Eleven at night.
Chen Ge woke up—roused by noise, by stench, by pain. His ears filled with a chaos of sounds: engines roaring, snoring, wind. Something like ten pairs of filthy socks had been smeared over his nose, plus three jin of shit, with a layer of mold on top. His head throbbed and spun.
Instinctively he shut out the noise and held his breath. The sound and the stench vanished at once, and the ache in his head cleared.
What the hell?
Chen Ge opened his eyes and reached out to pull down his sleeping bag's zipper and sit up. With a ripping sound, the sturdy, abrasion-resistant EMR camouflage sleeping bag tore open as if he'd burst out of his clothes.
Lightbulb and the others snapped awake. Night Cat switched on a tactical flashlight, leaned over the edge of his bunk, and squinted at Chen Ge. "Sledgehammer, what are you doing? Why'd you rip your sleeping bag?"
Chen Ge sat on the bed, completely baffled, and waved a hand.
"I wanted to get up and take a piss. The zipper broke. Go back to sleep."
The four of them stared at him, puzzled. It was strange, but they didn't ask, and switched off the light and lay back down.
Darkness returned to the room. Chen Ge sat still a while, then looked down at the burst sleeping bag, then at his own hands, his eyes full of shock.
No—the lights aren't on in the dorm. How can I see?
He came back to himself and immediately noticed something wrong. He raised a hand and rubbed his eyes hard, then opened them again. If he wanted to look at something, he could see it clearly—and his eyesight was monstrous.
Across the room, on the lower bunk, every hair on Korolenko's face stood out distinctly, though everything was tinted a cold blue-gray, like the view through GPNVG-18 night vision goggles.
Stranger still, there were heat sources too. Ivan and the others gave off a bright white glow, just like thermal imaging.
Am I hallucinating?
Chen Ge's brows knitted. He raised his left hand to pinch his thigh, and noticed something else.
Enormous strength. He could clearly feel a terrifying power coiled inside his body.
His face was one big question mark. He tried putting his hand on the heavy frame of the bunk—four-millimeter-thick angle steel—wrapped his fingers around it, and slowly squeezed.
What he saw made his jaw drop. He'd barely used any force, and the right-angle steel frame bent and caved inward. The perfectly straight beam was crushed into an obvious curve.
His hearing and sense of smell seemed unusual too. The sounds that had woken him hadn't all come from Bear and Lightbulb and the rest.
He turned his head and listened closely. The commotion came from the barracks building diagonally across from theirs, and from the room next door. The engine noise came from the road diagonally across from the building. Normally he'd only hear a faint hint of it—there was no way it could sound as if someone were talking right next to his ear.
His sense of smell was even better. If he wanted to, he could pick out dozens of odors: foot stench from the combat boots, the sour feet of Lightbulb and the others, the ammonia reek of urine from the communal latrine, and rust, mildew, gun oil, sweat, smoke...
Did I mutate?
Chen Ge let go and instinctively raised a hand to the back of his neck. The red, swollen lump around the bite mark had vanished. His eyes slowly widened as a guess took shape in his mind.
That freakish wolf spider bit me and mutated me into a spider spirit?
His breath caught. His pupils dilated involuntarily, his eyes shining. He slowly pulled the sleeping bag aside, got out of bed with his phone, and went out the door, looking up, down, left, and right with fresh wonder.
Night vision—he really had night vision! Everything in his field of view was cold blue-gray.
And his field of view was 180 degrees. Normally, peripheral vision barely reaches as far as your shoulders. He could stand perfectly still, without turning his head, and see the scenery at the far left and far right at the same time, along with the ceiling above and the tops of his own feet.
Mutation. It really was mutation!
Chen Ge swallowed. His heart rate spiked, his brain went into overdrive, his thoughts racing wildly, so excited he felt dizzy.
Have I become a Failed Man? No—I'm a Successful Man!
He took several deep breaths, then crept to the stairwell, climbed to the roof, and shut the iron stairwell door behind him.
Khrushchev-style buildings all had flat asphalt roofs. This one was decades old; the surface had gone black and hard, cracked all over from years of sun and weather, with dust and gravel gathered in the corners.
Ventilation inside the building was poor, so Russian soldiers usually came up to the roof to smoke, catch the breeze, chat, and hang laundry.
Chen Ge avoided the drying racks and clotheslines and walked to the parapet on the east side to look into the distance.
The whole world was a wash of cold blue-gray. His eyesight was monstrous: he could make out the small lettering on the mudguards of the armored vehicles parked on the training ground 450 meters away.
For instance, a BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicle had КМЗ-1809417 stamped on its mudguard!
Kurganmashzavod, manufactured September 2018.
His night vision maxed out at about 500 meters, but his eyesight went far beyond that. A military truck driving on the road over 1,000 meters away, under the streetlights, had a white Z painted on the side of its cargo bed, and below it the small words ЗАПОБЕДУ, ЗАРОССИЮ were clearly legible.
Three and a half kilometers away, the lights were on at the Church of Saints Peter and Paul in downtown Klintsy. He could see the carved detail on the surface of the Orthodox cross atop the golden dome, even the bolts at the joints.
Beyond that it blurred, and he could only make out outlines.
Chen Ge rubbed his eyes and couldn't help drawing a sharp breath.
If his eyesight was this monstrous at night, what would it be like in daylight?
Hearing: with nothing in the way, within 200 meters, every faint sound between 0 and 40 decibels was as clear as if whispered at his ear. Within 500 meters, sounds from 40 to 70 decibels were distinctly audible.
From 500 meters out to 3.5 kilometers, sounds of 70 to 120 decibels came through clearly.
Smell: he could precisely identify and trace the source of any odor within 100 meters, with concentration fading as distance increased. The limit was also 3.5 kilometers.
Sight, hearing, smell—all of them topped out at 3.5 kilometers!
Is that a boundary?
And sight, hearing, and smell could each be switched freely among three modes. For now he'd call the first Do Not Disturb mode—the state of an ordinary person.
Selective mode: only seeing what he wanted to see, hearing what he wanted to hear, smelling what he wanted to smell!
Full-open mode: all five senses wide open—provided his brain could take it.
It was like an ordinary person trying to watch dozens of screens at once, listen to dozens of sound streams, and smell dozens of odors all at the same time. The brain's processing power, the nerves' endurance, and the body's stamina couldn't keep up. Prolonged full-open mode meant dizziness and exhaustion at best, and confusion and sensory breakdown at worst.
Being woken by noise and stench a moment ago, with the headache and dizziness—that was simply because he hadn't switched on Do Not Disturb mode. His brain's processor had overloaded.
Having mapped out the limits of his abilities, Chen Ge felt his blood instantly boil. Adrenaline surged, his whole body went hot and sweaty, and his hands trembled uncontrollably. So did his legs.
Spider-Man!!!
I've actually become Spider-Man!
Every man's pursuit of power is written into his bones. Even a sissy wants to stop eating beef!
Wait—do I have spider silk?
Chen Ge thought of the Spider-Man in the red-and-blue suit swinging between buildings in New York. He took a deep breath and forced himself calm, then held out his wrist to check.
Bully Maguire's Spider-Man had silk glands in his wrists that produced webbing. He should have them too, right?
Huh? Why don't I have any?
Chen Ge looked over both sides, felt around, and found nothing.
Could it be that a wolf spider belongs to the tarantula family, which doesn't spin webs, so I don't have the ability to produce silk?
Chen Ge sighed with a touch of disappointment. He was about to give up on the experiment when the image came to him of Maguire's hands sprouting barbs and trying to climb a wall.
If I can't shoot webbing, barbs will do!
He spread his palm and tried to see if he could grow them. The next second, dense brown barb-like spines really did push out of his pores, about 0.5 millimeters long—you couldn't see them unless you looked closely.
Chen Ge held his breath, crouched, put his palm against the parapet, and pulled hard.
Sticky! And extremely sticky at that.
He retracted the spines and walked to the corner on the right side of the roof, where a big iron water tank stood one meter high and one and a half meters across.
The rust-spotted tank held half a tank of water, maybe 1.5 tons in all.
He was 1.85 meters tall, with an arm span equal to his height. He bent at the waist, pressed his palms to either side of the tank, let the spines emerge, and slowly straightened up.
It wasn't hard. He used maybe a fifth of his strength to lift the tank, and the spines never felt like they were losing their grip.
Hiss... a maximum lift of 7.5 tons?
However strong I am, that's how sticky the spines are?
Chen Ge set the tank down and let go, clenching his fist until his knuckles popped.
What can these hands do now? They could punch through a twenty-centimeter concrete brick wall, or a three-millimeter sheet of steel.
A person? One punch straight through!
Of course, that was assuming his body's toughness kept up. Otherwise, punching a wall would leave the wall fine and his own hand bones shattered.
Right—Bully Maguire fell off a building and only groaned a couple of times about his back, then walked it off. He took a pumpkin bomb to the face, used his feet to brake a train, and stopped it bare-handed. His durability was simply monstrous.
How tough is my body?
Chen Ge turned to look at the parapet, itching to try, but immediately dismissed the dangerous idea.
There were plenty of ways to test durability—no need to jump off a building. He went to a pile of red bricks by the wall and crouched down, picked up two with his right hand and stacked them, laid his left hand on top, then grabbed a brick with his right hand and smashed it down hard on the back of his left hand.
Bang—the brick shattered. His hand only stung a little.
He smashed eight more in a row. The skin showed a faint red mark, the bones were fine, and the pain was negligible.
Strong. Way too strong. I'm probably a tenth as tough as Bully Maguire now, right?
Chen Ge shook the grit and dust off his hands, stood up, and looked at the night sky heavy with dark clouds. He spread his arms and grinned—a silent laugh.
Is this what they mean by fortune and misfortune coming hand in hand?
Just like the saying: everything that goes against your wishes may be paving the way for a surprise!
If I hadn't been sent to Ukraine, I never would have gained this kind of power.
"Hahaha! Starting today, I do whatever the hell I want!"
Chen Ge was wildly exhilarated, seized by the urge to stand on the rooftop and fire off a crescent-shaped energy blast.
Hmm... on second thought, no. He wasn't strong enough to stop eating beef just yet.
Mutated into a spider spirit or not, he was still a carbon-based lifeform.
And no carbon-based lifeform could withstand firearms and explosives!
Could he stop a 9mm Parabellum pistol round? A .40 S&W, a .45 ACP, a .50 AE?
What about full-power armor-piercing 7.62×51mm, 7.62×54mmR rounds?
Or 12.7×99mm, 12.7×108mm, 14.5×114mm heavy machine-gun rounds?
Autocannon shells, mortar shells, tank shells, towed artillery, self-propelled artillery, rocket artillery, thermobaric bombs, precision-guided bombs, fuel-air explosives, missiles?
He had to keep his head down—especially on the Russia-Ukraine battlefield. Keep low, absolutely do not stand out.
Hold on and victory is yours. Six more months, the contract runs out, and I go home at light speed to enjoy a good life.
Stay a mercenary? Not even a dog would do it!
What about slipping away?
No, still no good!
If he ran, what would happen to his relatives?
Take the relatives with him?
Also no good! His relatives' two sons had both married Big Goose wives and opened three restaurants in Moscow, with assets of at least fifteen million yuan. Was he supposed to ask them to give all that up and go back to China with him?
Chen Ge settled his mindset and laid out his strategy for the next six months. Then he suddenly remembered the strongest ability of all for a spider spirit.
Danger sense!
The instant the thought surfaced, every hair on his body stood on end. Instinctively he whipped his head toward the southwest, then jerked it around to the northeast, and almost by reflex crouched, covered his ears, and opened his mouth wide.
The ammunition depot 700 meters to the northeast blew up. A blinding flash lit the night sky, and the boom arrived two seconds later.
Boom—the building shuddered, and every window shattered at once!
Rocket!
Just now, when the rocket entered the 3.5-kilometer range, his danger sense had screamed a warning. About five seconds later, the rocket hit the ammunition depot.
Twenty kilometers to the southwest lay the Russia-Ukraine border. A supersonic rocket coming from the southwest—Chen Ge could only think of one thing.
HIMARS!
A chain of explosions rolled on and on, the rocket's impact setting off sympathetic detonations in the depot. The night sky was painted orange-red.
Run, now. What if the Ukrainians went crazy and hit the barracks?
Chen Ge bolted for the stairwell, yanked the iron door open, and went clattering down the stairs.
The building was empty except for their squad. The second floor was already in chaos. The squad leader, Trench, bellowed.
"Move! Grab your gear and fall back to the woods on the right side of the camp. Double time!"
Chen Ge came running down, nimbly dodging several mercenaries, and charged to the door of Room 204, nearly colliding with Night Cat coming out.
But his reaction speed far outstripped a human's. He flicked aside in a blink, leaving Night Cat staring in blank confusion.
Night Cat had no time to think about it. He shouted, "Sledgehammer, we grabbed your gear for you. Get downstairs, quick!"
Chapter 3