Chapter 170: Master, Happy New Year

In Liu Mu's view, although Haide Kanpu did not do any real work and blindly believed in religion—no, that wasn't quite right; to be precise, he was fanatically devoted to a certain nun.

He was a good leader!

He did not hide that he came from the Holy Sisterhood, and he even preached to the Mine workers every Sunday, promoting his church, and even spoke without any avoidance about many of the church's circumstances, including the location of the Holy See, its organizational structure, and how wealthy the church was.

The Holy Sisterhood, what a familiar name!

The appearance of 'It' made Liu Mu forgive the Sky Viper for its major 'negligence' in not continuing to send resources over the past few months.

The big Boss was filthy rich, how could that not make one happy?

Every time he preached, there were no believers more active in listening than those few of them.

Especially when Pastor Kamp promised to be able to get hold of iron rails and a train, Liu Mu was so happy she didn't sleep all night.

In the middle of the night, she really didn't want to toss and turn in bed anymore, so she got up, made a bowl of Instant Noodles, and boredly opened the system interface.

Heitao A was good at everything, except it had no short videos or short dramas, making it not very appetizing.

However, Liu Mu had a purpose now; seeing that the countdown for the arrival had less than an hour left, she slurped up the noodles in two bites, then tilted her head back to drink the soup, and went out into the pitch-black early morning.

This time she didn't walk fast, passing by the security team's guard post with her hands behind her back, heading all the way up the mountain.

Under her feet was a solid road surface worked on by a steamroller; considering the heavy load of the trucks, the average slope of the entire road was 38°.

Liu Mu was like an elderly person who couldn't sleep, strolling slowly upward, wondering in her heart when Haide would be able to get a large amount of cement to pave the road surface, which would be perfect.

However, she wasn't in a hurry about this point; once the Cold Wave arrived, whether the newly repaired cement road surface could withstand the low temperature was still an unknown.

Regarding this, Heitao A also provided some data, but without determining the degree and duration of the low temperature, this data could not be used as a reference.

So Liu Mu had a new idea: the items must arrive, but whether to use them or not would be decided by her.

Regarding this point, Brother Kamp was more useful than that stingy Qin Han; at least the things Liu Mu wanted, he really gave.

Giving things and not being meddlesome, he was simply the most wonderful leader for a working person.

Of course, if this working person wasn't Liu Mu.

The blasting had ended just a few hours ago at night, the ground was soft, and pungent smoke was still rising from some of the drill holes.

Liu Mu passed through the huge mining area; in front of her was a huge cliff face dug out for road-paving materials, the bottom was pitch-black and bottomless, seemingly hiding a huge monster, peering at the lone person above in the darkness.

Standing for a while, Liu Mu's ears twitched, and a knowing smile gradually tugged at the corners of her lips.

The person she was waiting for had come... still harboring evil intentions.

"Sister Mu Liu, isn't it unsafe for you to be standing here in the middle of the night?"

There were no monsters in the darkness under the cliff; the monsters were in people's hearts.

Liu Mu turned slowly, her whole body shrouded in the intense light of a Flashlight, making it impossible to see the person coming.

"Xiaoliuzi," listening to the voice, she could naturally distinguish that sinister aura; Liu Mu narrowed her eyes slightly, seeing the inconspicuous gun muzzle behind the bright light, "You've come?"

Xiaoliuzi would not be content to let Liu Mu be the sole leader; furthermore, like Qi Kui, deep in his consciousness, he also looked down on women, and it was even more impossible for him to live long under a female leader.

"You knew I would come?" Xiaoliuzi was still cautious, especially having witnessed Liu Mu's boldness in establishing the entire mining area in just twenty days; he immediately began to have second thoughts about the plan he had suppressed for so long.

The gun muzzle moved slightly, but this hesitation could not save his life; he still decided to take the risk.

Now that the iron ore mining had taken shape, as long as he killed Liu Mu, he, Xiaoliuzi, would take over; he could both obtain the convenience of the early-stage Mine and work slightly hard to complete Liu Mu's established plan, thereby having achievements to show Haide Kanpu and the church.

Of course, the most important thing was that he, Xiaoliuzi, would from then on control the Mine and become the most powerful person under one. Even in the apocalypse, he could enjoy the good life of being above others.

Three birds with one stone, and it only required killing one person to achieve it.

Such temptation, his not-so-stupid brain had long thought through thoroughly, just waiting for an opportunity.

And here it was, Liu Mu entering the Mine alone in the early morning was the best opportunity.

Fearing this was a trap, Xiaoliuzi had even personally gone to the camp to check, confirming that those few in Liu Mu's group were all snoring and had already been surrounded by his men.

Just waiting for him to kill Liu Mu on this end, the others would send those few people on their way on that end; those who came together would 'leave' together, nice and tidy.

Thinking of the beautiful days ahead, the little doubt in Xiaoliuzi's heart gradually consumed itself.

"Whether you knew or not is no longer important. Mu Liu, I want to thank you; you first helped me get rid of Qi Kui, and then you built up the Mine. I'll live the good life in the future for you!"

With the bullet in the chamber, in a situation where Xiaoliuzi's body and background had no advantage, he could still gather a group of his own forces in the apocalypse; he was definitely not a hesitant person. He had to act, right now!

Bang! Bang!

"Is that so?"

The gunshot and the voice sounded at the same time; the bullets struck Liu Mu's heart and forehead respectively.

It must be said, within ten steps, the gun is fast.

Liu Mu leaned backward in response; before she hit the ground, Xiaoliuzi fired another shot, also at the heart position.

Three sounds, drowned in the gloomy night of the Mine.

Xiaoliuzi cautiously waited for a full five minutes, confirming that there was no movement in the chest of the person who had fallen backward, before daring to approach slowly.

"Mu Liu? Mu Liu?"

He stood on tiptoe three steps away, ultimately not daring to go directly over, but this distance was enough to see Liu Mu clearly.

In the intense light of the Flashlight, it only took a few seconds for him to discover a terrifying fact: the bullets had not entered Liu Mu's body.

The center of her brow was sunken, but the deformed bullet head was embedded in the depression as if it were an ornament; there was also a hole in her heart, but it was similarly shallow enough to see the metal bullet head.

Discovering this fact, Xiaoliuzi did not run away at the first moment, but instead, almost instinctively, frantically fired more shots.

Bang bang bang bang!

The more bullets he fired, the more terrified Xiaoliuzi felt; not a single bullet had truly entered Liu Mu's body.

The magazine was emptied, and not a trace of blood was seen.

Just as he was anxious to change the magazine and accidentally dropped the Flashlight, Liu Mu on the ground lost the mood to play along and sat straight up.

"Ghost, a ghost!"

The biggest reason Xiaoliuzi didn't run away in time was his conviction that although the bullets couldn't kill Liu Mu, they should have caused some damage, such as making her unconscious.

But now, even his last guess was wrong; he turned and ran.

Damn this curiosity; after running a distance, she still couldn't help but look back. At this one glance, she was so terrified that she went limp.

Liu Mu was still standing straight just like that, performing an inhuman act—jumping in place, leaping over ten-plus meters, and landing exactly behind Xiaoliuzi.

This time it was Xiaoliuzi's turn to collapse, using his hands and feet to try and get away, only to hear something else that frightened him even more.

"Parasitism is already complete; say your last words. From now on, you will become my new potted plant."

Several keywords rushed into Xiaoliuzi's brain, yet he couldn't comprehend them. "You, are you human or a ghost?"

"I'm a ghost~ give me back my life~" Liu Mu's voice trembled with a certain rhythm, sounding particularly chilling in the dark Mine, and just then, a few cooing bird calls came from the mountains, making everything seem even more eerie.

The disheveled Liu Mu wanted to scare him a bit more, but at this moment, Heitao A's prompt appeared: Mature.

Then she saw the short man on the ground suddenly stretch his arms and legs out straight, as if some force were pulling him to his limit.

Seeing this situation, Liu Mu hurriedly took out her phone to record, the light from the picked-up Flashlight completely covering Xiaoliuzi.

In just a few minutes, the unfolded person reached twice his original flat size, but his thickness was reduced by half, just like a spread-out pancake.

"Old A, what is it doing? Is it dissatisfied with the shape of the seedbed?"

This was, of course, a joke, but Xiaoliuzi seemed to still have a sliver of consciousness; this could be seen from his painful pupils.

Perhaps because the fear of impending death makes it easy to empathize, Liu Mu decided to offer a little end-of-life comfort. "Give up. Your brain and body have already turned into a plant. If you don't believe me, take a look for yourself."

In the enlarged mirror, Xiaoliuzi's current appearance was clearly reflected. Aside from the deformation, under the green skin that was stretched until it was almost transparent, there was nothing but fibrous matter, as if he were a split-open tree.

Between these fibers, countless white roots emerged, pushing the skin into countless bumps, dense and scrambling to break free from this layer of restraint.

Seeing this, Xiaoliuzi finally despaired. His mouth, stretched a foot wide, let out an unwilling wheezing sound, followed by a long intake of breath, like a giant deflating balloon.

"Hey, a person lives a lifetime, either dying of illness or being killed. Who told you to do so many bad things?"

"Of course, it's not that you can't do bad things, but it was wrong of you to want to kill me. Right? I'm not someone just anyone can kill; I hold grudges, you know!"

Liu Mu spoke for quite a while, finally seeing those resentful pupils dilate and fade, from which two slender flower buds emerged, then unfolded petal by petal in the night, blooming into two bowl-sized Great Master Flowers.

The moment the flowers bloomed, a thick, intense fragrance rapidly spread in all directions.

"It's over," Liu Mu jumped up and quickly signaled Heitao A to accelerate regeneration. "Won't this scent attract every Mutated Plant for ten miles around?"

As for Mutated Animals and humans, they would fall into hallucinations; back at the Scrap Station, even she had fallen for it.

【Parasitism successful, host body occupied successfully, host body regenerating...】

Meanwhile, hundreds of kilometers away,

Xu Xiaofeng, who was helping her younger brother check his homework, suddenly looked up, sensed something, and frowned slightly.

"Down!"

She left the room and softly scolded the vines emerging from the ground outside.

The Great Master Flower was restless, stemming from its rejection of another near-kin, and this 'kin' even came from its own branch.

The newly laid cement ground was pushed into cracks by the vines. Looking at her hard work of several months, a sense of resentment rose in Xu Xiaofeng's heart.

With a reach of her hand, a vine, as if it were a part of her own body, wrapped around her, taking her into the soil.

The remaining vines followed and sank, while the roots in the soil 'stitched' the cracked cement ground back together.

Deep underground, Xu Xiaofeng's body completely merged with the main body of the Great Master Flower; this way, her sensory abilities would be amplified to the maximum extent.

Liu Mu hadn't said anything when she took the branch, but at this moment, she understood the other party's intention.

Through Heitao A, they established a connection, even watching the process of parasitism reshaping the human body.

Xu Xiaofeng was a bit frightened; her own experience was already horrifying enough, and seeing a living person turn into a pure plant made her feel a bit nauseous.

"Has it become... a vegetable now?"

Liu Mu was noncommittal; after all, the term given by the eldest sister was truly fitting. "Eldest sister, try to see if you can remote-control it."

"I can feel it," Xu Xiaofeng closed her eyes, and the nervous system merged with the Great Master Flower continued to amplify her senses.

Just now she had indeed sensed the changes in the branch; how to describe it? It was like a part of her own body growing into a new individual elsewhere.

But this individual did not possess an independent consciousness, and naturally could not think; it remained just a branch.

Liu Mu was not in a hurry, quietly watching 'Xiaoliuzi' on the ground as he returned to human form, waiting for feedback from Xu Xiaofeng.

Not until the Morning Star rose did 'Xiaoliuzi' finally move.

Without opening his eyes, his body first sprouted some tender white roots that dug into the soil.

Then, using his arms to push with force, his body was propped up, his posture extremely stiff.

The arms providing the force did not stop after the movement ended; they actually rotated backward, and only when they landed on the ground again did they continue to exert force while growing, standing up without the legs using almost any strength at all.

This resulted in the whole person being supported by arms that had grown to the ground, a pair of arms almost longer than an ape's.

"Hmm, a bit strange," Liu Mu didn't use Heitao A to transmit the message again, but spoke directly to 'Xiaoliuzi', believing Xu Xiaofeng could hear her.

Sure enough, after just over ten seconds, it opened its mouth. "It is a bit uncoordinated. Xiao Mu, look, is this okay? I can restore some of his human consciousness. It's just that the branch's storage capacity is very limited; I can only restore memories from the last week, and the impact on his personality should also be quite significant."

"That's already great," Liu Mu had a deeper intention for letting the Great Master Flower parasitize Xiaoliuzi. "After the restoration, can you transfer control of him to me?"

"I'll try."

Xu Xiaofeng was silent for another while, and here Liu Mu saw 'Xiaoliuzi's' feet touch the ground, his body, devoid of clothing, beginning to simulate muscle exertion.

But because he had already undergone plant fiberization, these muscles looked more like tree roots of various shapes, and without any fat coverage, the green skin clung tightly to them, looking... very lean.

After his legs could exert force, his arms quickly retracted. At first, they retracted too short, so Xu Xiaofeng made adjustments, restoring 'Xiaoliuzi's' appearance based on the recorded footage provided by Heitao A.

"Walk a few steps, walk a few steps and let me see," Liu Mu stepped aside.

'Xiaoliuzi' was like a paralyzed patient in rehabilitation, sitting up and walking stiffly and uncoordinatedly, while performing some other movements.

Not until it could move smoothly did Xu Xiaofeng's voice come from its mouth again. "I have already relinquished control of the mind. Why don't you try controlling it with the system and see how it goes?"

Heitao A had full control, which was equivalent to Liu Mu having it. Sure enough, the next second, a figure appeared in the system storage space.

Around the figure were many command modules that could be triggered, and the super-intelligent Heitao A even provided an 'Autonomous Mode'.

Without needing to ask, Liu Mu knew this was data Heitao A had observed and recorded about Xiaoliuzi during this time, which was then imported into the current body to form it.

In autonomous mode, it should be able to move just like before and follow some of its previous thought patterns to do things consistent with the character's logic.

The branches of the Great Master Flower have limited storage, but what Heitao A can record is detailed enough.

"Just try the self-service mode," the horizon was already fish-belly white, and Liu Mu did not have much time to train a new Xiaoliuzi.

Just after she finished speaking, Xiaoliuzi opened his eyes, looked at himself with some confusion, and then looked at Liu Mu, "Master, Happy New Year!"