Chapter 27.1: Coiled Around Him Like a Snake
Wu Heng squinted his eyes against the sting of sweat, and Xie Chongyi’s figure gradually came into focus from a blur.
Blood was gushing from the wound on his leg, yet it seemed to have no effect on him as he propped himself up from the ground.
“You handled all of them?” His tone carried a trace of surprise.
“Mm. The problem…” Xie Chongyi stood before Wu Heng with both hands in his pockets. “The problem’s pretty big.”
“…” Wu Heng glanced past the boy, his voice calm. “If the crawlers in the mall weren’t feeding on each other, their current rate of evolution wouldn’t make sense.”
Xie Chongyi nodded. “Go on.”
“Evolution requires battle experience, energy cores, and food. But the shopping center doesn’t provide the conditions for such evolution. Even feeding this many spiders with a handful of zombies is a stretch.” Wu Heng pressed his lips together. “Something’s wrong with this mall.”
Xie Chongyi was silent for a moment. Then, all of a sudden, he bent down and reached a hand toward the teenager.
Wu Heng instinctively drew back.
Xie Chongyi raised his eyes. “Why are you dodging? I don’t hit people.”
Wu Heng watched him warily, his pale face and wide, jet-black eyes making him look, in Xie Chongyi’s view, like some eerie little ghost.
He was wearing black jeans, the bloodstains nearly invisible, but the fabric gleamed with a dark, wet sheen of blood.
“We—” Xie Chongyi began, but before he could finish his words, the escalator in the distance gave a creaking groan—something was climbing up.
Wu Heng flicked his hand, and a green vine whip unfurled in response, as though he had completely forgotten one of his legs was practically useless.
“Hey—” Xie Chongyi called out, but failed to stop him from turning away.
He knit his dark, long brows together, and without another thought strode up to the boy, bent down, and hoisted him onto his shoulder.
Wu Heng froze for a moment, then struggled violently. “Put me down!” His stomach was pressed against Xie Chongyi’s hard shoulder; his words came out muffled, and no matter how fierce his tone tried to be, it couldn’t sound threatening.
The vine in his palm, which he had forgotten to retract, changed from murderous intent to something like a snake pinched at the vital spot, thrashing its body wildly.
“Don’t you know to run when you can’t win?” Xie Chongyi, with his other hand, dragged a dead mutated spider from the shop and tossed it behind them to block the climbing creature’s line of sight. Carrying Wu Heng, he ducked into a clothing brand’s staff break room, and along the way casually grabbed a pair of jeans.
Wu Heng was dumped onto a single-seater sofa; the couch was unusually soft. He thrashed about on it and couldn’t manage to get up, finally tumbling to the floor before he could stand.
Xie Chongyi had already locked the break room door from the inside. He pressed his palm against the door, his gaze straight and indifferent — a completely different person from the one who’d just said “run if you can’t fight.”
Something had come inside from outside.
Also a many-legged creature, it was searching the shop carefully and slowly, and it had reached the break room door.
Wu Heng and Xie Chongyi exchanged glances.
It waited quietly at the doorway.
Wu Heng held his breath.
Knock. Knock.
“Are you in there?” A nervous, urgent male voice called out. “Open the door, there are monsters chasing me!”
Knock! Knock!
“They’ve caught up!”
Xie Chongyi leaned lazily against the door, with no intention of opening it.
The knocking escalated from knocks to bangs, and the voice outside grew frantic.
“Are you all dead? Can’t you hear someone knocking? Do you want to die?”
The thing outside slammed crazily at the door. “Broken world, miserable humans — you treat your savior like a clown. The insect nest will become your grave!”
The banging on the door stopped, and silence fell outside.
Wu Heng hobbled over, gently pushed Xie Chongyi aside, gripped the doorknob, unlocked it, and carefully pressed down.
Creak~
The break room door opened a narrow crack.
Whoosh!
Something dark dangled down from above the doorframe — a spider’s head, but with a human face.
“Wow, handsome boy!”
Wu Heng’s heart jumped in fright. He raised his hand and punched it. The face wobbled, and in an instant its eyes turned a glaring scarlet.
Xie Chongyi kicked the door shut and locked it again.
He didn’t scold Wu Heng for opening the door. Instead, his gaze first landed on Wu Heng’s face, now paler than before. “If you’re afraid of bugs, then don’t rush forward.”
“Being afraid doesn’t mean I can’t deal with the thing I’m afraid of.” Wu Heng calmed himself and spoke evenly.
Xie Chongyi didn’t call him out. He simply turned and began rummaging through the break room.
Wu Heng stood where he was. “What are you looking for?”
“There should be basic first-aid supplies in the staff room. Who knows if that mutated spider was poisonous? Your leg wound needs treatment as soon as possible.” At the last cabinet, Xie Chongyi pulled out a small medical kit. “Found it.”
He carried the kit to the coffee table in the center of the break room. Without looking at Wu Heng, he said, “Come here. Take off your pants.”
Whether it came from his privileged upbringing or from being treated like a star at school, the boy’s words carried an unconscious air of authority — even when he was saying something like telling someone to take their pants off.
But Wu Heng wasn’t one to be cowed by anyone.
Still, pants or not — they had to come off.
Among the pile of everyday medical supplies, Xie Chongyi found iodine tincture, cotton swabs, gauze, and bandages. He carefully checked the production dates and expiration labels one by one. When he turned around, Wu Heng had his back to him, already halfway through taking off his pants. The uninjured pant leg was pulled down, and he was bent at the waist, carefully peeling the fabric away from the leg wrapped in injury.
His legs were long and slender, almost overly thin, and very pale — yet not weak-looking. The only place with any real flesh was just above the thighs, two rounded, soft curves.
Xie Chongyi twisted open the iodine bottle. When he lifted his eyes again, his gaze landed — without him realizing — on Wu Heng’s calves and heels. The boy’s calf muscles were taut and lean, his Achilles tendons calling to mind the upright joints of a sturdy bamboo stalk.
Xie Chongyi’s standards were high. His disregard for people wasn’t arrogance, but because, to him, everyone looked more or less like the same ugly skin sack.
He had no interest in anything that wasn’t beautiful — whether man, woman, human, ghost, even dog. And if it was a dog, he would only want the one with the shiniest coat, the thickest bones, and the strongest muscles.
But Wu Heng wasn’t a dog. So he didn’t need thick bones or powerful muscles. Beautiful was enough.
The wound was on Wu Heng’s thigh. The spider silk was thin yet tough, biting deep into his flesh. With the pant leg finally off, beads of blood trickled down his thigh.
Xie Chongyi crouched in front of him, holding the iodine. He tore open a packet of cotton swabs, pulled out two, and dipped them into the bottle before swiping them across the wound.
It was a little cold.
Wu Heng’s upper thigh twitched.
Xie Chongyi’s eyes flicked to the small thing directly in front of his face. Even though it was cupped by underwear, its outline was still visible. His gaze lifted slightly, and he said coolly, “Wu Heng, you’re being impolite.”
Wu Heng had no idea what to say.
From his angle, he couldn’t even see Xie Chongyi’s full face — only the occasional stretch of his shoulders and back whenever he lifted his hands.
Even Zeng Like had never treated him this well. Every time Wu Siming hit him and she came to apply medicine afterward, Wu Heng only felt disgust.
Lin Mengzhi was good to him too, but he disliked people getting close. He believed he didn’t need it.
“Thanks,” Wu Heng said.
Xie Chongyi worked with practiced ease as he disinfected the wound. After wrapping it, he layered several sheets of gauze and carefully wiped away the blood trailing down Wu Heng’s leg. “The mutated spider wasn’t poisonous. Bacterial mutation shouldn’t affect you too much anyway, since you’re an ability user.”
Wu Heng nodded, took the pants from Xie Chongyi, and put them on.
As soon as he pulled them up, Xie Chongyi straightened, circling half a step around him.
Standing behind Wu Heng with hands in his pockets, Xie Chongyi said, “Looks like women’s low-rise jeans.”
“…”
Wu Heng immediately started to take them off.
Xie Chongyi pressed his hand down. “Make do for now. We’ll grab another pair later.”
Then he added, “Or do you plan on running around with your ass bare?”
Wu Heng didn’t answer. He shifted to sit on the sofa, his movements heavy — clearly unhappy.
Xie Chongyi followed and sat down beside him. From his jacket pocket, he pulled out a handful of items and set them on the coffee table.
Energy cores — a large portion of them wood-type.
“You’ll probably need these,” Xie Chongyi leaned back, eyelids drooping, looking ready to rest.
Wu Heng didn’t move. “You don’t need them?”
“You’re injured. You pick first. I don’t care about the type — I can use them all.”
Wu Heng leaned forward, carefully sorting through the pile of energy cores. Lizards were fire-type, spiders wood-type. After a moment’s thought, he also took out the water-type energy cores he carried. A rough count — about twenty of them, all the same size though differing in attribute.
He didn’t rush to absorb or convert them, instead lining up the energy cores according to the depth of their color.
The single water-type core was the palest among them. Wu Heng thought back to that sluggish mutant snail — its offensive power was probably at the very bottom.
“Class Monitor,” Wu Heng suddenly called out to Xie Chongyi.
The latter sounded half-asleep, his reply lazy. “Mm.”
“Shouldn’t mutant creatures and ability users be ranked into levels?” he asked.
“If you want to rank them, then rank them.”
Wu Heng picked out the snail’s core. “Snail’s useless. E-rank.”
Behind him, Xie Chongyi’s eyes slowly opened, staring straight at the back of the boy’s head.
“The spider and lizard cores are about the same depth of color. Let’s call them… D-rank.”
“We can only handle one spider or one lizard one-on-one. Facing a group takes everything we’ve got. So we should be D-rank too.”
“Mengzhi just awakened his ability — he doesn’t qualify for ranking.”
“Wu Heng.” Xie Chongyi’s voice cut in abruptly. He was awake now, leaning forward until he was shoulder to shoulder with the boy, his sharp gaze fixed on Wu Heng’s face, scrutinizing.
“Hm?” Wu Heng had already swept all the wood-type cores into his own hands.
Xie Chongyi seemed not to notice his greedy little move and asked instead: “The snail’s core. Where did you get it?”
Wu Heng froze.
“…Picked it up.”
Xie Chongyi had only asked out of formality; he didn’t expect an honest answer from Wu Heng. Leaning back again, he said, “Lucky you.”
Clutching the wood-type cores, Wu Heng absorbed and converted them as he muttered, “That’s what being lucky means.”
The boy behind him let out a low, ambiguous laugh.