Eaten Ch.149.1

Chapter 149.1: Monkeys

“I’m not unable to accept survival of the fittest. I’m still alive—there’s no real difference between me and them. I just…” Dou Lu looked at Xie Chongyi with tear-blurred eyes and said weakly, “I hate hypocrisy.”

“Wu Heng is like that too.” Whenever Xie Chongyi had a moment free from busyness, he always found himself thinking about Wu Heng—at first it was missing him; not being able to see him or touch him turned it into thinking, thinking layer by layer, unraveling it thread by thread.

From their first meeting and first conversation before the apocalypse, to the increasingly frequent interactions after it, Xie Chongyi thought it all over. The conclusion he reached was that Wu Heng had a thousand faces. If one had to say when Wu Heng was truly himself, it was only when he was eating—or being eaten.

“Class Monitor, do you really have to badmouth Wu Heng behind his back?”

“Not exactly,” Xie Chongyi turned around and headed toward the exit of the corridor. “Come down and eat.”

Dou Lu placed the urn containing the little bear’s ashes into her bedding, put on her boots, and trotted after Xie Chongyi.

“So, Class Monitor, you understand what I mean, right?”

Xie Chongyi didn’t slow his pace at all. “You want people with ulterior motives to tell you straight out, ‘I’m here to do bad things,’ instead of pretending to be good and deceiving you.”

Dou Lu’s nose stung again. “I just hope that interactions between people could be a little simpler.”

“Go to bed early after you eat.”

“…”

After leaving the dormitory building, Xie Chongyi stopped by the door and took down a black umbrella hanging there. As the cold rain spread across the umbrella’s surface, a few droplets splashed onto Dou Lu’s face. The chill made her shudder, and she instantly felt much more awake.

“Dead-leaf butterflies and horned frogs resemble fallen leaves; flounders can change their body color and patterns. The pitcher plants and bottle plants we encountered before, the well-known vipers—they all disguise themselves to avoid predators or to hunt. Humans are naturally no exception,” Xie Chongyi said as he stepped down the stairs. “But you can choose whether you want to be prey or hunter.”

“I don’t want to be hurt by others,” she said, “and I don’t want to hurt anyone either.”

Dou Lu gripped her umbrella and walked beside Xie Chongyi. Her voice was about as loud as the rain. “But I know that unless I die right now, I’ll never be able to stay out of it. Because I still want more people to survive.”

There were six work canteens in total. The one closest to their dormitory was Canteen No. 3. The blackboard at the entrance was updated daily with the menu. Today’s staple was a choice between corn cakes and brown rice. In a do-or-die apocalypse, this already counted as a luxury.

But anyone who knew the details understood that the corn was lab-developed—harvested every two days, produced in huge quantities, and terrible to eat. It had originally been meant as feed to keep livestock going and ensure a supply of meat, but even the animals refused it. Throwing it away felt wasteful, so in the end it was all sent to the canteens, turned into all kinds of simple meals and portable, long-lasting emergency rations.

The meat was much better than the staples: mutated chicken. A large mutated chicken could weigh several hundred jin, usually enough to cover a canteen’s daily meat needs.

Vegetarian options were more varied—lettuce, broccoli, and green tomato egg-drop soup. The egg soup still followed the old, pre-apocalypse tradition: don’t expect to scoop up much egg.

By this hour, the canteen was almost empty. To save electricity, only two or three bulbs were still lit.

After getting their food, Xie Chongyi and Dou Lu picked a table at random and sat down.

They had barely settled when a slender figure with his back to them picked up his tray, turned, and strode straight toward them.

That betta fish—every time Dou Lu saw him, his face dazzled her for a split second. She didn’t know whether he had always been this good-looking or if he’d become so after mutating. All she knew was that he ignored everyone at the base, and when he did speak, his words were especially, exceptionally unpleasant.

He dropped down beside the girl with a thud. His hair was now pinkish white, his eyelashes no longer pure black. His eyes carried a hint of moisture, but there was nothing fragile or pitiful about him—only an air of defiant arrogance.

In the dim space, he looked as though he were practically glowing.

Then he tipped an entire pile of snacks from his own tray straight onto Xie Chongyi’s plate.

Dou Lu sucked in a sharp breath.

“They all shoved this stuff at me. I don’t eat it.”

Xie Chongyi’s brows and eyes were hidden in the darkest patch of shadow. He didn’t even lift his gaze. He simply set his chopsticks down, steadied the tray, and unhurriedly dumped all the food from it into the trash can beneath the table.

He stood up without sparing Betta Fish a glance—whose expression had turned spectacularly ugly—tossed the tray into the return area, grabbed a clean set of utensils, and went to get food again.

Inside the kitchen workspace, an uncle leaned out of the window. “Wasting food—dock your pay.”

“It can be fed to the chickens.” Xie Chongyi raised an eyebrow, giving no hint of whether he was in a good mood or a bad one.

“That kid’s got a twisted temper—doesn’t get along with anyone,” the uncle said, leaning on the counter. “But plenty of people have their eye on him. He just sat there for a bit, and food and drinks piled up like offerings. Those ability users usually love showing off and picking fights, but in front of him they put on such an act—” The uncle pinched his voice and mimicked them, “‘Hiiiii, can I get to know you?’”

Xie Chongyi picked through the food with the tongs. “Don’t make chicken stewed with mushrooms anymore. I don’t like it.”

The uncle ignored him. “That kid—doesn’t he have a thing for you? Otherwise why’d he give you all his food?”

“I want egg fried rice.” Xie Chongyi dropped the tongs with a clang. He felt his appetite was about to be completely ruined.

Egg fried rice? The uncle finally snapped out of it. That was a pretty unreasonable request. “That’s kinda expensive, you know.”

Xie Chongyi said it was fine.

Anyway, he was using Xie Yi’s card—saving what he’d accumulated for Wu Heng.

—

Wu Heng’s group didn’t run into the kind of raging currents Lin Mengzhi’s group had faced, but their journey still wasn’t smooth.

As dusk fell, a troop of enormous monkeys came howling down from the mountains to the shore. They moved with astonishing speed, swinging by their arms through the treetops—one light sway and they could leap hundreds of meters. Luckily, the forest had grown taller and more robust as well; otherwise, it wouldn’t have been able to hold them.

They were clutching pinecones as big as beach balls, lifting them up and hurling them at the wooden boat on the river.

Like boulders smashing into the water, the pinecones sent up sprays dozens of meters high. The churning surface rocked the boat violently—before it could steady itself, another pinecone came crashing down.

“Ahhh—ahhh—ahhh—!” A monkey squatting atop the crown of a fir tree bared its teeth and howled with glee. Then came even more pinecones, raining down on them with crackling thuds like a meteor shower.

“Doesn’t feel like it’s about food,” Shen Ping’an said.

“Of course not! With how annoying they are and how huge they’ve gotten, there’s nothing they couldn’t eat if they wanted to. They’re just messing with us for fun!” Xue Qi dragged out X, who was curled up at the bottom of the boat. “You—go teach those damn monkeys a lesson.”

“They’ve forgotten who’s king? Let them see what real kingly presence looks like!”

Egged on sentence by sentence by Xue Qi, X started to feel dizzy. It hopped up onto the gunwale, puffed out its chest, and flew straight toward the monkeys, who were still passing pinecones among themselves.

As the distance closed, the parrot’s soft feathers grew harder and harder, taking on a cold gleam. Its body expanded inch by inch; by the time it reached the treetops, it had become a colossal bird that blotted out the sky.

The troop of monkeys erupted into agitation, shrieking warnings and threats. In an instant, the riverbank was deafening.

X chased after the fleeing monkeys, plunging headfirst into the unfathomably dense forest. Quick-eyed and quicker-clawed, it snatched up a monkey and burst back out, trailing broken branches all over its body, carrying the chattering captive back over the water.

An eye for an eye—using a monkey’s own methods against it. Once over the middle of the river, X loosened its grip, and the monkey dropped straight into the water.

The pinecones came hurtling toward it like artillery shells.

Xue Qi stood at the bow, shouting, “Forky is too cool! Forky, go go go!”

X flicked its head, shook out its feathers, and circled proudly above the wooden boat once before diving back into the forest.

“Wraaah—wraaah—!” The monkeys howled viciously.

The clamor in the forest drew the attention of everyone on the boat—everyone except Wu Heng. Wu Heng’s focus was on the monkey thrashing and struggling on the surface of the river.

‘Can monkeys swim?’ he wondered.

He watched intently and failed to notice the undercurrents surging beneath the water. Suddenly, the monkey’s body sank. It bared its teeth and chattered frantically, and to his surprise, its eyes even brimmed with glistening tears.

Wu Heng slowly sat up and scanned the surface of the water. It had already returned to calm, yet something felt off.

The monkey’s cries vanished as it sank beneath the surface. Not only the monkey disappeared—those pinecones were gone as well.

The monkey could be explained away by not being able to swim, but what about the pinecones?

Wu Heng realized then—there was something under the water. Those monkeys might not have been messing with them for fun after all; they could have been warning them that this stretch of river was dangerous.

“Wu Heng, hurry, come cheer for Forky with me!” Xue Qi waved a dripping leaf of elephant ear, calling out excitedly.

Wu Heng had a bad feeling.

The boat suddenly lurched.

Xue Qi turned back and told Yue Shanqing and Cao Xian to row properly.

The next second, a dark shadow shot up from beneath the hull, nimbly coiling around the wrist of the only one still standing—Xue Qi. He grabbed at it. “What is this? It’s slippery.”

Before the words had even fallen, he was dragged by a tremendous force and plunged headfirst into the water.

Cao Xian frowned, shoved the oar in his hands to Shen Ping’an. “I’m going down.” Grabbing the two long blades at his side, he leapt straight into the water.

Wu Heng gave Shen Ping’an a look of warning, then lay prone along the edge of the boat and plunged his hand beneath the surface. From the center of the black poppy’s pistil, a gray-green single eye suddenly opened.

The depths below were unfathomable. Kelp-like plants rose underwater like a submerged forest, harmless and soft, swaying neatly with the current.

And the thing that had just burst out of the water to drag Xue Qi under was precisely one of them. The one that pulled the monkey down was probably the same.

As if catching the scent of humans drifting into the water, they moved in perfect unison, surging toward the boy’s palm.

Vines burst forth in an instant, replacing the single eye.

Chaos erupted beneath the surface, and the calm above was shattered as well.

It was as if a pair of giant hands were violently churning the water. The wooden boat rocked back and forth. Shukui’s forepaws clung tightly to Wu Heng’s calf, and its fur was completely soaked by the river water sloshing into the boat.

“Will Cao Xian be okay? He’s been down there a while—he’s just a speed-type,” Shen Ping’an said. Compared to creatures on land, he felt underwater threats were far harder to deal with. Breathing alone was a nightmare; even ability users still had to breathe.

“He should be fine,” Yue Shanqing said, glancing at the water, though he didn’t sound confident.

Shen Ping’an didn’t hear Wu Heng respond. He turned around and saw a scene that nearly made him laugh out loud—Wu Heng was lying prone along the edge of the boat with both hands submerged, his expression solemn. If Shen Ping’an didn’t know better, he’d have thought Wu Heng was simply playing in the water.

<< _ >>