Chapter 208: Survivors
The base before them could hardly be described as anything but utterly devastated. In fact, it didn’t even resemble a base so much as the ruins of a vanished city lying in the heart of a desert.
By comparison, the so-called Deathlands lived up to its name in reverse—it was so beautiful it seemed like another world entirely.
The humans fleeing in all directions looked like an anthill that had just been doused with boiling water—scattered and collapsing. From afar, the ability users who fought back appeared pitifully small, no different from fireflies deep within an abyss.
Panting came from behind. “We have to go over there,” Xue Qi said. He could barely count himself as one of the insects, yet at the sight of this swarm dark enough to blot out the sun, his mouth and throat turned dry and itchy, as if all the moisture in his body had been squeezed out through his pores as sweat.
They stood on higher ground. The large number of humans in the base below had drawn the swarm’s attention. Aside from a few stragglers that occasionally broke off and flew elsewhere, they had not yet been noticed.
“With numbers like that, there’s no guarantee we’d make it back alive if we go,” Xue Shen said as he appeared, his expression cold. “Reinforce the entrance to the passage. We’re heading back now.” It wasn’t that he felt nothing, but he bore no responsibility for these people.
The beating of countless insect wings stirred up clouds of yellow sand. Wu Heng had no choice but to narrow his eyes. Every second, someone was being knocked down, their blood spraying out only to be swallowed by the sand in the blink of an eye.
Wu Heng lowered his gaze. The chaotic voices in his mind gradually fell silent. He lifted his leg and turned around.
A few steps behind him, Xie Chongyi watched with a bright smile. “Not going to take a look?”
Wu Heng didn’t know whether he should say no or yes. He didn’t know what Xie Chongyi was thinking. In truth, what Xie Chongyi thought didn’t matter to the world—but it mattered a great deal to him.
So he spent a bit of time thinking—and in that time, even more people died behind him.
“They don’t belong to Deathlands,” Wu Heng said flatly.
A reddish hue slowly crept into Xie Chongyi’s eyes. “If you ask me,” he said, “they could belong.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, the already battered city suddenly erupted with an earth-shaking explosion. Wu Heng turned his head and saw that the mutated insects, which had been diving down relentlessly, were all slamming into an invisible protective barrier above the base.
The enormous insects burst into sprays of blood the instant they collided with it—but they didn’t stop. Everywhere one looked, the scene was horrifying.
Wu Heng’s face turned deathly pale in an instant. He spun around to look at the now-empty ground before him. He had known it—he had known all along!
Xue Shen seemed about to speak, hesitating, but before he could figure out what to say, Wu Heng’s figure had already vanished from among them.
The boy reappeared near the part of the base that wasn’t covered by the barrier. He grabbed a woman lying on the ground, raised his hand, and in one motion shredded seven or eight grotesquely shaped insects. Then he directly hurled the still-dazed woman and the child in her arms into the protective shield.
The woman stood there, her long hair whipping in the air, shouting something at him—but Wu Heng couldn’t hear her now, nor did he care to. Standing where he was, streaks of bright yellow light began climbing up from his neck, and then, with him at the center, they split into tens of thousands of beams that shot toward the insect swarm and the tide of corpses.
The pitch-black mass of insects was scattered apart by the countless beams of light that darted wildly back and forth. Even more terrifying was that these suddenly appearing rays—bright enough to blind—were hotter than flames. Wherever they passed, there wasn’t even time for a scorched smell to form before everything had already melted into ash.
Xue Shen, Xue Qi, and X soon rushed over as well. The humans fleeing in all directions still needed them to be rescued one by one.
As for Wu Heng, he only needed to deal with the insect swarm and the corpse tide.
He plunged into the horde of the dead and locked eyes with one of the mutated zombies. It exhaled a foul stench, pus streaming across its face; the rotting flesh on its neck had even turned green—far less presentable than Doctor Chen.
It’s all your fault.
Wu Heng murmured silently. As the zombie reached behind him toward his heart, Wu Heng struck first—thrusting his hand straight into its skull and crushing the energy core inside its brain into powder.
Wu Heng killed the zombies one by one with his own hands. The anger in his heart only grew harder to quell, and the harder it was to suppress, the faster and more ruthless his movements became. His white sweater was soon soaked through with foul, blackened blood; even his face and hair were splattered. He looked like a madman drenched in gore.
To an ability user of Wu Heng’s level, these zombies were easier to cut down than mud. After wave upon wave fell, he crouched amid a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood, scooping up a handful of damp, blood-soaked sand to scrub his hands and face.
Then he tilted his head up. The remaining scattered insects were being relentlessly chased down by X.
Boots made no sound on the sand, but that didn’t mean Wu Heng was unaware someone was approaching. He slowly stood, turned around, and saw Xie Chongyi—his eyes glowing red.
“You promised me.” Blood beads clung to Wu Heng’s lashes. When he lowered his head, they slid down along his cheeks. But soon he lifted it again, wearing the same expression as Xie Chongyi. “But I’ll help you. Whatever you want to do, I’ll help you see it through.”
The light in Xie Chongyi’s eyes slowly dimmed. A sheen of moisture blurred the brightness of his gaze. After a moment of silent entanglement, he stepped forward and, with his right arm—still not transformed—pulled Wu Heng into a tight embrace.
Very soon, both of them felt the hollow of the other’s neck grow warm and damp.
—
As for the rescue efforts that followed, the group sat on a distant desert high ground, far from the base. Below them, the people still looked like ants. Ability users were helping ordinary humans—those uninjured aiding the wounded. Vehicles were parked nearby, waiting to be filled with people and supplies, ready to transport them to bases that were still safe for now.
“You guys still didn’t argue over this?!” Lin Mengzhi, who had just woken up and missed the battle, wore an expression that made it impossible to tell whether he was pleased or not. But seeing that Wu Heng and Xie Chongyi hadn’t gotten into a fight over something like “How could you do this—you don’t love me at all,” his face plainly showed undisguised astonishment.
If it were him and his woman, they’d have gone at it for a hundred rounds.
Wu Heng rested his chin on his hand. “Why would we argue?”
“He was practically about to die—about to die, and he still had to meddle in this kind of business.”
“If it’s something he doesn’t want to do, then it’s just meddling. But if it’s something he does want to do, then it isn’t.”
Lin Mengzhi felt a little dizzy.
“Exactly, how can matters concerning humans be considered meddling?” Xue Qi said. “The moment we awakened our abilities, we were destined to save the world. What, were they meant for scrolling online? Tap tap tap.”
“That much I know. As captain, saving humanity is my responsibility.” Lin Mengzhi waved his hand. He just hoped that what A’Heng had finally gained wouldn’t disappear so quickly.
“Um… th-that—” A group of people climbed up from the lowest part of the desert, each of them panting so hard they could barely form complete sentences. “Y-you… just now… h-helped us, right?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Xue Qi nodded. “What about it?”
“Are you from the Wurenxiang Base, sent to pick us up?”
“No, we were just passing by,” Xue Qi said.
“Passing by?” The woman behind the man cried out in shock. She looked around. “This place has been nearly deserted for over half a month. There are no other bases nearby. Not only have all the people fled, even the animals and plants are gone—you’re saying you were just passing through here?”
“We came from Deathlands,” Lin Mengzhi said.
“Deathlands?!” This time, it wasn’t just the woman who was stunned—everyone else was at a loss for words. Of course they knew what kind of place Deathlands was, but almost no one had ever successfully entered it.
Seeing the complicated expressions on their faces, Lin Mengzhi clicked his tongue. “What’s with those looks? I’m telling you, don’t even think about setting your sights on Deathlands—it already belongs to us.”
Wu Heng and Xie Chongyi exchanged a glance. In that look, each tried to pass off Lin Mengzhi as the other’s “pet pig.”
The others hadn’t even said anything yet, and Lin Mengzhi had already spilled all their secrets.
After silently passing the blame back and forth—only to realize they were all on the same side—they turned together to look at Xue Shen, who was still lowering his head and wiping his glasses.
The class rep would surely accept this mess with a smile.
“No, no—we didn’t mean that.” The woman’s sweat-soaked face was instantly filled with panic. She waved her hands before letting them fall weakly. “I’ve heard Deathlands is actually a good place, with mountains and water, no natural disasters. Inside… I’m sorry, I mean, I…”
Xue Shen finally finished wiping his glasses. Somewhat impatient, he cut her off. “You want us to take in the survivors from your base? How many people do you have? And how many of them are ability users?”
The others who had come with the woman looked embarrassed under the barrage of questions. Only she bent slightly at the waist and answered, “We used to have over twenty thousand people. Now there are probably less than a third left. Ability users make up less than a tenth.”
“You didn’t answer my first question,” Xue Shen said, sharper than ever.
The woman forced herself to respond, “If Deathlands really is better than the outside… then yes, I—I do have that thought.”
“Deathlands is better than the outside,” Xue Shen said. “Because it’s a place that abandoned humanity—and was abandoned by humanity. But whether we accept you or not isn’t up to me.”
The woman nearly burst into tears of joy. She quickly turned to look at Lin Mengzhi, about to bow deeply, but his scalp practically tingled in alarm as he hurriedly pulled her upright. “Not me!”
His shout still echoed across the desert when Wu Heng’s clear, gentle voice rang out.
“It’s me. Organize your supplies and count your people. We leave in two hours.”
A few others seemed ready to ask more questions, but the sharp-eyed woman quickly tugged at each of them, silencing them with a look. They scrambled back in a hurry, kicking up clouds of yellow sand as they went.
Before long, the wind picked up. Sand swirled in all directions, and across the endless desert, the broken remnants of human life were blown far, far away.
“Why don’t we go down and take a look—see if there’s anything we can help with,” Xue Qi said, standing up. “We can also ask about their base while we’re at it.”
“Sure.”
Seeing Xue Shen and Lin Mengzhi head down, Shukui—who had never been to a desert before—and X happily followed along, even rolling around behind them in excitement.
Just as Wu Heng was about to stand, Xue Shen passed right in front of him. From below, his expression looked just as grim as before, without the slightest sign of easing.
Xue Shen tucked his glasses away and, without warning, threw a punch straight at Xie Chongyi’s face—sending him plopping back down onto the ground.
“As your friend, I’m not as selfless as Wu Heng,” Xue Shen said hoarsely. “I don’t have any interest in saving the world. I wouldn’t care even if all of humanity died out. I just don’t want you throwing your life away.”
After saying that, he turned and walked downhill. His back looked unexpectedly desolate.
Wu Heng thought Xie Chongyi had brought it on himself, but still wanted to ask if it hurt. Yet the moment he turned his head, he met Xie Chongyi’s playful expression.
“Baby, it hurts so much. Blow on it?”