Chapter 186: Entering Changzhou Base
Wu Heng, his eyes half-closed, grabbed Xie Chongyi’s hand and placed it on himself, but the other man didn’t exert the slightest bit of force. Wu Heng grunted twice, released Xie Chongyi’s wrist, reached out to take his hand, and slid it between his legs.
Xie Chongyi’s pupils, which had finally returned to normal, began to fill with red once more, but he did nothing. He simply watched the other man quietly, waiting to see what else he might do.
Half-asleep and half-awake, Wu Heng had been at it for ages, yet the burning thirst within him hadn’t eased in the slightest. He opened his eyes, his gaze clear and sharp.
Xie Chongyi thought he would forget everything he’d just done and fall asleep.
Instead, Wu Heng narrowed his eyes, looking exactly like a cobra raising its head to threaten its prey.
“If you don’t fuck me, I’m going to fuck you.”
Seeing his deadpan expression, Xie Chongyi couldn’t help but laugh out loud.
The boy reached out and pushed Wu Heng down. Just as Wu Heng struggled to get up, the other’s icy fingers had already slipped into his body. Wu Heng’s body, which had been tense moments ago, went limp, and his eyes filled with confusion.
At times like this, Xie Chongyi couldn’t exactly be called gentle; a little pain was necessary to make the memory more vivid. He pushed in a second finger.
Wu Heng didn’t spend every day with Xie Chongyi, so accepting this wasn’t easy. Waves of pleasure made his teeth ache. “Enough… please.”
“No.” Xie Chongyi said, then leaned down to kiss him, sliding another finger inside.
A sob escaped through Wu Heng’s teeth.
Xie Chongyi’s mouth was as wicked as it could be. He bit down on Wu Heng’s lower lip and asked, “Why are you crying? Didn’t you ask for this yourself?” He wasn’t the type to constantly indulge his desires and revel in them, but once he started, it was impossible to stop anytime soon.
Wu Heng was blocked both above and below; he couldn’t escape, nor could he speak.
Only petals fell one by one onto the sheets.
Petals gradually blanketed the sheets and even the floor. Wu Heng’s slightly pale skin was now covered in patches of deep red and a dense network of bite marks, some of which were even oozing blood.
Wu Heng’s consciousness drifted from clarity to confusion. The harder and deeper Xie Chongyi thrust, the softer his voice became as he whispered in Wu Heng’s ear.
“The window seems to be open. You have to be quieter, gege.”
“Gege, baby…”
Wu Heng passed out, unaware of when it had ended.
When he woke up, he was already in the car. Outside the window, red petals rained down from the sky like blood, and the face of a stunningly beautiful woman appeared amidst the flower petals.
Everyone in the car wore solemn expressions, their breaths coming in ragged gasps.
Xie Chongyi reached his arm out the window. With a slight twist of his wrist, blood spurted from the woman’s mouth. Then, the purplish-red flower center shattered, and her face emerged from within. Her entire head was violently yanked free, tumbling rapidly through the air. Mid-flight, Xie Chongyi, his expression unflinching, crushed her skull in his hand.
Wu Heng tried to move but found his body tightly bound. He looked down and saw he was still wrapped in the hotel’s quilt.
What had happened?
“You’re awake?” Xie Chongyi held the woman’s wood-element energy core in his hand and held it up before Wu Heng’s eyes. “Good morning. Breakfast.”
“……” Wu Heng glanced outside; it wasn’t even dawn yet. He cleared his dry throat. “Have we left the Meizhou Base?”
Xie Chongyi lowered his hand. “We left just after three in the morning. We’ve only been on the road for a little over an hour.”
Wu Heng wriggled out from under the covers. “Why did we leave so early?”
Yang Ao sat in the front seat, a lingering look of unease still on his face. “We were sleeping at the hotel late into the night when it suddenly got noisy outside. Teacher Ying and Dou Lu went out to check and found that a plant symbiont had mutated and was eating people…”
At this point, Yang Ao’s voice dropped noticeably. “A lot of ability users were hunting them down right on the street. They dragged several innocent plant symbiotes out and slaughtered them right there. The class monitor saw things were getting out of hand and woke us all up.”
“So we left Meizhou?”
“Mm-hmm.” Yang Ao nodded.
“What about that mutated plant from earlier?”
“She was also leaving Meizhou. She said she found a nest of rabbits on the mountain yesterday and wanted to get there early before the ability users from the base beat her to it. Lin Mengzhi can’t resist anything that looks good,” Yang Ao said, his tone turning helpless and exasperated at this point, “so he took the initiative to let her hitch a ride.”
“As a result, just a few minutes after she got in the car, she grabbed Lin Mengzhi and took a huge bite out of him. That’s when we realized she was the plant symbiote the Meizhou base had been searching for.”
When Wu Heng heard that Lin Mengzhi had been bitten, he frowned slightly. “Was it serious?”
Yang Ao pointed to his own neck. “She almost tore his throat open.”
“Stop the car.”
Xie Chongyi was leaning against the window beside them, eyes closed as he caught up on sleep. When the car stopped, he didn’t move at all—only his eyes rolled slightly beneath his eyelids, clearly rolling them in annoyance.
Lin Mengzhi had been riding in the truck driven by Xue Zhi. Xue Zhi pulled over ahead, and Wu Heng shrugged off his coat, putting it on as he strode quickly toward the front.
Inside the vehicle, Lin Mengzhi was still vigorously wiping the blood off his body with a piece of cloth. The wound on his neck hadn’t started healing yet—half a chunk of flesh hung there, swaying, making him grimace in pain.
The young man raised his hand and knocked on the car door.
“Get out.”
Hearing Wu Heng’s calm, cold voice, Lin Mengzhi didn’t get out. Instead, he shrank toward the driver’s seat. “I’m not getting out.”
Wu Heng stood silently on the ground, saying nothing, not urging him either.
Click.
Lin Mengzhi obediently opened the door and jumped out of the truck, his face full of guilt and unease.
Wu Heng reached out his hand toward him. Lin Mengzhi instinctively tried to dodge, but failed. A warm palm covered the wound, and the exposed flesh began to heal at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Looking at Wu Heng’s somewhat pale face, Lin Mengzhi forgot about the pain. “It’s all my fault. I didn’t stay on guard—I almost got them hurt too.”
“It’s fine. After all, you were the one who got bitten.” Wu Heng withdrew his hand, deliberately leaving a small part of the wound unhealed.
Lin Mengzhi touched his neck. It still hurt a little, but he felt so guilty that he didn’t dare ask about it.
Behind the truck was Xue Shen’s car. Xue Shen leaned over the steering wheel, watching the two people ahead, while Xue Qi reclined in the passenger seat and remarked, “Feels like Lin Mengzhi only listens to Wu Heng.”
“What does that prove?” Xue Shen asked.
“I was just saying it casually,” Xue Qi replied, finding Xue Shen inexplicably strange. “I didn’t think that much about it.”
“Words without purpose are better left unsaid. If it has no meaning, there’s no need to say it.”
“?”
Wu Heng got back into the car, and the convoy set off again.
He carefully wiped the blood off his hands, ignoring Yang Ao’s look of admiration, and glanced toward Xie Chongyi, who seemed to have already fallen asleep.
The dim daylight outlined the sharp, shadowed contours of his profile. After a moment, Wu Heng leaned closer. “Class Monitor?”
Xie Chongyi raised his hand, placing it between them. “No unsolicited approaches.”
…What now?
—
“We should reach Changzhou this afternoon. If nothing unexpected happens, we’ll arrive at Deathlands within a week.”
“Changzhou is by the sea. Over the past few months, marine creatures have repeatedly come ashore to harass human bases. On top of that, there have been tsunamis. The base in Changzhou has been forced to relocate again and again, and now it’s basically no different from a small fishing village. If this keeps happening a few more times, Changzhou will probably be merged into neighboring Haizhou.”
“If it’s by the sea, does that mean there’s a lot of seafood?!!!”
“Drive faster—I want to eat seafood tonight!”
Along the way, the vegetation that dominated the territory gradually began to change. The firs and pines commonly seen in Meizhou became less frequent, replaced by flamboyant trees and banyan trees growing with explosive vigor, competing for dominance. Even large mutated animals could easily hide among them, their forms nearly impossible to spot. The lush greenery made it feel as though they were traveling through a vast green ocean.
“Say… if they keep growing like this, do you think they’ll pierce through the atmosphere?”
“No.”
After getting some sleep, Wu Heng had flowers blooming all over his head again. When they entered the Changzhou base, the guard was startled when he stuck his head out of the car window.
“Are you sure there’s no problem?” All the major bases had already received news from Meizhou—plant symbiotes were the most dangerous existence in spring.
Wu Heng replied seriously, “I’m sure.”
“…That’s not for you to decide,” the guard said.
They took out a wristband. “Put this on.”
“It’s not dangerous. It’s just to make sure we can track your location and physical condition at any time.”
Wu Heng took the wristband, returned to his seat, and silently put it on himself.
At that moment, Xie Chongyi moved over beside him, took the wristband, and helped him fasten it properly.
“Class Monitor.”
“Mm?” Xie Chongyi’s response carried a faint nasal tone, a kind of lazy indifference, as if he couldn’t quite be bothered.
“What were you mad about this morning?”
“You don’t need to know.”
…
Changzhou was livelier than Meizhou—lively in a somewhat unusual way. It might have been because the place was smaller, making the number of people seem larger, and naturally more bustling than other bases. But what was different was that the air here carried a festive, almost celebratory atmosphere.
They randomly found a small inn. The owner didn’t even bother collecting the money—just told them to leave it on the counter, tossed them a few keys, and hurried straight into the kitchen.
Wu Heng caught a whiff of a fragrant smell. Following it, he walked to the doorway of the room the owner had just rushed into and peeked inside. Lin Mengzhi’s head appeared beside him, also craning to look in.
The kitchen wasn’t big, and it had all the usual pots and utensils—that wasn’t strange.
What was strange… was that there was an octopus inside.
And that octopus had filled the entire kitchen.
The octopus was entirely translucent, like polished jade. Several of its soft tentacles were suctioned to the ceiling, while its massive, terrifying head hung upside down in midair, its eyes fixed on the owner in the corner.
The owner held both hands up, exerting all his strength. His face was flushed red, sweat pouring down, yet he had only managed to tear off one of the octopus’s tentacles.
That tentacle, as thick as a pillar, slammed heavily onto the ground. Without the slightest hesitation, it slithered rapidly toward the owner, coiling around his entire body and beginning to tighten.
“Hey—hey, hey hey hey! Damn it all, send me a live one, will you?!”
The owner’s wails and curses echoed through the kitchen, but the octopus’s gaze slowly shifted away from him—toward the doorway.
Wu Heng curved his lips into a smile at it, looking as if he had impeccable table manners before a meal.
