Eaten Ch.158.1

Chapter 158.1: “Did we just come here to walk the dog?”

Wu Heng’s words must have pleased Xie Chongyi immensely—made him extremely happy. After hearing them, Xie Chongyi covered his forehead and lowered his head, laughing nonstop.

Across from them, Lin Mengzhi’s face went from pale to dark in an instant, without even a transitional shade in between.

“Why didn’t you give one to me?”

Wu Heng replied, “You and the class monitor each get one.”

This time, the smile that had been on Xie Chongyi’s face shifted to Lin Mengzhi’s.

Holding a chopstick in each hand, Xue Qi pointed at the few of them. “Childish. Completely childish.”

“Hello, have you all finished eating?” a voice came from the other end of the dining table. Li Nian and Li Pingguo had appeared.

Li Pingguo was clutching a large bundle of umbrellas and said with difficulty, “It’s raining outside. My mom told me to bring you umbrellas.”

Wu Heng glanced out the window. Just like yesterday, a misty drizzle was falling.

Li Pingguo handed out the umbrellas one by one. When she passed one to Wu Heng, his gaze lingered on her face for a few seconds, as if he had noticed something. Startled, Li Pingguo looked up at him, then quickly lowered her head again, her expression uneasy.

“Thanks.” Wu Heng calmly withdrew his gaze. It wasn’t her.

Outside the guesthouse stood the vehicles the base had assigned them—two modified buses.

Li Nian walked at the front. “We’ll head to Pond No. 1 first—it’s the closest. If anything seems wrong, it’ll only take twenty minutes to get back to the base.”

Wu Heng and Xie Chongyi looked as if they had nothing to do with each other, each opening their umbrella separately.

But when they reached the bus door, Xie Chongyi stopped and stepped aside. He tilted his umbrella so that Wu Heng wouldn’t get wet while closing his.

As Wu Heng was putting his umbrella away, Xie Chongyi glanced at the colorful string tied around his wrist and said lightly, “You’ll hold a leash for a dog, but not for me.”

“It’s crowded and chaotic right now. I’m afraid it might get lost.”

“I might get lost too,” Xie Chongyi said, brushing a few raindrops off Wu Heng’s shoulder with his fingers. “And then get taken away by some bad guy or something.”

“…”

“Get on.” Xie Chongyi removed the string from Wu Heng’s wrist, put away his umbrella, and pushed him onto the bus.

As soon as Shukui got on the bus, it consciously jumped onto the empty seat beside Lin Mengzhi and sat there, upright. Its tall frame rose a full head above everyone else.

“You know you’re terrifying, right?” Lin Mengzhi turned his head—and was met with a panting dog’s face right in front of him.

Dou Lu came up next. Lin Mengzhi reached out his hand. “Long time no see, Lulu! Just a few days apart and you’ve grown into a fine young lady.”

“…You too. A fine young lady,” Dou Lu replied. She didn’t seem to be in a great mood, and what she said didn’t make Lin Mengzhi feel great either.

Holding onto the backs of the seats, Dou Lu made her way toward the rear and sat down on Wu Heng’s right.

“Wu Heng, I’m back.” She placed her bag on her lap and spoke softly.

“Was Jingzhou’s food good?”

“Not nearly as good as when I was with you. Just enough to stay alive.”

“Are you still mad at Ruan Silian?”

“…No.” Dou Lu lowered her head. The way Wu Heng spoke was always just like the class monitor’s—straight to the point. She hadn’t left Jingzhou just because everyone else had left. More than that, she’d realized she didn’t like the place. Some experiments were unavoidable; she just didn’t like them. But she hadn’t gone to Jingzhou solely because she wanted to make a name for herself in the apocalypse, either.

“I really hate it when people use ‘it’s for your own good’ as an excuse to tell me what I should do. My mom was always like that. Yes, I know they’re right, but no one ever considers whether I actually want to.”

Wu Heng bit into a strip of jerky. “You did want to go to Jingzhou back then.”

“If she hadn’t wanted me to leave, I wouldn’t have gone. But she didn’t show even the slightest hint that she wanted me to stay.”

Wu Heng looked at Dou Lu quietly. His gray-green eyes were calm, like stagnant green mist—thin and translucent, yet impossible to read or guess what he was thinking.

Xie Chongyi pressed a hand to Wu Heng’s shoulder, leaning in and tilting his head as he looked at Dou Lu. “If you don’t like that about her, you can just tell her directly.”

“She’d only say I’m being immature.”

Wu Heng was about to speak when Xie Chongyi gripped his shoulder and pressed him back against the seat. He himself almost completely blocked Wu Heng from view.

“Forgive me for asking, but… are you two friends or a couple?”

Dou Lu immediately showed a look of utter disbelief. “Of course we’re friends! If we were a couple and she treated me like that, I’d—” She raised her hand as if to slap someone, but in the end she didn’t finish her threat, nor did she bring her hand down. She lowered it listlessly and said helplessly, “You know how it is. I can never do anything about her.”

“?” Wu Heng and Xie Chongyi both looked at Dou Lu with identical ‘What are you even talking about?’ expressions.

Dou Lu pointed toward the front. “I’ll go find her. I won’t disturb your little two-person world.”

Xie Chongyi tugged at the corner of his mouth, turned his head—and suddenly kissed Wu Heng on the cheek.

Wu Heng’s pupils widened slightly for a split second before slowly returning to normal. He pushed at Xie Chongyi’s shoulder. “Public place.”

“No one saw.” Xie Chongyi’s fingers slid lightly past Wu Heng’s chin. “Your face is so small.” He gestured with his fingers. “Like a sunflower seed.”

“Why not just say a melon seed?”

“A melon seed is already a dead sunflower seed. Why would I use something dead to describe you?”

Wu Heng hadn’t expected that kind of explanation.

The bus started up. The driver was a man twice the size of an ordinary human, and the driver’s seat had clearly been modified as well. He squeezed himself in and sat down with a heavy thump, then even remembered to turn around and remind everyone, “Everyone, fasten your seat belts.”

“Come, come, big bro will buckle you in.” Lin Mengzhi held Shukui down and forcibly strapped a seat belt around it.

During the loudest moments of the engine starting, Wu Heng turned to Xie Chongyi. “Class monitor, when are you leaving?”

“I brought all my luggage over. Are you trying to chase me away?” Xie Chongyi kept his eyes closed, his eyeballs not moving at all. “You pull your pants up pretty fast.”

Wu Heng understood that the other person intended to stay, so he said nothing more and focused seriously on finishing the meat pastry he hadn’t eaten after breakfast.

The bus drove out of the base. Outside, the ground was covered with the corpses of crayfish. Some of their claws were still snapping at the air—clack, clack—like heavy, sharp blades striking against each other. Against the cold gleam of armor scattered everywhere, the sound made people’s eardrums ache.

The front of the bus crushed a crackling path straight through them. The vehicle shook violently. From the front rows came a click—someone had unbuckled their seat belt and stood up. The person turned and walked straight toward the back of the bus.

Wu Heng didn’t look up—until the person plopped down right beside Xie Chongyi.

“My name is Qiu Li. I’m a betta fish.” He leaned past Xie Chongyi and extended his hand toward Wu Heng.

Xie Chongyi crossed his arms and lowered his eyes, watching his boyfriend leisurely reach out to shake hands with the “betta fish.” Before he could even feel displeased, he heard his boyfriend ask softly, “Can betta fish be eaten?”

Xie Chongyi tilted his chin up slightly, looking at the ceiling of the bus, unable to suppress the smile curling at his lips.

—

The bus hadn’t reached its destination yet, but once they left the base, it was already water territory. There was hardly any land left suitable for growing crops. Forests, vegetation, ponds, and lakes stretched far into the distance, then were obscured by mist until almost nothing could be seen.

A transparent plastic bag appeared in the girl’s hands. Inside were several dozen pinkish-white, semi-translucent shells of varying sizes.

“For you. A gift,” Dou Lu said stiffly.

The two of them hadn’t spoken since meeting again. Dou Lu was the first to break the subtle wall of silence between them. Ruan Silian reached out and accepted the heavy plastic bag. She set it on her lap and casually took one shell out. Its color was uneven, like layers upon layers of pink gauze skirts—so beautiful it was almost startling.

“What kind of shell is this?”

“Sea Moon Shell. I picked them up when we were supporting the Northern Base. The class monitor said that even the prettiest Sea Moon Shells in the past weren’t as beautiful as the ones now, so I gathered some.”

Ruan Silian traced the uneven ridges on the shell with her fingers. “Can I use them to make two bracelets?”

“I already gave them to you. You can use them however you like.”

Ruan Silian put the shell back into the plastic bag. “Lulu, I owe you an apology for what happened before. Making that decision for you, I was too self-righteous.”

Dou Lu lowered her head, her hair falling over her face. When she spoke again, her voice was thick with tears. “I kept blaming you. I was selfish too.”

Ruan Silian leaned closer and gently wiped away the tears clinging to her cheeks and the tip of her nose.

At that moment, the bus reached its destination. The driver hit the brakes hard. “We’re here—” he announced, pressing the button to open the doors. With a loud clang, the doors swung open, and a gust of cold wind rushed inside.

Everyone got off the bus. Among the group were also members of the Qianzhou Base who weren’t part of their team. Holding umbrellas, they dispersed in different directions.

Wu Heng stood beneath Xie Chongyi’s umbrella. Both of them wore black leather boots, their temperaments equally distant—unapproachable.

“What are you planning to do?” Shen Ping’an stepped up beside Wu Heng, holding an umbrella.

The others were curious about that as well.

Before them, the waterlands were divided by raised embankments into square, unfathomably deep lakes. Fine rain, like needles, silently pierced the water’s surface and vanished. The depth was impossible to gauge; even the far edge couldn’t be seen.

“Before, Qianzhou already had nearly a million mu of crayfish farming area, right? Now that it’s expanded to several million mu isn’t strange for them. Are you going to plant something in all of this water?”

“This is no different from one person trying to take down an entire city.”

“It’s impossible… Even a thousand ability users couldn’t do it…”

“It’s pure fantasy.”

At some point, Xue Shen had also walked over.

“Why not wait a bit longer? Even if you can do it, your ability might run dry.”

Threads of green, as fine as hair, had already slipped from Wu Heng’s palm, creeping down along Shukui’s leash.

“The sooner the better,” Wu Heng said. “We have more important things to do.”

As soon as his words fell, faint green began to appear on the mud—ground that had been crushed bare by crayfish overnight, not a single blade of grass left. The green was so subtle, so unremarkable, that anyone unfamiliar with the boy would inevitably question his ability. At this point, it was still only a hypothesis.

Wu Heng merely lifted his lowered eyelids slightly. As he looked toward the nearest stretch of water, an invisible force swept outward across all the surrounding waters—

The surface suddenly began to surge.

With a thunderous splash.

It was as if a volcano had erupted and collapsed beneath the water.

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