Chapter 97 The Truth
"So you've caused so many deaths."
Yu Miaomiao stated the facts in a calm and understated manner.
From the moment Hang Song discovered that the bottle of cola he gave to Li Yi had taken effect, he began planning his own path of mutation.
"I originally just wanted to poison him and steal his food. I never expected that he would benefit from this misfortune and become a one-in-a-million superhuman, reaching the top of the food chain."
Hang Song's face was cold and sinister, his face covered with insect hairs and looked ferocious. He glared at Yu Miaomiao, his eyes, which bulged like flies, were bloodshot and filled with hatred.
"So, people with superpowers are at the top of the food chain? That's a ridiculous idea of yours."
Lu An also emerged from the shadows of the room. If this person tried to harm Yu Miaomiao, she would immediately intervene.
"So you decided to point the finger at me? We've known each other for ten years, haven't we, Hang Song... How did you become like this?"
Ye Jian returned to his dormitory at this time. He cooperated with Yu Miaomiao and the others to put on a show. Chu Bai and the others should have found the suspicious reagents in Ye Jian's office at this time... all of which were placed in advance by Hang Song.
The dormitory key was handed over by Ye Jian when she pretended to turn against him.
"I used my fingerprint film to enter the highly confidential area of the research institute, and I even made sure to let Li Yi know about it."
"Yes, you superhumans... can receive preferential treatment in resources, and can obtain... the right to live in this apocalypse."
Hang Song's voice grew increasingly strained as he spoke, as if he were about to be completely assimilated by insect genes and become a true mayfly.
"You're about to die, call out your companion."
Yu Miaomiao was curious about who this ability user who could extract life force was. At the same time, she was also very curious that Ye Jian was also an ability user.
"How come you... Hahaha, since you know so much, then go down and find him."
Upon hearing Hang Song's words, Yu Miaomiao's expression changed instantly.
Hang Song released his tentacles clinging to the roof beam and flew towards Yu Miaomiao. His back was split open, revealing wings made of two pieces of bone, with bloody flesh and skin still attached to them.
Yu Miaomiao dodged away, creating distance between them. After standing still, she saw that Chu Bai and the others had already drawn their weapons and started firing at Fuyou Hangsong. She slowly retreated to the edge of the battlefield, then flashed into her spatial dimension, turned on the visual screen, and didn't miss any detail.
Weapons were indeed of little use to Hang Song at this point. His skeletal wings blocked most of the attacks, and the few bullets that did hit his body only left shallow wounds.
"But I don't know how I got exposed... How did you idiots manage to find me?"
Hang Song smiled faintly, watching Chu Bai and the others shoot at him in vain.
"Because of those flying insects, and those strangely deceased corpses. The first time such a corpse was discovered was actually in the hospital morgue. You hid it in a freezer drawer, but failed to destroy it in time, or to be precise, you failed to find the corpse."
On the night Li Yi was resurrected and went mad, Hang Song went to the hospital morgue with the intention of finding and destroying the body used to resurrect Li Yi.
But when he arrived, the morgue was empty, without a single body. He assumed that all the bodies had been taken away for burial. The underground hospital was newly built and the management was very lax. They did not register every body; instead, they would take away a batch of bodies for burial as soon as the morgue was full. So Hang Song did not pay any more attention to it.
"The body had only been dead for a short time, so the strange plants did not break through the body and spread out. They were well disguised, just like a body that was already in the morgue."
In addition, the plants' growth rate slowed down after freezing, so they wouldn't be absorbed by the plants as quickly as Zhong Xin and the others' corpses.
But I'm a meticulous person, and even though the hospital and square were in a mess, the discrepancy in the number of bodies in the morgue made me suspicious.
"So you moved all those bodies away? Even if you moved them and checked them one by one, it would just mean that you ended up finding one more body."
"Because flying insects gather at the burial site."
Upon hearing about flying insects, Hang Song's expression changed again, but he quickly recovered.
"So what? This dungeon is teeming with those disgusting bugs now."
"Aren't you different from those insects now?"
Yu Miaomiao suddenly appeared out of the space, not far from Hang Song.
"Because the plants that grow from those corpses are called spider lilies, which is the superpower of your friend who can extract life. I just thought that when you said you went down to find him, you meant that you killed him. In fact, he is not a person at all, but a plant that you buried underground."
She held a small green leaf in her hand; it was a leaf of the spider lily. She had flashed into the space to find the source of this evil, for this plant was adept at hiding and disguising itself.
At this moment, the tiny plant stretched out its vines and twisted in Yu Miaomiao's hand. Yu Miaomiao tried to crush the tiny plant, but found that no matter how she crushed it, it would re-merge into the original shape of the leaf.
That's interesting.
Before she died in her previous life, Yu Miaomiao's team was fighting against mutated plants, and their target was the spider lily in front of them.
However, by then, spider lilies had spread all over the world. These vines had brightly colored flowers that looked extremely dangerous at first glance.
It does have the ability to extract human life and transfer it into other life forms, but the price is mutation. The recipient will undergo very random mutations, and most of them will not have a good ending.
But there is one thing that can counteract it: Li Yi's venom.
Li Yi was created by the other shore flower, and ultimately the other shore flower also ended with Li Yi.
Yu Miaomiao put the small leaf into a glass bottle containing Li Yi's venom. The struggling and writhing leaf sank little by little into the venom, was corroded and swallowed up, and eventually died out.
"This was all prepared in advance, part of the plan."
Yu Miaomiao clapped her hands and handed all the glass bottles to Chu Bai in a relaxed and cheerful manner.
That counts as completing a task.
"If you want to talk about your final failure, it probably comes down to the fact that you didn't have the ability but still insisted on going for it."
"You mutated Li Yi twice, from bat blood at the beginning to the juice of the red spider lily later. You think you have discovered the rules of this world."
"But you're lucky, at least you got what you asked for. This spider lily does have the ability to mutate humans, but what kind of mutation they become is random, and usually not a very good one."
"Impossible, Li Yi didn't become like me. He possesses immense power. Although he was my only successful experimental subject."
Hang Song's tentacles writhed uncontrollably, looking somewhat unbelievable.
"You may not understand, but Li Yi was originally a superhuman. It just so happens that the vampire bat gene in his body neutralized the spider lily gene, so he ended up becoming a monster that was neither human nor ghost."
"If it weren't for your interference, he would have been a normal superhuman. It was your inhuman experiments that turned him into that person, while you were originally just an ordinary person."
"But you're wrong. He wasn't the only successful test subject; you were successful too."
Ye Jian pondered for a long time before slowly saying, "And so far, the only variable for success is whether the person has superpowers or is an ordinary person. The large group of people you experimented with all died, only you and Li Yi survived."
"No, I turned things around. I was just an ordinary person before!"
Hang Song obviously couldn't accept this fact. He had paid so much to become a superhuman, only to be told that he was already a superhuman.
"Superpowered individuals don't all appear at the same time. The timing of each individual's mutation is different. You were originally a superpowered individual, but it hasn't manifested yet. If you were an ordinary person, you would become fertilizer for those spider lilies, just like those people you used for experiments."
You thought you had become a so-called advanced superhuman, but in reality, you're a monster.
"You're talking nonsense!"
Hang Song was furious. He curled his antennae around the kettle next to him and slammed it in the direction where Yu Miaomiao was. Then he turned and fled out the window.
However, the kettle only flew in a parabolic arc in the air for a short while before coming to a stop and slowly returning to the ground.
Yu Miaomiao's mental control was becoming increasingly arbitrary.
"Electric kettles are in short supply right now. If you don't want them, you can give them to someone who needs them."
Hang Song's path was blocked by He Liang and Xu Nanwei, who were already waiting outside the window.
"Let's go to the greenhouse and keep Li Yi company."
With a thought, Yu Miaomiao summoned Hang Song, who appeared in the greenhouse where Li Yi was being held.
Upon entering Yu Miaomiao's space, time stands still. He won't die within the space due to his lifespan, but whether he'll die from something else... is hard to say.
Li Yi, who had been waiting in the greenhouse for a long time, clenched his fists and slowly walked towards the terrified Hang Song. His wings were broken by Yu Miaomiao's telekinetic power the moment he entered the space.
For Li Yi, who had been eating scrap metal for half a month, Hang Song was now like fish on a chopping board, and Yu Miaomiao had just broadcast all the footage to Li Yi.
"We completed the task on time, right?"
He brought the red spider lily into the underground city. The fragrance of the flower attracted countless flying insects, which caused great chaos. He also took the opportunity to kill many people indiscriminately. The flower devoured lives in exchange for his life every day.
The truth is both laughable and absurd.
However, it actually caused a major disaster for the underground city.
"Hmm, you're planning to lock him up in your space too?"
Chu Bai said in a deep voice.
"No, can't you send someone to take it away?"
Yu Miaomiao's greatest hatred in this life is insects. Just thinking about keeping a disgusting mutated insect in her space is unsettling.
Li Yi, on the other hand, can deal with mutated plants. Yu Miaomiao thought that if she had the chance in the future, she could try to study his mucus and help Ye Jian develop new weapons as soon as possible.
"Okay, I'll send someone to hand over the work to you."
"No problem, as soon as possible. If it takes too long, he might get beaten to death by Li Yi."
How did her space turn into a prison now, one prison after another, day after day, just doing useless things.
Ye Jian stopped Chu Bai and the others who were about to leave, saying, "I'll go with you to find the commander." Chu Bai glanced at him but didn't say anything, tacitly agreeing to let him leave with him.
Yu Miaomiao felt a huge weight lifted off her shoulders. She had finally cleaned up this mess, and she would never, ever take on any more dungeon assistance missions again.
Returning home, after showering and changing into her pajamas, Yu Miaomiao lay in bed, but the pain of being wrapped tighter and tighter by the spider lily vines came back to her, and she drifted off to sleep with these painful memories.