Chapter 7: Mutant — This Was the Human-Yet-Inhuman Creature: a Mutant.

When the door opened, the first thing to meet Su Ze’s eyes was brilliant sunshine.

Liyang’s springs were dry with little rain, the weather fair—seven or eight days out of ten brought brilliant sunshine, and today was no exception.

It was precisely noon, and the dazzling sunlight streamed through the windows, lighting the entire dining area to a transparent brightness. Paired with the messy but deeply lived-in household clutter, it looked warm and alive—except for the smell of blood thick enough to drown out every other scent.

Su Ze glanced at the clean, tidy dining room floor, his gaze passing through the equally unremarkable living room toward the two bedrooms.

Thanks to the layout, the windowless living room was somewhat dim. Both bedroom doors stood open, blackness within, only the faintest outlines of furniture discernible.

The smell of blood drifted from one of those bedrooms, thick as a slaughterhouse—which, set against the seemingly normal furnishings of the dining and living areas, made everything all the more eerie.

Su Ze listened carefully for movement in the bedrooms and sniffed the air again. Confirming that both the monster and the blood-smell came from the right-hand bedroom, he set down his backpack, placed the wrench on the shoe cabinet by the door, took the kitchen cleaver from the inner compartment, and started toward that bedroom.

As he approached, the panting from inside grew louder—like a great feline fresh off a hunt, short and eager.

Just as Su Ze decided that whatever was making that panting sound, such a respiratory rate had to cause fainting, the panting cut off abruptly—and a dark shape burst from the shadows, lunging straight at his face!

Su Ze’s expression sharpened. He flung himself sideways, dodging the shadow’s ambush, and after a nimble roll, half-crouched on the ground and raised his head, finally seeing the shadow clearly.

The monster that had burst from the bedroom was tall, its muscles knotted and ridged, tattered blood-soaked pajamas hanging off it, without a single hair on its entire body. Its skin was yellow-gray, a thin layer wrapped over the muscle, the fibers and grain clearly visible beneath.

It stood hunched in a shadowed corner of the living room, eyes locked dead on Su Ze, mouth slightly open, breathing fast—the familiar panting. Its respiratory rate far exceeded a human’s, like a machine running at full tilt, demanding more oxygen for fuel.

This was the human-yet-inhuman creature: a Mutant.

Watching it, Su Ze turned his wrist slightly—then suddenly charged forward, cleaver raised, leaping high mid-charge and bringing the blade down on the Mutant’s head!

Clang!

Amid the clash of metal on stone, the Mutant caught the cleaver in its left hand and flung it aside, its right hand swooping forward to grab Su Ze.

Su Ze didn’t panic. Riding the Mutant’s own force, he threw himself left, kicked its right forearm, and neatly defused the attack—then, in the instant he hit the wall, he twisted his hips, swung his arm, and flung the cleaver from his hand!

Over less than two meters, the cleaver flew true, sinking into the Mutant’s neck—wide open after its arm was kicked aside—with a wet shunk!

Bright red blood sprayed out. The Mutant made hoarse, rasping sounds, both hands clawing weakly at its neck as if trying to cover the wound, but beyond gouging out more gashes, it accomplished nothing.

In under ten seconds, it crashed to the ground and gradually fell silent.

Su Ze, with his agile movements, had long since slipped into the dining area, neatly avoiding the spray of blood.

After waiting a while, Su Ze skirted the blood on the floor, walked over to the Mutant, crouched down, and began observing it carefully.

Beyond what he’d already seen, he found the Mutant’s pupils were deformed—neither the human circle nor an animal’s vertical slit, but a strange diamond shape. Its nostrils flared outward, its jaw jutted, the skin at the corners of its mouth had folded into creases, its canines had lengthened, its teeth sharpened—displaying clear atavism.

Its finger joints had one more segment than a human’s, its nails proliferated and blackened, triangular in cross-section, long and sharp—less like hooks and more like slightly curved triangular spikes, hard in texture, with exceptionally keen tips.

A short tail had grown from its tailbone. Its knees and foot bones were severely deformed, leaving its legs unable to straighten, permanently held at a slight bend—useful for coiling power into leaps and the like.

On the whole, aside from the shared traits of the primate order—forward-facing eye sockets, separated fingers and toes, flexible opposable thumbs—it no longer resembled a human at all.

Having noted the observed details, Su Ze found a cloth to pad his hand and dragged the Mutant into the dining area, watching its yellow-gray skin burn under the sunlight, swiftly blackening and festering.

So that was the reason for its light aversion. Su Ze watched the Mutant’s corpse, expressionless.

He hadn’t rashly entered the underground garage of Wu Chengzhi’s complex earlier precisely because he feared careless movement would land him in danger. Who’d have thought Mutants were even more dangerous than he’d imagined.

Su Ze had always had a clear understanding of himself.

His chronic under-eating had left him anemic, with poor stamina and a tendency to faint. But his five senses were superhuman, his reaction speed extremely fast, his strength great—and ordinary sharp implements couldn’t harm him. To borrow a gaming term: his Defense Value was very high.

He’d tested it himself in private: ordinary kitchen knives, fruit knives, sewing needles, and the like—common metal items—couldn’t cut or pierce his skin. Only stainless steel as sharp as a syringe needle could breach his skin’s barrier.

That was also why he’d completely ignored the mutated wutong’s proboscis when facing it—one look and he’d known the thing couldn’t possibly puncture his skin.

Now this ultra-high Defense Value had finally met its match.

Padded with the cloth, Su Ze seized one of the Mutant’s fingers and dragged its nail fiercely across the back of his other hand.

A sharp pain shot to his brain. A white mark instantly appeared across his jade-white hand, quickly turning red—though mercifully, there was no sign of bleeding.

Dropping the Mutant’s hand, Su Ze rose to his feet, feeling somewhat heavy-hearted.

On the surface, in this duel of spear and shield, his skin seemed to have won. But judging from the Mutant’s newly grown tail, its mutation was still in progress.

And simple reasoning made it plain: if Mutants had been this formidable from the start, how could Wu Chengzhi and his group possibly have survived unscathed? A nail that could score a white line across his skin would open other people’s flesh easier than cutting paper.

And it had taken only a single night.

Thinking of the mutated Venus flytrap, the mutated wutong tree, and the Mutant before him, Su Ze pressed his lips together and, through the cloth, poked at its flesh, festering in the sunlight.

Thankfully, the Mutant’s mutation was concentrated in muscle and bone. The skin had seemingly been abandoned—leaving it unable to withstand sunlight, stripped of the ability to move by day.

It wasn’t hard to understand, really. Early biological evolution on Earth loved extremes—anything useful got stacked, buff upon buff. Many lineages went extinct precisely because they couldn’t adapt to abruptly changed environments, trapping themselves to death.

At that thought, Su Ze looked back at the unbearable scene in the bedroom.

This must have been the elderly couple’s bedroom. Their wedding photo still hung on the wall above the headboard—only it had been soaked through with blood, the faces no longer discernible.

Their bodies lay scattered everywhere, nothing left but bones scored with tooth marks.

Su Ze could practically reconstruct what had happened last night.

The elderly sleep early. The family of three had retired to their rooms early in the evening—the parents resting, the son scrolling his phone and playing on his computer—then, unnoticed by anyone, he had begun to mutate.

Once the mutation completed, it had followed instinct in search of food, attacking its still-sleeping parents.

Su Ze silently let out a breath and rose to leave.

At the household directly opposite, he opened the door by the same method, and likewise saw the bright dining area and smelled the identical blood-smell—only without the urgent panting.

As for the source of the smell, it was in the living room.

Su Ze stared at the shattered, scattered remains on the floor, brow tightly knit.

No signs of an attack. No signs of a struggle. It looked more like… they had exploded on their own.

Su Ze thought for a while without reaching any conclusions, and decided to go home and take it from there.

Climbing to the fifth floor, Su Ze was just reaching for his keys when the door across the hall opened a crack, and Grandpa Liu’s trembling voice came through.

“Little Ze… Little Ze, what’s it l-like out there? Is it dangerous?”

Su Ze looked back once and answered, expressionless: “Very dangerous.”

Grandpa Liu started in alarm and nearly slammed the door shut on reflex, only barely restraining himself: “Th-then do you know the cause?”

“No. Only that plants have turned into monsters,” Su Ze paused, then added, “and people have too.”

“People? Turned into monsters?” Grandpa Liu cried out in shock, cutting himself off the moment he realized how loud he was. Only after Su Ze opened his door did he follow up, voice quavering.

“Th-then what about the police? The army? They should have a way to handle this, right?”

Su Ze’s movement through his door paused. “In a situation like this, it’s the same no matter who it is.”

“…Then what do we do?”

Su Ze leaned against his door, thinking for a moment, then looked back: “Seal your doors and windows, hide well, and wait for rescue.” With that, he closed his door.

Grandpa Liu wanted to ask more but didn’t dare call out loudly, so he could only scuttle back inside in helpless panic, wrapping himself in his blanket and shivering.

Su Ze showered, changed clothes, then sat on the sofa gnawing on a washed Mutated Wutong Tree Root, staring blankly between bites.

What he’d told Grandpa Liu just now wasn’t fobbing him off—it was his genuine thinking. His earlier attempt to persuade Wu Chengzhi and the others against the countryside had carried the same implication.

Mutated monsters were truly terrifying, and Mutants were formidably strong beyond imagination. Moreover, everything he’d observed indicated that the current stage of mutation was only the beginning—far from over.

But just as the mutated wutong had been burned to death by Wu Chengzhi’s group, and the Mutant couldn’t withstand a kitchen cleaver, humans—armed with firearms—would only need to survive the period of chaos before consolidating resources, launching a counteroffensive, and mounting rescues. It was only a matter of time.

The question was: how long would the chaos last, how much time would consolidation take, and could Liyang—not even qualifying as a third-tier city—hold on long enough to be rescued?

And what was the cause of the mutation? Why, beyond plant and animal mutation, were there incidents of human bodies exploding? Beyond humans, would animals explode too? What were the cause and the mechanism?

Su Ze tossed the cleanly gnawed stele into the trash, eyes glinting.

The remaining roots would last another two days. He’d use that time to observe carefully, then make his decision.