Chapter 220.2: Eat Well
Wu Heng didn’t wake up until the afternoon of the next day. The space beside him was not only empty, but cold as well. At the foot of the bed, X and Shukui were crouched there listlessly.
The moment X opened its mouth, its voice sounded terribly hoarse. “Cack.”
For the time being, Wu Heng paid no attention to the abnormal behavior of the two creatures. He threw off the blanket and walked out of the room. Faintly, he felt that something was wrong. Just yesterday, he had finally sensed the gentleness and loveliness of this world, but today those feelings had vanished without a trace, reverting back to how things used to be.
The dog and the bird followed cautiously behind Wu Heng. They had a lot they wanted to say, but after all, they were not human, and the parrot could only mimic speech. Right now, neither of them could get out even half a coherent sentence.
Wu Heng did not see Xie Chongyi anywhere in the house, aside from the breakfast prepared in advance in the kitchen, which clearly showed the other man’s handiwork.
A puzzled expression appeared on Wu Heng’s face. His movements stiff, he picked up the utensils and slowly finished the breakfast bite by bite. Looking at the spotless plate in front of him, he suddenly turned around and almost stumbled as he rushed upstairs. Sure enough, several sets of the class monitor’s clothes were missing from the wardrobe.
Standing before the rummaged-through closet, Wu Heng swallowed hard and took a step back. At that moment, the sharp pain coming from his shoulder reminded him of something. In a panic, he fumbled with his collar, yanking it open, and saw a bloody bite mark on his shoulder—Xie Chongyi had taken it away.
Wu Heng stood in the living room for a while, completely dazed. Beneath his skin, bluish veins finally began to emerge faintly, and the energy inside his body erupted in an instant.
Vines carried out a carpet-like search beneath the entire city, making no attempt to hide themselves. Whenever they passed through residential districts, they directly overturned the ground surface, frightening the security systems everywhere into emergency activation.
But in the end, Wu Heng found nothing. The other person had not even left him a single trace.
X hopped bit by bit to Wu Heng’s feet, tilting its head up as it stammered, “No… no…”
Wu Heng cast a dark look at it.
“No, no,” X struggled to recall. “No… no choice.”
The rampage of the mutated plants alarmed the entire city, but fortunately some people recognized them as Wu Heng’s symbiotic organisms. Realizing that something major might have happened, a number of them immediately rushed toward the residence of Wu Heng and Xie Chongyi.
But when they arrived, they were confronted with a scene that left them utterly dumbfounded—where the house had stood was now wrapped in enormous, lush vines. The vines were like twisted giant trees, layered over one another in dense, solid coils. At the very top, darkened flower petals drooped weakly, swaying unsteadily in the wind.
The people who had rushed over had no idea what was going on, but judging from the poppy’s vigorous, overfed appearance, Wu Heng probably had not suffered any life-threatening harm.
But why had things suddenly become like this?
“Brother!” Wu Zhi was the first to try rushing forward.
However, before she had gone very far, the vines lashed toward her. She dodged clumsily and could only retreat back to where she had been standing.
“It’s all your fault!” She turned and glared at Lin Mengzhi. “If you weren’t so promiscuous, my brother wouldn’t have become like this.”
“Why don’t you blame the apocalypse on me too?”
Wu Zhi burst into tears helplessly.
Wu Heng lay on the bed, the room already completely clogged with vines. He listened to the distant voices—some sharp, some calm—but he could not be bothered to keep listening. Pulling the blanket over his head, tears spilled from his burning eyes. He could not find Xie Chongyi. Not only in Suyou, even after searching the outside world, there was still nothing.
Suyou City was his home, and also Xie Chongyi’s home—the home of all of them. Even if Xie Chongyi were going to die, he should die at home, or die by Wu Heng’s hand, in his mouth. They could become one entity together…
Wu Heng had already thought it through. If he died, Xie Chongyi could plant him in the yard, or keep him in a flowerpot. That way, they would still be together.
Death was not something impossible to accept. What he could never accept was being separated from Xie Chongyi.
Wu Heng cried silently. To keep himself from making any sound at all, he bit his wrist until it was mangled.
He did not close his eyes for even a single day. In the distance from the house, Wen Yuan had arranged for people to stand guard in shifts. None of them knew what had happened, but they were afraid something might happen to the people inside the house.
Wu Zhi, who refused to leave no matter what, was kicked away by Liu Shen after a few hard shoves. But Liu Shen himself only stood guard for two hours before running off to have fun elsewhere. Cursing all the while, Lin Mengzhi took over and kept watch until the middle of the night.
Lin Mengzhi did not want to go back. He would rather stay here guarding his childhood friend.
He stared up at the sky. There were no stars, and even the moon had disappeared these past two days. He found himself thinking about how he had ended up tangled together with Liu Ning, and it gave him a headache. All he had done was bluntly say a few things like, “Men and women are all the same,” and “I never thought you were some kind of freak. Aren’t symbiotes everywhere now? They’re way stranger than you.” Yet somehow, Liu Ning had been so moved that she practically threw herself at him. Overall, the main reason was probably just that Lin Mengzhi’s personal charm was too overwhelming—even men could not resist him.
Soon after, he thought about Xue Shen. A textbook example of drunken recklessness. Fortunately, there was no love between them. Just as Wu Zhi had said, it was merely a casual sleeping-around kind of relationship.
But who he was going to sleep with tonight—that was also a problem.
Which was exactly why Lin Mengzhi did not want to go back.
He lay on the grass for a while, feeling a little cold. Sitting up, he pulled up the zipper of his jacket. Looking around at the deserted lakeside and the quiet scenery behind him, he climbed to his feet and carefully approached the cluster of plants, which seemed to have entered a resting state.
With nimble movements, Lin Mengzhi climbed onto the vines’ branches and knots. They were incomparably thick, more than capable of supporting his weight. He jumped around on them, and they did not even sway.
After much difficulty, Lin Mengzhi finally found the master bedroom, hidden behind densely packed leaves and branches. Sweating profusely behind the vines, he pushed aside the greenery. Several bloody cuts were scratched across the back of his hand, but he paid them no attention. Instead, he desperately squeezed himself into the narrow gaps between the vines. The moment his upper body had barely forced its way through, the vines suddenly began to move, tightening more and more—
“Owowowowow—eeeee—yooooouuuu!” Lin Mengzhi screamed miserably, feeling as though his internal organs were about to be crushed right out through his mouth.
Xue Shen, who had come to take over the shift, saw this scene and was utterly speechless. He grabbed Lin Mengzhi, hauled him back out, and dragged him back to where they had been.
“Holy shit!” Lin Mengzhi raised both hands. Blood had already soaked his sleeves red. “Those things don’t recognize family at all.”
Xue Shen left for a while, and when he came back, he was carrying a small box. After ordering Lin Mengzhi to sit down, he took out disinfectant and gauze from inside.
Lin Mengzhi felt a little weird about it. They were just bed partners—doing this kind of thing felt oddly mushy. So he laughed awkwardly and said, “Never thought you’d be this caring. Whoever marries you in the future is gonna be lucky.”
Expressionless, Xue Shen pressed hard on the other man’s wound with his thumb. “Smart mouth.”
Lin Mengzhi cried out in pain, but practically all of his attention was focused on Wu Heng, so he did not notice Xue Shen’s expression at all.
“Do you know what actually happened?”
“I don’t.”
“Aren’t you close with Xie Chongyi?”
“You’re close with Wu Heng. Do you know?”
“Damn it, I’m revoking your right to sleep with me for this whole week.”
“…Not okay.”
The two of them bickered endlessly by the lakeside. Meanwhile, Wu Heng was lying on the balcony, quietly watching them. Only after an unfamiliar man and woman came to change their shift—and finding them much less interesting to watch than Lin Mengzhi and Xue Shen—did Wu Heng return to bed and lie down again.
This time, he fell asleep.
—
Wu Heng and Xie Chongyi entered a dormant period, and all affairs of Suyou City were temporarily managed by Wen Yuan, Xue Shen, and Ruan Silian.
Although they had entered dormancy, they still needed to eat. If the poppy ate, it counted as Wu Heng eating, so every morning someone would lead over enormous livestock for the mutated plants to devour, leaving not even a single hair behind.
During the period when Suyou City was under temporary management, many things happened.
The first major discovery was that the infections inside Jiang Lian and Shen She had been suppressed. However, the mutations already caused by the infection could not disappear. Even so, for humanity, this was already the best news they could possibly hope for.
Then came Liu Shen, who took advantage of the absence of the two strictest managers to propose setting up an “unofficial venue” where the citizens could relax. Teacher Ying nagged him so relentlessly that he ended up drinking pesticide in repentance. In the end, Wu Zhi saved him, though quite a few branches were poisoned to death, and they likely would not recover for a long time.
Meanwhile, the relationship between Ruan Silian and Wen Ta spread throughout Suyou City. A handsome man and a beautiful woman—most people responded with blessings and congratulations.
The city’s population also surged dramatically, leaving Wen Yuan and the others overwhelmed with work.
On New Year’s Eve, the entire city celebrated humanity’s rebirth. Outside that enormous castle of vines, packages sent by survivors piled up into heaps.
Lin Mengzhi even forcibly hung several lanterns on the vines. The poppy swung itself left and right trying to shake them off, but failed. Furious, it chased Lin Mengzhi for dozens of kilometers before finally returning in a huff.
Inside the house, the dog, the bird, and the human all seemed to have regressed to some primitive age, each rougher and more unkempt than the last.
Wu Heng never deprived them of food—he gave them plenty to eat. But they themselves refused to leave the place. Just like Wu Heng, they only wandered around inside the house. Both the dog and the bird had gained quite a bit of weight.
But Wu Heng had grown thinner. The flesh on his cheeks had wasted away completely, and even though he did not naturally have large eyes, they now appeared huge and dark. His hair had grown down to his back, the ends dry and tangled. The buds and leaves sprouting from him were soft and weak, yellowing and falling off after only a few hours.
His once well-fitting clothes now hung loose around him. Whenever he bent over and stretched out a hand, the outline of his gaunt, bony body was painfully clear.
He did not want to die. Between him and the class monitor, if even one of them could survive, that would be enough.
He only wanted some quiet—like plants withering in autumn, hibernating through winter, and after resting and gathering strength, sprouting and growing again in spring.
“Plants can sprout again. Humans can’t. Symbiotes can’t either.”
The speaker was Old Lin from the Northern Tianqing Forest Farm. By coincidence, he had been planning to leave Suyou City on the same day Xie Chongyi did, so the two had departed together. At this moment, they were inside an underground base that never saw daylight.
Old Lin flipped through the newspaper in his hands as he spoke. “He’s still a plant symbiote. Who knows whether mutated plants might take advantage when the host’s mind is at its weakest?”
“That’s his business. He’ll handle it himself.”
The young man replying was flipping through a book in his hands. After speaking, he tossed it aside. “Who wrote this? It’s terrible.”
Old Lin glanced at the author’s name. He had written it himself.
The middle-aged man had just been about to argue back when, from the corner of his eye, he suddenly caught sight of a swaying black shadow on the wall. His whole body jolted. Without even thinking, he slammed his hand onto a button on the wall. Layer after layer of barriers made from special materials closed around the young man.
Xie Chongyi slowly lifted his eyes. The hand propping up his cheek had already transformed into an insect-like form. His eyes were blood-red, and even the shadow cast on the wall had become the shape of a gigantic insect.
“You think this is enough to make me lose control? I don’t think I’m that weak yet.”
Old Lin had long since fled down the narrow, cramped corridor in terror. Xie Chongyi yawned, then got up and lay down on the single bed by the wall.
He lay there for a long time without falling asleep.
He missed Wu Heng. If he still had the insect eyes and the ring, he would not have lost track of the other man. But now, he had taken back everything he had once placed on him.
Without tools, humans could only search through their memories for images of their lover from the past.
After lying there for a long while, Xie Chongyi bent down and dragged out a travel bag from beneath the bed. From one of its compartments, he pulled out a flattened, dried black poppy flower.
Leaving the winding, shadowy underground passageways behind, Old Lin emerged onto the desert aboveground. He brushed the yellow sand from his body and looked toward a helicopter that had landed at some unknown time in the distance.
Xie Yi, now recovered from her severe injuries, walked over with several people and told Old Lin, “Suyou has received our transmission. We’re preparing to evacuate immediately.”
Old Lin hesitated awkwardly.
“I know you’re staying behind,” Xie Yi said, sounding understanding. “In this era, everyone has their own choice to make.”
But Old Lin still hesitated.
“What are you trying to say?” Xie Yi pressed.
“He hopes you won’t tell the people of Suyou City that he’s here.”
A flicker passed through Xie Yi’s brow, unable to completely hide her pain, but in the end reason prevailed. “Understood.”
“He also hopes… that you won’t go in to see him.”
Fifteen minutes later, the helicopter lifted off from the ground, whipping the yellow sand into the sky.
No sooner had they left than, just as the flying sand settled back to earth, distant blurry black shapes appeared on the horizon like an approaching army, rapidly charging toward Old Lin’s location.
Infected. More and more infected. Soon, this land would contain nothing but yellow sand and the infected. Starved of food, they could smell the scent of fresh humans from hundreds of miles away and follow the trail here.
Old Lin took two steps back, clutching his newspaper, and hurried back into the tunnel.
The corridor was pitch-black, but Old Lin knew the path well enough to walk it without light. He jogged all the way back to the underground city. Standing at the edge of the nest-like underground structure, he looked toward Xie Chongyi inside the monitoring chamber.
The other man lay flat on the narrow single bed, as if asleep. Yet the walls of the entire room were covered with black fluid crawling and flowing across them, growing larger and more violent by the moment—
A disturbance erupted briefly on the ground overhead before everything fell completely silent again.
Old Lin climbed back to the surface once more. Across the wasteland lay corpses everywhere—black monsters whose faces no longer resembled humans. The impurities inside their bodies, the very source of the contamination, had all been devoured by Xie Chongyi.
As long as he continued devouring them, the infection would come to an end, and humanity would be saved.
And when that time came, Xie Chongyi would end his own life. All the energy inside him would wither away together with him.
At the most inappropriate moment, Old Lin found himself thinking of Wu Heng.
How could that child possibly accept something like this?
—
Infected individuals began appearing in the city again. No one could trace the source, yet they disappeared just as quickly. Mere seconds after appearing, they would suddenly collapse and lose all signs of life. No one could explain the phenomenon, and the only person who might have been able to was Wu Mo—who had already gone several days without eating or drinking.
Wen Yuan grabbed a bowl of porridge and force-fed it to him, then smashed the bowl to the ground and said coldly, “Humanity’s tragedy is because of this era. Xie Chongyi and Wu Heng’s tragedy is because of you.”
Wu Mo, however, remained calm. Wiping the corner of his mouth, he said, “No matter what, tragedy would have happened anyway.”
“Find him for me.”
A mocking smile tugged at Wu Mo’s lips. “You’d be better off asking Wu Dian. They come from the same root. Wu Dian finding him would be easier than me finding him.”
Wen Yuan wanted to say, “Xie Chongyi may no longer even be human. Wu Dian sent word that he can no longer sense his existence.” But then he felt there was no point saying so much to someone like Wu Mo.
—Wu Mo’s refusal to eat or drink was not even repentance. He simply believed that humanity’s true apocalypse was about to arrive, and that there was no longer any need for him to consume food.
“You lost your emotions as a human, shouting slogans about ‘saving humanity.’ What, did you start thinking of yourself as a god?” Wen Yuan said coldly. “Too bad you failed. Because the ones who can save us were never gods. It was always ourselves.”
It was true that Wu Mo had contributed greatly to humanity’s survival. But in reality, he had never regarded himself as human. He saw himself as Jesus, as Nuwa, as some higher-dimensional species gazing down upon a race no different from ants.
The eruption of energy had at least given humanity time to react and devise countermeasures. Now it was the pollution source’s turn to sweep across the world.
Wen Yuan stepped out of the research institute. Above him stretched skies filled with multicolored light, like an aurora.
The winding ribbons of light were unimaginably vast, spreading across the entire heavens. They moved dynamically, flowing and swaying slowly, their colors constantly shifting in depth and brightness.
Auroras had not appeared for a very long time. Everything on Earth, just like humanity itself, had entered a process of decline—of approaching extinction.
Across the street, a jeep suddenly came speeding over. The people inside jumped out, glanced around, spotted Wen Yuan, and hurried toward him.
“All the plant symbiotes… they’ve completely mutated.”
Wen Yuan had already seen it. Beneath the dreamlike auroras, enormous creatures were rising one after another among the newly repaired buildings. They moved rapidly, surging toward the strongest plant symbiote within the base.
Damn it. Wen Yuan’s throat tightened. That direction was where Wu Heng was.
The ability user standing below the steps continued his report.
“There are infected appearing all over the city. Even though their lifespans are abnormally short—only one or two minutes, sometimes less than a minute—in just that one minute they can infect dozens of people. They’re even worse than zombies!”
“Most ability users have already begun clearing them out, but this infection seems to originate mainly from inside the human body itself. President Xue said that right now, any one of us could mutate at any moment.”
“The situation outside Suyou is even worse. Most of them have gathered around the city,” the speaker swallowed hard, nearly crying. “What do we do, Major General? She still hasn’t arrived, and there are still over a hundred thousand people outside who haven’t made it in yet.”
After hearing everything, Wen Yuan looked at the base, which had already descended into chaos. Then he turned and strode back into the research institute. In mere seconds, he arrived in front of Wu Mo, grabbed him by the collar, and demanded, “The conditions for infection. Talk.”
Wu Mo’s expression remained calm. “Ability users.”
To Wen Yuan, his voice sounded like something only a devil could produce.
“The energy fields inside ability users already fail to meet normal human parameters. What ‘ability users’? The only difference is that they manifested differently from zombies. Now they’ve simply arrived at the same destination by different paths.”
Wu Mo’s eyes shifted, and within them appeared the network of insect eyes. Rising from his chair, he removed Wen Yuan’s hand from his collar. “But Wu Dian and the others won’t be infected. They are energy itself.”
Wen Yuan had not yet noticed the change in Wu Mo. He asked, “Then does that mean they…”
Wu Mo shook his head. “If they were useful, why wouldn’t I have used them to save Xie Chongyi?”
Abandoning Wu Mo there, Wen Yuan turned and strode out of the laboratory without another glance back. Behind him came a faint sigh.
“Humans are just ants, relying on the oldest kind of self-righteousness to continue their civilization…”
In the corridor, a gigantic insectoid body screeched as it lunged toward Wen Yuan’s back. Without even turning around, Wen Yuan drove the dagger in his hand straight toward the source of the shriek, plunging it into the infected creature’s throat. The blade flicked sideways, and the head dropped to the ground.
The severed head rolled several times before coming to a stop face-up. Half of Wu Mo’s face was horrifyingly visible within Wen Yuan’s field of vision, while black energy seeped out from the creature’s body and spread into the ground below.
Wen Yuan walked away cleanly and decisively. His voice echoed across the entire city.
“If an infected is discovered, no permission is needed. Eliminate them immediately.”