The golden sunlight streamed directly down from the azure sky, falling upon the land of City A.
The once prosperous and orderly streets were now littered with shattered glass, dismembered bodies, unrecognizable remnants of objects, overturned and burned-out car wrecks, charred black… while the monsters staggered and wandered among the ruins.
You could even see some creatures that still maintained a basic human form leisurely strolling along the streets, or loitering in front of empty storefronts, even relaxing with ease in the burned-out ruins of a coffee shop.
Unlike the bloodthirsty, frenzied state they exhibited at night, the monsters during the day seemed more like they were sleepwalking.
In this eternal dream from which they would never awaken, they followed their muscle memory, continuing their former lives in the chaos.
Of course, if a weaker creature happened to pass by, they wouldn’t hesitate to reveal their greedy nature as monsters.
Bloody hunts occasionally unfolded on the street corners of City A. Frenzied mutterings and inhuman moans intertwined with the wet sound of muscles being torn apart and the moist chewing and swallowing of flesh…
This insane symphony echoed through every corner of the city.
Until a breeze passed over the gray building at the crossroads… and then over the monsters in the city.
And that building was the supermarket where Xie Xishu and Qi Wu were currently located.
At that moment, all the monsters stopped moving without warning, as if someone had pressed an invisible button.
The monsters straightened up, raised their heads, and began sniffing the air frantically.
“Sss… Fragrant…”
“So… fragrant…”
“Smells good, tastes so good… smells good, tastes so good…”
…
Muttered, hoarse groans escaped from the monsters’ drooling lips.
Their swollen, grotesque faces simultaneously turned in the same direction.
“There…”
“There, hehehehe, the delicious one is right there—”
Although the closer they got to that building, the clearer and stronger the scent of another monster’s pheromones became—its aura was overwhelmingly fierce and domineering, which under normal circumstances would have been enough to scare away a large number of low-level monsters…
But this time, the situation was different from any other.
The fragrance in the air was so sweet, so enticing.
Even though the scent was faint, it was enough to awaken the deepest desires within the monsters’ bodies.
*
A few minutes earlier—
“Hiss—”
A soft hiss of pain echoed in the supermarket’s break room.
Xie Xishu only realized he felt a slight sting after seeing the long wound in his palm.
“That hurts.”
He let out a low groan, but didn’t receive any response from Qi Wu.
The flashlight flickered, the light still dim, but when Xie Xishu raised his head, he saw that Qi Wu’s eyes were glowing with a phosphorescent light in the darkness.
“So… fragrant.”
In the next moment, Qi Wu suddenly lunged, pressing his face firmly against Xie Xishu’s palm.
On Xie Xishu’s still-stinging wound, something warm and wet attached itself tightly… it was Qi Wu, greedily sucking the fresh blood that had just flowed out.
Xie Xishu’s heart skipped a beat.
He remembered the first time Qi Wu had revealed his inhuman side to him in that alleyway. Back then, Qi Wu had also fallen into some sort of grotesque frenzy after consuming his blood.
Xie Xishu had long accepted that his companion had mutated into a monster.
But he certainly didn’t think Qi Wu losing control at this moment would be a good thing.
“Qi, Qi Wu?”
Xie Xishu called out nervously.
“Are you still conscious?”
He mumbled the question.
At some point, the flashlight had fallen to the ground. Xie Xishu couldn’t see Qi Wu’s face, only hearing his own rapid breathing and the sound of sucking.
It felt like a long time had passed before he finally heard a mumbled response.
“Mmm… I’m just… helping you wipe away the scent of blood.”
“Th-Then, is it gone now?”
Xie Xishu stammered.
A few seconds passed after he asked, and finally, the soft, warm sensation of the monster’s newly grown organs moved away from Xie Xishu’s wound.
In the darkness, the young man silently picked up the flashlight again and pulled Xie Xishu toward the door of the break room.
“Your hand… you didn’t realize it was injured?”
Once outside, the light finally brightened a bit.
Xie Xishu hurriedly took a moment to glance at his hand—after Qi Wu had licked the blood away, the wound now only left a very faint pink scar. The surface of the wound was covered with a layer of sticky mucus, which gave off a familiar metallic smell. However, the area covered by the mucus was completely numb, and there was no longer any pain.
Before Xie Xishu could examine it further, Qi Wu, with a cold expression, had already torn off the hem of his T-shirt and wrapped layer after layer around Xie Xishu’s injured hand.
“Sorry. It’s my fault.”
Xie Xishu murmured.
Qi Wu had always had a fierce look, and since his transformation into a monster, that eerie and sinister aura had only grown stronger. When he looked grim, it was as if the temperature around them dropped several degrees.
Xie Xishu quickly glanced at Qi Wu and unconsciously bit his lip.
Although it wasn’t intentional, getting injured and bleeding in such a situation was indeed a foolish thing to do…
Thinking of this, Xie Xishu felt even worse.
Qi Wu glanced at Xie Xishu, seeing the pale and frail boy looking increasingly exhausted and pitiful, his gaze flickered for a moment.
“…This time, I’ll let it go.”
He spoke coldly.
“You know how weak you are and how easily you attract monsters. So behave yourself from now on.”
With that, he reached out, grabbed Xie Xishu, and began heading toward the supermarket’s entrance.
But after only a few steps, he abruptly stopped.
Now that no one was distracting him, Qi Wu immediately noticed the horde of monsters swarming toward the supermarket.
The wind was already tinged with the characteristic stench of blood and rot unique to monsters.
Xie Xishu peeked out from behind Qi Wu, squinting for a moment before he, too, saw the hideous, crazed creatures. His face instantly drained of all color, turning deathly pale.
“How… how can this be…”
Xie Xishu could hardly believe his eyes.
How could there be so many monsters?
“Is it because of my blood?”
Xie Xishu’s throat felt dry, and his voice trembled.
“But… I’ve been injured before, and I bled more than this, but it was never this bad. Could it be that the monsters have evolved like you…”
“Such a hassle.”
Qi Wu suddenly interrupted Xie Xishu.
As a monster, what he saw was much more detailed and clearer than Xie Xishu. He could even see the uneven, sharp teeth protruding from the monsters’ grotesque mouths, their revolting bodies oozing with sticky corpse fluids. He could also hear their labored, raspy breaths, driven by hunger, and the faint, dying screams of the “food” still struggling in their half-digested state within the monsters’ bellies.
The situation was much worse than he had anticipated—
Xie Xishu’s blood seemed to have become even more enticing, driving the monsters even more insane than before.
From all directions, the unique, sluggish footsteps of monsters could be heard, along with the squelching sounds of rotting flesh rubbing against slime.
His overly keen sense of smell, in some ways, dulled Qi Wu’s perception of the outside world. Surrounded by the constant stench of monsters and corpses, he hadn’t even realized that he and Xie Xishu were now completely surrounded by monsters.
He couldn’t even flee with Xie Xishu as he had before—there was no longer any path for them to escape.
“Ah, damn it—”
Qi Wu almost cursed aloud, but when he caught sight of the pale-faced boy beside him, looking as if he was about to cry, he swallowed his words.
“What are you so scared of? Is it that serious?”
Qi Wu yanked Xie Xishu and pulled him behind himself.
He glanced back at him, his expression calm.
“It’s just that there are a lot of them, killing them is just disgusting. With your tiny bit of courage, you’ll probably faint from fright.”
Qi Wu said coldly to Xie Xishu.
“The blood smell in that room was strong, and it’s hidden. Go hide in there for now. Besides, I already grabbed some snacks for you… Wait a bit, and when I’m done, I’ll come get you.”
As he spoke, countless fine cracks appeared across Qi Wu’s body again, but not as many tentacles emerged as before.
Oddly enough, the boy didn’t want Xie Xishu to see his final appearance before closing the door, as a wriggling mass of tentacles.
“Alright, now go.”
Seeing that Xie Xishu was still standing there, staring at him with tear-filled eyes and refusing to move, Qi Wu felt a strange surge of irritation.
He reached out to push Xie Xishu, but didn’t manage to move him.
“There must be another way, right?”
Xie Xishu instinctively grabbed Qi Wu’s wrist, his throat tightening as he spoke.
He realized he didn’t like Qi Wu’s current tone and expression… and he definitely didn’t like this strange, gloomy atmosphere.
“You can’t possibly take on so many monsters by yourself, right? You just finished evolving yesterday, didn’t you?”
Before he could finish speaking, he saw Qi Wu’s expression change instantly.
“What, you think I can’t beat them?”
“N-No, I just think there might be another way…”
At that moment, Xie Xishu happened to glance over at the scattered clutter near the break room door and saw a bloodstained car key lying on the ground.
Xie Xishu froze, then quickly rushed over and picked up the key.
At that moment, he wasn’t thinking too much—he just instinctively felt that escaping by car would be much better than having Qi Wu face all those gathering monsters alone.
“Look! A car key! If there’s a car, we can drive out of here. We won’t have to face these monsters head-on.”
After pausing for a moment, he turned his head toward Qi Wu and asked excitedly, “You can drive, right?”
There were many strange rumors circulating about Qi Wu at school. After hearing them so often, Xie Xishu inevitably thought that someone like Qi Wu, a “bad student” who spent all his time hanging around outside, would naturally know how to drive.
Qi Wu stared at Xie Xishu in silence for a moment.
Then, with a cold expression, the young man snatched the car keys from Xie Xishu’s hand.
“What’s so hard about that?”
…
*
Crash!
With a crisp shattering sound, the already damaged glass wall and glass door of the supermarket in City A were suddenly smashed by several muscular arms. Immediately afterward, several monsters, crawling on all fours and covered in a bright red hue, howled as they impatiently jumped into the chaotic supermarket from the street.
Their eyes were bloodshot, and their naked bodies looked as if the outermost layer of skin had been stripped away, exposing a raw redness. Every muscle and vein was clearly visible with every movement, and their wet skin continuously dripped mucus.
“Where?”
They uttered a string of greedy mutterings from their throats.
“Smells so good… it smells so good here! Where? Where!!!”
One of them tried to raise its head as much as possible, its bulging eyes frantically scanning the dim interior. Its clouded vision was filled with nothing but endless greed and desire. However, before it could locate the source of the enticing scent, another few hulking creatures squeezed into the supermarket. One of them stepped on its back, and the speedster monster didn’t have time to escape. The bones in its spine snapped with a series of cracks.
“Huh, it hurts, it hurts! Don’t steal from me!”
It screamed.
“That’s mine… that’s—”
The monster propped itself up on its remaining two arms and crawled slowly toward a certain spot deep within the supermarket. But soon after, more monsters poured in, howling and screeching in a frenzy similar to its own, as they all rushed toward the back of the store.
And monsters don’t care if there’s a squishy pile of flesh beneath their feet.
The only thing they care about is the tantalizing scent in the air.
“So fragrant…”
They whimpered incoherently, frantically searching for the source of that enticing aroma—
Meanwhile, outside the supermarket, from the underground parking lot’s exit, came the roar of a car engine.
The next second, a grayish-white blur shot out from the pitch-black underground parking lot.
With a deafening roar, the metal car body smashed through the figures blocking its path. Under the force of the flooring gas pedal, the car tore through the screaming, blood-soaked mass of bodies, then, covered in blood, sped toward the outskirts of the city.
Bang!
Bang, bang!
Bang—zzzzzz—
Xie Xishu sat in the car, his face pale as he listened to the constant sounds of impacts. Some of the sounds came from monsters being directly run over and turned into splattered red goo, while others came from the debris scattered on the road that the car hit.
The car they were in was very old—so old that, at first, Xie Xishu had doubted it would even start. When they had found it in the garage, he had been nervous for a moment. But now, sitting in the passenger seat, he was starting to regret his decision.
He remembered when he had asked Qi Wu if he could drive, and how Qi Wu had been silent for a moment.
…That was really suspicious, ahhhh!
*
Who the original owner of this old car was—whether it was one of the people back in the break room—Xie Xishu and Qi Wu would probably never know. But Xie Xishu was sure that whoever it had been, they had never imagined that their car would ever be driven like a wild bull.
Even in the apocalypse, Qi Wu’s insane flooring of the gas pedal left Xie Xishu stunned. He even began to doubt whether the person currently sitting in the driver’s seat even knew where the brake was—yet, despite everything, Qi Wu always managed to find just enough space in the cluttered streets to squeeze through (and if the space wasn’t wide enough, Qi Wu would simply choose to smash his way through).
“Bang—”
Another loud crash.
Xie Xishu was jerked forward inside the car, his face coming face to face with a rotting one plastered against the windshield. The next second, inertia pulled him back heavily into his seat again.
Qi Wu, expressionless, ran over the still-writhing humanoid figure and continued driving forward.
Meanwhile, Xie Xishu clutched his chest in pain, his face pale.
Amidst the dizziness caused by the speed, he occasionally wondered if Qi Wu was doing this on purpose.
Driving this recklessly, with the vertigo akin to a roller coaster, left Xie Xishu no time to think about how he had once eagerly opened the break room door, hoping to join other survivors and wait for the government’s rescue… only to have all his hopes dashed by the horrific scene inside.
But even as he tried to convince himself otherwise—when Qi Wu once again plowed straight through a group of monsters—Xie Xishu couldn’t help but speak up.
“Qi Wu.”
“Hmm?”
“Who taught you how to drive? Earlier, you said you could drive… but, wait, do you even have a license?”
Xie Xishu clutched the handle of the car window tightly with both hands, glancing at the speedometer that showed no signs of slowing down, and muttered to himself.
“…”
Qi Wu stared ahead, maintaining a strange silence.
And Xie Xishu: “Wait, why did you suddenly stop talking?”
“…”
Luckily, a few seconds later, the small car came to a screeching halt, and a sudden, thunderous noise shattered the tension between the two inside the car.
The speeding car shook violently from the impact, and the metal roof of the vehicle was deeply dented.
Xie Xishu and Qi Wu were both taken aback.
Then, they saw a purplish-blue face peering directly down from the top edge of the car’s windshield.
For a moment, Xie Xishu thought that the face looked somewhat familiar.
But he could swear that none of his acquaintances had eyes covered in raised, wart-like bumps.
The palm pressed against the glass center should not have had tiny suction cups either.
None of the people he knew had bodies that appeared to be deliberately elongated, with thin scales covering them—
Moreover, if it were a “person,” they wouldn’t be able to jump straight down from a tall building, landing accurately on the roof of a speeding vehicle, and still be bouncing around, completely unharmed.
As the car was speeding at nearly 150 or 160, the figure was surprisingly agile. It clung to the windshield, twisting its body, and quickly crawled up onto the hood.
Its face was now completely pressed against the front windshield.
Xie Xishu saw a large mass of red ooze spilling out from its deformed mouth, which stretched all the way down to its earlobes—
Overcome by fear, Xie Xishu was a beat slow to realize that the damp mass was its tongue.
This monster that had dropped from the sky was trying to lick him through the windshield.
“Whoosh—”
“Whoosh—”
…
Even amidst the howling wind of the speeding car, Xie Xishu could still hear the monster’s greedy panting.
*
“You smell so good… Xie Xishu,”
the creature hissed with a laugh, addressing the boy in the passenger seat.
__
Author’s Note:
P.S. Xiao Qi really has learned to drive.
But after learning, everyone told him not to drive.
