Chapter 206: Mutation (Part IV)
Xiao Ji led the man into the elevator and headed downstairs.
By this point, he no longer needed the support of his crutches.
While the alloy prosthetic limb still served as his structural support, his previously atrophied thigh muscles had been rapidly repaired over the past few days. When he walked now, he appeared no different from an ordinary person.
Perhaps due to the persistent rain over the last few days, the air outside felt damp and bone-chilling.
Xiao Ji wandered the streets for a while until he found a specialty store for medical equipment.
The rolling shutter of the store was only pulled up a third of the way, and the glass door inside remained unlocked.
As Xiao Ji pushed the door open and stepped inside, the sound of his entry startled the shopkeeper.
The owner sat behind the counter. Suddenly, two tentacles whipped past Xiao Ji’s ears, shattering the business license hanging on the wall behind him.
Xiao Ji spoke indifferently, “You’re being a bit excessive.”
The owner retracted the tentacles. His face appeared normal, but his eyes were vacant as he stared listlessly at Xiao Ji.
Xiao Ji pondered for a moment before inquiring politely:
“Do you have any wheelchairs? Give me your best one.”
The owner seemed rooted behind the counter. He clearly didn’t understand a word Xiao Ji said, continuing to stare at him with that same vacant gaze.
Xiao Ji locked eyes with the man for a moment. Realizing he couldn’t rely on him, he decided to walk further into the store to make his own selection.
From the array of wheelchairs, he picked the most expensive one. He sat in it and manually wheeled himself to the counter, looking at the owner.
“How much?”
The owner remained motionless.
Xiao Ji asked again, “Is it a gift?”
The owner remained silent.
Xiao Ji understood. He gave a slight nod. “Thank you for your generosity, kind sir.”
With that, he wheeled himself out of the shop.
The streets were desolate and empty.
There were very few stationary vehicles on the road, so Xiao Ji activated the wheelchair’s automatic mode and began to roam the thoroughfares.
He encountered various types of pollutants along the way, but he never stopped for any of them.
According to the original timeline, he would have had to idle around for another half a month before meeting Bai Yinnian.
That was far too boring and much too long to wait.
Thus, under the guidance of 037, Xiao Ji drove his wheelchair toward the district where Bai Yinnian was scheduled to execute a mission tonight, intending to wait for his “prey” to arrive.
As he passed a convenience store that had its lights on and doors open despite having no customers, he steered his wheelchair inside.
When the outbreak first occurred a few days ago, major supermarkets and convenience stores had been almost entirely stripped bare by looters.
For a store to be “open for business” in such a pristine state, one didn’t even need to think to know there must be an infected individual inside.
The dark brown bloodstains remaining on the floor and walls near the entrance further confirmed that something had happened here not long ago.
Sure enough, the moment Xiao Ji pushed open the door, he saw a woman sprawling on the ceiling.
She had four arms and four legs, resembling a giant spider. Her hair hung down in disarray, and she was still wearing a blood-stained convenience store uniform.
The moment Xiao Ji entered, the woman’s head snapped around, her bloodshot eyes staring straight at him.
Xiao Ji looked up and met the woman’s gaze. “Hello.”
The woman gave no reaction, remaining perched on the ceiling.
Xiao Ji took a lap around the convenience store. He opened the pot used for making Oden, added some mineral water, and waited quietly for it to boil before adding two bags of seasoning.
Then, he took some frozen Oden skewers from the freezer and dropped them into the pot.
He selected a bottle of lychee-flavored soda from the refrigerator, sat behind the counter, and flipped open a magazine.
After a moment’s thought, he looked up at the woman on the ceiling and frowned.
“Could I trouble you to go to the back warehouse?”
It wasn’t that he minded the thing hanging over his head affecting his appetite.
Rather, he was afraid something might fall off her and land in his pot while he was cooking.
The woman on the ceiling gave no response.
After two failed commands, Xiao Ji concluded that these creatures likely possessed such low intelligence that they couldn’t comprehend complex instructions.
His expression turned cold as he spoke indifferently:
“Get out.”
The moment the words left his mouth, the woman on the ceiling scrambled her arms and legs, rapidly crawling along the ceiling and walls before scurrying out through the open door.
Bai Yinnian, accompanied by three teammates, had just cleared a batch of pollutants from a high-rise building behind the block. They were now traveling slowly down the street in a military armored vehicle.
Sitting in the passenger seat, Bai Yinnian lit a cigarette and leaned against the window with his eyes closed. He spoke to the man and woman in the backseat:
“Keep a sharp lookout. We need to clear this entire street tonight.”
The man in the back complained, “We’ll never finish clearing them. Things have already spiraled out of control. There are pollutants everywhere. Once we clear this batch, another will show up in two days.”
Bai Yinnian knew that the situation would only grow more dire if this continued. However, as long as the research institute hadn’t sent word and there were still normal people waiting for rescue, they had to keep going.
They could only clear as many as they could.
“These things are evolving. They’re becoming harder and harder to deal with.”
The man driving joined the conversation.
Beneath his rolled-up sleeves, a bloody wound on his arm was healing at a rate visible to the naked eye.
Bai Yinnian flicked his cigarette butt out the window and sighed.
“Wait.”
The woman in the backseat suddenly spoke up.
The driver immediately slammed on the brakes. “What is it?”
The woman’s gaze was fixed on the side of the road. “That convenience store has its doors open.”
Hearing this, Bai Yinnian followed her gaze and indeed saw a convenience store with its “Open” sign lit up.
Not only was the door open, but the lights were on as well.
The woman rolled down the window and sniffed the air, looking bewildered.
“Is someone… cooking?!”
She possessed heightened senses and served as the team’s search-and-rescue specialist.
In times like these, normal people who hadn’t been contaminated would be hiding in their homes, trembling with fear.
As for those already infected, they would manifest in various forms—either wandering the streets in search of prey or staying in their own territory to wait for victims.
Regardless, no one would be openly cooking in a roadside convenience store.
It defied all common sense.
Bai Yinnian frowned and opened the car door. “I’ll go take a look.”
The driver hurriedly shouted, “Boss, the gun!”
Bai Yinnian had intended to say it wasn’t necessary.
However, his own combat mode consumed too much physical energy. After a thought, he caught the “gun” the driver tossed to him.
It had a massive frame and a wide bore; it clearly didn’t fire ordinary bullets.
He weighed the weapon in his hand. “Wait for me here.”
With that, he walked toward the convenience store.
As he reached the entrance, he instinctively glanced upward and saw a foot appearing above the store’s lintel.
A split second later, a woman resembling a spider lunged from behind the sign, leaping toward Bai Yinnian.
With a grim expression, Bai Yinnian raised the “gun” and aimed the muzzle at her the moment she pounced.
In an instant, a roaring flame erupted from the barrel, engulfing the woman.
A piercing shriek exploded from her mouth.
She curled her limbs, attempting to flee, but the flames clung to her like maggots on a bone, wrapping around her relentlessly.
Very quickly, she was incinerated into blackened carbon.
The pungent scent of burning protein filled Bai Yinnian’s nostrils. He coughed twice, covered his nose and mouth, and walked into the store.
Upon entering, he saw a man sitting behind the counter, flipping through a magazine.
Xiao Ji had long heard the commotion outside. At this moment, he looked up and met Bai Yinnian’s gaze.
As their eyes met, he lowered the magazine, gave a slight nod, and spoke indifferently:
“Hello.”
Translator’s Note: Welcome to the apocalypse! Xiao Ji is now playing the role of a “helpless” person in a wheelchair, but as we see, he’s anything but. Those “pollutants” or “contaminants” (污染物) are the mutated humans/creatures of this world. Bai Yinnian is our ML, a soldier who clearly has some special abilities of his own (did you notice the driver’s wound healing?). Also, for those unfamiliar, Oden (關東煮) is a Japanese/East Asian one-pot winter dish consisting of several ingredients such as boiled eggs, daikon, and processed fishcakes stewed in a light, soy-flavored dashi broth. Stay tuned to see how this “vulnerable” Xiao Ji handles the commander!
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