Eaten Ch.81

Chapter 81: Social Role Maladaptation

On the other bed, Ying Liuquan lay with wide eyes staring at the ceiling. Only when the breathing of the two beside him gradually grew even and steady did he carefully prop himself up and glance toward the two hugging on the nearby bed.

Were these two really that close? He had no memory of it.

In his impression, Wu Heng was the quietest student in the class—so quiet he wasn’t even like a shadow. A shadow at least could be seen, but Wu Heng, like him, seemed to exist as air.

Xie Chongyi, on the other hand, was the opposite. Not the most popular student in school, but certainly the most conspicuous.

Yet these two, in a moment unnoticed by everyone else, had become friends.

Perhaps even closer than with their other friends. Ying Liuquan had never seen Wu Heng hugging Lin Mengzhi or Xie Chongyi hugging Xue Shen to sleep.

He turned onto his side, facing the window, rubbing his brows, feeling a trace of worry.

He thought that if these two played together, there would certainly be conflict.

Plants that grew in dark, damp corners couldn’t necessarily withstand intense sunlight.

Darkness and light, cold and heat—how could they coexist peacefully? They couldn’t, only devouring each other in the end.

It was an unbearably sad world, Ying Liuquan thought. Even friendship couldn’t endure, because there was no time for compromise. Survival was the most pressing matter.

He curled up on the bed, looking listless, while outside the window, the swaying branches and leaves shimmered in the moonlight like ghostly hands.

Within his field of vision, countless jagged, clawing branches rose and fell in chaotic layers.

“Teacher Ying!”

Wu Heng, who had somehow already gotten out of bed, swung out a vine and instantly wrapped up the teacher, who was still curled on the bed. The moment the young man’s body was dragged off the mattress, the entire bed was pierced by a dark, solid object.

Xie Chongyi grabbed the clothes from the bed, stuffing them haphazardly into a canvas bag on the floor, holding onto Wu Heng with one hand while kicking the dazed Ying Liuquan into the hallway with his foot.

Half-conscious, Ying Liuquan looked through the doorway and saw the once-quiet room had been impaled and shredded by towering, column-like objects, and pieces of the ceiling were falling chunk by chunk.

In the hallway, a panicked bird flew out first.

“A’Heng, save me!”

X plunged headfirst into the boy’s arms.

Wu Heng held X, and the others quickly followed, running out of the room.

Lin Mengzhi shouted, “I told you! Those mutated bamboos can’t just stay quietly on the streets. They’re not stupid—they wouldn’t leave humans a single empty space to live in!”

“A’Heng, why are you with Xie Chongyi? You’re not—”

In the hallway, mutated bamboo shoots kept bursting forth, piercing straight through the entire building.

“Get downstairs first,” Wu Heng said. Vines surged from beneath him, wrapping his body and dragging him under the feet of the others.

He escaped incredibly fast, leaving everyone off guard, and Shen Ping’an vanished down the hallway alongside him.

Dou Lu could have teleported downstairs using her ability, but instead she gritted her teeth, grabbed Ruan Silian horizontally, and charged back into the room.

With a crash, she smashed through a window. Glass shattered everywhere—but right beneath her, a bamboo tower shot straight up.

Dou Lu kicked it, and the tower snapped. She stepped onto the broken section briefly, stumbled while holding her companion, and landed on the ground.

“Damn it! This is the first time I’ve ever jumped from this high!”

Taking the stairs was clearly inefficient. With Dou Lu as an example, almost everyone else opted to leap through the windows.

Lin Mengzhi tumbled and rolled down, and Wu Heng even used a vine to pull him briefly. Covered in dust and dirt, he got to his feet, looked up, and saw Shen She holding a violin case in one hand and an elderly woman in the other. He gave a blank look and muttered, “Seriously? At a time like this, you’re still thinking about your broken violin?”

Ji Zhelan, having just steadied herself, awkwardly cleared her throat, looking unprepared for the chaos.

Lin Mengzhi wasn’t the only one who thought such behavior unreasonable—but he was the only one who couldn’t hold back from saying it.

What could be more important than life itself?

No one responded. The awkward silence was shattered by a suddenly sprouting bamboo tip. Lin Mengzhi grabbed Wu Heng and leapt backward.

Before they even landed, another sharp bamboo shot up from behind. Its hard sheath scraped along the boy’s back as it grew wildly upward. Lin Mengzhi let out a scream, blood streaking across his entire back.

He didn’t stop to have Wu Heng check whether his “sexy” back had been half-slashed off. Instead, he pointed at the bus parked outside the hotel. “What about our bus?!”

No sooner had he spoken than something lifted the bus’s front end.

With a loud crash, the bus tilted, and the rear side was pierced by a new bamboo tower. The bus tires left the ground.

Mutated bamboo was everywhere. Wherever there was soil, it could appear without warning. Lin Mengzhi suddenly felt someone shoved into his arms. Looking down, he saw Xue Qi, dazed, “Hi~”

“Take care of them. If you can’t, hand them to Old Xie,” Xue Shen said quickly before dashing toward the hotel entrance.

“Brother!” Xue Qi’s expression changed upon seeing Xue Shen leave the group.

Lin Mengzhi held Xue Qi tightly. “Where’s he going?”

“Doctor Chen is still in the bus,” Wu Heng said, gently touching the bird’s feathers as he looked at Lin Mengzhi. “How’s your back?”

“Painful! It hurts so much!”

Xue Shen quickly grabbed the wailing Chen Meng and returned, panting. “Is everyone out?”

Ruan Silian replied, “The class monitor hasn’t come out yet.”

The night was pitch black. At some point, the moon had vanished.

The survivors of Meili Base had all gathered on the main street. Whether they were ability users or not, they could all sense it—soon, they would need to search for a new refuge.

Meanwhile, the low hotel building had been turned into a wasp’s nest by bamboo towers bursting up from the ground. Debris hung suspended in midair. The interior porches and furniture were exposed to view, cement chunks kept falling, and new bamboo shoots kept erupting from the ground.

Around the hotel, the earth was uneven and trembling. Hair-thin cracks revealed the restless, sprawling roots of plants—clearly, they were about to destroy the entire base.

The third floor of the hotel had been split into segments by the newly sprouted, thick bamboo towers. Xie Chongyi stood at a broken section, beneath his feet twisted steel bars and countless cracked flooring.

After observing the ground below for a moment, the boy smiled and lifted his gaze toward the opposite side. “Long time no see.”

A bun-haired girl held a long hammer. She braced herself against a bamboo trunk, intending to cross to the other side, but seeing the several-meter gap, she abandoned the idea. Instead, she called back to Xie Chongyi, “Xiao Xie, you’re not going to Jingzhou. You’re here slacking off. How can you justify this to the colonel for all the training he gave us?”

“I’m not Colonel Xie’s soldier,” he replied.

The bun-haired girl nudged the mushroom-haired boy with her elbow.

“Xiao Xie, the survivors need you. We need you,” the mushroom-haired boy said. He bent his knees, preparing to leap to the ground, but just before doing so, he glanced at Xie Chongyi. “The colonel needs you too.”

With that, the mushroom-haired boy sprang upward. His body elongated in midair until he disappeared into a thin line, reappearing above a shopkeeper’s family on the street. He twisted his wrist, gripping a long blade, which he plunged vertically into the ground, the tip flicking upward.

A crack lightninged from beneath their feet, extending a hundred meters. A root of equal length was jolted to the surface, and the mushroom-haired boy swung his blade, cutting it cleanly.

“Look at your second brother—so hardworking. Now look at you, idling away,” the bun-haired girl said, shaking her head in exasperation.

Xie Chongyi smiled faintly. Standing on the edge, his crimson eyes were icy and indifferent, black granules seeming to swim within his pupils.

The bun-haired girl frowned at the sight.

“You seem to have forgotten—I was driven out of Jingzhou three years ago,” Xie Chongyi said, his Adam’s apple moving as he lifted his gaze. He pressed his palm against the surface of his eye socket for a few seconds, then placed it onto the spiny sheath of a nearby bamboo shoot.

Some black matter clung to it—three or four tiny particles. After wriggling briefly, the black area expanded rapidly, upward and downward. The towering mutated bamboo suddenly wobbled and then collapsed limply like cooked noodles.

Portions of the buildings it had supported began to sink.

Xie Chongyi lowered his gaze, casually wiping his palm.

“I will go to Jingzhou—but you’ll have to wait.”

His figure dissolved into a drifting, reddish mist.

—

“I was actually planning to come find you.” Wu Heng, dressed in a short shirt and shorts and holding a bird in his arms, looked completely out of place in this base that seemed ready to collapse at any moment—his pale, fearless face starkly contrasting the surroundings.

“You ran really fast just now,” Xie Chongyi said, his deep red eyes fixed on him.

“I’m scared of dying, you know.”

“That’s not what you said when you were in bed earlier.”

Wu Heng felt that Xie Chongyi was just looking for trouble.

“Our car is gone!” Lin Mengzhi spoke up at this moment. He kicked the mutated bamboo beside him—its trunk as solid as a stone pillar—twice, hard.

By now, two-thirds of the bamboo shoots in the base had already shed their husks, revealing pale bamboo tubes like steel helmets that rose toward the sky, their branches and leaves lush and green.

The canopy above was gradually being swallowed by the dense leaves of the mutated bamboo. They were brazen—shooting up from the ground one after another, shedding their layers of husks in rapid succession, growing into hard, towering bamboo.

In less than half an hour, the entire base had become a sea of green.

Underfoot was a flood of bamboo husks, sharp and tough—their edges able to slice open a calf with ease. Walking on them required extreme caution.

Faint human voices came from nearby—someone crying, someone calling for help.

The bamboo forest seemed peaceful only because it had already finished its first round of killing.

Wu Heng casually placed his palm on the bamboo closest to him. The surface of the bamboo tube was covered in a layer of soft white fuzz. Like a leech, it actively clung to human skin—but the moment vine tendrils appeared, it instantly flattened back against the bamboo tube.

The vine slid into the bamboo tube, stabbed downward into the ground, and spread along the dense, web-like root network of the mutated bamboo.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

All the vines returned—empty-handed. Wu Heng looked at Xie Chongyi. “Its energy core isn’t inside the base. What’s here is only a small portion of its root system.”

“A small portion?” Dou Lu exclaimed. “But this base covers nearly two thousand mu. Two thousand mu is still just a portion of it?”

“Mm. Its main trunk isn’t in the base.” Wu Heng, sleep-deprived, answered weakly.

Lin Mengzhi scratched his head. “So… do we still have to go get that energy core? Now our car is gone, and we’re—we’re—we’re—we’re—we’re doomed again.”

Dou Lu shoved him lightly. “Captain, don’t be so quick to despair. We still have the class monitor, the class rep, and Wu Heng.”

“Can I say something?” Ji Zhelan suddenly spoke from behind the group. Compared to the beginning, she looked even more haggard. The value society had once assigned to her was utterly useless in this almost-primitive world. Even though no one blamed her or demanded anything from her, the drastic contrast made her increasingly uneasy—this discomfort growing steadily into pain, especially whenever important decisions had to be made.

She understood better than anyone that she had to complete her role shift as soon as possible—from a commander to a follower. She had to obey the decisions of these children. Every second of it felt absurd. This world had become far too absurd!

Everyone turned toward the team’s only adult, ready to listen.

Ji Zhelan brushed her hair back and said, “We should leave here as soon as possible. Whether we find a car after getting out or go on foot—what’s the nearest city to us?”

Ying Liuquan thought for a moment. “Probably Kuhuang. After Kuhuang, it’s Nansu.”

“Good.” Seeing that everyone was genuinely listening to her, Ji Zhelan felt a small sense of relief. “Then let’s set out now. We’ll head for Kuhuang.”

“What about this?” Lin Mengzhi lifted his hand and pointed.

“What about what?”

“This bamboo,” he said. Lin Mengzhi felt that adults’ gazes were too sharp, their eyes too heavy—they pressed his head down.

“You want to clear them?” Ji Zhelan looked incredulous. She tilted her head upward. The bamboo towers stretched so high their tops vanished into the dark. The place was now dim like a primordial forest—yet who would have imagined that bamboo was only an herbaceous plant? She spoke as if shouting, though her voice came out soft. “This has nothing to do with you kids. Someone will come and clean them up.”

“But they grow too fast,” Dou Lu said worriedly. “What if we walk out and they catch up to us? A’Ruan, what do you think—could that happen?”

Ruan Silian let out a little “Ah?” “I don’t know, Lulu.”

Shen Ping’an was the first to make a decision. “I’ll listen to Wu Heng.”

Ying Liuquan sat on the ground. He brushed his fingers across a curled bamboo husk beside him—his fingertip immediately split and bled. He sighed, “School really does teach students not to act rashly in dangerous situations, and to prioritize their own safety.”

A faint smile finally appeared on Ji Zhelan’s face.

Adults, after all.

“But right now, before being students, you’re ability users. You must weigh benefit and harm.”

“The base has policies and a military. It doesn’t need you—”

“Aunt Ji, that’s different,” Xue Qi pouted. “To fight evil and help the weak—I refuse to be a deserter.”

“Are you even a soldier that you can desert?” Xue Shen smacked him on the head.

A strange expression flickered across Ji Zhelan’s face. She also looked at Xue Qi. “Xiao Qi, if your leg were still the way it used to be, Auntie would definitely agree with you.”

Everyone froze, even Wu Heng gave Ji Zhelan a puzzled look.

Xue Qi stayed stunned the longest. The same words had completely different weight depending on who said them. A stranger calling him “crippled” slid right off his back—but Ji Zhelan was his friend’s mother. Tears filled his eyes. He lowered his head and said nothing.

“I’ll stay with Xue Qi.” Xue Shen suddenly spoke again, but this time his attitude was entirely different.

Dou Lu quickly tied her hair into twin “airplane” buns. Two short blades appeared in her hands out of thin air. “I don’t believe we awakened powers just to protect ourselves. I’m not leaving either!”

Seeing everyone fired up, Lin Mengzhi bounced excitedly. “A’Heng, A’Heng, what about you?”

Wu Heng held the sleepy gray parrot in his arms, his gaze calm. “I really like the barbecue from that shop.”

Wu Zhi reacted even faster than Lin Mengzhi. She snuggled against Wu Heng’s arm. “If my brother stays, I’ll stay…”

Wu Heng gently pushed away the ice-cold, frost-covered Wu Zhi. “Stay away from me.”

Lin Mengzhi waved her over. “Come here instead.”

“No.”

Even though Xie Chongyi had not yet expressed his stance, Ji Zhelan already knew the outcome. She picked up her violin case. “Thank you all for taking care of me these past days. Shen She, we’re leaving.”

Ji Zhelan’s reaction caught everyone completely off guard.

Shen She obediently followed her.

“Aunt Ji, where are you going?” Dou Lu grabbed the woman’s arm. “It’s dangerous outside right now. You’re not an ability user, and Shen She isn’t an offensive type either, you—”

Ji Zhelan yanked her hand free, almost shaking apart. She was clearly on the verge of breaking down. “Following you is even more dangerous!”

“No, it’s not…” Lin Mengzhi counted on her fingers one by one. “We have so many ability users here. There’s no way it’s more dangerous than the two of you alone. Auntie, don’t be impulsive, we can talk about this.”

“Talk about what? The energy cores—where aren’t they? The world is full of monsters now. Getting energy cores is easy. You just want to help the people in this base.” Ji Zhelan’s voice cracked into a scream. “In a chaotic world like this, can you save everyone? It’s already hard enough for us to survive ourselves—why go looking for trouble? Leaving here is obviously the best choice!”

“This isn’t helping an old lady cross the road. This isn’t saving a drowning child. This is a global catastrophe!”

“With just you… how much difference can you make?”

“And you—have you never eaten barbecue before?”

Everyone turned to look at Wu Heng. Wu Heng looked up. “Ah, me?”

X, imitating him, also opened his mouth. “Ah, him?”

Ji Zhelan wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes. “When you grow up, you’ll understand. Nothing is more important than staying alive.”

“Thank you for hosting us these days.” Shen She returned to the politeness from when they first met. He gave Xue Qi a deep look, then followed after Ji Zhelan.

“Shen She?!” Xue Qi’s voice rang out loudly behind him.

Shen She didn’t stop walking and didn’t look back.

Lin Mengzhi stood there like sleepwalking. “They’re just… leaving???”

Ying Liuquan grew worried again. “Will something happen to them?”

Xue Shen, surprisingly, was the calmest—and colder than ever. “She’s been dissatisfied with us for a long time. Leaving was only a matter of time.”

Dou Lu didn’t quite understand. “So Aunt Ji didn’t leave because we decided to stay—she left because she was already fed up with us?”

Shen Ping’an, however, said, “It’s social role maladaptation caused by a drastic lifestyle contrast. It’s not really about us.”

“Shen She is really pitiful.” Ruan Silian looked back in the direction the mother and son had left, sighing.

Wu Heng didn’t waste energy thinking about people who didn’t matter. He patted X. “I need to know where this bamboo forest starts and how far it spreads.”

X trembled, clearly unwilling, but when it saw everyone looking at it, it puffed up its chest, croaked twice, flapped its wings, and shot into the air. Dense leaves burst open around it, leaving a gaping hole in the bamboo canopy.

A few seconds after X vanished, a massive shadow suddenly swept over their heads. The gray bird spread its wings fully, letting out a loud, echoing cry. It dived downward and cleanly sliced through a cluster of bamboo above them, hovering high overhead and looking down at the group.

Wu Heng could tell at a glance it was showing off.

—

“All survivors inside the base, please gather at the control center. The control center will ensure your safety.”

The sentence repeated three times before the static slowly faded away.

Lin Mengzhi scratched his ear. “That voice sounds kinda familiar.”

Ruan Silian spoke softly. “It seems like Guan Jing, Mayor Guan Yingxue’s daughter.”

“Who? Guan Yingxue? Isn’t she the mayor of Hanzhou?” Dou Lu remembered clearly. “Why isn’t her daughter in Hanzhou? Are you sure you’re not mistaken?”

“I remember her voice well… because when Mayor Guan turned into a zombie during the last broadcast, the way she screamed ‘Mom’… I’ve never forgotten it,” Ruan Silian said.

Ying Liuquan added, “Earlier when Hanzhou’s power grid collapsed, Mayor Guan relied on ability users to relay messages to us, so—”

Wu Heng had no interest in listening to them piece the clues together. He spoke first: “The person in charge of the Meili Base can control electricity.”

“Oh—so?” Lin Mengzhi urged him to continue.

Xue Shen added, “Last night at the barbecue shop, those two guards said Teacher Zheng escaped from Hanzhou.”

Lin Mengzhi finally understood. “So they’re our own people! Come on, come on, let’s go to the control center. There’ll be a crowd—safer.”

“What about him?” Ying Liuquan pointed at Chen Meng, who was drooling and reeking terribly.

“I’ll stay here with Xue Qi and Doctor Chen. You guys go. Check what’s happening over there. And if you run into anyone who needs help on the way, try to lend a hand,” Xue Shen said, sitting down on the ground.

Dou Lu hesitated. “Then maybe A’Ruan and I shouldn’t go either… Doctor Chen can’t fight, and Xue Qi is like this. If something comes out, Class Rep might not be able to handle it alone.”

Wu Heng was generous; he assigned clearly. “You and Shen Ping’an stay.”

Seeing this, Ying Liuquan sat down on a piece of collapsed wall, looking conflicted. “Then I won’t go either. Even if I go, I won’t be much help… I’ll just drag you down.”

Wu Heng noticed the odd look on Teacher Ying’s face. He was about to say something when Xie Chongyi tugged his sleeve. “Let’s go.”

“Brother!” Wu Zhi ran after them, squeezing between Wu Heng and Xie Chongyi on his left side.

Xie Chongyi leisurely drifted over to Wu Heng’s right side.

“Ah!” Wu Zhi’s pupils went white with rage. This uncontrollable fury was something she only ever felt toward the class monitor. But when her eyes turned to Wu Heng, her expression softened instantly, gentle as a lamb. She shot a secret glare at Xie Chongyi, then said to Wu Heng, “Brother, carry me.”

But Xie Chongyi casually took hold of Wu Heng’s wrist, lowered his head, and copied her tone. “Brother, carry me.”

Author’s note:

Wu Zhi: !!!!!!!! THIS WORLD IS EVIL !!!!!!!!

<< _ >>

**TN

2000 mu – 1.33 square kilometres or 329 acres