Chapter 49: I'm So Hungry

Hiss—

Stripping and tugging, Liu Mu shed the raincoat the instant she felt an abnormal weight, simultaneously sprinting over ten meters away.

The High-Intensity Flashlight's beam pierced through the Black Rain; she saw something wriggling beneath the torn raincoat. She hurriedly shifted the light, and from the hole in the ground—pushed up a notch by the soil—something emitted a huffing and puffing sound, like the heavy breathing of an asthma patient having an attack.

Liu Mu retreated a bit further, climbed to a high point, and took out the gun she had stored in her space.

She had conveniently stowed one of the rifles snatched from the Urban Base into her space, while the other had been left on the Truck after the magazine was emptied.

【Warning: This species is not in the Earth biological directory. Please handle with caution.】

The system prompted abruptly, and Liu Mu immediately wanted to flee. "Can you crack its attack method? How do I kill it?"

【Currently unknown. It is recommended that the host leave as soon as possible.】

She wanted to leave, but it was already too late. From such a distance, those two lumps had dissolved part of the raincoat and actually took flight right where they were, coming straight for her.

"Damn it, heaven-defying!"

No wings, and not even Newton could hold it down. Liu Mu fired continuously, smoking that thing up, but it only stalled in mid-air; its altitude didn't change at all.

Seeing it about to reach her, Liu Mu had no choice but to jump down from the high point. Her feet hit the ground, splashing up a large mass of black water, and without pausing, she charged toward that bizarre human head again.

The head had just drilled out from underground. It didn't fear Liu Mu's approach; instead, it revealed an extremely vivid greed and opened its mouth toward her.

In this very instant, two Hand Grenades with pulled pins flew out from Liu Mu's hands, one after the other. The first was deflected by the tongue that had just extended, and the second dove straight into that mouth filled with sharp teeth.

Having finished the throw, Liu Mu immediately dodged to the side, because this ghostly thing actually knew how to bat the Hand Grenade back at her.

An explosion occurred almost exactly where Liu Mu had been before she dodged. By the time she rolled to a stop and looked back at the second one, that head had actually closed its mouth and was chewing.

Liu Mu cursed under her breath. She had thought it might chew the Hand Grenade to pieces and eat it, but though the explosion was delayed, it arrived, bursting with fire inside that mouth.

"Yeah!" She clenched her fist, ready to grab two more Hand Grenades to blast that thing back into the hole, preferably burying it underground.

But just then, a danger struck head-on. She instinctively dodged to the side, only to see those two scarlet lumps fly past her head. Her pupils contracted sharply; she didn't hesitate in the slightest and sprinted forward at top speed. Her line of sight had already captured signs of that thing turning in mid-air, ignoring gravity—it simply didn't give a person a moment to relax.

What gave her an even bigger headache was the system reminding her at this moment that an energy riot was about to occur nearby, the source being the very head that had likely 'eaten' a Hand Grenade.

"Damn it, I'm done for." Caught in a pincer attack, Liu Mu had no other choice but to try her best to escape. But even with her speed pushed to the limit, it was of no use against energy radiation moving at the speed of light.

Perhaps the only thing to be thankful for was that before she was killed by the energy riot, she saw those two lumps that had turned to follow her being decomposed by this force in mid-air, falling as two piles of red debris.

This energy even caused the Black Rain within ten meters to stop in mid-air, while that head, like a container for a bomb, began to dissolve rapidly as the energy erupted, flowing into a puddle of scorching, viscous liquid. The moment it touched the accumulated Black Rain on the ground, it evaporated into white smoke at the same speed.

"Black Rain?" Liu Mu didn't stop. The stones this time weren't large, and they weren't enough to affect her mobility.

In the end, she used the clumsiest method she had already practiced: she rushed over before the energy could tear her apart and slapped the Giant Sun Fragment buried in the disgusting mucus into a nearby puddle.

The standing water was only a dozen centimeters deep. The Fragment fell in, churning up a large amount of bubbles; it rolled up and down restlessly just like an effervescent tablet, while the energy in the air rapidly retracted, returning into the Fragment.

Only then could Liu Mu catch her breath, her gaze fierce as she looked at the stone sinking in the water.

The broken stone was only the size of a thumb; she hadn't expected it to be so troublesome, actually capable of turning itself into a Mutant.

Regarding this, after isolating the stone, Heitao A provided the system's analysis: 【It should be that after the biological Mutation, it actively approached the Giant Sun. Lacking sufficient self-energy replenishment, it lost dominance and became a parasitic form.】

The whole affair hadn't even taken a quarter of an hour, but Liu Mu felt her physical strength had been severely depleted. She returned to the half-collapsed house where she had been resting and sat down.

"Xiao A, are you saying... the Giant Sun Fragment likely has self-awareness?"

A Mutated Animal—er, a mutated object—lost its dominance and was controlled by the Fragment, but that thing's previous attacks and expressions were quite logical. The fact proven behind this was not just terrifying.

【The system cannot provide a definitive answer. The recommendation remains for the host to try her best not to actively approach Giant Sun Fragments. The system also cannot recover it as energy; currently, it appears that the act of collecting it will not yield any benefits, but rather carries extremely high danger.】

The system emphasized its point again, which inevitably made Liu Mu suspicious. How could there be no profit in the Fragments? As long as she was willing to turn around and sell them to the Laboratory over there, she didn't know how many good things Xing Tianyang and the others would be willing to give!

Her silence caused the system to speak again: 【Does the host need a physical examination? Having come into contact with too many non-Earth environmental energy bodies, your body may continue to mutate, and the direction of the Mutation is unpredictable.】

Speaking of this, Liu Mu couldn't help but feel that Heitao A was still concerned for her little life, but, "Can't you absorb the massive energy inside it? Hiss, what on earth is this thing..."

What could it be?

Liu Mu took a bucket of purified water from her space, using half to boil food and the other half to clean herself up simply. She changed into a dry set of work clothes; she didn't throw away the soaked vest and jeans, keeping them to wash when she got home so she could wear them again.

The Black Rain didn't stop. At dawn on the third day, Liu Mu couldn't sleep, so she put on a new raincoat and rain boots to continue scavenging. This time, she didn't actively dig into holes; even if she encountered one she couldn't avoid, she would stand at the entrance and scoop outward with a steel-bar net she had 'woven' by hand.

If she ran into a few more of those mutated monsters, her risking her life was a small matter, but it was just too disgusting and ruined her appetite.

After four days of working almost without rest, the Steel Mill became the second place to be wiped clean by her. The space after the third system upgrade was truly vast; this time, the steel recovery reached thirty thousand tons without breaking the upper limit.

Adding the previous five thousand tons, there were already over thirty-five thousand tons, and the space still had nearly one-third of its capacity left. Come to think of it, steel has high density and can be stacked, which saves much more space than collecting plastic.

She finished the collection just at dawn on the fifth day of coming to the Steel Factory. The Black Rain hadn't stopped in between, and many low-lying areas were flooded. It became very difficult to find more Giant Sun Fragments, so she simply gave up.

However, she wasn't in a hurry to go home after finishing here. She had to go see the city; after these few days, the human tragedy caused by Song Yulin should be nearing its end. She had to record some video evidence to take back and make things difficult for Yang Shuo.

It was a pity she had forgotten to ask for the specific location of Liu Fugui's hardware store, otherwise, she could have gotten more things.

The gloomy weather made dawn arrive a bit late. Liu Mu sprinted on foot, splashing black water all the way. This water soaked into the soil much slower than previous rain; a layer of pitch-black oil film had accumulated on the surface of the standing water, but even after pushing this oil film aside, the water underneath was still black. The sediment was colorful, which just gave one an ominous premonition of being poisoned sooner or later.

On a high-rise building that had collapsed by a quarter, Liu Mu cautiously lay on the ninth floor; this was enough to have a panoramic view of the roughly four-story-high Stadium opposite.

There were still people. The remaining Survivors were in worse condition than before, dragging their emaciated bodies through the Black Rain to move corpses—that's right, the corpses of the previous Mutants.

Although they wore raincoats, many people had more or less developed ulcerations on their skin, especially the skin that had come into contact with the rainwater; almost no one was intact.

Less than a month after the disaster, some people had already revealed their beastly side. Liu Mu stared at the person hunched over, moving the corpse of their own kind in the high-definition recording, her anger stirring.

She had thought that after she escaped, that woman Song Yulin would treat the Survivors better out of fear of Yang Shuo's accountability. Now it seemed she simply didn't take human life seriously at all.

Although the city had suffered severe disaster and had been rescued once by Yang Shuo's troops, there were at least five or six thousand people left in this base. But according to Liu Mu's observations, excluding the soldiers acting as foremen, there were no more than a thousand Survivors.

This murder rate was no less than that of the natural disaster.

After recording for two consecutive hours, Liu Mu put away the equipment, leaned against the cracked wall, and stuffed cold, hard bread into her mouth, no longer looking out the window.

One kilometer away from the Stadium, the place previously used for dumping the Survivors' household waste and clearing construction debris had now become a mountain of corpses, completely blocking the road there. Even with the Black Rain falling from the sky, it couldn't cover up the stench of rotting corpses, which drifted all the way here. Whether it was sunny or raining Black Rain, it was foreseeable that the people remaining here, even if not affected by the Mutation, would soon be infected with other viruses; they wouldn't live long...

Regardless of what plans Yang Shuo and the others had, what the purpose of establishing the Urban Base was, or if he was completely unaware, Liu Mu had to do something, otherwise, she wouldn't feel at ease!

All day long, she observed the base from a nearby dilapidated building. Until nightfall, Song Yulin stayed holed up; she didn't even see a shadow. The soldiers acting as foremen on the ground changed back and forth four times, but the people remained the same.

Before night fell, the light in Liu Mu's eyes grew brighter. Mutated Animals were more active the deeper the night, especially going crazy for a while before dawn. She believed that after the base had experienced the baptism of Mutated Animals, they should have this common sense, so she chose the first half of the night to act.

Perhaps killing only Song Yulin wouldn't be of much use, but at the very least, it could test Yang Shuo's true attitude. Once the highest leader here died, he would definitely come in person.

The sky grew dark. The last batch of Survivors moving corpses staggered from afar toward the base. In the torrential rain, a thin and weak figure swayed and fell straight onto the water-logged road.

"Careful!" Fortunately, the other person walking with her gave a pull, preventing her from worsening her physical injuries by falling again.

"Thank you," beneath the Raincoat, a face like gold paper lifted slightly, the hoarse voice almost drowned out by the sound of the rain.

Liu Mu pulled at the brim of her Raincoat, covering most of her face, "It's nothing, let's go."

Although she tried her best to lower her voice, the act of pulling the person had exposed her body temperature and strength, which were different from these people; she was healthier than all of them. That warmth was truly too inviting; the girl's small hands gently closed, and eyes that had long lacked vitality now stared fixedly at that tall figure, as if she had discovered a final straw to clutch at.

Thinking of her plan, Liu Mu did not notice this insignificant gaze, only following the crowd to pass through the Base gate smoothly; these soldiers indeed did not care about the number of Survivors.

In their eyes, these people probably could no longer stir up any trouble, and in any case, they would all soon become dead people. Without taking off her Raincoat, Liu Mu followed the crowd to sit in a section against the wall of the Stadium, being ordered to start resting immediately.

The expected distribution of food did not arrive, sparing her a risk of potential exposure, yet it also let Liu Mu know another reason why these people were so weak: besides the heavy and unhealthy physical labor, there was also hunger.

Those soldiers were also not afraid of them escaping; after bringing the people in, they closed the main gate and then lazily left the ground floor.

The few electric lights in the hall were turned off one after another, leaving only the elevator leading to the underground and the fire exit on the east side lit, with two chatting soldiers guarding there.

Just as Liu Mu was thinking about how to deal with them without alerting the Survivors, the sound of plastic rubbing suddenly rang out beside her, and a Survivor curled up next to her.

Some people took off their Raincoats to cover themselves and lay on the ground, while others put them aside to try and dry the black water on them; the person who approached her side just pulled down their hood, a pair of eyes staring straight at Liu Mu in the dim light.

To be honest, Liu Mu was not timid, but being stared at like this still made her spine feel cold, especially since the hunger and desire conveyed in those eyes were truly terrifying.

Liu Mu did not take off her Raincoat, nor did she pull down her hood, her eyes hidden in the darkness as she looked at the girl beside her with displeasure, feeling somewhat restless.

"What is it?"

Her voice was cold, even with a hint of disgust.

"Hungry, I'm so hungry," the girl pleaded as if by instinct, "Do you have food? You do, don't you?"

The volume of these words was not high, but it immediately alarmed the others nearby who were tormented by hunger and exhaustion; those lying down sat up, those sitting looked over, and although they did not believe it, they hoped almost blindly that Liu Mu really had food.

"No," Liu Mu answered indifferently, and just as she was about to get up to change places, her arm was grabbed by the girl; despite having almost fallen in the rain earlier, this grab actually had quite a bit of strength.

"No, you do, you have the scent of food on you, your arms are so thick, unlike us, you have food, right? Give me a little to eat, just one bite, I beg you!"

The girl became more agitated as she spoke, finally almost screaming, though the shouting still carried weakness.

Liu Mu knew this person was crazy, and before being besieged by the surrounding people, she threw the person away forcefully, "I think you're starved crazy; who here has food? I haven't eaten for two days either; if you're hungry, am I not hungry? Isn't everyone hungry?"

She deliberately threw her off twice to get her away, also disguising her voice, and when she finished speaking, she did not forget to act as if she were panting with effort, as if she would faint if she said any more.

"But you clearly have body temperature, you're different, I'm hungry, I'm really so hungry," the girl was thrown away but crawled back like a madwoman, seemingly caught in a delusion, and lunged at Liu Mu as soon as she opened her mouth.

Liu Mu just rolled on the ground, dodging the lunge while saying in terror, "She, she's infected? Help, she..."

Hearing her say this, the crowd, already physically exhausted, retreated three meters away under the control of fear, screaming and shouting, "There's a Mutation here, come kill her quickly, she's mutated!"

Liu Mu mingled in the crowd, looked at the crazed girl with some pity, and then quickly left the spot.

The commotion here alarmed the soldiers, who came running over while shouting, and without any questioning, raised their guns and fired at the girl isolated by the crowd.

Liu Mu, running toward the fire exit, looked back and met the gaze of those confused eyes in the pool of blood.