Chapter 153.1: Alligator Gars
The mycelium had completely vanished. Blood was quietly seeping out from beneath Wu Heng’s fingernails. Without hesitation, he stepped into the forest, searching for Jiang Yi, who had been wrapped into a cocoon by Xue Qi.
The mountainside had been turned upside down. Rocks from below had been unearthed, and the vegetation had taken on an entirely new appearance. Wu Heng stumbled forward, his steps uneven.
Suddenly, a heavy weight landed on his shoulder.
“Mom.”
X was the last to wake up. When it opened its eyes and found that Wu Heng was gone, and that it was still being tightly held by Xue Qi, it struggled free and immediately ran off to find him.
Wu Heng lifted it off his shoulder and held it in his hands.
With a bird’s keen sense of smell, X tilted its head and caught the scent of blood on the human holding it.
Lowering its head, it saw thin trails of blood sliding down the fingers of the hand around its body, then along the back of the hand, gathering at the wrist bone into droplets that fell, one by one, into the damp soil below.
Wu Heng looked unconcerned. His vines searched across the entire mountain, and at last, from the far side, dragged out a bundle whose original color was no longer recognizable.
When it was found, strands of mycelium still clung to the gaps in the webbing, continuing to squirm as they tried to burrow inward, though without success.
X pecked them into its beak and gulped them down with eager chomps. After finishing, it lifted its head and looked at Wu Heng.
After a brief moment of eye contact, X spun around. Wind rose from the ground, and its form—like a bird, like a dragon—grasped Jiang Yi and sped toward the river’s surface.
Wu Heng, meanwhile, returned to the boat on his own.
“You’re hurt.” Shen Ping’an pushed Xue Qi aside and looked at Wu Heng’s blood-covered hand.
“It’s nothing.” Wu Heng dipped his hand into the river beside the boat to wash it. The bleeding silently stopped.
Jiang Xun zipped up his jacket. “It’s almost dawn anyway. Let’s keep moving. Each boat can arrange its own rowers. Anyone who still needs rest can lean back and sleep for a while.”
Shen Ping’an and Cao Xian each took an oar, sitting on opposite sides as the wooden boat rocked its way forward.
Wu Heng lay half-reclined at the stern. Beneath him were a sleeping bag and a soft blanket. X and Shukui leaned against him on either side. He had just expended too much energy and hadn’t recovered yet. All he felt was bone-deep cold, as if even the river water were giving off rising chills.
X shifted, then took the initiative to press its soft, warm chest and belly against the back of Wu Heng’s icy hand.
Without realizing it, he fell asleep.
When he woke again, not only was it daylight, the rain had stopped, and the boats were no longer moving.
The three boats were moored together, and everyone was sharing the instant food Jiang Xun and the others had brought from Jingzhou.
Seeing Wu Heng awake, Jiang Xun spoke up first. “You’re finally up. If you’d kept sleeping and we left Shenjian, Xie Chongyi would’ve torn me apart.”
“Here, have a corn cob—specially developed in Jingzhou.” Yang Xiaoyun grabbed a large, bright yellow ear of corn from beside him and tossed it to Wu Heng.
Wu Heng wasn’t fully awake yet, and suddenly his arms were filled with corn, compressed biscuits, and jerky.
He sat up and saw that mist drifted thickly around the boats. The surrounding mountains loomed faintly through the fog, like a scene from a fairyland.
“I never thought mountains were anything special before,” Yang Xiaoyun said around a mouthful of corn, words slightly slurred. “But staying here feels better than being out there. Outside it’s either zombies or corpses. Watching perfectly good cities get destroyed one after another… that feeling…”
“Can’t be helped. An apocalypse like this was bound to happen sooner or later,” Wang Ruixiang said. “When the Earth welcomes a new civilization, we just happen to be the old one. Weren’t the dinosaurs the same? Take my advice—don’t think you’re that important.”
Wu Heng listened to them chatting off to the side. He was the first to tear open the vacuum packaging on the corn. Lowering his head, he sniffed it.
Corn… with no smell at all?
Unable to judge whether it was good or bad, he took a bite first.
The instant his teeth cut into the kernels, Wu Heng’s face turned green.
It was no different from chewing dried dung.
He lifted the corn back up in front of his eyes, reconfirming its identity.
After confirming it really was corn, he listlessly set it down. He could follow medical advice—but he wasn’t going to eat crap.
If the corn was inedible, then the compressed biscuits were only different from it in shape and hardness. He only ate the jerky, but even that didn’t taste very good.
So he handed most of the food people gave him to X and Shukui. Dogs were omnivores, and X needed to control its weight—they needed the food more than he did.
When the chatter around him gradually thinned out, Wu Heng brushed the sticky corn crumbs from his hands. “After we leave Shenjian, I’m going to Hanzhou first.”
“Hanzhou? That’s your hometown, right? Want to go back and take a look?”
Wu Heng shook his head. “To meet up with Xie Chongyi in Hanzhou.”
Quite a few people in the team didn’t know about Wu Heng’s relationship with Xie Chongyi. Hearing this, they simply assumed the two brothers were close, and some couldn’t help feeling a bit envious.
“Impressive,” Mo Zhaohong said, giving a thumbs-up. “You still care about him from so far away.”
“It’s not easy. Times like these test relationships the most. Forget friends or brothers—even parents and children might not be worth as much as a meat bun.”
“I remember Hanzhou’s situation being pretty complicated.”
“How so?”
“After the previous person in charge abandoned the city and ran, a group from Meizhou went over to take control of Hanzhou. I heard they were inmates from Suziqi Prison. The leader’s not even twenty—his name’s Ning Bizhen. No one’s really figured out his ability yet. Have you heard of a puppet master? It’s something like that—an ability that can control other people.”
At the mention of Hanzhou, Xue Qi couldn’t help but ask, “That strong? If he can run Hanzhou, that’s pretty good. So why is it complicated?”
“Ning Bizhen wants to merge the Hanzhou base with the Meizhou base, break away, and establish a new country—Han-Mei.”
Xue Qi froze for a second, then rolled his eyes dramatically. “Han-Mei? What’s next, Han-Jiao (sweaty feet)?”
“But if he really can look after the survivors and shoulder the responsibility of a city leader, the higher-ups might not be unable to turn a blind eye to his little schemes. Staying alive is what matters most,” Yang Xiaoyun paused, then continued. “But not only is he promoting personal hero worship inside the base, he’s also reverting to feudalism—declaring himself the Emperor of Han. He treats all the survivors in the base as his subjects. If you don’t pledge loyalty, you die. Our people have gone several times and were all turned away at the gate.”
“Then just kill him,” Xue Qi said.
“We’re not sure whether he’s implanted something strange in the survivors’ bodies. If we kill him rashly and hundreds of thousands of survivors die along with him…”
Xue Qi opened his mouth, stunned for a moment. “He’s only in his twenties. Hundreds of thousands buried with him? He’s playing that big?”
“Then if we’re going to Hanzhou, will he even let us in?” Shen Ping’an asked after thinking it over.
“If we don’t change out of these clothes, there’s no way we’re getting in. Ning Bizhen hates people from Jingzhou the most.”
—
“What’s that down there? Something black?”
At daybreak, only a few scattered mountains remained blocking the way ahead. Victory was in sight.
But Lin Mengzhi was lying flat on the raft, peering into the water. Faint, massive black shadows seemed to be appearing below the surface.
“Careful,” Luo Lei pulled Lin Mengzhi back. “We haven’t seen any aquatic creatures the whole way here. Now that we’re about to get out, it’s best to stay quiet and not alarm them.”
“Then why weren’t there any of these big things deeper inside Shenjian? Now that we’re close to the outside, there are so many?”
The river was wide. In both the visible and unseen stretches of water around the two rafts, the slowly moving dark shapes were growing more numerous, and the water itself was turning darker.
The ripples on the surface were becoming increasingly unnatural—rising and falling unevenly. Sleek, oil-black backs occasionally sliced through the surface, brushing lightly against the bamboo rafts.
“Down there…” Liu Dongfan raised his camera. “They look like alligator gars.”
“Those ugly fish your colleague loved to keep?” Before the apocalypse, one of Liu Dongfan’s coworkers had given him two. Not only did they eat a lot and grow fast, but if you weren’t careful, they’d even dragged the family cat into the tank and torn it to pieces. Ever since, Wang Meixia had utterly despised this kind of fish. She still hadn’t forgotten their terrifying jaws. “Weren’t those things an invasive species? How would Shenjian have them?”
“You just said it—an invasive species. Someone must’ve brought them in,” Liu Dongfan snapped several photos of the water’s surface. “Probably people who fled here back then and released them… My god, why are they so big?”
He handed the camera to Wen Yuan. “Looks like we need to get out of here fast.”
In the camera, the frame captured only part of a fish’s head—its crocodile-like snout, rows of sharp upper and lower teeth that looked capable of shredding anything beneath the water.
More terrifying still—it was enormous. Even before the apocalypse, alligator gars had already been large fish. Now they had grown wildly, reigning contentedly as overlords of the depths.
And now, they were about to feed.
With a crack, a bamboo raft was rammed hard. Wen Yuan staggered, tossing the camera back to Liu Dongfan. “Careful not to fall in!”
The words had barely left his mouth when—splash!—came a sound from the neighboring raft.
Luo Lei shouted, “Shit! Who fell in?!”
Someone had been knocked overboard. The relatively calm water erupted as the alligator gars attacked in a frenzy. Water shot up several meters high. Armored bodies churned and twisted violently as they bit and tore. Everyone’s hearts leapt into their throats.
Just as Wen Yuan was about to make a move, a stark white skeletal hand suddenly slapped onto the end of the raft, gripping it with effort. Dr. Chen’s drenched head surfaced.
“They don’t eat doctors. Picky eaters. But still good fish, good fish.”
Lin Mengzhi grabbed him and hauled him up.
The alligator gars, spoiled by their time in Shenjian, had become selective. They’d bitten the foul-smelling zombie a few times, found the taste off, and tossed him aside in disinterest. That was how Dr. Chen narrowly escaped death.
But the others weren’t so lucky.
The massive school of alligator gars surged forward aggressively, wave after wave gathering from the distance. They slammed their bodies frantically against the two fragile bamboo rafts. The gars forced to the surface by the crush of the swarm were each as large as a minivan. Swallowing a person whole would be effortless for them. Their blood-red eyes locked onto every human on the rafts.
Blades of wind skimmed across the water without leaving a single gap. The alligator gars that leapt above the surface were sliced into pieces midair. Wen Yuan wiped the water from his face and looked at Xue Shen. “You control the rafts.”
In a situation like this, Lin Mengzhi had no advantage. He did his best not to hold anyone back, doing everything he could to protect the others on the two rafts.
Fireballs enveloped both rafts. The alligator gars shot up from below like cannonballs, slamming into the fiery barrier before crashing back into the river with sharp, crackling impacts.
The river turned glossy black from the sheer number of surging fish. Their scales flashed like an endless galaxy.
“The raft’s coming apart!” Lin Mengzhi clearly heard a bamboo strip crack beneath his feet.
The swarm beneath the water had already grown unimaginably vast. He could distinctly feel the violent tremors underfoot.
With a splash—
Icy river water surged over the raft, breaking through the fire’s defensive perimeter.
Lin Mengzhi stared down blankly. Before he could pour out more of his power—
A scream cut off abruptly beside him.
“Old Liu!”
Wang Meixia had been shoved down onto the raft by Liu Dongfan, allowing her to avoid the alligator gar that lunged up to bite.
But Liu Dongfan was a split second too slow.
A gigantic gar snapped its jaws shut and tore away his entire upper body in one bite. The raft lurched. His lower half, still spilling blood, toppled into the river. The swarm descended instantly, and with the taste of flesh and blood, their frenzy grew even more savage.
“Old Liu! Liu Dongfan!”
No one had time to react. Xue Shen and Wen Yuan heard only the sound of anguished screaming.
Swallowing his grief, Lin Mengzhi forced himself to channel even more energy.
Crack.
Crack.
The alligator gars blocked the rafts’ path. They lunged and bit from behind, while the front was sealed off just as tightly.
The bamboo raft beneath their feet was coming apart. The hollow bamboo poles had split open with visible fractures—and beneath those cracks, countless red eyes packed together in the water below.
“Help—!” Lin Mengzhi’s legs were shaking uncontrollably. Just how many alligator gars were there? They couldn’t kill them all!
Xue Shen suddenly stopped. He poured his energy into the water beneath the raft. The splashing spray froze midair for a split second before shooting down like bullets into the fish below.
Shattered bodies of alligator gars became food for the living ones—but to the naked eye, their numbers didn’t seem to decrease at all.
Wen Yuan cleared the surface again, yet the swarm beneath stirred restlessly once more. Whether in terms of reproduction or sheer savagery, it was staggering.
“We can’t drag this out any longer. If our energy runs dry, we’ll all die here.”
“As if we want to drag it out!” Lin Mengzhi shot back.
Suddenly, a dull pain shot through his thigh. The blood flow there seemed to stop abruptly, as if clamped by something hard and unyielding.
He looked down.
Ying Liuquan was clinging tightly to his left leg, face pale with terror. The raft rocked so violently on the water it was barely more stable than a drifting leaf. He was terrified.
“Teacher? Teacher! You’re a teacher!” Lin Mengzhi shouted.
Ying Liuquan stared at the water’s surface, now completely overrun by fish without a single gap. His whole body trembled like a sieve. “A… a teacher is still human.”
His voice was so faint Lin Mengzhi almost didn’t hear it.
And on the other side, the raft carrying Wen Yuan and Luo Lei finally failed to withstand the relentless battering. It shattered completely. Even ability users couldn’t create something from nothing—the raft dissolved into the river in the blink of an eye.
Reacting quickly, Lin Mengzhi unleashed high-temperature flames, driving back the fish that tried to seize every opening. He grabbed Wen Yuan and the others and pulled them onto the raft he and Xue Shen were on.
But with everyone now crowded onto a single raft, it began to sink under the weight. Slowly, steadily, the river water rose—past their ankles, up to their knees—before the raft wobbled and barely stabilized.
The river water swallowed the flames around them inch by inch. Steam hissed and sizzled, shrouding everyone in damp heat until they were drenched in sweat.
“It’s over.” Lin Mengzhi tasted blood in his mouth. Their enemy wasn’t just the alligator gars—it was Shenjian itself. The Chunyin River was their natural nemesis.
On the river’s surface, the only remaining light flickered. After less than five minutes of Lin Mengzhi forcing himself to hold on, it went out with a final hiss.
Their protection was gone.
Now the swarm could tear into them at will.
The fish watched greedily—but did not immediately charge. Instead, they grew strangely calm, circling as they stared at the raft of humans stranded in the middle of the river.
Xue Shen manipulated the current, drawing everyone into a relatively steady whirlpool. The moment the alligator gars attacked, a wall of water would rise instantly to shield them.
Ying Liuquan knelt on the raft. Everything below his neck was submerged. He could even feel the firm, cool snouts of the gars brushing against his arms—as if at any second they would surge up and rip him apart.
He felt like he might lose control of his bladder right there in the water.
Ruan Silian suppressed the discomfort churning in her stomach. With one hand, she held onto Wang Meixia, who was close to breaking down. Noticing Ying Liuquan’s expression, she said calmly, “Teacher Ying, don’t be afraid. We’ll definitely make it out of here.”
The gars swished their tails around them, sending waves crashing over the raft. Every time a wave struck Ying Liuquan’s neck, he flinched as if someone had sliced it with a blade.
“They’re like humans,” he murmured, lips pale. “I can hear them talking—laughing at us for overestimating ourselves.”
“Teacher Ying, you’re really overthinking it.”
“It’s humans who overestimate themselves,” he said faintly. “Too arrogant. Too self-important.”
His soaked hair clung to his forehead. Every fear he had ever known was etched onto his thin, timid face.
“Because adult fish have no natural predators, you label them invasive,” Ying Liuquan said softly. “Do humans have natural predators on Earth?”
He lifted his hand from the raft and reached toward the nearest alligator gar. “We all just want to live, relying on intelligence or instinct. There’s no higher or lower.”
That gar actually remained still, docile, allowing the young man to stroke its head.
But the strange tenderness between man and fish didn’t last even half a minute.
The gar beneath Ying Liuquan’s hand suddenly stiffened. Its long body went rigid as it rose from the water, locking eyes with the human above.
In the next instant, without hesitation, it twisted around and bit the gar behind it clean in half.
The self-slaughter erupted in the blink of an eye, spreading from the nearest point across the entire river.
Countless severed bodies and entrails of alligator gars churned through the current, staining the water a dark, murky red.
Before long, the number of surviving gars visibly dwindled.
And the instigator of it all wept, tears streaming down his face. “I only wanted to live.”
Just then, in the distance, at a bend in the river, several boats appeared on the water, swaying as they approached.
On them… were those humans?