Chapter 101.1: Zombie Tide
A zombie tide?
The crowd hadn’t reacted yet — especially those at the end of the line. After rushing for so long, their exhaustion had dulled their senses to the outside world.
From beyond the dense forest not far away, faint, muddled growls could already be heard. The sound was very low, but in an instant, it stabbed sharply into everyone’s eardrums.
Wu Dian had already moved to the back of the group. Countless blades glowing with white light shot out from his palm, spinning as they flew into the forest. The scattered roars immediately became louder.
Only then did everyone snap back to their senses.
“Zombies! Zombies are coming!”
“Let me through!”
“It shouldn’t be too many. Zombies are really spread out nowadays — most are gathered in the cities. Plus, the ability users at the Kuhuang base far outnumber the ones in our Xingli.” The speaker kept glancing behind himself while trying to maintain a facade of calm.
The children, elderly, and women had already been allowed into the base first. At this moment, the ones still waiting for inspection were almost all young or middle-aged adults. But regardless of age or gender, all living things have spirits — fear and panic descend on everyone equally.
“Can you f*cking move any faster?!” Lin Mengzhi was caught off guard as someone shoved him.
Lin Mengzhi lifted his chin. “The f*ck you yelling for? I’m stuck out here too — am I running away? Am I not standing in the same damn place?”
Wu Heng glanced once toward the commotion, and he too was shoved. “Zombies are coming and you still have time to watch the show?”
The force used on him was clearly much greater. Caught off guard, he fell straight to the ground.
The boy, whose mood was already so terrible it couldn’t possibly worsen, swept his hand casually. The man who had shoved him was instantly flung into the air, hitting the ground with a loud smack and rolling several times.
The man didn’t even have time to scream in pain before a bare foot, covered in purple blotches, appeared in front of him.
Realizing something, he slowly lifted his eyes — just as a cold, foul-smelling liquid dripped onto his face.
His pupils dilated instantly. Reflected within them was the zombie closest to him… and behind it, a dense swarm of rotting corpses, their decomposed flesh combined still unable to form a single complete face or intact body.
He didn’t even have time to scream for help before his body abruptly lifted off the ground. Something yanked him back into the survivors’ line a hundred meters away, saving his life by a thread.
Wu Heng had already climbed back up from the ground. He saw the man looking at him with provocative eyes, just as the vines behind him sank back into his body.
The man suddenly collapsed for no apparent reason, his body turning into a thin layer of skin — as if something had sucked out all his insides. The sight startled everyone nearby.
Wu Heng’s expression remained unchanged, calm as still water. He raised the detector to resume checking people through, only to find that the line had already fallen apart.
With zombies right in front of them, nobody was going to keep following rules — they began rushing straight into the base, including ability users.
A van drove out from inside the base gate. Before it even fully stopped, a team of people leapt out. Meng Haiqing was among them. He took the pager from his waist and shouted, “Activate the outer-city transit station. All survivors who haven’t been tested yet — divert them to the transit station first!”
“What’s a transit station?!”
“Let us into the base!”
Seeing none of this concerned him now, Wu Heng tossed the detector back into the vehicle and started walking toward the base. X returned from scouting the distance and landed on his shoulder.
“A’Heng, where are you going?” Lin Mengzhi suddenly realized both the person beside him and the bird were gone. He searched with his eyes and saw only Wu Heng’s figure moving in the opposite direction of the guards and the crowd.
“Getting off work. Going back to the hotel.”
“A’Heng!” Lin Mengzhi thought he must have misheard.
The crowd surged, and the survivors quickly flooded into the base. Many pieces of luggage were left scattered across the open ground. The shadows of the zombie horde stretched across the earth under the moonlight, like shifting black forests rippling in the wind.
Their steps were slow and staggering, but the number was overwhelming — a dense, endless mass. A few flea-like zombies darted quickly through the ranks.
“A’Heng!” Lin Mengzhi stood between the zombie horde and his childhood friend, his head spinning like a top, torn between the two sides.
At this moment, Xie Chongyi arrived at Lin Mengzhi’s side, his expression sharp and commanding.
“You go with him.”
“What about you guys?”
Xie Chongyi gave a faint, meaningful smile.
“Wu Heng is pretty important to me too.”
“Class Monitor, you’re a real brother.” Lin Mengzhi made a sloppy half-bow, then immediately turned and sprinted after Wu Heng.
Xie Chongyi didn’t linger on Wu Heng’s retreating figure. He turned around, raised his hand, and with one motion crushed a large cluster of zombies already upon them. His arm hadn’t even lowered when a decayed zombie leapt at him from midair.
His arm was swept over by a wave of black liquid, morphing into a blade. The zombie was sliced cleanly in half, filthy blood scattering like petals. Beneath his feet, something sticky—like black molten rock—spread outward in all directions, licking across the ground.
Sheng Jiang walked up behind him.
“Anything under a hundred thousand doesn’t even qualify as a zombie tide. You better save your strength.”
“Why are they coming here?!” Meng Haiqing shouted.
“So many humans gathering in one place in such a short time—zombies that can’t find food will obviously follow the trail.”
Sheng Jiang flung out a blue net. The strands looked soft, but when they cut through zombies, it was like slicing tofu.
“Wu Dian and I have already killed several tens of thousands, but the number of zombies around the area where Kuhuang is located… mm, probably in the tens of millions.”
“Oh no!” Dou Lu screamed. “How can there be so many? Are they all coming?!”
“Who knows?”
“Half an hour from now, everyone return to the base.” Wu Dian’s voice rang clearly in every person’s ear.
—
Along the way, vehicles driven by guards sped toward the base gate nonstop. Dust billowed across the road. From outside the walls came endless roars, the clanging of metal, and the sound of rotten flesh being sliced apart — all drifting into the base from time to time.
Lin Mengzhi exchanged glances with several survivors inside the car. They weren’t wearing uniforms, so they were probably ability users from the middle city.
“A’Heng, are we really going back to the hotel at a time like this?” Lin Mengzhi felt something was off. “What if they don’t pay us our wages?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Wu Heng said as he walked. “I’m tired.”
“But…” Lin Mengzhi had assumed Wu Heng would stay and help. “I feel like they might not be able to hold them off. There are too many.”
“They’re not harder to deal with than mutated plants or animals,” Wu Heng replied. “And with those people there, it’s enough.”
“Are you in a bad mood?” Lin Mengzhi struggled to keep up with Wu Heng’s pace. “Also—you’ve gotten taller.”
The boy suddenly stopped walking.
“I almost ran into you,” Lin Mengzhi said. “What’s wrong? Are we going back? Going back to show off our skills?”
“Mengzhi, if you made a request of me, and I refused you… would you be angry?” A trace of pure confusion appeared on Wu Heng’s face.
Lin Mengzhi, puzzled, still shook his head. “No.”
“But someone refused me, and I’m a little angry. Why?” The dissatisfaction he felt appeared only toward Xie Chongyi. The last time he’d felt this kind of frustration and anger was back in elementary school, when he realized Wu Shiming and Zeng Like might not truly love him.
Lin Mengzhi was stunned by the question.
“Anyone who gets rejected would be angry. You’re only a little angry — that’s even more normal.”
“Then why aren’t you angry at me?”
Lin Mengzhi grinned, showing his teeth.
“If you reject me, you must have your reasons. I trust you unconditionally.”
He isn’t a normal person — that, and the fact that he doesn’t trust Xie Chongyi, were the two reasons his anger existed.
Something moved in his hair. A black insect dropped down, and Wu Heng caught it with his hand. Suddenly, he thought of another reason — Xie Chongyi didn’t love him enough.
But why should Xie Chongyi love him? So the reason still circled back to the first one — because he himself wasn’t quite normal.
The insect tried to jump to the ground and crawl away. Wu Heng closed his hand around it and continued walking toward the hotel.
…
The zombie tide approached, and every survivor in the base wore fear and terror on their faces. They didn’t know whether the ability users and the base’s defenses could hold back the monsters outside.
Everyone hid inside their rooms and quickly finished packing their belongings. Human bases were always fragile — collapsing every time — and it was only a matter of time before they would once again be forced onto the road, fleeing for their lives.
Wu Heng and Lin Mengzhi found a row of self-service bicycles by the roadside and rode down the empty, deserted street.
He was hungry. The craving tugged at Wu Heng’s thoughts, pulling him toward wanting to go back.
A grimy little boy, not even as tall as a bike’s handlebars, appeared in the street. When he saw the two of them, his eyes lit up. He jumped and waved to the side.
“Mom! I see the big brothers!”
A woman hurried out onto the street, stopping both bicycles.
“What’s going on, auntie? You should be staying at home right now — don’t run around, especially with a kid…” Lin Mengzhi slipped into a guard’s tone without noticing.
“N-no, it’s fine, really.” The woman’s eyes were fixed firmly on Wu Heng. She wiped her hands on her clothes, then took out a small red safety charm from a cloth pouch tucked against her body and held it toward Wu Heng.
“I rushed to finish this this afternoon. Thank you for what you gave our family before… That meal you gave us earlier today — it was the first full meal my husband, my child, and I have had in months.”
Wu Heng remembered events, not faces. He lowered his head and glanced at the charm. After thinking for a moment, he said, “I want a nicer-looking one.”
The woman immediately pulled the charm back, her expression embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I must have rushed too much… I’ll make a new one. When it’s done, I’ll—”
Her words were suddenly cut off by the boy beside her.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Lin Mengzhi had been leaning on his handlebars, keeping watch on the surroundings, when he caught sight of the boy — who should have been clinging to his mother — suddenly walking toward the roadside in a stiff, unnatural way.
That alone wasn’t alarming. Kids were always curious, no matter the time or place.
But what was strange was that the boy stuck his fingers into the sewer grate and, using strength completely incompatible with his size or age, lifted the entire grate up.
Even then, Lin Mengzhi still hadn’t managed to shout at him to stop.
Not until the boy stuck his entire head and upper body into the sewer—
The thin summer clothes clung to the boy’s spine, so skinny that the bones were visible. He was clearly searching for something inside the sewer, the muscles beneath the fabric tightening and stretching. A full contraction rippled across his entire back.
The hem of his shirt trembled, lifted slightly — and from beneath it emerged a long, flesh-pink tail covered in fine fuzz.
The woman turned her head. She caught sight of it and gasped. Once she realized it was a tail, her gasp turned into a scream.
“Xiao Bei!”
The safety charm fell to the ground. She rushed over in panic, grabbed the back of the boy’s collar, and dragged him out of the sewer.
“Chiu… jiji…” Strange chirping sounds came from his mouth.
Wu Heng got off his bike, letting it lean aside casually. He walked over, crouched next to Xiao Bei, and placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder, turning him to face him.
The boy’s face was exposed for all to see—
It had grown even thinner, a layer of gray fuzz sprouting across the surface. His eyes were a dark, murky red.
Two incisors protruded past his lips, visibly lengthening.
“Ji… jijiji…”
The sounds in his throat were absolutely not human. As he kept chirping, he suddenly reached out—one hand grabbing the woman, the other grabbing Wu Heng. His fingers had lengthened dramatically, each bent like a hook, nails blackened.
“What’s wrong with you?” the woman cried, clutching Xiao Bei’s hand in return. “Xiao Bei, Xiao Bei? I’m your mom. Call me Mom. D-don’t make that sound. You’re human…”
“Jiji… jijiji…”
“Don’t call like that! Don’t!” Her eyes filled with tears as she shouted. She let out a long, pained sob—
Then suddenly, she responded with an even stronger “jijiji.”
Wu Heng slowly turned his head.
The woman had stopped crying. Her head hung slightly askew, and she stared at him with hungry, greedy eyes, looking far more aware of her desires than the little rat-child on the ground.
“There’s no need to remake the safety charm,” Wu Heng murmured.
A short blade materialized in his hand. With a gentle flick, he slit both mother and son’s throats. Their warm blood splattered across his face.
The poppy’s hair-thin roots quietly spread across the ground, licking and swallowing.
Wu Heng stood up. He walked over, bent down, picked up the fallen safety charm, and tucked it away. Then he looked at Lin Mengzhi.
“There are infected people in the base.”
Lin Mengzhi was still frozen from witnessing the sudden mutation of the mother and her child. His throat felt blocked; he was overwhelmed with anguish.
“Then… what do we do?” Lin Mengzhi’s body was trembling. “There are already nearly ten thousand people in the base.”
Wu Heng lifted his bike by the handlebars and mounted it. “Go back to the hotel and sleep.”
Seeing Wu Heng nearly disappear from sight, Lin Mengzhi finally stepped on the pedals and followed.
The infected hid among the crowds, concealed in any building inside the base. The mother and son they just encountered were likely not the only ones. The threat from outside was obvious; the ability users could handle that. But no one knew about the abnormalities already festering inside the base.
The poppy had just eaten. The familiar scent—on the way home, it sensed many more like it.
Only Wu Heng knew the base was already collapsing.
He pedaled steadily forward when a black shadow suddenly darted under his front wheel. Behind him, Lin Mengzhi’s bike screeched to a stop, but Wu Heng was sent flying several meters by the impact.
X spread its wings, wrapped around Wu Heng, and landed with him safely on the opposite side of the street.
The black shadow that had crashed into the bike arched its back, ripped apart the front half of the vehicle in a few swift motions, sniffed sharply, red eyes flashing—and lunged toward Lin Mengzhi again.
A rat?!
Lin Mengzhi kicked it hard, sending it flying. It let out a sharp “jiji” cry. It slammed into a wall, then leapt up once more. From the alley behind it, pairs of glowing red eyes began to appear.
They still roughly resembled humans—
But their snouts jutted forward, fur grew thick across their bodies, and looking lower, each of them had a long tail dangling between their legs.
A poor start: the infected who had charged first backed away a step, and the crowd behind it began to stir in agitation.
Bang! One of them leapt out from the group, climbing the wall on all fours before smashing through a window.
It was like lifting what looked like an ordinary stone slab, only to uncover a nest of creatures boiling beneath it.
Under the moonlight, they surged out of the narrow alley, so dense they almost blocked out the moon. The rooftops and walls were now crawling with them.
“A’Heng… what should we do now?” Lin Mengzhi looked up. This dilapidated city couldn’t withstand any more destruction—and neither could humans.
“Go back to the hotel. Sleep.”
Wu Heng noticed his bicycle was no longer usable. Slinging his bag over his shoulder, he lowered his head and walked forward.
Lin Mengzhi felt something was very wrong. He pedaled after Wu Heng, wobbling as he rode beside him. “A’Heng, I know you’re in a bad mood, but talk to me, okay? I’ll help you think it through, and after that, we can go beat up some rats, alright?”
“Why beat rats?” Wu Heng asked the same way he’d ask when others questioned him.
“Ah—” Lin Mengzhi nearly tipped over. He jerked the handlebars to straighten himself. “Because they eat people, obviously! There are tons of ordinary folks in the base. We have to save them.”
“Why save them?”
“Why are you asking me such deep questions?” Lin Mengzhi was confused. After a long moment, his voice sounded again, soft. “Anyway, I guess… my grandma always told me to be a good person. Doesn’t matter how other people act. I should be a good person.”
“A’Heng, it’s like—you and me, right? I treat you well because I want to. There’s no reason. Even when you ignore me, I don’t get upset. Even when you say things I don’t understand, I’ll still play along. I’ve never asked why. Why should everything need a reason? If you want to do something, just do it. Enjoy life while you can.”
“Though this might sound bad… I feel like you’ve been more cheerful since the apocalypse. Maybe that has something to do with your parents being gone.”
Lin Mengzhi braked and grabbed Wu Heng’s arm.
“If you’re unhappy, then go do the things that make you happy.”
Do things that make him happy?
Wu Heng thought for a moment.
That would be eating and drinking.
“Let’s go.”
The youth brushed Lin Mengzhi’s hand aside and climbed onto the back seat of the bicycle.
“Go where?” Lin Mengzhi hadn’t recovered yet—he was still savoring his own speech.
Wu Heng: “Beat rats. Eat rats.”
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