Chapter 119: “Love you”
X’s imitation was still a bit clumsy, and it ended up pressing Wu Heng down so hard that he plopped onto the ground.
“……”
Wu Heng had to struggle with considerable effort before he finally managed to pull his head free. X, meanwhile, was already having the time of its life, taking off and circling gleefully in the air.
“Let’s get moving first,” Shen Ping’an said, extending a hand to Wu Heng.
Wu Heng shook his head and pushed himself up from the ground on his own.
They didn’t spare so much as a glance at the team beside them, instead heading straight up the mountain path. Seeing them take the lead, the other team hurriedly urged the girl to stop wailing and turned around to chase after them.
The mountain trail clung to the side of a sheer cliff. On the inside were layers of protruding rock, while on the outside the cliff dropped away step by step, growing higher and steeper. The narrow path could only accommodate one person at a time; anyone even slightly broad-built would find it much harder to pass, with a real risk of falling.
The few of them were all slim and tall, so crossing was easy—so long as they watched their footing and didn’t trip.
“That team treasures their greyhound,” Meisida said worriedly. “It’s fast, has a strong bite, and has helped them win plenty of fights. This time it took a loss at your hands—they’ll definitely look for a chance to get revenge.”
Shen Ping’an replied, “We’re just passing through Liuying. If they really want to follow us the whole way, that’s up to them.”
Meisida was about to say more when the wailing from behind drowned out his voice.
“I told you I didn’t want to come, I didn’t want to come—I can’t get through at all!”
“How are they walking so easily? That’s got to be some kind of evil technique!”
“I’m going on a diet when we get back!”
“Can you move faster? If you shove my dog off the cliff, I’ll kill you, you fat bastard!”
Wu Heng was annoyed by the noise behind them. He pressed his palm against the inner rock wall, and from the point where his hand touched, green branches burst forth, spreading in all directions. In the blink of an eye, the brown stone wall was completely overgrown in green—leaves concealing the vines, flower buds scattered everywhere.
The branches even crept beneath the feet of the team behind them.
Not knowing what kind of mutated organism this was, they panicked, hopping about in fright, grabbing at one another, nearly tumbling off the mountain in a tangled chain.
“What the hell is this thing? Where did it come from?”
They looked up in disbelief and discovered that the mountain wall—previously sparse in vegetation—was now completely covered by this strange growth. Layer upon layer of it spread out, lush and heavy, like thick green carpets. Only on closer inspection could one notice that there were actually flower buds on it.
Was this a mutated plant? A mountain spirit?
Before they could make sense of it, the plant ahead of them unfurled on the outer side of the few people in front, spreading like lotus petals, then striking out like a cobra.
In the blink of an eye, those people were entangled, vanishing without leaving so much as a hair behind.
“Where… where did they go?” A dark-skinned man swallowed audibly, staring at the now-empty stretch of path ahead.
At the same moment, the plants that had blanketed the mountainside vanished completely.
Sweating profusely, the group edged forward, checking the rock wall and the ground.
There was nothing—no bloodstains, no traces of roots or vines.
“Mountain ghosts?”
“Probably mutated plants that eat people.”
“Let’s hurry up and get up there. This is terrifying.”
The group that had seemingly been devoured clean by plants was delivered straight to their destination. After landing, Wu Heng immediately began wandering around, feeling and searching through the area.
Ruan Silian took quite a while before she finally recovered herself.
Meisida, whose sense of smell was especially keen—particularly when it came to plants—remarked, “What kind of flower is that? It smells so good.”
Shen Ping’an, uncharacteristically displeased, shot Meisida a glance. “Watch what you say.”
By then, Wu Heng had already found the stone core rumored to contain immense energy. It was shaped like a flying disc, embedded in the mountain wall, surrounded by faceted stones of similar shape. Its color, however, was paler—a blend of brown with bright yellow and faint threads of light green.
More importantly, any ability user could sense the energy contained within it; the closer one drew, the stronger the sensation became.
Wu Heng was no exception. He merely rested his hand lightly upon it, and from his wrist onward, his veins and flesh seemed to be inexplicably filled by something. It was as though the Mother Earth herself, in all her boundless tolerance, was gently caressing the human body.
But the longer he kept his hand on it, the more pronounced a stinging pain became.
Wu Heng withdrew his hand, studied his palm for a moment, then bent down to examine the stone core closely.
Meisida had come over at some point without him noticing.
“People at the base have said that stone cores like this are formed during movements of the Earth’s crust,” Meisida said. “They might be products from hundreds of millions, or even billions, of years ago.”
“Mm, is that so?” Wu Heng murmured. The hand hanging at his side twitched slightly, and a mountain-cleaving axe appeared in his grip.
The axe was raised above the youth’s head. Under the starlight, the blade flashed with cold gleams. Countless vines sank into the handle, converging into the body of the axe, until it was entirely wreathed in a layer of green radiance.
“It’ll counterattack!” Meisida hadn’t expected him to strike so directly. Fear showed in his eyes as he cried out despite himself.
“Whatever.” He was determined to take whatever was inside the stone core.
As soon as Wu Heng finished speaking, his arm dropped in a blur. The blade tore through the air—clang!—and cleaved straight into the mountain wall.
A long, deep fissure split open in the rock, and the destroyer showed no sign of stopping, the blade continuing to drive inward.
Meisida stood rigidly to the side, hot sweat washing over his body. He stared fixedly at the youth’s profile. From the very beginning he had known the other’s strength, yet he had never imagined that he could use his ability to hack open a fissure like this.
Before this, so many of them had tried—individually and together. Splitting it open was simply impossible; they could only dig. But digging would cause the stone core to fling them away directly.
This method was crude, but it worked.
However, their luck did not last long. A faint yellow light spilled out from beneath the blade.
Wu Heng felt a force—irresistible, seething with rage.
Daylight flared suddenly bright, then dimmed again. When they came back to their senses, they realized it had been the surge of energy in motion.
In the span of half a heartbeat, the youth’s figure was slapped away like a small skiff, the mountain-cleaving axe in his hand dissipating abruptly.
A sharp pain tore through Wu Heng’s abdomen as his body was blasted clear out of the entire mountain.
At that moment, X was seen spiraling down from the mountaintop in a diving plunge. The gray blur shot to the human’s back, its massive body interposing itself behind him.
The poppy spread out from behind Wu Heng, locking onto the mountain wall, and the human’s slender, kernel-like body was abruptly hauled back to the outside of the mountain summit.
The vines converged once more, reforming into an axe. Wu Heng clenched his teeth and brought it down with all his strength, deepening the fissure that had already been cut.
Boom—
Another heavy blow.
This time Wu Heng was blasted even farther away. To those on the ground, he was now smaller than the stars in the sky.
His back slammed into X’s soft abdomen. Before he could even lift his head, a hoarse cough sounded above him—hack—and a mouthful of bloody foam spilled from X’s beak.
Wu Heng opened his mouth, his teeth already smeared with blood. “I’ll get you something good to eat later.”
X let out a low gugu sound, its body dropping before it rapidly beat its wings and took off again, returning along the same route to the mountaintop.
Wu Heng was carried back once more by the poppy.
The third axe strike came down, and the entire mountain mass shuddered. Dazzling white light poured out from beneath the blade.
He gave a muffled grunt, his skin prickling with needle-like pain.
Meisida fared even worse, dropping to his knees and covering his face.
Seeing this, Shen Ping’an swept out a green, umbrella-like canopy, firmly sheltering himself, Ruan Silian, and Meisida beneath it.
“Wu Heng, stop first!” He extended his vines toward him, only for them to burn into a handful of ash.
No sooner had the words left his mouth than Wu Heng was blasted away for the third time. He shook his head, no longer able to hold it in, and spat out a large mouthful of blood.
X, too, cried out in agony from the impact, nearly tumbling from midair with Wu Heng still in its grasp.
Even the flower buds on its head had wilted, their stems bent, turning from vibrant green to a lifeless dark green.
Staring at the stone core that was already within reach, Wu Heng’s eyes reddened. The axe in his hand became swords—two of them.
The youth swung again. His body was thin and frail, the gale whipped up by the surging energy threatening to erode him into a statue. Large patches of his face were burned—perhaps scalded. In any case, there were not many parts of him left that were still intact.
The fissures carved open again and again let out a cry—neither human nor monster, sounding like the voice of the mountain itself, or perhaps something from the heavens or the depths below. That roar shook the soul, sending chills through everyone’s scalp.
In the surrounding forest, flocks of birds took wing, wild beasts howled, the clouds overhead sped up in their drift, and even the stars hid themselves.
With only a little over twenty centimeters left between him and the stone core, Wu Heng could already hear the subtle trembling of his own bones.
Crack. The tip of the sword hacked down a few more centimeters.
Beams of white light mixed with green burst forth. This time, Wu Heng’s body was struck by a blow more violent than all the previous ones combined. Even when X expanded its body to the largest possible size, it still failed to catch him—man and bird plunging straight into the forest below.
“Wu Heng!” Shen Ping’an’s voice was already drifting down from above.
Wu Heng lay sprawled on a patch of moss, his eyes half-lidded. His heart and lungs felt as if they had been ground into powder. Blood soaked through the moss, seeping in thin threads into a nearby stream. In the distance, a soft-bodied giant was slithering closer.
“Cough.”
X beat its wings, using its body, wings, and talons together, spinning in place, but it couldn’t manage to stand up.
“Gu.”
“Gugu.”
“Run.” Wu Heng’s voice came only from his chest, never reaching his lips. He struggled desperately to move, managing only to roll himself into a pool as cold as a glacier.
Hiss—
That snake’s tongue was longer than a human arm, its body even more terrifying in size. Clearly, its target was not the pinky-sized human, but the parrot that could feed it for half a year in a single meal.
X staggered as it ran, trying several times to take flight, but failing each time. Instead, it soaked all its feathers through, doubling the weight of its body.
Exhausted, it collapsed onto the ground, eyelids drooping as it looked toward Wu Heng in the distance.
The giant snake raised half its body before X, the sound of its flicking tongue sending shivers down the spine.
X let out a couple of soft gugu sounds. “Love you,” it said, looking at Wu Heng.
Wu Heng closed his eyes. The subzero water temperature eased his pain to some extent. With great effort, he extended an arm out of the water. Slender vines crept along the moss, strand by strand, thread by thread, coiling around the giant snake’s tail.
Just as the snake was about to strike, Wu Heng yanked with all his might. A mouthful of blood sprayed out as the giant snake was thrown off balance and crashed down.
It tore free of the vines in a few quick movements, found the source of the disturbance, and swam toward Wu Heng in fury.
A dagger appeared in Wu Heng’s hand. He would never lie on the ground saying “I love you.”
The youth was drenched from head to toe, almost soaked in bloody water. Pale flesh wrapped around blue-green veins, and even the white of his bones seemed faintly visible. His lashes were dark and thick to a frightening degree, like a specter flashing through the forest.
Bracing himself on the mossy stone, Wu Heng knelt low. As the giant snake opened its jaws and lunged at him, he drove the dagger straight up from below into its vital point.
But the creature’s reaction was swift as well. With a sweep of its tail, it coiled around him.
Crunch, crunch.
Wu Heng did not keep his arm pinned together with his body. Holding the dagger aloft, his bones shattered piece by piece as he stabbed again and again.
He reduced the snake’s throat and head to pulp, then seized its upper and lower jaws with both hands and tore violently, ripping the snake’s head in two.
Man and snake fell to the ground together. Wu Heng felt over his own body and found that there wasn’t a single place left uninjured. Panting, seeing no one around, he cried from the pain.
X had somehow made its way over, crawling across the mound of the snake’s body to lean against his side.
“Intermission,” Wu Heng said soundlessly, stroking X’s wet head.
—
On the open ground before the stone core, the two teams had come into conflict.
Shen Ping’an stood in front of the stone core. “Don’t you believe in first come, first served?”
“Pah.” The fat man sneered. “Whoever gets it gets it. Don’t give me that first-come nonsense.”
Meisida snapped, “Have you no shame? We’re the ones who opened this breach. Without us, you wouldn’t even be here—this is robbery!”
“So what if we rob you? We rob people every day.” The woman folded her arms. “Shukui, their bird is gone. Bite them for me.”
That greyhound emerged slowly from behind them, saliva dripping from its jaws.
Meisida rushed forward to face the dog head-on, only to have it clamp down on his shoulder and fling him aside with a single bite.
Shen Ping’an frowned. He drew two batons from behind his back. As the dog’s head lunged down from above, he jammed one baton straight into its mouth and hurled it off to the side.
Beside him, the fat man’s hand reached toward Ruan Silian. Before Shen Ping’an could swing his baton, Ruan Silian drove her knife straight into the fat man’s palm.
“Ow, ow, ow!” The fat man clutched his wrist and hopped about. His back slammed into the mountain wall, and whether because of his weight or because the mountain had already been loosened, black rocks tumbled down from above.
Shen Ping’an grabbed Ruan Silian and dodged aside. The fat man, however, staggered backward, and his palm slapped directly onto the stone core.
“Why is it so hot…?” the fat man said in astonishment.
The falling rocks rolled down the slope. A blinding white glare made it impossible for everyone to open their eyes. The obese body leaning against the stone core was illuminated until it turned half-transparent, then gradually ashen gray.
“It’s really hot…”
“Fatty!!!”
The light died away. A breeze passed through, and the human-shaped ash standing there was simply blown away.
“Fatty, Fatty!” Several people ran over, searching and calling out in all directions.
“What just happened? He was right here!” someone cried out in alarm. “That thing just now—that was the stone core, right?”
Shen Ping’an let out a sigh. “I already said it—first come, first served.”
“So lining up means it won’t attack us?!”
“That’s not what I meant. It’s that you latecomers aren’t up to it.”
Wu Heng had been able to struggle against the stone core for over half an hour, yet this man had been reduced to ash the moment he touched it.
Shen Ping’an was thinking of these people. If something couldn’t be done, there was no need to force it—better than leaving one’s life here.
“I don’t believe it.” Someone refused to accept it and was about to step forward to try again, only to have the dog bite onto his sleeve and drag him backward.
“Boss, don’t.” Another person kept shooting him meaningful looks. Since they couldn’t take it now, they could just wait until the others got it in hand, then think of a way to seize it afterward.
Seeing that those people had abandoned the idea of looting, Shen Ping’an walked to the edge of the cliff. He looked down at the pitch-black forest below—there was no movement at all, and Wu Heng’s energy had grown very faint.
He wanted to go down and look for him. No one knew how many dangers lurked in the forest at night. But he couldn’t leave Ruan Silian and Meisida here, and taking them along would slow him down too much. All he could do now was stay here guarding the stone core and wait for Wu Heng to return.
Less than half an hour later, laughter came from the fork in the path.
“We really lucked out today. We could already see cracks forming in the mountain from down below…”
The third team—
This group was large in number and clearly not the friendly type. Even the previous team unconsciously moved closer to Shen Ping’an and the other two, standing with them.
“What’s going on here? A group dinner?”
“What happened to you all? Why does everyone look so filthy?”
“And who’s this beauty? I don’t think I’ve seen her before.” As he spoke, he reached out.
Shen Ping’an stepped forward. “Show some restraint.”
“F*ck…” the man cursed, lifting his blade and hacking toward Shen Ping’an.
Shen Ping’an’s eyes flickered. Vines coiled around the man’s wrist and flung him straight toward the stone core. The man’s back slammed into it, and he cursed in pain.
Sensing a living being drawing near, the awakened stone core flared with light on its own. Just like the fat man before, the man was reduced to a pile of ash.
Seeing this, the man’s teammates didn’t even think about the stone core. They assumed it was Shen Ping’an’s ability, and shouting curses, they charged at him.
Shen Ping’an pushed Ruan Silian toward Meisida. Calmly, he issued a harsh warning: “Touch her, and I’ll settle accounts with you after I’m done here.”
With that, he gripped his vine staff and strode forward to meet the oncoming group.
The young man stood a good head taller than their average height. Once surrounded, he brought his staff down hard on one person’s thigh.
When flames were hurled at him, he simply crossed his vine staves, more than enough to block them.
Though they were fire-type ability users, their level was probably not even as high as Lin Mengzhi’s. With the boost he’d gained from Wu Heng, dealing with these people would normally be easy.
But Wu Heng had suffered severe injuries, and Shen Ping’an was inevitably affected as well. At present, he could only just barely hold them off.
As a bystander, Meisida didn’t understand all the twists and turns—he only felt that it was incredible.
Thinking back to the one who had just split the mountain and nearly split himself out of existence, he could only gape in shock. “Just who exactly are you people?”
Ruan Silian let out an “ah.” “We’re high school students.”
After saying that, her gaze returned to the more than twenty people tangled in combat. She could tell that Shen Ping’an was struggling. Those people struck viciously; clearly, after the apocalypse, their hands had been stained with plenty of blood. If Wu Heng didn’t come back soon, Shen Ping’an would definitely be at a disadvantage.
“Aren’t you going to help?” she asked the few people with the pet dog.
“We’re not going,” the girl shook her head vigorously. “There are several in there who came straight out of prison—murderers, rapists. There’s nothing dirty they wouldn’t dare do.”
“Don’t look at us—we do snatch things sometimes, but at most we just take a little advantage. We don’t kill people. They’re different. They’re all desperadoes!”
Before the girl finished speaking, a black aura grabbed her waist and dragged her away. The greyhound barked and pounced on her with its paws.
Squch.
Her chest was torn open, her heart ripped out, and a pale blue energy core was extracted. In the blink of an eye it was absorbed, all of its power added to the attacker’s own, followed immediately by a heavy punch to the back of Shen Ping’an’s head.
Shen Ping’an spat out a mouthful of blood. His staff transformed into a blade, which he drove straight back from under his arm, piercing two people in succession. Without even blinking, he then slashed fiercely at the scar-faced man with dark-type abilities.
“A kid’s still a kid—just a kid,” the man dodged with practiced ease, as if playing with Shen Ping’an.
He was forced all the way back to the edge of the cliff.
At that moment, Shen Ping’an suddenly stopped.
He stood straight, lifting his eyes to stare at the air behind the man—surprised, and with a trace of reverence.
Green waves rose and fell, blotting out the sky. At their crown, a gray shadow circled in silence, and on the surface of the vines, a haggard, deathly pale human face flickered faintly into view.
He parted his lips, and the vines let out a murmured dirge, like a funeral lament.
Seeing everyone suddenly freeze, and hearing the unsettling sounds behind him, the man turned his head back—confused, with a hint of mockery.
At that moment, a hand plunged straight into his heart.
The man was caught completely off guard. He staggered backward.
The youth’s entire body was lowered to the ground by the vines, yet his hand never left the man’s chest.
His blood-soaked fingers lifted the heart to his mouth. He took a bite, spat out the energy core, and chewed only the sinew and flesh.
He ate just that single bite. Then he frowned, paused for a moment, and lightly tossed what remained from his hand.
A bird flew over with its beak open and caught it with perfect precision.
Wu Heng wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with his finger, his brows and eyes languid yet gloomy.
“Too old,” he said. “Gets stuck in my teeth.”
Hes a menace….