Chapter 4: Glandular atrophy

The first time Xu Lin saw Ji Jixuan was during his first year of study in the main city of Danshi, at the freshman orientation ceremony. In the auditorium packed with students, Ji Jixuan took the stage to deliver a speech as the freshman representative.

Among Xu Lin’s cohort, only a little over one hundred students came from outside the city. They were relegated to a single corner of the auditorium. Everywhere else sat the local Danshi students.

The people of Danshi were notoriously arrogant. Having been raised in a golden pond since birth, they carried an innate sense of superiority in their bones. They wouldn’t spare a single glance at these “country bumpkins from out of town,” as if looking at them would dirty their eyes.

Yet this same self-important crowd adopted an entirely different demeanor when it came to Ji Jixuan. They whispered among themselves, their gazes fixed unabashedly on his face, their expressions written all over with sycophantic eagerness.

School A, as Danshi’s premier institution, boasted a complete educational system. It covered a person’s entire academic journey from infancy to the threshold of adulthood, with students of different ages assigned to separate campuses. In effect, once a child stepped through the school’s gates, they would never have to worry about their education again.

The lives of the upper class were always convenient and luxurious beyond imagination. Of course, only those from the main city could enjoy such privileges.

Originally, School A was only open to Danshi locals. But forty years ago, Danshi suddenly announced a new policy regarding the school. Every ten years, School A would hold open admissions across all regions. Anyone, regardless of origin, could apply for admission. As long as they met the requirements, they would be accepted, and out-of-district students could even have their expensive tuition waived.

It was like a celestial being, in a moment of whimsy, casting down a ladder to heaven for mortals to climb. For a time, countless people scrambled and fought tooth and nail for a spot on that ladder.

Without this “once-a-decade out-of-district admissions” policy, Xu Lin would never have had the chance to set foot in Danshi.

However, his purpose in coming here was not for himself. He had no interest in the celestial jade pools of the immortals, nor did he harbor any longing for a world that did not belong to him.

He had come to this unfamiliar place alone, driven solely by a desire to fulfill his teacher’s wish.

His hometown had a formal name: District Thirteen. It sounded pleasant enough, but outsiders still preferred the more straightforward and widely understood term: the slums.

Xu Lin was born in Yanyu Township, under District Thirteen.

His life before the age of twelve was practically a trashy soap opera.

He was tossed into a rain-soaked trash bin, still attached to his umbilical cord, right after being cut—a debut that could only be described as the worst possible start.

In the slums, which comprised hundreds of villages and towns, there were over a dozen cases of abandoned infants every single day. It was an all-too-common occurrence, hardly worth noticing.

No one would waste their energy searching for the parents of such abandoned babies. It didn’t take a genius to figure out they were either young couples who had sought thrills and indulged in forbidden fruit, accidentally creating a life they couldn’t handle, or people so poor they couldn’t even support themselves. What would be the point of finding them?

Inevitably, these infants all ended up in the same place: the orphanage.

An overcrowded orphanage was at least better than a trash bin. At least the child would get a meal. But that was all it was—a meal. Whether it was enough, whether it was good, the starving couldn’t afford to care. They had no choice, no right to be picky.

Xu Lin grew up day by day in that orphanage, just like his companions, eating when they could, going hungry when they couldn’t, barely scraping by.

Once the children in the orphanage turned five, the director would arrange for them to have a yearly physical examination.

On the day of the exam, hundreds of children, as thin as poles, would crowd together, looking like a gathering of stick insects with long arms and legs.

The examining doctors would perfunctorily measure their height, draw blood, test their vision and oral health, and assess their intelligence. As long as a child had all four limbs and no obvious physical defects, even if they were as thin as a mummy, the doctor would stamp them with a “healthy and qualified” label.

After completing these casual health reports came the most rigorous and important part of the whole process.

The gland examination.

Physical health was secondary. The gland was the main event.

In a slum where ninety percent of the population were Betas, having an Alpha or Omega in the family was like seeing green smoke rise from your ancestral grave.

Just as a duck could not give birth to a swan, and a chicken could not give birth to a phoenix, two Betas would only produce a Beta.

The remaining ten percent of special individuals meant that the few Alphas and Omegas in District Thirteen all chose to pair with each other. Betas, being the common majority, were never a consideration.

But the more unattainable something was, the more people would scheme to obtain it.

For this reason, in this unregulated territory, dark and unspeakable deeds sometimes occurred, deeds that would forever remain hidden from the light.

For a Beta family wishing to improve their inferior genes, the first step was to find an Omega to bear offspring. Where this Omega came from and whether they were willing were of no consequence.

The gland was a gift from heaven, but in District Thirteen, a gland could only bring disaster.

Typically, a child’s gland would develop around the age of five. If a gland was detected, it meant the child was no longer a Beta. By the time they reached the differentiation age of ten, they would only differentiate into either an Alpha or an Omega.

A child with a gland was like a spring welling up from parched earth—a coveted, watched-over prize.

They became the target of a scramble.

Xu Lin’s gland was detected when he was eight.

The day after his examination report was posted on the orphanage’s adoption list website, a middle-aged couple who couldn’t have children came in, completed the paperwork, and whisked Xu Lin away with remarkable speed. They moved quickly, afraid someone might get to him first.

His adoptive parents were both Betas. They lived in a small seaside village and ran a small shop. Business wasn’t exactly bleak, but it was far from prosperous.

On Xu Lin’s first day home, the villagers heard that they had adopted a child with a gland. They were all envious, crowding around Xu Lin and staring at him as if he were a phoenix egg that had fallen from the sky.

His adoptive parents, who had been mocked openly and privately for over twenty years of childless marriage, were finally able to lift their heads high and straighten their hunched backs.

Their home wasn’t large, filled to the brim with daily necessities. They managed to clear out a small attic to serve as Xu Lin’s room. The attic was freezing in winter and sweltering in summer, and the damp corners of the walls were covered in moss. The wooden floor and walls were spotted with mildew stains. But Xu Lin loved it. No more sleeping in a communal bunkroom—he had his own room. What more could he want?

He adored his new home.

The villagers lived off the sea. Whenever their neighbors returned from fishing trips, his adoptive parents would buy large quantities of fresh fish and shrimp, saving them all for Xu Lin.

They believed this was the most nutritious food. Xu Lin, who had never eaten well before, happily ate fish for two whole years—steamed, boiled, dried. He ate a lot, yet he only grew thinner.

When he turned ten, his body still showed no signs of change.

His adoptive parents stared at Xu Lin’s neck every single day, their gazes practically tearing through the skin at the back of it, wanting to touch his precious gland and water it so it would grow faster.

A hospital was a place people who had saved their whole lives would never go unless their bodies were on the verge of collapse. One visit, one examination, and in the blink of an eye, the bill would have four digits.

The hope of a brighter future was right before their eyes. His adoptive parents couldn’t wait any longer. They gritted their teeth and took Xu Lin to the hospital for a check-up.

Xu Lin obediently went through the tests. The examination report contained only one line: Long-term insufficient nutrient intake, decreased growth hormone and auxiliary growth factors, glandular atrophy.

Xu Lin didn’t understand. His adoptive parents didn’t know the details either. They asked, “Is this serious? Can it be treated?”

The doctor gave them a silent look and kept them behind in the office for a private conversation. Xu Lin sat alone on the bench in the hallway, waiting. He waited a long time before his adoptive parents finally emerged.

They had entered the hospital beaming with smiles and high hopes. Now their brows were furrowed, their faces ashen.

Xu Lin had never seen them look like this before.

“Glandular atrophy is irreversible.”

It meant that because Xu Lin’s nutritional intake had been consistently too limited over a long period, severe malnutrition had prevented his gland from absorbing sufficient nutrients. It had long since stopped developing, would not grow any further, and could not differentiate.

His gland was a seed that had died before it could sprout.

With intermittent hunger in the orphanage and inadequate nutrition afterward, his gland had ceased growing at some point, unnoticed.

A tree that could have grown to shade the sky had its roots bitten by pests in the soil at the seedling stage, then scalded to death by a cup of boiling water thrown over it.

Now he was nothing more than a wilted, yellowed little sapling.

Dead. It would never grow again.

No matter how long he waited, Xu Lin would not differentiate into an Alpha, nor would he become an Omega. He belonged to the ninety percent of District Thirteen’s population. He would forever be a Beta.

Two years of waiting had been wasted.

His adoptive parents’ wish to hold their heads high would never come true.

Xu Lin was a Beta, just like them—an ordinary person among the masses.

After returning home from the hospital, in the middle of the night, Xu Lin heard his adoptive parents having a hysterical argument. After that, his situation became very awkward.

His adoptive parents fought incessantly because of him. The warmth was gone. The time and energy they had invested in him over the past two years would never bear fruit—it had all been wasted.

A pearl had turned into a dull fish eye overnight.

The neighbors’ snide and sarcastic mockery of his adoptive parents came roaring back.

Xu Lin no longer had his own attic room. He no longer had fresh fish and shrimp. His adoptive parents’ smiles had become a luxury item. The fragile household was shrouded in deathly silence every day. Their gaze no longer rested on Xu Lin. They turned a blind eye to his attempts at affection, treating him as dispensable, like a wisp of air.

His adoptive parents never said anything harsh to Xu Lin, but their actions made their thoughts perfectly clear.

Xu Lin was young, but he wasn’t stupid.

They used their attitudes to tell him they no longer needed him. The only reason they hadn’t kicked him out was their sense of “responsibility.”

Xu Lin had wanted to repay them for those two years of kindness, but they wouldn’t give him the chance. They ignored his existence, only sparing a mouthful of food each day. The way they fed him was like feeding a stray dog that refused to leave, freeloading and shamelessly clinging on.

Xu Lin had his pride. So one night, he slipped away in the dark and never went back.