Chapter 194: White Moonlight
Xie Chongyi first showed a puzzled expression, then raised two fingers and clearly told his overly imaginative partner, “I can be two, but I can’t be both male and female.”
Having a child was only an idea. Even if it could actually happen, the child itself would never be more important to Xie Chongyi.
So after hearing his “clarification,” Wu Heng’s reaction was flat. “Oh? Is that so? Then forget it.”
Unexpectedly, Xie Chongyi didn’t let the topic go.
“I heard poppies are hermaphroditic and can complete pollination by themselves.” The boy lowered his head, moving closer to Wu Heng’s cheek, making Wu Heng instinctively step back—only to have the back of his neck caught. A warm hand slid from his neck down to his abdomen.
“The seeds are all in the ovary. Gege, is your ovary here?”
Wu Heng stiffened. “I don’t know.”
Xie Chongyi found his confused and slightly frightened look very cute. He also found Wu Heng cute when he was bloodthirsty and fierce, when he was silent, gloomy, and dejected; the way he ate was even cuter. Although, aside from his eyes barely qualifying as “cute,” the rest of him—well—was more like some kind of dangerous, cold-blooded creature.
“When I passed out, were you scared to death?” Xie Chongyi grasped Wu Heng’s fingers, interlacing them, and pressed him against the window.
Wu Heng nodded seriously. This wasn’t something he needed to think about.
“Sorry.” Xie Chongyi seemed to restrain his arrogance only in front of Wu Heng, yet even now he wasn’t being humble. He was apologizing for the inevitable pain he would bring the other, not because he needed to obtain forgiveness.
Wu Heng kept his gaze fixed deep in Xie Chongyi’s calm eyes and shook his head. “It’s okay.”
Even if Xie Chongyi were to die immediately after saying sorry, meeting him would still remain the most irreplaceable and fortunate part of Wu Heng’s life. Wu Heng had always been content.
Xie Chongyi looked at Wu Heng, his throat tightening as his breath hitched for a moment.
He wondered whether being a more selfish person might make him happier, might make him more worthy of Wu Heng. But before the thought could fully take shape, he rejected it himself—because if that were the case, he might never have participated in the experiment at all, nor been sent to Hanzhou to attend the same school as Wu Heng.
And yet, Xie Chongyi still wanted to live a little longer—just a little longer.
The two of them didn’t get out of the car to sleep on the ground with the others. Instead, they leaned against each other inside the car and spent the night that way.
…
The next day, before the light in the sky had fully spread across the earth, they had to set out again.
Ruan Silian and Ao She woke up more than two hours earlier than the others and started another fire nearby to prepare breakfast.
Ao She was practical and didn’t care much about taste. He took a sack of cornmeal, mixed it with water, kneaded it into bun-like shapes, set up a steamer, and made over a hundred of them in one go.
“They can be carried along as rations, both people and livestock can eat them.” It also saved time since they wouldn’t have to stop to cook on the road.
Ruan Silian was more meticulous. She stirred the cornmeal into a paste, added chopped dried vegetables and dried scallops, and separately made a pot of mushroom chicken soup for Wu Heng.
At daybreak, everyone—disheveled and unkempt—began eating breakfast. Ao She carried his corn buns around, stuffing two into each person’s hands by force. Even Shukui and X had to eat—three each.
“Soupy stuff doesn’t keep you full,” he said.
They ate while planning how to proceed.
“We can’t drive up the mountain. The vehicles will have to be put away.”
“What about the supplies on them?”
“Store everything, but each person can carry essentials—food, water, some emergency medicine if we have it. And don’t forget weapons for self-defense.”
“What about the livestock?”
Not wanting to burden others, Ao She drove them off the vehicles. “They can walk on their own. The cattle can even carry loads.”
“Alright.”
Before they had vehicles, almost everyone carried large-capacity backpacks. After getting the vehicles, they hadn’t thrown those packs away, and now they finally came in handy.
Wu Heng only put some snacks in his bag and nothing else—he had space to store things elsewhere. The others, however, couldn’t afford to travel light like him. They carried as much as they possibly could. Just for drinking water alone, each person strapped on a large jug. By this point, they also consciously grabbed several of Ao She’s corn buns, stuffed them into bags, and hung them under their backpack straps. Repellent sprays to drive away insects and wild animals had to be brought along as well…
Just organizing and packing everything took the group more than half an hour. Once Wu Heng saw that things were mostly ready, he stored away several vehicles. There was no need to remind anyone—Doctor Chen would automatically sort out the supplies inside, and might even clean the vehicles until they were spotless.
This was the first time Wu Heng had revealed his spatial ability in front of the newcomers. The others were already used to it, but Yang Ao was staring in stunned disbelief, not even trying to hide it.
No wonder Yang Yu had said last night that Yang Liangliang should acknowledge Wu Heng as his godfather—he himself almost wanted to do the same!
Shen Ruyi stood at the edge of the group. An hour earlier, during breakfast, not only had the gentle and easygoing Ruan Silian skipped over him when handing out food, even Ao She had ignored his existence!
Now, not only was his stomach empty and aching with hunger, but he was also forced to carry a backpack as heavy as a turtle shell. The sky wasn’t fully bright yet, and he kept staring at Wu Heng across from him, who was calmly combing the feathers of that “damn bird.” The man was indeed good-looking—but also hateful. His brother had been trying to please this person, and that was why he hadn’t been given any food.
“Water.” Shen Ping’an handed Shen Ruyi a two-liter plastic bottle.
Shen Ruyi jumped in protest. “I’m already carrying two bottles!”
“Your hands are still free. Carry another one.”
By the time Wu Heng finished grooming X’s feathers, everyone else was ready. He put away the comb and said, “Let’s go.”
—
There was no path on the mountain, nor any trace of human passage. The slope was entirely over sixty degrees, tangled with vines and thorny undergrowth. The ground beneath their feet was uneven, crisscrossed with thick tree roots pushing up through the soil. No one knew where the water above was coming from, but it flowed down continuously, making the forest damp and slippery. Stepping on the roots was especially dangerous—one careless move and you’d fall flat on your face. Above them, a dense, dark canopy stretched endlessly, with no visible end.
Thirty minutes after setting out, the distance they had covered—if they turned back, they could still glimpse last night’s campsite faintly through gaps in the branches and leaves.
Wu Heng and Xie Chongyi walked at the rear of the group. At the very front were Shen Ping’an and Ao She; in the middle was Xue Qi. Ao She’s ducks darted around on both sides, while X squatted on Shukui’s head, and Shukui kept sticking out its tongue.
“Shukui,” Xie Chongyi called. The big dog turned around and stood in front of them.
Xie Chongyi unscrewed the lid of his water bottle, had it open its mouth, and poured the water straight in. “That’s enough.”
Wu Heng held a handful of fresh grass shoots, chewing them as he walked—he had picked them along the way.
“Want some?” he asked Xie Chongyi.
“No.” Xie Chongyi wasn’t actually some kind of insect, nor did he count as an animal symbiote.
Wu Heng chewed with crisp crunching sounds. After finishing a few stalks, he said softly, “I feel like the temperature is lower than before.”
Xie Chongyi didn’t respond immediately. Instead, he noticed that the forest around them was gradually losing the characteristics it had back on the lowlands. Various fungi and konjac-like plants had disappeared, banyan trees were almost nowhere to be seen, and the dense mass of epiphytes had vanished as well.
In their place were straight pine and fir trunks, low shrubs, and even the light had become a bit brighter than before.
“Wu Heng, do you remember I told you a long time ago—before the apocalypse, I once went north for field research? There were birch trees there that exceeded world records.”
Wu Heng nodded. “I remember.”
Xie Chongyi wasn’t a professional botanist—he just had a good memory. After scanning the surroundings once more, he lifted his head and looked at the neatly aligned canopy above. Red leaves swayed gently, and the sunlight filtering down was no longer in irregular patches, but a bright, even diffusion.
“The vegetation along this stretch is exactly the same as what I saw in the north before,” he said. Compared to the layered, densely stacked structure of a rainforest, northern vegetation was much simpler and more straightforward.
Wu Heng still had a blade of grass in his mouth, half inside, half hanging out. He thought for a moment. “But we’re clearly in the southernmost region right now. Even with higher elevation, northern vegetation shouldn’t appear here.”
Neither of them could explain the strange phenomenon.
“Let’s keep going and observe,” Xie Chongyi said, reaching out to straighten Wu Heng’s sun hat. “Tell the others to stay alert.”
“WAAAAAAAHHHHH—!” Lin Mengzhi’s scream suddenly rang out from the front.
Wu Heng’s pupils shifted color—and in the next instant, he was gone.
Xie Chongyi, still standing where he was, looked at the sun hat left behind in his hand because its owner had moved too fast, and ground his teeth.
But in the next moment, he smiled indifferently. It didn’t matter—if he died, he would become the one and only “white moonlight” in Wu Heng’s world.
“What kind of squirrel is this?! This is a ‘Bestore squirrel’!” Xue Qi shouted, pointing at the gigantic squirrel blocking their path.
“Chipmunk,” Ao She said, signaling the lead duck beside him to keep its followers in check and not startle it. “It doesn’t seem hostile.”
“Its eyes aren’t red, it hasn’t mutated,” Yang Ao added.
“???” Dou Lu was full of question marks. “With that size, you’re saying it hasn’t mutated? That thing has to weigh at least two hundred jin!”
The chipmunk had fallen from the sky. When it landed, it was still clutching a pine nut in its front paws. Its cheek pouches were already stuffed so full they bulged wider than the broadest part of its body. The markings on its back were clear, its fur visibly soft, and its eyes were bright and sharp—humans hadn’t seen such a harmless and adorable “little animal” in a long time.
Wu Heng appeared silently in front of the group. He had thought they’d encountered some danger ahead—only to find it was just a squirrel.
The chipmunk’s nose twitched constantly as it observed this group of strange-looking creatures that had intruded into the land of death. It even seemed curious.
It hopped forward a few steps and, in a blink, arrived right in front of Shen Ruyi.
Startled, Shen Ruyi let out a scream and turned to run. At that moment, the chipmunk suddenly reached out with its paw—snatching away a corn bun hanging from his backpack.
After grabbing the food, it leapt up the tree in a few bounds, chittering loudly from above.
“The animals here seem pretty friendly,” Zhou Yi said after watching the chipmunk disappear. “No zombies, and the animals haven’t mutated, just a bit bigger. No wonder people say this place is a treasure land.”
A gust of wind passed through, and a few broad leaves fell from above. Lin Mengzhi and Xue Qi both shivered at the same time.
“Why does it suddenly feel… kind of cold?”
