Chapter 59: You’re the monster!
Shoreline coordinates 33.97, 4, 1 kilometer outside the protective wall.
The ground was swept by flamethrowers. Amidst the gray smoke and the corpses of sea snakes, the ground team was searching for a rescue method around the place where their teammate had disappeared.
Lu Qian was still trying to call, “Yan Li? Yan Li? Can you hear me? Answer me!”
Han Xuhua and two other teammates were on guard duty to prevent another surprise attack. They could only glance at the blocked pile of rocks from time to time, at their wits’ end. “How did she get down such a small gap… Even if the team leader isn’t tall, she’s not that small, right?”
The other two technicians took out their tools and took turns. Finally, after inserting an optical life detector, they concentrated for a few seconds and suddenly shouted:
“Captain! There’s water!”
At the same time, in the underground cave.
It was dead silent. Cheng Ming could only hear her own breathing and heartbeat, which was terrifyingly loud in this deserted place.
Her helmet was upside down on the side, and the indicator light was flashing pale. The occasional static she received was like a surging electric current, which could not be heard by the person who was not wearing it.
The pain in her arms and ankles slowly spread to her cerebral cortex. It should have been from hitting the rocks when she had rolled down before. She had fractures, and even some bone cracks.
But she was in no mood to care.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
Intelligent monsters were really troublesome.
She sighed for the second time, but it was no longer with nervousness, but with disbelief and even a hint of mockery.
“Are you playing with me?” her voice was ethereal, but there was already some anger in it.
She was too eager to find out the answer. Facing this human-snake monster that was a mystery from beginning to end, she was anxious.
How could she not have thought that the helmet was a full-frequency audio input, completely real-time. Even if she couldn’t hear clearly, what was the use of taking it off?
This Fish-Fungus didn’t care about any humans or missions, nor did it care about any monsters or organizations. From beginning to end, it was here for food.
In front of her, between the gray and white sedimentary columns, there was only a thin layer of liquid, clean and clear, with not even a bone fragment left.
After eating and drinking its fill, the culprit had curled up, not moving or making a sound.
It was only when Cheng Ming repeatedly asked it what the other had said that it answered, “I don’t understand.”
Was it playing with her?
She was now very suspicious. Was it the sea snake that had found her first, or was it this Fish-Fungus that had released the signal first… It had nothing but food in its eyes, and its non-human attributes were completely exposed.
“It’s not important, Cheng Ming,” after a long while, Xiao Ming spoke again. “Don’t mind it. You’re not on the same path as it.”
So nonchalant, it even sounded like it was in a good mood, like a patient comfort after deception and exploitation.
As Cheng Ming listened, she felt a little cold.
There it was again, this feeling.
It was clearly in her own body, but she couldn’t understand its thoughts at all.
If she wasn’t even honest with herself, who else could she trust?
“Did you have to eat it? Did you have to eat it at this time? Have you thought that since it came to me, it might have other uses for me?” she asked. “Can’t you not be so selfish?”
“You’re not speaking up for it, are you?” Xiao Ming was also unhappy. “Cheng Ming, you’re really strange. You clearly say you’re human, why do you care so much about other monsters?”
“Don’t answer a question with a question. Aren’t you a monster too! Do you have empathy for them?” Cheng Ming was a little emotional, and her thoughts were completely messed up by it.
If she were really human, and if this deformed snake monster had ill intentions towards her, she would not have any psychological pressure. But this was neither a life-and-death scene, nor was it so urgent that a choice had to be made. The other had not wanted to harm her, but had instead taken the initiative to return the seashell to her… although its motive was unknown.
But this question still lingered like a nightmare—
Had she killed her “own kind” again?
“What does it have to do with us? I’m just following the natural law of the jungle,” Xiao Ming said. “This mentality of yours, should it be called ‘compassion’? Is this what human education has given you?”
From the beginning of knowing the truth of her own life, and knowing that a part of her also belonged to the secular meaning of “monster,” her thinking had unknowingly shifted.
Which category should she belong to?
Was she human, or a monster?
“Then, are you concerned about its human part, or its monster part? And are you concerned as a human, or as a monster?” Xiao Ming asked.
It was the evolution of the chaos in her heart, and it had hit the nail on the head, accurately stepping on her minefield.
“Shut up! You’re the monster!”
“…I didn’t mean to disturb your cognition,” Xiao Ming paused for a moment and said, “It’s just that you’re angry because of this, and I find it a little incredible.”
It had finally used the idiom correctly, and it sounded much more rational than her.
These words, whether light or heavy, and the breathing that rose and fell with them, made her feel that what was growing in the gap between her and its flesh and blood was not algaefungus at all, but a dark and damp mold, which was lingeringly connecting their bodies, ruthlessly dividing their spirits, and also loosely filling their lives.
Moist, warm, sticky, disgusting, and no matter what, she couldn’t get rid of it.
It seemed that there was a lack of oxygen in the depths of the cave. She panted rapidly, dizzy. Beep, beep. Until the helmet that had fallen by her side vibrated again, and Lu Qian’s voice came in faintly, Cheng Ming suddenly came to her senses.
No.
It was confusing her.
“What did it say?” she asked for the second time. Her voice lingered between the flowing water and the rocks, so low that it was a little sinister.
Did it actually understand, but didn’t want her to know, so it had suddenly started to murder?
…
Ten minutes later, the trapped person was successfully rescued.
Cheng Ming responded to Lu Qian’s call and assisted the technical staff above to determine the structure and location of this cave.
The team members worked together to blast a hole in the pile of rocks. The light shone into the bottom as a guide, and then a fuel-air bomb was placed to completely blow off the top.
She was a little unsteady when she got to the surface. Han Xuhua rushed up to support her.
Lu Qian asked, “Are you okay?”
She checked the equipment on her. The combat suit was not damaged, and the life monitoring was also fine. The coating on the surface of the clothes was waterproof, and the water droplets had quickly evaporated after she came out. She was not in a very sorry state.
It was just that her face was not very good, and her reaction was a little slow.
Han Xuhua freed a hand and placed it on her helmet, and slid it left and right comically. “Were you scared?”
“…I’m fine,” Cheng Ming shook her head, took her hand down, and squeezed her own scapula, saying, “I have a slight fracture, but I’ve already set it. I’ll be fine after a rest.”
This was true.
With her current self-healing ability, it would be fine in half an hour at most.
It was just that she couldn’t avoid the pain.
Han Xuhua looked at her shoulder and immediately hissed, “Team leader, you’re too hard on yourself…”
“What did you encounter?” Lu Qian looked down at the half-collapsed, half-supported cave. “Is it still inside?”
“I don’t know. It disappeared after I stabbed it. It might have been washed away by the water,” Cheng Ming evened out her breathing. “A sea snake mutant.”
“I saw it,” looking at the snake eggs that had been blown out and were all over the ground, Lu Qian said with disgust. “Why don’t they just dig their nest under the Defense Center.”
“They didn’t dig it,” as a former scientific researcher, Cheng Ming subconsciously explained. “This type of snake is amphibious and must come ashore to lay eggs, but they don’t have the habit of incubating them. It’s just that we happened to run into their breeding season. So, in fact, we were the ones who intruded into their territory.”
And had destroyed the nesting site they had worked so hard to find.
People’s fear of monsters was too great, so much so that they had forgotten that mutated creatures below the MR level were actually not much different from ordinary animals thirty years ago. How to live in harmony with nature, the most heatedly discussed topic in the past, and animal protection organizations had been widely established all over the world. Harming these creatures would be severely condemned and even punished.
But, after the ocean pollution occurred, the Defense Center had separated the two largest ecosystems on the surface, and humans and sea creatures had become completely opposite.
For example, their mission this time, to clear the security risks, included all mutated creatures, regardless of their danger level.
Hearing her words, the few people nearby were clearly stunned.
Lu Qian looked at her, and the brow under the transparent cover of her helmet was faintly furrowed. Her expression was more like Cheng Ming owed her money.
And so Cheng Ming also subsequently realized that there was a problem with the identity and position of her words.
Thirty years of disaster, a sea of blood and hatred built on countless bones. The land and the ocean, humans and mutated creatures could not go back.
What kind of person would empathize with a monster?
Experts and scholars in ivory towers might, but they, the frontline soldiers who had lost countless comrades in the struggle against monsters, would absolutely not.
Cheng Ming lowered her head, tapped on the display on her arm, and changed the subject. “The estimated danger level is level two and above. I don’t know if any of you have seen it?”
Everyone gathered around. The fire support team was still on guard with their weapons, and only used their peripheral vision to scan.
The helmet had a built-in recording device and would keep a record during the mission.
Cheng Ming started playing from the moment she was entangled by the snake’s tail.
The camera had switched to night vision mode after she had fallen into the cave, but it was very unclear as it swayed and rotated with the waves.
Cheng Ming observed their reactions without changing her expression.
When the human-snake monster’s whole body was revealed, Han Xuhua first let out an “ah.” The three people next to her were also more and more shocked. “Is this a snake? How does it have claws? Does this mutation even make sense?”
Affected by the clarity of the camera, they did not recognize for the time being that the monster’s “four claws” were human hands and feet.
Another two or three seconds later, before the monster pounced and revealed its human face, a palm suddenly pressed on it and directly closed the playback.
“It’s indeed a new monster. This is a more important matter and can’t be delayed any longer. Yan Li, you go back and change with Xiao Meng, report to the higher-ups, and get some rest,” Lu Qian said on the public channel.
Then, she seamlessly switched to a private channel and said to Cheng Ming, “Report it to the biology department.”
Cheng Ming glanced at her and said “okay” without changing her expression.
There were some scenes in the back that she couldn’t let them see. She had originally wanted to cut off the power before the monster gave her the seashell, and use the excuse that the equipment had malfunctioned after being soaked in water.
But she hadn’t expected that Lu Qian would be one step ahead of her.
This Captain Lu… seems to know a lot too.
…
At 7:30 in the evening, when the sky was completely dark, Cheng Ming finally returned to her apartment on the 17th floor.
As soon as she pushed the door open, not surprisingly, Yan Rong was sitting alone at the entrance.
“Sister, you’re so late today,” she raised her delicate little face and looked at her. Her hair slid from her cheek to the back of her neck and merged into the night behind her.
The background was black. She was waiting alone in this quiet and dim living room. Only her two pupils were shining brightly, making her look particularly cute and pitiful. “Was the mission not smooth?”
Cheng Ming’s heart skipped a beat.
This feeling of always having someone waiting for her at home, she had only felt uncomfortable at first—of course, this discomfort still existed. But she had to admit that when she opened the door and saw a pair of eyes that were wholeheartedly looking forward to her, there was indeed satisfaction, and also some guilt of being tied down.
It was just a pity that she was a cuckoo occupying the nest… all of Yan Rong’s feelings were towards Yan Li.
“There was some trouble, I forgot to tell you. I’m sorry, Rongrong,” Cheng Ming walked over and naturally squatted down in front of her.
“Is sister okay?” she asked worriedly, pulling her hand.
“I’m fine, I’m not injured.”
Yan Rong carefully looked at her bracelet and, after confirming that there were no abnormal physiological signs, she let out a sigh of relief. “Did you encounter a new monster? What kind? Was it ugly?”
“Ugly,” facing her sister’s curious questions, Cheng Ming couldn’t help but curl her lips into a smile. She took out her phone and flipped through some of the pictures she had taken before uploading them to the biology department. “Want to see?”
The biology department wanted to record the information of the new species and also needed her to submit a video. The subsequent records that were not suitable for public viewing had been deleted by her—the wearer herself did not have the relevant authority, but Shenzhou Pharmaceutical Company often asked Yan Li to do some things during the mission, so they were naturally afraid that the Security Department would find out. So they had given her a program similar to a Trojan horse, which could invade the data storage space and delete and modify the helmet’s camera records.
She had chosen a few close-up photos that had been processed to be even more absurd and comical, and had racked her brains to coax her sister.
But her sister on the other side flinched, “A snake?”
Cheng Ming was stunned and quickly flipped the phone screen over. “Are you scared?”
She had carefully looked through Yan Li’s many memories of Yan Rong and had focused on memorizing her various interests and hobbies to prevent making a mistake. But she didn’t remember that she had a fear of snakes.
Yan Rong looked at her phone, then looked up at her, and didn’t speak, but just shook her head and pulled her closer.
“Sister,” she propped herself up and got closer. Cheng Ming was afraid that she would fall, so she subconsciously raised her hand to hug her.
Yan Rong wrapped her arms around her and quietly rested on her shoulder.
At this moment, it was quiet and silent. There was no light, and it was not so dark. Only the faint fragrance of the person in front of her floated to her nose. She belatedly realized that this posture was too intimate, and Xiao Ming had not made a sound.
Yan Rong buried herself in her shoulder with great force and lowered her eyelashes.
Sister, the one who is afraid of snakes, isn’t it you?
