Chapter 37: If She Mutated

"Fine, my foot! So you're telling me you don't even know what's going on? You're using me as a test subject, aren't you?" Liu Mu could barely keep up the act; she wanted to jump out of the 'Corpse Bag' and have it out with the system, but then she realized she could curse it without jumping up.

"Are your values shattered because you're a data-brain with no human emotions? Next time you encounter something you don't know, can you stop giving random advice? If I turn into a monster one day, don't think you'll have it easy..."

After ten minutes of cursing in her head, Liu Mu felt she had vented enough of the disgust from seeing the strange bird and the fear of turning into a monster herself. She stopped and let out a faint snore.

"She actually just fell asleep?" Luo Sanlin, who had been so worried he was ready to check if Liu Mu was still breathing at any moment, slumped down. He had to admit, this girl was truly tough.

However, Xing Tianyang, who could have sat in the front but insisted on staying by Liu Mu's side, was eyeing the person on the stretcher like a predator. He clearly had ill intentions, and Luo Sanlin had to keep his guard up, lest his old classmate get something sliced off by that guy while he wasn't looking.

It would take at least three hours to get back to the city. The soldiers began to snore one after another. Luo Sanlin yawned, pulled out a packet of instant black coffee, tore it open, and poured the bitter powder directly into his mouth.

"I won't conduct tests without her or her guardian's consent." Xing Tianyang finally realized the young man was guarding against him. Seeing him struggle to stay awake, he yawned, "I'm going to sleep for a bit. If she shows any abnormalities, you can wake me."

Luo Sanlin didn't speak, though the color around his eyes seemed to be deepening.

Before dark, the group returned to the Base. Liu Mu felt her body being moved and wanted to open her eyes, but after several attempts, she found her eyelids were too heavy. Her eyes had been nearly glued shut by blood earlier, and now that it had dried, her lids were stuck together.

"Wait," noticing her eyeballs moving, Luo Sanlin immediately realized something was wrong and covered her eyes with a wet towel. "Don't rush, we've already reached the Base."

Before the stretcher was even carried into the treatment room, Liu Mu felt the Binding Strap on her body being undone. She opened her eyes and sat straight up on the bed.

"I'm fine, no need to trouble yourselves!"

If they really gave her a full check-up, they would inevitably find something wrong.

The young doctor, who was ready to clean her external wounds, was startled and knocked over the stainless steel tray in his hands. "Wait, wait, the wounds need to be treated!"

Liu Mu bolted out the door. The medical student only saw her covered in blood and didn't know that the small wounds under the blood clots had already mostly healed; she simply didn't dare stay.

Liu Mu remembered everything that happened from the moment she entered the seaside canyon until now. Even though she had slept for a while on the return trip, the system had concluded that her external wounds were healed. If she got cleaned up, she would definitely be sliced up for research.

Luo Sanlin, who was just about to go back and rest, saw Liu Mu rushing out of the first-floor treatment room and immediately blocked her path. "What's the rush?"

"Nothing." Seeing a familiar face, Liu Mu pulled him into the crowd. The doctor who followed her out shouted a few times, but they had already vanished.

By the time Xing Tianyang finished reporting the mission to Yang Shuo and came over, there was no one left to be found.

"I must go to her Scrap Station immediately," Xing Tianyang said with a stern face and a grave tone. "I suspect she absorbed that Black Stone in some way."

Standing beside him was the female Researcher who had been determined to save him earlier, who was also his student, Jiang Xue. "But Teacher, you are also injured. Why not recover first before going?"

"You felt that energy too. If she has undergone Mutation, the consequences could be unpredictable. Besides, she knows the location of the Base." Xing Tianyang turned to go find Yang Shuo to apply for a new operation. Although it was annoying, it was the rule of the Base, and the latter was the highest leader.

Jiang Xue secretly resented Liu Mu for being meddlesome; not only had she ruined their operation, but now they had to go find her. Yet, she couldn't let her teacher go out and take risks alone, so she hurried after him. Just for a split second, she thought she saw Liu Mu's figure in the crowd, but when she stepped back to look closely, there was nothing there.

Seeing the people walk away, Liu Mu lifted the blanket off her body. "Ma'am, thank you. No one snatched your things, right?"

"No, thank you for saying those things to the leader. We don't have to worry about anything now." The woman was the wife of the elderly couple she had traded with yesterday, and lying beside her was their sleeping granddaughter, Nannan. "Now that we're full, the child can finally sleep."

"That's good." By now, Liu Mu had washed her face with Luo Sanlin's help and borrowed a tracksuit from Luo Mu; it was impossible to tell she had been severely injured earlier. "Is the old man out again?"

"Yes, he can't sit still, thinking about scavenging more things..." The woman became uneasy at this, hesitated for a moment, and then asked, "Boss, will you still be collecting scrap in the future? If not, we can find other things."

With eight kilograms of Compressed Biscuits, if the old couple ate less and the granddaughter didn't have a big appetite, they could last at least half a month. As for the Energy Drink, they had originally wanted to trade it with others, but thinking that the army would charge rent for the lockers later, they kept it. After all, those drinks weren't of much use to the elderly and children, but they were a necessity for the soldiers.

Liu Mu had traded the Energy Drink to them for that very purpose. "I'm mainly collecting scrap steel and recyclable plastic, which is hard to find now. Ma'am, barring any accidents, I'll come once every Wednesday. If you need anything, I can trade for it at other Bases for you."

"You go to other Bases too?" Hearing this, the woman was visibly excited. She leaned over to pull a middle-aged woman with a broken leg on the next bed. "Sister, sister, wake up! Where did you say your daughter was attending university yesterday? Was it in the city?"

Liu Mu thought the woman wanted her to bring something back, but she didn't expect her to ask for help finding someone.

The woman who was woken up had a sallow complexion, and her long, permed hair was tied into a braid, though it was a bit messy from not being combed daily. When the woman helped her sit up, Liu Mu saw that one of her hands was wrapped in a Binding Strap and looked deformed.

She was a victim of a major fire. She said her husband and daughter were at the Jianghe City University nearby; her husband was a physics professor, her daughter was a student, and she herself was a cashier at a trading company. A fire broke out in their home on the first day of the disaster. She hadn't been able to wake up in time and was eventually saved by the helper who worked for their family.

They were near the sea, less than a few dozen kilometers from the main pier. Because the land price in the county was relatively cheap and convenient for storage, many trading companies liked to set up branches there or open their businesses there entirely.

Liu Mu had an intuition that the woman wasn't telling the whole truth, but she didn't care. She only asked for the specific location of the woman's husband and daughter, promising to help inquire if she had the chance to go there.

She didn't make any firm promises, as finding people in these times was too difficult, and it was possible they had already perished.

Liu Mu chatted with them for a while and saw several groups of soldiers coming in and out. Half an hour later, Xing Tianyang walked out of Yang Shuo's office with an indifferent expression and headed to the basement level used as a Laboratory.

She had promised Luo Sanlin earlier that she wouldn't leave at night, so he had gone to the area where their family lived to rest, looking exhausted. The conditions here were truly poor; although families could live together, there wasn't even a partition.

The diligent ones, like the old woman's family, had scavenged some things to pad the floor, while those who only wanted to rely on aid or were purely lazy just slept on the ground. Clothes and blankets were hard to find after the disaster; if the temperature dropped suddenly, it would likely lead to another massive loss of life.

Liu Mu intended to ask the old couple to help keep an eye out for any news within the Base, promising that valuable information could be traded for supplies.

After chatting with them for a while and hearing that there were also Survivors from the Steel Factory, Liu Mu pondered for a moment before tiptoeing back to the ward area where the injured were staying.