Feast

The hand showed no fear of the sharp edges of the glass. In the next moment, Lu Ban felt his field of vision suddenly narrow.

Because from the left, through the gap beside the driver's seat, another hand climbed up.

That thing appeared before Lu Ban's eyes for the first time in full, every detail clearly visible.

Its skin was hard and leathery, marked with several irregular grooves. Beneath its rat-like head was an open mouth, but it looked nothing like a rat's. Inside the three-part mouth was a dense array of sharp teeth, like those of some kind of reptile.

Several dark-red tongues writhed inside the gaping mouth, swaying like tentacles as they tried to pull the food outside into it.

The ratman noticed Lu Ban, who was driving, at first glance.

Two ratmen crawled into the vehicle from the left and right in grotesque, prostrate positions. Their writhing, tongue-like mouthparts swept toward Lu Ban's arms.

Lu Ban did not hesitate. He gripped the steering wheel with his left hand, seized the crowbar with his right, and brought it down on the ratman to his right.

The end of the crowbar struck the ratman's head with pinpoint accuracy and sank deep inside. Some dark-yellow fluid sprayed from the wound. The writhing tongues and tiny, dense teeth immediately lost their vitality. The ratman's narrow vertical pupils went dull, and it stopped moving.

But in that brief opening, the ratman on the left had already seized Lu Ban's left arm.

The dark-red, slick, slender tongue wrapped tightly around Lu Ban's arm, while its tiny teeth sank into his upper arm.

Squelch--

Before he even felt the pain, Lu Ban saw green spreading from the wound on his left hand.

Several fresh shoots emerged between the ratman's teeth and his wound, shaking rapidly like earthworms that had been stimulated. Lu Ban felt something surge up his throat. As he pulled out the crowbar, he coughed, and bright-green fluid splattered across the steering wheel.

"No."

A cry of despair came from behind. Through the cracked rearview mirror, Lu Ban could see several ratmen crawling into the back of the bus at the same time, attacking Stone and Mary.

Bang--

Mary shot the ratman at the front in the head. Dark-yellow fluid and flesh exploded outward, but another ratman immediately pounced on her, knocking her down. Its three-part mouth opened, its dark tongue constricted the neck of the middle-aged biologist, and then its sharp teeth followed.

"Urgh!"

Mary let out a low whimper. Her throat was torn open by the fangs. As blood gushed out, green vegetation sprouted from the hideous flesh.

The ratman raised its head slightly, preparing to bite again and tear Mary's throat completely apart, when a gunshot rang out.

Bang--

Stone had picked up Mary's gun at some point. His hands trembled, and after firing just once, he lost his balance and fell onto the floor.

The ratman that had attacked Mary had half its head blown apart. Murky brain matter flowed over Mary, mixing with the filthy blood from her wound and creating a strangely gorgeous, eerie color.

Mary struggled to breathe, but her torn throat and the blood from her major artery had blocked her windpipe. Like a drowning person, she desperately sucked in air yet could not obtain any oxygen, on the verge of suffocating to death.

Beside her, pale-yellow fluid spread from beneath Stone. His entire body trembled, and he could no longer make another move. All he could do was watch helplessly as two ratmen moved toward him and Mary, their horrifying mouthparts reeking of blood and announcing their sentence of death and doom.

Lu Ban drove the crowbar through the ratman gnawing on his left hand, piercing its body. The pain seemed to make the ratman's movements sluggish for a moment, and that same pain also brought Lu Ban's mind back to clarity.

Inside his skull, some writhing life was waiting to break through the soil and welcome new life. The itching transformed into agony, tormenting Lu Ban's sanity.

In such a desperate situation, Lu Ban opened his mouth.

"■■■■■--"

A vast, indifferent voice originating from primordial antiquity burst from Lu Ban's mouth.

At that instant, a more absolute existence occupied Lu Ban's mind. Above the itching and pain was the fear and awe originating from human instinct.

Lu Ban could feel some blazing flame burning everything between the grooves of his cerebral cortex. If someone had measured his temperature at that moment, he might have watched his body temperature exceed forty degrees Celsius.

This was the Speech Bullet.

This was the Last Words.

The mutterings Lu Ban had previously recorded at the Jiangcheng Grand Theater, originating from the Old Ones and from the Great Being, now echoed through the bus in the wilderness of the Ruined City.

In only a moment, the narrow eyes of the ratman attacking Lu Ban's left hand widened into round circles. Its dark-yellow vertical pupils began to waver, and it let out a howl.

It was the howl Lu Ban had heard before, resembling a wolf pack and yet also like the sobbing of humans.

The other ratmen inside the vehicle howled as well. The ratmen clinging to the vehicle's body and roof lost their strength amid their harsh, shrill cries and were flung away by the speeding bus.

Lu Ban had no time to worry about them. He drove forward while continuing to mutter.

He knew very well that this grassland possessed some kind of power that allowed plants to grow unchecked. Only by leaving the grassland's range of radiation could he alleviate his own transformation into a plant.

Amid Lu Ban's repeated muttering, the fresh green shoots seemed to stop growing as well. At that moment, the vegetation growing wildly from Lu Ban's ears, eyes, nose, and mouth trembled faintly as though swept by an electric current, seemingly fearful and afraid to emerge. It actually curled back up by force.

The ratman beside him had completely blackened eyes. Its body's surface heaved as though some organism had invaded it, like bubbles searching for a breakthrough between its skin and muscles, about to swell and burst.

"■■■■■--"

Amid the maddening mutterings, the ratman released Lu Ban's hand and fell toward the outside of the vehicle.

Lu Ban glanced at the ratman, but in the next moment, a black shadow covered the gray-white creature.

It was a fish.

Amid the fever caused by his own mutterings, Lu Ban could hardly determine what species of fish it was, or whether it was even a fish from Earth. At least, when he saw its scale-covered body and enormous eyes, gills, fins, and mouth packed with hard teeth, his first thought was simply: fish.

The enormous dark figure, nearly as long as the bus, swam through the ghostly green grass. It bit the falling ratman into its mouth in one gulp, then began to "rise."

Lu Ban followed the fish's form with his gaze and looked up. He saw the fish fling the ratman's already broken body into the sky. The corpse floated lightly as though freed from gravity's restraints, and then more fish gathered around it.

These fish swam nimbly out of the deadly grass without being affected by the plants in the slightest. They shared the ratman's corpse in midair. Lu Ban discovered that even the dark-yellow blood did not fall to the ground, instead dispersing like smoke.

He saw that after the fish quickly finished devouring the ratman, they seemed to have caught the scent of blood.

They thrashed their bodies and surged toward the bus in a swarm.

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