Chapter 211.1: Infected
Seeing Wu Heng and Xie Chongyi like that, Lin Mengzhi immediately let go of Wu Zhi and straightened up awkwardly.
“What’s wrong? Did someone b*lly you?” Wu Zhi quickly noticed something off about him.
“As if, who would dare b*lly me?”
“Really? Maybe you just don’t realize when someone is b*llying you.”
“Huh?” Lin Mengzhi didn’t understand at all.
“Hey, hey—” From the distant slope, a middle-aged man came running and waving. It was Qi Songshi, leaning forward as he hurried over. “I’ve been looking for you guys forever!”
“Aren’t you counting the people?” Xue Qi asked.
“I had someone else take care of that,” Qi Songshi said. “I came to get acquainted with you all. How should I address you?”
As he spoke, his gaze quickly swept over everyone, finally lingering mostly on Xie Chongyi.
Xie Chongyi smiled in an easygoing way. “Xie Chongyi.”
Qi Songshi wasn’t really asking for his name. “What kind of work are you mainly responsible for here?”
Xie Chongyi kept smiling. “I’m still waiting for instructions from above.”
“I see,” Qi Songshi said, rubbing his hands, his attention shifting again to Xue Shen. “And how should I address you?”
Before Xue Shen could answer, Lin Mengzhi grabbed Qi Songshi by the shoulders and forcibly turned him around. “Look at you, so anxious. The person you’re looking for is right here.” The boy held Qi Songshi’s head steady so he could finally see Wu Heng, who had been sitting on the ground eating the whole time.
It wasn’t as if Qi Songshi hadn’t noticed him. Back in the desert, they had spoken face-to-face, and in the end, it was this very person who had nodded in agreement to take in the survivors from Xianghu Base.
It was just that he found it hard to believe—too delicate, too beautiful. Some powerful ability users with strength to spare often kept young boys around who looked just like this: overwhelmingly beautiful, to the point that it overshadowed everything else.
But that was only from Qi Songshi’s perspective. If he had endured the hardship of walking at the very front of the survivors’ line, he would have seen the same scene as those ahead of him—beauty was the least noteworthy thing about the boy.
Lin Mengzhi didn’t bother hiding anything—he wished he could elevate his childhood friend to a place where everyone could see him. When he saw Qi Songshi fall silent, he worried he hadn’t made things clear enough.
“The entire Deathlands is under his control.”
Wu Heng had just finished what he was eating. He wiped his hands on the grass at his sides, then stood up. “Let’s go.”
And just like that, Qi Songshi was left behind by the group.
Not all the ability users from Xianghu Base had evolved to the point of teleportation, so they still relied on vehicles. Fortunately, they had enough of them, since the evacuation had been planned and prepared a week in advance.
However, Deathlands was still completely primitive—there were no roads at all for vehicles to travel on. While Wu Heng and the others could have used their abilities to bring ability users to the base quickly, most of the survivors were still ordinary people. Taking them along was the real challenge.
The only option was to use abilities to clear a path. Luckily, this was exactly what earth- and wood-type ability users were best at.
Unfortunately, the ability users in Xianghu Base were not well-rounded—they were specialized. Among the wood-type users, only four specialized in plant manipulation, and among the earth-type users, only two were skilled at reshaping terrain in a short time.
“Sorry… according to the ability manual written in Jingzhou, it’s recommended that ability users focus on one direction, at most two. If you try to learn everything, it might have a big impact on the body.” Even though no such side effects had appeared yet, everyone was still afraid.
“What manual?” Xie Chongyi suddenly asked, looking at Lisa.
Lisa pulled out a small, wrinkled booklet from her bag.
Xie Chongyi took it and flipped through a few pages. The listed rules and notes felt somewhat familiar. He skimmed quickly, turning a couple of pages at a time, and soon reached the last page. The moment he saw the author’s name, he closed the booklet.
“What’s wrong?” Wu Heng tried to take the manual from him to have a look as well.
When Wu Heng reached for it, he clearly felt resistance—Xie Chongyi seemed reluctant to let him see it. That only made him more curious. He snatched it away and lowered his head to read.
There was nothing particularly unusual inside—it was all basic knowledge about using abilities. Wu Heng quickly flipped to the last page, and the printed name in the bottom-right corner made his expression turn strange.
“So it was written by you.”
“I just wrote it casually back in Jingzhou. Who knew they’d take it and use it as an official manual?” Xie Chongyi handed the booklet back, watching as Lisa carefully tucked it away again, his gaze lingering for a moment.
Wu Heng’s group got into the rear passenger compartment of a vehicle together with several earth- and wood-type ability users from Xianghu Base. There were also about a dozen other people in the same compartment. The initial joy of arrival didn’t last long on their faces—uncertain of what lay ahead, their expressions soon turned worried again.
“Don’t destroy them—just move them aside temporarily.” Wu Heng held onto the side railing of the truck bed as energy flowed from the tires into the ground. Ahead, the dense, interwoven network of massive plants slowly parted to either side, opening up a broad path. He glanced at the ability users, who were sweating heavily and so nervous their legs were trembling. “Do it like this. See?”
Wu Heng withdrew his hand, leaving the task to them, and walked over to Xie Chongyi to sit down beside him.
After sitting, he kept his eyes fixed on the green canopy above, which seemed to be shifting aside with great difficulty.
They hadn’t gone very far when, with a loud clang, one of the wood-type ability users suddenly turned pale and collapsed inside the truck.
“… ”
Xie Chongyi saw Wu Heng’s eyelids twitch in shock and buried his face into his neck, laughing quietly.
Seeing this, Lisa hurried over to help the fallen person up and passed him to his companions. Then she looked at Wu Heng, extremely embarrassed. “We’re really sorry… Our base moved into Butterfly Valley not long after the apocalypse began. The butterflies there only started mutating in large numbers recently, so we’ve always… always…”
Wu Heng’s eyes were cool and distant. “So even with abilities, you’ve been living in the apocalypse just like you did before?”
After Lisa lowered her head in shame, a cold scoff came from above after a long silence. “No wonder you can’t even deal with a bunch of insects.”
Lisa lowered her head even further. She could understand the mockery, but she didn’t quite understand where the resentment in his tone came from.
—
By the afternoon, the blazing red sunset surged like a golden tide toward the once-barren city that was now beginning to take on the shape of a base. A long convoy arrived at that very moment.
“Damn, finally—finally home!” Lin Mengzhi jumped out of the vehicle and reached out to help Wu Zhi down. The moment she landed, he immediately turned around to look for that girl.
Outside the city, during the time Wu Heng and the others had been away, towering walls had already been built. The main gate had clearly taken mutated creatures into account—its height was enough that even X, with his massive size, could pass through without any trouble.
The gate wasn’t made of wood, but metal—a dreamy ocean-blue color that shifted in shade along with the fluctuations of the energy network.
“This is…”
Xie Chongyi stepped forward. “Wu Heng, call Doctor Chen out. Have him conduct a full checkup for everyone.”
Then his gaze shifted to Xue Qi. “Go find Dou Lu and bring her here.”
When Wu Heng appeared, Doctor Chen followed behind him. Although it was clear he was trying hard to control his limbs and expression, anyone who knew him even a little could see the excitement on his face—like a mouse that had fallen into a rice jar.
The survivors, unaware of the situation, were startled when they saw a zombie suddenly appear. They instinctively shrank back in fear. Even though their cries were suppressed in their throats, their movements still caused quite a commotion.
“How can there be a zombie?”
“Wasn’t this place supposed to be safe?”
“He’s our doctor,” Xue Shen said, then looked at Qi Songshi. “Have your people line up. Only after passing the physical exam and constitution test can they enter the city.”
Qi Songshi, who had originally been eager to step forward, subtly took half a step back instead and instructed Lisa, “You go first and check things out for everyone.”
Lisa looked at the zombie standing among several young people, swallowed her fear, and stiffly walked up to them.
Unexpectedly, the zombie stepped forward directly and grabbed her hand. “You’re already grown up, yet still afraid of seeing a doctor like a child.”
That nauseating stench of decay rushed into her nose in an instant. Lisa could hear her own heartbeat pounding like thunder, along with the silent yet overwhelming scream in her mind.
Those few seconds felt like an entire lifetime. The zombie released her hand and looked toward Wu Heng. “No problem.”
Lisa took a deep breath. “Th-thank you…” Then she slowly retreated back into the group of survivors. Qi Songshi kept questioning her at her side, but she could barely hear him anymore.
Watching her return, Zhou Yi frowned. “Those who pass the first round of checks, stand to the side and wait for the second round.”
With Lisa taking the lead, the others felt somewhat reassured, and the line gradually began to move.
Wu Heng shifted his legs. He glanced back into the city, then withdrew his gaze. “Are we waiting here for them to finish all the tests?”
Xie Chongyi replied, “I suggest we wait. This is the first batch of survivors entering the base—every step of the process will become a reference for all future groups.”
Wu Heng gave a small nod. Before he could say “Alright,” a drawn-out male voice suddenly rang out from above.
“Our lord has returned, I see?”
Liu Shen, who knew where he had been hiding, poked his head out from the very top of the distant wall, far above the ground. “Men, come with me—bring a table and chairs over. How can we let our lord stand?”
Xie Chongyi and Wu Heng both withdrew their gazes and exchanged a look. The former curled his lips slightly. “He adapts quickly.”
Wu Heng was concise. “Flexible.”
“In your territory, he might have to stay that way—flexible—all the time.”
Liu Shen arrived quickly with his people, though they fiddled around behind the gate for quite a while before finally managing to pass through the energy barrier. Once over, his men swiftly set up tables and chairs, and just like that, he put together a simple inspection station.
Xie Chongyi glanced at the tables and chairs—they were clearly newly made. “You made these?”
“Not at all,” Liu Shen said. “There’s a couple in our team who used to be carpenters. They’re the best with this kind of work. Today, Teacher Ying and I were arranging living spaces in the city for everyone, and the couple spent the whole day making furniture.”
After saying that, he leaned in close to Xie Chongyi with a sly grin. “I even had them make a huge bed for you and the lord. Pretty thoughtful of me, right?”
“…Alright.”
Wu Heng had already sat down, eating while waiting for the inspections to finish. His gaze slowly swept over nearly everyone present, finally settling on Wu Zhi, who stood side by side with Zhou Yi. She was more than half a head shorter than Zhou Yi, yet her presence was no less imposing. When they had parted before, she had just been a little girl who cried whenever something happened. Now, she was just like her ability—silent and indifferent, like a snow-covered peak.
Wu Heng couldn’t quite tell whether this was good or bad. Objectively, it was certainly a good thing—children who only cried for candy weren’t useful for survival or work. But subjectively, he didn’t feel the relief or reassurance he had expected.
Meanwhile, on Lin Mengzhi’s side, the atmosphere was completely different.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Bo Ying,” the girl replied.
“Are you an ability user?”
Bo Ying shook her head. “No one in my family has abilities. Are you?”
Lin Mengzhi nodded. “Mm-hmm.” But he didn’t say more. Talking about such things in front of ordinary people without abilities didn’t seem very appropriate.
Bo Ying looked at his face for a moment, then took out a small bundle of white cotton cords from the colorful woven pouch slung across her body.
“What’s this?”
“These are cotton cords we made ourselves. After a blessing ritual, wearing them will keep the wearer safe and bring them good fortune.” As she spoke, she took Lin Mengzhi’s wrist and tied one around it, then placed the rest into his palm. “These are all for you.”
From Wu Heng’s perspective, Lin Mengzhi’s face had turned so red it looked like it might explode.
“Wu Heng!” Dou Lu’s voice came from behind. In the blink of an eye, she was already in front of him, slightly out of breath. “What do you need me to check?”
Seeing that she had arrived, Xie Chongyi waved Liu Shen off and stepped forward.
“Humans, ability users, symbiotes, and infected individuals on the verge of mutation—all have different energy fields. Before coming here, these people just went through an attack by mutated insects, so we need you to confirm that none of them have been infected.”
Dou Lu froze for a moment. “What if they are infected?”
“We’ll deal with that later.”
“…Alright.”
The inspection progressed smoothly. Doctor Chen and Dou Lu each handled their own areas, but the atmosphere was completely different between them—Doctor Chen remained cheerful the whole time, even humming to himself. He only needed to confirm whether anyone had illnesses, especially infectious diseases.
Dou Lu, on the other hand, looked much more serious. Among every three people she examined, one would often lose the qualification to enter the base.