Eaten Ch.112

Chapter 112: like the ocean bowing to a mountain stream

“Brother, whatever you gave her—I want some too.” Wu Zhi stretched her hand out toward Wu Heng.

The boy tossed a length of soft vine into her palm. The poppy immediately reared up, then tried to burrow into her skin.

“Ahhh!!!” Wu Zhi let out a terrified scream and flung the vine onto Lin Mengzhi’s head.

Lin Mengzhi froze for a moment. His scalp began to itch, and then a sharp pain followed.

“Enough fooling around. It’s time to set off,” Shen Ping’an said. He reached into Lin Mengzhi’s hair and lifted the vine away. The poppy viciously coiled around his fingers, blood running down his knuckles, but it had little effect on him. The vine soon bored into his body.

In the early morning, the mountain forest hadn’t yet warmed up, and the humidity was still pleasant. The greenery was denser than ever—towering trees and bamboo groves everywhere, ancient vines as thick as pillars crisscrossing the forest, and unknown mountain flowers occasionally drifting out a faint, clean fragrance.

But it was only possible to take in the scenery at a glance; there was no time to linger. The depths of the forest looked like a black hole, unfathomable.

At ten in the morning, the sun came out. Lin Mengzhi hoisted Ruan Silian onto his back, and the group quickened their pace.

At ten-thirty, they reached the first stop along their route: Anxi.

Anxi’s buildings were beautiful—white walls with red window frames. Though many of the walls were cracked and stained with blood, under the sunlight the window frames and walls still glittered with fine points of light.

The main gate stood half open. On the white wall to the right, a line of flamboyant calligraphy read: Peace of mind, joy at heart—Peach Blossom Stream. Welcome to Anxi.

Ruan Silian patted Lin Mengzhi on the shoulder. He set her down. “I’ll go take a look,” he said. “Don’t move yet.”

The group stopped as Lin Mengzhi approached the half-open gate at a slow, careful pace.

Shen Ping’an’s voice sounded low behind him. “There definitely shouldn’t be any zombies left. The horde drew all the nearby zombies toward Kuhuang. Anxi’s survivors were infected too, but there’s no guarantee there aren’t other mutated creatures inside the base…”

“Don’t talk,” Lin Mengzhi snapped. “I’m already nervous enough.”

In the past, this kind of job was always done by Xie Chongyi or Xue Shen. Sweat broke out all over him. He grasped the door bolt, leaned his body against the gate, and, eyes slanted, peered cautiously inside.

Peering inside, Lin Mengzhi saw that the base was completely empty. Behind the gate, the open ground was littered with many bulging sacks and suitcases. Farther back, several jeeps with their doors flung wide open came into his view.

He studied the ground strewn with luggage, then compared it to the clean street beyond. Suddenly, he turned around. “Something’s strange.”

“What’s strange?” the others asked, looking at him.

“…” Lin Mengzhi couldn’t shoulder expectations this high. “I just feel like… something’s off. You can go in and feel it yourselves.”

Wu Heng brushed past him and pushed the gate fully open with both hands. The bell above the door let out a clear, lingering chime.

“That sounds awful,” Wu Zhi said, clapping her hands over her ears.

“It was probably an ability user inside who activated their power,” Shen Ping’an said, raising the knife in his hand and steadying the incessantly swaying bell with its tip. “The sound might be able to carry to every corner of the Anxi base. The energy hasn’t fully dissipated yet—Anxi’s survivors were probably infected not long ago.”

“Maybe there are still ability users in Anxi City?” Lin Mengzhi said.

“Since they decided to relocate to Kuhuang, it’s unlikely they’d leave anyone behind in the base,” Ruan Silian said, walking to Wu Heng’s side and gazing into the city. “Acting alone would be far too dangerous.”

The high temperature baked the blood on the ground, releasing an unpleasant, rancid stench. Wu Heng’s sense of smell was keen; he lifted a hand, and X on his shoulder had already used its wings to shield the lower half of his face.

“I can’t breathe,” Wu Heng said, moving the wing aside and instead pressing his own fingers against his face as he slowly walked in.

The others followed behind him.

An empty city was even more chilling than a horde of zombies. In the rising heat, the sweat on their bodies gradually turned cold.

Reaching the center, Wu Heng bent down and casually tugged open a burlap sack. Inside were several sets of clothes; pressed at the very bottom was a packet of biscuits crushed to crumbs, and a small bag of white sugar.

Lin Mengzhi and Shen Ping’an moved to the left and right, opening several more sacks and a few suitcases. Without exception, they all contained clothes and small amounts of food—some even hid low-grade energy cores of various attributes.

“Were those zombies’ belongings?” Lin Mengzhi felt a jumble of emotions.

“Something attacked them when they were leaving,” Shen Ping’an said.

“Could’ve been people,” Wu Zhi said, clutching the monkey and scanning the surroundings warily.

Shen Ping’an shook his head and picked up the energy cores one by one. “If it were people, after attacking the survivors they would definitely have taken the food and the energy cores. Those two things are necessities, whether you’re an ordinary person or an ability user.”

Their discussion faded behind him as Wu Heng walked on, step by step, slowly approaching the jeeps—vehicles he hadn’t seen in a long time.

The bodies were painted pitch black, reflecting a cold sheen under the sun. Their bulk was like small mountains, the front ends like crouching tiger heads. They had clearly undergone meticulous modifications; the smooth yet sharp lines told anyone who came near just how precious and rare they were.

Wu Heng thought that in the apocalypse, it was unlikely an ordinary person could own such a jeep. Even if the original owner had been a normal person, chances were it would have been taken from them in the end—or sold in exchange for food.

A flicker of curiosity crossed his eyes. What kind of creature could take down even ability users?

He moved without a sound, able to catch every tiny movement around him.

The vines moved ahead of him, probing the area around the vehicles to see if it was safe.

His fingers silently brushed the door handle only a meter away. It had been baked warm by the sun.

Before he could move any closer, two faint coughs came from inside the vehicle.

“Cough, cough.”

“Cough, cough, cough…”

—

“There’s air-conditioning? I’ll turn it on—does it run on solar power?”

“Cough… the wiring blew yesterday. It probably won’t work.”

They entered an empty shop. It was very clean—no people, no dust, no supplies—only a few bare shelves and a long table with benches for customers to sit briefly.

The young man Wu Heng had discovered in the vehicle was slumped in a corner, coughing every so often. His hair hung past his ears, and with every cough, the bones of his body jutted out sharply.

“We ran into people from your base on the road just now. Why didn’t you leave with them?” Shen Ping’an asked coldly from across from him.

The young man gave a weak smile. “They were all infected. How could I go with them? Turn into a zombie too?”

“We checked. The people from your base were infected before setting out—right at the gate. Why weren’t you infected?” Shen Ping’an continued, his questioning steady and methodical.

“Because I wasn’t bitten,” the young man said. As he spoke, a wistful look crossed his face. “I didn’t make a sound. They wandered around nearby for a while, then left.”

“So what did your base encounter before departure?”

Crack. Crack—

Lin Mengzhi’s serious expression broke. He stared at Wu Heng, who was standing at the far edge. “What are you eating?”

“Pistachios.”

“I want some too.”

Several hands reached out toward Wu Heng at once.

Wu Heng dropped a few into each person’s palm.

The pistachios tasted rather ordinary. Wu Heng found himself wishing there were a place where Ruan Silian could, like before, make him a ton of jerky he could eat anytime, anywhere.

Crack, crack—crack—

The shop instantly grew lively, as if it were filled with many, many people.

“What are you staring at?” Lin Mengzhi lifted his chin and said to the young man.

The young man smiled and shook his head. A trace of bitterness surfaced on his pale face. “Did you meet after the apocalypse?”

Lin Mengzhi was just about to answer when Wu Heng glanced lightly at him. “Who gave you permission to ask us questions?”

The young man looked confused. Why wasn’t he allowed to ask?

“When you’re in the weaker position, it’s best not to casually probe the other side for information,” Wu Heng said. “Because not only will you fail to get the answers you want, you might also get beaten into a meat paste and tossed out.”

Wu Heng casually took the shelled pistachios from Lin Mengzhi’s hand and said flatly, “Our previous question. Answer it.”

Wu Heng’s attitude was everyone’s attitude. If Wu Heng wanted to help, they would lend a hand; if Wu Heng wanted to keep his distance, they were ready to throw someone a hundred meters away.

The young man saw this too—but he had originally thought that the tall, dark, taciturn man was the one in control, or perhaps the handsome boy who talked a lot and spoke in fragments.

The young man coughed twice and gave a helpless smile. “When the apocalypse first began, Anxi organized zombie-clearing operations. During one mission, two people from one of the teams died. The survivors who came back said the two had been pushed out and bitten by zombies—but others said that wasn’t the case. In the end, the matter was left unresolved. You know how it was after the apocalypse began—people died every day. Everyone was already numb. Just two deaths. Dead was dead. What else could be done? A lot of people thought that way.”

“Until today, when we saw those two people again—the ones who supposedly died months ago. They were a married couple, and they had already turned into zombies. They bit us.”

Lin Mengzhi had already leaned over the long table, listening intently. “They’d been in the base all along?”

“Yes. Their son had been keeping them at home.”

“Their son?”

“A teenage boy who dropped out of high school. He’s a fire-type ability user and had his own squad in our base. He’d probably been wanting revenge all this time. Today, everyone gathered at the gate, preparing to relocate to Kuhuang. He likely knew that once we reached Kuhuang, it would be hard for his revenge to succeed—so he made his move just before we set off. Along with his own squad, he wiped everyone out.”

“It was only today that we learned the truth: his parents weren’t some so-called ‘sacrifices’ at all. Their teammates found out the couple had awakened abilities, ambushed them from behind, and dug out their energy cores, trying to transfer the abilities to themselves. They failed in the end—abilities can’t be transferred just by possessing an energy core.”

“You’re saying… he alone killed everyone in your base?” Lin Mengzhi was stunned. “Then why didn’t he kill you?”

“I’m his brother. Why would he kill me?” The young man broke into a brilliant smile.

“……”

Before anyone could react, the sound of footsteps rang out.

“Brother!”

A burst of firelight flared inside the shop. The sudden heat instantly melted several rows of shelves. As tongues of flame rushed toward them, a layer of frost spread from beneath their feet, climbing up the walls. Just as the flames were about to lick over them, a powerful surge of icy mist slammed into the fire, forcing it back, and warm water sprayed down over everyone’s heads.

Wu Heng held the vine in his hand and raised a green umbrella, sitting calmly beneath it.

The hazy water mist gradually dissipated, and the flow of water shifted from warm to icy cold.

Just as it seemed they could stop, an ice blade suddenly formed in Wu Zhi’s other hand. Without hesitation, she thrust it straight toward the boy’s abdomen.

A vine slipped out midway, shattering the ice blade. Ice fragments exploded everywhere.

“Hey—hey hey hey! Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!” Lin Mengzhi clutched his head, fleeing in all directions as he was pelted. “Stop fighting, stop fighting!”

“Don’t kill anyone.” Shen Ping’an pressed both of them down at the same time. Wu Zhi merely snorted coldly, a little disappointed that she hadn’t finished the other party in time, while the boy who had rushed in began cursing them loudly.

“What are you trying to do to my brother?!”

Shen Ping’an let go of him and, at the same time, grabbed the frail young man leaning in the corner and tossed him over. The boy scrambled to catch him, eyes red. “Brother, are you okay?”

Watching the scene, Wu Heng instantly lost interest. He was still holding the umbrella as he walked out of the shop.

“Find a shaded building to rest in. We leave after dark.” He knew people were following behind him, but he didn’t care who. After speaking, he glanced at the jeeps not far away. “Go drive one.”

“I’ll do it.” Shen Ping’an squeezed past Wu Heng.

“That’s our car! What right do you have to take it?!” An angry shout full of resentment rang out behind them.

So damn noisy.

The umbrella in Wu Heng’s hand twisted and coiled from bottom to top, transforming into an arrow that pointed straight at the two people inside the shop. He first aimed it at the flushed, same-aged boy, then paused and shifted it slightly to point at the sickly young man, saying softly, “He’s so stupid that I’m starting to doubt whether the one who lay low for months to carry out the revenge was really him.”

A horn blared outside. The others got into the vehicles one after another. Lin Mengzhi rolled down the window. “A’Heng, stop f*cking dawdling and get the f*ck in! I’m f*cking hot as a dog!”

The vines withdrew and reverted to their scattered form, spinning once and folding themselves up like a closing umbrella, then hanging from Wu Heng’s canvas bag.

Bracing himself against the car door, the boy bent down and climbed into the vehicle.

…

Shen Ping’an parked the car in front of a pretty little villa, its lower half concealed beneath grass-like plants that grew as tall as trees.

“What kind of plant is this?” someone asked.

“Astragalus,” Shen Ping’an replied. “The tree behind it is a walnut tree—perfect for giving it shade.”

He cut the engine, glanced outside, and said to Lin Mengzhi in the passenger seat, “Get out and run a few laps around the house. See if anything tries to attack you.”

“???”

Lin Mengzhi slammed the door hard. He took a deep breath, cursed under his breath, then took off like the wind.

By the time he returned to the starting point, he was drenched in sweat. He went straight to pushing open the courtyard gate and stepped into the dense clumps of astragalus. The ground beneath his feet was cracked and dry; the brown roots of the plants bulged partly above the surface, crawling across the entire yard.

Shen Ping’an drove the car into the carport, and the others entered the house without incident.

Inside, the place was clean and orderly. The three-story villa had a simple, tasteful open-height design. On the walls hung paintings whose bloodstains had been wiped away, and the well-crafted cabinets, coffee tables, sofas, and other furnishings all spoke of the former owner’s love of life.

Aside from that, however, there was only one room filled with winter clothing that had been left behind, along with thick quilts and blankets—items meant purely for warmth.

“Why is there nothing you can actually wear out?” Lin Mengzhi said, standing in a third-floor room, deeply disappointed. “I can’t wear A’Heng’s stuff.”

Without batting an eye, Wu Heng swept all the quilts and clothes on the floor into his space. His spatial storage was now several times larger than before—if he pushed it a bit more, he reckoned he could probably stuff an entire base inside.

Wu Heng’s expression didn’t change, and he made no effort to hide it, but the few people who watched the items vanish with their own eyes were still deeply shaken.

Shen Ping’an’s face looked haggard yet sharp as he glanced at them. “This has to stay secret.”

“Are you kidding? There’s no way I’d say anything,” Lin Mengzhi said, shaking his head like a rattle drum. Then he added, “Unless someone threatens to shove cockroaches up my ass.”

Ruan Silian, meanwhile, said, “Astragalus is a medicinal herb. You can cook it with meat, or make porridge with it. A’Heng, do you want some?”

“Eat,” Wu Heng said, turning to go downstairs. “I’ll put the ingredients and seasonings in the kitchen first. We’ll cook in the afternoon—I’m going to sleep now.”

The kitchen was even tidier than the other rooms—so bare it might as well have been four empty walls. Food was scarce in the apocalypse; there was even a pile of wilted wild greens on the counter, no one knowing whether they were edible or not. Wu Heng touched them and realized they were just weeds—inedible.

He took half a sack of rice out of his space, a rack of wolf ribs that Doctor Chen hadn’t wanted, along with a number of seasonings Ruan Silian might need, a bucket of water, and some white radishes, carrots, and bamboo shoots that were still fresh.

Wu Zhi trotted over and froze the ribs. “Brother, this won’t do. Otherwise they’ll stink by the afternoon.”

Shen Ping’an leaned against the kitchen doorway. “I’ll sleep in the living room and keep watch. You can all sleep in the rooms—I’ve checked them. They’re clean, and there are bamboo mats.”

Wu Zhi gave Shen Ping’an a fake smile and thanked him.

“If anything happens, you can call—” Wu Heng was extremely tired, so he changed his words midway. “Call Mengzhi.”

“Got it.” Shen Ping’an would never question Wu Heng, let alone oppose him.

As Wu Heng walked past Shen Ping’an, the flower bud on his head swayed back and forth.

Compared with his owner’s pallor and gloom, it looked full of vitality.

“Are you going to keep wearing that?” Shen Ping’an asked curiously.

“Which one?” Wu Heng stopped, picked up the remote on the cabinet, and tried to turn on the TV.

It didn’t work.

Shen Ping’an pointed at his head.

Wu Heng said, “I’m waiting until it blooms before I take it off.”

Shen Ping’an nodded, indicating that he understood.

Wu Heng lay down on the bed in a room on the first floor. The window was floor-to-ceiling; the lower portion near the ground was splattered with blood, already darkened with age. The edges of the stains made one think of cockleburs.

Beyond the glass stretched lush astragalus, even more luxuriant and thick than before. It blocked much of the sunlight from entering the room, so it wasn’t unbearably hot—though the plant itself looked like it was about to wilt from the heat.

The boy tugged the pillow a little to keep his head from pressing against the headboard and snapping the flower bud.

His eyelids slowly closed. A flood of thoughts flashed through his mind, and in the end there was only Xie Chongyi’s face—and the words he had said to him.

“I like you.” “I like you.” “I like you.”

With his eyes closed, Wu Heng’s lips moved as he murmured the three words over and over again. The person in his mind echoed them too, their voices merging into one. Suddenly, a thin trail of moisture slid down from the corner of Wu Heng’s eye.

Back then, he had questioned whether Xie Chongyi lacked love, simply because he felt that someone who had grown up surrounded by love coming to him to seek his affection was like the ocean bowing to a mountain stream.

It wasn’t self-deprecation—there truly was no love in his heart. Even if he gave Xie Chongyi every bit of love he had, it wouldn’t amount to even a fraction of what others could give him.

What’s more, what he felt for Xie Chongyi wasn’t love at all—just hunger.

And even if there had once been love, it had vanished completely after he had been poisoned by Xie Chongyi to the point of vomiting blood.

—————————————————————

Author’s Note:

Wu Heng: It’s not love. It’s appetite.

Xie Chongyi: Man is made of iron, food is steel.

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