Chapter 126.1: Snake Attack
Lin Mengzhi slid to his knees with impressive speed. He collapsed against the seat and kowtowed to Wu Heng. “A’Heng, you have no idea how tightly I clenched my butt when I saw those snakes.”
Wu Heng didn’t want to know. He stroked the head of the anxious, restless Shukui and fell into thought.
“Let’s see if we can back out first,” Shen Ping’an said from the front, sounding as if he’d aged twenty years in an instant. He didn’t step on the accelerator. Instead, he used vines to lash the tires and carefully dragged them backward. As he slowly hauled the jeep back, he explained, “It’s probably spring. Snakes go into mating season too. Female snakes secrete a kind of pheromone that only males can smell, and when they mate, it can be as few as two or three, or as many as hundreds.”
“Before the apocalypse, reaching a scale of hundreds in such a short time definitely wouldn’t have been likely—but now, not necessarily.”
“That’s so obscene…”
“Lin Mengzhi, do you want me to throw you out of the car?” Shen Ping’an glanced at the chattering boy in the rearview mirror.
Lin Mengzhi immediately shut his mouth.
“Who knows how long they’ve been tangled together—or whether they’re hungry,” Shen Ping’an said, frowning. The tires rolled over the damp layer of fallen leaves, letting out the occasional creak, and everyone in the car was on high alert.
Lin Mengzhi spoke up again in disbelief—this time, he felt fully justified. “You still have the nerve to worry about whether they’re hungry?!”
“Snakes are already irritable during breeding season. If they also have a need to feed, things get even more troublesome.”
“Oh. I see.”
“In fact, you didn’t understand any of that, did you?” Wu Heng looked calmly at Lin Mengzhi.
For once, Lin Mengzhi sensed something—just a trace—of subtle malice in his childhood friend’s words.
“A’Heng~~~” He lunged toward Wu Heng for a hug. “Don’t be mad.”
That hug made the car’s weight shift to one side. At that moment, the tire happened to be pressed against a stone that had been soaked smooth by rain. The rear left tire suddenly slid downward, and a third of the vehicle sank. The whole car ended up hanging at an angle on a slope covered in loose rocks. Further down, there seemed to be the sound of trickling water.
Before everyone could launch a new round of condemnation against Lin Mengzhi, faint scraping sounds came from the roof above their heads, along with a broken, intermittent—and far more hair-raising—hissing.
Crack.
Something shattered, and the car sank another notch.
Wu Heng’s fingers brushed the window. Vines sprouted from his palm, but this time there was something different: a very thin layer of white glow enveloped the vines.
The inside of the car was covered in a layer of green armor, but the creatures outside didn’t stop because of it. Soon, there was movement beneath their feet as well.
“We need to get out of the car,” Shen Ping’an said decisively, releasing the steering wheel and looking toward the back. “Travel light.”
Wu Heng nodded once.
X and Shukui seemed to know instinctively who was the most reliable. Both squeezed into Wu Heng’s arms.
“You two get out and run on your own,” Wu Heng lowered his eyes and instructed the dog and the bird. “Don’t worry about us.”
X would be the easiest to escape the snake nest—no matter how mutated the snakes were, they couldn’t grow wings. And a greyhound’s top speed wasn’t something to worry about either.
Mixed up with humans, they would only end up dragging each other down.
“Then what about us? What do we do?!” Liu Dongfan had never seen snakes this large before. Even pythons weren’t this big—and they still hadn’t even seen the snakes’ heads!
Wu Heng was just about to speak when Shen Ping’an cut in decisively. “No. Your body’s tolerance has always been at its limit. Doctor Chen is only a trace of personal will—he can’t drain much of your energy. Humans are different.”
“You’re overreacting,” Wu Heng said lightly. “I wasn’t planning to put them into the space. I was going to say—just keep close.”
Shen Ping’an: “…Then that’s okay.”
“So now… we get out?” Lin Mengzhi clenched the door handle. He glanced outside the car. The slowly writhing reptiles had already tangled themselves into a net outside—not one, not two. His vision blurred; he couldn’t count them, and didn’t dare try. Better to just rush out—if they got caught, that’d be his bad luck.
Wu Heng pressed against the window. A narrow gap opened silently, and vines rose along the car body, standing soundlessly on the roof.
The towering, sky-piercing forest had become the most suitable breeding ground for mutated life. The surrounding shrubs and young, not-yet-grown trees had all been flattened—branches and leaves flying, pressed into the ground or scattered across the snakes’ bodies. Only the large trees still stood, their trunks and branches covered in black vipers of all sizes. Branches cracked and snapped incessantly, and when they broke, the snakes fell one by one—slap, slap, slap—into the writhing mass on the ground.
Wu Heng searched for the female snakes. They were usually larger and more robust.
They weren’t hard to find. Each occupied its own spot; the tree trunk beneath them or the canopy above was coiled thick with male snakes.
“After you get out, run to the southwest,” Wu Heng withdrew the vines and closed the window.
“Which way is southwest?”
—
Most of the snakes were still clustered around the females. A smaller number were moving in the direction of where they were, but they were still mapping and orienting with their forked tongues. As long as they ran fast enough—and more importantly, as long as the snakes were numerous enough, their bodies large enough, their numbers vast enough—a few little mice hopping about wouldn’t stir up too big a wave just yet.
The jeep was like a mouse that had accidentally strayed into snake territory, lying utterly still amid the swarm.
Suddenly, a snake burrowed in from below and rammed into it, jolting the car. The rear end was levered upward.
Just as it was about to tip forward and stand on its nose, the trunk suddenly flew open.
“Jump!” Lin Mengzhi kicked Luo Lei—who was frozen stiff with fear—down out of the car. Then he spread his arms, hooked the couple on either side, and leapt off with them.
As soon as he landed, he kicked the two of them out of the swarm of snakes. “Run!!!”
“A’Heng, jump quickly, I’ve got you!” Lin Mengzhi grabbed him as he looked back, tucking his cane under his arm and spreading his hands wide.
Wu Heng tossed Shukui to him. “Take him and run.”
Before Lin Mengzhi could even process who “him” was, Shukui had already landed on the ground, its body rapidly growing in size before his eyes.
The greyhound suddenly lunged toward Lin Mengzhi’s head.
Instinctively, Lin Mengzhi closed his eyes. There was the sound of tearing, and then a warm, bloody stream of innards splashed over his head.
It turned out that Shukui had bitten the black snake that had leapt from the tree into three pieces. After swallowing one segment whole, it lowered its head and scooped the crippled Lin Mengzhi into its mouth, then glanced back at Wu Heng before leaping forward.
Wu Heng then threw X out of the vehicle. Before he could even tell X to run, X had already, with a shout of “Mama! Mama!”, swung its arms and weaved through the countless open jaws of the attacking snakes.
Wu Heng didn’t pay further attention to X and jumped down from the car.
Behind him, Shen Ping’an landed while holding Ruan Silian.
The moment they touched the ground, the jeep behind them screeched and rattled—it had been entangled and destroyed by a massive pit viper.
Wu Heng casually picked up a small viper, about the thickness of his thumb, and tossed it into his mouth. “Let’s go.”
Beside him, there was now no one.
As he moved, a spine-chilling, ear-piercing “hiss—” sounded from behind.
A female snake, enormous as a mountain, slid down from an ironwood tree. As it moved, the surrounding male snakes began moving with it.
From ahead came an unknown scream, and overhead, birds let out long, piercing cries.
Wu Heng heard Shen Ping’an’s voice: “This is bad… it’s a snake mountain.”
“I told you it’s not my fault!” That was Lin Mengzhi’s voice.
Wu Heng slowly turned, a knife hilt appearing in his hand. He collided with a pair of scarlet eyes, and the icy breath from the other person hit him squarely in the face.
Without hesitation, he twisted his wrist, driving the blade straight upward—but the female snake seemed to have already anticipated this. With a flick of its head, it dodged the thrust and rapidly climbed up a tree.
The swarm of snakes surged toward Wu Heng like a wave.
To Wu Heng, snakes were just insects. Beads of sweat formed on his palms, and an undeniable discomfort radiated from deep in his chest through every part of his body.
He glanced at the surrounding jungle. Spinning his blade in a circle, he stabbed it into the ground. Energy flowed along the blade into the earth, tracing the tangled roots of various plants beneath the surface.
Stimulated by this force, buds sprouted from the roots and broke through the soil. Before they could grow, they surged together in front of Wu Heng, and a whole cluster of snake heads was neatly sliced off.
The massive tree that the female snake had climbed suddenly constricted its branches inward. From within the jungle came a scream that was almost human—but not quite.
Watching the wildly thrashing snake tails and heads, and the giant tree teetering, Wu Heng decisively passed through the swarm. His vine whip lashed out at the attacking snakes, sending flesh and blood flying. A white pattern appeared on his palm.
“Let’s see how you handle this,” he thought.
He was carried by the poppy next to the female snake. The snake opened its mouth wide and howled, its scales rattling.
Wu Heng pressed his palm against the cool surface of its body and, from left to right, gently traced a line.
Branches at their limit of strength suddenly splintered. The female snake was split in two, its upper and lower halves falling to the ground one after the other, sending a tremor through the entire forest.
One female snake was dead—but there were others. Some were sliding lazily, some were mating, and the rest, large and small, surged in a flood-like mass.
Wu Heng climbed a tree. He recalled Meng Haiqing and found a great bow appearing in his hands, just like the one the other wielded. He aimed at the largest cluster of snakes, narrowed his eyes slightly, drew the bowstring, and gently released his fingers.
The rain of arrows temporarily lit the nearby area as if it were daylight, striking the snake cluster with unerring precision. After a chorus of hisses, the snake ball collapsed with a crash. Many of the male snakes were killed in a single strike, falling lifeless to the ground, while the main body of the snake ball stretched out leisurely, winding like a swimming dragon. It lifted its head from the tail, flicked out its forked tongue, and slowly descended—but several male snakes coiled around it again. The female snake snapped irritably, swallowing two of them at once, and its crawling speed suddenly surged.
The plants around Wu Heng began to stir. Lower plants shot upward, higher ones bent down, layer upon layer forming a barrier in front of him, before lashing out with various appendages at the female snake and the rest of the swarm.
Wu Heng stood at the very back—the safest spot. Vines and other plants grew in a frenzy, enveloping the snake swarm completely.
At that moment, the female snake lazily coiled around a massive, straight boulder. Its belly rippled, and its mouth flared bright—suddenly, a blazing fire surged through the vegetation.
They wouldn’t dare release a forest fire—but the snakes would.
Even though they had prepared for the possibility of strange mutated creatures in Yunling, the reality far exceeded their expectations: the snake swarm included a female snake with extraordinary abilities!
The plant barrier collapsed. Many members of the snake swarm were caught in the destruction. Even though Wu Heng had deployed a light shield for the poppy, preventing it from being harmed, the chaos was immense.
The female snake draped her head over the top of the boulder, her tail flicking lazily, staring straight at Wu Heng, her forked tongue constantly flicking out.
The few who had run ahead were now forced to retreat, in far worse shape than Wu Heng.
Lin Mengzhi casually burned several black snakes that lunged at him. His cane had long vanished, replaced by a flickering fire rod in place of his lower leg. In the crook of his arm was Shukui, whose neck bore a deep, flesh-exposing bite mark.
“So many snakes, so many snakes, so many snakes… the whole ground is covered! This entire mountain is snakes! A’Heng, why the hell are you climbing so high?!”
“Pit vipers really are one of Yunling’s specialties.”
“Wow, you really know your stuff.”
“…What do we do?”
“First, deal with the biggest one.” Lin Mengzhi pointed toward the massive snake far ahead.
“It has abilities,” Wu Heng warned him.
“What do you mean?”
No sooner had he spoken than the female snake lashed its tail to the side, knocking over a tree. As the enormous canopy hit the ground, fire suddenly burst from its mouth, turning the treetop into charred embers.
“It can understand us,” Shen Ping’an frowned, feeling the situation grow even more difficult.
“Animals don’t normally consciously awaken human-level intelligence. It probably ate someone,” Wu Heng said, tossing a viper dangling from his shoulder to the ground. “We’ll travel underground, using the poppy to clear the way—but it can only carry us a few dozen kilometers at most.”
“That won’t work—you’ll get hurt.” Shen Ping’an was almost certain. Wu Heng traveling alone might be fine, but trying to carry this many people at once would overload him.
“Then what do we do? What should we do?” Luo Lei wailed, chopping at the snakes lunging from the ground. They were venomous, but didn’t really bite—like they were toying with him, lunging and retreating over and over. Torture.
“Fight,” Shen Ping’an drew two long swords. “Kill them, and we can leave.”
As soon as he finished speaking, several people without supernatural abilities were dragged by a tree branch to a spot where there were fewer snakes. Underground branches shot up, converging above their heads, forming a tight “tree cage” that protected them completely.
Wu Heng scanned the ground. With a subtle motion of his fingers, all the people and animals were cloaked in a faint white glow.
Lin Mengzhi raised his palms skyward. “Wow… I’m a goddess.”
Shen Ping’an flicked away the vipers coiling around his lower legs. The tips of his swords pierced the mud along with the snakes. “Then… let’s begin.”
The tails of the snake swarm had already begun to whip, striking left and right. Some even lifted half their bodies high. The mass of snakes moved like a formation of human soldiers.
Lin Mengzhi gritted his teeth. The flames at his feet split into several streams, licking toward the snakes like fuses set alight.
Shen Ping’an crushed the skulls of two snakes under his boots. A single sweep of his sword’s cold blade could fell a whole cluster.
But the snakes were too numerous. Even fire alone wasn’t enough—they could extinguish flames with sheer numbers. To burn the entire mountain would be required, but Lin Mengzhi could never bring himself to do that. Many of Yunling’s creatures might vanish forever if taken outside this region.
In his heart, he clung stubbornly to humanity’s enduring hope.
