Chapter 209: “…your value is pitifully small”
Wu Heng also quite wanted to give Xie Chongyi a couple of punches.
“Let’s go down and take a look.” Ignoring Xie Chongyi’s whining, he placed his hands at his sides. A long, serrated green leaf—longer than his body—swept out from beneath him. Before Xie Chongyi could even blink, Wu Heng had already slid down in a flash, quickly overtaking the few people ahead who were stumbling and tumbling along the way.
“How come I didn’t think of doing it like that?”
The yellow sand was soft—step on it, and everything below the knees could sink straight in. Lin Mengzhi felt that someone as tall and handsome as himself would usually sink even deeper.
Up close, the inside of the base was far more shocking than it looked from afar. Broken human limbs were mixed together with fragments of insects. Half-eaten heads were filled with blood-red sand. From time to time, you would step on a leg or an arm.
Many people were collapsing in tears—grief-stricken or utterly despairing.
In contrast, the group that had come earlier to speak with Wu Heng—especially the woman who had talked the most—hurried up from behind with a face full of excitement. She took the loudspeaker from her waist and ran around shouting:
“Quick, quick! Everyone, pack up your things—we need to evacuate immediately!”
“Send people to notify Wurenxiang Base. Tell them we won’t trouble them after all, and they don’t need to send anyone to pick us up.” At this point, a faint trace of resentment crept into her tone.
…
Not long after arriving at the base, Wu Heng’s pant legs—just cleaned by the yellow sand—were once again smeared with blood and slime.
Lin Mengzhi and the others, who had been following not far behind, had already scattered to help out. Except for Xue Shen—and, among the rest, including Zhou Yi (and, well, except for X)—they were all full of fervor. Maybe they hadn’t been before, but now they were.
Wu Heng, meanwhile, wandered around nearby. Occasionally, he bent down to pick up some of the packed food scattered on the ground—sometimes a roughly made packet of candy, sometimes a piece of dried beef, or some tools. He picked them all up. To others passing by, his behavior looked a bit like those young scholars who proclaim that human civilization will never be extinguished. After all, he even picked up a single bowl, no different from scavenging junk.
And yet, it is precisely from such “junk” that human civilization is refined and rebuilt.
But they had misjudged him. Wu Heng had no intention of preserving civilization or ensuring its continuity—in his eyes, nothing was more important than having enough to eat.
He could distinguish between dead things and living things by their taste. Whether by smell or by eating them, the difference was significant.
Because of this, he gathered the scattered supplies around the base faster than anyone else.
He led three young-looking yaks behind him, and even unearthed and took away an entire litter of piglets buried beneath the ruins.
Wu Heng circled around the collapsed houses but found no survivors. As the leader of what was currently the largest and most promising base, although he didn’t care about what survivors thought of him, he also didn’t want to become a tyrant that everyone would want dead.
He couldn’t steal.
“Wuu…”
A very faint sobbing sound rang out.
Wu Heng quickly pinpointed the exact location and led the yaks briskly toward it.
After weaving around several broken walls, he finally got close to the source of the crying behind a half-collapsed wall. His stride paused briefly, then he drew back, stood on tiptoe, and looked down along the base of the wall.
It was a child, sitting against the wall, covered in large patches of blood. The child seemed to sense someone approaching, lifted his head, and met Wu Heng’s gaze.
“Does your family have any cows?” Wu Heng asked expressionlessly.
The child shook his head, his voice hoarse from crying. “We only have sheep—goats.”
Only then did Wu Heng feel at ease enough to lead the yaks over and crouch down in front of him.
“Are these your cows?” the child actually asked on his own.
Wu Heng hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “They are now.”
After the child fell silent, Wu Heng began to observe him. By Wu Heng’s standards, the boy looked much more clever than Wu Zhi—his eyes bright like lychee pits, his face no bigger than half a palm, delicate enough to blur the line between boy and girl. But perhaps due to malnutrition or long-term life under the high-pressure conditions of the apocalypse, his hair was as dry as straw, his skin sallow, and most importantly, he lacked the childlike innocence one would expect at his age.
The child traced his fingers back and forth in the sand, waiting for the handsome older boy in front of him to say, “Come with me.”
“Are your family’s goats still alive? Where are they?”
“……”
“Aren’t you going to ask my name, big brother?” the child tilted his face up.
“What’s your name?” Wu Heng asked hurriedly, then added, “Where are your goats?”
“My name is Jiang Lian.”
“Lian as in silver carp?” Wu Heng recalled that the last time he’d eaten was at dawn. He was hungry—and humans tend to lose patience when they’re hungry. Even more so for him.
“Lian as in window curtain,” the child said as he climbed up from the ground. His small body staggered slightly, but he put on an adult-like expression. “Follow me.”
All around them were broken walls and ruins. Jiang Lian led Wu Heng weaving through the debris, getting farther and farther from the noisiest area where survivors had gathered. Eventually, they arrived at a slope that had already been buried under yellow sand. Jiang Lian looked around but couldn’t find the sheep pen he remembered. When he looked back up at Wu Heng, he was already nervous.
“I remember… the people in our building kept their sheep here.”
“All of them?”
“Mm.” Jiang Lian sounded less and less certain. He had seen his parents trade supplies for their lives before—now he wanted to trade goats for his own survival.
“How many?”
“Quite a lot. Our family had two ewes and six rams, plus three newborn lambs. Other families had some too. Aunt Lisa distributed them to us, said it would make life easier.”
“Who’s Lisa?”
“The second-in-command of our Xianghu Base.”
“You even know what ‘second-in-command’ means?”
“The adults talk about it a lot. They say the second-in-command is as good as the first. The first-in-command doesn’t want the second to take over, but if the second did, it would be what the people want.”
Wu Heng roughly guessed who this “Lisa” was. If nothing unexpected had happened, it was probably the woman who had come up to speak with them earlier—the one who had initially been walking behind a middle-aged man, but the moment she saw an opportunity, immediately rushed to the front.
When the boy looked down at Jiang Lian again, his expression carried a deeper meaning than before. He didn’t like children—mostly because of Wu Zhi—but the one in front of him, he didn’t dislike. Clever and quick-witted, the child knew he couldn’t hide his thoughts, so he simply poured out everything he knew.
Under that gaze from above, Jiang Lian felt dizzy. He wasn’t an ability user, but he had gone on missions with his father’s team before. Even when facing the most terrifying mutated creatures, the fear had never been as intense as what he felt in these few short seconds.
Only when sweat began to roll down both sides of Jiang Lian’s face did Wu Heng withdraw his gaze. The instant he did, the sand mound in front of them exploded with a loud boom, and yellow sand surged into the air like smoke.
“Big brother… are you an ability user?” Jiang Lian reacted quickly, asking in astonishment.
“Baa—baa~~~” Startled, the sheep inside began bleating.
Wu Heng no longer had any need to pay attention to Jiang Lian. Without answering him, he stepped into the sheep pen and, with a lift of his hand, took away two-thirds of the flock. The rest—someone else would find them and take them away.
Seeing that Wu Heng was about to leave, Jiang Lian hurried after him.
“Big brother, where are the goats?”
“Big brother, I’ll help you lead the cows.”
“Big brother…”
Just as annoying as Wu Zhi had been as a child.
But suddenly, the voice behind him disappeared.
Wu Heng’s steps paused. He caught the scent of a strange powder in the air. Turning around, he saw that a mutated butterfly—twice the size of Jiang Lian—was clinging to him, its proboscis already pierced into the back of his neck.
Jiang Lian lay on the ground, completely motionless.
Wu Heng’s expression changed instantly. The butterfly’s head exploded, leaving only its body twitching sporadically.
He strode over and stopped in front of the unconscious Jiang Lian.
Raising one was raising. Raising two was raising. Raising hundreds or thousands was still raising them.
He could just treat them like livestock—pigs and cattle. Even if he couldn’t eat them, they could still work for him. Those without abilities could go farm. In Deathlands, there was never a shortage of work to be done.
But Wu Heng knew very clearly that this time, his decision to save him had nothing to do with whether he needed labor or food. Because the moment he lowered his head, he remembered the first time Wu Shiming had beaten him violently—he had run out of the house and onto the streets. The surroundings were brightly lit, yet not a single light offered him any hope.
Wu Heng bent down and picked the child up. He was very, very light.
By the time they returned to the survivors’ gathering point, most people had already assembled. In the noisy crowd, Wu Heng spotted Xie Chongyi at a glance, standing out like a crane among chickens.
Xie Chongyi was standing together with the woman who was very likely Lisa. Her attitude toward him was full of gratitude and respect, like he was a savior, talking nonstop about something.
Meanwhile, the young man was putting on gloves, his body slightly turned as he listened absentmindedly.
With just a sidelong glance, he noticed Wu Heng not far away—looking as if he had just come back from wandering off somewhere.
“…Cows and a kid?”
“Hold on a moment,” Xie Chongyi tossed a line to Lisa, then kicked aside the debris at his feet and strode toward Wu Heng.
Wu Heng also walked forward.
“Whose kid is that?” Xie Chongyi asked the moment they met.
“…”
…
“Is Deathlands really safe? A lot of people say it’s extremely dangerous—you can’t survive there at all!”
“Is there food? Are there places to live?”
“What do we need to do for you?”
Before departure, all the survivors gathered together, noisy like a pot of boiling water. With their lives on the line, how could they not worry? They had a thousand questions.
“Alright, alright!” Xue Qi climbed onto a set of steps. “Quiet down! Did you hear me? Quiet! Let me explain things to everyone!”
“Whose child is this? Come take him!” someone shouted loudly from below.
“…”
“Please, everyone, quiet down!” As the spokesperson of Xianghu Base, Qi Songshi brought the situation under control the moment he spoke. His gaze flicked briefly toward Xue Qi, and a satisfied smile tugged at his lips before he quickly suppressed it. In a deep voice, he continued:
“Whether Deathlands is absolutely safe is unknown—but we have no choice. Shen Cheng of Wurenxiang Base is ruthless and merciless in his management. And according to news from Jingzhou, the fall of all bases is only a matter of time. Deathlands is, on the contrary, the best—the very best—option. What’s more, this isn’t even up to us anymore. Do you understand?! What matters now is whether they are willing to take us in. Just now, if it weren’t for me and Lisa pleading on your behalf, we would have lost each other on the way to Wurenxiang. Do you understand?!”
The crowd’s noise and unease gradually softened into hushed whispers. From their reactions, it was clear that Qi Songshi’s words had reassured them to some extent.
Xue Qi clicked his tongue in annoyance.
“Get down,” Xue Shen said, looking at him. Once Xue Qi stepped down, Xue Shen walked up himself.
“We could have refused to let you in,” Xue Shen said. “Because, in my view, your value is pitifully small.”
With that single sentence, even the whispers in the crowd disappeared.
Qi Songshi clenched his teeth and hurriedly lowered his voice. “What are you saying?!”
But Xue Shen paid him no mind. His gaze swept across every face below.
“No matter how much your leader begged, that is not the reason we agreed. If that makes you uneasy, you can leave now. Or you can choose to enter Deathlands with that unease—live there with it—and think carefully about the real reason why you were allowed to enter in the first place.”
“But I can tell you one thing clearly,” the young man continued. “From the moment you enter Deathlands, Xianghu Base will cease to exist.” He glanced at Qi Songshi, whose face had turned ashen. “So I suggest you remember this well—who is providing for your lives from here on.”
Yet Xue Shen did not give them the answer. Just as he said, unease spread through them once more, and even the way they looked at Qi Songshi carried a little less trust than before.
Wu Heng was sitting on the roof of a jeep not far away. Between him and Xie Chongyi lay the still-unconscious Jiang Lian, along with X and Shukui, who had squeezed themselves up there.
Watching the scene at the gathering point, Xie Chongyi cast an amused glance at Wu Heng’s face and asked, though he already knew the answer:
“Who was Xue Shen talking about?”
Wu Heng rarely smiled, but this time he did.
“Me.”
**TN
Xue Shen is really good with politics and mental jujutsu. I wonder if he could win Mengzhi too XD