Chapter 220.3: Eat Well
Beneath the endless auroras, the humans moving across the ground resembled one ghost after another. Infection came without any warning at all. One moment someone was normal, the next they would suddenly turn and attack their companions.
Dou Lu joined forces with several other magnetism ability users to place all non-ability users within layer after layer of magnetic nets. Fearing that infection might soon descend upon herself and her allies as well, she summoned ability users from other fields to reinforce the sanctuary. Behind the rippling layers of energy, the community gradually became hazy, as though it existed in another dimension of space-time.
Dou Lu stepped back several paces, tightly gripping the magnetic blade in her hand. She thought to herself: either the apocalypse would truly descend today, or it would finally come to an end today.
Within the chaotic currents of wind around her, several abnormal streams suddenly appeared.
Without even looking, she thrust sideways. The blade pierced straight through the forehead of an infected companion, filthy blood splattering across the side of her face.
Click.
Lin Mengzhi fastened on his helmet. Behind him, the elderly woman chased him out the door, only to be stopped in the courtyard by a wall of fire. She opened her mouth, unable to speak. After all, she was not really his grandmother—she had no right to stop him.
But the young man still paused, turned around, and grinned. “Come on now, when have I ever failed to handle something once I stepped in? What’s the big deal?”
Lin Mengzhi actually had no confidence at all.
Wen Yuan had issued an order: all ability users were at risk of becoming infected. If anyone noticed abnormalities in themselves, they were expected to take action on their own and avoid harming others as much as possible.
Lin Mengzhi felt that the past twenty-odd years of his life had been pretty good. But “good” didn’t mean “lucky.” He was simply content. Judging by his general misfortune, there was a very high chance this damn infection would eventually land on him too.
He ran toward Wu Heng’s direction. Before being infected, male or female, none of it mattered anymore—he just wanted to see Wu Heng once.
Shen Ping’an and Shen Ruyi had already arrived ahead of him.
The ground beneath their feet trembled. The mutated plants were about to arrive.
“Imitate him—your specialty,” Shen Ping’an instructed. “Hold them off first. I’ll go wake Wu Heng.”
“What if they notice?” Shen Ruyi really had no confidence he could imitate Wu Heng successfully. Dual-system abilities plus a plant symbiote—he could manage imitating a single ability type, but this many? Was that even a joke?
“They won’t be able to tell while we’re all here. You just need to buy me a little time.”
The tremors beneath their feet grew more violent. The lake surface churned and shook. From the distance, thick, blackened thorns came roaring in like a storm cloud covering the sky. Entwined with them were soft trailing vines that used the thorns as support, not expending any strength of their own. Water splashed everywhere. Gigantic trees—no longer identifiable as any known species—erupted from the ground. Beneath them, endless fields of lilies bloomed frantically in all directions…
Together they formed an encirclement, quickly transforming the surrounding area into a primeval forest devoid of sunlight. Although they had no faces, a closer look revealed that they had been silently observing a single point at the center all along.
A clean, handsome young man stood there, gaze calm, saying nothing.
As long as he didn’t act, they wouldn’t be able to detect him.
Shen Ping’an walked forward slowly. Standing beneath the vine-covered trees, he carefully placed his palm against them. The poppy did not reject his approach. Instead, its branches and leaves extended, enveloping the human body, allowing him to meet it halfway.
At the moment Shen Ping’an thought he would finally be able to see Wu Heng, those soft and harmless branches suddenly tensed. In a completely unexpected move, they hurled him away. Then, even thicker and denser vines erupted outward again, wrapping the creature inside them in an even more airtight seal.
Inside, Wu Heng was sitting on the bed wrapped in a blanket. The veins beneath his skin were clearly visible; green energy was continuously circulating through them. His root system seemed to have extended too deeply—so deep it was unfathomable. He could sense the breathing of the entire earth, steady as ever, unaffected by any energy fluctuations or abnormal magnetic fields.
It was as if he were being gently held in two arms, endless streams of energy flowing into his root system and being transmitted to the entire plant.
He had spread his plant network across the continent solely to find Xie Chongyi. He hadn’t found him—but by sheer coincidence, he had absorbed all the overflowing energy into his own body.
For a human body or even a mutated plant body, containing such massive energy was impossible. That was why two energy cores were rapidly helping him share the burden, preventing his physical form from exploding.
He could not stop. Because at his core, he was already the most voracious, most predatory plant symbiote.
Purple auroras leaked through the gaps in the vines. Wu Heng could hear the voices of all existing life on Earth.
Nearby, the “Wu Heng” clone was pinned to the ground by Lin Mengzhi, who had rushed over. Tears welled in Lin Mengzhi’s eyes. “Damn it—you finally came out!”
Shen Ruyi silently cursed under his breath. In his mind he kept repeating ‘I am Wu Heng, I am Wu Heng, I am Wu Heng.’ But the connection between plants was far tighter than that of any other species. A single ripple of energy was enough for the observers to detect the anomaly. They rebelled on the spot—competition among plants was always brutal.
Panicked, Shen Ruyi kicked Lin Mengzhi away and hurled fireballs at the incoming thorns. But the thick floral scent drifting through the air quickly left both of them dizzy and disoriented.
Lin Mengzhi’s limbs went weak. It felt as if something was choking his throat shut. He couldn’t even crawl anymore.
Even though Shen Ping’an was only a few hundred meters away from them, the moment the plant cluster went into full rampage, he vanished completely from their field of vision. The vegetation surged even more violently, clearly showing an intent to monopolize all of Suyou.
Shen Ruyi lay on the ground, half-conscious and retching. “It’s… it’s all your fault…”
Lin Mengzhi forced his eyes open and looked over, but all he could see was a trembling, fragile lily.
“…Damn.” What a cunning ability.
But trying to imitate the original in front of the original itself—how could it not be seen through? Shen Ruyi was exposed immediately and uprooted on the spot. Thorn-covered vines wrapped around his ankles, and he let out a piercing scream as his legs were pierced, blood pouring down in streams.
Lin Mengzhi tilted his head back. With all his remaining strength, he released only a wisp of black smoke.
Only then did he finally realize the pain in his chest. Lowering his head, he saw that a small cluster of centipede-like thorns had already pierced into his heart at some point.
His energy was being drained.
Then why the hell am I still wearing this stupid helmet?! Lin Mengzhi yanked it off. Before he could even throw it away, his entire body was flipped upside down and hung in the air.
In his muddled consciousness, Lin Mengzhi couldn’t even think of a last will. The only regret left in his mind was that he never managed to get a wife.
The world seemed to have been smeared with a layer of static noise. Towering, sky-reaching mutated plants turned blurry and indistinct, like something out of a surreal fantasy world.
Between the swaying giant branches, a black-bodied creature drifted through the air, moving with uncanny agility. In the blink of an eye, it appeared in front of Lin Mengzhi and met his gaze head-on.
X hooked its claws onto the thorns binding Lin Mengzhi and yanked with all its strength. The human lost all restraint and plummeted straight downward—but before he hit the ground, the mutated bird skimmed along the surface in a smooth arc, catching him.
It dodged the whips of vines and thorns, flying up into the sky. Beneath the auroras stretching across the heavens, X blurted out, “Beautiful!”
Lin Mengzhi weakly opened his eyes. On the ground below, Shukui was carrying Shen Ruyi at full speed toward the safe zone.
“Where’s A’Heng?” he asked X, forcing his mouth open.
X had no way of answering such a complicated question. Lin Mengzhi struggled to turn his head and saw X’s swollen belly—it looked even fuller than before. If even the bird was this fat, then the person must be fine too. Reassured by this thought, Lin Mengzhi closed his eyes in relief.
—
The moment Wu Heng pulled the door open, the noisy world suddenly fell silent.
The vines wrapped around the house retreated back into his body. A few seconds later, they burst out again and surged forward. The mutated plants that had been aggressively trying to overturn and devour the poppies scattered in panic. The poppies pursued them relentlessly, only returning after draining every last bit of their energy.
Only after the mutated plants had been cleared away was Wu Heng finally able to see the dreamlike aurora. He lifted his head and narrowed his eyes, clearly sensing the immense, surging energy.
Shen Ping’an came running from behind. He had known Wu Heng must have come out already, but the moment he actually saw him, his heart still jolted. The person before him had become much thinner, even more haggard and pale than he had been back at school. His hair hung loose down his back, and if not for his beautiful face, he would have looked completely like a homeless drifter.
After steadying his emotions, Shen Ping’an finally said, “It’s good that you’re alright. Where’s the class monitor?”
The two people who were usually inseparable like conjoined twins—yet now one of them was nowhere to be seen.
Wu Heng shook his head. Having not spoken for such a long time, his throat and mouth were still awkward and unfamiliar with speech at first.
“I don’t know.”
Shen Ping’an frowned, but Wu Heng gave him no chance to continue questioning and instead said, “Let’s deal with what’s in front of us first.”
The vines spread effortlessly across the entire city and even throughout all of Suyou. Everyone was buried deep within a green ocean. One by one, the infected and the ability users on the verge of infection were dragged out. The vines did not merely seize their energy—even their bodies were devoured completely clean.
Most people still had no idea what was happening and had yet to react. When the ability users who had not yet shown signs of infection were seized, pierced through, and torn apart, they assumed this was another mutated plant symbiote. But none of the powers they unleashed could shake it in the slightest—not even a little.
The infected inside and outside the base had not yet been completely rooted out when all the vines suddenly froze stiff for a moment. Then a large portion of them split away and left Suyou.
“It’s Wu Heng,” Ruan Silian was the first to recover her senses. She grabbed Wen Ta by the hand. “Let’s hurry over.”
Without even thinking, Wen Ta pulled his hand away from hers.
“What? He’s definitely mutated! Don’t you know the plant symbiotes have all mutated? He was already that strong before—if we go over there now, aren’t we just asking to die?”
Ruan Silian wanted to survive. She was afraid of death, but she also could not afford to lose Wu Heng. No matter the reason, she could not be without him. She could go by herself.
But before Ruan Silian could even leave the house, vines suddenly burst from the ground and wrapped around Wen Ta’s ankle. His whole body was hoisted upside down into the air. The vines coiled around him from head to toe, as though searching for something.
“Help! Help! Hurry!” He stared fixedly at Ruan Silian. “Go find someone to save me!”
Even his lightning ability could not cut through them. The lord must have mutated!
Useless trash.
Ruan Silian looked at him coldly as she slowly backed out of the house.
“You’ve been infected.”
After saying that, she turned and ran.
Wen Ta had been infected. Wu Heng would never let him go. Becoming food for the poppies was only a matter of time.
Ruan Silian tightened her grip on the fruit knife in her hand. From a heap of flesh and blood on the street, she dug out a filthy coat and draped it over her head before running toward what she guessed was the safe zone.
The city was in utter chaos. She had not yet entered the protected area, and infected could appear around her at any moment.
Soon, a rapid series of footsteps sounded above her head—sometimes light, sometimes heavy. Definitely not an ordinary human.
Ruan Silian clenched her teeth tightly. She did not even dare look up and simply kept running with all her strength.
Another set of footsteps appeared, accompanied by a shrill screech.
An infected one. She was certain now.
Bang!
The sound of something heavy landing made Ruan Silian’s legs go weak with fright, but she did not dare stop and continued running forward. The footsteps above her seemed to be on top of the high-rises, yet they were drawing closer and closer. Soon even the sound of heavy breathing became clearly audible.
The coat clutched in her hand was suddenly yanked away, and a pair of golden eyes abruptly appeared before her.
Dou Lu reacted swiftly, grabbing Ruan Silian by the wrist and scooping her up into her arms before leaping onto the rooftops.
“I’ll take you to the safe zone.”
Amid the roaring wind, Ruan Silian looked down over the base below, where the vines churned wildly and without restraint.
“What happened to A’Heng? Did something happen to him?”
“No.” Dou Lu was too exhausted to say much more.
The situation outside Suyou City was even worse.
Suyou was a lost land—a dead zone that had already been abandoned and was no longer affected.
But outside was different. There was no aurora there, and the sun blazed with abnormal ferocity. The vitality of the land had not yet been completely drained. Even though it had already become a wasteland, humans still remained above the ground.
Humanity simply refused to die out completely.
The infected outside the convoy were easy enough to deal with. What truly caught them off guard was the sudden mutation of the ability users within their own ranks.
Before they had even reached Suyou, their numbers had already been reduced by a third.
And within the convoy, there was still that old zoologist encouraging the elephant herd he had insisted on bringing along.
The storage bags created through abilities could only hold supplies, not living creatures, so there were many people like the old man.
“There are only a few of them left in the whole world! We have to bring them!”
New infected appeared every moment, while their numbers kept shrinking. At first people cried in grief, then gradually became numb. By the end, whenever someone beside them mutated, their companions would act first and kill them before the soldiers even had to move.
“What’s this?”
The old man walking among the elephants suddenly spoke up.
He stopped, and the elephant herd around him stopped as well, surrounding him protectively.
The old man bent down and stared at two tiny green leaves sprouting from the yellow sand beneath his feet.
“Heh, little thing, not bad. Tough little survivor!”
“Come with me.”
He shook a handkerchief out from his pocket and carefully pinched the stem—less than two centimeters tall—between his fingers before gently pulling upward.
The fragile-looking sprout had roots far longer than expected. Even after pulling until it reached knee height, the end still had not appeared. The old man let out another surprised “Heh!” Just as he was about to praise it again, the yellow sand was violently overturned.
What burst out instead were leafy vines surging upward like a nest of snakes exploding from underground.
The elephant herd immediately fell into panic, their footsteps chaotic. The convoy was scattered apart by the vines. The ability users’ powers were utterly useless against them.
The vines kept pouring out from beneath the earth in ever greater numbers, as though searching desperately for something, even more frantic than the terrified crowd fleeing from them.
Only when the vines finally seemed to locate their target did the main branch abruptly change direction and charge straight toward the leader at the very front.
Xie Yi had already been watching him gently for quite a while. Before this, Xie Chongyi had described Wu Heng to her as a weak and pitiful poppy flower.
How was this weak or pitiful?
The young man stepped out from the surging sea of green. Standing before Xie Yi, his snow-pale face looked utterly bloodless beneath the scorching, blinding sunlight.
“Auntie,” he said, licking his dry lips, “where is Xie Chongyi?”
Xie Yi herself looked exhausted. The burdens on her shoulders came from every direction. She carefully sized up the young man who had suddenly appeared before her. He was tall and slender, prettier in person than he had looked in videos, though clearly lacking the spirit and vitality he had back then.
Still, she hardened her heart and said, “I don’t know.”
“You carry his scent. I smelled it back at the base.”
Shock flashed through Xie Yi’s heart.
“From that far away, you…”
“I can. And I can still save him.”
Xie Yi did not believe him.
“I’m his mother. It’s perfectly normal for me to smell like him.”
“That’s different.”
Wu Heng shook his head and lowered his gaze toward the woman before him.
He actually did not know what to do. If it had been anyone else, he could simply have used force and threats. But this was the class monitor’s mother—and a good mother at that. He did not really know how to make her speak.
Besides, he was exhausted now. The explosive energy swelling inside his body made his head ache and his bones throb.
He only wanted to see Xie Chongyi.
He had to see Xie Chongyi.
The vines behind him quieted briefly, only to become agitated again moments later.
“Hey! Don’t bully my elephants!” the old man shouted from the distance.
Wu Heng had eaten people before.
He had never begged anyone.
Yet now, he pleaded with Xie Yi.
“Please tell me.”
After getting his answer, the vines rushed off into the distance before circling back around. In one sweep, they wrapped up tens of thousands of people and carried them all directly to the gates of Suyou City.
—
At a single glance, it looked as though countless black tubes had been inserted into Xie Chongyi’s body. The erupting sources of pollution outside all surged frantically toward him, fighting to squeeze into his body first.
Wu Heng slid down the passageway. It was deep—dozens of meters deep—and ladders were attached along the walls.
The moment he landed, an infected creature lunged at him with a roar. He immediately reached out and tore off its mutated head. After tossing the head aside, he caught the scent of Old Lin lingering on his palm.
As an afterthought, Wu Heng stepped on the pollution source crawling deeper into the tunnel and absorbed it into his body.
There was no hesitation or homesick fear upon returning. Wu Heng walked quickly. He was moving so fast that he nearly tripped several times. The winding tunnel twisted like a maze and took quite a while to traverse. He did not use his powers or plants to move himself, relying only on his legs, because as he walked, he was still thinking.
Once he saw Xie Chongyi, he planned to slap him twice first, then bite chunks of flesh right off him alive.
But the moment Xie Chongyi’s sleeping face entered his sight, all of Wu Heng’s desire to eat flesh and drink blood vanished without a trace.
Wu Heng directly opened the glass enclosure and sealed off the tunnel behind him. Compared to a container whose life was nearly exhausted, a vigorous new host was obviously far more attractive.
They surged toward him.
Even the ones inside Xie Chongyi’s body crawled out as well.
Wu Heng felt somewhat uncomfortable, but showed nothing on his face. The reason he had absorbed so much energy was precisely so he could swallow all these things now.
He crouched beside the crude single bed and stared at Xie Chongyi for a long while before finally poking him with a finger.
“Hey.”
Xie Chongyi did not respond.
So Wu Heng climbed onto the bed and held him in his arms, the two of them lying there together.
He had thought he would not be able to sleep. After all, the excitement brought by the joy of reunion usually made it difficult for people to fall asleep.
Yet the instant he lay down beside Xie Chongyi, his eyelids grew heavy on their own.
He fell asleep—and had the best rest he had enjoyed in a very long time.
When he woke up, everything before him was pitch-black.
At first, Wu Heng thought night had fallen. But once he became fully conscious, he remembered that he and Xie Chongyi were underground now.
Where would the sky come from down here?
Then, when he looked carefully again, he realized that those black shapes filling his vision were all pollution sources.
Wu Heng stretched out an arm to absorb them, only to discover that the arm he extended no longer had a human shape.
Had he transformed into an insect?
He lowered his arm and stiffly turned his head to look at the still-unconscious Xie Chongyi beside him.
Wu Heng was not that generous or selfless. He wanted Xie Chongyi to remember him forever, and he wanted humanity to remember him forever as well.
The young man climbed down from the bed and took out paper and a pen from the suddenly spot-covered space around him. He muttered to himself about all the things he wanted to leave behind, but after thinking it over again and again, he only wrote four words:
“Eat well.”
As for words like love or not love—someone who is loved knows it better than anyone else, so there was no need to state it outright.
After leaving the note behind, Wu Heng did not look at Xie Chongyi again and turned to leave.
The pollution sources trailed after him like tails.
Above him stretched a brilliant starry sky. The desert was so quiet that the only sound was the soft scrape of sand against the soles of his shoes. Wu Heng glanced back at the pollution sources that were still continuously pouring into his body. He dug a small mirror out of his pocket and almost failed to recognize his own face.
What an ugly insect face.
After wandering through the directionless desert for several hours, Wu Heng finally stopped blankly in place, because he no longer knew where he should go.
Tears fell from his eyes—not out of fear or grievance, but because he suddenly wondered whether Xie Chongyi had once felt just as lost as he did now.
After resting where he stood for a while, Wu Heng looked around, found a direction, and began walking westward. The harsher and less suitable a place was for life, the more suitable it was for him now.
He was not moving slowly, though he kept stopping and starting along the way. It was not until the following morning that he reached the coldest and steepest region.
He had only just found a place to sit down when the poppies immediately drove their roots deep underground. The pollution sources were imprisoned within the root system, sinking deeper and deeper below the earth.
Then he lay down.
Out of the corner of his eye, several clusters of tiny purple flowers appeared beside his face.
Plants had begun to appear in the wasteland. The pollution sources must have been almost completely absorbed and cleansed.
But both of Wu Heng’s energy cores had already shattered. Only the poppies remained, and the poppies’ vast root system had to keep the pollution sources locked down.
The sunlight on the plateau was dazzlingly bright. Before long, it scorched his cheeks painfully, while the heaviness in his body seemed to melt away beneath the heat.
After an unknown amount of time had passed, Wu Heng groggily raised his hands, only to discover that his fingers and arms had returned to their former appearance.
He tried to sit up.
But he could not move.
Not even slightly.
His body felt as though it had grown into the earth itself.
After struggling fruitlessly for a while, Wu Heng let his hands fall back down. Feeling the plant within his body, he realized that its roots had already spread across the entire world.
It had swallowed every pollution source.
Like a gigantic network, it had almost fused together with the earth itself.
Wu Heng quickly understood:
Neither he nor the poppies would ever be able to leave this place again.
Now, the plant was no longer a part of him.
Rather, he had become a part of the plant.
He was already dead.
Aheng