Chapter 125: Nest of Snakes
“Where are you now?” Xie Chongyi asked.
“Still in Yunling, in a village here. There are a few hiking enthusiasts who’ve been trapped for several months—they don’t know what’s happened outside,” Wu Heng said unhurriedly, raising a hand to remove Shukui’s paw from his head.
“Beyond Yunling is Shenjiandi. The energy fluctuations there are no weaker than Yunling’s, and two-thirds of the area is undeveloped primeval jungle,” Xie Chongyi said, then paused. “Wu Heng, how about you wait for me and we go together?”
“No need.” Wu Heng’s eyelids drooped lazily.
After the boy flatly refused, he realized there was no sound in his ear. He opened his eyes, touched the ring on his finger, then brushed the insect-eye on his earlobe.
The moment his fingertip touched it, the insect-eye blinked.
“Do you miss me?” Xie Chongyi’s voice sounded intermittently.
“I already said it just now,” Wu Heng reminded him.
“You said you miss me.”
Wu Heng articulated each word clearly, evenly, without the slightest emotion: “I miss you.”
A voice can convey feeling, yet Xie Chongyi heard not a trace of emotion in Wu Heng’s words. He wanted to get angry, wanted to pinch the other’s face hard, but the time and place were wrong. He sighed inwardly.
“What are you busy with next?” Wu Heng suddenly asked.
“Tomorrow I’m going to the East Sea. The ground beneath a nearby base has been hollowed out by burrowing worms—I’m going over to assist with the evacuation.”
“Worms?” Wu Heng frowned the moment he heard that. “Don’t let them eat you.”
If the class monitor were to die, then even in death he’d have to die in Wu Heng’s mouth, rot in his stomach.
Being shown concern by Wu Heng was no easy thing to come by. Xie Chongyi replied leisurely, “Got it.”
“I won’t talk for now. Something’s come up on my end.”
Wu Heng saw Shukui stand up, its entire body taut, facing toward the door.
The energy link was cut off. Wu Heng sat up without a sound. Lin Mengzhi knelt and shuffled toward the doorway, his face full of alarm and uncertainty. “It seems like there’s someone outside.”
“Someone’s here,” Shen Ping’an said as he sat up as well.
There was a click from the lock on the door, followed by the handle twisting on its own.
“Lie back down first and see,” Shen Ping’an said. As soon as he finished speaking, the three people and one dog all lay down in unison.
Shukui stretched its two front paws forward, eyes squeezed shut. The eyeballs beneath its lids rolled uncontrollably, and its lips twitched into a grin from time to time.
X—X still hadn’t woken up.
Creak—
A crisp sound rang out. The dim room was utterly silent; instead, the few figures outside the door were the ones almost startled into making a noise.
“They didn’t wake up, did they?”
A head bumped the door open, poking halfway into the room to scan around. It withdrew again. “Didn’t wake up. Sleeping like a bunch of pigs.”
“Don’t hurt them. They’re just kids. Only take the car keys.”
“Then it depends on whether we can find the car keys. Don’t get soft-hearted at a time like this.”
Lin Mengzhi quietly rolled over next to Wu Heng and, grinding his teeth, spoke in a very low voice. “They’re kind of like us—every time they want to do something, they have to argue first.”
He had just finished whispering into Wu Heng’s ear when a leg stepped into their room. The person who entered was one of the seven. After coming in, he stood by the wall for a while, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then he began to move carefully around the room, searching.
Where would the car keys be… He had no idea, so he could only start feeling around from the edge. The first thing he touched was a pair of pants. “These pants are so skinny—who could even fit into these…” He dug through both the front and back pockets. Empty.
Next, he picked up a very soft, very soft knitted sweater. No pockets.
He gently put it down.
At this moment, Lin Mengzhi had his mouth wide open, laughing silently. The man shoved his hand straight into Lin Mengzhi’s mouth.
Wu Heng and Shen Ping’an quietly watched Lin Mengzhi.
“This kid breathes through his mouth,” the man said with distaste as he pulled his hand out and wiped it hard on the blanket.
Worried they might wake up, the man sped up his fumbling search, his movements inevitably growing louder. Outside, the others had their packs on and were even more tense than he was.
The man who still couldn’t find the car keys was sweating so badly that beads rolled down his face, his breathing rapid and uneven. In a moment of carelessness, he flipped X off from behind Wu Heng’s head.
X was startled awake. It rolled over on Wu Heng, sprang up, and faced the uninvited guest.
Its eyes gradually reddened. Its head lowered inch by inch, beak opening as it let out a hoarse, low cry.
The man froze in place, almost petrified. This bird seemed… not like an ordinary bird at all.
The people in the room were bound to wake up any second now, yet he no longer even knew how to move his legs.
In the blink of an eye, just as X lunged at the man, Lin Mengzhi suddenly shot up and grabbed the murderous gray parrot in a tight hold. He turned and barked at the man behind him, “If you don’t want to die, get the hell out.”
The man scrambled and crawled out of the room. Before anything could erupt outside, Shen Ping’an climbed up from the mat. “Ruan Silian, you can wake up now. We’re leaving.”
The mats and blankets all belonged to them, and packing up took no time at all. X stood on the windowsill for quite a while. When it was time to go, it flew onto Wu Heng’s head and, using both claws, began building a nest—Wu Heng’s hair was the longest now, the most suitable for nest-building. In the past, it wouldn’t have dared; it hadn’t even dared to perch on Wu Heng’s head. But now things were different. It couldn’t resist the temptation of long hair.
Wu Heng shooed it onto Lin Mengzhi’s head. With Shukui following behind him, he pulled open the door.
“Keys. Hand them over.” A small outdoor knife was pointed straight at the boy’s nose.
Shen Ping’an, carrying two quilts over his shoulder, stood behind Wu Heng with a complicated expression. If the other party wanted to die, there were plenty of ways—there was no need to come right up to Wu Heng.
“Wow, we’re ability users, you know. Are you serious?” Lin Mengzhi stared in disbelief at his childhood friend being threatened with a knife. “We’ve been more than decent to you, haven’t we? We gave you information, fed you, and you turn on us faster than this damn bird!”
“I don’t care what kind of ‘user’ you are. What, can you fly?” The man switched to gripping the knife handle with both hands, swallowing hard. “Hurry up—the keys!”
“Can we talk this through?” Lin Mengzhi could tell they had no other options, driven into a corner. They were probably afraid that a single vehicle wouldn’t be able to take everyone, which was why they’d set their sights on stealing the car—but that was a huge mistake.
“Put the knife down. I’m not joking. If you don’t, you might die any second now.”
“I said it—give us the car keys!” Trapped in a forest where the sun never reached, the man seemed to have completely broken down. He raised the knife and stabbed at Wu Heng.
Wu Heng slowly closed his eyes. His hair, like a swimming serpent, swept up to block in front of him, forming something like armor. The tip of the dagger snapped clean off and fell to the ground.
After blocking the stab, his hair fell softly—but it didn’t drop back into place. Instead, it looped around and suddenly pierced straight through the man’s abdomen.
The long hair transformed into slender, supple vines. Layer upon layer of leaves sprouted along them, lush and vivid, with scattered buds on the verge of blooming. If not for the streaks of blood clinging to their surface, the scene could almost be described as “ten thousand green silken strands hanging down.”
The man was hoisted high above the roof.
Before his breathing stopped, Wu Heng said calmly, “See? You’ve gone up to the sky.”
The vines gently flung the man away. His body was tossed straight into the nearby forest. After completing their task, the vines rustled back, once more turning into Wu Heng’s gentle, graceful black hair.
“Let’s go.” Wu Heng ignored the three people standing opposite him, already stunned, and passed through the damp, cool corridor into the courtyard outside.
Descending the steps, he paused, then turned back to look at the hesitant Lin Mengzhi. “Should we bring the others along too?”
Lin Mengzhi immediately nodded hard. “I was thinking the same thing!”
There were only three who hadn’t been involved—the middle-aged couple, and Luo Lei.
After everyone got into the car, the few people left behind in the house chased them out, following behind the jeep, crying and cursing as they ran for quite a distance. They didn’t stop because of it. Instead, they accelerated, plunging headlong into the peril-filled forest, straight into the long, endless night.
—
“Have two people keep watch outside the car. The rest can sleep for a bit—it’s not even midnight yet,” Shen Ping’an said. His vines continuously cleared away the grotesquely overgrown plants along the road. The roof of the jeep was already littered with broken branches and shredded leaves. The map could only give a rough direction; what lay ahead was, in truth, unknown.
Wu Heng’s body was under an extreme load. He had long since become exhausted beyond measure. No matter how violently the road jolted, he could still half-recline in the back seat and fall into a deep sleep.
The three people in the very back row didn’t dare sleep at all. They stared wide-eyed, overstimulated, several times opening their mouths as if to speak, only to say nothing in the end.
“My surname is Wang—Wang Meixia. My husband’s surname is Liu, Liu Dongfan. You can just call us by our names, or Uncle and Auntie, either is fine,” Wang Meixia said nervously. “Once we’re out of Yunling, you can just drop us off at any intersection. We’ve already troubled you so much.”
“Oh? Where are you headed?” Lin Mengzhi twisted around to ask.
“We’re all from Yaozhou. The people who didn’t get on the car are also from Yaozhou. We used to go hiking together a lot, traveled to quite a few places. This time we came to Yunling to challenge a few famous trekking routes. We never expected that once we entered the mountains, we wouldn’t be able to get out,” Wang Meixia said, and once she started talking, she couldn’t stop. She was very chatty.
“What a coincidence—our destination is also Yaozhou.”
“You’re going to Yaozhou too? Th-then that’s really wonderful! Are you also from Yaozhou?” Wang Meixia’s eyes reddened with excitement.
“No,” Lin Mengzhi shook his head. “We’re from Hanzhou. We were originally planning to go rely on a friend in Jingzhou, but we changed our minds halfway. Now we’re thinking of traveling around a bit first, then finding a suitable base to settle down in.”
“A base?”
“Survivor cities. A lot of cities from before… are gone.”
“Gone? What do you mean, gone?” Wang Meixia asked in shock.
“Earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, invasive plants and animals, zombie tides—basically, they’re just gone. But Yaozhou is still there, don’t worry.”
Wang Meixia clasped her hands together and murmured, “Buddha bless us, Buddha bless us.”
She muttered a whole string of prayers, then smiled apologetically at Lin Mengzhi. “You all get some sleep. We’ll keep watch for you.”
“No need,” Shen Ping’an’s voice came from the front. “You can’t tell which things are real dangers.”
Wang Meixia had no choice but to give up the idea of helping.
The nights in Yunling seemed anything but peaceful. From time to time, the howls of some wild beast rang out. The forest canopy crashed and rustled as something slammed into it. Tires crushed rocks, or sent them tumbling down the slopes. Endless layers of branches and leaves loomed like ghostly shadows lunging toward them again and again.
When the ride finally began to smooth out, Wu Heng woke instead. He glanced out the window—pitch-black.
“Where are we?” He sat up, his voice hoarse.
Turning slightly, the first thing he saw was the three people in the back row sitting bolt upright like statues, their faces ashen. That was normal—they’d looked like this since yesterday.
But when he looked at Lin Mengzhi, he found that Lin Mengzhi, too, seemed under considerable pressure.
In the front seat, Ruan Silian had her eyes clamped tightly shut.
Seeing that Wu Heng was awake, Lin Mengzhi hugged Shukui and tugged at its ears. “I was just driving with Shen Ping’an.”
“?”
“He was clearing the way and driving with vines, and I was pushing from behind with airflow. I tried it—it works!”
“And then?” Wu Heng’s brows twitched slightly.
“I didn’t control it.”
“So?” Wu Heng’s eyes drooped further.
Shen Ping’an couldn’t listen anymore and cut straight to the point from the front. “He pushed the car into a snake nest.”
“What the hell—who knew there were snakes here! Running into small animals on the road is totally normal, right?! Who knew this ‘small animal’ would be this big? And who knew this ‘small animal’ was in the middle of mating with its partner?!”
Lin Mengzhi kept his voice down, but from his expression he was clearly recounting it at full volume. “And who knew—who knew—its partner would be a whole truckload of them!”
Wu Heng slowly pressed his face to the car window.
He stared into the darkness outside. After a few seconds, he realized that this darkness was not the night at all, but slowly writhing snake scales.
Right up against their vehicle was not a single snake, but a gigantic snake ball formed by several snakes coiled together!
He lifted his gaze to look upward. Whether because the snake ball was too enormous or because the window limited his view, he couldn’t see its top for a moment.
Inside the car, it was so quiet that everyone’s breathing could be heard.
After observing for a while, the boy slowly turned his head back and looked at Lin Mengzhi.
Lin Mengzhi rubbed Shukui’s head and said stiffly, “A’Heng… you should be able to handle this, right?”
Wu Heng’s eyes shifted, and he parted his lips. “I give up.”