Chapter 120: Stone Core
Wu Heng lifted his eyes, and the group behind Shen Ping’an all shuddered.
A middle-aged man with a scar across his face clenched the knife in his hand. He pressed the handle tightly and his teeth chattered.
Before anyone could react, he slashed through the shoulder of the dark-type ability user.
He forced a smile at Wu Heng. “Honestly, I’ve long grown tired of their actions.” After saying this, he shoved the man violently and spat on the ground.
Wu Heng simply watched him calmly.
The dark-type ability user had simultaneously lost both his heart and his energy core; whether or not the knife struck him, he was doomed. A few seconds after falling, he stopped breathing.
Nearby, the girl hadn’t closed her eyes. Blood poured from her mouth in spurts, and her teammates clustered around helplessly.
The greyhound kept nudging her with its head.
Her arms groped along the ground, reaching toward Wu Heng’s direction.
The greyhound was much smarter than the teammates who just cried and panicked. It stayed alert to its master’s movements and, after the girl gave the command, turned and ran toward Wu Heng.
Noticing that the greyhound had no ill intent, Wu Heng didn’t kick it. It obediently bit her clothing and dragged her along.
“Dog… you… keep it,” the girl said in broken gasps.
As soon as her words came out, the man beside her jumped up. “That’s not allowed! This dog is ours! You can’t give it to someone else!”
The girl didn’t actually feel much pain, but the loss of energy was very noticeable.
She looked at the dog’s head above her, then glanced at the expressionless boy beside her. The large bird behind him seemed to glow with its feathers. Anyone who could take care of a bird this well could certainly handle a dog too.
“Help me,” she said, using her fingers to tap the greyhound’s paw. “Shukui, go, sit, hand, give it to him.”
The greyhound shook its head and lay down beside her.
Wu Heng just watched quietly. He had no intention of raising pets, especially since this greyhound couldn’t even defeat X.
The girl, however, thought this was a test. At this moment, she still managed to lift her head and roar at the motionless greyhound, “Go! Hurry!”
Only then did the greyhound move, dragging itself dejectedly to Wu Heng and sitting down, trembling as it stretched its right paw out in front of him.
Wu Heng didn’t take it.
“I don’t want a dog.”
Seeing this, the people beside him bowed their heads and tried to persuade her. “Look, he doesn’t want it. Just leave Shukui with us. We wouldn’t hurt Shukui, would we?”
The girl lay flat on the ground and began to cry.
“I beg you… please… please!”
Wu Heng remained unmoved. He tilted his head up, then down, examining the greyhound from head to tail. A breed known for agility and speed, there wasn’t much flesh on it at all.
If it had been a Labrador or an Alaskan Malamute, Wu Heng might have accepted it.
But this was just a lean little dog; its body probably had less meat than even X’s belly.
“Why not take it?” Shen Ping’an appeared behind Wu Heng. “There are places you can’t take a vehicle—this one could help carry some supplies.”
“Birds guard the sky, dogs guard the land—how about that?” Ruan Silian also tried to persuade him.
The greyhound was covered in scars, breathing rapidly, its lifted paw remaining in the air.
Wu Heng extended his hand. Its paw immediately fell heavily, then it turned and ran back to the girl.
“Bag… bag.”
The girl hurriedly grabbed her dirty bag and handed it to Wu Heng.
As soon as Wu Heng took the bag, the girl only managed to form a mouth of thanks, then exhaled deeply. Her legs trembled, and she passed away.
The greyhound barked anxiously beside her, pawing a large hole in the ground. Realizing its master was indeed gone, it lifted its head and howled like a wolf.
In an instant, its body grew and stretched. With a single leap, it dashed into the crowd, biting a woman in its jaws. With a shake to the left and right, the woman’s waist snapped in two.
The woman’s body still hung halfway from its canine teeth when it already lunged for a second person.
In one breath, it killed five people, until from a dark corner, a gunshot rang out. A bullet flew silently and smoothly, piercing its abdomen.
The more the canine was injured, the more exhilarated it seemed. It didn’t pause for a moment. With a thud, it landed near the corner and thrust its head inside.
It emerged holding a bloody head in its jaws.
Its breathing sounded like an ancient beast. It chewed the human skull, letting out a low growl, crouching in a stance ready to continue.
Shen Ping’an landed in front of it.
“You’re hurt. This isn’t what she would want to see.”
Wu Heng slung the girl’s bag over his shoulder, bypassed the bloody scene between human and dog, and stepped over the puddles of blood back toward the stone core.
“Get away!” Someone beside him shoved him violently, grabbing at the stone core with both hands.
The surface of the stone core shimmered with a wave-like white light. Visible to the naked eye, the radiance coursed through his muscles and bones.
A heatwave swept across the faces of everyone in the open space, scalding a few people nearby so intensely that their facial skin seemed to blister.
Yet Wu Heng closed his eyes in comfort, not understanding why.
After the white light faded, people finally dared to open their eyes. The man holding the stone core remained in the same posture, but like the fat man before him, he retained only his original shape.
Wu Heng took a step forward, generating a slight wind, and the man instantly disintegrated into pieces.
Gasping sounds arose from behind. Wu Heng’s steps halted. Looking down at the ground, a doubt formed in his mind: Why was the stone core destroyed when touched? He had just struck it with a knife—had it been activated?
Wu Heng slowly lifted his eyes, focusing on the stone core. He reached out his hand.
Shen Ping’an immediately shouted, “Don’t touch it!”
But before the words finished, the boy’s fingers had already grazed the surface of the stone core. Time stretched painfully with each passing second, fear making every moment feel unbearably long—yet nothing happened.
“Why? This doesn’t make sense!” someone shouted in alarm.
“Getting burned to death makes sense.”
The stone core itself had already been pried loose. Taking it out was effortless. Wu Heng held it in his hands, turning it over and examining it. It was roughly the size of a serving plate at home, saucer-shaped, with horizontal brown striations crisscrossing its surface, interspersed with thin bright yellow lines.
“Why isn’t it attacking him…” someone murmured. “Is it safe as long as we take it out? Should we—”
“Don’t move yet. Let’s watch first.”
In the dim light, the bright yellow lines on the stone core suddenly flickered.
Shen Ping’an, who had been on edge the entire time, nearly leapt forward instantly. Without thinking, he tried to snatch the stone core from Wu Heng’s hands, but a surge of searing heat blasted him away.
The light began flickering faster, its temperature rising, like a scoop of boiling water, hot oil, flint, or lava flowing over skin.
Wu Heng realized it was stuck to his hand—he couldn’t put it down, nor could he shake it off.
He only felt the burn, but to the onlookers, his entire body seemed to be swallowed by the light. His hair and the edges of his clothes fluttered, but all that remained of him was a glowing outline.
X tried to extend its wings into the illuminated area, but in the blink of an eye, the wing tips smoked and caught fire.
Ruan Silian, not wanting it to keep causing trouble, quickly put out the flames.
Wu Heng’s world, by contrast, was extraordinarily quiet. He calmly stared at the stone core in his hands. The brown stone surface faded away, the light spinning like a rapidly rotating planet, eventually condensing into a warm white energy core no larger than a fingertip, seemingly about to sink into his body.
Wu Heng’s pupils flickered. Green light sprang from his palm—not vines, but the energy inherent to wood.
The green energy enveloped the white light, pushing outward in resistance. The white light transformed into projectiles, desperately trying to penetrate. The collision of the two energy cores unleashed a wave of power that swept everything around them clear.
Shen Ping’an and X managed to catch many people who were about to fall off the cliff in one go.
Feeling the dull pain of his body being pierced through, Wu Heng dropped to one knee. Vines surged out from behind him like a tidal wave, crashing toward the white radiance. A crackling sound of scorching filled the air as flames burst along the vine bodies.
No.
Wu Heng clenched his teeth. Under the stimulation of the stone core, he had just awakened a wood-type ability. His body could absolutely not accommodate a second energy core of a completely different attribute.
If it successfully took root inside him, not to mention the body’s original balance—even the space, Lin Mengzhi, Doctor Chen, and he himself could all be destroyed.
As if punishing humanity’s greed, the white radiance condensed into a beam of light that descended from the sky, pouring straight into the boy’s eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.
Wu Heng froze for two seconds—only two seconds of calm—before the tearing agony of his body being ripped apart followed. Clutching his chest, he collapsed to the ground, clearly sensing two newcomers battling fiercely inside him, utterly indifferent to whether he lived or died.
“Damn it, he got it—take him down!”
“How?”
“Kill him.”
Shen Ping’an’s face was pale and cold as he stepped in front of Wu Heng. “Let’s see who dares.”
X’s massive, towering body stood atop the mountain peak. It spread its wings, its neck lowering in a dangerous arc.
It shielded Wu Heng beneath the shadow of its body, while everyone else fell within its attack range.
Wu Heng’s vision blurred as he watched Shen Ping’an and X fighting them. There were many ability users on the opposing side; though Shen Ping’an’s combat power was high, he couldn’t avoid being affected by Wu Heng’s condition.
Wu Heng watched for a while, then whimpered softly and curled up. X was still too fat. He didn’t know how others saw it, but to him, it looked particularly clumsy.
The entire space trembled, vines spreading wildly until they filled everything.
Doctor Chen huddled in a corner, holding Lin Mengzhi, surrounded by a flock of sheep and chickens.
“Is A’Heng going to be okay?”
“Don’t worry. If something happens to him, we’ll be the first to die.”
Lin Mengzhi still couldn’t set his mind at ease, because three distinct forces had clearly appeared within the space: plant symbiosis, wood-type—and another one… something Lin Mengzhi had never encountered or seen before. Yet as a fellow ability user, the answer surfaced naturally in his mind.
Light-type.
He muttered under his breath, “Three forces, two energy cores… no one can withstand so many different powers inside their body…”
“A’Heng, you have to find a way to get them out of your body! You’ll die!”
Wu Heng clutched the fabric over his chest. His ragged breathing drowned out every other sound around him.
Cold sweat slid down from his temples. Blue-green veins bulged along his neck, rising like demonic claws to cradle his pale, fragile face.
His eyes were half-lidded as he struggled to swallow. He was fighting several forces for control of his own body and consciousness—his bones shattered and reassembled, his muscles torn apart and reattached to the bone surface again and again.
Lin Mengzhi’s voice seemed to come from somewhere far away:
You’ll die!
No. I won’t.
Wu Heng’s long, slender fingers pierced through the skin and muscle of his chest. His palm pressed down on the beating of his heart. A crushing sense of suffocation instantly spread through his entire body, accompanied by the struggling and shrieking of the energies within.
“No.” Beads of bright sweat slid down the bridge of the boy’s nose, and a faint smile even surfaced at the corner of his lips. “There is nothing that can’t be defeated—including myself.”
Beneath his palm, the whole world was forced to make peace.
—
“Don’t move!”
“I say—this is your girlfriend, right?”
A knife was pressed against Ruan Silian’s throat from behind. Blood instantly streamed down her neck and soaked into her collar. The man pressed his cheek close to hers, glaring viciously at the unconscious boy beside Shen Ping’an.
“Hand him over!”
X landed silently behind him.
The man caught the movement out of the corner of his eye. Abilities surged around both himself and the woman in his grasp. “If you don’t hand him over, we die together.”
Shen Ping’an frowned.
But before he could react, the opponent’s orange-red energy began to tremble. Fine white streaks swept upward, and a flash of white appeared behind him.
Sensing the approach of another’s energy, the man tried to trigger his ability explosion—but found himself frozen.
“What’s going on?!”
A hand grabbed his head from behind. A white blade twisted along his neck, and his head was flung away.
Wu Zhi’s expressionless face was revealed to everyone.
“Sister,” she called out. “It’s okay now.”
Ruan Silian hadn’t even turned around before she felt the temperature plummet. The ground beneath her feet froze into a thick layer of white frost.
“Ice-type?”
“It’s ice-type!”
The person speaking shattered explosively. Blocks of ice, each encasing the body tissue of those nearby, erupted across the ground. Only the few people belonging to the greyhound’s owner were spared.
Shen Ping’an quickly pressed gauze and disinfectant to Ruan Silian’s wound while glancing at Wu Zhi. “Where did you run off to?”
He was too busy to wait for an answer and quickly turned to lift Wu Heng off the ground.
Frost on Wu Zhi’s eyelashes melted into drops that ran like tears. “Brother… are you okay?”
Ruan Silian covered her neck. “A’Heng doesn’t know yet, but he should still be able to save Mengzhi.”
Wu Zhi hesitated, unsure what to say. After a moment, she said, “Then I’ll go down the mountain with you.”
Like she knew everything, she walked toward the greyhound, lifted its front legs, held it in her arms, and silently headed down the mountain.
Her hair was disheveled, only a few hairpins remained, and her clothing was oversized—black jacket and pants obviously men’s wear. She walked quickly at the front. X hovered level beside her, muttering incessantly: “Stupid, stupid, stupid, little idiot, little stupid chicken, shameless.”
Wu Zhi remained silent.
The jeep was still parked safely on the open ground outside the forest. Wu Zhi tossed the dog inside, turned to the two who had followed, and said, “Then I’ll be leaving.”
Ruan Silian was taken aback, then hurried over to her. “Why are you leaving? Where are you going? Are you afraid A’Heng will help Mengzhi deal with you…” She trailed off, unsure how to finish.
“I’m not afraid,” Wu Zhi lifted her chin. “If I can kill, I’m not afraid of being killed.”
“I hate Mengzhi. I hate… I hate Brother. I hate that Brother loves Mengzhi. I hate that Brother doesn’t love me. I don’t want to be with them.” Wu Zhi’s hands were in her pockets. A metallic taste of blood lingered in her mouth, and the weather made movement difficult.
“Xiao Zhi, it’s not like that,” Ruan Silian tried to reach out and touch Wu Zhi’s face, but Wu Zhi dodged. She withdrew her hand. “Mengzhi and A’Heng definitely love you. They really do.”
“But loving me makes them suffer.” Wu Zhi looked down at the tips of her shoes. “Sister, I understand everything. You don’t need to explain so much. Smart or not, as long as I exist in front of Brother, he suffers a day for every day I exist.”
“If it’s really like you said, that they love me,” Wu Zhi paused, “then it’s better for them to hate me.”
“As for where I go… the world is big. I have many places I can go. If I’m bored, I can even kill some bad people for fun.”
“But no matter where I go, I will always hate my brothers.”
“It’s just… from now on, there won’t be anyone left to braid my hair.”
X followed the girl, teasing her while seeing her off.
—
Jingzhou.
Three laboratories stood around a botanical garden. Not far from them was the military, heavily guarded, with the research institutes hidden deeply.
It was already past midnight, yet the buildings were still brightly lit, personnel rushing to and fro.
A three-story office of the military had only a few lights on. This was the enforcement office; most were out on missions, and the locations of those missions were mostly elsewhere.
On the second floor, the monitoring room displayed dozens of surveillance feeds, each showing different scenes. At one point, a red light flashed and an alarm sounded.
Xie Chongyi stood at the doorway, luggage in hand, lazily reporting as if ignoring the dozens of people in the control room. “Where’s Colonel Xie? She’s not in Jingzhou?”
Wu Dian leaned on the desk, glancing at Xie Chongyi’s luggage. “What are you doing with that?”
“Oh, this?” Xie Chongyi replied calmly, taking his time. “Anyway, I’ll leave after seeing Colonel Xie once. I’m not staying long. I didn’t bring the luggage to the dorm, so it’s easier when I leave.”
“…”
Nooo a cliffy🫠😭