Chapter 16: Every Single One. Is Su Ze a Mutant Too?

When Su Ze came dragging the boar back, a bonfire was blazing in the clearing outside the cave. The Mutated Golden Pheasant and Badger, skewered on branches, roasted over the flames—glistening with fat, their aroma carrying for miles.

But there was none of the delight you’d expect from people facing a feast on the faces of Lin Xiuzhu and Qin Yu, seated before the fire.

Tears shimmered in Qin Yu’s eyes. Lin Xiuzhu’s gaze was deep, his face grave as still water. They watched the flames in silence, and the air was unbearably heavy.

Su Ze wasn’t surprised by any of it.

Anyone with a conscience, hearing of the Gale Squad’s sacrifice, would feel that ineffable weight—reverence for the spirit of those who gave their lives, and awe toward a will greater than their own.

But the pair soon sensed someone approaching. They looked up—and both their gazes went instantly blank.

Qin Yu’s tears froze at the corners of her eyes; the gravity in Lin Xiuzhu’s hadn’t even had time to fade. Paired with their dumbfounded expressions, they looked rather silly.

Lin Xiuzhu: “…THIS is the fucking wild boar you mentioned?”

Qin Yu: “It’s huge…”

The Mutated Wild Boar, dragged all the way here by one hind leg, stood as tall as an adult man’s thigh even lying flat—by visual estimate, at least a hundred kilograms.

Su Ze was starving by this point. He didn’t dignify Lin Xiuzhu’s babbling with an answer—just dropped the boar, dashed to the fire, and took an enormous bite of the roast badger.

Lin Xiuzhu got up, circled the boar once, and looked with complicated eyes at Su Ze, who hadn’t lifted his head once. “That’s not mutation. That’s a full-on transformation, right?”

Even before the apocalypse, an ordinary person who ran into a boar like this had exactly one option: turn and run. How was anyone fighting one of these alone and barehanded? When Su Ze had said he was going to catch a boar, he’d assumed he meant the small kind!

Su Ze had no time for him. It was Qin Yu who asked, astonished, “Mutation? Su Ze is a Mutant too?”

Lin Xiuzhu grunted an affirmative and sat down by the fire. “That’s what he says.”

…Mutated where, exactly? Qin Yu studied Su Ze, wanting to ask—but watching him eat with that level of single-minded devotion, she decided to shelve the question and turned to Lin Xiuzhu instead. “Forgive me for asking, but when did you mutate?”

Lin Xiuzhu blinked, then answered honestly. “The 9th.”

“The 9th…” Qin Yu murmured. “I mutated on the 9th too. Before me, another colleague on the expedition mutated on the 3rd. He… died right then and there.”

After a stretch of silence, she asked again, “Do you remember how long your mutation took?”

Perhaps because they were fellow Mutants, Lin Xiuzhu, exceptionally, answered every question. “Let me think… I had seafood at lunch, went to the bathroom not long after, and passed out from the pain… Woke up around dusk, I think. No idea about exact times—I wasn’t in any state to check my watch.” At the end he gave a bitter smile and poked at the bonfire with a stick.

Qin Yu nodded. “About the same as me. Around ten in the morning, I fainted from unexplainable pain, then mutated at extreme speed, coming to around four in the afternoon. My colleague—from the first stomach cramp to death, under two hours.”

Qin Yu bit her lip, recalling what came after, recounting it like a penance. “By nightfall, the mutations that had been isolated cases suddenly seemed to turn contagious. Of our twenty-person expedition, ten died on the spot, their bodies rupturing apart…”

A long silence. Then Lin Xiuzhu asked quietly, “And the rest of you?”

Pain flashed through Qin Yu’s eyes. “Three fled out of fear. The others stayed to protect my teacher and me, and that bear… killed them…”

“A bear?” Lin Xiuzhu stared at her, startled.

“A Mutated Giant Bear. And it was… strange.” Qin Yu gathered her words slowly. “Most Mutated Creatures keep the habits they had before mutation. Even their changes follow biological instinct—watch them long enough and you can handle them. But that bear… it hunted us for three entire days. Like… a vengeful spirit that wouldn’t rest.”

At the words “vengeful spirit,” Qin Yu shuddered, still shaken by the memory.

Even Lin Xiuzhu could tell something was off by now. He pressed, “Why, though? Did you wreck its den? Steal its cubs?”

Qin Yu smiled bitterly. “We did nothing at all. We were under Captain Zhou and the others’ protection, waiting for extraction.”

At this point Su Ze, who had taken the edge off his hunger, spoke up. “When did you enter the mountains?”

Qin Yu: “April 1st.”

Su Ze: “For what?”

Qin Yu hesitated before answering. “…Field research.”

Lin Xiuzhu burst out laughing. “Miss, your lying needs work.”

Qin Yu pressed her lips together. “Sorry… it involves classified material, I can’t—”

“At this point, classified or not doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Teacher!” At that voice, Qin Yu shot to her feet and whirled toward the cave mouth.

There stood an old man past sixty, carrying himself with remarkable presence. He stood just under 1.7 meters, his skin a bronze hue, his frame lean but by no means frail. His features were ordinary, but his eyes were exceptionally bright and warm—the kind of face you instinctively wanted to be near.

Academician Wei Fengtang, in the flesh.

“Teacher…” Qin Yu looked at Wei Fengtang, her voice shaking, tears surging up. In that instant, she felt she had her anchor back—could finally be just a student again, with no need to be strong, no need to swallow her fear and grief.

Wei Fengtang’s own eyes brimmed, faint tracks visible on his deeply creased face. He walked up to Qin Yu and looked at the broken stubs of branches on her back. His hands trembled, wanting to touch them—and fearing to hurt her. His eyes were pure heartache.

“Does it hurt?”

At those words, the tears in Qin Yu’s eyes broke free and poured down like a burst dam. “Teacher… Captain Zhou is dead… that bear… that bear… it even took… Captain Zhou’s vocal cords…”

She wept openly in front of Wei Fengtang, crying as she poured out everything that had happened—like a child tattling to a parent after a disaster.

It took a good dozen minutes before she calmed somewhat, hiccupping, “…By the time I woke up… the bear was already dead… Su Ze saved us…”

At that, Wei Fengtang turned to look at Su Ze and Lin Xiuzhu. “Thank you. These are hard times—offering a hand to strangers now is no small thing. You have my deepest gratitude.”

With that, the old man bowed, formally and deeply, to Su Ze and Lin Xiuzhu.

Qin Yu hurried to bow alongside him, which made Lin Xiuzhu’s skin crawl with discomfort. He retreated several steps, babbling in a fluster, “No need—it’s nothing… I barely did anything… You’re too kind…”

His eyes darted to Su Ze—and found the man standing bolt upright, accepting the old man’s thanks without a shred of evasion.

Not even afraid of shortening his own lifespan… Lin Xiuzhu grumbled inwardly, fighting down the urge to hide his tentacles and looking left and right with forced calm.

He was actually a bit afraid of Wei Fengtang, and the reason was simple: he was terrified of being seized and sliced up for research. Unconscious, the man had been a harmless old grandpa. Awake? He was an Academician of the National Academy of Sciences!

How did he wake up so suddenly… Lin Xiuzhu was still grumbling when his eyes lit up and, on pure reflex, he looped a tentacle around the camping chair he’d just vacated, carried it around the fire, and set it down beside Wei Fengtang.

“Please, sit—”

Before the chair even settled, the realization hit him and he could have slapped himself twice! One moment terrified of being dissected, the next shoving his octopus legs right up to the man—how stupid could he get?!

Wei Fengtang glanced down and was about to give his thanks when the tentacle whooshed out of sight. The not-yet-stable chair wobbled twice in place and clattered to the ground.

Wei Fengtang: “…”

Qin Yu: “…”

Lin Xiuzhu: “…”

Su Ze: “…Pfft.”

Under Lin Xiuzhu’s furious glare, Su Ze issued instructions with perfect entitlement. “Go fetch two rocks.”

There were only two chairs here, and by the eternal principles of respecting one’s elders and looking after the ladies, the remaining one obviously went to Qin Yu. Besides, Su Ze had always maintained that Lin Xiuzhu sitting in a chair was a waste of a chair—merely cramming those eight tentacles into a seat was a logistical nightmare in itself.

At those words, Lin Xiuzhu reflexively opened his mouth to snap back—then glanced at the chair still lying in the dirt, turned without a word, and vanished into the forest. A moment later he returned, holding up two large rocks.

With his tentacles.

Wei Fengtang wrestled down the urge to lean in and study him, declined Qin Yu’s offer of help, righted the chair himself, and sat down by the fire.

Once everyone was settled, Su Ze picked up the roast pheasant, split it in two, and handed half to Wei Fengtang and half to Qin Yu.

Wei Fengtang pondered for a moment and accepted it graciously. But Qin Yu shook her head, her face complicated.

Su Ze didn’t press. He simply redirected the pheasant to Lin Xiuzhu.

Lin Xiuzhu made a couple of grudging noises, prepared to refuse on principle—then thought better of it and took it.

He’d spent the whole evening scared half to death, then bustled back and forth playing errand boy for a good while. Refusing food now would just be robbing himself!

Quiet fell around the bonfire, broken only by the sounds of chewing and the stirrings of insects and beasts in the forest.

Su Ze was full by now. True to his no-waste principles, he gnawed methodically at the scraps of meat still clinging to the skeleton, while his mind worked on the matter of Wei Fengtang.

He’d noticed when he first returned that Wei Fengtang was already awake, but hadn’t come out—lying on the bed, weeping silently.

And reading the air between Lin Xiuzhu and Qin Yu, Su Ze could roughly guess why. Hearing everything Qin Yu had recounted, Wei Fengtang—the root cause of it all—couldn’t help but blame himself.

Which was exactly why Su Ze had asked Qin Yu all those questions. Partly out of genuine curiosity; partly to lure Wei Fengtang out, so the man wouldn’t sit alone in the dark spiraling.

When everyone had eaten their fill, Su Ze finally set down the badger skeleton, picked clean, and looked at Wei Fengtang, asking once more, “Academician Wei—why did you enter the mountains?”

Wei Fengtang didn’t circle around it. He answered directly: “For the meteorites from the Ursa Minor Meteor Shower that fell on Changling Mountain.”

A biologist. An Academician of the Academy of Sciences. A man past sixty, risking his life deep in a primeval forest—all for a meteorite that plainly fell outside his field of research?

One only needed to connect a few dots to see that something was very wrong.

Lin Xiuzhu cried out without meaning to, “Are the meteorites connected to the apocalypse?!”

Wei Fengtang was silent a moment, then answered with a scientist’s characteristic rigor. “At the present stage, there is no direct evidence proving that hypothesis. But since the Ursa Minor Meteor Shower occurred, every single mutation event has taken place within ten kilometers of a meteorite impact site.”

“Every single one?” Su Ze asked, as though confirming.

Wei Fengtang nodded, solemn. “Every single one.”