Chapter 17: Superpowers and Poppy
The morning sunlight poured down, fully revealing the apocalyptic scene on the ground that had already changed beyond recognition.
The rescue they had been waiting for since yesterday had yet to arrive. Outside, everything remained deathly silent; only the occasional low growl broke through, chilling people to the bone and pushing their fragile hopes into an even deeper abyss.
But it was only the second day. Most households still had some food stored away, so even though the world outside was drenched in bloody slaughter, most people remained relatively calm. They still believed the government or the military would soon come to wipe out the monsters and rescue them.
There was no breakfast left for Wu Heng at home, but that also spared him the time he would’ve spent cooking for the other three.
Now, with no water or electricity, Zeng Like was busy and frazzled in the kitchen, while Wu Zhi quietly slipped into Wu Heng’s room carrying a large bag of things.
Wu Heng, holding two books and about to head downstairs, looked up when he saw her. “What is it?”
Wu Zhi dumped the contents of her bag onto his desk—it was snacks.
“For you.”
Wu Heng’s expression didn’t soften at that, but his eyes seemed more liquid than usual, clear and glistening, as though smiling without moving his lips.
He looked her over. Wu Zhi didn’t really resemble him much—she looked almost exactly like Zeng Like, with round cheeks tapering to a pointed chin, like a plump melon seed. She had single eyelids, yet her eyes were large, giving her a smart and charming appearance. Only, she was a bit of a fool—no matter how you looked at her, she didn’t seem that bright.
“Mom didn’t comb your hair?” Wu Heng noticed her messy hair, like a little madwoman’s.
“She didn’t have time. She’s busy cooking, but there’s no water. I didn’t dare bother her,” Wu Zhi whispered.
Wu Heng chuckled. “Go bring your comb. I’ll do it for you.”
It had been a long time since her big brother last combed her hair. Overjoyed, the little girl ran back to her room, fetched her comb, and handed it to him.
She sat down on the chair in Wu Heng’s room, while he stood behind her. Their hair texture was identical—smooth and sleek. Even though Wu Zhi’s hair was long, combing it wasn’t difficult at all.
The boy lowered his gaze, carefully and attentively braiding two plaits for Wu Zhi. At the ends, he tied each with a pink scrunchie adorned with little plush flowers, and then clipped two blue-green moon-shaped hairpins to one side of her head.
Wu Zhi looked at herself in the mirror, her little face flushing red with excitement. “Thank you, brother! I’ll love you for my whole life!”
At that moment, all the gloom around him seemed to vanish. His gentleness was like a deep spring, quietly gathering and overflowing.
When he went downstairs, he didn’t see Lin Mengzhi. Instead, Grandma Lin was already sitting in the living room. Hearing movement, she knew it was Wu Heng and asked if things outside had improved, when they might be able to go out.
Wu Heng wasn’t as good at making excuses as Lin Mengzhi, but he still didn’t want Grandma Lin to know the truth of what was happening outside. After pausing a moment, he said, “You can’t see anyway—what would you go out for?”
Grandma Lin slammed her cane angrily against the floor.
“And where’s Mengzhi?” Wu Heng asked stiffly, steering the topic away.
“Still sleeping. I can’t wake him no matter how I try,” Grandma Lin replied, sitting down again.
“Then I’ll make you breakfast,” Wu Heng said as he rolled up his sleeves and headed for the kitchen.
In the sink lay a large grass carp they had brought back from the supermarket last night. Beside it was an empty water jug, the bottled water already poured into the sink.
Wu Heng didn’t waste time fretting over how much water Lin Mengzhi had squandered. Instead, he studied the fish’s eyes, then reached out and touched its tail with a finger.
With a sharp smack, the tail whipped hard against his wrist.
That wasn’t right.
Fish couldn’t live long in bottled water, yet these ones were vigorous, far from ordinary grass carp.
Wu Heng wiped his fingers on a cloth by the sink, recalling how last night Lin Mengzhi had insisted these fish weren’t mutant.
Only pausing for a few seconds, Wu Heng turned and left the kitchen. Face set, he pushed open the door to Lin Mengzhi’s room.
Lin Mengzhi was lying under the covers. His face was flushed and darkened, his head of purple hair curled and tangled, his lips pale as ash.
“Mengzhi?” Wu Heng stepped closer, bending down to call softly to him.
“Mm?” Lin Mengzhi groggily opened his eyes, the whites tinged gray. He struggled to raise his arm. “Hot.”
Wu Heng caught his arm as it fell limply, only to fling it away at once—Lin Mengzhi’s skin was burning, like a bar of molten firestone.
The searing pain in his palm lingered. Wu Heng slowly lowered his gaze and saw that a patch of skin on his hand had been scorched clean off.
This wasn’t zombification. Wu Heng quickly reached a conclusion about Lin Mengzhi’s change.
It was possible Lin Mengzhi had awakened a special ability—that he might be one of those gifted individuals Xie Chongyi had mentioned, a so-called “lucky one.”
It was Wu Heng’s first time encountering something like this, and he didn’t know how to handle it. He set the energy cores they had acquired yesterday down by Lin Mengzhi’s pillow, then stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him.
After finishing breakfast with Grandma Lin in the dining room, Wu Heng went back to check on him. The room’s temperature had risen noticeably, heat wafting from the bed where Lin Mengzhi lay. He had begun to mutter deliriously.
“If I turn into a zombie, A’Heng, kill me.”
“Or just eat me now—at least while I’m still edible.”
“It hurts so much.”
Wu Heng lingered in the room for a while, silent, before leaving again.
He stood in the kitchen, rolling up his sleeves. The grass carp in the sink seemed to sense the looming danger, thrashing wildly in an attempt to escape. Wu Heng’s hand shot out, gripping the liveliest one with ease.
The carp from the supermarket were no small catch—nearly half a meter long, their flesh extraordinarily rich and tender after mutation. Leaning slightly forward so as not to let water drip onto the floor, Wu Heng bit off the fish’s head in one swift, elegant motion, his chewing making a crisp, clean sound.
In front of him squatted the gray parrot. Tilting its head high, it jabbed its increasingly sharp and hardened beak into the fish’s body, pecking out one chunk of flesh after another.
Wu Heng left one fish aside. He cleaned the wet stovetop, though his fingers lingered against the edge as he fell into thought. Then he asked X, who was still savoring the taste of fish, “Do you know where Hanzhou No.1 High School is?”
X flapped its wings once.
The boy couldn’t help reaching out to stroke its feathers. They had grown much stiffer than just a couple of days ago, and he found himself wondering what X would look like when it was fully grown.
“I’ll give you a note. You take it to Xie Chongyi.”
Every feather on X radiated refusal.
“It’s not far. But… you probably don’t know who Xie Chongyi is.” Wu Heng thought for a moment, then pulled out his phone. Opening the class group chat, he enlarged the group photo and pointed at the boy in the very center. “Remember him. This is what he looks like.”
Xie Chongyi was easy to recognize. His extraordinarily beautiful peach blossom eyes alone were enough to set him apart. Even Wu Heng—who was somewhat face-blind—could remember his features.
Still, X drooped in reluctant protest.
But Wu Heng had already returned to the living room, found pen and paper, and began writing the note.
He wrote down all the questions weighing on him, rolled the paper into a small tube, and strung it on a thread from Grandma Lin’s sewing kit, fastening it around the parrot’s neck.
“I don’t know if he’s still at school. If you don’t see him there, check nearby. In times like this, if he’s alone, he probably couldn’t have gone far. If he’s with a group, it’s even harder to move far. If you really can’t find him, just come back.”
“Outside isn’t safe—be careful,” Wu Heng said softly, scratching X’s little head with a fingertip.
But X felt no comfort. The way it looked at Wu Heng was as though staring at a demon king about to be born.
—
The corridor outside was anything but peaceful. From time to time, the sound of shuffling footsteps passed by, and the residential complex often rang with human screams. Most people had no idea what was happening; and in times of uncertainty, the majority became would-be warriors.
Wu Heng took up his knife. He pulled open the door leading to the corridor—right outside, a zombie was wandering.
The moment it turned, his short blade pierced its skull.
Stepping past the body, Wu Heng shut the door to the stairwell and began clearing the building of intruders, starting from the first floor.
In the residential building, nearly every household kept their doors tightly shut. Layer upon layer of foul blood stained the floor, each level radiating the despair of a world where order had collapsed. Zombies roamed the hallways in search of food, sniffing left and right, their bodies broken and twisted. At the faint sound of footsteps, they froze, then turned toward the noise.
The boy climbed the stairs step by step, blade in hand.
The scent of the living immediately stirred the zombies into excitement.
Wu Heng was excited too.
He had no special powers, but he would still become a strong one in this apocalypse.
Half his face was drenched in zombie blood, streaming down the sharp line of his jaw. His eyes glowed a dull crimson, devoid of luster. He wasn’t bloodthirsty—just calm.
Sunlight spilled through the carved stone window at the stairwell’s corner. One side of his face, clean and untouched, was as gentle as an angel’s; the other side, spattered in gore, was like a demon’s.
He cleared the building floor by floor. By the time he reached the top, the hallway was surprisingly clean.
Wu Heng advanced cautiously, walking to the end of the corridor. Suddenly, a door cracked open.
“Brother A’Heng?” A messy-haired little girl poked her head out. “How did you get up here? The building is full of those things—outside too.”
Seeing the girl who often greeted him, Wu Heng lowered his blade behind his back. “Just came up for a walk.”
“What about the things in the building?” Lili’s face was full of fear.
“Maybe they all went out,” Wu Heng said casually, lifting a sleeve to wipe the blood from his face.
“Oh.” Lili clung to the doorframe. “The police uncle hasn’t come yet?”
“No.”
“Why haven’t they come?” Tears welled up in her big round black eyes. “Our kindergarten teacher said, if something happens, we should go find the police uncles.”
“My mom and dad went to work that day, and they still haven’t come home. No one helps me wash my face or brush my teeth, no one combs my hair, and no one makes food for me.”
“Brother Ah Heng, can you come in and cook something for me? I’ve only eaten little cookies for two days.”
Lili’s face was covered in tears. Wu Zhi often played with her, so when Wu Heng looked at her, he felt a bit more than he would toward a stranger’s child.
Wu Heng put his knife away. “Alright.”
Following behind Lili, he stepped into her home. It was a warm, tastefully decorated place, neat and tidy—but with only a child living there, it felt lonely and cold.
“This is my kitchen.” Lili stood by the doorway, twisting her fingers nervously, her eyes full of expectation. “The food’s in the fridge.”
“Mm.” Wu Heng strode into the kitchen.
He opened the refrigerator. Every shelf inside was crammed with bloody hunks of meat. His gaze lifted—and met a pair of eyeballs staring back at him.
“Hehe.” Lili’s voice came from right behind him, eerie and chilling. “Brother A’Heng, Mom and Dad were happy to let me eat them. You’ll be willing too, right?”
Wu Heng slowly lowered his head and saw Lili’s small arms locked tight around his waist.
He tried prying them off, but they didn’t budge, welded to him like iron.
Casting his gaze sideways, he caught sight of the little girl’s face—already swallowed up by a gaping, fang-lined maw. It opened and closed, saliva dripping down. Her eyes had shifted to her forehead, reduced to two thin slits.
“Are you done talking?” Wu Heng asked quietly.
“All done, all done,” Lili nodded eagerly. “I’m ready to eat! Awoo!”
The words had barely left her mouth before a scream tore from her throat—Wu Heng’s short blade had pierced one of her eyes.
Her arms instantly released him. Lili leapt back, clutching her face. “Brother A’Heng, why’d you do that? Why’d you stab my eye? I only wanted one bite!”
Wu Heng slammed the fridge door shut. Bang! The noise made the little zombie across from him flinch in fright.
“How did you figure it out?” Lili asked impatiently. Normally, no one should be on guard against a little girl like her. Over the past two days, she had already tricked and eaten all the people on this floor—everyone trusted her.
Wu Heng lowered his eyes, wiping the blood from his blade over and over on his sleeve. He spoke lazily: “The outbreak started at five in the morning. Your parents usually leave for work at eight-thirty.”
“Hmph!” The little zombie stomped her foot.
Right after, she suddenly leapt up. Her four limbs clung to the kitchen ceiling like a spider, her head twisting at a grotesque angle to face Wu Heng. “Brother Heng, today Lili must eat you!”
She dove down with frightening speed. Wu Heng rolled aside and slashed with his knife, grazing her arm—it barely slowed her.
“You always looked so easy to bully, but turns out you’re not like that at all,” Lili hissed, clinging to the window. Her greedy eyes devoured the sight of him, drool slipping down her chin.
She pounced again, but this time Wu Heng didn’t use his blade. He caught her arm midair, swung her whole body, and slammed her to the floor. In the same motion, he stomped down on that revoltingly huge mouth.
There was a sickening squelch as her head caved in.
But then, to his shock, a wet tongue slid out from beneath his shoe, coiling tightly around his ankle. Blood streamed down as pain shot deep into the bone.
“Got a bite, heheh!” Lili laughed brightly.
Wu Heng narrowed his eyes, unmoved. Bending down, he gritted his teeth and tore off the little zombie’s arm, flinging it behind him.
Yet, just as he raised his knife to plunge it into her skull, a vine lashed across from the side of his face—shhk!—and the little zombie’s other eye burst open.
The little zombie didn’t even have time to scream before several vine tendrils—some thick, some thin, covered in fine fuzz—lashed down like meteors. Whsshh, whsshh! Filthy blood sprayed as Lili’s shrieks faded into silence.
Wu Heng, pale from blood loss, stood encircled by the eerie green glow of the vines. Against that backdrop, his skin looked all the more porcelain-white, almost translucent.
Only once the little zombie was well and truly dead did the vines cease their assault. Their retreat was slow, gentle, almost… cautious.
At last, a single vine lingered. It rested lightly on Wu Heng’s shoulder, its tip brushing against his cheek in a tentative, almost flattering gesture.
“The poppy from the city outskirts?” Wu Heng tilted his head slightly toward it. He had only ever seen these vines once before—out by the suburbs.