Chapter 172: Implantation
Lin Mengzhi, who had just been rescued by Xue Shen, stared with his mouth wide open when he saw Wu Heng acting spoiled.
Something felt off.
Being gay is only a sexual orientation—it’s not a contagious virus.
“What’s your relationship?” The atmosphere between the two of them felt a bit strange. Like a couple, not like brothers.
“Couple.”
About half the people looked surprised—not because of their relationship, but because he admitted it so openly. In these uncertain times where survival was never guaranteed, many people’s sexual orientations tended to shift with circumstance, but very few would openly announce it themselves.
Xie Chongyi pinched Wu Heng’s cheek hard. Wu Heng let out a muffled sound and sobered up quite a bit, the vines instantly retracting as well.
Rubbing the spot that had been pinched, Wu Heng watched as Xie Chongyi took Lin Mengzhi’s seat. He glanced at the table, which was a complete mess of cups and plates, and asked, “You all are…?”
No one introduced themselves one by one. Instead, the bearded man briefly summarized who they all were.
Without thinking much about it, Xie Chongyi already knew what Wu Heng had been planning. He chuckled softly. “He’s quite generous with you.”
Those who knew what that smile meant began to feel uneasy, while the unfamiliar newcomers eagerly chimed in agreement.
When Wu Heng started stuffing food into his mouth again, Xie Chongyi looked around the table, picked up the wine glass Wu Heng had used, and looked at everyone. For the first time, he smiled broadly enough to show a few of his teeth.
“Wu Heng is drunk. I’ll have a couple of drinks with you instead.”
“Come, come,” they happily agreed. You little brat, we’ll drink you under the table.
With one glass after another, Xie Chongyi’s alcohol tolerance gradually became evident. White liquor, beer, red wine—no one knew how much he had poured down. One by one, the people across from him collapsed, while he remained perfectly clear-headed.
He let Wu Heng lean against his leg and play with the vines, only eating a little from time to time. Most of the time, he was either drinking or chatting with these people.
“The Jingzhou Base might fall too?”
“Even the capital isn’t that impressive,” the man answering propped his chin on his chopsticks, wincing from the pain, his tongue thick with drunkenness. “Before, they talked about things like great geography and economic belts. But now? Who the hell cares about feng shui or whatever—everything’s heading toward the end anyway.”
“The doctor said the Earth’s magnetic field might disappear completely. The sun might disappear too. When that happens, our electricity, communications, and abilities will all stop working. Hic. The doctor said that would be the real apocalypse.”
“Who’s the doctor?”
“Banruo.”
Lin Mengzhi had been listening with rapt attention. When that unfamiliar name suddenly appeared, he asked, “Who’s Banruo?”
“He…” Xue Shen had only gotten halfway through his sentence when rapid, loud knocking sounded at the door—three knocks in quick succession. The greyhound lying on the floor immediately pricked up its ears and stood up.
Looking out into the hallway through the window, several towering black shadows filled the entire view, standing motionless.
Xue Zhi opened the door. Her body clearly froze for a moment. Then she turned sideways and stepped half a pace aside.
Shen Ping’an stood outside with two insect-men, clearly not here with good intentions.
Although the two insect-men had once been human, they had almost completely lost their former appearance and consciousness. They simply stared straight ahead lifelessly, without glancing at anyone in the room—like two robots waiting for orders.
But their presence alone was enough to alarm the ability users inside. In panic, they dropped their chopsticks and wine glasses, standing up one after another.
“It’s late. You should all go rest.”
Shen Ping’an spoke, his expression cold and devoid of emotion.
This was the first time the others in the team had faced Shen Ping’an after he had been implanted with the parasite. On the surface, he seemed almost the same as before, but inside he was completely different. Shen Ping’an had once been the gentlest and kindest person in their group—without question.
They suffered a huge psychological shock. The person was clearly still alive, yet he had nothing to do with the person he used to be.
Lin Mengzhi was more straightforward. He suddenly rushed in front of Shen Ping’an, grabbed his shoulders, and shook him.
“Brother, wake up! Brother!!!”
Shen Ping’an merely pushed Lin Mengzhi away lightly. But on either side of his shoulders, two blood-red spears silently aimed at Lin Mengzhi.
A heavy stench of blood rushed toward him. Lin Mengzhi felt a chill run through his entire body and instinctively took two steps back.
Dou Lu’s eyes widened, unable to believe the scene in front of her.
“Do you not remember? Or are you unable to resist?” Xue Shen leaned against his chair and said weakly.
They seem to know each other.
The ability users who didn’t understand what was going on exchanged glances and reached that conclusion.
But unfortunately, once someone had become a follower of Ning Bizhen, they could only remain his follower until death. No one could change that.
“Well, uh… that’s right. It’s so late—we should go back to our own rooms to sleep!” Someone stood up first, breaking the stalemate.
He pulled out his chair and had just taken two steps when the muscles on his face suddenly tightened. Before anyone could react, his body suddenly swelled, burst open, and exploded into splattering blood and flesh.
Several people standing close by were instantly drenched in blood. They even seemed slower to react than those farther away. Terror appeared last on their faces. A brief commotion broke out in the room, but it quickly fell silent.
In a place no one noticed, a section of vine stained bright red quickly crawled back into Wu Heng’s body from beneath the table.
Wu Heng placed his palm on Xie Chongyi’s thigh and slowly straightened up.
Across from him were the wall still dripping blood and the terrified faces staring back at him.
He lowered his eyes.
Such perfectly good food—whether as rations themselves, or the food the dead had already eaten—had all been wasted like this.
The lighting in the room suddenly dimmed for a moment. In the brief darkness, a faint glimmer appeared—just for an instant. Then the lightbulb flickered back on.
Wu Heng’s seat was empty.
Drip. Drip.
The two insect-men heard the sound, and like the others who also heard it, they lowered their heads to look at the source—the left side of their own chests.
A hand shot straight through their torsos. Fingers stained bright red with fresh blood glowed like coral.
Puchi!
Wu Heng pulled his hands back, and the two insect-men collapsed with a thunderous crash!
Standing calmly in place, Wu Heng slowly spread his fingers. In each hand, he held an energy core still warm to the touch.
Unlike the energy cores of most ability users, these two each tightly encased a red, jaggedly-shaped gu insect—resembling amber.
Shen Ping’an, who stood in front of the insect-men, turned and saw the faint red glow streaming into Wu Heng’s palms.
The energy cores shattered into two puddles of glass-like material, but the two gu insects were still alive.
Without hesitation, Wu Heng clenched his hands again. From between his fingers, a deeper red seeped out, mixed with powdered shell. Several people in the room let out an involuntary gasp.
“They have an owner,” Shen Ping’an said, his tone part reminder, part warning.
Wu Heng lowered his hands, letting drops of blood fall from his fingertips. He looked into Shen Ping’an’s eyes and spoke in a volume only they could hear:
“You do too.”
After saying that, he raised his hand, grabbed Shen Ping’an’s shirt, and wiped all the grime from his hands clean.
…
The next morning, white and pink ribbons and balloons hung all over the campus. The murderous creeping jasmines and banana plants had become obedient, letting the insect-men decorate their branches with ribbons and Shen Miao’s personal posters.
Gifts had piled up at the school gates in previous days—no gift boxes, just high-level energy cores of various attributes in baskets, and the most easily found, colorful flowers, all clearly harvested from mutated plants.
Wu Heng sat atop the school gate. A creeping jasmine cautiously approached, only to be shredded by X’s teeth, and slunk away in defeat.
Chewing on an energy core, he scanned his surroundings—the playground behind him was still rehearsing performances, the faint strains of a piano drifting intermittently through the air.
That morning, Xue Shen had shown him the data collected yesterday: there were nearly ninety thousand ability users, and the number of survivors driven by Ning Bizhen to the outermost slum districts reached over a million. These million survivors also formed the main workforce keeping Hanzhou running.
Except for S District, the other areas were under Xie Chongyi and Xue Shen’s responsibility. Before leaving that morning, Xie Chongyi told him that he would stay in contact with him through the ring.
Wu Heng pondered how much influence Xie Chongyi might face, and his gaze unconsciously penetrated the walls of the office building across the street. Three people were turning the corner onto the street.
Behind Mao Fengying was probably her husband—Shen Ping’an’s father. With them was a young boy, who gave off a naïve, coquettish aura, even more pronounced when his facial expressions shifted with his eyes, eyebrows, nose, and mouth.
From far away, Mao Fengying could already see the boy sitting on the school gate. She opened her mouth wide, bewildered at how the insect-men from Area S could allow him to sit there.
“Mom, what are you looking at?” Shen Ruyi tugged on her mother’s arm.
“Nothing, nothing. What are you babbling about? Hurry up and go inside. Don’t want to see your brother? You still have to help me with work—lots of guests today…”
Mao Fengying’s nagging couldn’t stop Shen Ruyi’s curiosity. He simply looked in the same direction his mother had just been staring. There, under the gloomy sky, sat a boy whose beauty was almost supernatural, so striking it made his heart skip a beat—almost stop entirely.
“Mom, who is that?”
This was a person who didn’t fear even Ning Bizhen, a man who treated human lives like grass. Ning Bizhen hadn’t driven him away—he was still alive. Mao Fengying already knew this person’s depth and mystery, and hearing her youngest son ask questions now made her want to gouge out her own child’s eyes.
“Why are you asking? How many times have I told you before leaving? We cannot afford to offend anyone from Area S!” Mao Fengying said harshly, swiping her card and tugging both the man and her son forward.
Shen Ruyi kept looking back. By the third glance, the figure on the school gate had vanished.
…
Wu Heng returned to his room and waved his hand. Vines grew densely along the corners of the walls, twisting all the way up to the very center of the ceiling, where they bloomed into a large cluster of flowers.
Once the room was shielded from the outside world, Wu Heng looked at the uneasy people inside and said, “Xue Shen probably told you our plan for tonight before he left.”
“He did,” Xue Zhi nodded.
Lin Mengzhi and Xue Qi squeezed together on the sofa, speaking in unison: “Kill Ning Bizhen, right?”
“Good, that’s settled,” Wu Heng said. He pushed away X, who had been persistently nuzzling him. X stubbornly crouched back onto his shoulder, surveying the others with disdain.
Wu Heng stood in the center of the room, spreading his palms. Vines like octopus tentacles crawled out from his hands. They didn’t droop softly; instead, they swayed upward, twisting left and right like aquatic plants, or more like snakes raising their heads high.
“Ning Bizhen’s ability level isn’t higher than mine, and he’s only a single-type user. He can’t directly harm me too much. You, however, are different. Take Shen Ping’an, for example—if Ning Bizhen strikes, he could completely turn you into his puppets without anyone noticing.”
“If you want, the mutated plants can temporarily protect you for a while, preventing you from being implanted with a gu and losing your mind entirely.”
Wu Heng rarely spoke this much in one breath. He paused for a few seconds, giving everyone time to absorb what he had said.
X stretched its wings on his shoulder, like a mascot of power and authority perched on a throne.
“Gu implantation… gu implantation,” it echoed.
“The task will be more difficult, and the plants will require more energy. Once they leave me and lose my energy supply, they will die quickly.”
Death, the vines twisted and writhed.
Wu Heng glanced at everyone and continued, “So I need to remind you: if you want them to temporarily serve as your guardians, you’ll need to supply them with energy. In other words, they will enter your body.”
“But the benefit is that tonight, all of you will be under my protection.”
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