Chapter 140: He wanted to eat people
“Humorous,” Jiang Xun said.
“Humorous,” Lin Mengzhi echoed.
A few minutes later, Wen Yuan’s voice came through. “This used to count as a tourist area. After the meal, all squads will search in four directions. Besides collecting samples of local soil changes and mutated flora and fauna, also check whether there are any living people. Eliminate any zombies.”
“Received.”
“Received.”
Lin Mengzhi also said, “Received.”
“You don’t need to go,” Wen Yuan said, glancing at Lin Mengzhi.
Lin Mengzhi gnawed at the sinew on the bone, baring his teeth as he chewed, and asked indistinctly, “Captain Wen, is always treating people differently your team’s style?”
Lin Mengzhi wasn’t being sarcastic; he wasn’t the type to beat around the bush.
But the people opposite were all adults. In particular, Wen Yuan, Yang Xiaoyun, and Jiang Xun had been directly involved in a conflict more than half a year earlier. The three of them put on the same complicated expression, and Wen Yuan fell silent.
“Back then, we really did you wrong. But at the time, the situation in Jingzhou was complicated. From the moment the first zombie appeared, our team had been responsible for inspections and cleanups across various areas. At that time, everyone who knew the situation—including our superiors—believed that zombies could be completely eradicated, and that mutated animals and plants were just genetic mutations.”
“Even though everyone thought it wasn’t an especially dire situation, people kept dying—zombies, animals, plants, and all kinds of sudden, unexpected regional natural disasters… Our team started with over two hundred people. In half a year, a third were lost. Less than a week after the true apocalypse arrived, our numbers plummeted from the hundreds to double digits. By now, only I, Captain Wen, and Jiang Xun remain—the last three survivors of that original brigade.”
“During that period, the world was in turmoil. Our team was reassigned under Wu Mo. Wu Mo wanted only ability users; more importantly, Jingzhou’s situation was the same as everywhere else—possibly even worse. Recruiting ability users was also to organize them and send them out to carry out the most dangerous missions in various places.”
“Weren’t there any benefits?”
“With our homes gone, what benefits are there to talk about? Do you think people like us did it for benefits? If there were no benefits, would we just go home?”
Jiang Xun poked at the plate with her chopsticks. “Back then, the situation was chaotic. Everyone was struggling under immense pressure. We’re human—we can’t guarantee we’ll always function flawlessly like a machine programmed to never make mistakes.”
“The youngest person who died in the team was only sixteen. Captain Wen had raised him with his own hands since he was eight. And not just him—many of us were personally trained and guided by Captain Wen. In the end, one after another, they were either torn to pieces or turned into zombies, and he had to pull the trigger himself.”
“At that point, Captain Wen’s mental state and emotions were already on the verge of collapse, which is why he reacted so extremely to a certain student’s accusation.”
“Among your group back then, quite a few were ability users, and several were even stronger than us. Whether you went to Jingzhou or not actually wouldn’t have made much difference,” Jiang Xun said with a smile. “But we still really hoped you would go—if you went, you could work.”
After saying that, Jiang Xun let the smile fade. “After that incident, Captain Wen began receiving psychological treatment while continuing to carry out missions. We all had to accept a reality: even if all of humanity stood united, the momentum of upheaval was still unstoppable.”
Wang Ruixiang said, “This has nothing to do with unity, and even less to do with stance or race. It’s simply because we, like all other living beings, live on this planet. At that moment, even the greatest scholars and pioneers turned into tiny ants.”
“The way human society operates isn’t all that different from an ant colony’s. Who’s to say ants don’t have profound ideas passed down for thousands of years within their species? It’s not hard to realize that all things are physically equal—but accepting that our thoughts might be the same, or even inferior, is much harder. Humanity fights with all its strength, yet the number of casualties may end up greater than that of ants.”
Wen Yuan suddenly spoke up. “Eat well. Live well. As for what happened back then—I owe you an apology.”
After saying that, he set down his bowl and chopsticks and left.
“Uh…” Lin Mengzhi leaned against Wu Heng’s shoulder. “Is he… sad?”
“Middle-aged people are all pretty sensitive and fragile,” Xue Shen said.
Teacher Ying said, “Young people are actually very fragile too.”
“Teenagers are even more fragile,” Xue Qi added.
“Who are you calling middle-aged?”
“…Our Captain Wen isn’t even thirty yet, okay!”
While everyone was chattering away, Wu Heng took the chance to eat a whole lot more food.
Shen Ping’an had been watching him the whole time.
“You seem to be eating especially much today.”
“I’ve never had venison before,” Wu Heng said. He tossed a few meat bones to Shukui, wiped his hands with the poppy, and added, “Free activity.”
“Follow Captain Wen and the others, or—”
“Either is fine.”
Wu Heng chose to go off on his own. He left the crowded area and headed toward the deeper, more magnificent and shadowy part of the forest. The camp behind him hadn’t even faded from view yet when his saliva began to flood again, his appetite fermenting instantly, as if it had never been satisfied.
He wanted to eat—but not cooked venison, not raw venison either. He didn’t want jerky, didn’t want organs.
He wanted to eat people.
Spring was a season brimming with vitality for pure plants, but for plant symbionts, the rampant growth they seized this opportunity for was accompanied by rapid energy consumption—one kind of energy needed by the symbiont, and another needed by the plant itself.
Feed someone for a thousand days.
Wu Heng planned to randomly eat one of his teammates.
—
“Lunch time!” a pockmarked man beside Liu Shen shouted, his doglike eagerness written all over his face.
Their team had temporarily stopped in a river valley between two mountain peaks. A few blasts of fire from fire-type ability users burned the wild grass in the valley clean away, leaving behind a pitch-black flat clearing.
Liu Shen sat down on the prepared ground, stretched out his legs, yawned, swept his gaze around the group, and finally said, “Same old rules. Three people to a group, go hunting. In two hours, I want to see your results.”
“Little White Dove, you’re in a group with Pockmark and Skinny Monkey.”
Wu Zhi was covered head to toe in stinking mud, her hair messily tied at the back of her head. She trailed after the two walking bundles of dry sticks like a little beggar.
A pair of eyes, high up above the canyon, quietly watched their position and movements.
Pockmark had shifty eyes and a big mouth. He chattered nonstop as they walked, his hands itching to act, slicing away plants along the path with his ability.
“Little White Dove—boss really knows how to name people. Once you’re with us, it’s Pockmark and Monkey,” he said up front, then bumped Skinny Monkey on the shoulder.
Skinny Monkey’s figure looked like a walking stick insect standing upright. After being bumped, he turned back and gave the girl a cold snort. “First time I’ve ever seen an ice-type ability user this useless. What a waste.”
Wu Zhi kept her head down and said nothing as she walked. Her mind was full of her brother—sometimes Lin Mengzhi too. She felt that having left them, she was probably about to die. Her world was pitch-black now; without her brother, she was a moth that had lost its light.
But leaving her brother was the last thing she could do for him. She was a thorn embedded in his flesh, a blister in his throat, a sore on his back that he could never scratch off by himself.
The Shenjian forest was dense and lush. Animals and plants unseen elsewhere could all be found in this mysterious, energy-rich territory.
A group of mutated deer were leisurely grazing in a patch of woodland.
“Deer this big? Gotta be one or two thousand jin, right?”
“Catch a small one.”
“Won’t the females go berserk?”
“Anyone you grab would go berserk!”
Wu Zhi lay prone behind the bushes, holding her breath. But the incessant chatter beside her never stopped. Just as she was about to ditch the two of them and hunt a deer on her own, a massive surge of energy slammed into her body from the side.
She was sent flying, crashing into a tree trunk, and under the shower of falling leaves she was in too much pain to get up.
The cleaver in Pockmark’s hand was already close. Wu Zhi’s heart jolted—her body reacted before her mind did, rolling away. The cleaver slammed down where she’d just been, gouging a pit into the ground.
“Little White Dove, this is your first lesson—always be wary of the person closest to you.”
Pockmark’s form dissolved, and seven or eight copies of him appeared behind the bushes, their lips moving silently.
Skinny Monkey leapt from behind them, hundreds of wind blades sweeping toward Wu Zhi.
Wu Zhi raised her hands to block with an ice wall—but the wind blades pierced straight through her defense, heading directly for her face. She scrambled backward, raising more defenses as the wind blades rattled and cracked against the ice surface.
But before she could catch her breath, her ankle was suddenly grabbed, and with a bang, she was slammed hard into the ground.
“Lesson two: the person closest to you isn’t necessarily trying to kill you—they might just want to teach you a lesson.”
Wu Zhi’s pupils went completely white. She clenched her palms, and the ground beneath her gradually froze, the air temperature around her plummeting.
She was slammed brutally into the earth as a foot pressed down on her chest.
“Lesson three: saying they’re giving you a lesson might just be a lie.”
Skinny Monkey’s wind blades retracted, the tips now aimed directly at her heart. “You’re very pretty. Pretty children are meant to be eaten, not grass. Dying by our hands should at least be… dignified for you.”
Wu Zhi struggled with all her strength, wrapping her hands around Pockmark’s calf and trying to flip him over. But a survivor and ability user who had crawled and fought through the apocalypse for months was not someone a little girl who had always lived under others’ wings could resist.
“Let go of me!” she finally shouted. “Let go of me!”
The blade pierced through her clothes, and blood instantly spread across the fabric.
Clang!
The sound of weapons colliding almost ruptured the three of their eardrums. The wind blades dissolved in an instant, and Pockmark’s triumphant grin froze on his face.
Before either of them could react, a gash had already appeared along their bodies.
Pockmark hunched over, staring at the hole in his chest, seeing the shock mirrored on the faces of his clones behind him.
“Holy—”
Green plant veins spread outward from the cavity, entwining his bones, absorbing his internal organs, piercing through to his heart.
“Ah!!!”
The scream came a moment too late—but its intensity was undiminished.
“Mutated plants! Mutated plants!!!”
Pockmark and Skinny Monkey frantically tore at the ever-growing mutated vines. Their emerald bodies gradually turned red with blood as they slithered through the two men, sometimes even exchanging bites, while chunks of flesh fell to the ground.
The energy cores were ripped out, and immediately the two stopped hopping and collapsed, limp.
Skinny Monkey panted in terror, eyes fixed on the dense canopy above—it seemed like someone was up there.
Wu Zhi sat there, staring blankly at the familiar vines that hadn’t vanished. She pushed herself up, murmuring, “Brother…”
She scanned every direction, her eyes frantic and anxious.
“Brother!” Tears welled up in her eyes. She stayed rooted to the spot, not actually searching, because she knew they would never be reunited.
“Brother, I’m sorry. I’m really just like Mom in being annoying. I knew you hated me, didn’t like me—but I kept saying I love you, I love you, I love you… I never cared about your feelings. I was just a parasite… I’m really, really annoying!”
“I’ll grow up, just like Sister Xiao Ruan. By then, I won’t be your little sister anymore. Bury your sister with Mom and Dad. I am Wu Zhi, and I will become your teammate. I’ll do no worse than anyone else!”
No one answered. The forest was silent, and only two dark stains of blood remained on the ground. The deer grazing with their heads down had long since vanished.
—
Wu Heng moved through the forest, collecting fish, insects, birds, and butterflies that weren’t in his space yet. The plants were countless, and he even picked a few deer to pack up and take with him.
When he returned to the camp, the others hadn’t come back yet. Only Ying Liuquan and Ruan Silian—the few with almost no abilities—were guarding the campsite.
“Where am I sleeping tonight?” Wu Heng yawned uncontrollably on the way back, still half-dazed.
Shen Ping’an pointed at the two makeshift tents. “Either of these will do.”
Wu Heng took off his shoes and crawled into the tent closest to him. Inside were four sleeping bags; he picked the one at the edge, shook it open, and climbed in.
—
A few days later, they ventured deep into the heart of Shenjian. After seeing swans by the lakeside and traces of some human activity, the interior of the land appeared to everyone as a truly primeval forest.
The jungle was densely covered by massive, umbrella-like tree canopies. Ancient vines formed nets, and the roots beneath their feet twisted and protruded like hills. The forest light was dim and eerie, with only occasional clusters of red or white alpine azaleas providing brief relief to everyone’s nerves.
Wu Heng, however, grew increasingly rosy-faced the deeper he went.
Xue Qi moved freely above the group. His several long, thick limbs were both strong and springy, letting him leap tens of meters in a single bound.
Glancing up, his body shimmered under the segmented, sliced-like lights, radiating a soft blue glow. If one didn’t know his identity, few could fail to be startled by his blue spider-like form—at least, Wen Yuan and the others, who had never seen his true form, were momentarily shocked when they saw him.
“Xue Qi’s so big—carrying me shouldn’t be a problem, right?” Lin Mengzhi bounced up and down.
“Or Shukui?”
“Don’t get distracted in a place like this. Many creatures in a primeval forest are unknown to us, and we have no idea how mutated they might be. Stay focused,” Wen Yuan reminded.
At that moment, Jiang Yi suddenly stopped walking.
“The direction’s wrong.”
Wen Yuan raised his hand, signaling the people behind to halt. Wu Heng dropped to the ground immediately.
“The direction’s wrong?” Jiang Xun stepped forward. She had not only a compass, but her ability to back it up, as well as the latest map provided by Jingzhou. After triple-checking, she deactivated her power. “No, it’s correct.”
“The terrain in Shenjian is complicated, and it only gets worse deeper inside. The map is perfectly accurate outside, but here, it’s not guaranteed,” Jiang Yi said, frowning. He crouched down, and strands of white roots fell from his palm, sinking into the moss covering the tree roots for a long moment before he withdrew his hand and stood up.
“These old trees’ root systems showed signs of activity before we arrived,” Jiang Yi continued, brushing mud from his palm. He and Jiang Xun scanned the area—their team looked so small in this environment.
“It’s not just the roots that moved—the mountains beneath our feet reformed just a few hours ago. Our goal is to head south. The direction seems correct, but it’s actually guiding us west. We’re now far off our intended route.”
Jiang Xun crouched and spread out the map, analyzing the team’s current position. She used her ability to sense their geographic location.
A pair of eyes silently appeared behind her and Wen Yuan—gold with flecks of black, like two flickering lanterns.
“I—”
“Hoo…” A hot breath swept over several of them from behind. A golden leopard, as large as a small building, suddenly appeared, slapping a paw toward Jiang Xun.
A vine wrapped around her waist and flung her aside.
Though enormous, the leopard moved with surprising agility. With a light leap, it dodged attacks from several ability users and lunged toward Wang Meixia and the others, whose energy fields were noticeably weaker.
A crystal-clear sphere of water enveloped them. The leopard’s massive, sharp paw struck the sphere, but it couldn’t penetrate it. Infuriated, it opened its jaws and bit down hard.
The water sphere shattered instantly.
Wu Heng was still lying on the ground, completely unhurried. A warm-white guillotine appeared above the mutated golden leopard’s neck. He twitched his index finger, and the guillotine fell. Snap! The people below were immediately drenched in a spray of blood.
The golden leopard’s head was gone in an instant. Its massive body crashed down heavily, the back of its head slamming into the ground. A swath of surrounding bushes and vines collapsed along with it.
The vines on the ground licked up the blood and even nibbled on some of the leopard’s flesh before silently retreating back into Wu Heng’s body.
“Whose ability was that just now? I haven’t seen it before—can someone say?” someone shouted.
“This leopard is way too big. Even a mutated leopard outside the mountains wouldn’t grow this huge.”
“No wonder this is Shenjian… if your ability is too weak, you wouldn’t even survive getting in here,” another said. As he spoke, a tingling ran up his neck. He scratched it—and his hand came away wet. “What the—?”
The moment he looked up, his bones chilled.
A shadow blotted out the sky. In the center of a disc-shaped body dangled a triangular snake head, transparent saliva dripping continuously.
“Such a huge snake!”
Before the snake could even make a move toward the people below, a low buzzing came from afar—wings beating in perfect formation, a scale darkening the sun.
“Eagles?!”
“No, mosquitoes! Mosquitoes!” Xue Qi, flying above, saw most clearly. They swarmed from the distance, their red eyes approaching, long, sharp proboscises glinting with cold light.
“The leopard’s blood is attracting them!”
“Could be humans themselves too.”
Before the mutated mosquitoes even reached them, the forest trembled violently. The deadwood and ancient vines above loosened rhythmically. The light-blocking canopy collapsed like a closing umbrella, branches and leaves vanishing, tree trunks becoming thin and clear.
Something was crawling down the trees—countless in number. From afar, it looked like the bark was wriggling, but upon closer inspection, those were endless insect legs.
“Centipedes! Mutated centipedes… the trees are full of centipedes!”
The human team was nearly surrounded. They clustered around the leopard’s corpse, standing defensively. The buzzing, crawling sounds of countless mutated animals merged into a single, indistinct mountain-language warning: Welcome to Shenjian.