Changling Mountain’s full name was the Changling Mountain Range. It boasted five main peaks including Changling Mountain itself, over four thousand lesser summits, and a highest elevation of 2,600 meters. With gentle slopes and lush vegetation, it was one of Hua State’s three great primeval forests and the country’s first national nature reserve.
Rich in species and frequented by many large, fierce beasts, Changling Mountain had barely been developed, and its ecological environment remained pristine. Because of this, the villages around the mountain had all kept their hunting traditions, and many households held hunting licenses.
A village like this should, by all logic, be safer than the cities. Yet Su Ze, walking into the village at dusk, discovered that the situation here was far more terrifying than in the city.
The first thing he felt upon entering the village was silence.
No voices, no breathing—not even the sounds of small animals moving about. Though it was the liveliest season of spring, the entire village was as silent as a dead city.
And then there were the eerie Humanoid Plants.
Su Ze pushed his dead-batteried Electric Scooter along the road, walking slowly. Because the village sat close to Liyang, its infrastructure was fairly decent: one main road ran straight through it, and every household had water and electricity.
And since the disaster had struck at night, at least half the houses still had lights glowing inside—illuminating the Humanoid Plants standing at every single doorway, making the scene all the more horrifying.
These Humanoid Plants came tall and short, fat and thin; even their plant species differed. Some were small trees thick with branches and leaves, some were clumps of flowers and grass, and some were mushrooms of every size—every strange variety imaginable.
Their only commonality was that all of them appeared at the entrances of homes, all roughly human-shaped: some frozen in the motion of pushing open a door, some already having stepped over the threshold, some with just a hand reaching out from inside—like they were begging for help, or beckoning.
Besides the Humanoid Plants, Su Ze also glimpsed many animal-shaped plants through the door cracks, as if every living thing in the village had been replaced by vegetation overnight.
Su Ze had pushed the scooter through most of the village when his foot suddenly caught. He looked up at a courtyard not far away.
He had heard it—the sound of normal human breathing coming from inside. More than one person.
Su Ze hurried to the courtyard gate, raised his hand, knocked, and called out loudly, “Hello? Is anyone home?”
The breathing inside stalled. Su Ze heard a hushed hiss, footsteps, and the sound of a hunting rifle being cocked. Then someone walked out and stopped behind the courtyard gate.
“…Who’s out there?”
“Hi. I came from Liyang, looking for somewhere to charge my vehicle.”
The man inside the courtyard was silent for a while. “…There are empty houses everywhere. Just pick any one and charge.”
“I’m afraid there might be monsters inside.” Su Ze delivered the utterly unconvincing line in the flattest tone possible.
Silence again. After a good long wait, the gate finally cracked open—revealing a single eye and the dark muzzle of a gun.
A moment later, the man’s eyes went wide and he blurted out in disbelief, “Little Su?!”
Su Ze’s lips twitched, almost invisibly. “Brother Wu.”
A few minutes later, Su Ze sat in the first-floor living room, eyeing the handful of people around him with a slightly furrowed brow.
Even though he’d only glimpsed them in passing that day, he still clearly remembered: three cars had driven out to the countryside with Wu Chengzhi—five men, four women, and five children, one of them still in swaddling clothes.
But now only Wu Chengzhi remained, along with the man who called him Squad Leader, two haggard-looking women, and four children. Old Liu, who had been the most insistent on coming to the countryside, was gone. The woman who had sat beside Wu Chengzhi on the journey was gone. Only the little boy remained, silently nestled in Wu Chengzhi’s arms.
Connecting it to the Humanoid Plants outside, Su Ze asked, thoughtful, “You didn’t notice anything off the day you arrived?”
Wu Chengzhi froze for a moment, then smiled bitterly. “If I had even half your instincts, Little Su, I wouldn’t have—”
The rest was cut off by a woman’s choking wail. The woman holding the swaddled infant shot to her feet and rushed into the house.
“…Sorry. Her husband was Old Liu. And one of the children too…” Wu Chengzhi’s lips trembled, his eyes reddening. “The day we arrived, the village was so quiet… Every house had its doors and windows shut. No one was moving about. We assumed the villagers had been scared into hiding and thought nothing of it… Who knew that after one day we’d see…
“Before long, plants started growing out of Old Liu and Old Ma and the others… I regret it so much! I regret not listening to you and staying in the city! If we’d stayed in the city, then maybe—”
“Maybe more of you would be dead.” Su Ze cut Wu Chengzhi off calmly. “Brother Wu, the Mutants haven’t stopped mutating.”
Wu Chengzhi released his head from his hands and stared blankly at Su Ze. “…What do you mean?”
Su Ze considered for a moment, then pulled the battered Kitchen Cleaver from his backpack and pointed at the gouges across it. “These are claw marks they left. And their speed has improved as well.”
Wu Chengzhi stared at the clear claw marks on the cleaver, then lifted his gaze to Su Ze’s face, shocked and bewildered.
Before he could speak, Su Ze put the cleaver away and continued, “In the current situation, there’s no difference between city and countryside. What matters is how to survive. Survive, and there’s hope.”
“Hope…” Wu Chengzhi murmured. His gaze swept over the adults and children in the room and finally came to rest on the son in his arms.
Involuntarily tightening his arms around the boy, Wu Chengzhi looked at Su Ze. “For the first time in my life, I feel like I’ve lived to this age for nothing—I don’t see things half as clearly as you, Little Su… Oh right, you must be tired after walking all this way? Say whatever you want to eat. Food is the one thing we’re not short of here.”
Su Ze declined. “Thank you, I ate on the way.”
He paused, then continued, “No need to prepare food for me tomorrow morning either. I’m leaving at first light.”
Wu Chengzhi was startled. He seemed on the verge of saying something, but in the end he only asked, “Where are you going?”
Su Ze didn’t hide it. “Changling Mountain.”
After a long silence, Wu Chengzhi nodded. “All right. I’ll drive you tomorrow morning. Don’t be so quick to refuse—this place may sit at the edge of Changling Mountain, but getting into the mountains on an electric scooter would take you at least two days. I’ll drive you; we’ll be there within the morning, and I can still make it back in time for dinner.”
The mountain roads were rough and broken, eventually giving way to no road at all, and the scooter’s battery was limited. It truly wouldn’t carry him into Changling Mountain in one go.
Su Ze nodded his thanks. “Okay. Thank you, Brother Wu.”
Wu Chengzhi waved a hand and stood, scooping up his child. “Come on, I’ll show you where you’re sleeping. Don’t worry, the houses… have all been tidied up.”
“Mm.” Su Ze answered and followed Wu Chengzhi upstairs.
The night passed without dreams.
Su Ze opened his eyes just as the sky began to gray with dawn.
Feeling the long-lost hunger in his stomach and recalling his foraging journey since the apocalypse began, Su Ze felt both grateful for his good luck—he had started out on Mutated Venus Flytrap digestive fluid, which had given his stomach time to adapt—and convinced that his luck was dreadful: it had been nothing but soup and gnawed tree roots, without a single taste of meat.
But that had been his own choice. The meat in the city was either Mutants or companion animals; he genuinely couldn’t bring himself to eat either. And with Liyang City already launching localized rescue and cleanup operations, Longchang and Zhongdu would only move faster. If he didn’t want to go hungry in the future, or end up investigated and dissected, he could only go where mutated species gathered and earn his keep there.
His head full of roast chicken, grilled rabbit, and steamed bear paw, Su Ze rolled out of bed and walked to the window to look outside. Beyond the courtyard wall he could faintly make out lush green treetops—and yet there were no trees planted outside this small courtyard where Wu Chengzhi and the others lived.
Su Ze turned and headed downstairs. Just as he was about to step out, a voice came from behind him.
“Little Su, join us.”
Su Ze turned. It was Wu Chengzhi, with the other surviving man standing beside him. Both wore masks, carried gasoline and firewood in their hands, and wore solemn expressions.
Su Ze nodded, thoughtful, and walked out the gate with them. He watched them carry off the Humanoid Plants that had at some point wandered up to the courtyard wall, moving them to the road crossing far from the yard. Then they stacked the firewood, poured the gasoline, and lit it.
Once the fire caught, they placed the Humanoid Plants beside the firewood, then carried over the other plants that had wandered onto the road, arranging them in a ring around the pile.
Little by little, the fire burned bigger and fiercer. Amid the leaping flames, Su Ze thought he saw the Humanoid Plant farthest from the fire move.
Move—toward the fire.
When every Humanoid Plant was wrapped in flame, Wu Chengzhi looked at the man beside him, who stood with arms crossed, lost in thought. “Little Chen, keep an eye on this. Afterward, bury them in the usual place. I’m taking Little Su to Changling Mountain; I should be back around dusk.”
Little Chen looked like he wanted to speak but held back. Wu Chengzhi patted his shoulder. “Relax. I know what I’m doing.”
Then he gestured for Su Ze to follow. Walking to the familiar SUV, he opened the trunk and loaded Su Ze’s Electric Scooter inside, saying frankly, “There’s no telling what we’ll run into on the mountain road. If it gets too dangerous, I may not be able to keep driving you.”
Su Ze nodded to show he understood. Once Wu Chengzhi packed water and food and soothed his son, the two of them set off.
Liyang City had no national highway leading to Changling Mountain; the roads were all built by the local counties and villages themselves, so their standards varied wildly.
Closer to Liyang City, the quality was higher—the roads relatively smooth, some even paved with asphalt, like the road Su Ze had ridden his scooter on. But the closer they got to Changling Mountain, the worse it became: gravel roads gave way to dirt tracks, and the whole drive felt like riding a pirate ship.
Fortunately, Wu Chengzhi ran a car dealership himself, and this SUV had been modified to take a beating. However battered the passengers got, at least the vehicle held up.
An ordinary person would never have withstood that kind of jostling, but Su Ze acted like nothing was happening, spending the whole trip focused on observing their surroundings and gauging the danger level—though the yardstick for “danger” wasn’t himself, but Wu Chengzhi.
Fortunately, with the region sparsely populated and it being daytime, the threats from Mutated Creatures proved less severe than the awful road conditions. Wu Chengzhi drove Su Ze all the way to the foot of the mountain. Before they even got close, towering trees that blotted out the sky were already visible, along with the deep, lightless darkness of the dense forest.
“Alright, this is far enough.” Su Ze spoke up.
The car soon pulled to a stop. Wu Chengzhi watched in silence as Su Ze picked up his backpack. Just as the other man opened the car door to step out, he finally spoke.
“Little Su, I know you’re not an ordinary person. But Changling Mountain is no ordinary place either—least of all in the current situation. You… be careful out there.”
Su Ze smiled, almost imperceptibly. “I will. Thank you.”
With that, he walked toward Changling Mountain without a backwards glance, his snow-white, slender silhouette quickly swallowed by the dense forest and gone from sight.
“I hope we meet again someday…” Wu Chengzhi murmured to himself, then sighed, started the car, turned around, and drove off.
Meanwhile, deep in the forest, Su Ze was muttering under his breath as he walked—
“Wild rabbits, pheasants, roe deer, wild boar… Ah! I forgot to bring seasoning!!!”
