Chapter 25.1: Battered Yet Strikingly Beautiful
Dark clouds hung overhead, and the city’s former prosperity could only be recalled through the stifling, oppressive buildings—living people were scarcely to be seen.
The number of zombies wasn’t as dense as one might imagine; most had either starved to death or been devoured by mutated plants and animals.
Lin Mengzhi walked in the lead, gripping a knife and wordlessly clearing the path.
Wu Zhi clutched the corner of Wu Heng’s clothes, holding tight to the rag doll she refused to part with no matter where they went. Atop her head perched the lazy, gluttonous X.
The nearest shopping mall was less than five kilometers away. In the old days, taking the subway there would have taken no more than half an hour. But now, with the city in ruins and everything collapsed, the subway was long gone—they had no choice but to walk.
Wu Heng walked while studying a rolled-up map of Hanzhou in his hands.
He had grown up in Hanzhou and had a general sense of its terrain and urban layout. But for a more detailed and comprehensive picture, he still had to rely on the map.
Hanzhou sat on a plain, yet within its boundaries lay ten lakes of varying sizes. Wu Heng didn’t have the mind to think about whether the water quality or aquatic life in those lakes had mutated. His gaze instead fell upon a botanical garden in the southwest, covering nearly 800 hectares.
The map had been made for tourists visiting Hanzhou, so next to the botanical garden’s icon was a note: over 20,000 plant species were collected within.
With such an astonishing number of plants, the probability of mutated species inside would be far higher than outside.
And although they were all of the same kind, their energy cores still shared his own affinity—each one a great tonic.
“Brother?” Wu Zhi, panting, spoke up softly.
Wu Heng, distracted, replied, “Hm?”
“Brother Mengzhi has killed so many monsters… shouldn’t you go help him?”
“Why don’t you go?”
“…” Wu Zhi’s face flushed red. “I’m scared.”
“So am I.” Wu Heng didn’t even look up, his tone cool and detached.
Wu Zhi glanced left and right, clutching her rag doll tightly in her arms. She staggered a few steps, then turned to look behind them.
“Brother, someone’s following us.”
Only then did Wu Heng react. He glanced back, and the few young men trailing them instantly darted behind a sedan parked on the roadside.
“Don’t worry about them.” Wu Heng withdrew his gaze and kept walking.
Each of those youths was carrying at least two bags. They were drenched in sweat, gasping for air. But the thought that if they lost track of this group, they’d have to face the zombies that popped up from time to time on their own—well, that thought made all their fatigue vanish like smoke.
“These two kids… I never realized they were this capable.”
“They saw us plain as day, but didn’t say a word about letting us come along. I practically watched them grow up—no wonder they had the guts to tear down someone’s house like that.”
“Grow up? You’ve got some nerve saying that. Back when those two were in elementary school, you and your buddy blocked them on the way home more than a few times just to snatch their pocket money.”
The three of them had lived in the same residential complex as Wu Heng, right across from their building. When the radio broadcast came out, it was a blunt declaration: everyone should fend for themselves, every family on its own.
Some people chose to keep hiding at home, waiting for the government or the military to find a cure for the virus and send in rescue. Others decided to take their chances outside—after all, if you stayed home, you’d starve anyway.
These three belonged to the latter. By sheer coincidence, they had witnessed firsthand Wu Heng and Lin Mengzhi using their powers.
It was clear enough that Wu Heng and Lin Mengzhi weren’t going to remain in the complex, so the three hastily stuffed a few bags with supplies and set out after them.
The moment the two boys stepped out of the community, the three trailed right behind.
“I can’t anymore, I need a break!” Lin Mengzhi leaned against the wall of a convenience store, hands braced on his hips, sweat streaming down his face.
He turned his head toward Wu Heng and Wu Zhi, who were a short distance behind. Wu Zhi at least looked as terrified as one would expect, which was reassuring in its own way. But Wu Heng—his posture was so relaxed, it was as though he were out for a casual stroll on a pleasant afternoon!
What Wu Heng should have been holding wasn’t a map at all, but rather a cup of inexplicable hand-ground coffee.
Wu Zhi jogged up to Lin Mengzhi. “I want Coke!”
“Where am I supposed to find Coke for you?” Lin Mengzhi rolled his eyes.
Wu Zhi pointed her finger at the glass door beside him. “There’s some inside.”
Lin Mengzhi turned around.
“…”
After two seconds of silence, he bent down and used his knife to deftly pry open the convenience store’s lock.
He pushed the door open and let Wu Zhi in. “Grab a few more bottles.”
By this time, Wu Heng had already walked to the open space in front of the store. He stopped, glanced inside, and asked, “What are you getting?”
“Coke. Do you want one?”
“…Sure.”
Wu Zhi went behind the cashier’s counter first, tore a shopping bag from the roll, then stood in front of the shelves tossing cans of Coke into it one by one. With every can she dropped in, the bird on her head gave a little nod.
Above her, a faint rustling sound of sliding friction drifted down.
X was the first to react. When it lifted its head, the store had already been completely overtaken by some kind of giant, broad-leafed vine plant. Just moments ago, the inside had been perfectly clean, with nothing at all.
X let out a cry and darted out of the convenience store.
It flew straight to Wu Heng, snatched the map from his hands, and signaled him to look toward the shop.
And in less than ten seconds, thick, muscular vines had already woven themselves into a dense curtain across the entrance. At the side, Lin Mengzhi was still obliviously fiddling with his knife, while the vines silently crept toward his feet.
Wu Heng snatched the blade from Lin Mengzhi’s hand and swung it at the vines.
The knife flashed down, and the vine recoiled in pain.
“Wait outside,” Wu Heng tossed out, and before Lin Mengzhi could even figure out what was happening, Wu Heng had already slashed open the green curtain and stepped inside.
Green had become the sky and earth of the convenience store. The vines were still growing, crawling, writhing—yet they seemed in no hurry at all.
“Brother…” Wu Zhi stood dazed beside the shelves. Her neck was already strangled tight, yet she still clung desperately to both her rag doll and the Coke, refusing to let either go.
Wu Heng was silent for a moment. When he reached her side, he recognized the plant for what it was—a type of wisteria vine.
He pressed his palm gently to her throat. With a faint snap, the vine choking her broke apart.
Only then did the flourishing vines seem to realize their prey had been snatched away. Their movements quickened, swelling and surging into an attack stance.
Wu Heng barely had time to shove Wu Zhi out of the store. Just as he was about to dash out himself, a whip-like vine coiled around his waist. His figure blurred—and vanished from the doorway.
“Brother!”
Lin Mengzhi was frantic. “I’ll burn it—set it all on fire!”
“You’ll burn my brother too!” Wu Zhi cried.
For Wu Heng, it was as if he’d returned to that day in the outskirts.
The store was crammed so tightly with vines that not even air could slip through. They sprouted endlessly along the shelves and walls, the rasping friction sounding like he had stumbled into some reptilian lair.
The oxygen around him was thinning—his enemy intended to suffocate him alive in here.
“You’ve delivered yourself to me,” Wu Heng muttered. After standing still for some time, he casually bent to pick up a stray branch in his hand. “Just in time—I need to replenish my strength.”
His stamina had already been drained back in the residential complex. The poppy flower shared everything with him, bound to his will—if he didn’t care how long he lived, then it too longed for the other’s death.
The moment the mutant plant, which had fused with humans, came into contact with its own kind, it erupted violently from its host body, spreading and conquering in the same ruthless fashion.
Leaves shredded to pieces filled the air, while streams of green sap rained down.
The boy’s face was deathly pale, ghostlike. He bent down, spotted the knife he’d brought into the shop earlier, and picked it up.
With the blade in hand, he strolled through the store as if nothing were out of the ordinary.
All plants had roots. Even aquatic ones.
Wu Heng knew full well that, with his current stamina, he wouldn’t last long—he had to end this quickly.
His cool fingers pressed against one of the thick vines clinging firmly to the wall. The vine shuddered noticeably.
In that instant, Wu Heng caught the direction of its involuntary recoil.
Without hesitation, he strode straight toward the deepest part of the convenience store, stopping before a door where countless tendrils kept spilling outward.
The mutated pothos must have its core body inside.
Wu Heng swung his knife, hacking through several vines. While they busied themselves sprouting fresh shoots, he slipped inside with a swift sidestep.
The room was meant to be the store’s stockroom, but there were hardly any supplies left. Instead, a mountain of human corpses nearly touched the ceiling.
The wisteria’s root system gleamed black and slick, stretching outward from dozens of bodies. Each branching root lay embedded in a corpse.
Some of the bodies faced Wu Heng directly, their expressions of terror and panic still frozen clearly upon their faces.
The sight reminded him of the oddly shaped trees he had once seen during a spring outing—trees whose trunks bore strange protruding knots, grotesque yet seamlessly part of the whole.
The corpses here resembled those knots. Not only had they been consumed as nutrients for the mutated pothos, but even their shells had been fused into it, as if they had always grown from its roots.
Anyone who saw this scene would feel a visceral wave of disgust—and so did Wu Heng.
Step by step, the boy approached. He chose a corpse with its back to him, drove the knife into it, and buried the blade deep.
White sap seeped along the edge of the knife. Overhead, the pothos vines thrashed violently, but they were crushed and pinned down by Wu Heng’s own vines.
He yanked the knife free, rolled up his sleeves, and bent to thrust his hand inside the corpse.
He rummaged for a long time—only to withdraw empty-handed.
The initial discomfort ebbed away, replaced by simmering dissatisfaction. Wu Heng’s pale, porcelain-like face grew ever darker, his brows and eyes steeped in deepening gloom.
Puchi, puchi, puchi…
Wu Heng stopped fussing over the poses or expressions of the corpses; he drove his knife into every corpse within reach, one stab after another.
He was like Yama, claiming lives without discrimination.
The root system was torn to pieces—the pothos’ leaves lost their sheen, the vines lost their stiffness; the leaves blackened and yellowed, the vines went limp and lost their grip, peeling off the wall in handfuls.
When Lin Mengzhi and Wu Zhi ran in, Wu Heng was swinging his aching wrist. He hadn’t heard their calls; he plunged his knife into the chest of the last female corpse. For the first time, the tip of the blade met resistance as it sank in.
Wu Heng’s gaze paused, a faint smile appearing on his face. “Found it.”
He pulled the knife free and, at the corpse’s heart, extracted a green energy core smothered in white sap.
“Brother!” Wu Zhi suddenly screamed.
The corpse on the floor, after its energy core was removed, snapped its eyes open. Though its body lay unmoving, its arm shot straight up and its fingers easily sank into the boy’s left chest.
Wu Heng’s expression froze. He bent his head and saw the corpse’s hand already buried deep in his chest; the corpse’s arm had shoved in as well.
He could clearly feel a foreign thing inside him, and he could feel his heart being gripped tight.
The female corpse, having succeeded, lifted an eyebrow and slowly sat up.
“So it wasn’t a mutated pothos—it’s a zombie.” Wu Heng said softly as he looked into the creature’s murky eyes.
Flames flickered faintly in Lin Mengzhi’s palm.
The zombie glanced at him and rasped, “You dare move and I’ll kill him right away.”
No sooner had the words fallen than the cold flash of a blade streaked in front of them: the zombie’s arm was severed instantly, and before it could react, the youth’s knife decapitated it.
Wu Heng climbed up from the floor, pale. He pulled the hand out of his body, tossed it aside with disgust, and said, “Don’t threaten me—otherwise I’ll give you only a corpse.”
The vines outside shared his fury, retracting in an instant and spearing straight into the female corpse, skewering her into nothing but pulp.
Lin Mengzhi and Wu Zhi both froze, holding their breath, neither daring to make a sound.
“You two wait outside.” Wu Heng twirled the blade once, then reversed his grip and handed the hilt toward Lin Mengzhi.
“Holy sh*t, are you okay?!”
“Your grandpa’s fine. Get out.”
Lin Mengzhi snatched the knife and dragged Wu Zhi away, vanishing from Wu Heng’s sight in a flash.