Chapter 212: Heredity
The morning of the third day.
Lu Jinzhao still hadn’t slept. Last night, around 3 a.m., the warehouse next door had gone quiet, and no more sounds came after that.
Early in the morning, Lu Jinzhao left her room and walked to the courtyard gate, waiting for the woman who had broken the tablet to come fulfill the agreement.
Just as dawn was breaking, the warehouse door also opened, and the man named Xu Ming, who hadn’t obtained a tablet, walked out of the warehouse.
Lu Jinzhao heard the noise and turned back to look toward the warehouse door, seeing that Xu Ming’s current state was clearly somewhat off.
His complexion was too pale, his face was full of sweat, his black hair stuck to his forehead, his T-shirt was soaked with sweat and looked somewhat disheveled, and the extremely obvious dark circles under his eyes made him look overly fatigued. Lu Jinzhao felt it was a bit subtle; she indeed hadn’t heard any sounds of exertion intense enough to make him sweat so much.
He looked up toward the door, his expression gloomy, his eyes somewhat dazed, but not the kind of daze from being possessed by a ghost—more like from extreme fatigue.
Anxiety, fatigue, fear, and an indescribable urgency.
Something was urging him on.
As he passed by Lu Jinzhao, he didn’t cast her any extra glance, which was a bit unusual. After all, Lu Jinzhao had killed his teammate yesterday and destroyed a tablet, but at this moment, he didn’t care at all.
Not long after he left, his teammates also came out of the room. When they saw Lu Jinzhao, one of them showed a wary expression, but they had more important matters, so they just nodded to Lu Jinzhao in greeting and then hurriedly chased in the direction Xu Ming had gone.
It looked like they were going to track Xu Ming.
What happened last night?
Xu Ming’s abnormality was obvious, so probably some accident would happen today.
Lu Jinzhao looked up and memorized the direction they left in, continuing to wait in place.
The mountain village’s morning was shrouded in a layer of faint mist, and the biting air faintly carried the smell of burning firewood—someone had probably started making breakfast.
The person Lu Jinzhao was waiting for arrived a bit later than she expected, but as soon as she approached, Lu Jinzhao knew why she was late.
She was just like a second Xu Ming: pale complexion, body soaked in sweat, expression dazed.
But unlike Xu Ming, there were some problems with her body.
Some obvious problems that could be directly observed.
Her body was undergoing some kind of mutation, like suffering unbearable radiation: parts of her skin were rotting, her nails had vertical ridges, her eyeballs were cloudy and turbid, and worse, Lu Jinzhao felt her head was a size larger than yesterday.
Lu Jinzhao spoke vigilantly, telling her to stop and preventing her from coming closer.
The woman obediently stopped, a pained expression appearing on her face as she looked at Lu Jinzhao in confusion and asked, “What’s wrong with me?”
Lu Jinzhao replied to her, “Don’t you know yourself?”
The shadow puppet lurked under the cover of the jacket, always vigilant for unexpected events. Lu Jinzhao’s eyes carefully observed the changes in the woman’s expression, her senses attuned to the surroundings to detect anything amiss immediately.
Hearing Lu Jinzhao’s words, the woman fell silent for a moment. She seemed to be thinking, but that head, which was a size larger than yesterday, was even less functional than yesterday.
She thought for a good while before slowly saying, “I failed.”
Her voice was confused with a hint of unwillingness: “I tried to snatch a tablet from my teammate on the way to complete the mission, but I failed. I didn’t dare go back and just found an empty room in the village to stay in.”
“When I woke up today, I felt… my body wasn’t quite right.”
As she spoke, her right hand unconsciously landed on her left arm, her fingers digging forcefully into the skin, making creaking sounds. The rotting area was scratched open by her, blood water slowly flowing out along her fingers, yet she seemed to feel nothing.
“A bit itchy.”
The woman said expressionlessly, her fingers moving more forcefully. Lu Jinzhao could see that they had even dug deep into the flesh.
She had been “infected” by something.
The sweating appearance was identical to Xu Ming’s, but her condition was more severe than his. Was it the punishment for breaking the tablet?
Lu Jinzhao calmly advised, “You should go back to see your teammates; they’ll be worried about you.”
She wasn’t sure what this near-“infection” thing was exactly, so to be safe, it was best not to have too much contact with the woman.
She now knew for sure that there were no tablets and that destroying one would lead to misfortune.
As for advising her to go back to her teammates, it was simply throwing this bomb back.
She still remembered the person who had been with the woman at the time. Didn’t that person know about the woman’s plan?
Probing her backer, who might also be from the same city as the woman.
How to handle this obviously off person now could be left to people from her own city to worry about.
Hearing Lu Jinzhao’s words, the woman’s turbid eyes rolled around, her fingers slowly stopping their digging. She lowered her hand, her nail crevices full of bloodstains and minced meat, and said, “Okay.”
The woman turned and left.
“Still retains human thinking, but very sluggish. Pain sensation seems gone, body is rotting, brain enlarged—what does this mean?”
Lu Jinzhao watched her back while thinking.
She turned back into the room. Tian Lei was also preparing to go out. Lu Jinzhao told her what had just happened, then had Tian Lei follow the woman to observe what happened next, while she herself headed in the direction Xu Ming had gone.
Compared to what would happen after the woman returned to her teammates, Lu Jinzhao was more curious about what Xu Ming, whose “infection symptoms” were slightly milder, was doing now and what changes he would undergo.
Perhaps the process of the mutation would yield some information.
As for the woman
She was beyond saving.
Lu Jinzhao made that judgment about her.
Because the village wasn’t big, with Lu Jinzhao’s current skills, finding someone in a place like this was still simple. After all, her speed was fast enough now, and her eyesight sharp enough.
After leaving the small courtyard, she quickly caught up, first seeing the figures of those two from the warehouse. They stood outside a villager’s courtyard, their backs somewhat stiff, not moving at all.
Lu Jinzhao didn’t hide her footsteps and approached quickly.
The two obviously heard her approaching and turned slightly to see it was the passenger. Their grave expressions then relaxed a bit.
What happened?
Lu Jinzhao walked forward and then saw a scene that surprised her a little.
The courtyard door was wide open. Inside the courtyard, one person stood, and one lay on the ground.
The standing one was Xu Ming. He was bathed in blood, his face ferocious, holding a scythe and continuously swinging it downward, while the one lying down… was just an ordinary villager.
Xu Ming was… killing?!
