Chapter 40

Run. Run without stopping for a moment. This was the only remaining thought in Su Xing’s buzzing head.

Receiving Wen Ruyao’s direction, her chaotic, headless-fly-like footsteps finally found a path. Her body reacted a beat before her brain, shooting like a swift lightning arrow—whoosh—into the shadow-dappled, dim little road on the left.

After losing the power supply, all the lighting facilities in The Park had naturally been paralyzed long ago.

The night sky was pitch-black as ink. The faint moonlight vaguely illuminated the winding red-brick path, and also cast the dark, tilting, and toppled tree shadows into grotesque forms like wraiths and ghosts.

In the darkness, the air seemed to have solidified. The empty park was terrifyingly silent. The entire world seemed to hold only a single sound—her own footsteps.

And the heartbeat practically bursting from her chest.

The darkness-limited vision layered an unknown danger onto the road ahead. Following this path Wen Ruyao had pointed out, they could quickly escape The Park. But what about after that?

Su Xing’s nerves were taut, a thin layer of sweat beading on her forehead. She looked up into the distance. The towering high-rises of the city center stood motionless and solemn, utterly unrecognizable from their former prosperity. These gaping, dark, massive structures were more like tombstones stabbed into the earth. No lights in the distance, only raging infernos that seemed they would never cease, capable of burning everything to ashes.

Once these fires started, they were very difficult to extinguish. The drastic increase in atmospheric oxygen content made this city easier to ignite now than ever before.

Su Xing gritted her teeth and continued running forward. Strangely, she still heard no movement behind her. Without sound, she couldn’t judge whether the monster was still pursuing them.

Suspicion rising in her heart, the speed of her steps slowed ever so slightly, and instantly she felt the heel of her foot glued by some kind of substance. A pulling force dragged backward, making her stumble two steps and nearly fall.

Turning her head to look, she discovered that the entire ground behind her had been silently and soundlessly blanketed by a vast expanse of white mycelium. Where the hyphae had spread, a faint, acrid-sour rotting smell emanated.

A scorching, piercing pain flared at her ankle. Wincing at the pain, she frowned, seeing that the trouser fabric snagged by those threads had already been corroded through, touching the skin beneath.

She drew in a sharp breath, kicked violently with all her might to snap those white threads, and turned her head to run forward desperately.

This giant monster, pieced together by mycelium like a stringed puppet, was simply too bizarre. But now it seemed its main body was indeed these self-aware hyphae, perhaps a mutation of some kind of fungus.

Controlling that massive and unwieldy body might make it difficult to catch fast prey, but these hyphae, “growing” endlessly from the earth, could close in on Su Xing at an incredibly rapid pace.

Before running even a few more steps, still not yet out of The Park, Su Xing could already smell the increasingly strong sour-rot stench behind her.

No good. She couldn’t shake them off at her speed. Before long, she and Wen Ruyao would be submerged by the overwhelming mycelium closing in from behind, then corroded until not even dregs remained.

“See the firelight up ahead? Go there.” Wen Ruyao’s voice sounded much steadier than before. Her arms hooked around Su Xing’s neck, her body weakly draped against her back, but her body temperature had returned to normal, no longer as scalding as it had been in the Bunker.

The Park was lush with trees. In recent days, some trees had started spontaneously combusting for unknown reasons. Not far ahead of them was one such blaze, billowing thick black smoke, the sky-scorching flames glaringly conspicuous in the dark night.

She charged straight toward it. The closer she got to the fire, the more noticeably the mycelium curling toward her from all directions behind her lost its momentum, becoming restrained, as if fearing something.

Sensing this, Su Xing’s eyes darkened with focus. She ran toward the firelight even faster. As the distance gradually widened, the relentlessly pursuing mycelium behind her abruptly contracted, wringing itself into a single mass, and suddenly lunged forward in a sharp thrust. In an instant, it tangled around Su Xing’s calf.

The unexpected external force threw Su Xing hard onto the ground. Wen Ruyao on her back was also flung off by the momentum. Her light, thin frame, carrying little weight, rolled multiple times and came to a stop right beside the burning flames.

The hyphae coiled tightly around Su Xing’s calf, dragging her backward inch by inch. She instinctively struggled fiercely, but the more violently she fought, the tighter the grip on her calf became, tearing through her pants and cutting into her flesh. The corrosive burning sensation forced a pained cry from her lips. For a moment, her strength was drained. Mycelium from all directions began spreading toward her, completely surrounding her in the blink of an eye.

Dense, white mycelial threads crept slowly up along her pant leg, like one cold, venomous snake after another flicking their red, forked tongues. Everything happened too fast. Su Xing’s entire body was tense, blood flowing in reverse, her limbs paralyzed and powerless. The fear in her eyes gradually morphed into despair.

“Get down!”

Wen Ruyao’s shout pulled her from the icy despair. A ball of fire was thrown down from above her head. Su Xing instinctively ducked her head to dodge.

BOOM!—

Sky-scorching flames roared to life behind her!

Wen Ruyao had stripped off her own jacket as kindling and then quickly tossed it toward the ground. The large swath of sweeping mycelium behind Su Xing was instantly engulfed by the flames.

These strange things recoiled at the touch of fire. The hyphae that had already climbed up to Su Xing’s waist shrunk back violently under the fiery assault. The binding on her body vanished. A split second before the blaze could reach her own body, Su Xing scrambled and crawled from the ground to her feet.

“Go, quickly!”

Wen Ruyao rushed over, grabbing her hand. The two of them stumbled and staggered onward, continuing to run.

Perhaps the attack of the flames had had some effect, as the monster didn’t pursue them any further for the time being. They quickly left The Park and reached the road outside its perimeter.

Before them was that same intersection, the one they had passed through when first entering The Park. Directly across on the diagonal was the Mall.

Su Xing’s calf was injured, every step a bone-deep stab of sharp pain. Wen Ruyao’s state wasn’t much better. Once out of The Park, their pace didn’t slow. Eventually, it became Su Xing limping along in front, pulling Wen Ruyao onward.

The road was still a deathly stillness. The dark, towering buildings on either side seemed silent and menacing in this strange atmosphere—and indeed they were menacing. Any terrifying creature could be lurking within these structures, and by the time prey discovered them, it would already be too late.

A wave of dark clouds drifted over, blotting out the moon, which had been the greatest source of light in the night.

The vision of the two cautiously moving along the road suddenly dimmed to the point of near-total darkness.

Su Xing’s heart pounded like a drum. She reflexively tightened her grip on Wen Ruyao’s hand. Her steps hesitated for a beat, but quickly resumed, advancing unceasingly through the darkness.

“Wait a moment.”

Wen Ruyao pressed her voice to a very soft whisper. But Su Xing didn’t seem to hear her, her face pale as she continued to drag her forward.

And indeed, she hadn’t heard her. Su Xing could probably only hear the thundering thump-thump of her own heartbeat right now.

Just then… she had almost died.

Her first time touching death so closely. That suffocating despair, even having now escaped by the skin of her teeth, still made her feel like she’d fallen into an icy abyss, as if she’d already died.

“Su Xing, stop for a moment. We can’t just wander around aimlessly right now.” Wen Ruyao gently tugged at her hand.

Su Xing shook her head, her expression somewhat wooden. “No, if we stop, it’ll catch up.”

“Wait, ahead seems to be—”

Su Xing couldn’t listen to anything she said at this moment. Added to the very dim light, she didn’t notice the wrong color of the road surface underfoot. She took a step—and it was as if she’d stepped onto something suspended and soft. That completely unguarded step sent her entire body pitching forward instantly!

Wen Ruyao behind her grabbed tightly onto her hand, intending to pull her back, but her body was too slight. Instead, she was pulled along and dragged in.

A dizzying whirl. Su Xing felt as though she’d fallen into a very deep pit, and she’d even brought Wen Ruyao down with her. Whether out of guilt or instinctive fear, as she was rolling down, she reached out and hugged Wen Ruyao’s body tightly to her. It wasn’t until the back of her head slammed into a hard rock that she immediately lost consciousness.

Just before passing out, she heard a fuzzy voice…

[Bootlick Value +1]

“…”

…

“Originally meant to guard against those monsters. Never expected two living people would fall in instead.”

“And both are beauties, heheh.”

“But they actually have guns on them. No telling what their background is.”

“Forget guns, just look at their clothes. So clean from head to toe. Looks like they’ve been living pretty well.”

“Goddammit! Early morning and you’re all jabbering about what? What beauties?”

When Su Xing woke, she felt like her head was splitting open from pain. Then came a clamor of noisy chatter. She struggled to lift her eyelids, but they didn’t open.

“Xingxing, Su Xing.”

The familiar, crisp voice sounded by her ear. She moved her fingers and slowly opened her eyes.

The light was bright. Her whole body felt like it had fallen apart, aching everywhere. She squinted for a moment as she adjusted, the first thing she saw being the white floor tiles beneath her feet, then a row of shelves displaying various accessories and all kinds of novelty little toys.

“Yo, beauties. Can’t believe we meet again, hah.”

“…”

This somewhat sleazy male voice made the dazed Su Xing frown. She lifted her head to look. Outside the lowered rolling shutter stood a group of people. The face of Scarred Man appeared right at the front.

This place…

She looked around again. Judging by the decor, it seemed to be a small trendy toy shop. Combined with those people outside, if her guess was right, they were now in that Mall at the intersection.

But how had they ended up here? Last night…

Right. Last night, she’d accidentally fallen into a “trap,” and had dragged Wen Ruyao down with her.

“You’re finally awake.” Wen Ruyao let out a barely perceptible sigh of relief.

Su Xing blinked, feeling a twinge of guilt as her gaze met Wen Ruyao’s. But the moment she saw the other’s bound hands and feet, her eyes immediately darkened.

Not just Wen Ruyao; she herself was tied up just as tightly.

“Quiet!”

At that moment, a man’s voice came from outside. The muttering at the door of the small shop immediately stopped. The crowd parted to make way. A man in a full suit and leather shoes, dressed very much like an insurance salesman, walked up to the outside of the rolling shutter.

“Apologies. Since we don’t know your situation, we can only temporarily inconvenience you to stay inside for a while. However, might I ask, where did you acquire these weapons?”

The man turned slightly sideways. In his hand was precisely the backpack filled with firearms and ammunition that Su Xing had carried out from the Bunker.