Chapter 107: Center of the World
Wu Heng had already explained everything clearly. Whether to believe it or not was Xie Chongyi’s business.
The pain inside his body was so intense that even his nerves were spasming. Letting Xie Chongyi grip him, Wu Heng looked at him with calm gray-green eyes and asked, “Will I be poisoned to death by you?”
“If you throw it up in time, you’ll hurt for a few days at most.” Xie Chongyi paused, then added, “But that kind of luck belongs only to you. If you didn’t have self-healing abilities, you’d probably already be dead.”
Grief and indignation surged in Wu Heng’s heart; his expression turned desolate. The food he had painstakingly nurtured for months turned out to be nothing but deadly poison, utterly inedible. Detached from the world as he usually was, even his resolve now inevitably developed fine cracks.
This was equivalent to saying that everything he had done from the very beginning of the apocalypse until today had been in vain.
People often said that the more beautiful something looked, the more poisonous it was—but no one ever said that things that smelled sweet and fragrant could also be lethal.
Monster.
Xie Chongyi was a monster.
Even if ten more pairs of Wu Shiming and Zeng Like died, it still wouldn’t compare to even one-tenth of the anguish he felt now.
He had clearly followed every step to complete an entire problem, yet the result was off by tens of thousands of miles from both the process and the answer key.
Back when he was in school, he could rewrite the problem again and again until it was completely correct from start to finish—that was why his grades had always ranked at the top.
But Xie Chongyi was not a wrong problem.
For the first time, Wu Heng didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to give up, nor was he willing to.
He could only think of other methods: add garlic and stir-fry at high heat to remove most of the toxicity, excise glands or the liver that might secrete venom—
But no, Xie Chongyi was neither a mushroom nor a pufferfish. That insect, that black sticky fluid—everything made it abundantly clear that there wasn’t a single part of Xie Chongyi that could be eaten. From head to toe, he was a poisonous insect.
If Xie Chongyi were chopped up and thrown into a pot, the final outcome would be nothing more than throwing the pot away along with it.
At this thought, tears spilled from Wu Heng’s eyes. Clear tears carved wet tracks down his face, already smeared with blood.
“Was I not good to you?” Wu Heng shot back at Xie Chongyi, his voice trembling despite his effort to hold it steady. “How could you… not be edible?”
Wu Heng knew himself that the question was unreasonable. He was simply too heartbroken, too disappointed.
If it weren’t for Xie Chongyi, he would almost have forgotten what heartbreak and disappointment felt like.
Xie Chongyi wiped the tears from Wu Heng’s face hard with the palm of his hand. “Why are you crying?”
Wu Heng remained silent.
Xie Chongyi had no choice but to carry him to a chair and sit him down, then leave the room, his entire body smeared with blood.
A guard hurrying past outside was overwhelmed by the surging stench of blood from the room and instinctively turned sideways. When he twisted his head and saw the young man’s clothes and pant legs looking as if they had been soaked in a pool of blood, his face barely recognizable as human, he was so frightened that he nearly passed out on the spot.
“What happened? Did an infected person appear at the rest station?” the guard demanded, going on full alert as he shouted at the young man.
“I slipped and fell by accident—lost a bit of blood,” Xie Chongyi said with a smile.
“…” The guard choked on his words. “Even if you’d smashed your head clean off, you wouldn’t be bleeding this much. Wait here—I’ll go get a doctor to take a look at you.”
“What doctor would have time right now? Where’s the water? I’ll just get some water and wash up,” Xie Chongyi said, twisting a corner of his clothes. Fresh blood seeped out in large amounts between his fingers.
The guard pointed him in a direction.
Along the corridor Xie Chongyi walked through, a trail of bloody footprints was left behind. Watching them, the guard couldn’t help but shudder.
A deranged world—a deranged world.
Wu Heng recalled the poppy back into his body; the pain inside him was still excruciating.
After a long moment, he lowered his head and wiped the sticky clots of blood from his face with the back of his hand. As soon as he wiped them away, the blood flowed again in a fresh smear.
Knock, knock.
Two consecutive knocks sounded at the door.
It definitely wasn’t Xie Chongyi. When Xie Chongyi came in, he never needed to knock.
Forced to straighten the back he had been hunched in pain, Wu Heng leaned against the chair back, gripping the armrests with his fingers to keep himself from slumping sideways. “Come in.”
The door was gently pushed open from the outside. Standing there was a young boy of about fifteen or sixteen, wearing an ill-fitting guard uniform and a steel helmet far too large for his head, his features delicate and small.
He peered into the room. “What’s going on in here? Is there anything I can help with?”
Wu Heng said nothing was wrong—there wasn’t.
“But there’s blood all over the floor, and your clothes are covered too. You don’t look well at all.” The boy didn’t leave; he stepped a few paces further inside.
The stench of blood in the room grew even stronger, but it was two completely different kinds of blood. One carried a faint sweetness, like nectar drawn from flowers blooming in spring, tempting one to taste it. The other carried immense power—this latter one stirred an urge to seize it. Along with that, there was fear and submission, though he could not explain why.
“Go out.” Wu Heng lifted his gaze and silently stared at him, listening to the tense rhythm of his own breathing.
This time, his self-repair was far more difficult than previous times. If he diverted the poppy’s focus, he might end up vomiting several chunks of body tissue from unknown origins.
“I just wanted to help you.” Under the yellow light bulb, the little guard hesitated.
But he didn’t appear weak at all; despite seeming more malnourished than Wu Heng, there was strength in him.
Wu Heng narrowed his eyes, observing him. In the dim light, he noticed an unusual fluid flowing beneath the boy’s sallow skin—blood darker than the skin, tainted blood.
And the smell—Wu Heng had always been unnaturally sensitive to all kinds of scents.
Something inedible had been placed on the table.
Wu Heng turned his head away.
“What do you think you’re helping him with?”
Xie Chongyi appeared silently at the door, holding a basin of water. The only clean part of him was a white towel draped over his arm.
His arrival immediately shattered the little guard’s reason.
At the moment he turned, the boy’s mouth opened wide, teeth blackened, gray-white eyes filled with ravenous desire, and he lunged at the person at the doorway.
Xie Chongyi didn’t move an inch. In the air behind him, two enormous insect scythes emerged out of nowhere and thrust forward. With a crack, the black scythes crossed—
the little guard was severed cleanly at the waist, his body split into two. Filthy black blood sprayed across the wall from the broken torso.
‘Disgusting insect.’ Wu Heng glanced aside, thinking to himself. He knew the reason Xie Chongyi was impossible to eat was entirely because of those insects.
“He wanted to eat you,” Wu Heng said dully, watching Xie Chongyi walk toward him.
“Mhm.”
“You could’ve just poisoned him to death. There was no need to make it so troublesome,” Wu Heng said, his breathing unsteady from the pain.
“No. Other people’s saliva is disgusting. I wouldn’t be able to eat for three days,” Xie Chongyi replied casually. He set the basin of water down on the desk by the wall, soaked the towel in it, then wrung it out.
Wu Heng froze. “But I just bit you.”
“You’re different.” Xie Chongyi, in fact, wished Wu Heng would be like those corpses reeking of decay.
If that were the case, he could, upon opening his eyes, cut the person down without hesitation—like harvesting wheat—leaving only two legs standing on the ground, instead of having to worry, after being sucked for blood and gnawed for flesh, about whether the other person might be poisoned to death. All those who prayed for love in this world were absurd in exactly the same way; those already absurd would only become more so, without exception.
Wu Heng was carried to the chair in front of the desk. He plunged both hands into the basin, and when he lifted his face, Xie Chongyi wiped it with the towel.
To Wu Heng, Xie Chongyi had already lost most of the allure of being the most delicious food in the world. In the faint, wavering halo of light, Wu Heng recalled his first impression of Xie Chongyi: unquestionably, the center of the world.
“Lift your head,” said the center of the world.
Xie Chongyi cleaned the blood-smeared neck in his hands until it was white again.
—
Lin Mengzhi stayed glued to Chen Meng’s side. Chen Meng’s appearance was undeniably that of a zombie; the people he revived screamed the instant they opened their eyes.
“What are you screaming for? Shut up!” Lin Mengzhi repeated the warning mechanically.
“I need to rest for a bit.” Chen Meng slumped down onto the ground and shot Lin Mengzhi a meaningful look.
Lin Mengzhi rolled his eyes and stepped in front of Chen Meng. “Eat quickly. Don’t let anyone see.”
“Alright, alright.” Chen Meng knelt on the ground, tearing a leg off a corpse and biting into it, blood gushing as he devoured it.
Lin Mengzhi stood with his back to him. The tearing and chewing sounded like a mastiff behind him. He had no time to be disgusted, staying alert to his surroundings.
Although Chen Meng was eating the dead while saving lives, such actions defied both moral ethics and the medical principles he had always upheld. The guards looked the other way, but Chen Meng insisted that Lin Mengzhi shield him from view—no one could see, or else his faith would collapse.
Dr. Chen consumed the meat in a matter of ten minutes, then returned to clarity and resumed treating patients.
Of the more than a hundred injured carried to the plaza, only half were saved. Chen Meng watched the bodies being carried away with a pang of regret. “If Wu Heng were here, it would be different.”
Lin Mengzhi said, “Wu Heng isn’t a morgue.”
“These aren’t corpses—they’re food.”
Just as Lin Mengzhi was about to comment that Chen Meng had both eaten and taken, a piercing scream came from the end of the street.
Liu Ning appeared, stepping in high heels. Her shadow stretched long as she dragged a woman behind her. The woman’s face was streaked with tears; she clawed at Liu Ning’s skirt and cried out for help.
“Help me! Let me go! I haven’t done anything! I haven’t done anything!”
“I don’t know either! I really don’t know!”
“Do you think I would kill my own son and daughter?!”
As Liu Ning stepped onto the plaza, Lin Mengzhi finally saw the woman’s face clearly—it was the mother of the little girl and boy who had mutated suddenly in the morning and afternoon.
She sprawled on the ground, wailing and struggling to rise with all her strength. Even so, she showed no signs of infection or mutation. She was simply an unarmed middle-aged woman, more normal than the rat-woman earlier—at least the rat-woman had a tail.
“Is there no law in this apocalypse? Does the state abandon ordinary citizens at a time like this? Are you bandits? What evidence do you have that I’m the source of infection?” The woman’s voice was hoarse, and she looked utterly exhausted. Losing two children in succession had left her on the verge of collapse.
Lin Mengzhi couldn’t help feeling a twinge of pity. He looked toward Liu Ning. “Didn’t you say before that without evidence, you can’t kill someone?”
Liu Ning didn’t answer. A dagger appeared in her palm. She bent down, took hold of the woman’s wrist, and drew a vertical cut along her forearm.
Glug—splash—
Black, filthy blood slid out like congealed meat jelly.
“My god!” Lin Mengzhi and Doctor Chen clutched each other at once.
But it wasn’t over yet. Those black, jelly-like chunks plopped onto the ground; after splattering apart, they pieced themselves back together, forming a mass that slowly wriggled toward where the living stood.
Squish.
A high-heeled shoe came down mercilessly on it.
“See? She’s already no longer human—just a parasitic host of the infection source,” Liu Ning said coolly. Then she turned the dagger, the blade now facing the woman.
The woman swallowed hard, her expression growing even more terrified. She shook her head frantically and waved her hands. “No, no! I’m not an infection source! I’m not a parasite! I’m not!”
She wailed in agony. “Two months ago, I already noticed something strange, but I never ate anyone, never bit anyone. I don’t have abilities, there’s no energy core in my body. But it eats people, it bites people. It infected my two children—but after they were infected, they were still the same as before. They didn’t mutate, they didn’t turn into zombies. I thought it would be fine. When you scanned us with the detectors, didn’t you also find nothing?”
“But I don’t know why—once we reached your Kuhuang, we became restless and agitated. We wanted to leave, but we didn’t know where to go, and we didn’t know where that feeling came from.” She wiped at her tears. “Then my two children mutated one after the other. I didn’t want to live anymore.”
“I slit my throat with a kitchen knife. I didn’t die—but what flowed out of my body didn’t go back into me. It ran out through the window instead.”
“I really didn’t hurt anyone. I really didn’t!”
“You can’t kill me. Once they leave my body, they’ll scatter everywhere—everywhere! Do you hear me? And then all of you will be infected!” she screamed herself hoarse.
She slowly straightened her upper body, lifting it like a soft worm raising its head, and looked at Liu Ning with raised brows. “If you don’t believe me, look under your feet.”
The people nearby looked down toward Liu Ning’s feet.
Liu Ning frowned. She slowly lifted her left foot. On the mottled concrete ground, a fist-sized black hole had appeared at some point, its edges looking as though they had been gnawed by sharp teeth.
“Holy shit!” Lin Mengzhi shouted, flinging off the reeking Chen Meng. He dashed over in a few steps and dropped to the ground to examine it.
After a moment, he lifted his head in shock. “It’s not a pit—it’s an opening. It looks like it ran off—”
The woman’s sigh drifted to his ears. “Ah, someone else is going to get infected now. Ahhh, how pitiful!”
“Are you insane?” Lin Mengzhi stared at her in disbelief.
The woman tilted her head and swayed her body. “Call me whatever you want. You can’t do anything to me anyway. Keep pushing me and I’ll just keep bleeding—let everyone in your entire base die clean!”
Lin Mengzhi’s head rang. He ground his teeth until they creaked, raised his fist, and was about to swing it down.
A guard lunged forward and grabbed him. “Kid, don’t be reckless!”
“Assistant Liu!”
A cry rang out. The guard who shouted caught the staggering Liu Ning. At some point, Liu Ning’s face had turned deathly pale. She kicked off her high heels—below the ankle, her foot was already charred black.
Lin Mengzhi’s heart lurched. “Doctor Chen! Doctor Chen!”
Ignoring the strange looks from everyone else, Chen Meng stepped forward and crouched in front of Liu Ning.
“Be gentle,” Lin Mengzhi couldn’t help but warn.
“I haven’t even touched her yet. Why don’t you do it?” Chen Meng snapped irritably.
When no one else spoke up, Chen Meng carefully reached out. The glow in his hand was a warm, pale yellow—but the moment it neared Liu Ning’s ankle, it rapidly turned gray.
Chen Meng didn’t even have time to pull his hand back. The charred blackness instantly rushed along the glow and surged into his palm. His whole body jolted, and he fell back onto the ground with a thud.
“Doctor Chen, are you alright?” Two guards helped the fallen zombie doctor to his feet.
Chen Meng shoved them away, staring at his right hand in shock. The very hand that had healed countless people—the “God’s hand”—had somehow turned charred black. He roared, “My hand!!!”
Everyone around him was horrified at the bizarre sight.
“What… what is this thing?!”
—
Wu Heng lay on the bed, dozing. The faint scent of blood in the room was, to him, even more pleasant than perfume.
But the sound of birdcalls and the flutter of wings woke him.
He rolled over, expressionless, staring at X, who had apparently woken up. X was squawking wildly, flapping its wings and flying high and low around the room.
Wu Heng watched for a moment and quickly realized something was wrong. X was desperately pecking at something.
“Monster!”
“Disgusting!”
“A’Heng!”
“Run!”
The thing that X had been chasing finally climbed up the wall, fully revealing itself in Wu Heng’s line of sight: black, viscous, like some kind of slime or pulp.
The lingering pain in his body made him act without hesitation. Barefoot, he leapt to the floor.
The black mass lunged straight at him.
Wu Heng twisted his body just in time to dodge, grabbed X, and threw open the door, sprinting outside.
Most of the guards at the rest station were resting. Others were holding the line along the base walls against the zombie tide. Everything was quiet nearby—except for Wu Heng’s rapid breathing and pounding footsteps.
Though still recovering from serious injuries, the poppy didn’t slow him down a bit. After a few steps, Wu Heng could teleport instantly to the next corner.
The ground was littered with rubble and debris. The poppy stretched out, clearing the path for its master.
It had intended to turn back and attack the strange creature pursuing them, but Wu Heng recalled it. Xie Chongyi’s business was his own; The poppy couldn’t afford a second round of feeding.
As he ran, Wu Heng pondered why that thing had emerged from Xie Chongyi’s body—and why it seemed intent on continuing to feed on him, polluting him further.
But no sooner had the question surfaced than Wu Heng himself dismissed it as impossible. Given Xie Chongyi’s personality, there was no way something like that could escape from his body without him knowing.
So there was only one possibility: that strange mass had come from somewhere else—but it had to be connected to Xie Chongyi, because its smell carried a hint of familiarity.
—
At that very moment, Xie Chongyi was standing face to face with Wu Dian and Sheng Jiang, negotiating terms.
“I apologize,” Sheng Jiang said quietly. “But the energy cores really were all given to you. There aren’t any left.”
Xie Chongyi replied coolly, “You injured me this badly and think that a mere eighty-eight B-grade cores, thirty-six A-grade cores, and eight S-grade cores are enough to compensate me?”
“……” Sheng Jiang crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, clearly helpless. “Xiao Xie, how old are you? Do you still want me to write you an IOU?”
“That works.”
Wu Dian took out paper and pen from the side and handed them to Xie Chongyi. “Write it yourself.”
Xie Chongyi took the notebook, flipped to a blank page, and let bold, sweeping strokes fall across it.
Sheng Jiang had been watching with a smile. Among the brothers, Xie Chongyi was the youngest. He wasn’t the best-looking to begin with, and now half his face was temporarily gone. As the older brother, Sheng Jiang really ought to compensate him. As long as the demands were within what he could fulfill, he was willing to accept them.
However, when the entire page was filled edge to edge with dense writing, the smile on Sheng Jiang’s face turned into a sneer. “Xie Chongyi, don’t bother writing an IOU. Writing a sl*ve contract would be faster.”
Xie Chongyi paused his pen. After a moment’s thought, he smiled. “Big brother’s right. I’ll write up another agreement right away.”
Seeing the other actually push his luck like that, Sheng Jiang hissed and was just about to speak when hurried footsteps came rushing over.
“Class Monitor!”
A bird cried out at the same time—but the bird’s voice was a wail.
“Class Monitor, save me! Class Monitor, save me!”
Sheng Jiang was the first to notice the black, liquid-like mass bouncing, sticking, and lunging through the air—but before he could react, Xie Chongyi shoved the pen and paper into his chest, halting his movement.
Wu Heng, teeth clenched, had run all the way here, already at the limit of his endurance. Seeing Xie Chongyi, he finally exhaled in relief.
When he saw Xie Chongyi stride toward him, he didn’t think twice—he buried his head into Xie Chongyi’s chest. Before Xie Chongyi could even wrap his arms around him, Wu Heng nimbly spun around and hid behind his back, panting heavily, utterly frustrated.
“Class monitor,” he gasped, “your… your insect got out.”