Eaten Ch.85.2

Chapter 85.2: Dog, Leeches

Dawn emerged. In the group heading toward the Kuhuang Base, people kept complaining about the heat. The smell of sweat was baked into the dry, scorching air and turned sour. Every now and then, zombies would pop out and give people a fright. Luckily, both ability users and regular humans had long been capable of dispatching zombies calmly. The ability users’ main task now was to watch out for mutated species—creatures and plants far stronger than any zombie.

Ye Zongran strolled lazily at the back of the group, with Sheng Jiang sticking close at his side.

“What does Jingzhou need my help with?” The elderly man loved to chat. Having walked for so long, he couldn’t hold it in and started a conversation with Sheng Jiang.

Sheng Jiang had originally been calculating whether he could safely send these people to Kuhuang first and then return on his own. But Ye Zongran interrupted his thoughts, so he paused and answered,

“Professor Zhang and the others discovered that mutated plants have completely betrayed their original genes. They rewrote their own internal structures. And they’re the most affected by the environment—water, soil, magnetic fields, everything influences them. Professor Zhang monitored this. Among all mutant species, plant symbiotes have the highest probability of backlash. Nine out of ten people get devoured by their plants, becoming nutrients… or their roles get reversed, and they end up as puppets controlled by the mutated plant.”

“Unlike animal symbiotes. Animals can form dominance bonds easily with humans—their mental consciousness submits readily. But in a plant’s world, obedience doesn’t exist. No matter what bond it forms, the other party is always just ‘soil’—a source of nourishment, nothing more.”

Ye Zongran listened in silence for a long moment, then let out a cold snort. “Ten people is your entire sample size?”

Sheng Jiang admitted frankly, “There are too few plants that develop self-awareness, and even fewer true symbiotic or parasitic cases. Those ten already came from sweeping all of Jingzhou and the two-hundred-li radius around it.”

“One tree cannot make a forest,” Ye Zongran said. “Not enough to be threatening.” After a while, he murmured again, “But I should still go take a look.”

Sheng Jiang nodded in relief. When he turned his head, he noticed the sweat on the old man’s forehead. He took out a bottle from his bag. “Have some water.”

Ye Zongran waved him off. “When you’re old, you don’t need to drink that much.”

Sheng Jiang’s face went dark. “Please drink it. If you dry up and die, the colonel will shoot me on the spot.”

Only then did Ye Zongran reluctantly take it, though he didn’t drink yet. He frowned, looking ahead into the blinding morning light. “At noon, find a shaded area. Have everyone rest. Don’t travel during the hottest hours.”

“Understood.”

After Sheng Jiang answered, he heard the buzzing of voices from behind.

He reached into his bag and slowly drew out a long blade glowing faintly blue. A few damp strands of hair clung to his jaw as he narrowed his eyes and looked back—his pupils had turned blue as well.

“I hate you I hate you I hate you.”

“I hate you~”

“When my brother comes back, I’ll have him kill you!”

“Kill you~”

“Can you two stop? Aren’t you tired? Lin Mengzhi, why are you bickering with a child?”

Lin Mengzhi held her hand up next to Wu Zhi’s head height. “Wow, a 168-centimeter child!”

Wu Zhi was so furious her expression froze over—then immediately melted into water. Lin Mengzhi held an empty bottle under her chin. “Don’t waste it.”

Ruan Silian felt helpless yet amused. “Mengzhi, honestly…”

By now Wu Zhi’s rage meter had maxed out. Ice spikes formed in her palms, and she raised her hand to stab at Lin Mengzhi’s abdomen.

“I’m going to kill you!”

“Sh*t!”

Shen Ping’an had been watching closely. Before the ice spikes could reach Lin Mengzhi, vines swept out and knocked them all away.

Lin Mengzhi gripped the water bottle, stared down in disbelief, then looked back up. “Wu Zhi, do you have a conscience?”

“Who told you to be so annoying?”

“You called me a dog first—did I say anything about you?”

“That’s because you yelled at me first.”

Just as the argument was about to escalate, a male voice—one not belonging to their team—cut in, “You’re all panting like dogs and still have the energy to bicker? As expected of Xiao Xie’s teammates.”

—

On the other side, the rest of the group was also panting heavily.

Wu Dian had found a spring. The water emerged from the mountainside, trickled down jagged rocks, and pooled into a small clear basin below. When he dipped a finger into it, bright, glass-like ripples spread out. The temperature was cool and pleasant.

“Why isn’t the water hot?” The round-faced youth squatted where the stream fell, so hot that he had taken off his shirt. He scooped handful after handful of water and dumped it over himself. “Cold, cold—cold!”

“This is water from inside the mountain. How could it possibly be hot?” The short-haired woman rolled her eyes. “At this temperature, you really think the heat will roast a mountain from the outside all the way in?”

Although Wu Heng was thirsty, he didn’t like squeezing around a crowd. He stood a little ways off, holding X, quietly waiting for the others to finish drinking.

X, however, didn’t have such reservations—it didn’t care about crowds in the slightest.

It struggled violently out of the boy’s arms, hopped to the ground, and shouted, “Move move move—move aside!” Flapping and leaping, it stepped on several people’s heads as it bounded to the water’s edge. “Let this lady drink first.”

“Waaah—it speaks human language? Oh my god!”

“Why is even a bird cutting in line? No manners at all. Did its family not teach it anything and now it expects society to do it?”

X folded its wings, crouched at the water, stretched its neck, and gulped mouthful after mouthful. Then it dipped its wings into the water, splashed itself, and shook its feathers hard.

Xie Chongyi also didn’t join the scramble. He squatted beside Wu Heng and, hearing X screeching, asked in surprise, “It’s a female bird?”

“A male bird,” Wu Heng mused. “It probably learned that from Dou Lu.”

“Everyone, let’s rest here for a bit. We’ll move again in fifteen minutes.” Wu Dian washed his face with the spring water. His features were delicate—not exactly handsome—but with a mushroom-cut hairstyle, he could at first glance be mistaken for a student girl. Yet his upright height and the sharp, disciplined authority in his expression made it impossible to underestimate him.

No one stayed beside the pool; everyone else had retreated into the shade to escape the scorching sun.

Wu Heng rolled up his sleeves and walked over, with Xie Chongyi following closely.

As soon as the boy stood by the water’s edge, the green vine surged up from beneath the pool like a wave. In an instant, it drained the shallow water, which was less than three inches deep.

Xie Chongyi muttered, “…I demand an explanation.”

Wu Heng blinked, watching the spring trickle down the rocks again. “It’ll be fine.”

The sound of the spring splashing over the exposed stones at the bottom rang lightly in their ears. For some reason—whether because of the sound or something else—their eyes met, and they shared a quiet smile.

The drained pool slowly refilled, and the two of them cupped the water and drank for a while. From the resting group behind them came an irritated “Damn it.”

Wu Heng didn’t turn. He never cared about what unrelated people were up to. He sat cross-legged, bent over, and plunged his hands into the pool. The vine moved naturally, swaying along with the short, thin aquatic plants.

He scooped up a full handful of spring water and stretched his slender neck to drink. His green-tinged veins tightened along with the stretch—but hands are not containers, and about two-thirds of the water spilled down his wrists and chin. A large patch of his tunic was soaked, two patches of his pants were wet, and his neck and calves gleamed, washed translucent and crystalline by the water.

The boy’s expression was relaxed and serene, not like someone on the run, but like a child out for a spring outing.

Xie Chongyi noticed that the boy’s collar kept sliding down, revealing more and more—from his collarbone down to his sternum—gradually settling fully within Xie Chongyi’s line of sight.

Someone came over from the side, and only then did he reach out, using his fingers to grab the other person’s collar and pull him backward.

Wu Heng was nearly strangled by this inexplicable move. “?”

The person who had come over was a local from the Meili Town base, around forty years old, with a scruffy beard. Probably because of the heat, his face was flushed and swollen. “I just drank some water a moment ago, and now I’m thirsty again.”

He smiled awkwardly and desperately drank the water he was holding.

Wu Heng silently retracted the vines that had been lingering in the water.

He sat where he was, a gentle breeze blowing, though the heat waves still rolled over him relentlessly.

“Hiss—” After drinking for quite a while, the middle-aged man let out a sound of impatience and reached up to scratch his neck, making it crack and pop.

When Wu Heng and Xie Chongyi looked over, they saw his neck already covered in scratch marks.

Xie Chongyi furrowed his brows and warned, “If you keep scratching, the infection could kill you.”

The middle-aged man bared his teeth but stopped, though it lasted less than ten seconds before he tilted his head back, scratching in agony again. As he scratched, he muttered, “You don’t know how it feels if you’ve never been itchy. It’s worse than death. I wish I could just slash my neck twice.”

After a moment, Wu Heng’s gaze steadied. He leaned forward and pressed down on the man’s wrist.

The man froze for a moment, then tried to use his other hand to scratch. The vine coiled around his wrist and twisted it behind his back.

At that moment, however, the man became furious. His eyes widened, he struggled violently, and shouted, “What are you doing? Let go of me! Let go! I can’t even scratch an itch?!”

“Ah—so itchy—so itchy, so itchy!” With his hands restrained, he could only twist his body desperately, whipping his neck as if there were something stuck to it that he needed to shake off.

Wu Heng remained unmoved. He pressed the man to the ground and stepped on his shoulders, preventing him from moving his upper body.

“Don’t move,” he said in a low voice, then bent down.

Xie Chongyi crouched closer. “There’s something inside him?”

“Seems like it,” Wu Heng replied, though he wasn’t certain.

At this moment, the others also noticed the man’s abnormal behavior, but none dared to get close. Only Wu Dian walked over slowly and cautioned, “Be careful.”

Wu Heng observed carefully for a moment.

Finally, his fingers brushed over the man’s damp, hot neck. Beneath the skin, the pulse throbbed wildly, and the bulging veins made his neck feel uneven under the touch.

The young boy’s pale, slender fingers were soft and almost boneless. Instead of being seductive, they carried an intense sense of danger, as if they could stab into the man’s throat at any moment.

“Found it.” Wu Heng paused, pressing his thumb and forefinger together to pinch a tiny black spot on the man’s skin, then began pulling it outward.

“Ah—” The man’s body immediately went out of control. A feeling of being painfully sucked out ran through him, as if he wanted to tear his own skin off. His lower body writhed like a worm, letting out heart-wrenching screams, even begging others to kill him.

No matter how he struggled, however, Wu Heng had full control over everything above the shoulders.

Wu Heng continued pressing his foot on the man’s shoulders, his gaze calm as he watched the thing between his fingers grow longer.

Cold, moist, soft.

Much softer than a vine, like a piece of boneless rotten flesh.

When he had pulled out three to four centimeters, the markings on the unknown creature became visible to the three of them: dark yellow interwoven with dark green, with a glossy sheen. The more of its body was pulled out, the more it writhed.

“Leech,” Wu Dian said, glancing at the man’s convulsing body. “Once it’s out, he should be fine.”

“Are leeches and bloodworms the same kind of creature?” Xie Chongyi asked Wu Dian.

“I don’t think so, but they’re very similar.”

Wu Heng continued pulling the creature out. The more of it emerged from the man’s body, the more violently it twisted, and the more complete its body appeared to the eye.

It wasn’t flat like a leech, more cylindrical, but still the same kind of creature. It had drunk who knows how much blood, its body swollen and reddish.

The end with the sucker was completely pulled from the man’s body, and it immediately coiled itself and lunged straight toward Wu Heng’s face.

Xie Chongyi didn’t hesitate. He raised his hand and grabbed the midsection of the mutant leech. Its head and tail flailed, trying to curl back, but being overstuffed with blood, it couldn’t bend much.

The slimy, wet sensation was truly disgusting. Xie Chongyi clicked his tongue, and with a snap, the leech’s body burst into a spray of blood.

Those standing nearby, afraid to get closer, were too shocked to react. A leech? And over half a meter long!

Xie Chongyi had already crouched by the water, scrubbing his blood-stained fingers, his expression one of utter disgust.

“How could there be a leech?”

Wu Heng looked at the middle-aged man on the ground, still barely alive. The blood hole on his neck was slowly closing.

Wu Dian turned to face the others. “It probably happened while he was drinking water.”

The group went pale instantly. Several of them immediately covered their mouths, retching uncontrollably.

After a moment, Wu Dian continued, “Leeches normally attach to the skin. This one didn’t actually enter his body. The physiology of an ability user isn’t weak enough to be killed by a small creature like this.”

“Y-Yeah…” The man’s expression relaxed considerably after being rescued. He sat up. “I just felt itchy before. It must have been hiding underneath, sucking my blood.”

Seeing that the victim could stand and speak, the others finally breathed a little easier.

“Thanks for earlier,” the middle-aged man said, standing before Wu Heng. “If you hadn’t noticed the leech crawling on me, I’d probably have been drained dry.”

He laughed twice. When Wu Heng said it was no trouble, the man turned, intending to move into the shade to avoid the sun.

But as he turned, Wu Heng’s eyes narrowed.

The fabric on the man’s back was already bulging, as if he were carrying a small mountain.

Wu Heng strode forward, grabbed the man’s shirt, and yanked it upward.

The scene before him made Wu Heng’s expression change sharply—somehow, several thick, swollen leeches were now sprawled across the man’s back, their soft yellow-green bodies intertwined and entwined, their suckers still feeding, the blood-filled pits so deep that bone was visible.

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