Chapter 135: Chaotic Phenomena
When they arrived before the Bug Mother, the dozen or so people split into two teams.
Led by Chu Baixian and Wei Qi respectively.
To ensure student safety, Shen Zhuo and Feng Muya were assigned to two different teams.
Shen Zhuo went with Wei Qi to find a way to extract tissue samples from the Bug Mother.
Feng Muya went with Chu Baixian to conduct an overall scan of the Bug Mother.
Wei Qi indeed had some skill; it was normal for him to be looked upon favorably by Ji Weishen.
Wei Qi’s ability was called [Concealment].
As the name suggested, he could hide the presence of people within a ten-meter radius centered on himself.
It completely erased pheromones, glands, and even human body heat and other properties.
But because the mechs were heavy, their team had to leave the mechs to operate. To maintain a safe distance, they had to walk about three hundred meters to the Meat Mountain.
As soon as they got off the mechs, everyone heard a very strange sound.
It sounded like countless people crying one after another in the middle of the night, or perhaps just wind blowing from nowhere.
This sound became clearer and louder the closer they got to the Bug Mother.
Fu Qishang followed behind Shen Zhuo, obeying commands as they rapidly approached the Meat Mountain.
But halfway there, a white light suddenly flashed in front of Shen Zhuo.
It was a reflection from something.
Shen Zhuo followed the spot of light and looked up at the sky.
Ai Li’s mech was holding a cold weapon, reflecting sunlight as a warning.
Seeing Shen Zhuo look up, Ai Li manipulated the mech to make a hand gesture.
He and Ai Li didn’t always sit together in the royal classrooms when they were young. When separated by too much distance, Ai Li would make hand signals.
Indicating things like “skip class later” or “let’s go eat together.”
Over time, they could convey simple information through gestures.
Seeing Ai Li’s movement, Shen Zhuo’s pupils shrank.
He immediately grabbed Wei Qi’s clothes. When the Alpha turned around, he frowned and shook his head.
“Don’t get close yet,” Shen Zhuo mouthed.
Shen Zhuo turned to look at the sky again.
Ai Li made another gesture.
Fu Qishang didn’t quite understand. “What are you communicating?”
Shen Zhuo’s lips moved, making almost no sound.
He took a deep breath to compose himself before looking at the sky again, discovering that Ai Li had already left that spot.
“Ai Li told us to be vigilant.”
Shen Zhuo withdrew his gaze, looking at the squirming Bug Mother in the distance.
He didn’t quite understand Ai Li’s meaning, but the content Ai Li expressed made his face look grim:
“He said, the Bug Mother is covered in people.”
The team approached cautiously. With no other information from the other team, they couldn’t see Chu Baixian and the others for the time being.
Wei Qi’s ears were filled with that strange wind sound, and he felt a bit unsettled.
Combined with Shen Zhuo saying the Bug Mother was covered in people, Wei Qi decided to hand over leadership to Shen Zhuo for judgment.
An S5’s keen senses would definitely be better than an S2’s.
If he made a wrong decision, all these students would suffer.
So Shen Zhuo and Wei Qi advanced side-by-side, slowly arriving in front of the Bug Mother.
They finally saw the full appearance of the Bug Mother.
It wasn’t much different from the military’s intel, only clearer.
It wasn’t a simple mountain shape; the Bug Mother looked more like a giant soft-bodied worm.
It hid its head and tail, coiled into a ball, its body squirming slowly due to metabolism.
Its skin appeared as a semi-transparent, meat-red thin film, yet it was exceptionally tough and taut.
Shen Zhuo raised his hand and touched it lightly.
It felt thicker than rubber, and transparent slime stuck to Shen Zhuo’s fingers.
Shen Zhuo frowned and preserved the slime in a sampling test tube.
Through the transparent skin, one could see countless eggs squeezed together inside its body. The quantity was staggering.
Some already had the shape of insects, while others were just white eggs.
On both sides of the Bug Mother’s body were countless wriggling limbs, dozens of meters long, each of different thickness.
Those tentacles were long and short, squirming and twisting on the ground around the insect body; some were inserted into the soil.
The entire insect body was evil and massive, like an alien creature.
A scream suppressed in the throat sounded not far away.
Shen Zhuo turned his head and his face also went pale for a moment.
A student pointed at the tentacles on the ground, eyes red-rimmed, fighting back terrified emotions as they conveyed information to Shen Zhuo—
Those hundreds, thousands of tentacles, upon closer inspection, were all composed of countless faces.
Living, human faces.
Those faces were squeezed together, twisted and deformed by the pressure, more distorted and terrifying than ordinary humans.
They were all in a fleshy-pink state, their expressions grotesque, a mix of various emotions densely packed together.
But without exception, the mouths on all the human faces were opened to their maximum, like people deprived of air desperately trying to breathe.
The endless wind sounds or crying they heard earlier were coming from those “faces.”
The scene rendered everyone speechless for a moment. Everyone stared with stiff eyes, too horrified to move.
Even Shen Zhuo couldn’t react instantly; his hand gesture for instructions was a beat slower than usual.
Just then, Fu Qishang pulled his hand trembling, pointing in a certain direction.
Shen Zhuo looked over and saw a human face staring straight at them.
That look was extremely venomous. Its lips opened and closed, emitting a scream, the expression so ferocious it didn’t even look like something a human could achieve—
But on the tentacles of this Bug Mother, it probably didn’t count as a person anymore.
Fu Qishang was obviously frightened by the sight before him, gripping Shen Zhuo’s fingers so hard his knuckles turned white.
Shen Zhuo didn’t forget what they came to do. After a brief stiffness, he took out a small knife from his waist, ready to take samples.
“Don’t be afraid. It doesn’t look like there’s any problem right now.”
Shen Zhuo stared tightly at the mass of writhing tentacles nearby.
To be honest, he had never liked this kind of soft-bodied creature.
Let alone one covered in human faces.
“Wei Qi, go try to get some eggs from the Bug Mother’s body. You guys watch the perimeter; fire directly if there’s any movement. Fu Qishang…”
Shen Zhuo thought for a moment. “You follow me to collect other materials from the Bug Mother.”
“Yes, Your Highness.” Wei Qi turned and ran toward the other side of the Bug Mother.
The remaining students nodded.
Fu Qishang took a few deep breaths, forcibly suppressing his uneasy emotions.
He began preparing to activate his ability [Gravity Manipulation] in his hand.
The Bug Mother looked quiet, but both the tentacles and the main body could erupt at any time.
They had to be ready to retreat quickly.
Approaching that tentacle, Shen Zhuo looked for a place to cut.
Just as he was about to strike, he heard a very clear voice ring in his ear.
Not a scream.
Not a cry.
But two words, clear as a normal person calling his name—
“Shen Zhuo.”
Shen Zhuo’s scalp exploded. The voice was very close, seeming to be just nearby.
He glanced at Fu Qishang, who responded with an equally terrified expression.
The blonde boy shook his head, indicating he hadn’t found the direction of the voice.
“Shen Zhuo…”
The voice appeared again, seemingly a bit further away, but still venomous.
“You… you heard it too, right?” Fu Qishang’s voice was shaking. “You know people here too…”
“Impossible.” Shen Zhuo cocked his ear to listen, suddenly breaking out in goosebumps all over his body.
Not because of how eerie the voice was.
But because this voice… was familiar to him.
“Don’t you think this voice sounds a lot like…”
Shen Zhuo and Fu Qishang exchanged glances.
Fu Qishang’s lips were turning a bit pale:
“No, it can’t be. Isn’t he dead?”
Right, precisely because he was dead, it was confusing.
Because the voice they heard.
Was Xun Qing’s.
Reason told Shen Zhuo it was impossible.
He watched Du Feng strangle Xun Qing.
Given Du Feng’s temper, Xun Qing absolutely could not be alive.
But he still looked around; as expected, there were no other human figures.
It couldn’t be Xun Qing. It was likely the combination of wind and the strange crying here causing his ears to temporarily fail to distinguish sounds.
Shen Zhuo moved quickly, using the test tube to swiftly cut off a small piece of tissue from the Bug Mother’s tentacle, then stuck the tube into his waist belt.
Suddenly, having heard something, the boy’s eyes changed!
A sharp gaze shot from under long lashes toward a certain direction.
In the next second, he grabbed Fu Qishang’s arm and rolled on the ground, getting away from where they were standing.
A tentacle instantly slammed down on the spot where they had just been, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Shen Zhuo took Fu Qishang and lunged a few meters, rolling to a stop. Both reacted extremely fast, flipping over and propping themselves up with one hand to stand again.
Back-to-back, guns raised, alerting the surroundings.
“Shen Zhuo!”
That voice appeared again, only this time it was extremely close to Shen Zhuo.
It was practically spoken right in his ear, the voice filled with malice and hatred.
Shen Zhuo subconsciously looked in the direction the voice came from.
And with just this one glance, Shen Zhuo froze.
His entire body felt as if ice water had been poured over him from head to toe.
A chill climbed rapidly up his spine, triggering uncontrollable, violent shivers. Cold sweat broke out instantly.
Shen Zhuo went numb all over, staring in disbelief at the face on the tentacle in front of him.
His throat was dry and painful, the two words he spoke raspy beyond measure:
“Xun… Qing.”
Because of their movement earlier, they were much closer to another one of the Bug Mother’s tentacles.
And on this tentacle, right in front of Shen Zhuo, was a face he knew all too well.
It was his face.
“This…” Fu Qishang’s voice trembled as he looked at Shen Zhuo in disbelief. “How can it be you?”
This face was almost identical to Shen Zhuo’s; traces of plastic surgery were hard to distinguish.
But from the details, one could tell it wasn’t Shen Zhuo.
At this moment, its features were twisted, mouth wide open, looking just like a drowning person.
“It’s not me, it’s…”
Shen Zhuo suddenly found it very difficult to say those two words. “Xun Qing.”
“He once got plastic surgery to look like me to trick Du Feng. He was killed by Du Feng.”
The Bug Mother’s tentacles gleamed with a disgusting luster.
All the human faces had turned into red meat of the same texture as the creature.
But even though this face had lost its original color, Shen Zhuo could still tell from the contours.
This was Xun Qing.
But… why was Xun Qing here??
“Shen… Zhuo…”
The words spoken by that face were broken and intermittent because it had been squeezed out of shape.
The tone was different from Xun Qing’s usual voice, carrying a coarse and piercing quality.
Xun Qing seemed extremely angry. The resentful calls gradually turned into roars like those around him.
“Why aren’t you dead yet…”
“Why aren’t you dead?!”
“Shen Zhuo!! You should die!!”
Those eyes had also turned into a lump of flesh on the Bug Mother’s tentacle.
Staring at him blankly, viciously, venomously.
Shen Zhuo stared for a moment, then suddenly pulled the dagger from his waist.
He plunged it straight into the gap on the side of Xun Qing’s face, pressed his wrist down, flicked upward, and gouged the entire face right off.
“What are you doing!”
Fu Qishang was startled by Shen Zhuo’s overly decisive action.
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