Eaten Ch.98.1

Chapter 98.1: Big Fight

Looking up at the massive gray shadow overhead, everyone momentarily couldn’t tell whether it was a bird or a dinosaur.

But in a world full of unsolved mysteries, one more bird didn’t really matter.

First, water.

At this moment, the source of life had tangible proof: the parched land was soaked once more, the cracks in the dry soil absorbing the water, and the yellowed wheat fields bent low under the weight of drought now lifted their heads proudly.

Though only temporary, it was enough to give them a few more days of life.

With a clang, a soaking-wet man suddenly knelt before the sky filled with green vines, murmuring incantations. Amid the frenzied, gesticulating crowd, he didn’t seem strange at all.

X let out an “Aiya ma ya!” and flew back onto the boy’s shoulder.

Nearby, Meng Haiqing was utterly stunned. He muttered, “Don’t get yourself killed,” and reached out to save the half-dead water-type ability user.

Half of the vines sensed movement. Like waves splitting from a riverbed, they swirled in a wide arc, lashing toward Meng Haiqing like long whips.

Meng Haiqing raised his hand. A massive bow, half the height of a person, appeared in his grip. A golden arrow materialized in his palm, and before the vines could reach him, he released it.

The arrow split into two, then spread across the sky. Countless vines were cut in half, their bitter sap and shredded leaves raining down.

“Phew—” Meng Haiqing exhaled, unsure what had just happened or where this thing had come from. All the mutated plants and animals in the base had supposedly been cleared.

However, the fallen branches and leaves didn’t give up like previous mutated plants. The leaves twisted on the ground, the vines burrowed beneath, and with a thunderous sound, several times more vines pried open the earth. Some even knocked a few survivors aside, furiously striking toward Meng Haiqing.

“What the hell is this thing?!” Meng Haiqing sprinted faster than a hundred-meter dash. Every metal sword or knife he threw cut through the pursuing plant bodies—but as soon as they hit the ground and took root, even more would grow immediately.

But Meng Haiqing could faintly sense that, although their assault was fierce, it carried no murderous intent—mutated plants that had developed to this level, if they truly wished to kill humans, would never play this “he runs, it chases” game here.

Wu Heng stood in place for a moment, setting the half-dead, fat man down. Whether he was dead or not didn’t concern him; the poppy had already found a new toy.

With his back to the fleeing Meng Haiqing, Wu Heng began asking the remaining survivors for their personal information.

“Chen Ping, I’m very strong—I can lift over a thousand jin with one hand!”

“Jiang Anxiong, no abilities.”

“Quan Jing… before…” The girl tugged at her sleeve, swallowing hard, her voice shrinking. “I was dragged into the city sewers by a rat, chewed on, and… survived.”

Wu Heng noted down their names and attributes. He remembered that a few months ago, when they first set off, Wen Yuan and the others had landed by helicopter. Besides trying to recruit ability users, they had brought some bad news—Xue Shen and Xue Qi’s mother had also been taken by the creatures in the sewers.

Seeing the boy calmly taking notes, Quan Jing couldn’t help but ask, “Aren’t you afraid?”

“Afraid of what?”

“Someone turning into a rat… doesn’t that scare you?” Quan Jing’s eyes were red. “My friends won’t play with me anymore.”

Wu Heng looked up and saw, on her damp face, a pair of eyes silently pleading for comfort.

He thought she had come to the wrong person. Among people he knew, only Ruan Silian excelled at such matters, and with a guaranteed effect.

“You can play with the rats,” the boy said casually.

“No, I’m scared.” Quan Jing shook her head hard.

Wu Heng couldn’t think of a better solution—he was just a temp.

“Later, get the ID card from the guard in the back. He’s busy right now.” Wu Heng stepped aside. “Name, gender, ability attribute.”

Wu Heng didn’t particularly enjoy listening to people complain, but he couldn’t control their mouths. As long as they faced the uniform, their urge to vent could be easily triggered.

“Sir, I’m a local from Shisanhe. You probably don’t know, but Shisanhe City ranks in the top five in provincial GDP—and now it’s all gone. And Kuhuang… Kuhuang wasn’t much better off back then.”

“Officer, do you have a print shop here? Or maybe an ability user who can make copies? My cat is missing!”

“Master, do ability users get any special privileges?” The man twiddled his fingers, desperately winking at the young master. “I’ll give you this.”

Wu Heng’s mood, which had started off fairly good, gradually soured under all the noise and flattery. He lowered his gaze to the papers, and even with an expression that kept people a mile away, stray words still managed to slip into his ears.

Among the 186 survivors from Shisanhe that he and Meng Haiqing were responsible for, by the time they had collected information from more than sixty, Wu Heng summoned back the poppy, and suddenly the light above shone brilliantly.

Meng Haiqing’s longbow was just drawn, but in front of him, the wind was calm. That bizarre, otherworldly monster seemed to have never existed.

“You should ask them yourself,” Wu Heng said, stepping back to let Meng Haiqing take the lead.

Information collection finished, Meng Haiqing stood at the doorway, reciting names and handing out ID cards.

Outside the shelter, the bus came for the third time. It was probably a special service just for the survivors. Each time, before the bus even stopped, people were already pawing at the windows and doors. When it braked, they surged forward—but guards stationed on the bus kept order, and no major incidents occurred.

From the second shelter in the middle, a woman came out, cursing as she led her child. “Why are you putting those damn collars on us? How do you think others will see us? We aren’t your prisoners! Abusing your power, you bunch of—”

Wu Heng heard the noise, yawned, and peeked over. It was the little girl’s mother from that morning. Both mother and child were wearing a black HOPE collar around their necks, and the little boy kept tugging at it.

“Mom… it hurts my neck so much with this on…” the boy tugged at the woman’s sleeve, whispering.

Hearing this, the woman immediately bent down, scooped up her son, and ran toward the guard beside the bus.

The guard could tell from afar that this woman wasn’t someone to mess with. Before she even reached him, a shield crackling with electricity appeared in his hands.

“Hey! Hey, what is this thing? My son says it hurts!” the woman cried anxiously.

The guard replied, “The HOPE collars are made from animal leather. Because children’s skin is delicate, the inner side of their collars is lined with rabbit fur. Humans with normal body data won’t feel any pain when wearing them.”

“Mom… it hurts—” The little boy’s tugging grew more frantic, and he even threw his head back, crying loudly.

The woman’s eyes immediately reddened. She shouted, “I don’t care what material this is! My son says it hurts—take it off right now!”

Wu Heng squatted at the doorway, his gaze fixed on the boy in her arms.

The poppy, hidden underground, caught a familiar scent.

The little boy tilted his head back. In a place where no one could see him, his eyes turned from black to waxy yellow, and his face was streaked with green.

“It hurts—” he screamed, flailing his arms violently. One slap landed on the woman’s neck. She screamed in pain as blood poured down, and her hands went limp uncontrollably.

The boy fell backward to the ground. The moment he hit, he flipped and sprang back up, landing on all fours and charging wildly across the ground.

The woman froze for a moment, then hurried after him.

“Zom… zombie…”

“So fast…”

Several ability users pushed through the crowd and tried to intervene, but the fully mutated little zombie dodged all of them.

A shadow flashed, and a man suddenly felt weight on his shoulder.

He turned back in horror to see a rotting, pus-filled mouth biting toward his face.

The man let out a scream. At that same moment, the little zombie was slammed to the ground by the effect of the HOPE collar.

Even so, it growled, struggled to rise, and darted back into the crowd.

“What’s happening?” Meng Haiqing heard the chaotic screams from outside and moved toward Wu Heng.

Wu Heng: “Someone’s infected.”

In midair, colorful ability skills shot toward the little zombie. The woman screamed and rushed to push away the ability users targeting her son. Meng Haiqing threw a small golden orb. In midair, it unfurled like a fig, then lunged rapidly at the little zombie.

Bang!

Before the golden cage could capture it, the little zombie leapt—and its body exploded in midair. Filthy blood sprayed like fireworks.

A grimy HOPE collar fell to the ground.

“Ah!!!” The woman let out a heart-wrenching scream and lunged forward, but could only scoop up chunks of soil stained red.

Before anyone could recover from the shock of what had just happened, blood suddenly spattered across a section of the crowd. Screams erupted—the man who had been bitten in the face by the little zombie was also eliminated by the HOPE collar in the same way.

This was the first time Wu Heng, along with the people from Shisanhe, had witnessed the power of the HOPE collar. It wasn’t simply a monitoring device; its operating rules weren’t designed to intimidate the survivors in the base.

“Was it this thing on our necks that did this?” one Shisanhe survivor asked in a trembling voice.

“Could it suddenly go out of control?”

Wu Heng looked at the ground, quickly drying under the sun, and asked Meng Haiqing, “The HOPE collar’s elimination function—how is it triggered?”

This wasn’t classified, so Meng Haiqing didn’t withhold. He answered, “It’s activated by Mr. Mo’s ability.”

“Mr. Mo?” The name sounded ancient.

“Mr. Mo is the head of our base. He used to be the chairman of Heyuan Real Estate in Kuhuang City. After the apocalypse, he’s been rescuing local citizens. People from Jingzhou came asking him to help, and even those rascals from Nansu Base sent someone to invite him—he refused. The fact that so many survived in Kuhuang is largely thanks to him. We all respect him very much,” Meng Haiqing said, his admiration evident.

“What is his ability?”

“Sorry, that’s not something I can disclose.” Meng Haiqing refused promptly.

Wu Heng didn’t respond.

Not far away, guards were already cleaning up the scene. The woman, exhausted from crying, was helped onto the bus, while two guards buried their heads in the open ground, searching intently for something.

“Why did we only find one HOPE collar?”

“Did that man not wear one?”

“If he didn’t wear it, how did he explode?”

“Yeah! Hurry up and find it!”

Meng Haiqing went into the shelter to continue distributing ID cards, while Wu Heng sat on the ground at the doorway. In his bag were other statistics: age distribution, gender ratios, and the proportion of ability users among the survivors.

He took them out to review. Among all age groups, the largest proportion was under forty years old. Within that group, children under twelve still made up a reasonable portion. The smallest group was elderly over eighty—out of nearly two thousand survivors, there were only three.

As for gender, the number of males was nearly twice that of females, though the number of ability users was roughly equal within each gender.

Overall, ability users accounted for only about one-seventh of all survivors. Many of the abilities were relatively trivial; rarer abilities—like those controlling metal, wood, water, fire, earth, and electricity—were scarce, and none of the survivors had the plant symbiosis ability.

Wu Heng closed his notebook. No wonder Wu Dian had said before that, even after searching all of Jingzhou, they couldn’t find enough samples of plant symbionts. Not a single one had appeared among Shisanhe’s two thousand survivors.

This wasn’t necessarily bad. Especially now, even before the apocalypse, the rarer a creature, the more valuable it was—biologically, sociologically, geologically… all kinds of value. Like giant pandas: even their droppings would be examined carefully.

The boy didn’t like attention. Whether as a human or as a plant, he preferred to stay in the shadows.

“Come on! Come on, you little brat!” Lin Mengzhi’s voice rang out, full of anger.

He kicked open the shelter door. Behind him were three boys who looked no older than fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen. Shorter than him, they swung their arms and lifted their chins, faces full of contempt.

“Lin Mengzhi! Don’t be impulsive!” His team leader ran out in a panic. “You’ll be punished for this!”

“F*ck your punishment!” Lin Mengzhi yanked his satchel off his head and flung it several meters away. His eyes were bloodshot. “I quit! Today I’m beating these little idiots until they learn their place!”

“They’re minors!”

“So am I!”

Lin Mengzhi roared with his neck stiff, and in that moment, a ring of flames shot up around the three boys—taller than any of them—trapping them inside.

A giant mastiff burst out of the fire ring, its four paws slamming into the ground hard enough to leave four large pits. It bared its teeth, growling low in its throat. Then the muscles in its hind legs tensed, and it leaped forward, charging straight at Lin Mengzhi.

Lin Mengzhi snorted, flicking out a whip of fire. With ease, he lashed the dog aside. He didn’t retract the heat on the whip—wherever it struck the mastiff, the flesh sizzled loudly, smoke rising.

Half of the flame circle was blown apart. The tallest boy stomped his foot, and the ground trembled—one of the distant houses suddenly collapsed, chunks of earth shooting out like stray bullets toward Lin Mengzhi’s back.

Fire wrapped around every clod of dirt, burning them into a few piles of ash.

And the last boy—the one who still hadn’t made a move—suddenly vanished from sight.

Wu Heng, who had been watching the spectacle, raised an eyebrow.

Lin Mengzhi was obviously confused too; he’d never seen such a thing. Wu Heng and Xie Chongyi could disappear as well, but they would reappear after a few seconds—they shifted space, not truly vanished.

But this kid had genuinely disappeared, leaving no trace.

Before the bewildered Lin Mengzhi could react, pain suddenly exploded across his back. His body lurched forward, nearly making him fall to the ground.

The pain hadn’t even subsided when another fist came out of nowhere and smashed into his face. Half his head buzzed from the hit. He cursed under his breath, and flames roared up around him—so intense that people standing far away could feel the heat wave slamming against their faces, let alone those trapped inside the fire.

A shrill cry tore through the air. The invisible boy lay curled up on the ground, clutching his head, the flames on his body still not extinguished.

The mastiff lunged in, grabbed its brother in its jaws, and flung him around mid‑air in an attempt to shake the flames off—only for the fire to flare even hotter.

It wasn’t until the earth‑ability user smothered him under heaps of dirt that the flames finally went out—but it was too late. The boy’s skin was burned so badly there wasn’t a single patch intact.

“Keep running your mouths,” Lin Mengzhi crossed his arms. “You’re the ones who wanted to ‘spar’ with me. Not my problem.”

No sooner had he finished speaking than his team lead punched him straight to the ground. The man pointed at the boy who was still screaming on the dirt. “Do you have any sense at all? Ever heard of holding back? You think a spar means you have to kill them?”

“He’s not dead…”

“At this severity, he might as well be!” The lead drew a long breath, forcing himself to stay calm. He turned to Lin Mengzhi. “Enough. We don’t need your help. You’re not even one of Kuhuang’s people. Go back to our starting point and collect today’s pay.”

Lin Mengzhi’s lips twitched. His expression did truly sour. “Fine, I’ll go. Big deal. You think I actually enjoy doing work for you?”

He patted the dust off and strode away without looking back, his posture cool and confident—but the moment he turned, he happened to meet Wu Heng’s gaze from a distance, and there was unmistakable grievance in his eyes.

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