Chapter 115: with translation of chapter title

Ha... ha」

Wang Teng gasped heavily, waves of sharp pain from below reminded him that what lay before him was not an illusion.

"Big... big... big brother!"

"Don't kill me, please, please let me go..."

Begging desperately, he strained to support his body with both hands, his blood-soaked palms pressing against the floor as he kept retreating.

He wanted to get away from the man before him, away from this demon.

Lin An tilted his head, looking at him with interest, but the sound of the human-faced crab struggling to climb up came again from beside his ear.

It's so noisy.

"Shing!"

The blade was drawn, and a cold knife-light flashed and vanished.

Lin An's figure vanished instantly like a lingering afterimage.

The bluish-black crab legs were flung high into the air, but in the blink of an eye, all the limbs growing from the woman's head were cleanly severed.

Looking closely, the skull with only the joint cuts remaining resembled the crab meat eaten in autumn.

But that's indeed also true.

The mindless human-faced crab continued to struggle and move, and having lost all its limbs, the woman's face was twisted in pain.

"Gather up all the crab legs; this can be made into many weapons."

After confirming the monster could no longer make a sound, Lin An casually ordered Gao Tian, then walked up to Wang Teng and slowly bent down.

"Give me one."

"A reason not to kill you."

His voice was calm, but to Wang Teng's ears it sounded like a demon's whisper.

Upon entering the third floor, Lin An discovered several places of spiritual anomaly; after probing with his mental power, it was clearly the release of a skill.

Combining the scene's situation and the sound of the self-detonation, he also roughly reconstructed the circumstances of the skill's release.

It was some kind of self-destruct or explosion attribute skill, and it could remain in place for a certain time.

After some speculation.

The Awakened Ones before him had previously lived nearby and was accompanied by so many ordinary people.

Due to the lack of food, his intention to enter the zombie-filled Shang Cheng to search for supplies meant he must have mastered a means of attracting zombies.

Or he possessed a skill with a forewarning effect, equivalent to having an 'eye'.

Otherwise, a zero-rank Awakened One, not being a physically strengthening type—an early-stage powerful Awakened One—would actually be unable to handle so many zombies inside the Shang Cheng.

Especially before, this place was also occupied by a marrow-sucking spider.

Having lived nearby for not a short time, frequently entering the supermarket, and also possessing some detection ability.

Without a doubt, the half-bodied man before him certainly knows something.

Otherwise, given Lin An's personality.

Dare to act against me, wanting to kill me?

Heh.

The moment Wang Teng makes any move, he will instantly strike and kill him on the spot.

Reason? Reason?

Wang Teng trembled all over as he looked at Lin An, frantically thinking in his mind what value he had that could prevent Lin An from killing him.

"I...! I say! I'm useful! I'm useful, sir!"

"Whatever you want to know, I can tell you anything you want to know!"

After racking his brains, he could only think that Lin An perhaps wanted to ask him something without killing him.

"Speak? Use?"

Lin An smiled gently.

"It's not what I want to know, but what you know."

"Tell me what's abnormal here or what has happened."

"For example, the spider earlier—I'm sure you've had dealings with it."

"And the human-faced crab just now—what do you know about it?"

"If the information is useful, I can consider not striking to kill you."

After receiving Lin An's assurance.

Wang Teng, hearing this, nervously nodded his head, then quickly recalled all the information about this place in his mind.

The pain in his lower body made him shudder uncontrollably.

"Spider..."

"That monster appeared on the third day after the Apocalypse broke out; we call it the brain-eating spider."

Recalling the marrow-sucking spider, a flicker of fear crossed Wang Teng's face.

"That's a demon!"

"At first, there were actually a lot of people here."

"You know, this is Shang Cheng. Although it was afternoon before the Apocalypse broke out, there were still quite a few shoppers."

"I am just an ordinary Shang Cheng employee."

"Get to the point."

Lin An slightly frowned, cutting off Wang Teng's words—someone like him, who hemmed and hawed for ages without getting to the point.

Three hours to thoroughly investigate the secrets inside the Shang Cheng, he simply didn't have time to listen to this guy's nonsense.

I just want to know how the marrow-sucking brain-eating spider appeared, or if there's anything special about it.

Wang Teng, hearing the sound, fearfully nodded his head and could only continue speaking:

Sir, it's not that I don't want to get to the point. It's that the brain-eating spider is related to this.

Back then, I and the mall staff reacted quickly; at that time, the zombies broke out from the first floor.

We used racks to block the descending elevator, after which the zombies couldn't come up, and we, a total of over two hundred survivors, managed to stay alive on the third floor.

I don't know why, but starting from the second day, a woman suggested we first eat some fresh food, like live fish. Otherwise, if we waited a while longer, these living things would die, rot, and become inedible.

To avoid wasting food, we listened to that woman. After all, no one knew how long we'd have to survive here.

But precisely because we listened to her, without fire we could only use a lighter to cook the fish and crab half-raw.

That night after eating, we all got diarrhea, and nobody dared to eat again.

But I don't know why, that woman seemed to have a special preference. She was the only person who ate raw food and had no reaction.

From that day on, she had to eat raw crab and raw fish slices every day. She loved tearing open live crab shells or pulling off the legs of live crabs to eat them raw.

When Wang Teng spoke up to this point, he felt a bit nauseous; under the physique of an Awakened One, his originally bleeding wound had gradually been sealed by tightening muscles, trapping the blood.

His face turned pale, and he continued speaking:

On the fourth day, that woman, like someone infected with the zombie virus, had a somewhat unclear mind.

As a result, when she was scooping crabs in the pool like a madman... she turned into a corpse.

We were terrified back then, and I didn't become an Awakened One either.

There was no way; we could only use a pole to stab her into the pool, and then someone brave used a stick to smash her skull.

Just after smashing her skull, a ground full of eggs, or rather small spiders, burst out.

Later we discovered that the woman hadn't turned into a zombie; instead, her brain was parasitized by spiders.

Most of those spiders later hid and we don't know where they went; among them, one kept growing bigger...

... and became that brain-eating spider...

Gao Tian's face turned dark, and hearing the scene Wang Teng described, he couldn't help but feel a bit nauseous.

He couldn't imagine what it would look like for a person's brain to be covered in spider eggs.

Just as Wang Teng was about to continue speaking, Lin An suddenly solemnly opened his mouth to ask:

The spiders you saw crawling out of that woman's brain at the time—were they entirely blood-red?

Wang Teng, immersed in recounting his memories, was bleeding heavily, and his mind was somewhat unclear.

He blankly lifted his head, looked at Lin An, and slowly nodded.

Sir, you... how do you know..

Get back!

Lin An suddenly let out a fierce shout, directly pulling the retching Gao Tian and blasting backward to a distance.

Wang Teng weakly narrowed his eyes, his voice low and powerless.

Sir... what are you afraid of...

I... haven't finished speaking yet...

His voice was muffled and unclear, like a ghostly sound with a changed tone.

His mouth opened and closed.

Dense masses of scarlet spiders crawled out quickly from his mouth...