Apocalyptic Island - Chapter 6
Chapter 6
Bai Mi bumped into her, stopping her own tracks, and asked in a low voice, “What’s wrong?”
Wen Yishu instinctively grabbed her wrist: “There’s someone behind the aloe.”
The dark figure seemed to have heard their conversation. It staggered forward and fell, making a weak sound: “Save me…”
Neither of them moved for a moment. It just didn’t make sense.
This person was clearly not from this floor. The plants were no longer rioting, yet she was still outside.
Even if she wanted to ask for help, she should have gone to the nearest place, not run up to the eighth floor.
This was the top floor. By the time she had managed to climb up, she would have already died once.
The woman’s sobbing came through, sounding very pitiful, but Wen Yishu didn’t lower her guard. Instead, she grabbed a sharp dagger that Bai Mi had given her for self-defense.
Her other hand held the flamethrower, and she stood still.
The woman cried for a while, seeming to have cried enough. A timid voice sounded: “Please, have a heart, save me.”
Wen Yishu: “No.”
The woman’s crying stopped abruptly: “Why?”
Her voice was a little strange, hoarse and rough, giving the impression that she was very dehydrated.
Wen Yishu inexplicably felt a little nervous. She gripped the dagger in her hand tighter.
“If you had the energy for that, you would have already gotten up and saved yourself,” Bai Mi’s cold words broke the silence.
Wen Yishu agreed in her heart. That’s exactly what she wanted to say.
The woman slowly moved out of the shadow. She was wearing a thin blue sweater that was already soaked with blood. Except for a small area on her shoulder, the original color was no longer visible.
Her pale face was like a freshly plastered wall, showing no signs of life.
There was also a deep wound on her face, from the corner of her mouth to her eye, as if a complete face had been cut in the middle.
The bones on her face were exposed, and where her arm connected, it was no longer a human arm, but a dead tree branch.
The woman’s eyes were blood-red, and the veins on her face were bulging due to her excessive grimace.
She was exhaling more heat than anyone else. Wen Yishu recalled the fever that occurred during human mutation in the laws of the apocalypse.
Although the person in front of her might no longer be a person, she remembered the name for such a mutated person in the pinned video: a Variant.
Wen Yishu knew very little about this kind of information and didn’t know if they would try to mislead people.
If it weren’t for their caution, they might have fallen into this woman’s trap.
Wen Yishu looked at her face and clothes and felt a little familiar.
It seemed to be the woman she had seen in the stairwell, the one who was dragged away. The blue sweater she was wearing left a deep impression on Wen Yishu.
The woman bared her bloody teeth, smiled menacingly at Bai Mi, and then turned her gaze to Wen Yishu.
In a cold voice, she asked, “Why didn’t you save me just now?”
Wen Yishu pursed her lips and didn’t explain. The woman didn’t wait for her to speak and started to move her stiff limbs.
“But that answer doesn’t matter anymore. Since you didn’t save me, you can die too!”
As soon as she finished speaking, her branch-like hand hooked onto the ground in front of her, leaving a small mark. She was almost instantly in front of the two of them.
Wen Yishu raised the flamethrower in her hand at the same time as the woman moved. As she got closer, she pressed the button without hesitation.
With a sharp scream, the hand that had just extended barely grazed her cheek and then shrank back. The woman also retreated quickly from their sight.
She went back behind the giant aloe and rolled on the ground to extinguish the flames on her body.
During this interval, Wen Yishu quickly sent a message to Huo Xiaoguan, telling her to come in first.
This woman was indeed a Variant. Mutated plants were afraid of fire, and so were Variants.
The greatest fear came from insufficient firepower. Now that she knew the flamethrower could protect her, she wasn’t so nervous anymore.
A large piece of the woman’s sweater was burned away, revealing some woody skin. Her body color couldn’t even be considered pale.
The area on her chest seemed to have been pierced by something. It was no longer human skin but had turned into a gray-green color, like the bark of a sweet olive tree.
Wen Yishu looked at her vicious eyes and couldn’t understand why she had such great malice toward her. This malice didn’t seem to be the hostility of a Variant toward them, but it was directed only at her.
Even though Bai Mi was standing in front of her, the Variant only attacked her.
Wen Yishu thought back. She didn’t seem to have any connection with this person at the headquarters, and she didn’t even know her name. She asked, “I didn’t cause your death. Why are you specifically looking for me?”
The woman’s eyes widened. If looks could kill, Wen Yishu would have been cut into a thousand pieces by now.
Her rough voice almost broke as she roared, “You clearly saw me! Why didn’t you save me? You were so close to me, why didn’t you come down and lend a hand?”
As she spoke, her wooden hands turned into the shape of vines. She stood still and stretched out her hands to whip her.
Wen Yishu didn’t move an inch. She raised the flamethrower in her hand and instantly ignited the woman’s hand. With another scream, the woman’s hand was set on fire in an instant.
Even though it was made of wood, a nauseating smell of burning fat wafted through the air.
“Die! Those who didn’t save me, die!!!” The woman instantly lost her sanity. After turning into a Variant, all of a person’s negative emotions seemed to be magnified in an instant.
All of her unwillingness before her death turned into endless resentment when the branch pierced her chest.
She only remembered the pair of pitiful yet distant eyes she saw before she died. She thought that if only the person had helped her, she had already pushed so many people away to block the rioting plants.
To live, she was covered in the blood of others. She didn’t think this was wrong. People were selfish and didn’t need to be responsible for others.
Wen Yishu sneered with some anger: “If I had saved you, would you have helped me in the same way?”
The woman’s wildly whipping vines paused. Her blood-red eyes stared at her intently: “What do you mean? Of course I would help you.”
Wen Yishu took a step closer to her with the flamethrower in her hand. The last bit of pity in her heart disappeared: “Really? How do you explain your body, which looks like it’s been soaked in blood? When I saw you, you were already like this.”
The woman’s body, hidden in the shadow, trembled slightly. She opened her mouth as if she wanted to refute Wen Yishu’s words.
Her expression changed almost instantly. The bloodshot eyes spread throughout her entire eyeballs in those few seconds of hesitation.
At this moment, the woman’s body no longer had any warmth. The face that was just shocked and dazed now showed a playful smile.
The wound on her face actually healed at a speed visible to the naked eye. The vine-like arms also gradually shortened and returned to their normal appearance.
Her face also became rosy. Now, she looked almost no different from a normal person. If you ignored the blood-stained sweater on her body, she looked like a healthy person.
She was completely unchanged from before her mutation, except that the woody skin on her chest was only slightly smaller and had not completely returned to normal.
In just a few seconds, she had returned to her normal human appearance. Wen Yishu’s pupils constricted.
The first thought that came to her mind was to defeat the opponent, to make her lose her ability to move, no matter what it took.
Bai Mi moved before she did. Her figure shot out like an arrow from a bow, showing astonishing explosive power.
Wen Yishu followed closely. In the middle of the fight, the Variant seemed to have undergone an evolution. This speed startled her.
Bai Mi swung a blade at her face. The Variant lowered her waist and easily dodged it.
Her voice also changed. It was no longer the rough and unpleasant voice from before, but more like when she was asking for help in the stairwell: “You’re right. Selfishness is human nature. Humans truly understand humans. Even if I were alive, I definitely wouldn’t have saved you.”
Wen Yishu’s explosive power was poor. She could only manage to kick her, while also turning on the flamethrower to prevent her from getting up.
Her foot felt like it had kicked a sturdy tree. For a moment, Wen Yishu was in a trance, feeling as if her whole body had stepped into a void, shaking her.
This was followed by a sharp pain from the sole of her foot. She almost knelt directly in front of the Variant.
Before Wen Yishu could cry out in pain, the woman’s restored hand turned into a vine again and whipped toward her shoulder.
She had no time to dodge and took the blow head-on.
In an instant, a burning sensation came from her shoulder. The flamethrower fell to the ground in response.
Another vine whipped toward Bai Mi. Luckily, she used the wall to push off and jumped farther away, so she didn’t get whipped like Wen Yishu.
Taking advantage of this gap, Wen Yishu gritted her teeth. Tears welled up in her eyes from the pain, but she still managed to retreat two steps, putting distance between herself and the opponent.
Her flamethrower was directly whipped to the other corner of the wall by the hand that had transformed into a vine.
A wide smile appeared on the woman’s face. Her blood-red eyes stared intently at Wen Yishu.
“Your flesh and blood smell delicious. The dead meat down there can’t even compare to you.”
The way she looked at Wen Yishu was like she was admiring a delicacy, a look that completely abandoned human emotions. She was just looking at a piece of food.
Wen Yishu’s stomach churned. Could it be that the Variants evolved by eating people?
The number of Variants was not large now, so it was reasonable that the authorities had not detected them. Every second of contact was challenging her perception.
Humans eating humans—no, this woman in front of her was no longer a human, but a complete monster!
She was not a good person in life, and after death, she became a Variant. A completely rotten life.
Wen Yishu was still backing away, trying to find an excellent position to attack.
The woman narrowed her eyes and stretched out her vine-like hand, having no intention of giving her a chance.
The sole of Wen Yishu’s foot was in great pain, which limited her movement.
The vine effortlessly wrapped around her neck, pulling her in front of the woman.
She licked her lips with her scarlet tongue, leaned down, and stared at Wen Yishu’s face, saying somewhat obsessively, “I’m going to eat your eyes first.”