Chapter 93.1: “I don’t want a brother”
“…” Lin Mengzhi hid behind Shen Ping’an. “I think I just saw a ghost.”
“Rounding up, all plants under heaven are basically one big family. Shen Ping’an, take a look—what was that just now?” Xue Qi sat on the ground. He had been the closest to the vine that suddenly burst out of the earth, but even so, he had only seen a hand reach up—never the person the hand belonged to.
Shen Ping’an: “It was Wu Heng.”
“That’s not my brother’s voice,” Wu Zhi said unhappily. “Ugly.”
Xue Shen pushed up his glasses. “…It was Old Xie’s voice.”
“They’re back?” Lin Mengzhi craned his neck to look, but unfortunately it was too dark all around, and most of the survivors had already entered the base. Behind them, there wasn’t a single human figure in sight.
“Probably some new ability,” Xue Shen said.
Ying Liuquan, who had been quiet for a long time, wiped the sweat from his face. “I did sense Wu Heng’s and Xie Chongyi’s consciousness flicker between us for a few seconds just now.”
Xue Qi was shocked. “Has Wu Heng’s hand always been able to stretch that far?”
“No.” Lin Mengzhi denied it. “It used to only cover a small range.”
Everyone vaguely sensed that the two must have encountered something at the Meili Base that caused Wu Heng’s ability to level up again.
After a moment of silence, Lin Mengzhi suddenly jumped up, pointed at Wu Zhi, and exaggeratedly exclaimed, “It’s all your fault! If not for you, I would’ve gotten to level up too!”
Wu Zhi rolled her eyes. “If you think summer is going to end tonight, then by all means, keep blaming me.”
Dou Lu vigorously waved her hands to disperse the stench still lingering in the air. “Save the arguing for after we get inside.”
A guard had already walked up to them—Kuhuang Base was considerably larger than Meili in every aspect. Even the guards’ uniforms were well-tailored: just a simple dark-navy T-shirt and black trousers, topped with a leather chest piece printed with a light-blue sphere, and even a black steel helmet on his head.
His face showed no emotion, only waterfalls of sweat. “Routine inspection. Three green lights and you may enter.”
“Teacher goes first.”
“Yeah, teacher first.”
Everyone courteously stepped aside.
“…” Ying Liuquan said, walking forward.
The guard gripped the handle of the scanner and swept it from the top of the young man’s head down to his face, neck, chest, hands and underarms, abdomen—then crouched to scan his legs. Afterward, he stood and moved behind the young man. The first scan ended, and the tip of the detector beeped once and lit up green. But the guard still repeated the entire procedure, meticulously, two more times. Only after all three scans showed green did he finally say quietly, “You may enter.”
Ying Liuquan hunched his shoulders and stepped aside, clearly planning to wait until the rest of the group had passed inspection so they could enter the base together.
The guard looked at him. “Go in first.”
“I…”
The guard cut him off. His tone didn’t change, but his volume rose slightly. “Every extra second you stay outside the base is another second of danger. Go in.”
Ying Liuquan opened his mouth, then quickly turned around and walked briskly toward the base gate.
Ruan Silian was pulled forward by Dou Lu. “Go.”
The guard lifted the scanner. In the distance, a shrill, anguished scream suddenly rang out.
“No!!!”
They all turned curiously to look. All they saw was the woman in the red dress from behind. Heat waves curled and lifted the ends of her hair. Her posture was elegant and poised, but in her right hand she held a long spear—its tip even redder than her dress.
A woman with disheveled hair was kneeling on the ground, clutching a creature that was half-human, half-insect. “Do you know killing needs to be repaid with your life?!” she roared, the veins on her neck bulging.
The long spear slid gently into the woman’s wrist artery. The woman in the red dress remained expressionless. “He’s not human anymore. Just a fly.”
With that, she turned and walked away without looking back, tossing out her orders: “Relatives go to the observation room. If their vitals stay normal for 24 hours, they can be released. After release, they must wear a HOPE ring for one week.”
With nowhere to appeal and nowhere to vent her grief, the kneeling woman buried her head and sobbed in a muffled, heartbroken mess. The survivors who had yet to be inspected were also stunned in place by the sudden scene.
Soon, two guards came out from inside the base. One grabbed her by the arm, dragging her away by force. Afterward, one of the guards set the corpse on fire.
Crackling sounds erupted, and a burnt, charred smell drifted toward Lin Mengzhi and the others.
Their expressions varied, but Lin Mengzhi was suffering the most. He blew his nose hard, his nasal cavity burning. “Damn it, I can’t take this!”
“What’s a hope ring?” Dou Lu asked the guard standing before them.
“It’s a type of collar our base invented. It monitors survivors who are currently in the medium-risk stage for 24 hours,” the guard said. “All the survivor’s physiological data detected by the collar is transmitted in real time to our base’s control center. If an anomaly appears, the collar can complete a ‘clearance action’ within three seconds.”
Lin Mengzhi didn’t understand. “A clearance action means clearing the virus out of the survivor’s body?”
The guard shook his head. “It means clearing the survivor.”
“Huh?”
Even after everyone finished the inspection and entered the base, Lin Mengzhi was still muttering in shock.
“I kinda feel… wearing a hope ring is even worse than being thrown in jail. You lose all your dignity…”
“That’s not all. Wearing something like that is basically announcing to everyone around you: this person might mutate, stay away from them. No matter the intention, that’s almost guaranteed to result in the entire base isolating and bullying that one person,” Xue Shen said.
“What if the person doesn’t mutate into a monster but evolves into an ability-user? Like some sort of advancement?” Dou Lu asked.
Ruan Silian thought for a moment and then hesitantly voiced her guess. “I feel like… they may have already developed a dataset or criteria to distinguish between infection-mutation and evolutionary mutation.”
“That fast?!”
Lying on Xue Shen’s back, Xue Qi raised his right hand high. “Don’t underestimate humanity, damn it!”
—
“Did it work?” Under the moonlight, Xie Chongyi propped his chin in his hand and asked.
Wu Heng took in the suffocating stench around them in the spatial pocket and nodded. “It worked.”
“Does Shen Ping’an know you’ve evolved an ability that can monitor parasitic organisms now?” Xie Chongyi asked, amused.
Wu Heng: “Of course not. I only just found out myself.”
The distance of several dozen kilometers far exceeded the range the poppy could extend—only with Shen Ping’an’s help had he managed it.
His face was deathly pale, as if all the blood in his body had drained away—he looked like the thin white sprout inside a plant seedling just breaking through the soil.
“Not just monitoring parasitic organisms—you’ve evolved a plant space too?” Xie Chongyi asked again.
Wu Heng didn’t tell him that the space had existed for a long time already, and that its current size had expanded dozens of times compared to before.
The poppy’s true body always occupied one corner. Its true body wasn’t the vine—its real body was a straight, green stem. The thing clinging to the white walls behind it was the vine. But calling it a vine wasn’t quite accurate—it was actually its root system, Wu Heng’s blood vessels. And the “wall” it clung to was the inner wall of the boy’s heart.
Wu Heng: “I only just realized it too.”
“But long-distance control requires extremely powerful ability,” Xie Chongyi said, studying the color of Wu Heng’s face.
Wu Heng nodded. Just now, he’d only sensed a faint reaction and had wanted to test it. Although it had worked, the strain had sent a sharp ache through his mind.
“Other than Shen Ping’an, can you graft onto anyone else?”
“Probably not. Grafting can only happen between plants. Back then Shen Ping’an was already in a half-plant state, so the timing was perfect.” Wu Heng opened his hand—his fingers turned into five vines. With a flick of his wrist, the vines extended across the ground and pierced a clump of man-tall thatch grass and a small patch of plantain beneath it.
The shapes of the thatch and plantain quickly changed. The drooping, hook-shaped leaves of the thatch gradually lifted, their half-yellow, half-green color fading back to pure green. The plantain, which had lain flat against the ground, lifted upright—and soon, several poppy plants of varying height appeared.
Xie Chongyi walked forward and crouched down. After examining them for a while, he turned to Wu Heng, sincerity in his eyes. “Wu Heng, you’re incredible.”
The starlight above fell coldly onto the earth, glowing like dim, luminous eyes.
Wu Heng subconsciously looked up. He realized that even a sky full of stars was nothing compared to the beauty of Xie Chongyi’s eyes.
Color, fragrance, and taste—the standards of delicious food. Xie Chongyi seemed to possess all of them.
“Thank you,” the boy whispered, then turned and walked away quickly.
The main vein of the mutant bamboo was quickly located by the two of them. It wasn’t as far as Wu Dian had described—most likely because, harassed by the yellow crazy ants, it had been forced to keep relocating.
The bamboo grove, ravaged by the yellow crazy ants, was in utter chaos. The bamboo crowns drooped and yellowed, many stalks bore deep scratches, cracks, and some were even broken in half.
Wu Heng found it. It had almost no offensive power—just frantically sprouting bamboo shoots in an attempt to drive away intruders. For the previous yellow crazy ants, this kind of attack was like shoving a banquet of delicacies into the mouth of a homeless person who hadn’t eaten for ten or fifteen days.
Unfortunately, Wu Heng was human—he couldn’t enjoy such a feast.
The vines dug into the soil, and the mutant bamboo’s roots burst upward. The crackling of splintering bamboo felt like the grove’s secret, low growl.
Xie Chongyi hardly had to lift a finger. He stood to the side, arms crossed, occasionally swatting away white fluff that flew toward his face, and sneezing lightly in discomfort.
A green-glowing energy core was held by the vines and presented to Wu Heng. The energy within it far exceeded that of any previous wood-type energy core they had encountered.
Before Xie Chongyi stepped forward, Wu Heng had already tucked the core into his pocket.
“Let me see.” Xie Chongyi reached out.
Wu Heng took it out again.
Xie Chongyi held the energy core in his hand. This wood-type core had a deeper green than any before, with unevenly distributed pale green filaments inside. He returned it to Wu Heng. “Without this core, will the bamboo grove disappear?”
“The current grove would vanish, but the bamboo itself won’t. Soon, a new grove will grow here.”