Chapter 9: I Thought You’d Be Preparing for Your Own Funeral First
Grandma Lin once again heard the chaotic footsteps and the banging of workers unloading goods. Exhausted from scolding, she sat on the sofa with a darkened face.
If she could still see, her expression might have looked even darker, because the once spacious living room had become increasingly crowded—more and more crowded. Lin Mengzhi had found the carpenter’s number in his phone book and asked them to bring their materials and tools to seal up the balcony today.
When he returned to the living room after the call, he saw Wu Heng already asleep on the sofa.
The fluffy parrot stood on the armrest next to Wu Heng’s head. It stared at Lin Mengzhi without blinking and called out, “Water.”
“I never said I was going to raise you,” Lin Mengzhi muttered, but still turned and headed into the kitchen to pour a bowl of water for the parrot.
“You don’t look like a mutated bird to me.”
As the parrot buried its head to drink, Lin Mengzhi studied it closely, but couldn’t see anything different from the parrots he usually saw.
Wu Heng had only been asleep for less than three hours. When he woke, a veil of mist still clung to the daylight outside the window.
On the balcony, three workers were nailing boards to the wall. The living room was empty—Grandma Lin and Lin Mengzhi were gone. Only the parrot they’d brought back in the morning was curled up on the sofa, sleeping just like him.
The young man’s eyelids drooped as he stared blankly at the floor tiles beneath the coffee table.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The workers swung their hammers, driving nails into the wall one by one. But to Wu Heng, it felt like the nails weren’t going into the wall, but into his heart. With every heavy blow, blood seemed to be forced out of his heart, his muscles tensing before pulling back again.
Sweat slid down Wu Heng’s temple. He picked up the teapot from the table and poured himself a cup of water. Before his tongue could even register the taste, the entire cup had already been gulped down his throat.
After finishing the entire pot of water, Wu Heng panted heavily, his already inky-black pupils dilating further. He listened to the murmurs of the workers, and then—he caught the scent of fresh meat. Alive, warm, fresh. The smell grew stronger with every movement the workers made, until it consumed Wu Heng’s entire world.
Wu Heng shook his head violently and staggered to his feet.
The parrot, startled by his sudden movement, woke up. It looked up at Wu Heng, then flapped its wings and began circling frantically above the living room, squawking in a harsh, grating voice. Its cries were so strange and shrill that Lin Mengzhi was jolted awake, stumbling out of his room with an irritated look on his face.
“What the hell!”
One look at Wu Heng and Lin Mengzhi was instantly wide awake.
Tripping over his own feet, Lin Mengzhi rushed back to his room, yanked out a bedsheet, and threw it over Wu Heng’s head, wrapping him up. He dragged him to the bedroom door and with all his strength, tossed him inside—then slammed and locked the door.
Silence fell inside the room. No movement. Lin Mengzhi pressed his ear against the door, and let out a breath of relief.
BANG!
The door shuddered from a sudden blow.
Lin Mengzhi swallowed hard and stepped back.
Driven mad by hunger, Wu Heng had lost all reason. Every organ in his body screamed in agony. He didn’t know how many times he’d slammed into the door—he felt no exhaustion, no pain—until finally, he heard Lin Mengzhi sobbing uncontrollably outside.
That knife… might as well have been a gift, Wu Heng thought grimly.
The parrot was left at Lin Mengzhi’s place. Wu Heng went home to shower and change. Lin Mengzhi, eyes red from crying, walked him to the door.
“Just hang in there a little longer. They’ll find a vaccine soon, I know they will!”
Wu Heng was too exhausted to speak. He dragged his feet through the hallway and made his way home.
It wasn’t that he was pessimistic.
He just knew all too well—whatever landed on him was never anything but disaster.
The kind without hope.
He showered, changed clothes, and wiped the steam off the mirror with his palm. In less than two days, a moldy green-blue hue had already spread beneath the boy’s pale skin.
The bluish tint sat just under the surface—no amount of rubbing could remove or blur it.
Back in his room, Wu Heng lay down on the bed. He took out his phone and sent a WeChat message to Xie Chongyi. He didn’t ask if the other person was around—he simply sent the video he’d taken that morning of the fish.
A few minutes later, Xie Chongyi replied: [I don’t really like that kind of fish. Too flashy.]
“…”
Wu Heng didn’t express his inner speechlessness. Instead, he got straight to the point: [They seem to have mutated. Highly aggressive and bloodthirsty.]
[I thought you wouldn’t contact me again] Xie Chongyi replied, out of nowhere.
Wu Heng, whose face rarely showed emotion, was now visibly puzzled.
Fortunately, Xie Chongyi’s tangent ended on its own.
He sent another message: [How did you figure that out?]
Wu Heng replied, [I put a blood-stained knife into the tank. They went berserk.]
Xie Chongyi: [So you think the mutation isn’t limited to humans. Animals too?]
[I believe ‘distortion’ means turning into zombies. ‘Mutation’ means evolution. These are two different types of aberrations we’re seeing.]
There was too much to type, so Wu Heng switched to voice. He pressed the voice message button and spoke steadily, unhurriedly:
“Distortion is undeniably infectious. But whether mutation is infectious—I’m not sure. Do you have any new information to exchange?”
The boy’s voice was completely at odds with his appearance. It had none of the typical hoarseness of a teenage boy—cool, distant, and hard to get close to.
Xie Chongyi replayed the audio several times before replying with text: [Plants might mutate too.]
“How would that even work?” Wu Heng couldn’t picture it.
Even if plants somehow became intelligent… what good would that do?
Xie Chongyi said, [It’s becoming bigger, and more aggressive?]
Wu Heng hesitated. “Have you seen it yourself?”
This time, Xie Chongyi didn’t hold back. He directly sent Wu Heng a few photos, along with a short written explanation:
[This is the bougainvillea growing on the balcony above mine. Three days ago, I noticed one of its branches had started to hang down, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. Then after just one day, the bougainvillea from upstairs had nearly covered a third of my balcony. I didn’t tell the neighbor upstairs — instead, I bought some garden shears and cut off all the parts that had grown into my balcony. The photos I sent you were taken just today, one day after I trimmed it.]
In Hanzhou, Wu Heng had never seen such lush and vigorous bougainvillea. The ones he was familiar with usually only grew up to knee height and were generally dry and scrawny.
But in the photos, the bougainvillea loomed darkly over Xie Chongyi’s balcony, its purplish-red petals so vivid they seemed almost alive, as if they were lurking — watching something with a predator’s eye. The sunlight was completely blocked out by the mass of it.
Wu Heng didn’t doubt him. He asked, “So it just becomes more lush, that’s all?”
But this time, Xie Chongyi sent a voice message — only five seconds long.
Wu Heng tapped on it. At first, all he could hear was a faint buzzing of static. Then, at the very end, came a low, ambiguous chuckle from Xie Chongyi, followed by a lazy, drawn-out line:
“Just wait.”
Two minutes later, Wu Heng’s phone buzzed with a new video message.
In the video, the lighting was bright. The person holding the phone seemed to be rummaging for something in a corner. Once they found it, the camera shook a bit, and suddenly, the bougainvillea was right there, up close — separated from the phone only by a sliding glass door.
“Watch closely,” Xie Chongyi’s voice was low and restrained in the video.
Wu Heng focused intently and saw a slender, well-defined hand swiftly slide open the door and toss a cardboard box outside.
The moment the box hit the ground, the previously soft and graceful bougainvillea branches suddenly shot out like arrows. With several sharp thwack sounds, the box was instantly riddled with holes.
Once the bougainvillea returned to its original drooping form, the video ended. Wu Heng played it again.
If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes—if the video had come from a random netizen instead of Xie Chongyi—he would’ve assumed it was just another internet hoax. He would never have believed that a bougainvillea could develop territorial awareness, let alone attack other creatures that entered its domain.
Still stunned, Wu Heng heard Xie Chongyi say again, “It hasn’t stopped growing. At its current rate, I estimate that within half a month, this entire building will be overtaken by it.”
That was truly enough to make one’s scalp tingle. A plant had somehow gained self-awareness—and even wanted to drive humans away.
Wu Heng quickly gathered his thoughts and asked, “Where are you planning to go?”
“What’s it got to do with you?” Xie Chongyi replied immediately.
“It doesn’t,” Wu Heng said. “So where are you going?”
There was a long pause before Xie Chongyi finally replied: “I thought you’d be more concerned with your own funeral arrangements first.”
“…”
Wu Heng put down his phone and didn’t reply. A sorrowful expression slowly spread across his pale, fragile face, as though it were about to shatter.
He should’ve moved faster last night. He should’ve killed Xie Chongyi and devoured him completely.
Wu Heng brooded darkly—someone like Xie Chongyi was meant to be his prey.
