Eaten Ch.76

Chapter 76: The people he’s waiting for have arrived…

“Sure, no problem. After you finish eating, just let my husband know. I’ll make more ice so it won’t melt on your way back,” the woman said. She dragged a chair over and sat down next to Wu Heng. “Where are you all from?”

“The south. We came from the south,” Lin Mengzhi answered quickly. “We’re leaving tomorrow.”

“And where are you planning to go?”

“Jingzhou.”

“Jingzhou is great—big base, large population, lots of job opportunities.” The woman wiped her hands on her apron. “Our whole family originally planned to move to a bigger base too. Big places treat ability users much better.”

“Then why didn’t you go?” Xue Shen asked in confusion. Anyone who could run a shop at a time like this clearly wasn’t an ordinary person. Whether it was securing ingredients and tools for the business or guarding against people who might try to rob them at any moment—both were huge hassles.

If they could keep a shop running, they certainly had the ability to leave.

The woman said, “Right before we were set to leave, both of our kids got sick one after the other. We thought we’d wait until they recovered a bit, but… we didn’t expect them to never recover at all. After we lost both children, my husband and I gave up on going to a large base. We stayed here, where we could still help some of our fellow townsfolk.”

“What illness? Infection?” Lin Mengzhi asked through a mouthful of food.

“One caught a cold. The other fell and got hurt—his wound got infected and inflamed. We used every medicine the base still had, but nothing worked. The doctors here said the bacteria and viruses have mutated. After the mutation, not only did their ability to infect increase, some even developed strong drug resistance. The medicines humans invented in the past don’t work on them at all.”

“But small, ordinary injuries aren’t enough to kill an ability user. Mr. Ye said that ability users’ constitutions have gone through earth-shaking changes. If I could… I’d really want both my children to have become ability users.”

The woman talked on and on—not in an annoying way, just recounting all the changes happening around them, how relatives and friends died one after another. By the time she finished, she gave a small smile. “My son was about your age, so I got a bit emotional. Talked too much, too much…”

She stood up just as the bearded man came out carrying two rectangular trays. “Comin’ right up~”

Lin Mengzhi immediately craned her neck. “Smells amazing!”

The bearded man set the trays down and said, “You’d better finish it all or you’ll be in trouble.”

The woman heard him and smacked him hard with her palm. “How can you talk to customers like that?”

Wu Heng casually handed her his empty bowl of shaved ice. “One more, please.”

“What kind of meat is this?” Ying Liuquan asked, pointing at the skewers on the tray. He wasn’t about to eat meat of unknown origin.

“This is lamb—mountain goat. But it’s not from livestock raised in our base. Our base’s farming industry hasn’t developed yet. My nephew catches them outside the base. Basically, whatever he brings back that day, we sell that day.” Mentioning her nephew made the bearded man’s expression turn both proud and relieved. “You guys go ahead and eat. I’ll go grill your fish.”

Soon, Wu Heng caught the aroma of fish skin being charred to a fragrant crisp.

Several nearby tables smelled the grilled fish too, their eyes going wide with longing.

Wu Heng had already eaten two servings of ice cream. He didn’t touch the sweet rice dumplings—the glutinous rice balls tasted like sticky cement spheres.

With the skewers, he only picked out the meat. Anything unfamiliar and obviously vegetarian, he flicked aside with a casual tap of his long, slender fingers—picky and selective without a trace of embarrassment.

The lamb wasn’t very gamy, and they didn’t use too many seasonings. The meat was fresh and juicy. The pork belly and lamb brisket were grilled until the surface formed a fragrant, crispy crust. They were crunchy when bitten into, yet tender and aromatic inside. The lean parts didn’t get stuck between the teeth, and the fatty parts were rich but not greasy.

Wu Heng especially liked the chest fat—it wasn’t greasy at all and had a crispy, fragrant bite. But he didn’t care for the seasoning on top; he always shook most of it off before putting the meat into his mouth.

With Wu Heng joining in, no amount of food could really be considered “a lot.”

He ate most of the meat, then got up and went to the bearded man. Under the man’s stunned expression, he ordered an entire additional lamb leg.

“I’ll pay you.”

Lin Mengzhi, stuffing fried noodles into his mouth so fast the wok aroma practically sprayed out, still found time to expose Wu Heng’s tricks. “Good thing we saved up plenty of energy cores before. Otherwise, at the rate you eat, we definitely wouldn’t be able to afford this.”

Xue Shen sighed beside him. “Human adaptability is as powerful and swift as ever.”

Ying Liuquan said, “Humans are ants.”

Lin Mengzhi asked what he meant. Ying Liuquan was just about to explain when all three of them told him to shut up—anyone with experience knew you shouldn’t let Ying Liuquan answer questions related to life and death.

“Yo, eating, huh?”

A dark, thick arm suddenly reached over Lin Mengzhi’s head and snatched seven or eight skewers of wild vegetable balls. “Kids, where’d you come from?”

“Put it down.” Lin Mengzhi stood up, slurping back a stray noodle hanging from his mouth.

Behind the tall, heavily built man stood several others wearing base guard uniforms—black short-sleeved tops with a crookedly embroidered national flag on the chest. They casually divided up the skewers they had snatched, their eyes sizing up these unfamiliar faces. Then, suddenly, they all burst into loud laughter.

“Little brats!! Hahaha!! ‘Put it down,’ seriously?”

The leader laughed the loudest, slapping the shoulder of the guy nearest to him. “Don’t you know we’re a community of shared fate? What yours, mine—everything belongs to everyone!”

Wu Heng leaned his body to the side, avoiding the man’s hand.

He didn’t like talking to people and avoided conflict whenever possible. In situations like this, Lin Mengzhi or Ying Liuquan could handle it—and there was also Xue Shen. He had no need to step in.

“I told you to put it down.”

Lin Mengzhi clenched his fists, a surge of anger blazing up inside him.

The weather was already unbearably hot, and this group’s blatant robbery was like tossing sparks into a barrel of gasoline. Lin Mengzhi felt he was seconds away from exploding.

The bulky man didn’t take him seriously at all. He shoved the wild vegetable balls into his mouth, chewing loudly as he reached for another skewer—snatching it right from someone else’s hand before they could eat it. Meat was all he cared about.

But the person he grabbed from had surprisingly strong hands—cool to the touch. The bulky man shivered and let out a startled “Hey,” then tried to yank it away with both hands.

Wu Heng lifted his eyes lazily. “That’s mine.”

Ying Liuquan, worried the situation would escalate, hurriedly offered out his own bowl of meatball soup. “Here, you can have mine. I haven’t even touched it.”

The leader’s joking expression froze. He glanced at Ying Liuquan, then suddenly reached out and flipped the entire bowl over, spilling everything. “You trying to feed a beggar?”

“No, I…” Ying Liuquan only felt heartache for the food splattered across the table.

“You’re about to get detained,” Xue Shen said kindly.

“Captain, captain, forget it, forget it—don’t blow this up. They’re just a few kids, why are you even picking a fight with kids?”

The people behind him were also distressed over the wasted food. A whole bowl of meatball soup—most people couldn’t even dream of tasting something so luxurious. The captain was really a pain.

Everyone nearby turned to look. Even the two guards who had been stationed at the base gate earlier recognized the commotion. The bearded man and the woman ran out as well. Seeing the messy scene, they rushed between the groups to break things up.

“Don’t fight, come on, times are hard enough already! What are you doing?”

“You’re all over thirty, and you’re stealing food from kids? Aren’t you ashamed? Do you even care about the laws of this base?!”

But the more they tried to calm him, the angrier the bulky man grew. His dusky face flushed hot. After sweeping his gaze around, he suddenly bent down and bit off the piece of meat on the skewer in Wu Heng’s hand.

He chewed loudly. “Yeah, I’m robbing it. So what? We spend every damn day cleaning out monsters inside and outside the base. We work ourselves half to death—why can’t we eat a bit of your food?”

After swallowing, he shoved the bearded man. “Go, make me a plate of fried noodles! And make it big—if it’s not enough, I’m not paying.”

The man led his teammates toward an empty table nearby. But halfway there, his body suddenly lifted off the ground—someone had grabbed the back collar of his uniform, cutting off his breath. His eyes widened.

The person holding him tossed his entire body aside. The hundred-plus-kilogram mass flew like a meteor across the street. The wall he crashed into collapsed with a boom, dust billowing up.

“Captain!”

Xue Shen gently raised his hand. Chains of water formed on the ground, holding their feet in place. “You want to go help? That wouldn’t be a wise decision.”

Wu Heng wiped the corner of his mouth with his finger. He crouched in front of the bulky man, meeting the furious, bloodshot eyes. “Spit it out.”

High-level ability users naturally exert pressure on lower-level ones. It came from the amount of energy stored in one’s energy core. When the core wasn’t actively fluctuating, no one could judge the strength—but once released, the difference was undeniable.

The bulky man panted heavily, his head forced downward by the oppressive energy. “Spit what?”

“The meat.”

The man stared in disbelief. “I already ate it!”

“It’s fine. I’ll help you.”

Wu Heng placed his palm over the man’s mouth.

A soft, chilling coolness slipped between his lips, lingering for a brief moment.

Realizing what was happening, the man clamped his mouth shut as hard as he could.

A few seconds later, his eyes bulged, legs kicking violently. His thick arms clawed desperately at the boy’s wrist.

His neck flushed red. The skin tightened. Veins bulged beneath the surface.

Ability users often had slightly enhanced vision. As he arched his neck in agony, the other ability users nearby clearly saw the strange bulge moving downward along his throat.

“What is that?!”

That wasn’t an Adam’s apple—an Adam’s apple doesn’t move downward like that.

The bulky man’s mouth, now hidden from everyone’s view, was forced completely open. A vine slid down along his esophagus, burrowing deeper. He could feel that cold, soft thing wriggling and crawling inside him. He was on the verge of fainting, yet never quite reached the point of losing consciousness.

Terror forced tears from his eyes. Saliva dripped from his jaw. Even his gag reflex was completely blocked.

So all he could do was endure the torment—rigid, fully conscious—while something alive crawled inside his body. He didn’t even know what it was. A leech? A snake?

Wu Heng looked down at him quietly. The human body was warm and moist—environments that vines disliked, like being wrapped in layers of airtight rubber. But if it could directly consume a human body, then it would enjoy that.

The man’s struggles were insignificant to Wu Heng. But Wu Heng wasn’t a sadist; he didn’t take pleasure in someone else’s agony.

The vine finally reached its destination.

It found the piece of lamb at the bottom of his stomach, drenched in gastric acid and saliva.

Wu Heng released him and shifted his gaze to the chunk of meat now sitting in his palm—ugly, foul-smelling. Under the bulky man’s blank, horrified stare, Wu Heng extended his hand toward him.

The man instinctively flinched, staring at the boy as if he were seeing a ghost.

“Go on,” Wu Heng said. “Eat it. My treat.”

The man stared at the chunk of meat that looked like vomit. A “motherf*cker” rose to his throat, and his face, flushed with humiliation, slowly turned a sickly blue.

A real man knows when to yield. He already understood he couldn’t afford to offend the person in front of him. So he no longer feared the disgust. He grabbed the wet lump and shoved it into his mouth.

Food that had passed through his digestive tract once tasted worse than excrement. Swallowing hard against the nausea, he forced it down with a loud gulp.

Wu Heng tilted his head and smiled slightly. He didn’t believe him. Leaning closer, he said, “Open your mouth.”

“For what?”

“I need to check.”

Since awakening his ability, the bulky man had never been this humiliated. He held himself back again and again, then finally said, “Ah—” and opened his mouth.

Wu Heng really did inspect carefully, only letting him go after confirming it.

Seeing him stand up, Ying Liuquan’s body trembled. Lin Mengzhi pushed Xue Shen, and Xue Shen turned to the stunned shopkeepers behind them. “Didn’t we still have a grilled fish that hasn’t been served yet?”

That single sentence not only snapped the shopkeepers back to awareness, but also reminded everyone else to move again.

The bulky man’s teammates also noticed the water chains around their feet were gone. They didn’t even have time to be shocked that someone in this group was a water-ability user—they quickly rushed toward their captain.

Before Wu Heng fully turned around, everything had returned to normal.

“Captain!”

“Captain, are you okay?!”

“I told you to stop stealing other people’s food. We’re not dogs! You walk around long enough, you’re bound to step on something nasty. Ran into a tough one this time, didn’t you?”

The smallest young man in the guard squad spoke in a near–after-death tone, “Captain, why didn’t you fight back? The second squad is going to laugh at us so hard tomorrow…”

The bulky man pressed a hand to his chest, still struggling to catch his breath. His teammates hurried to pat his back and help him breathe.

“Alright, alright. Losing isn’t your fault.”

“The feeling he gave me…” The bulky man swallowed hard. The sensation of something alive forcing its way through his body still left a chill deep inside him. “He’s even stronger than Teacher Zheng.”

“Teacher Zheng’s ability is lightning, you sure? That kid looks like a high schooler.”

The bulky man said coldly, “Go try him yourselves then.”

No one spoke.

He pushed himself off the ground. “Stop eating. Go tell Teacher Zheng that the people he’s waiting for have arrived inside the base.”

“Got it…”

—

Night fell. Probably because everyone who went out during the day had returned, the base felt much more crowded than before. Most people looked numb and exhausted, their faces sallow, clothing torn. It was rare to see anyone walking with a relaxed expression.

Lin Mengzhi knocked on door after door, delivering dinner.

“Lazybones. Here—travel expenses. Two energy cores. I want fire-type, grade D.”

After knocking on several doors and coming up empty-handed, it seemed everyone wasn’t just lazy—they were broke and stingy too.

“Where’s my brother?” A faint wisp of white hair flickered at the doorway. “My brother went with you, why didn’t you tell me? If I’d known, I would’ve gone too…”

“Your brother went to look for the class monitor.”

“What happened to the class monitor? Why would my brother go look for him? He should’ve come to me first.”

“He…”

Wu Heng knocked a few times on another door. Holding an ice cream and a bowl of stir-fried lamb noodles in one hand, the pale wrist of his other hand was wrapped with a vine, coiled and ready to strike.

If Xie Chongyi was still acting as abnormal as before, he would kill him before the corruption fully took over. No matter what he had to do—even if he had to burn everything he had.

Click.

The door opened.

Wu Heng lifted his deep, shadowy gaze. “We packed dinner for you.”

Xie Chongyi scratched his hair, let out a yawn—the abnormality from earlier seemed completely gone.

“Come in.” He didn’t take the food from Wu Heng’s hand at all; he just turned around and walked back inside, leaving Wu Heng—and the dinner—standing at the door.

Wu Heng blinked, unable to tell whether he felt disappointed or relieved.

The boy stepped into the room and gently closed the door behind him.

To save power, the motel only provided a small desk lamp in each room. Xie Chongyi sat on the edge of the bed beside it, long legs stretched lazily nearly halfway into the walkway.

He stared straight at Wu Heng for a long moment before finally speaking.

“Was the base fun?”

Wu Heng set the food on the bedside table. “The ice cream was really good.”

Xie Chongyi glanced at it. “Made by an ability user.”

Wu Heng had only wanted to test whether Xie Chongyi could still eat food humans liked.

If he could, then maybe Xie Chongyi could still be raised a while longer.

If he couldn’t… then he’d eat him immediately.

—————————————————————

Author’s note:

Xie Chongyi: Tastes great.

Wu Heng: Disappointment disappointment disappointment disappointment disappointment disappointment disappointment—

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