Apocalyptic Island - Chapter 68

Chapter 68

If even a single person there had been capable of handling business, she wouldn’t have been able to make it up. Fact proves that “human wave tactics” simply do not work against Wen Yishu.

She didn’t linger. Grabbing the String-of-Pearls, she lowered herself from the rooftop, detached the hoverboard from her person, and used its last remaining power to head back. As she approached the city center, she found a place to hide the hoverboard. Although most of the cameras on the streets had been destroyed, Wen Yishu didn’t want to cause more trouble and preferred to avoid unnecessary risks altogether.

She returned to the apartment with her bag. Bai Mi was already waiting at the door. She took the bag from Wen Yishu, and its weight caused her hand to sink noticeably. Bai Mi asked with some confusion, “Why is it so heavy?”

Wen Yishu nodded. “It’s full of seeds, so it’s a bit heavy. Find a cabinet to store them in.” After saying that, she handed her glasses to Bai Mi. “Also, the video inside—help me edit it and send it out.”

Bai Mi asked, “The segment from the laboratory?”

Wen Yishu nodded. “I wonder if Rhine will like this grand gift I’m sending them.”

Exposing human experimentation… the “Black Gloves” were so confident in letting subjects come and go because they believed no one could escape. As expected, the world is just one big “shoddy stage crew.” Perhaps the plant mutation hit them too hard; they couldn’t even catch her. The research lab was clearly short-staffed.

Wen Yishu arranged everything methodically. Yu Ning hadn’t replied for a long time. Looking at the messages sent by Ling Shuang and Huo Xiaoguan, she couldn’t help but worry about her friend’s safety.

“Leader, has Yu Ning replied yet?”

Yu Ning had only messaged Wen Yishu at the very beginning. Since Rhine quarantined the entire plane crew, she hadn’t received another word. The other two weren’t familiar with Yu Ning’s situation either, but they had applied for a transfer to this area, and the higher-ups had approved it.

Huo Xiaoguan felt they were being treated as cannon fodder, but she didn’t mind. At worst, she and Ling Shuang would defect immediately and follow Wen Yishu to Warp Speed. The deterioration of the general environment was an inevitable trend; they might as well follow the tide and stab Rhine in the back. The main thing was following Wen Yishu. Trust is precious; it’s hard to find someone like Wen Yishu who stays with you through thick and thin.

Wen Yishu didn’t message Yu Ning again. She decided to go see for herself. She hoped her friend was holding on and hadn’t met with an accident.

Wen Yishu watched the videos over and over. She felt that if their abilities could evolve, then the Merman’s ability likely could too. She just didn’t know how many people that lead Merman had eaten by now. Wen Yishu had a bad premonition; she felt its level might be higher than her own.

The jump from Level 1 to Level 2 was already a qualitative leap. She wondered if the power of each level grew exponentially. If so, it would be terrifying. So far, she had only seen the Banyan Tree reach Level 3, but the Banyan’s power hadn’t been fully unleashed. Yet, it exerted an unprecedented deterrent effect on animals. Wen Yishu felt a Level 3 Merman would be no less formidable. Its illusion might even be capable of shrouding an entire region.

After resting for the afternoon, Wen Yishu prepared to head out again. Ling Shuang and Huo Xiaoguan had already arrived in the area. She intended to check on Yu Ning and get a grasp of the Merman’s current state. She had been caught off guard by such xenogenic creatures initially, and she wondered if the Rhine people were still as clueless as she had been or if they had developed countermeasures.

At the same time, xenogenic sightings on the streets were gradually increasing. The incident of people swallowing large amounts of crystals was fermenting rapidly. More and more people were suffering the consequences, though fortunately, there weren’t many such individuals in the urban districts. Mutations were occurring on a small scale and hadn’t caused massive casualties yet.

Every household kept their doors and windows tightly shut, not daring to make a sound to alert the monsters outside. These newly mutated individuals had almost no intelligence, relying entirely on instinct to search for fresh, delicious food. The streets were no longer quiet.

In the distance, a first scream pierced the sky, followed by a second and a third, like the prelude to a plague, spreading quickly through the block. A man knelt in the middle of the road, clutching his own throat. Irregular lumps protruded under his skin as if something living was squirming inside. His spine suddenly twisted and deformed, bones piercing through flesh to grow a tailbone similar to a rat’s, while grayish-black fur erupted wildly from his pores.

Then his face began to elongate, his teeth grew sharp, and he eventually fully transformed into a half-human, half-rat monster. On all fours, his sharp claws dug into the gaps of the floor tiles, emitting an ear-piercing squeak. This was someone who had eaten a rat crystal. It was unclear why he had come out of his house—perhaps the mutation process was too slow, and he thought he had successfully evolved a superpower?

More people began to fall, their bodies twisting and swelling, merging with different animal characteristics. Someone’s back split open with bat-like wings; someone’s arms were covered in snake scales; another’s entire head turned into the compound eyes and mouthparts of an insect. An out-of-control hovercar crashed into a shop window, the fire from the explosion illuminating the silhouettes of even more mutants. They swarmed like a tide toward the humans who hadn’t mutated yet.

The Haishi District was in total chaos!

Wen Yishu’s gaze locked onto a few mutants whose thinking was clearly much sharper than the other xenogenics who only knew how to pounce on prey. Most were grayish-black “Rat-men,” but occasionally she saw mutants with different characteristics—snakes, bats, or even the chitinous luster of some arthropod. It was hair-raising.

The news broadcast on the holographic billboards was suddenly interrupted, replaced by a piercing alarm and a blurred government announcement: “Please, all citizens stay in your homes… wait for rescue…”

To Wen Yishu’s ears, it sounded no different from waiting for death to arrive. Sure enough, people were taking advantage of the chaos to start looting and arson. Honestly, Wen Yishu felt the Federation had done well to hold out this long. In smaller places, people were already living like primitives; many people stopped updating after sending their latest status reports.

Streetlights flickered. The power grid in some areas had been destroyed by mutants, plunging entire blocks into darkness. Below, a woman who hadn’t mutated yet ran wildly while clutching a child, only to be tackled by a former neighbor—now a half-dog, half-human monster—who began tearing at the child in her arms. Blood splashed onto a roadside vending machine, triggering its advertising voice: “New flavor energy drink! Replenish your daily vitality!”

It was somewhat misplaced. Soon, the battery-powered vending machine died due to insufficient power.

Wen Yishu didn’t panic; she only narrowed her eyes slightly. She noticed that not everyone who consumed crystals mutated; some simply died in agony, while most turned completely into monsters. Rat crystals had the fastest mutation speed, but other biological crystals seemed more unstable, resulting in noticeably sluggish movements. Wen Yishu watched the mutants rampaging on the street quietly, her fingers unconsciously stroking the short blade at her waist. It wasn’t fear, but the coldness before a hunt.

She was waiting for Bai Mi to provide a safe route. Personally, she preferred to carve a bloody path directly through these xenogenics. Based on her observations and the updated xenogenic content on the “Enhanced Training” app, she identified several common types:

Rat-men were the most common mutants. They liked to move in packs; even just in the City Gate Lane area, she saw several waves wandering past. They were extremely fast and loved devouring any living thing in sight. As night fell, Wen Yishu noticed they specifically avoided areas with strong light, preferring to roam in the shadows. These were the most common and weren’t hard to deal with.

There was another type that the encyclopedia on the Real-Time Feed gave a pretty name to: Sky Hunters. These mutants often appeared near caves with poor environments. Leathery wings ripped out of their backs, their facial bones protruded, and their teeth evolved into barbs suited for tearing at a prey’s throat. They lurked in the shadows of high-rise buildings, diving almost silently, specifically targeting lone humans. Just now, Wen Yishu saw a poor soul who had come out to pull back a relative who had lost their mind, only to be snatched away by a Sky Hunter. These were generally a combination of humans with birds or bats. Their weakness was obvious: their wings were fragile, and if hit, they would lose balance and fall from a great height.

The hardest to deal with were the Defensive Types. They were covered in hard chitinous scales like snake skin, their joints secreted corrosive mucus, and their jaws could split open to their ears to swallow a human head whole. They were slow but extremely patient, preferring to set ambushes. Their shells could withstand ordinary bullets, making them incredibly difficult to kill. If she encountered one, Wen Yishu would have to use the flamethrower to slowly “roast” it to kill it completely.

The one that disgusted Wen Yishu the most was the Hive Host. The exterior was still a human shell, but the abdomen was swollen into a semi-transparent sac filled with hundreds of squirming larvae. The mouthparts had evolved into tubes that continuously sprayed acid. Although they wouldn’t attack proactively, they released pheromones to attract other xenogenics to protect them. If she encountered such a creature, Wen Yishu wouldn’t even think about how to kill it—she would just run as far as possible. It was said that the intel on this creature came from a 50-man vanguard unit that was completely wiped out. The weakness was fire, and the crystal was hidden deep within the larval cluster, though no one had ever retrieved one.

Wen Yishu pushed open the apartment’s protective window, and the cold wind blew in, carrying the distant screams. The streets had become hell. She leapt lightly onto the external air conditioning unit and used the steel frame of a nearby billboard to climb onto the roof. From here, the entire city was split in two: one half was burning chaos, the other was deathly silence under blockade.

The quarantine zone at the city gate was in another location. Wen Yishu leaped between buildings like a cat, avoiding the patrol routes of the Sky Hunters. While standing on top of a small factory, a loose iron roof nearly sent her falling into a pack of Rat-men below. Fortunately, she released the String-of-Pearls in time. The monsters were too busy fighting over a corpse to notice the movement above.

The drainage pipe of the perimeter wall was just wide enough for one person to crawl through. The inner walls were covered in slimy organic matter, like the mucus secreted by some organism. Halfway through, the pipe suddenly vibrated—something was gnawing on the metal at the other end! Wen Yishu snatched out her dagger and pierced a Rat-man through its eyeball the moment it crawled in.

After flipping past the last filter screen, she rolled into a quarantine room. The place was eerily quiet. There were no monsters, only congealed blood and scattered documents. They seemed to have moved their base; this quarantine area was completely abandoned. Wen Yishu had entered without any effort.

Yu Ning wasn’t here. The Sky Colossus was parked quietly in its original position. The last maintenance had ended in a hurry; the maintenance crew hadn’t even had time to pick up their tools from the floor before leaving.

What exactly happened here? Why was the retreat so silent? Wen Yishu opened the chat box with Qu Yue. She tentatively typed a few words: “How is the communication with Rhine going?”

The other party didn’t seem busy; the chat box showed “typing…” Qu Yue sent back a message: “Progress is smooth, the quarantine zone has been fully blockaded. Don’t go to that place lately; be careful not to be recognized by the security patrolling outside.”

Wen Yishu frowned, staring at the message for a long time without replying. Although the security patrols outside were indeed tight, she didn’t know if Qu Yue was lying or if she, too, was being kept in the dark.

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