Eaten Ch.121.2

Chapter 121.2: Wu Heng’s Awakened Abilities

After a long while.

Lin Mengzhi suddenly snorted coldly. “…Do you think I never thought about killing her when I saw you beaten black and blue?”

“Do you think that when you always brushed me off, I truly didn’t feel even the slightest resentment?”

“But I was still willing to risk my life for the two of you!”

Wu Heng’s gaze was hidden beneath his long, thick lashes. He softly said, “Me too.”

Lin Mengzhi felt a strong sense of accomplishment. It was rare for him to ramble on at such length and actually have his childhood friend agree with him.

But something felt off.

“You have complaints about me too?!”

Wu Heng lifted his eyes slightly, his back straightening a fraction compared to before.

“When we were kids, you always made me do your homework.”

“When you skipped school, you made me cover for you, and in the end we both got our palms beaten by grandma.”

“You dragged me to internet cafés and got my pocket money stolen by older kids for a whole week.”

“You learned to cook and made me taste-test, and I ended up with food poisoning and got taken away by an ambulance.”

“There’s quite a lot. Want me to keep going?”

Lin Mengzhi’s mouth fell open as he exclaimed “Wow” over and over. “So vindictive. Just wait. Once I get out, I’ll chop Wu Zhi into minced meat.”

“She’s not here. She ran.”

Lin Mengzhi was about to ask where she had run off to when he saw a flash of red before his eyes, followed by a soft drip.

Wu Heng was bleeding from the nose.

Lin Mengzhi immediately started yelling at the top of his lungs, “Damn it, damn it, damn it, stop, stop, stop, stop!”

Wu Heng had just used his conversation with Lin Mengzhi to distract himself for a brief moment. In reality, his entire body had long since been pierced through by agony. He felt as if his heart were porcelain, cracking open with fine fissures, splitting apart piece by piece.

His spine seemed to come apart section by section. The thoracic vertebrae jolted the ribs loose from their joints. A sweet, metallic taste surged up into his mouth. Wu Heng spat out a mouthful of blood, his face turning as white as paper.

“Dr. Chen, Dr. Chen, stop feeding your damn chickens and get over here, hurry, hurry, drag him away. That’s enough, that’s enough!”

Dr. Chen walked over in his work clothes, holding a plastic basin. He shook his head. “Medical personnel are not emergency evacuation personnel. I regret that I’m powerless to help.”

“He’s not even a doctor!”

“A volunteer.”

“I &…&%￥…))%%…￥…”

“Are you f*cking stupid?” Lin Mengzhi blurted out in a flash of inspiration. “If you push yourself to death like this, Dr. Chen and I are still stuck in the space. Are we supposed to be buried with you?!”

The madness in Wu Heng’s eyes finally receded a little.

That did make sense.

He still had so many chickens and sheep.

“Then we’ll stop here for now.” Wu Heng eased his breathing and the flow of energy, withdrew his hands, and spat out another mouthful of blood to the side. He turned back as if nothing were wrong. “Try it. See if you can move. If you can, get out. This place isn’t suitable for living people.”

“I’ll try.”

Only the bones in his left leg had not finished growing yet.

“Go on, go on. I’m about to die of boredom in here. Dr. Chen is smelly and greedy too…”

一

The law enforcement office building was brightly lit. Gale-force winds raged all around, and within two hours the temperature had plunged sharply. Everyone was on edge.

“The stone core is gone?” Sheng Jiang spread his palm. A blue net unfurled across the conference table. Countless threads crisscrossed it, flowing and pulsing like blood vessels.

Seeing the confusion on Dou Lu and Xue Shen’s faces, Wu Dian took the initiative to explain. “This is his ability. Transmission and signals. It can monitor energy fluctuations across all domestic locations. The stronger the energy, the thicker the signal line. The weaker it is, the thinner the line. Sometimes there’s nothing at all.”

“What is the stone core, then?”

“The stone core is a natural stone body containing immense energy that one of our teams discovered two months ago. Tests show it originated from Earth six billion years ago. The energy inside that stone… even if the few of you combined your strength and multiplied it by a hundred, you still—” Wu Dian did not finish the sentence. It would have been too demoralizing and too exaggerated.

Dou Lu said flatly, “So we’re just too weak.”

“It’s not your fault. It’s been growing for far too long. Even for us, if we truly tried to confront it head-on, it would be death or serious injury.”

“Our experts, along with specialists from the base near where it was located, all went to conduct on-site investigations. Not only was it impossible to extract, some people were seriously injured because of it. Even so, we did not ban others from going to survey or study it. Humanity can no longer protect any other life on Earth. Humanity can only protect itself.”

Dou Lu got annoyed the moment she heard “humanity” again. Humans are humans, why keep saying humanity. She asked only what she did not understand. “Just now Sheng Jiang said it’s gone. Does that mean someone took it?”

Xue Qi finally spoke up, raising both thumbs. “That’s insane. Seriously insane.”

“We need to know who did it,” said a young man sitting on the windowsill behind Wu Dian. Beside him was Xie Chongyi, head lowered as he played with his spatial ability.

“Catch them? Didn’t you say we weren’t going to interfere?” Xue Qi asked.

“We still need to figure out the whole sequence of events and write a report. We also need on-site confirmation. Most importantly, someone who has obtained energy this powerful should be brought under our command,” Sheng Jiang said. As he spoke, he pressed his palm onto a point in the mountain range near the Liuying Base. It magnified, magnified again, magnified again, until a blurry image appeared.

A dog was tearing into and gnawing at a woman’s corpse.

“So many bodies. What happened here? And why did the dog run off after eating that woman?” Dou Lu leaned closer, finding the image far too unclear.

“It can be replayed. Signal is technology,” Sheng Jiang said with a slight smile. Light spun in his hand. “You have to understand that networks exist at all times, Dou Lu. Your ability can be used this way too.”

The footage rewound several hours.

“Is this the stone core? There’s no one there? Did we rewind too far?”

“Here it comes.”

A streak of vibrant green climbed up from the base of the mountain.

Xue Shen pushed up his glasses and glanced at Xie Chongyi, who remained indifferent on the windowsill. “These leaves look kind of familiar.”

“Familiar where?” Dou Lu didn’t even realize that they were leaves.

The greenery eventually spread so densely that it nearly obscured the camera, revealing the still-unpacified Dou Lu sitting at the table. She straightened up immediately, her face darkening.

Xue Qi had no personal grudge against the person in the footage. He raised his hand and pointed. “Isn’t that Wu Heng and the others?”

Xie Chongyi’s spatial interface froze for a moment, then disappeared. He stretched his legs, planted his feet firmly on the ground, and circled around. “A bit thirsty.”

Wu Dian, long annoyed by Xie Chongyi’s habit of ignoring everything and whining about trivial discomforts at critical moments, said, “The water’s downstairs.”

Xie Chongyi replied carelessly that he knew, but he didn’t go downstairs to get any.

He walked over to Sheng Jiang, hands resting on the table, squinting as he watched the footage floating on the network.

Sure enough, the boy had a small bud on his head—it hadn’t bloomed yet.

And he had changed clothes again, brand-name this time. How many clothes had he managed to steal in Hanzhou?

And he still didn’t seem to care about his own life…

Xie Chongyi’s face remained calm, even casual, yet a thin streak of coldness ran from the corner of his eyes. His fingers tapped absentmindedly along the edge of the table.

The reactions of the others, however, were completely different.

Xue Qi’s eyes widened as he leaned over the table. “Wu Heng is amazing, holy shit!”

“Do you really think following you people in Jingzhou has a future?” Dou Lu murmured, stroking her chin.

“His way of fighting actually has a lot of reference value,” Wu Dian said, motioning for Sheng Jiang to pause. “Come take a look.”

After Wu Dian spoke, the others in the office gathered around.

On the screen, the boy was thrown backward several times, and in the last instance, both he and the bird fell into a dense forest. What followed was the chaotic looting and slaughter common in the apocalypse. At the spot where the boy and the bird had fallen, a green light slowly began to glow—though no one noticed it.

“At this point, energy should already be entering his body,” Wu Dian pointed out using the infrared overlay.

When Wu Heng appeared again, a boy behind Dou Lu shook his head and sighed, “If I could have an entrance this cool in my life, I could die without regret~”

Wu Dian glanced at him with a calm gaze, and the boy quickly tapped his mouth, embarrassed.

The footage was short. The images were blurry and rough, like an old TV screen full of static snow. Very antiquated, but enough for them to understand the whole process.

Sheng Jiang put away the signal network, shrugged, and casually walked over to stand by the window. “If it’s him, then there’s nothing to be done.”

“You know him?”

“Xiao Xie’s playmate.”

“Then why didn’t he come to Jingzhou with Xiao Xie? These others all came. Someone this strong wasting their abilities instead of doing something practical is such a shame.”

Sheng Jiang had intended to speak honestly, but then changed his mind mid-sentence. What came out was: “There was no choice. Our Xiao Xie still isn’t that attractive to him, so he didn’t come.”

Xie Chongyi wasn’t buying it.

But he was indeed displeased—though not because of Sheng Jiang’s words.

After a moment, his thin eyelids lifted slowly, like frost sliding aside. A casual smile masked the coldness in his eyes. He beckoned to Sheng Jiang with a finger. “Hey brother, lend me your ability for a bit.”

Several people who knew him well saw the expression and immediately realized: he was up to mischief again.

Far away, thousands of miles from here, the small team’s dinner tonight was a hot pot of mutton and snake meat. The vegetables were a bowl of wild fruits they had picked from the forest. Some were fruits they had eaten in childhood. Dried under the sun for several days, they lacked moisture but were unusually sweet.

The hot pot was set up inside the tent, with the canopy opened to allow smoke to escape. The gale outside made the tent flap loudly. X was already asleep in the blankets, while Shukui had not yet returned from digestion.

Wu Heng wasn’t particularly hungry and had a poor appetite. He held a bowl of mutton soup, sipping it slowly.

The aroma of meat filled the air, the broth bubbling, while the other four ate heartily around the stove.

“The drop in temperature is perfect. We can finally keep moving,” Lin Mengzhi sniffled and stuffed another mouthful of meat in. “The past few days have been so miserable. Finally, we can eat something.”

“That useless Dr. Chen kept sticking his head into my stomach to poke around. I sometimes felt like he was drooling into me,” he grumbled.

Shen Ping’an, who had been listening, interrupted, “Eat. Don’t be disgusting.”

“I’ve been disgusted by Dr. Chen for days,” Lin Mengzhi muttered, glancing at Meisida. “Are you a hornet? Male or female?”

“…”

Shen Ping’an and Ruan Silian both held their bowls, quietly laughing. Meisida blushed. Lin Mengzhi realized the question might have been unnecessary and burst out laughing. “Male, male. I thought maybe mutated animals were different. What if it were female?”

Wu Heng leaned against the tent and smiled.

But his smile lasted only two or three seconds before freezing on his face.

A strange yet familiar energy quietly appeared outside the tent.

“It’s hot in here. I’ll eat outside,” Wu Heng said, rising. As he left, he casually set the bowl and chopsticks on a stool by the door.

He carried a dagger in his hand and circled the tent, finding nothing unusual.

He looked around in confusion, certain that his senses were not failing him.

At that moment, the grass not far away rustled.

Wu Heng turned silently to face it.

A flash of white appeared—the greyhound leapt out instantly, its belly even rounder than before.

It was now the size of a normal greyhound. Wu Heng squatted in front of it, sniffed at its mouth, and stared unblinkingly. “You ate someone,” he stated with certainty.

Under a human’s gaze, the greyhound tucked its tail.

“Go inside,” Wu Heng said, dismissing the matter. He made way for it to enter the tent.

Voices of surprise echoed from inside. For Lin Mengzhi, this was his first encounter with the greyhound, and his shouts were the loudest.

Wu Heng was about to return to the tent when a sharp pain suddenly prickled the back of his head. He raised a hand to probe it, and a familiar voice, tinged with danger, came from behind: “Don’t… move.”

Before any identity appeared in his mind, Wu Heng’s heart trembled three times.

“Class Monitor?”

Unfortunately, the voice did not answer him. Instead, it continued in a cold, official tone:

“Name: Wu Heng; Gender: Male; Identity: Blue Star ordinary citizen; Age: 18; Occupation: Student.”

“Crime committed: Theft of state property.”

“Arrest requested: Yes.”

“Interrogation authorized: Yes.”

“Arresting officer: Xie Chongyi.”

“Interrogating officer: Xie Chongyi.”

“Approved by—” The voice deliberately paused, lowering slightly as if speaking right by Wu Heng’s ear, “Xie Chongyi.”

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