The rain lasted for more than two days and finally stopped at dawn on the third day.
By then, the world had completely changed.
West Town had turned into something like a small primeval forest. All kinds of plants had taken over the place, beasts lurked within the undergrowth, and most traces of human civilization had been swallowed up.
It seemed to signal that, from this moment on, humanity would be at a disadvantage in the apocalypse.
Jiang Fu lifted her hand and touched an epiphytic orchid clinging to a damp tree trunk.
The cluster of orchids had pure white petals, long thick leaves, and an especially robust root system. The dense roots clung tightly to the branches, like grotesque, plump worms wrapping around the tree.
It was said that epiphytic orchids evolved to a higher degree than terrestrial ones, because they were better at making use of limited conditions to secure better growth.
Like this one before her—borrowing the tree’s height to reach sunlight at the top while greedily absorbing nutrients from it.
In the later stages, among the powerful mutated plants, seven or eight out of ten were epiphytic or parasitic species. The most elite of them even developed a degree of intelligence and could move about, seeking more favorable environments for survival.
Yet at this moment, looking at the menacing, clawing orchid before her, Jiang Fu showed no fear—only faint satisfaction.
“This world is getting livelier and livelier,” she said softly. For humans, it was a disaster. But from another angle, wasn’t this the best of times for these plants?
Jiang Fu admitted that she had been narrow-minded before.
She stroked the petals and smiled. “The ones that make it to the finals later on all look bizarre and twisted. You’re pretty—try to live up to it.”
She tried sending a thread of resentment energy into the flower.
Immediately, the orchid visibly turned gray, then scorched black. Its originally delicate and elegant form became swollen and coarse.
It had grown ugly in an instant.
Jiang Fu: “…”
She snapped the flower off. “Forget it. Grow on your own. I won’t interfere.”
She turned and left, not noticing that the charred orchid she had tossed to the ground struggled faintly. Fine new roots quickly sprouted from the broken end, wrapping around a nearby tree root and burrowing in. The entire flower managed to continue living.
It swayed gently in the wind, “looking” toward the figure walking away step by step.
…
Jiang Fu moved through the forested town. The wet branches and leaves were pushed aside by her resentment energy; the mud beneath her feet was kept at bay the same way. She remained completely clean and dry. After making a round, she had a good sense of which beasts and plants in the town held the most potential.
A shadow swept across the sky above.
“Wen Zangyu,” Jiang Fu called.
The shadow swooped back and landed on a tree branch, crouching as it waited for her to speak.
Jiang Fu beckoned. “Come down.”
Wen Zangyu jumped down. She tried to move as lightly as possible, but still landed with a thud, splashing muddy water and dotting her work clothes with stains.
“Something… wrong?” she asked.
Jiang Fu pointed out the promising beasts and plants in the town and said, “When you wander around here, be careful. Don’t kill these ones. Give them time to develop.”
Wen Zangyu frowned.
“They’ll grow strong very quickly. When that happens, if you kill them, you’ll get stronger flesh and higher-grade crystal cores. And if you don’t kill them by then—” Jiang Fu looked at her, “this place is very close to Hongri Base.”
Hundreds of thousands of people lived there. It was a natural temptation. Once these creatures grew powerful enough, they would naturally head toward Hongri Base.
And Hongri Base would know no peace.
Jiang Fu remembered that Hongri Base had been the first human settlement this future Zombie King had ravaged.
Before that, however, Hongri Base had been famous for its high level of safety—because there were no powerful mutated beasts, plants, or zombies around it.
Jiang Fu estimated that the strong ones had all been eaten by Wen Zangyu.
Wasn’t that letting others reap the benefits?
If destruction was inevitable, why not drive the tiger to devour the wolf—use one force to eliminate another?
Wen Zangyu thought for a while. Finally understanding the reasoning, her brows relaxed. “Okay. Won’t kill.”
“I’m going to Hongri Base to take a look. Coming?”
Wen Zangyu lowered her head to look at her hands. They were still clearly zombie hands. She still looked far from a normal human and couldn’t possibly blend into a base.
“Appearance isn’t a problem. I can change your face,” Jiang Fu said. “For a while, a strange illness will spread in Hongri Base. I need your help.”
“A strange illness?” Wen Zangyu looked confused. Her thinking was still slow, but instinct told her the person before her seemed to know something about the future. Was this illness something she had foreseen?
She needed help—help treating it?
Jiang Fu smiled slightly. The illness wasn’t foreseen. She had cursed it into existence. After two or three days of fermentation, it should have already broken out. But to infect more people, she would need Wen Zangyu’s assistance.
“Have you mastered Zhou Liangji’s ability?” she asked.
Wen Zangyu raised her hand. Thin silver threads emerged from her palm—exactly the fine-thread ability Zhou Liangji had possessed.
Earlier, when those threads had burrowed into Wen Zangyu’s legs, Jiang Fu hadn’t removed them. Over the past three days, her guess had been confirmed. Wen Zangyu could indeed absorb others’ abilities and turn them into her own.
No wonder she would later possess such a wide range of skills.
“Mastered… not well. Attack… not good…” Wen Zangyu said.
Meaning she hadn’t fully grasped it yet; its offensive power was weak.
“I don’t need you to attack,” Jiang Fu replied. “Next, practice planting those threads into living bodies. That Wen Zicheng still has a breath left, doesn’t he? He’ll make a good test subject…”
Half an hour later, Jiang Fu returned to the car. Wen Heyu was staring eagerly at the road entrance. The black cat flicked its tail at him teasingly, but he didn’t respond.
The moment Jiang Fu appeared, his eyes lit up instantly. He hurried over. “Sister!”
The black cat jumped down from the car, bored. “After he finished packing, he’s been waiting for you the whole time. No matter how I teased him, he ignored me. And I even helped him chase off a few mutated snakes that wanted to eat him.”
Wen Heyu paid no attention to the cat’s complaints, circling only around Jiang Fu.
Jiang Fu had no choice but to stop. After thinking for a moment, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a plump little worm. “Here, play with this. I’ve been raising it for several days.”
Wen Heyu cupped the worm in both hands, watching it burrow and wriggle across his palm, looking slightly bewildered.
Jiang Fu glanced at the grayish-brown worm squirming against his fair, pinkish palm. The contrast did seem a bit odd.
She looked at the boy’s dazed expression. Ever since he woke up, he had been especially clingy with her. Maybe it was because her resentful energy was inside him.
But that wasn’t a good thing. More often than not, he was like a big dog—circling around when its owner was present, and waiting eagerly for the owner to return when they were gone.
When Jiang Fu saved him, ninety percent of it was to win over Wen Zangyu, and ten percent was because he reminded her of her mother. It wasn’t out of some noble conviction that she had to save a living, breathing life. She could no longer be that kind of noble person.
But since he was alive now, she didn’t want him to grow into someone without an independent personality.
“This worm is yours now,” Jiang Fu said. “Raise it well.”
Wen Heyu blinked. “Huh? What—what does it eat?”
“It was originally a silkworm. After I fed it resentful energy for a few days, it mutated. Now it feeds on resentful energy. It should probably still eat mulberry leaves too. You can figure it out yourself.”
As she spoke, she got into the car and slid into the driver’s seat. “Get in. We’re heading to Hongri Base.”
“What about my sister?”
“She’s not leaving for now. She’ll come in a few days.”
Wen Heyu obediently got into the car. Sitting there, he continued holding the mutated silkworm, glancing at Jiang Fu from time to time, then back at the worm. At least it distracted him a little.
Jiang Fu focused solely on driving, as if she hadn’t noticed his gaze.
In truth, she needed to concentrate.
Plants were everywhere. The original roads were almost completely overgrown and barely visible, making it a serious test of her driving skills.
…
Hongri Base.
The torrential rain had finally stopped, but no one in the base felt relieved—because the base itself had drastically changed.
Roads, streets, alleyways—any place that had once been smooth and flat—had been taken over by plants bursting up from underground. Areas that had once been farmland or hills were even worse. Countless buildings had been rendered structurally unsound. Even the most orderly and prosperous commercial district now looked as if primeval wilderness had returned.
Worst of all, many of these plants were toxic and aggressive. They had also brought with them swarms of insects and small beasts, providing perfect cover for them.
Because of these changes, the base had suffered heavy losses. The people were deeply unsettled. If the situation outside the base weren’t even worse, many would have already fled.
So as soon as the rain stopped, all ability users in the base were called out to clear the vegetation.
Zhou Liangji and his group naturally joined the effort. They were a well-known ability-user team in the base, highly respected and admired. If they skipped a collective operation like this, people would talk behind their backs.
However, today, none of them felt quite right.
Seeing everyone listless, Zhou Liangji frowned. “Are your injuries not healed yet?”
Yan Mi, the team’s second-in-command and Zhou Liangji’s closest companion, shook his head. “No, the injuries healed long ago. I just don’t know why my stomach’s been feeling uncomfortable.”
“Your stomach? Did you eat something bad? Should we have Zhao Qing treat you?”
Zhao Qing was the team’s healing ability user.
Not far away, Zhao Qing was also clearing plants. “…” She glanced over without expression, then lowered her head and continued working.
If she could treat it, would she not? She herself couldn’t figure out what was causing everyone’s stomach discomfort—and she was feeling unwell too.
But Zhou Liangji’s tone… It was as if she were a subordinate he could command at will. As if she simply didn’t feel like healing them, and would only do so if he ordered her.
Such casual entitlement. Such offhand dismissal.
Wasn’t the normal reaction to ask, “Has Zhao Qing already treated you?”
Or simply call her over directly to talk?
Instead, she was right there in front of him, yet he asked someone else whether she should go do something.
It made her feel like she was being treated as something to be used, rather than as a person with her own will.
Zhao Qing felt an uncomfortable tightness in her chest. The feeling had started the day Zhou Liangji rushed to treat those rescued people first, and it had been lodged in her heart ever since. Now, in this moment, it became even clearer.
Her friend Li Yaqing leaned over. “Don’t take it to heart. We know you’re not unwilling to treat us.”
Zhao Qing was taken aback.
Li Yaqing jerked her chin toward Zhou Liangji. “What he said just now was really unpleasant to hear. Anyway, don’t take it to heart.”
So her friend felt it too. It wasn’t that she was being overly sensitive.
Suddenly Li Yaqing’s expression changed. She clutched her stomach, dry-heaved a few times, and then vomited with a loud retch.
What came out wasn’t just the breakfast she had eaten, but also thin silver threads, strand after strand—like fine noodles. They were even wriggling.
Li Yaqing turned pale with shock. Forgetting her own discomfort, she cried out, “What is this?!”
She definitely hadn’t eaten noodles that morning—let alone noodles that could move!
Zhao Qing was stunned. So was everyone else. When they saw the filth on the ground, their already unsettled stomachs churned even worse, and one after another they began vomiting as well.
What they threw up differed from person to person, but there was one thing in common: those writhing noodles.
Zhou Liangji hurried over. “What’s going on? What happened?”
Then he saw the noodles. “Parasites? What did you all eat?”
Before anyone could figure out what unclean thing they might have eaten, the noodles gradually disappeared—as if they had never existed.
Everyone: !
What kind of parasite just disappears on its own?
Zhao Qing murmured, “I think I sensed an ability’s aura… and it felt familiar.”
One member of the team said, “Yeah, only an ability would vanish like that.”
“And speaking of familiar, that noodle-like form looks familiar too.”
They looked at one another. That strange sense of déjà vu—where had they seen it before?
Thin. Silvery white. Wriggling…
Suddenly, all at once, they turned to stare at Zhou Liangji, their eyes wide.
It was Zhou Liangji’s ability.