Chapter 28.2: You can eat me if you are hungry
The air filled with the charred aroma of roasting meat as the lizards shrieked in a piercing chorus.
The racket below shook the place, their massive, hundred-kilo bodies crashing into one another, tumbling down the stairs, bodies ablaze as they bolted into the underground first floor.
Wu Heng remained calm and collected until shouts drifted up from below—not from the lizards, but from other types of insects.
“I couldn’t carry much alcohol. The fire should burn itself out after a while.” Wu Heng only wanted to test whether they feared fire. Although he already believed no creature could be unafraid of fire, in this world now, anything was possible—he had to verify it himself.
The chaos from the basement and the anguished cries of the mutant animals rose again and again, then grew weaker, until they finally faded away. Through it all, Wu Heng kept the same thoughtful expression as at the beginning. He felt no pity—not even the slightest trace.
Xie Chongyi sat on the steps. “So when you went to the supermarket just now, it was just to grab alcohol and a lighter?”
Wu Heng glanced downward. “Wanted to test it.”
After a brief silence, a furious voice belonging to a human echoed from below.
“Who? Who the hell was the first to bring fire in here? What did I tell you? Rules! Rules! Where are the rules!? Look what you’ve done—you stampeded in here like a damn pig and scared all the other bugs half to death! You even crushed this leopard gecko flat!!”
“It’s squashed already. Let’s all mourn together.”
“Mourning’s over. Now I’ll bury its corpse inside my stomach. Boohoohoo, my poor little leopard gecko.”
From below came the sharp, crisp sound of chewing.
So, that mutant spider-man from last night really was their leader.
Still, however much the mutated animals could talk, at the end of the day they were still just animals. They were only bigger, tougher-skinned, sharper-toothed, more agile—maybe a little smarter.
But if they’d grown up together with humans—
Xie Chongyi tilted his head back, letting the sunlight spill over his face. He squinted slightly. “Let’s lure it out.”
The first thing Wu Heng thought of was using meat.
His gaze landed on Xie Chongyi; his eyes brightened, the gloom on his face instantly lifted quite a bit.
“How do we lure it?”
Xie Chongyi shifted to the seat closer inside. Then suddenly he lifted his arm, hooked it around Wu Heng’s shoulders, pulling him into his embrace. Leaning forward, he looked toward the back of the floor below.
“Hey.”
Wu Heng: “?”
The chittering noises from below vanished without a trace the moment Xie Chongyi “greeted” them.
Wu Heng stayed where he was, leaning against Xie Chongyi’s embrace without moving, while an enraged roar echoed from downstairs.
“Don’t move! Let me handle this—I’ll tear them into eight pieces!”
“Don’t forget what I said—rules! Discipline!”
Its crawling sounded bold and imposing, every step pounding the ground with force, and it was obvious from the sound that the creature was a many-legged animal.
Climbing along the staircase, it planted two legs on the wall, two legs on the banister, while the rest hauled it up the steps. It moved quickly, scuttling to the corner in the blink of an eye.
“Damn it, I can’t make the turn!”
Its spider legs were long and thin, covered in fine hairs, its whole body gleaming gemstone-blue with flecks of pale blue and white at certain spots—clearly poisonous at a glance.
One of its legs got stuck between the railing bars, and it struggled for quite a while without pulling free.
Silently, Xie Chongyi struck. Crack!—one of the blue spider’s legs snapped clean off.
“Aaaaaughhhhhh!”
“You’re finished, you’re finished! You broke the Savior’s slender, graceful little leg!” Xue Qi was in such pain that tears nearly spilled from his eyes. Seeing the crowd of mutant lizards clogging the doorway to gawk, he shouted furiously, “What are you looking at? Want to steal my food? Over my dead body!”
He was completely unaware that the steps behind him were now covered in soft vines. They sprang out from every gap, coiling upward around his body from below.
By the time he realized it, the vines had already wrapped his entire form and suddenly tightened, one even stuffing itself into his mouth as they dragged him up the stairs.
“Mmph… mmmphhh!”
He was dragged all the way to Wu Heng’s feet.
Xue Qi stared wide-eyed at him—not with anger or fear, but with… joy?
Wu Heng lifted his hand, and the vines in his palm instantly went taut, like a sword aimed straight at the spider-man’s throat.
“Mmph!” It thrashed violently—until it caught sight of Xie Chongyi beside Wu Heng.
Xie Chongyi saw its face clearly too.
“……”
Wu Heng was already preparing to finish it off.
Xie Chongyi made a sound and tugged Wu Heng to the side. “I know him.”
“You know him?” Wu Heng lowered his hand. “You’re sure?”
Xie Chongyi: “Xue Qi. Xue Shen’s younger brother. Biological brother. Twin.”
“Mmph! Mmph mmph mmph!” The spider-man nodded frantically, tears and snot streaming down his face.
Wu Heng, disgusted, immediately retracted all the vines.
Xue Qi’s many legs flailed about before he let out a string of exaggerated cries. Then, with a blink, he transformed into a boy of seventeen or eighteen, who immediately threw himself at Xie Chongyi in an embrace.
“Old Xie, how are you here? Where’s my brother? Is my brother with you?”
To Wu Heng, it all felt strangely like a long-lost family reunion.
He had never experienced this kind of overwhelming affection. Standing aside, he felt both alienated and uneasy. So he turned, walked a few steps upward, and sat down on the higher steps.
“He came to the shopping center with me. He should already be outside by now.” Xie Chongyi pushed Xue Qi away and took a deep breath at the sight of the tears and snot in front of him. “Why are you here?”
Xue Qi walked to the railing, glanced at the mutant insects already starting to move around freely, then returned to stand in front of Xie Chongyi. “It’s a long story. You know I’ve got a side job, right? Of course I had to be at the mall before it opened. All the food, drinks, and toys for those bugs had to be swapped out, cleaned up, glass wiped down…”
Xie Chongyi leaned against the wall. “Make the long story short.”
“Anyway, our assistant manager suddenly grabbed me and started biting me—I was scared half to death! At first, I just wanted to snatch away one of my favorite blue spiders and run, but in my panic it bit me instead. When I woke up again—holy shit!—there was a gecko the size of a crocodile crawling around beside me!”
“Old Xie, I’m telling you, I passed out from fright. I really did! Then when I woke up again, I stood up, and—my God—I realized my legs were longer, and there were way more of them. I clattered over to the mirror and saw that except for my head, my whole body had turned into that same kind of blue spider I’d always liked before, only way bigger!”
“The power hadn’t gone out yet at that time, so I grabbed my phone. I’d only scrolled through a few messages and haven’t had fun yet, when something smacked across my body. I looked up—damn, it wasn’t a stick, it was a spider leg. And guess what? Our assistant manager had turned into the same thing as me. But the only difference was, he lost his sanity. I still thought of myself as human—at least subjectively—even though I knew objectively I definitely wasn’t human anymore.”
“I fought with him and lost. That bastard was a redback spider—more poisonous than me. Even when he was human he was sneaky and vicious, so after turning into a monster he became one of the deadliest kinds. He wouldn’t let me leave, forced me to play second-in-command for him. Now he’s the store manager, and I’m the assistant manager.”
“Most of the bugs down here have already mutated by now. The ones that didn’t became their food.”
“Last night the store manager sent me out on patrol. When I saw people I was so happy, but you guys just wouldn’t open the door. And that—what’s-his-name—when he finally did open it, he punched me right in the face! I was so anxious I could’ve died.”
“And what do you eat here?” Xie Chongyi shifted the topic.
Xue Qi stammered at once, “I… I sometimes eat a bit with them too… but don’t worry, I’ve never eaten a zombie, and definitely never eaten a human!”
Xie Chongyi lowered his gaze, his expression cool and unreadable.
“How’s your leg?”
Xue Qi grinned, “I’m fine. The one that broke was just one of the extra legs—it’ll grow back soon. That’s not important. What’s important is—how are things outside now?”
“Pretty bad.”
Xue Qi froze for a moment, then sighed. “Well, of course. If the outside world were fine, someone would’ve come to clean up these damn bugs long ago. It’s already been more than a week, and there’s still no movement outside.”
“You two should go back. Around three in the afternoon my store manager takes a nap—then you can sneak out, and he won’t notice.” Xue Qi slumped down onto the steps, his energy draining away instantly.
“What about you?” This time it was Wu Heng who asked.
Wu Heng rested his chin on his knees, staring listlessly ahead.
At this point, Xue Qi couldn’t even be bothered to ask who he was. He just thought Wu Heng’s temperament was unusual, glanced at him a couple of extra times, and then answered, “Every time the store manager naps, he makes me stay right by his side, not allowed to move a step! He’s got this sentinel—if I so much as step away, the sentinel wakes him up. If it weren’t for the fact that the store manager spends every day mating with female spiders now, I would’ve suspected he had a crush on me back when we were human.”
“What?” Wu Heng and Xie Chongyi spoke in unison.
Xue Qi: “Is it so strange to think he had a crush on me?”
Xie Chongyi waved his hand. “Him having a crush on you is strange, but what you said before that is even stranger.”
“You think I’m making it up? I even took pictures! I was thinking, once I turn back to normal someday, maybe those pictures could end up in a documentary. But right now, I can’t leave at all. If I could, I’d show you right now!” Xue Qi’s face twisted in all directions as he spoke, as though he’d reached the limit of his patience.
The thought that he might be trapped in the shopping mall’s reptile house as a spider for the rest of his life filled him with despair. Tears started streaming down his face. “If I’d known this would happen, I wouldn’t have wished in the past to be a blue spider in my next life. This wish came true way too fast—they granted it in this life instead.”
Wu Heng and Xie Chongyi just quietly watched him cry for a long while. X, meanwhile, lifted its head and yawned.
Xue Qi’s crying left his throat a little raw before he stopped.
A lizard below was poking its head out; when it saw him, he immediately shouted, “I’m about to win—tears of joy! Get lost!”
The lizard drew its neck in and retreated, tail flicking.
Xue Qi stopped crying, and only then did Wu Heng speak: “You can come with us.”
Xie Chongyi leaned against the wall, his body angled lazily toward where Wu Heng sat above.
“Go where? Do you know how many mutated bugs are on the first floor? Do you know how fast some reptiles breed? After mutating they go even crazier. It’s been more than a week and they haven’t left—whatever they give birth to they eat themselves. And they still can’t finish it!”
Xue Qi clawed at his head. He’d been living with the bugs down there every day; if he hadn’t said it out loud himself, he’d have thought it perfectly normal.
Wu Heng looked up at Xie Chongyi, and Xie Chongyi met his gaze.
Sunlight poured down the stairs, but Xie Chongyi felt Wu Heng’s eyes were dark and cold. Whatever Wu Heng said or did, there was always a dampness about him that wouldn’t dry in the sun or blow away.
Xie Chongyi withdrew his stare and raised an eyebrow at Xue Qi. “Set the place on fire—then we can leave, right?”