Chapter 98 I'm Fine
"It's not time for the follow-up appointment yet." Zhou Zhuohua appeared with dark circles under her eyes and looked at Bai Chenzhu, saying, "If I remember correctly, you just left here the day before yesterday?"
Bai Chenzhu smiled at her. Ever since he learned that this young lady was an 'acquaintance', his attitude had improved considerably. "I'm Jiang Ye's assistant now, and I'm here with him. He said he wanted to come and see that vaccine."
"Push, push, push every single day!" Upon hearing "vaccine," Zhou Zhuohua finally snapped, "I told you it wouldn't be that fast, you're driving me crazy!"
"Sis, isn't this just asking for trouble?" Jiang Ye shrugged, saying shamelessly, "Where's Professor Zhou?"
Zhou Zhuohua had no choice but to take a deep breath and said, "This way."
Bai Chenzhu followed the two, turning left and right, until they arrived at a large laboratory. Everyone inside was wearing a white lab coat and engrossed in their work, occasionally moving around and discussing in hushed tones. Zhou Zhuohua led the two into an inner room without changing his expression. Professor Zhou was resting in a chair, half-lying down and half-sitting, with his notebook covering his face.
"Dad, Jiang Ye is here." Zhou Zhuohua put away the data book on his face.
"Huh? Hmm?" Professor Zhou rubbed his eyes and fumbled to put on his glasses. "Jiang Ye?"
Jiang Ye stepped forward. "It's me."
The two started talking about vaccines. Bai Chenzhu overheard a bit and learned that there had been some progress with vaccines, but they couldn't turn the tide. For example, they couldn't turn zombies back into humans, nor could they make humans into superhumans. They could only reduce the probability of humans becoming zombies after being infected.
Jiang Ye seemed to know a lot about zombies and superhumans. Professor Zhou asked him if it was possible to turn all infected humans into superhumans instead of zombies, or to make existing superhumans even stronger...
These topics are sensitive, and Bai Chenzhu tilted her head, wanting to hear Jiang Ye's answer as well.
However, Jiang Ye raised his eyes and looked directly at Zhou Xuan, asking instead of answering, "Everyone knows that mutations are uncontrollable, so why is Uncle Zhou suddenly asking about this?"
"These are just some speculations." Zhou Xuan paused for a moment, as if he wanted to say something, but hesitated and finally awkwardly changed the subject, pulling him to talk about the current progress of vaccine research.
The zombie virus is known to be the most powerful virus ever encountered by mankind, so powerful that it can rewrite genes like never before. You'll either be lucky enough to escape, or you'll become a superhuman or a zombie. And it's still unknown whether it's hereditary...
Bai Chenzhu looked at Zhou Zhuohua, who was starting to doze off beside him, "Sister Zhuohua..."
"What did you just call me?" Zhou Zhuohua suddenly woke up, her usually cold eyes now shining like dazzling fireworks in the night sky, full of anticipation.
Bai Chenzhu suddenly hesitated to reveal the reason, but he still said, "Sister Zhuohua, I heard Jiang Ye call me that, is that right?"
"Studied under Jiang Ye?" Zhou Zhuohua's expression was a little strange. She seemed to want to say something, but finally rubbed the bridge of her nose in dejection. "It's nothing. What were you about to ask?"
Where's Mengmeng?
Zhou Zhuohua said, "Right now, we're short-staffed, so I sent her to do odd jobs in another lab."
"May I go see her?" Bai Chenzhu asked politely.
"Let's go together." Zhou Zhuohua led the way for him.
Bai Chenzhu had assumed that Zhou Mengmeng would be like the others in the lab, wearing a white coat and fiddling with test tubes, but he never expected that doing odd jobs would be such a dangerous job.
"You want her to record data on human alienation?!" Bai Chenzhu exclaimed in surprise.
"Yes, she's an ability user now, so it's within her capabilities." Zhou Zhuohua seemed completely unconcerned about Zhou Mengmeng's inability to handle the task.
Two rows of people were strapped to the floor in the laboratory.
Perhaps it could be described as "humans turning into zombies." Some had ashen faces and roared in anger, while others had red veins crawling up their skin and their eyes turning red... Ropes tightly bound their necks, chests, waists, and calves, rendering them unable to move.
Zhou Mengmeng, like everyone else, is regularly injecting them with vaccines and observing their reactions.
Zhou Zhuohua and Bai Chenzhu stopped at the door, not daring to disturb the well-organized laboratory.
Bai Chenzhu stared at the mutated humans. They seemed to have lost their ability to speak and their reason, only emitting unintelligible roars. In his mind, they were gradually forming gray marks.
Inside the relatively safe research institute, Bai Chenzhu boldly extended his mental energy to investigate and discovered that the mental energy of these zombies was unimaginably depleted, like wooden stakes hollowed out by termites, frantically trying to fill themselves up and chasing after external mental energy.
Perhaps sensing the approach of the 'food', they struggled frantically, raising their ferocious faces toward Bai Chenzhu, their dim eyes flashing with the light of seeing food.
"You'd better stay away from him." Zhou Zhuohua sighed, seeing that he was still so 'popular'.
"It's alright," Bai Chenzhu smiled. "Animals are easier to control than plants. If it were a mutated plant..."
When this was mentioned, he suddenly paused, unsure of what to say next.
He himself didn't know why he started this topic, just like he had encountered a very dangerous mutated plant.
In fact, mutated plants are very rare; he and Zhou Mengmeng did not encounter any during their short month-long trip.
Zhou Zhuohua didn't notice his odd behavior. "It's a pity. First, we don't study that, and second, they are very good at hiding in nature, much harder to spot than zombies. So the research institute doesn't have that thing."
"Speaking of which, Tang Zhao told me that this thing was also created by an alien race. Besides studying human bodies, they are also studying the plants and animals of Earth. They are truly despicable..." Zhou Zhuohua couldn't help but mutter to himself.
A gray mark in my mind has darkened, becoming darker than the others.
Bai Chenzhu looked in that direction as if sensing something, only to see a zombie in the corner with its head down suddenly raise its face. The straps on its body were shattered by a great force, and it attacked a researcher with its back to it with a heart-piercing claw.
"Watch out!" Bai Chenzhu shouted.
Zhou Mengmeng reacted quickly, turning around and kicking the claw away, pulling the researcher who had narrowly escaped death.
But the zombie did not care about the researcher who had failed. It landed on all fours, arched its back, and suddenly leaped towards Bai Chenzhu by the door.
Bai Chenzhu turned around, grabbed the startled Zhou Zhuohua, and ran toward the door. The zombie attack missed, but the zombies kept their eyes on Bai Chenzhu.
Bai Chenzhu turned to meet his gaze, his dark eyes surging with waves of emotion, one after another, washing over one's senses. The zombie stood there dazed for a few seconds, and when it opened its eyes again, its red eyes reflected the closed door, but the two figures were nowhere to be seen.
But the traces of spiritual power remained; it landed on all fours, propelling itself forward, and a large hole was torn in the gate.
Screams echoed down the corridor. Some superhumans tried to stop it, but in the confined space, the zombie bit and clawed at anyone it saw. Its frenzied behavior made even the superhumans hesitate. It was this moment of hesitation that allowed the zombie to catch up with Bai Chenzhu.
Bai Chenzhu grabbed an umbrella and opened it, blocking the zombie's attack. However, he was thrown to the ground by the force of the impact. Zhou Zhuohua quickly helped him up, "Xiao Bai!"
"You go first, it's got its eye on me." Bai Chenzhu dropped the twisted umbrella frame and pushed her away.
"No!" Zhou Zhuohua stood in front of him, suppressing her fear of turning and running away. "You've never abandoned me before, and I won't abandon you either."
Bai Chenzhu was startled. The figure in front of him flickered into colorful lines. In a daze, he saw the woman lying on the bed in the hotel with a pale face and cold sweat. At that time, she had been infected.
He closed his eyes, and some memories flashed inappropriately before his eyes, like a series of cannonballs, exploding in the depths of his mind, assaulting his senses, making his vision blurry, and about to plunge him into darkness.
He couldn't afford to faint at this moment. He gritted his teeth, shook his head, and tried to clear the fog in his eyes. In his clear vision, he saw a zombie baring its teeth and leaping towards him.
Zhou Zhuohua pulled over a small cart that someone had left in the corridor and rushed over in one breath, the wheels whirring as they slid quickly.
However, the zombie's strength was far greater than that of a normal person, and it overturned the cart, sending her flying backward.
Without time to think, Bai Chenzhu caught the retreating Zhou Zhuohua with one hand, brushed past him, and swiftly grabbed the neck of the leaping zombie, only to be tackled to the ground by the inhuman monster. He gritted his teeth, his hands gripping the zombie's slender neck tightly, his arms drawing blood.
A gleaming dagger flashed before their eyes, and the zombie's head tumbled to the ground. The remaining limbs remained stiffly in their original positions, only to be kicked away.
Bai Chenzhu breathed a sigh of relief as Jiang Ye pulled her up from the ground.
"A-Zhu, you..."
He saw Jiang Ye's mouth opening and closing, and his nervous expression, as if he wanted to say something, but then he was plunged into darkness by the noisy buzzing in his ears.
"You can't even handle one zombie!" Jiang Ye cursed, his voice echoing down the corridor. He picked up the unconscious person and glared angrily at the group that had followed closely behind. "Foolish! Why would a drug that promotes mutation appear in the research institute? Have you thought of an explanation?"
Stopping the mutation means that while humans will no longer turn into zombies, they will also lose the possibility of becoming superhumans. Yet, some people, clinging to a sliver of hope, still want to explore ways for humans to further mutate, ideally becoming superhumans or becoming even stronger.
However, the mutation is uncontrollable and may make the zombies stronger.
For example, right now.
The head of the group, a portly man, wiped the cold sweat from his face. "You...you hear me out, this was just a small mistake. The benefits it brought are far greater than we imagined; there are already people with superpowers..."
Jiang Ye said nothing more and strode away with Bai Chenzhu.
Zhou Zhuohua looked at Zhou Xuan, who had a serious expression, in surprise. She gritted her teeth and decided to deal with the immediate matter first. "I need to go see Xiao Bai."
She hurriedly caught up with Jiang Ye's retreating figure.
——
Bai Chenzhu had a very long dream.
In his dream, under the moon, there were two ferocious monsters, one with a single arm and red eyes, and the other with white fur and blue eyes. They relentlessly pursued him, and the one that severed the giant hand that attacked him was also a gleaming dagger.
He didn't sleep well; fragmented images kept flashing through his mind. He had an urge to break through the fence, but he never succeeded.
"...He's fine, just in really bad health. He just needs some rest." A woman's voice said calmly, accompanied by a chill and a tight feeling on her arm.
Bai Chenzhu guessed that Zhou Zhuohua was applying medicine to his arm.
"What about his head? When will he regain his memory?" Jiang Ye pressed.
"It's hard to say," Zhou Zhuohua said truthfully. "You need to take your medicine on time and take good care of yourself. Once you feel better in a few days, I'll try acupuncture..."
"You should go back now." After hearing her instructions, Jiang Ye got up to see her off.
The sound of a door closing rang out.
Soon, the sound of a chair being pulled could be heard. Jiang Ye sat down next to him, and only the two of them remained in the room, with only the sound of their breathing.
Accompanied by a familiar aura, Bai Chenzhu was plunged into darkness once again.
He saw for the second time that fiery red but cracked sky, the burning land, and the slowly flowing lava.
An extremely out-of-place, large rattan cat bed—no, wait, a wolf den—was placed in the corner, with a gray and white wolf licking its fur on top.
Bai Chenzhu watched it lick its fur for a while, and only after the wolf finished did he go over to greet it, "Hi?"
The gray wolf was startled and jumped up, standing straight with its back arched and teeth bared in a fierce stance. But after seeing who it was, it quickly crouched down, becoming harmless and docile, wagging its tail happily.
"What a coincidence." Bai Chenzhu paused. "We meet again. Do you know where this is?"
He tilted his head.
"Eno?"
If Bai Chenzhu was still in a daze when they first met, now, the place is filled with Jiang Ye's spiritual energy, and the aura of scorched earth is palpable.
This is Jiang Ye's territory. Bai Chenzhu said confidently.
So the wolf in front of him is either Jiang Ye's pet or Jiang Ye's incarnation... Bai Chenzhu's mind stirred, and he realized that he might also be able to transform into a non-human form.
He raised his fingertips, and his palm transformed into scattered points of light. These points of light dispersed and then, as he wished, quickly coalesced into a complete arm, with even the cuffs being identical to those in reality.
The gray wolf made an ambiguous sound from its throat, then got up, circled Bai Chenzhu, and pushed him forward. Bai Chenzhu, confused, followed its lead and sat down in the wolf's den.
The gray wolf leaped onto his lap, lay down familiarly, wagged its tail, nudged his palm with its head, and uttered its first words since they met: "Pat pat."
Bai Chenzhu thought he was hallucinating, "...What?"
The gray wolf nudged his palm twice more, a silent urging.
Bai Chenzhu tentatively touched the gray wolf's head, very gently, which elicited a dissatisfied purr from the wolf. He then increased the pressure, kneading the fur all over his palm.
This is too fantastical.
He stared at the gray wolf with its drooping ears, squinting eyes, and an expression of enjoyment on its face, and thought to itself.
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