Eaten Ch.84

Chapter 84: Experimental Subjects

After walking a few steps, Wu Heng hesitated. He looked at Wu Zhi. “You go find Mengzhi.”

Wu Zhi froze in place. Her eyes lost their spark. “Why should I go find Mengzhi?”

“Based on the information they brought, the weather will remain harsh after dawn. Mengzhi should be the one struggling the most in this heat—Dr. Chen will start stinking, and Xue Qi’s leg…” Wu Heng spoke calmly, without emotion. “You head to Kuhuang first.”

“No!”

Wu Heng frowned. He realized he still preferred the previous, more naive version of her.

Xie Chongyi stepped forward, bending slightly. Looking at Wu Zhi, who looked on the verge of tears, his expression seemed gentle, but his words were firm: “Wu Zhi, it’s time to wean.”

Wu Zhi gritted her teeth, twisting the monkey’s ears off.

Without looking back, she ran off, her voice echoing through the bamboo forest. “I’m going to hate you for three days and three nights!”

After she left, Xie Chongyi asked Wu Heng as they walked, “Why didn’t you let her come with us?”

“The reason is what I just said,” Wu Heng said softly. “Bringing her would just slow us down. That’s a fact.”

“And also… it’s dangerous,” Wu Heng added.

Xie Chongyi said, “If it were just mutated bamboo, Wu Dian and Sheng Jiang wouldn’t have come all the way from Jingzhou.”

“Wu Dian? That Mushroom Head?” Wu Heng recalled the earlier conversation between Mushroom Head and Xie Chongyi, realization dawning slowly. “You knew each other already?”

“That’s all in the past,” Xie Chongyi replied casually.

“So they’re your old friends from Jingzhou?” Wu Heng’s curiosity surged—not just about Xie Chongyi, but also about Wu Dian and Sheng Jiang. Though the three of them didn’t smell exactly alike, their scents were remarkably similar.

The boy’s gaze drifted down, casually scanning Xie Chongyi’s pocket—the one holding the item Wu Dian had just handed over. Wu Dian had been vague in his words, but the meaning was clear between them.

Thinking back on that scene, Wu Heng felt a strange unease in his chest.

He hadn’t even had a bite yet, and Xie Chongyi was about to run off with someone else? If that happened, he would risk his life to stop him.

“Sort of,” Xie Chongyi said.

Wu Heng’s mind drifted fluidly between the present and memory.

“The last time, when Teacher Ying awakened his abilities, you told me that you had once been involved in an experiment related to the apocalypse.”

“You remember?”

“…My memory isn’t that bad,” Wu Heng said, smirking slightly. “So Wu Dian and Sheng Jiang, like you, also participated in that experiment. Then why were they in Jingzhou while you were in Hanzhou?”

“Why do you want to know so badly?” Xie Chongyi rarely saw Wu Heng ask so many questions in a row.

“Why ask at all?” Wu Heng shrugged. “If the class monitor doesn’t want to say, then it’s fine.”

The ground beneath their feet had once been a relatively clean, orderly base street. Now it was a mountain of erupting bamboo roots, easy to trip over if one wasn’t careful.

Their steps weren’t in sync; the bamboo sheaths crunched beneath their feet. Shadows of bamboo leaves flickered across their shoulders, and birds cooed somewhere in the dense canopy above.

“Let me think… what did I say to you that day?” Xie Chongyi said, reaching back to pull Wu Heng up beside him so they walked side by side.

“One afternoon, twenty years ago, the Academy of Sciences’ satellite detected a severe geomagnetic anomaly for the first time. An expert team was immediately dispatched to the source of the abnormal signal, with Xie Yi accompanying them to ensure the experts’ safety. Half a month later, they brought back a black stone roughly two cubic meters in size. Inside the stone were not only highly concentrated radium and uranium elements, but also an unknown active substance.”

“In the following six months, the Academy managed to reach a preliminary conclusion. They believed the stone was a purely natural mineral formed in the Earth’s core, containing tens of thousands of harmful substances. To contain it, the Academy sealed it using a special material called R139.”

“A year later, the researchers involved in the study began falling into delirium and stupor. The lead researcher, who had the most contact with the stone, suffered bodily dissolution, crawling on all fours like a gecko…”

“The Academy did everything it could to save them, but in the end, only one member of the research team survived.”

“In the next three years, multiple locations reported signals of geomagnetic anomalies. Jingzhou coordinated with several other regions to simulate nearly a hundred possible scenarios for these magnetic fluctuations.”

“What kind of scenarios?” Wu Heng asked, growing more curious.

“The Earth exploding, shrinking, drying up, the oceans expanding to cover a hundred percent of the surface…” Xie Chongyi said. “Everyone argued endlessly, and no conclusion was ever reached. And then, at that moment, the stone disappeared.”

Wu Heng couldn’t help blurting out, “It’s a living being. It ran away. It might have something like a monster’s lair, and its kind are probably waiting for it to come home…”

“Once you return, remember to keep your distance from Xue Qi,” Xie Chongyi said, placing a finger on Wu Heng’s shoulder.

“Wu Dian’s second brother used his elder brother’s authority to enter the laboratory and bring the stone home.”

“Because the lab containing the stone was independent from the Academy, and due to the previous incidents, all personnel avoided the place. The security only patrolled outside. So it wasn’t until several months later that anyone realized the stone was missing.”

The air grew increasingly hot. Wu Heng tugged at his collar and asked, “What does that mean?”

“Wu Dian’s second brother has been a mad scientist since he was a child. Because he constantly stole things from the lab, his older brother beat him countless times. This time, his older brother couldn’t stop him, so he stayed home and devised a theory. Simply put, it involved extracting substances from the stone and injecting them into human bodies. But in his theory, injection was only the second step—the first step was selecting experimental subjects who met his criteria.”

“At the time, we had no idea what he was planning. He, however, fully understood the implications of his actions. He sent his chosen subjects, one by one, into a room connected to the stone—including Wu Dian.”

“He carried out everything in secret. By the time his actions were discovered, all of us had already been infected. That stone had become nothing but waste.”

A bead of sweat rolled down Wu Heng’s nose. “Whoa,” he exclaimed. “And then?”

“Our fate was inevitable death. The experiment continued.”

Wu Heng still didn’t fully understand. “But… you’re still alive now?”

“Not as quickly as you might think,” Xie Chongyi said.

“…Wow.”

“Our parents always encouraged us, praising our greatness. But sometimes, we wondered if it was all a staged play, a deception orchestrated by several parties—to trick us, and maybe even themselves,” Xie Chongyi said, his eyes strikingly clear and dark. He lifted the corner of his eye slightly. “That’s why, the night Teacher Ying’s abilities awakened, I told you about my darker side.”

“Then why did you leave Jingzhou afterward?”

“On the surface, I had recovered. They hoped I could live a normal life.”

Wu Heng said calmly, “On the surface?”

“If the geomagnetic anomalies stopped, I could live at least another twenty years.”

Wu Heng asked cautiously, “But the geomagnetic anomalies haven’t stopped, so…”

“I could die, at any moment,” Xie Chongyi interrupted Wu Heng, his tone surprisingly light. In that voice, Wu Heng sensed both fearlessness and recklessness, as well as the usual indifference—only now, it was sharper, more intense.

Wu Heng lifted his hand and wiped the small bead of sweat from the bridge of his nose. His heart raced, yet the surface temperature of his body seemed to drop instantly.

His meal wasn’t even fully ripe, and yet, its life was already short.

He didn’t even know what level of growth would count as “ripe.” He relied on taste to judge. Of course, even unripe it was still edible, and the flavor wouldn’t be terrible—but missing out on the best part made him restless.

They walked a little further, and the wind whispered through the bamboo.

There were also voices—someone was coming. It seemed they were catching up to Mushroom Head’s group. They had left around the same time, so a meeting wasn’t surprising.

Taking advantage of this brief moment alone, Wu Heng spoke again. “I know you’re a dual-ability user. Besides space, I’ve never seen you use the other one. So the other… it’s not an ability—it’s the infection, the disease.”

The mist had nothing to do with space; teleportation was the spatial ability.

“What does it do?” Wu Heng stepped closer, studying Xie Chongyi carefully. His features were sharp and striking, eyelashes as black as ink—handsome.

Yet there were no signs of illness. He was even strong—the kind of power that could crush everyone else without effort.

“You want to see?” Xie Chongyi stopped.

Wu Heng wasn’t afraid. “I do.”

“Then I’ll show you.”

With that, Xie Chongyi twisted his wrist. A mutated bamboo beside him toppled, the bamboo node cracking with a snap, and a green bamboo shard appeared in his hand.

The angled edge, sharp at the tip, brushed against the side of Xie Chongyi’s cheek. Using his other hand, Xie Chongyi pushed Wu Heng back a few steps.

Before Wu Heng could show any displeasure, the bamboo shard pierced the skin, tracing along his jaw in a single pull.

And on that face—one Wu Heng had memorized at first glance—a horrifying gash appeared.

The dark red interior spilled open, and black granular matter cascaded down to their feet like a waterfall.

A powerful, overwhelming aroma hit Wu Heng, making his head spin. The scent was identical to Wu Dian’s, yet it differed slightly from Xie Chongyi’s own aroma.

When Wu Heng realized that these things were actually spreading outward, he quickly stepped back several paces—they were still alive.

They scattered, flowing and clinging like black magma. The soil beneath their feet became soft, and nearby bamboo toppled one by one, leaving the area looking like the aftermath of a fire. As far as the eye could see, it was scorched earth.

The gash quietly closed. Somehow, a deep trench had been gnawed between the two of them. Xie Chongyi stepped over it, standing in front of Wu Heng. “Scared?”

Wu Heng’s gaze froze for a moment, his eyes flickering with an unusual color. His entire body heated up. After a long pause, he swallowed and said, “Is the activity still going? I want to join in too.”

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Author’s note:

Xie Chongyi: I’m infected.

Wu Heng: Is there really such a good thing?

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