After All Species Mutated, I Activated Cheats [Apocalyptic] - Chapter 8

Under Sister Li’s withered palm, she was clutching her carotid artery. On the skin covering the artery, there were three deep, radiating gashes. They branched out from a single central point, stretching across nearly her entire neck.

Lu Mian leaned in for a closer look. “This looks like a bite from something. Does this thing… suck blood? Or maybe it drains other fluids, like water. Whatever it is, it feeds incredibly fast.”

Lin Feng leaned in as well. “What kind of creature could do this?”

Lu Mian stared at the three scars, lost in thought. He felt as though he had seen a wound like this somewhere before, but he couldn’t quite place it.

He straightened up, pulled the blanket back over Sister Li, and took the flashlight from Lin Feng’s hand. “Let’s head out first.”

The group stepped out slowly. Old Wang and Brother Chen waited by the door with Xiao Sun. Unable to resist his craving, Old Wang lit a cigarette, the cherry of the tobacco glowing and fading silently as he puffed away in the dark.

Lu Mian swept the flashlight around the pitch-black room with Lin Feng following close behind.

“It’s getting late and candle-light only goes so far,” Lin Feng suggested. “Should we head back and come again tomorrow?”

Lu Mian turned and gave Lin Feng a small smile. “It’s fine. Brother Lin, didn’t you come find me in the middle of the night precisely because you were worried the thing that attacked Sister Li might strike again? Xiao Sun was right, the doors and windows here were all locked, yet Sister Li still met a grizzly end. We’d better find this thing as soon as possible.”

The two did a full lap of the house but found no useful leads. Feeling a bit discouraged, Lu Mian joined the others squatting by the door.

He sat against the doorframe, staring blankly at the bowl of apples on the floor.

Just then, a flash of lightning streaked across the sky outside. For a split second, the room was as bright as day before plunging back into gloom.

Lu Mian froze.

He thought he had seen something just now, right there on the floor.

A second bolt of lightning flashed, illuminating the room once more.

Lu Mian’s eyebrow twitched. He grabbed the flashlight resting beside him and stood up, heading back into the room.

He looked left and right, then stepped back a few paces. He clicked the flashlight on, placed it flat on the ground, and lowered himself until he was lying prone on the floor.

“Xiao Lu?” Brother Chen called out.

Lu Mian adjusted the angle of the beam until it settled on a specific spot. “You guys might want to see this.”

Hearing this, the others stood up and hurried into the living room.

The flashlight beam stretched across the floor toward the bathroom. In the path of the light, a shimmering trail nearly ninety centimeters wide appeared, surrounded by a mess of frantic footprints.

“What is that?” Old Wang asked.

“Looks like glue,” Lin Feng remarked.

Lu Mian stood up and followed the trail to the bathroom door. “It’s probably not glue. It looks more like the mucus trail left by something crawling. It’s mostly been stepped over, so it’s hard to tell. Can someone bring me another light?”

Brother Chen stepped forward, grabbed a second flashlight from the table, and handed it over. “Use this one. Keep that one where it is.”

Lu Mian grunted in affirmation, clicked on the new light, and dropped back down to scan the floor.

This time, he found two distinct trails.

He beckoned the others over, then stood up and pointed to a thinner mark. “This one looks like it came up through the floor drain. See? The grate has been pushed up. This bigger trail here connects over to the toilet.”

Old Wang, who wasn’t much for overthinking, asked bluntly, “So, what the hell are we looking at?”

Lu Mian pondered for a moment. “I only have a rough theory. Based on these two trails, the thing likely crawled up through the drain and made its way to the living room… Wait!”

Suddenly, as if remembering something, Lu Mian grabbed the flashlight and bolted for the bedroom. Standing before Sister Li’s window, he gave his customary three bows to the figure on the bed before peeling back the white blanket once more.

He moved to the foot of the bed and shone the light on the soles of Sister Li’s feet.

“What’s wrong?” Lin Feng asked.

Frowning, Lu Mian began a manual search. Finally, in the gap between two toes, he found a tiny puncture. “Look at this wound.”

The group crowded in for a look.

The wound was miniscule, almost invisible unless you were looking for it.

There, in the fold between two toes, were three radiating marks—identical to the massive wound on her carotid artery.

Lu Mian did a quick mental calculation of the distance from her foot to her neck and let out a sharp hiss of breath.

“If I’m right,” Lu Mian began, “this thing started out very small. It crawled up through the bathroom drain and into the living room. Sister Li must have accidentally stepped on it. It latched onto the sole of her foot to suck her blood, gorging itself until it grew. Then, it crawled up her leg and clamped onto her carotid artery.”

That explained why Sister Li’s feet were twisted at such an unnatural angle.

Realizing this, Lu Mian felt a chill run down his spine. “It seems this thing carries some kind of neurotoxin that paralyzes its prey. Otherwise, when it was still small, Sister Li could have easily pulled it off. Why else would she just let it drain her dry?”

Lu Mian paused, then continued, “And judging by the two completely different trails on the floor, its appetite is a bottomless pit. Draining a whole person only made it grow from the size of a pinky to nearly a meter wide. It didn’t burst. If it finds a second victim, will it just keep growing?”

With grim expressions, the men covered Sister Li’s body and filed out, looking down at the trail in the living room with disgust.

“If it comes up through the sewers, that means it lives in damp places or water,” Brother Chen noted. “It drinks blood and leaves mucus. Guys… I think I know what this is.”

“Me too,” Old Wang muttered.

“Same here,” added Lin Feng.

Xiao Sun remained silent.

Lu Mian shook off a layer of goosebumps. “You’re likely right. It’s a leech.”

Leeches typically live in rocky riverbeds or at the bottom of ponds, but they can be found in sewers and rice paddies too. They were revolting creatures.

Lu Mian sighed. “But a normal leech doesn’t have an appetite this big. They usually feed on capillaries. This thing went straight for the artery. It’s not natural.”

Brother Chen couldn’t help but scoff. “The human-faced butterflies aren’t natural either, and that Butterfly Queen was even more ridiculous. The world has gone mad. It’s perfectly possible for leeches like this to exist now.”

Outside, lightning flashed again, and the rain began to pour harder.

Standing by the window, Lu Mian froze. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw something.

Ever since the encounter with the Butterfly Queen, his eyes had changed. Not only was his field of vision wider, but he was also much more sensitive to movement.

In those brief seconds of lightning, even though he wasn’t looking directly out the window, he saw objects writhing all over the exterior wall.

He grabbed his flashlight and aimed it outside.

On the damp exterior wall, clusters of yellow-and-black mollusks were clinging to the siding, crawling upward in massive groups. They varied in size, but every single one of them was enough to make a person’s skin crawl.

They were exactly what they had suspected: leeches.

“Holy sh*t!” Old Wang yelled. “There are so many!”

Lu Mian scanned the area with his light and spotted an exceptionally massive leech in the central courtyard.

Compared to it, the nearby electric scooter looked tiny.

Lu Mian gasped and spoke urgently, “The rain must have expanded their territory. We have no idea how much these things can eat. If anyone runs into them, they’ll be drained dry. We have to warn everyone, now!”

Old Wang rubbed his arms. “I have a megaphone back at my place, Building 3, 202. Going door-to-door is too slow. Maybe we should…”

Just then, a blood-curdling scream pierced the night, making everyone jump.

The neighborhood erupted. With the recent strange events, everyone was on high alert for cries for help. Voices began shouting from all directions.

“Which building? Which unit? Speak up!”

“Building 3! Upstairs, top floor!”

“It’s my neighbor! Building 3, 1001! I’m going over! Hurry up, guys!”

The sound of doors slamming open echoed through the complex.

Lu Mian’s expression shifted. “This is bad! It’s too dangerous to be outside right now! We have to go!”

Without a second thought, the group charged downstairs toward Building 3.

As they burst out of the lobby, raindrops the size of beans pelted them, making it hard to see. Lu Mian, however, barely felt it. He looked up at the building. Everywhere the flashlight hit, there were leeches. They were long and tubular, inching their way up using their suckers.

“Wang, you and Xiao Sun go get the megaphone,” Lu Mian directed. “Lin, Chen, and I will go straight to 1001. Once you have the megaphone, tell everyone what we found!”

Old Wang gave a thumbs-up. The group split into two teams on the second floor. Lu Mian followed Lin Feng and Brother Chen as they sprinted up the stairs.

Lu Mian watched the two men ahead of him. Lin Feng had been a soldier, so his stamina made sense. What surprised him was Brother Chen.

Chen was incredibly thin, seemingly nothing but skin and bone, yet he was keeping pace with Lin Feng without even breaking a sweat.

What Lu Mian didn’t realize was that the two men in front were constantly glancing back at him.

Because Lu Mian spent most of his time indoors and rarely saw the sun, his skin was very pale and he didn’t look particularly strong. Lin Feng and Chen were both worried he wouldn’t be able to keep up with such intense physical exertion. Yet, each time they checked, they saw the fair-skinned youth following them effortlessly. In fact, he looked like he wasn’t even trying.

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