Necrosis (II)

The room was pitch-black.

Zhou Zhi didn't step inside.

Instead, he stopped outside to observe.

After a brief moment, Zhou Zhi turned and left.

Heading the other way.

A commotion came from the other side.

Xia Yu and the others walked over.

"Let's spend the night here."

Zhou Zhi said, "There might be Mucus Men tonight. Block the doors and windows with whatever you can find, and reinforce them."

There were plenty of materials here. If they ran short, they could dismantle the furniture.

Mucus Men weren't frightening.

Zhou Zhi knew perfectly well that those Mucus Men would have a hard time breaking through locked doors and walls.

But if that were all there was to it, there should have been many survivors amid the Pestilence.

Yet, from what they'd seen along the way, aside from the people who'd survived thanks to Bai Xiu's rudimentary knowledge of the Plague Extermination Art, there wasn't a single living person.

They were all Disease Seeds [Mucus Men].

And there were even more threats.

There had to be monsters more dangerous than Mucus Men.

Xia Yu was an incredibly beautiful girl.

Some girls were hard to describe as beautiful; they simply looked pleasing to the eye. Xia Yu, on the other hand, was the very embodiment of beauty.

Her eyes, her nose, and everything else—

Not one feature failed to appeal to people.

She had a slender figure and a lovely voice.

Lei Heng and the others sat off to one side, eating the food they'd found in Uncle Liang's shop.

"She's really beautiful."

"Boss, how can there be a girl this beautiful in the world?"

One of his lackeys crouched on the steps, sneaking glances at her in the distance.

"I used to hang around the Central School area, too. How come I never heard of a girl like her?"

Lei Heng smiled and spat on the ground, his eyes shifting sideways. "That just means you weren't good enough at it."

Xia Yu's long, shapely legs were reflected in his eyes.

Her delicate hair clip.

"Tsk, tsk..."

Lei Heng swallowed.

Beside him, one of his lackeys spoke up.

"Boss... something's not right inside..."

Lei Heng was a little displeased. The lackey's voice always seemed ill-timed, but he still turned around. "What is it?"

"Boss... you should go take a look."

"Inside. You'd better bring that great Plague Exterminator Zhou along..."

Lei Heng froze.

Though he resented Zhou Zhi, he understood now that there was no way he could survive in the Pestilence Zone on his own.

If he wanted to live, Zhou Zhi, who knew the Plague Extermination Art, was one of the few safeguards they had.

But...

"I'll go take a look first."

Lei Heng lowered his voice. "Qingshi turning into a Pestilence Zone is dangerous, but it's also an opportunity."

"If Xia Yu hadn't used [that thing], I'd have had my way with her long ago."

Every danger was an opportunity.

Lei Heng knew that perfectly well. Maybe he really could snatch something from the jaws of danger in the Pestilence Zone, learn one or two Plague Extermination Arts, and become a Plague Exterminator. It wasn't impossible.

Just imagine—even becoming someone like those people on TV, one of the [Seven Xuanyuan Stars].

Lei Heng stood up. "Where's the bathroom, old man Liang?"

Uncle Liang sat in the distance, looking distraught. He was crouched off to one side, silent.

"Boss, I'll take you."

The lackey from earlier immediately caught on to what Lei Heng had in mind.

Zhou Zhi's calm gaze settled on Lei Heng's retreating back.

Then it swept over Uncle Liang.

"What is this..."

Lei Heng remembered that this wasn't the room where Uncle Liang and the others had found his Mucus Man wife dead, but another room.

In their current situation, they had no way to bury her, so they'd left Uncle Liang's wife where she was.

If it had been that room, Lei Heng wouldn't have risked going in and getting pathogenized.

But this was different.

This was Uncle Liang's son's room.

He pressed the light switch.

The light didn't come on. Instead, it gave off a strange electrical buzz.

The room looked shabby, with peeling walls everywhere—a stark contrast to the outside.

Behind Lei Heng stood the lackey, pointing ahead.

"Boss, look over there."

Lei Heng frowned, breathing in the stench.

It was the sour, rotten smell of decaying flesh.

The sallow-faced man followed the lackey's pointing finger and looked down.

Beneath the plain-looking bed.

"Hmm... what..."

Under the bed.

Several chunks of rotting meat had sprouted bizarre white hairs that stretched toward the far side of the bed.

Around the meat were strange scratches. They were crude, but it was obvious someone had carved them deliberately.

The bed was low, and if the meat hadn't started to stink, it would have been hard to notice anything beneath it.

"This is the good stuff you were talking about???"

Lei Heng really wanted to slap his lackey.

A chunk of rotten meat.

It had gone completely bad.

The lackey looked wronged and lowered his head. "No, boss. I found this at the edge of the side window in old man Liang's house."

As he spoke, he took a small booklet from his clothes.

More precisely, it was a yellowed letter, crumpled who knew how many times.

Its edges were ragged.

Lei Heng snatched it from him.

"[Where flesh and blood sprout, there is Taisui]."

"[Take wood from the Five Elements, and you may prolong your years]."

The Five Elements? Taisui?

Those words left Lei Heng confused.

They didn't sound like Xuanyuan terminology.

"Forget it. Take it for now..."

Lei Heng glanced at his lackey from the corner of his eye.

"Wrap it in a piece of cloth."

The lackey froze. Then he looked at the rotting flesh under the bed, his mouth opening and closing. In the end, he tore off a piece of his clothing and prepared to wrap up the meat.

But the instant the lackey touched the rotting flesh—

Something horrifying happened.

"Something's wrong..."

"Boss..."

"It hurts..."

The lackey cried out in pain.

The chunk of rotting flesh seemed to come alive.

Through the cloth, it clung fast to his hand!

"It... it's biting me!"

"It's..."

Lei Heng's face changed. He immediately ran outside.

Behind him, the lackey's desperate screams were piercing.

There's something wrong here.

That was what Zhou Zhi sensed.

It wasn't coming from a Disease Seed outside, but from within.

Zhou Zhi looked at Uncle Liang.

Ever since losing his son and wife, Uncle Liang had seemed utterly bereft of the will to live.

But... Zhou Zhi could smell something strange coming from him.

That smell had been there back at the Clinic, but it had been faint.

After they came to this courtyard, especially in Uncle Liang's son's room, the smell became unmistakable.

Like rotting flesh,

And more importantly...

[Human in the final stages of illness].

[Pathogenization Index: 73.6%].

[Compared to physical illness, mental illness may be even harder to cure].

Zhou Zhi remembered that when they entered the residence, Uncle Liang's Pathogenization Index had been less than thirty percent.

But now...

Had the old man only walked around the residence twice?

"This old man was the one who suggested coming back to this house."

"Think about it. Maybe he had a plan all along and came back to do something..."

"Maybe he came to get something?"

Zhou Zhi's right hand never left his scalpel.

In the distance,

A cry rang out.

Then came Lei Heng's voice.

"Help... help..."

"There's... there's a monster!!!"