100k Volts Electrocutes You To Death Chapter 1
Chapter 1
New Beginnings
At 9:20 PM, in the data monitoring room of a certain power station, a 30-something year old man held several reports and sat at a table carefully looking them over.
At his side stood several uniformed young men, taking advantage of the man reading reports, the youth on the right side quietly said, "Deputy captain, right now he is simultaneously supplying energy for two Tier 1 cities, this ability definitely has no problems, you see…can we let him stop now?”
The man sitting in the chair thought for a bit, and then responded: "Oh, let's wait a bit longer. Perhaps he can still go a step further…”
Ten minutes later, the phone on the table rang. One of the men went over to pick it up, and after a while he turned around. "Already got to 5.”
The man finally said, "Let's stop then.”
Everyone let out a breath.
"Shaoyuan, tomorrow you get in contact with him." The man stood up and rubbed his forehead, and then folded those several pages of material and placed it in his pocket. "He's called…called Ye Wenxuan ba.”
Li Shaoyuan hurriedly nodded. "Right.”
"For the time being we can relax his supervision, we don't need to follow him as tightly. We want to avoid emotional backlash, that would be detrimental to us." The middle-aged man muttered to himself. "In addition, see whether or not there are any other people staring at him, if there are, first avoid inadvertently alerting the enemy.”
"Yes, Deputy Captain!”
In the bathroom of his rental home, Ye Wenxuan splashed a handful of water on his face, and then swung his head to throw off the water, reluctantly opening his eyes.
Right now it was already a little past three in the morning.
Ye Wenxuan could vaguely remember that he had looked at his phone before sleeping, it had been September 12th.
He used a finger to open the phone sitting on the counter, glancing at the screen.
September 15th, 3:25 in the morning.
"I actually slept for two days and two nights?" He quietly talked to himself.
The day before yesterday, that night he had supplied power for 5 cities, when he walked out the power plant, his legs had already gone soft.
After the 5 hour long test, several plainclothes officers sent him back home. Ye Wenxuan had thanked them, and when he closed the door he had almost knelt down next to the shoe racks.
Fortunately in this apartment he was the only tenant, otherwise if he had been seen by others, it's uncertain whether they might have thought he had gone out to do some strange shady business.
After coming back, Ye Wenxuan didn't even wash his face or take off his clothes. He collapsed on the sofa and immediately fell asleep.
When he finally woke up again, it was already the wee hours of morning of the 15th.
Those people especially chose to invite him over on a Friday night, could it be that they were afraid he would collapse from exhaustion until after the second day, and avoided interfering with working hours?
Then that is truly quite considerate ah. Ye Wenxuan absent-mindedly thought.
He was still wearing that wrinkled light plaid shirt, his two hands rested on the vanity. Under the soft light in the bathroom, he carefully studied himself in the mirror.
Ye Wenxuan this year was 26 years old, his facial contours were distinct and outlined, a pair of peach blossom eyes seemed to carry light whoever they looked at, there was a bit of romantic and amorous meaning.
Besides, having been employed for 3 years had allowed him to already begin to shed the young and immature feeling from his student period, his countenance carried some handsome temperament of a mature man.
And because he had majored in clothing design, in his bones he carried some romantic and fashionable artistic cells. Ye Wenxuan also deliberately left his hair to shoulder length, and normally would just put it up in a ponytail. But because he wasn't that kind of meticulous man, Ye Wenxuan left a ponytail but never thought to take care of it, every time he would just roughly and carelessly put it up and be done with it, so his style always seemed to be messy.
Fortunately he was handsome, no matter how he tied his hair it would always have a sort of avant-garde aesthetic.
His stature couldn't be considered especially tall, even though he wasn't a muscular fashionable good-looking guy, his limbs were still slender and powerful, he definitely could not be compared to some feeble literary otaku.
At the moment he looked in the mirror, he didn't pay attention to the hair and clothes that had become messy from sleeping for two days. Instead he looked at his own eyes.
That pair of black pupils were scarily bright, Ye Wenxuan leaned closer to the mirror and lifted his eyelid, only focusing on the pupil.
Zi——
A light thin streak of blue lightning swept rapidly across his pupil, disappearing beneath his eyelid.
After a few minutes, the blue light again flashed, sweeping across in the other direction.
Ye Wenxuan leaned against the mirror for half a day, letting out a breath, and then he rummaged around the pockets on his shirt and jeans for half a day and finally fished out a pair of black-framed gla.s.ses.
Opening them up, he placed them on his nose.
The thin lens blocked in front of his eyes, concealing the arcs of lightning that would emerge from time to time.
The phone placed on the vanity started ringing. Ye Wenxuan picked it up to take a look, right now it was a low battery notification.
He clicked his tongue, then jabbed his index finger at the charging port. The screen lit up, and the phone immediately showed "Charging.”
He controlled the amount of current output, and after a short moment the phone was completely charged, it had only been a bit over 10 seconds.
This series of actions was done quite fluidly, it was clear that this was already not his first time doing something like this.
Ye Wenxuan placed the phone back into his pockets and returned to the bedroom, quickly taking off his clothes and conveniently throwing them into the washing machine on the balcony. Then he turned around back into the room and threw himself onto the soft bed.
The day before yesterday that night he had really done a big ticket, making him feel as if his kidneys were emptied. He had slept for a day and a night and was still tired all over. But after he had woken up, his spirit was actually extremely lively.
He raised his phone to his face and looked over the missed calls and all kinds of unread messages.
The majority of them were from his gang of scoundrel friends calling him go out over the weekend, and there were several from his company coworkers with news, notifying him to work overtime over the weekend. After that were several tens of calls from the design director, mostly all urging him to go to the office to spare his life.
Ye Wenxuan: "…" It's over, so many calls were unable to wake him up, when he goes to work tomorrow he will definitely be seized and given a beating by the director.
He thought for half a day, then still held the phone in his hands and opened the column with his missed calls. Looking at the string of the same number, he simply tapped with his finger and called back.
The first call was cut off by the other person, he casually dialed back again, and after the receiver went "du du du" a few times, the other person finally picked up the call.
"Hao er ah," Ye Wenxuan affectionately said, "have you slept?”
The person on the other side was half-asleep, after he looked at the time, he immediately started scolding loudly: "Ni ma it's 3:30 in the morning…Ye Wenxuan if you don't have any important business, I will f*king risk not going to work tomorrow to drive over specifically to beat you up!”
Ye Wenxuan: "Hey, I do have proper business, don't get too excited, take a deep breath, then take another——”
"Take your own f*king breath!" Yue Hao had already woken up: "What happened to you, lao zi called you on Friday afternoon, then I f*king called you for two days, even when I called yesterday night it still didn't go through. I almost reported to the police did you know!”
On Friday afternoon Ye Wenxuan had an appointment with a certain department of the national Ministry of Special Affairs, during that time all forms of communications were confiscated. Until he had returned from the power plant, those plainclothesmen finally gave him back his backpack. Even if he hadn't collapsed because of exhaustion from too much power generation, there was still the confidentiality agreement he had signed with those plainclothesmen, no matter how much Ye Wenxuan wanted to show off to other people, he still had to forcibly restrain himself.
Even though the other person was the college cla.s.smate who he had always had a good relationship with, at this time he could only close his mouth and not mention it.
So he could only say ambiguously: "I…went to do a big matter, I benefited several tens of millions of fellow citizens, and provided light for countless numbers of households.”
Yue Hao: "…”
Ye Wenxuan: "I feel like I may be the reincarnation of Thor…”
Yue Hao: "F* your uncle, foolish words should be written a little more reasonably, you must be sleep walking in the middle of the night. If you say any more I'm going to hang up…”
Ye Wenxuan: "Oh, I might need to resign.”
Yue Hao: "F* you big…what the h.e.l.l?!”
Over there came a burst of crackling and rattling of turmoil and chaos, Ye Wenxuan guessed that the phone might have rolled under the bed. After a while, Yue Hao seemed to have crawled up, swearing: "F*, what did you say, you want to resign? At that time who was it who had been happy to the point of crying with mucus flowing out when you had been hired by SFLS? Last week you even said that your superiors had given your team a big project, and then after not seeing you for a few days, you're telling me that you want to resign?!”
Ye Wenxuan: "Ai, G.o.d's plans supersede our own…”
Yue Hao: "Get lost! Say human words.”
Ye Wenxuan: "…It's a long story.”
The two people fell silent for a short while, then Yue Hao let out a sigh on the other end: "All right then, when I get off work today let's find a place, we'll sit down and have a good chat.”
Ye Wenxuan: "Ay.”
Hanging up the phone, Ye Wenxuan crawled off the bed and changed into some exercise gear. Picking up his phone, keys, and some change, he left his rental and then started jogging toward the community park next to his apartment building.
He liked to carry out some aerobic exercise, this was also an aspect where he was different from most other youths who did design.
At five thirty in the morning, Ye Wenxuan finished his jog and bought some breakfast on the way. Then he finally returned to his rental apartment in S city.
He was originally a W city person, and later on came to S city for his studies, and after he graduated he returned to W city, into a pretty good clothing design company. Then last July he had changed jobs into one of the top 500 companies in the world, SFLS had a Chinese branch in S city, so he had once again returned to this flourishing metropolis.
He had lived here for a while, and when he had finally saved some money, Ye Wenxuan simply found a rental apartment close to the company in a pretty good environment. It had two rooms, a living room, a kitchen, and a bathroom, and even had a large balcony that overlooked the community park. Even though the price was expensive, but it was definitely much more comfortable than the staff dormitory that had four people to an apartment.
Throwing the breakfast on the table, Ye Wenxuan took off his exercise gear and went into the shower in his bathroom to take a quick bath.
Water acc.u.mulated freely on the floor of the bathroom, gradually flowing toward the water blocking strip at the door.
An arc of lightning visible to the naked eye flashed across the surface of the water, the strange light blue lightning stuck to the surface of the water. Taking the young man still standing under the shower with closed eyes to wash his hair as the center, the lightning radiated outward, flashing and wandering.
The water flowed and trembled, stopping two centimeters in front of the water blocking strip.
The electric current squeezed and pressed around it, steering the water toward the drain.
"Rip.”
The white lamp in the bathroom inexplicably flashed twice, giving out "zi zi" sounds.
Ye Wenxuan washed his hair clean and wiped his face with a hand, opening his eyes.
In the instant when he opened his eyes, all of the electricity completely withdrew back into his body, not a thread remaining outside.
The white light returned to normal, not making the "zi zi" sounds again.
The water once again started flowing in all directions, and was eventually stopped by the water blocking strip.
Ye Wenxuan let out a breath. He turned off the water heater, turned around and picked up the towel, starting to wipe himself off.
In the damp mist, the man's body was faintly discernible.
His fair and glossy skin could vaguely be seen, his two legs were especially long, with wide shoulders and a narrow waist. His arms and thighs were covered in a thin layer of muscle, even though it wasn't as exaggerated as those bodybuilders in the gym, but no matter who saw this kind of body, they probably could only cover their nose and praise him a sentence: "This man is truly s.e.xy.”
As he ran his fingers through his hair and shook water droplets flying out, a small thread of electricity also flew out, hitting the wall with a "pi pa" sound, and then decomposing in the air soundlessly.
## First chapter of little theater is the Luo minister who still hasn't received the script ##
Zhou Fang: “We have a big problem, our special affairs minister has disappeared.”
He Feizhang: “What?! Who is so arrogant, they actually dare to seize Luo minister away in front of my this S-cla.s.s expert!”
The special affairs department's entire 20 members were dispatched, they searched for several days but were still unable to find their boss Luo Wen.
Sitting in another work's special affairs department building with a stupefied expression, Luo Wen: “What's the situation? Where are the parasitic beasts? What about the parasitic beasts? What kind of thing is the Chinese thunder knight?”
Translator Notes:
[1] deputy captain – 副队, ok so this is where it gets hard. I don't know anything about military rank, and 副 also means deputy, so I'm not entirely sure whether he's a lieutenant or deputy captain or something. I think based on later context it's deputy captain, since he's the deputy captain of the team?
[2] Tier 1 – interesting fact I learned, China has a hierarchical system for rating cities, check it out on Wikipedia
[3] romantic and amorous – 顾盼风流, I really don't quite know how to translate this. 顾盼 means to care for, 风流 means romantic/dissolute/amorous, so I just focused on the second part…
[4] turmoil and chaos – 兵荒马乱, idiom, means soldiers munity and troops rebel
[5] SFLS – 思芙莱斯, a brand in this story that is quite well known, probably on the level of Louis Vuitton or Chanel, I'm just going to abbreviate it as SFLS since I don't have a translation for it
[6] G.o.d's plans supersede our own – 人算不如天算, or Man proposes but G.o.d disposes
[7] soundlessly – 无声无息, idiom, means wordless and uncommunicative
[8] minister – 部长, is the head of a department, also called section chief, secretary, minister…
[9] He Feizhang – this entire Little Theater should be referencing 我生物不好你别骗我, another work by Pilgrim Words that I also slightly read but didn't quite enjoy bc of it revolving around a lot of amnesia, I guess Luo Wen is also in there?
Some miscellaneous translator notes:
Based on context, S city should be Shanghai, W city should be Wuhan, and B city (mentioned in the next chapter) is definitely Beijing.
I probably typed out more swear words in this chapter than I've ever typed/spoken in my life. I directly translated 特么 into f* or some forms of that word, since I think the pinyin ta ma is a little weird. I do like using pinyin for some, like lao zi. There will also frequently be other curse words, like wo kao, which I might use the pinyin for.
Random Notes:
The first chapter of a whole new project. Took 2 hours, 2 pm – 4 pm, for 3.4k characters to ~2.6k words. This will be the only chapter that I will be making an active effort to actually formally translate, like I mentioned in my note on the novel page. Hopefully in the future with my “summary-translations” I will be able to keep the time to less than 45 minutes, and be able to put out 2 chapters in the time it took to translate this one.
But yeah, I'm very excited for this side project. 100kV (how I'm going to abbreviate this from now on) is one of my only 2 (now 3) 5+heart ratings on my Reading page, and I couldn't resist going back to read it again. And when I did, I got an urge to translate it, because it's just so fun and amazing. So yeah, when I'm translating, it's going to be my third time reading through this story. I think that's the key. I'll probably only translate things that I have reread, and am willing to keep on rereading in the future.
I will have to say though that I am a bit concerned about whether adding this new story will mix it up into the CFCS posts, so that the next post b.u.t.ton at the bottom of the chapters will get the series mixed up together. Hmm.
But also the author will sometimes add on a small snippet often called something like “Little Theater” at the end. Don't skip those! They're often hilarious. And spoilerish. haha.
Edit (12/14): h.e.l.lo everyone, I'm very excited to be starting this new series, it's definitely one of my loyal favorites. After two rounds of translation marathons, each a week long, an arc of CFCS and quite a few chapters of 100kV have been translated. I have a whopping 26 posts currently lined up and scheduled on here, 13 chapters for each series. I'm pretty proud of myself, to be honest. That's over 40 hours of translating. I hope that you all enjoy this series as much as I do! Also, about the strikethrough text, please check out the 100kV home page to see the important note and important edit. ?