Captured

"Alarm, alarm... Unknown powerful electromagnetic waves detected!"

Dozens of red lights flashed wildly across the touch control screen, and the sweet synthetic female voice carried unmistakable panic.

Qu Jianlei, dressed in pajamas, stared at the scene in shock. "The Faraday Cage... leaked a Frequency Band?"

The next instant, his vision went black, and he lost consciousness.

When he came to, a chill ran through his body. He woke abruptly with a splitting headache.

Is this Dreaming back to Shenzhou again? Qu Jianlei sighed inwardly and slowly opened his eyes.

His surroundings were rather dark, and he could not make out where he was for the moment.

But why... why were his hands and feet tied up?

Were they trying to rob him, or... take advantage of him too?

If it was robbery, he had been transmigrated for six years and was still broke as a joke. Their eyesight was truly terrible.

If it was the other kind, the original owner of this body had not been bad-looking, but... he was far too skinny.

Yet there was no doubt that he was still in the desolate land he secretly called the Wasteland.

As his eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness, he vaguely saw pale objects hanging from above.

When he focused on them, he nearly jumped out of his skin. Those pale objects... were human limbs!

Dismembered... human bodies? His scalp prickled all over.

Had he been captured by Fallen?

The Fallen... were mutated humans who ate people.

No one knew what had contaminated this Wasteland, but while there were quite a few mutated humans among the Survivors, few of them ate human flesh!

Qu Jianlei had learned of the Fallen when he first transmigrated here, but he had truly never encountered one.

Another sharp pain came from the back of his head. It was not the usual swelling pain inside his skull, but the pain of an external injury, accompanied by dizziness.

He had been knocked out from behind! Qu Jianlei reached that conclusion.

Then before being knocked out... what had I been doing? How could I have been so careless?

He tried hard to remember. Scenes from after his transmigration surfaced in his mind one by one.

After every Dreaming back to Shenzhou, he would review what he had experienced to calm himself down—his obsessive-compulsive disorder was beyond saving.

The original owner of the body he transmigrated into was also named Qu Jianlei, an eight- or nine-year-old orphan who had not been very bright and had frozen and starved to death.

The original owner had left him no grudges or entanglements, but he had been someone everyone could bully.

After transmigrating, Qu Jianlei had had a few ideas for making money, but for someone as weak as him, wealth was the original sin.

Now, he was a cart driver, making a living transporting garbage for others.

The Wasteland had vast Garbage Dumps where one could always dig up plenty of useful things from discarded junk.

Many Survivors relied on the Garbage Dumps to scrape together a living.

Qu Jianlei had also tried finding valuable things in the Garbage Dumps, but unfortunately, he was simply too weak.

He could not fight others for territory, and even when he managed to dig up something decent from some remote corner, it would always be snatched away.

No matter how well he hid it, it was useless.

So, after much painful reflection, he built himself a Tricycle and began transporting the garbage scavenged by those Scavengers.

Not every Scavenger was willing to spend money hiring someone to haul garbage, so Qu Jianlei went hungry one meal and ate the next for several years.

Still, one good thing was that everyone knew he did not make much money, so the number of times he was robbed dropped considerably.

But it had not disappeared entirely.

This time... after thinking carefully, he remembered being knocked unconscious while hauling garbage.

The person who hired him was a Scavenger who had arrived at the Garbage Dump less than a year ago and was usually so stingy he hated spending money.

This person seemed to have found something valuable this time and was willing to pay to hire his homemade Tricycle.

Qu Jianlei had been starving, so he asked only for a tube of Nutrient Solution as payment. He drank it on the spot before starting work.

Yet they had not gone far when his head jolted, and he lost consciousness.

Who would have thought he had been captured by the Fallen! Thinking of this, he could not help sighing. "Sigh."

He was doomed—more danger than safety.

The moment his sigh left his mouth, a surprised voice came from nearby. "Is that... Silly Qu?"

Qu Jianlei turned his head at the sound. Four or five meters away, a Black Shadow was curled up on the ground.

But the voice was familiar. "Rogers?"

Rogers was one of the few people who did not bully him, though their relationship... was not particularly good either.

He was one or two years younger than Qu Jianlei and had nearly frozen and starved to death back then as well. Qu Jianlei had saved him with a bowl of hot water and half a tube of Nutrient Solution.

The two had depended on each other for a while, but one report from Rogers had gotten Qu Jianlei beaten black and blue.

Afterward, he had only said, "Silly Qu, I just wanted to live a better life."

Their fragile friendship had capsized, and Rogers had successfully joined a small gang. Now he was much sturdier than Qu Jianlei.

But he had never bullied Qu Jianlei. When he saw others bullying him, he did not speak up to stop them, but he never joined in himself.

At first, Qu Jianlei had hated him intensely, but later... that hatred gradually faded.

In the Wasteland, everyone had their own principles for surviving.

Rogers let out a soft sigh. "Silly Qu, do you still hate me?"

"Silly Qu?" Qu Jianlei snorted, too lazy to say anything else.

Back then, who had been calling him "Brother Qu" every other word? Thanks for showing me how treacherous people could be.

"Silly Qu, we're about to die. What is there left for you to hold on to?" Rogers asked indifferently.

"I truly regret not having a brain as clever as yours. Otherwise... I would definitely be living a hundred times better than you!"

"Hmph." Qu Jianlei snorted again. Living a hundred times better than me? Your intelligence really is something else!

Rogers did not think there was anything wrong with what he said. "If you had just joined any organization, you could have shown your value."

Value, my ass! Do you know what it means to be used up and tossed aside? Qu Jianlei could not even be bothered replying.

Even Blue Star had the saying "slice them up for research." The people of the Wasteland would only be worse.

There was simply no way to communicate properly with such low-intelligence creatures.

Fortunately, during the time they had spent together, he had kept many secrets to himself. Otherwise, he might not even have survived these six years.

"Still hate me? Fine, that's up to you." Rogers did not seem to care much.

He chuckled. "Do you know why the two of us are still alive?"

"No," Qu Jianlei answered blandly. He did not say it because he wanted the answer, but simply because he did not want to seem too unusual.

If Rogers was willing to talk, he did not mind listening.

"It's because the Fallen need to 'use flesh to raise flesh,'" Rogers laughed, his voice full of malicious delight.

"Aren't you determined to uphold some kind of bottom line? Silly Qu, let me ask you... would you eat human flesh?"

Qu Jianlei fell silent. Only after a long while did he ask, "Then... have you eaten it?"

"Of course I have!" Rogers answered without hesitation.

The next instant, he became agitated. "What the fuck does whether I ate it have to do with you? Don't fucking act like you're nobler than me!"

"Living! Staying alive is what matters most!"

Anyone who had eaten human flesh... could never be a friend! Qu Jianlei had long since made up his mind about that.

Still, he could not be bothered saying anything to this idiot.

After a long silence, he suddenly spoke. "Actually, you haven't eaten human flesh, have you?"

Rogers fell silent. Several seconds later, he spoke through gritted teeth.

"You know what? I especially hate that self-righteous attitude of yours."

"You fucking seem to know everything, so why didn't you know the Fallen were coming to capture you?"

"I'm just more familiar with you," Qu Jianlei answered calmly. "So now... are you seeking death?"

"I want to live! I don't want to die!" Rogers replied quickly. "I only argued with you because I couldn't accept it!"

"B-Brother Qu, I don't want to die. You definitely have a way, right?"

"I don't have a way," Qu Jianlei replied, Calm and Collected. "Just wait for rescue."

The Fallen were the common enemy of all Survivors in the Wasteland.

No matter how much people hated each other, they would not hesitate to join forces when facing the Fallen.

The reason was simple: the Fallen not only ate people, but could also absorb the mutated genes within human bodies.

Put simply, it came down to six words—the more people they ate, the stronger they became.

No one could tolerate such evil beings. Survivors truly had zero tolerance for the Fallen.

So the rescue he spoke of really was quite possible.

"Rescue, my ass!" Rogers snorted. His emotions were extremely unstable now.

Then he gave a miserable laugh. "B-Brother Qu, do you know? I've been captured for three days already. Where would any rescue come from?"

"For three days, they haven't even given me a bite of human flesh. They said I'm too sturdy. But you... might get to eat human flesh earlier..."

By the end, he seemed to have thought of something amusing and actually began to laugh.

Worried about attracting the Fallen's attention, he did not laugh loudly, but there was something sinister in that laughter no matter how one heard it.

Was he really that insecure? Qu Jianlei could not help sighing softly. "I really didn't expect to put that much psychological pressure on you."

"Stop pretending!" Rogers could not help roaring under his breath.

Yet the next instant, he pleaded again. "B-Brother Qu, save me."

"Saving me is saving yourself too. Do you want to eat human flesh, or are you willing to be eaten by the Fallen?"

He switched between roles with remarkable ease, and Qu Jianlei was no longer surprised by it.

In the Wasteland, who did not live behind several masks?

But the next instant, a trace of doubt arose in his heart: Could this be a trap aimed at me?

In other words, perhaps there were no Fallen at all. Perhaps some people were merely interested in his secrets.

So they had arranged this setup, with Rogers playing himself.

That possibility objectively existed. The Wasteland was a place that valued profit above all else.

And Rogers knew, more or less, that there was something unusual about him.

Qu Jianlei took a deep breath, then slowly let it out.

He knew very well that the most suitable choice was to refuse Rogers, or... simply pretend he had not heard him.

I haven't even figured out my own secrets yet. At a time like this, shouldn't I be keeping a low profile and looking out for myself?

Yet although he knew this was the correct choice, he truly could not control himself.

Because... he was sick!