spell—and to his shock, a white light and barrier circle appeared before him. As he stepped forward, one moment he was still at the gates of Shanhai University, the next he had arrived in a narrow alley of the Dark Zone.

Turning to look behind, the wall at the end of the alley still had that graffiti—

Go f*ck yourself.

It actually worked!

Wei Huan was stunned. Somehow, his mind had summoned the original Golden Crow incantation. Could this be a side effect of his pact with Yun Yongzhou?

Leaving the boundary quickly, Wei Huan pulled up his hoodie and walked to the alley entrance. There, he spotted a young man squatting on the ground with his back to him, playing Gomoku with a dirty little kid.

“Hey! I won again! Come on, one more round…” The man pulled out a black stone from his pocket and placed it on the ground.

“Wow, you can actually beat a kid?” Wei Huan chuckled as he snuck up behind him.

Ah Zu spun around, stunned. “Ah Heng?” He grabbed Wei Huan’s shoulder, slapping his arm and pinching his face. “The poison in your body—is it gone?!”

Wei Huan smiled and nodded. “So you really were waiting for me here every day.”

The little furball peeked its head out from behind his shoulder and let out a soft “ying” when it saw Ah Zu—startling him so much he jumped back. “Wha-what is that?!”

“Oh, this guy…” Wei Huan comforted him. “Just a little demon. It won’t hurt you. Think of it like a cat or a puppy.”

Ah Zu gave it a few glances, rubbed his buzz cut, then suddenly seemed to remember something. He grabbed Wei Huan and tugged him along. “Right! I found a huge secret. It’ll blow your mind.”

Wei Huan, still confused, saw Ah Zu toss a piece of candy to the kid. “Game saved, little bro. We’ll play again next time.”

“What secret?” Wei Huan pressed as they exited the alley. Ah Zu pulled out his phone, scrolled quickly, and handed it over. “Look at this.”

The moment Wei Huan saw the screen, he flinched in shock.

Even the little furball sucked in a cold breath. “YING!”

The person in the photo—was clearly himself!

No, to be precise, it was the current face he had.

“What does this mean?” Wei Huan looked at him. “When did you take this photo? Why don’t I remember it?”

Ah Zu wore an I-knew-it expression. “You also thought it was you, right?” He dragged Wei Huan along as they walked quickly, explaining as he went. “I think I mentioned before—Research Institute 137 transports batches of failed experimental bodies for mass incineration almost every week. When I passed by on another mission last week, I saw a body on one of their transport trucks that had a face exactly like yours! So while no one was looking, I smuggled it out.”

What?

The amount of information in that sentence made Wei Huan’s scalp tingle.

“Wait… you’re saying the person in that photo is an experimental subject who looks exactly like me?”

“Right,” Ah Zu said again. “At first, I was terrified. I thought you’d been captured again. So I rushed back and had Leah examine it.”

Wei Huan’s heart tightened. “And?”

“We’ll talk inside.” They reached a vehicle, and Ah Zu tossed him a helmet. He brought Wei Huan across half the Dark Zone, looped around a ruin, and arrived at a manhole. As soon as Ah Zu’s palm touched the cover, it opened automatically. Holding the little furball tightly, Wei Huan jumped in after him and discovered layer upon layer of defenses and a hidden base.

Wei Huan guessed this must be one of their organization’s bases.

There were other people inside, all dressed in black like Ah Zu. Wei Huan had never taken a close look before, but today he noticed that Ah Zu’s outfit actually had a pattern on the back—it was hard to make out because it was also black.

He stepped closer to make out the design.

A bow and arrow? Or a crescent moon?

Ah Zu led him into a room. Leah was standing inside. A red laser scanned Wei Huan’s entire body at the door before allowing entry.

Leah wore silver-rimmed glasses this time and looked Wei Huan up and down. “You’re lucky. You actually survived.”

Wei Huan raised an eyebrow. “I’m no ordinary person.”

The little furball popped out from between his fingers, as if chiming in agreement, “Ying!”

“You’re right—you’re not.” Leah was much calmer than before upon seeing the little creature. She exchanged a glance with Ah Zu. “Did you tell him yet?”

Ah Zu nodded, then walked to a transparent glass wall behind Leah and entered a code. The wall slowly pushed open, revealing a cryogenic chamber—inside laid a corpse that looked identical to Wei Huan.

“This is the one…” Even though he had mentally prepared himself, Wei Huan still found it hard to believe. The furball trembled, hiding in Wei Huan’s palm after just one glance. “Ying ying ying…”

“We compared your DNA with his,” Leah said, shrugging unapologetically when she saw Wei Huan’s shocked expression. “That’s right, we sampled your data last time.”

Ah Zu picked up the explanation. “Your DNA and the corpse’s are identical. If not for the different serial numbers—you’re you, he was 7509—we almost thought they killed you.”

Wei Huan didn’t understand. If the DNA was the same, then could it be…

“We examined him. He had no Gou Wen poison in his body. During the dissection, we found his internal organs had all dissolved—most likely a failed experiment. But the gene sequence is completely identical to yours.” Leah circled around Wei Huan. “So, we have reason to believe this person is a genetic copy of you.”

“A… a twin?” Wei Huan asked.

Leah showed no effort to hide her doubt but leaned toward believing he had actually lost his memory. “Even identical twins, though initially genetically identical, eventually diverge in expression. They aren’t perfect copies.”

She grabbed Wei Huan’s thumb and pressed it onto a glass panel. A fingerprint image appeared. Then she pulled up another fingerprint—slowly, the two overlapped.

“You’re completely identical copies,” Leah turned to him. “So, not twins—clones. But I don’t know which one is the original and which is the clone.”

It was all too much to process. Wei Huan didn’t know what to say for a moment.

Why clone a human body?

And this body didn’t seem particularly special. Compared to average adult males, it was even on the slender side.

Still, at least one thing was confirmed: there really was something wrong with this body, and a huge secret was hidden within it.

“How did you survive?” Ah Zu finally asked the question he’d been holding back.

Wei Huan pulled himself out of his thoughts. “Long story. I’m a student at Shanhai now.”

“Seriously?! You actually got into Shanhai! That’s incredible!” Ah Zu was thrilled. “So you survived because you ate the Reverse Soul Fruit, right?”

“Someone gave it to me,” Wei Huan shook his head.

“I see…” Ah Zu mumbled. “That person must be a really good person.”

Hearing this, the furball suddenly perked up, no longer afraid or sleepy. It jumped to Wei Huan’s shoulder and began babbling a long stream of “ying ying ying”—unfortunately, no one understood it.

Wei Huan forced a laugh and covered its mouth. “Something like that…”

There wasn’t much time. Wei Huan needed to use this visit to the Dark Zone to learn more about his body. He grabbed Ah Zu’s arm. “You’ve been doing missions near the institute—you must know the place well, right? I want to find out what really happened.”

Ah Zu hesitated for a moment but finally agreed to take Wei Huan to check it out.

“Research Institute 137 has tons of outposts in the Dark Zone. You escaped from one of them.” Ah Zu drove them along. Tilting his head toward a building in the distance, he said, “See that black glass tower? That’s the real Research Institute 137.”

Following his gaze, Wei Huan saw it—a tall building near the edge of the Dark Zone, almost touching the border with Fanzhou. From the outside alone, it was clearly a high-tech product, forming a sharp contrast to the sprawling slums all around it.

Those underground bases were likely all used for experiments, just like the one he escaped from. Judging by the numbering alone, the number of test subjects must be staggering.

Going to those underground labs wouldn’t help—he needed to figure out their purpose.

“I want to go into that building,” Wei Huan said.

“I figured,” Ah Zu wasn’t surprised at all. He made a quick turn and drove him into a dark alley just a block away from the 137 Building. The security here was already much tighter than in the heart of the Dark Zone—police patrols were everywhere.

“Take this.” Ah Zu pulled out two coin-sized electronic patches from his pocket, tossed one to Wei Huan, and stuck the other under his own neck.

Wei Huan examined the small gadget. “What’s this?”

“Electronic mask.” Ah Zu tapped his, and a small holographic screen appeared in front of him, displaying several faces with different labels beneath. “Do you want to monitor, or go in for reconnaissance?”

Wei Huan thought about it. Monitoring was relatively safer. After all, Ah Zu was a regular human, and judging by how he saved him last time, he didn’t seem like someone with combat training.

He glanced at the wristband on his hand.

“I’ll go in for recon. You do the monitoring.”

“Got it.” Ah Zu picked one of the profiles and pressed a button. In the blink of an eye, his face changed into that of a gaunt young man. “This guy is a member of their surveillance team—not on duty today. I’ll be in the control room keeping an eye on the building’s activity for you.”

“Understood.” Wei Huan chose a researcher who also wasn’t on shift and applied the electronic mask to take on his face. Ah Zu pulled two suits from the car’s storage compartment. “Might not fit perfectly, but it’ll have to do.”

As he changed, Wei Huan felt it was all too convenient. “Why are you so prepared? And why are you helping me so much? I know it sounds ungrateful, but the more I think about it, the more it bothers me.”

Ah Zu paused while buttoning up. “Do you know why I joined this organization? Why I’m investigating the 137 Research Institute?”

He put on the glasses tucked in the suit’s pocket. “I never went to school, never had parents. I lived by begging with my younger brother, who was five years younger than me. When I was twelve, I used all my money to buy him synthetic milk, and when I came back—he was gone. I searched everywhere, nearly the entire Dark Zone.”

His voice trembled slightly, but he forced it under control, squeezing out a strained smile—which looked even more absurd on the researcher’s face.

“I eventually found my brother’s shoe in a test subject burial pit. It was the birthday present I’d saved up everything to buy for his seventh birthday.”

After saying that, Ah Zu let out a long breath.

“I want to know what kind of inhuman things this institute is doing even more than you do. I spend every waking moment on this. Everyone in our organization does.”

Wei Huan finally understood why Ah Zu had been so thoroughly prepared. He didn’t seem like that type on the surface.

“I’m sorry, I—” Wei Huan’s throat tightened, but Ah Zu just patted him on the shoulder. “It’s okay. I’m not a kid anymore.”

After composing themselves, Ah Zu explained while walking, “We’ve already gathered a lot of intel. I’ll send you the building’s map and the guard posts.”

“If anything happens, you have to tell me immediately. I’ll protect you,” Ah Zu said, slipping on his earpiece.

Wei Huan couldn’t help but laugh. He wasn’t used to hearing things like that—he had always been the protector. He pinched Ah Zu’s shoulder lightly. “I’ll protect you too.”

They split up. Ah Zu entered the building first—facial recognition at the entrance passed smoothly. Wei Huan observed that even though Ah Zu normally came off as unreliable, in moments like this, he was surprisingly composed.

Clearly, this organization wasn’t playing around. Wei Huan suddenly became curious about the organization’s “leader.”

“You can come in now. I’m waiting at the elevator on the right side of the lobby.”

Hearing the voice in his earpiece, Wei Huan began to move. Before going, he tucked the little furball into his suit pocket and whispered, “No matter what happens, stay quiet. Got it?”

“Ying!”

“If something happens to me, you run.”

The furball peeked out of the pocket sadly. “Ying…”

“Good boy.” Wei Huan adjusted his clothes and walked steadily toward the building. Two security guards stood at the door. One glanced at him and politely greeted him, “Director Zhang.”

Wei Huan nodded calmly and walked up to the facial recognition system.

Watching the screen analyze his electronically-masked face, his Adam’s apple bobbed nervously.

“Verification successful. Welcome back.”

Only when the electronic voice announced that did Wei Huan finally breathe a sigh of relief. After a few steps inside, he saw Ah Zu waiting near the elevator. The latter was pretending to check his watch while keeping his head down.

Wei Huan stepped up and casually stood beside him—just as the elevator doors opened. The two of them stepped inside together, as if by coincidence. Because of surveillance, they maintained some distance and lowered their heads, speaking through the earpieces.

Ah Zu spoke first. “My office is on the 13th floor. Your lab is on the 21st. Let’s go to our respective floors first to scout for any intel.”

Wei Huan gave a quiet “mm.” “Once I’ve scoped out the 21st floor, I’ll update the map you sent me. Also, you have to keep a constant watch on me and the surrounding surveillance. The moment anyone appears, notify me immediately. It’s best if you stay on the 13th floor. If anything else happens, let me know.”

Ah Zu was a little surprised. The person in front of him didn’t seem like someone untrained—he acted more like an experienced squad leader.

“Got it. If everything goes well, I’ll stay on the 13th floor and wait for you.”

When the elevator reached the 13th floor, they split up. Wei Huan lowered his head to avoid the cameras and checked the 21st floor map on his phone, quickly memorizing the guard post layout—just as the elevator arrived.

The 21st floor was laid out in a square loop. All the labs and departments were on the left side of the hallway. Wei Huan noticed that the right-side wall had no doors at all—it was a solid, uninterrupted wall.

But strangely, there was a surveillance camera installed roughly every ten meters along that same wall.

There must be something behind that wall.

Following the map, Wei Huan arrived at the lab assigned to his identity. It was lunchtime, so the lab was nearly empty except for one young man huddled in a corner, working intently. Wei Huan strolled casually through the lab as if making a routine inspection, picked up a lab report, and flipped through it.

It recorded all kinds of rejection responses:

[Autolysis of internal organs]

[Immune system disorder]

[Muscle dissolution]

Every page he skimmed detailed some terrifying reaction. They were clearly doing human experiments here—but what exactly was their goal?

“Director Zhang?”

A voice startled him. Wei Huan’s heart skipped a beat. He quickly placed the report on a table, steadied himself, and looked up calmly.

It was a young female researcher in a white lab coat. Her expression wasn’t friendly—in fact, it was a little sharp. “Could you step away from my workstation?”

Wei Huan awkwardly moved aside.

She sat down, looking up at him with an unmistakably dismissive expression.

What did I ever do to her? Wei Huan thought bitterly, ready to leave.

“By the way, Director Zhang,” the woman spoke again, “I hope you can return access to the subject storage chamber soon. You said you were borrowing it for one month, and it’s been a month now. I don’t care what task Dr. Yang assigned to you—my subjects need storage space too.”

Wei Huan had no idea what she was talking about but played along. Since he couldn’t alter his voice, he pretended to have a cold and spoke in a hoarse tone, coughing slightly as he replied, “Got it. I’ll take care of it.”

He didn’t linger and quickly left the lab.

Subject storage chamber… Was it some kind of warehouse?

Then Ah Zu’s voice came through the earpiece. “That subject chamber she mentioned—I have a dedicated feed for it on my monitor.”

“Sounds like it’s an important place,” Wei Huan replied in a low voice. “Can you tell where it is?”

“No. I only have the interior feed—no location info.”

That didn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t they label such a place? It’d be nearly impossible to find…

Wait. That was probably the point.

Putting the storage chamber aside for now, Wei Huan checked several labs in succession. The information he gathered was limited: human experimentation, an extremely high failure rate, each lab focusing on a single function, and a chief engineer named Professor Yang Shu.

But no sign of cloning.

So far, he’d found nothing related to cloning—then how had this body of his come to be?

Still filled with doubt, Wei Huan reached a hallway corner and saw a large iron door not far along the right-hand wall.

Just as he suspected—something was hidden here.

He walked toward it casually. The door was fitted with a touchscreen requiring a fingerprint scan.

Great. Where was he supposed to get a valid fingerprint?

Suddenly, Ah Zu’s voice came through: “Ah Heng, someone’s walking toward you—he’s the 21st floor’s chief administrator. High clearance.”

Just then, a pot-bellied middle-aged man with glasses waved to Wei Huan from a distance. “Director Zhang? Aren’t you off duty today?” He walked closer. “Here to inspect the subject chamber? I just checked it myself.”

Subject chamber again.

Ah Zu’s voice piped in: “So this is the subject chamber.”

Talk about luck—what you seek just falls into your lap sometimes.

Wei Huan nodded, coughed a few times, and spoke in a low voice, “Yeah, not sure what’s wrong—my fingerprint hasn’t been working.”

“Really?” The man walked up and tried his own fingerprint. “Works fine for me,” he said with a laugh. “But yeah, it’s finicky. I’ve been saying they should switch to iris scans—they just won’t listen.”

Wei Huan chimed in, “Exactly, iris scanning would be way more convenient.”

Not really—he’d be screwed if it was.

The heavy metal door slid open. Wei Huan stepped inside. “Thanks for the help.”

“No problem.”

The door closed slowly behind him.

“You’re in. I can see you on my feed,” Ah Zu’s voice confirmed.

Wei Huan took a deep breath. The so-called subject chamber was a massive cold storage room. At the entrance hung a heavy insulated lab coat. All four walls were lined with tightly packed rectangular compartments, arranged like neat rows of oversized drawers.

None of the “drawers” had keyholes or passcode pads. Wei Huan turned around. In the middle of the room stood a small console. He reached out to touch it, and the black surface lit up.

“Welcome back. Please select your login method.”

Password. Fingerprint. Face recognition.

Wei Huan chose face recognition—it was risky, but probably his only real shot.

“Please face the camera directly.”

As the camera scanned his fake digital face, Wei Huan’s mind raced through every possible backup plan. Those few seconds of verification felt like minutes.

Finally, the AI gave its verdict:

“Verification successful. Welcome back, Mr. Zhang Zhiyong.”

Holy cr*p, this digital mask is really something.

A control panel appeared on screen. Wei Huan gave it a quick scan. Suddenly, other voices came through his earpiece—it sounded like someone else had entered the monitoring room and was talking to Ah Zu.

He focused back on the screen and spotted a button labeled [Subject Management]. He clicked it, and a prompt appeared asking for an ID number.

ID number…

Wei Huan remembered the number he had when he escaped: 7494.

After another face scan, click—a drawer behind him slid out about half a meter.

There really was an entry with that number. Maybe it was the cold temperature in the room, but Wei Huan felt goosebumps rising all over.

The drawer was quite high, so he moved a ladder over from the door and climbed up to take a look.

It was empty.

He quickly climbed down and entered several consecutive numbers following 7494—up to 7509. All of the subject storage drawers were empty.

Could it be that all of these were already taken away?

He tried a random number—7890. The drawer opened, and this time, it wasn’t empty.

Wei Huan walked over and pulled open the freezer drawer. What he saw stunned him. Inside lay a body exactly identical to his own. In disbelief, he tried more numbers.

One drawer after another opened. Wei Huan’s heartbeat quickened. Standing in the middle of the subject storage chamber, he stared at the “specimens” popping out, too shocked to say a word.

Each body looked like a copy-paste of him, with no differences except for the number on the shoulder.

So… there wasn’t just one clone…

He leaned against the control station, scalp tingling.

Could it be that this entire subject storage chamber…

“Sh*t, Ah Heng!”

Ah Zu’s voice suddenly came through the earpiece—he had just shaken off a chatty “colleague,” and when he looked up at the monitor, he saw disaster.

“Get out, now! The real Zhang Zhiyong is here! He just came out of the 21st floor elevator!”