Seeing Omens of Death [Infinite]

A new novel from the author’s column, After the Demolition, My Whole Family Made the Pig-Butchering Scam List, is now available. Coming soon: Can Infinite Failures Only Deduct Love? Please add them to your reading lists. Thank you!~ Blurb: Rich socialite Jiang Ye is pressured by her mother into having children. By chance, she clicks on an ad offering a huge reward for bearing someone a child. After a night of indescribable dreams, she wakes up on a battered bus. A bunch of painfully naive college students are on their way to the mountains for a picnic and, while they’re at it, to pick up girls. A stray dog suddenly darts out halfway there. Jiang Ye prides herself on having 20/20 vision in both eyes, and clearly sees that the dog’s mouth is covered in black fur, with a bloody eyeball stuck on one of its fangs. What they don’t know is that someone else is in these mountains, watching them... After Jiang Ye finishes her first case, she returns to reality. She thinks it was just a nightmare, but soon discovers that a case has happened in the real world: "College Students Go Mountain Picnicking, Die at the Hands of a Brutal Killer, Bodies Gnawed by Stray Dogs!" There are seven cases in total. Case One: The Thirteenth Eye in the Mountains. Case Two: The Pickled Corpse. Case Three: Wangzai Apartments. Case Four... As a fabulously wealthy socialite worth over a hundred million and a super drama queen, Jiang Ye has always thought of herself as too delicate to fend for herself. That is, until she enters this mysterious world of murder cases and learns the rule: "See a murderer, and you die." Then she... [Reader's Guide] 1. There’s little romance, though there is some flirtation. The focus is on plot, suspense, and murder cases. Please don’t turn the comments into a battlefield of debates. Everyone has their own views, so let’s keep things civil. Thank you. 2. The infinite small worlds and the real world intersect. The setting is fictional, so please don’t compare it to reality. Readers who insist on imposing their worldview, or who have moral expectations of the protagonist, please don’t read. Characters’ opinions do not represent the author’s. P.S. The next novel in my coming-soon list is The Grand Arcanist, Is She Making Money Today? Here’s the blurb: Arcane alchemy + a game world with a Western fantasy flavor. A murder takes place in District 13, a low-class slum in Throne of Arcana. The wooden door opens. Xie Keli, a scumbag who used to roam the streets, walks out of the room belonging to the lowborn Fu Chuan, his clothes in disarray. Just as the furious crowd is about to execute him, a noble’s guard unit appears from the sky. As the illegitimate son of a noble, he gets away unscathed. Late that night, he touches his own face and remembers that before she used the "Devouring Scroll," she was called Fu Chuan. And before she transmigrated as Fu Chuan, she was a game-resource reseller. In the world of arcana, wands dance, elemental particles sing, flesh and blood surge and are destroyed, and matter born of time disintegrates under the power of spells. The coffin bearer, the little skinner assassin corps, the Cross Rose Knights, the cunning plutocrats, the zombie bride, the ugly goblin army... Are they all just dungeon instances? Arcane mages from the academy are choosing teammates to run dungeons. The heir, eldest brother, calculates how to eliminate his family’s shameful, good-for-nothing little brother. His beautiful, captivating fiancee is already carrying twins by the academy’s male idol. And the male lead, equipped with a BUG-ridden System, plans to kill the scumbag young master and claim the world’s fortune. Shaking a triangular potion bottle, using fire elements to ignite the cloud-fire furnace, calculating the miniature world of metal reactions, and struggling with an alchemy system of "nothing + infinity," Xie Keli, sporting bedhead, calculates how much this batch of alchemical products can sell for, assuming the reactor doesn’t explode first. Reader’s Guide: 1. A blend of Eastern and Western dimensions, a high-martial world where the game has become reality. Class divisions are severe: theocracy checks the power of the monarchy, the monarchy rules over everything, and capital monopolizes the material economy. 2. Gear and resources come from dungeon runs. Defeat a boss and it drops gear and experience; otherwise, you can turn to alchemy. Either burn money on technology or grind relentlessly and survive dungeon runs. The story is set mainly in an academy, with monster battles and leveling up, countless academies competing, and an all-out global race in arcana. The strong rise to the top, while the resilient stage a comeback. 3. The novel’s characters’ worldviews do not represent the author’s. Given the civilization and plot logic of this setting, please don’t apply modern morality. The protagonist keeps a low profile, is honest and ordinary, can be male or female, and belongs to the down-to-earth, darkly pragmatic school. When fighting others, the only outcome is that you die or they die. 4. Romance plays a small part and is open-ended. Imagine what you like based on the protagonist’s identity and the plot, but please don’t interfere as a reader. 5. I haven’t thought of anything else yet. I’ll add it when I do. The next novel, Mutants (Future Mutant War), is now available. World Setting: The year 2500. Resources are depleted, and technology has developed along a narrow path (firearms + biological mutation + energy). The world is on the brink of a wasteland transformation. Living resources have dwindled to the bare minimum, the dominant political system is collapsing, and capitalist conglomerates control everything. The gap between rich and poor is immense. Class markers have begun appearing on people’s identity cards, and society has descended into an extreme culture of debauched entertainment. Blurb: Global climate change and radiation disasters reveal mysterious regions in the seas and on land. With resources equaling wealth, the Tianxi Consortium, one of the era’s largest financial groups, concludes that its heavily funded development project at the Deep Red Zone B05 ruins has failed. It sends the Ninth Exploration Team to investigate the site. As the team’s history and environmental studies consultant, frail-looking Sui Xin is one of the consortium’s highly intelligent middle-class employees. She is strikingly different from her hulking teammates, who are armed with lethal weapons. But on their very first day, the team is swallowed by fog. Their tires corrode and burst, and with a deafening crash, the vehicle plunges into a ravine. When Sui Xin wakes from the pain, she discovers that the skin on her arm hurts. She touches it and feels a two-centimeter-long worm crawling under her skin. In a pool of water beside the wrecked vehicle, countless wriggling blood-red worms are swimming toward her. At that moment, she knows it’s over. She also realizes that everyone chosen for this mission seems to belong to the very lowest ranks, E and D, on their identity cards. And she is E, the very lowest. Sui Xin doesn’t know that as she touches her arm, a global livestream begins. Across the world, including on the Tianxi Consortium’s channels covering numerous different ruins, this ad appears: They’re trapped in a ruin with no way out, and death awaits them. But they will also bear the hopes of humanity and complete their genetic mutations! The ad’s gimmick is loud and flashy. Heads keep dropping in the ruins, while the massive wealth brought in by the livestream makes the capitalists beam with delight. But they don’t expect that three days later, some of these people will really mutate. Mutants go on a killing spree on the livestream, brutal and powerful. They’re about to break out of the ruins and return to the human world. They’re about to take revenge. Humanity panics and votes worldwide to execute the mutants trapped in the ruins. The capitalists and human society then send in extermination forces and mercenaries to wipe out the mutants and rescue the poor souls who haven’t changed. Later, Sui Xin is brought back as an unmutated survivor. The consortium’s young heir smiles and asks whether she wants to be locked up in a laboratory and studied like a rat, or bow her head and become his captive. Five minutes later, in the washroom, Sui Xin washes the scalding blood from her hands. In the mirror, her eyes are a pure, deep red. First mutation talent: skin-contact-based mimicry and disguise. After returning to the consortium, she soon learns a secret: mutants have very short lifespans. The stronger the mutation, the more severe the cellular decay and backlash. Only the major consortiums have the means to develop an antidote. Mutant ability types include flight, telepathy, lie detection, limb duplication and imitation, invisibility, control, and bodily transformation into other organisms (radiation and viral mutation of the body, changing into cockroaches, mice, lionfish, shrimp, birds, and so on, with the risk of being overtaken by the instincts of those creatures). Mutant talents are usually singular. Only a very few prodigies can undergo multiple changes. Most mutants are still made of flesh and blood, and can be killed by physical or energy-based attacks. P.S. This is a future mutant war in a highly unstable, class-stratified society. At its heart are the warning signs of a future apocalypse brought on by excessive capitalism, environmental and energy problems, the wealth gap, and the entertainment culture triggered by extreme indulgence. It is not meant to reflect present-day society, but is purely a work of future speculation. The battle scenes are limited to low-level martial arts and supernatural abilities, with no deification or immortal cultivation: low-level magic, strange-energy studies, and combat skills. Theme: Fight fiercely to survive, never compromise, and fight for life.