Chapter 105 – No Matter How You Look at It, He Doesn’t Look Human

The moment Gouzi opened his eyes, he nearly scared his soul right out of his body. Su Lifeng’s terrifyingly sharp Bone Wings were less than a centimeter from his neck. But that wasn’t the worst of it… After all, this was not the first time Su Lifeng had attacked him when he was completely unprepared. What truly left Gouzi dumbstruck was the fact that a layer of black fur had appeared all over his body…

“Ah! Ah…!” Gouzi pointed at himself, so frightened he could barely speak.

“Here.” Su Lifeng very kindly opened the front-facing camera on his phone and held it up in front of Gouzi.

Gouzi was still completely unprepared. After staring at himself on the screen for two seconds, he suddenly let out a bloodcurdling scream. “Aaaah!”

Two tufts of black fur had sprouted on his cheeks, and his ears were noticeably misshapen.

Combined with the hair now covering his entire body, Gouzi felt that he looked a little like a rat, a little like an actual dog, or maybe something like a bear. No matter how he looked at it, he just didn’t look human.

Su Lifeng stared at the corpse for a while, then said, “Its genes may really have incorporated rat genes, but this layer of fur on you is an unexpected bonus. It should be the portion of those genes that was absorbed by it but never manifested as an external trait. At the very least, it gives you a layer of defense, doesn’t it?”

Gouzi wanted to cry but had no tears. He did not think this so-called layer of defense would be of any use against Su Lifeng. Of course, after becoming one of the Mutants, Gouzi had also gained a much deeper understanding of Su Lifeng’s tremendous strength, as well as the gap between him and ordinary Xenospecies. Gouzi could now be considered one of the ordinary Mutants himself, but in front of Su Lifeng, he was no different from those ordinary Xenospecies. He had no ability to resist whatsoever.

“As long as I don’t compare myself to Su-Ge, having some ability to keep myself alive against ordinary Xenospecies is already enough to be satisfied with.” Gouzi immediately felt perfectly content.

In fact, after looking a few more times, he even felt that his current appearance had a certain style to it…

“Also, I think your ears may have some use too,” Su Lifeng went on. “When I attacked you just now, I was aiming for the front of your neck, but you actually dodged. Granted, it was just a casual attack, but that kind of reaction speed really does count as sharp.”

When it came to matters of life and death, Su Lifeng did not bother with polite words. As for Gouzi, although hearing the words “casual attack” made him observe another moment of silence for his current weakness, he still said quite readily, “I’ll try it out.”

He twitched his ears and listened for a while, then said, “It seems like that’s really the case. I feel like my hearing has improved a lot.”

“What do you hear?” Su Lifeng asked.

“I hear a lot of people running over there, but I’m not completely sure. There’s a lot of noise in my ears, and gunshots, wind, stuff like that.” As Gouzi spoke, he hesitantly raised his hand and pointed in another direction.

Su Lifeng looked in the direction he was pointing, and his pupils instantly contracted.

In the Precognitive Vision, he had vaguely seen a building outside through the “window.” Su Lifeng had originally planned to use that building as a landmark to search by, but if Gouzi had not suddenly pointed out this spot, it probably would have taken him quite a while to truly notice the building’s position. There was no helping it. The buildings were packed too densely together.

“No, your ears aren’t deceiving you. I think you’ve found them,” Su Lifeng said, a rare flicker of undisguised killing intent flashing through his eyes.

…At the security entrance on one side of that building.

“Hurry, hurry.” The mayor was urging them on in a rush. After his mutation, he ran extremely fast and moved with remarkable agility. It was impossible to tell that he was already in his fifties.

Not far behind him was the bureau chief. Just like before, the bureau chief kept his head lowered and said nothing, though his expression was clearly much uglier than it had been at the television station.

The ones farther behind and the ones leading the way up front were obviously all Xenospecies.

“When exactly is Ren Xiaoying coming? Didn’t we agree that she would come pick us up once we got here?” The mayor rushed to the entrance in a few quick strides and immediately breathed a sigh of relief, but then asked uneasily.

The Xenospecies standing off to the side had half her face transformed into constantly writhing tentacles, each more than a meter long. The other half, however, looked no different from an ordinary person’s. Whenever she spoke, gray powder sprayed from her mouth. After giving the mayor an indifferent look, she said coldly, “Zhang Huazhu, you don’t need to keep rushing us.”

“I’m just worried something might go wrong. To be honest, hearing all that gunfire has me panicking too.” Zhang Huazhu was clearly still a little afraid when speaking to this Xenospecies, and his attitude had turned much more ingratiating.

“Wasn’t this situation already within expectations? We can use this opportunity to see just how much combat power your human armies and weapons actually have inside a city. As for the Wisdom Species, you don’t need to worry about her. Her strength is beyond anything you can imagine. If these troops were truly as powerful as they are during their field drills, that would be one thing, but in a restricted place like this, they can’t stop the Wisdom Species,” the female Xenospecies said coldly.

So she still hadn’t given him a definite time… Zhang Huazhu grumbled inwardly, but on the surface, he kept smiling and nodding. “Yes, of course. Absolutely.”

Unfortunately, the Xenospecies weren’t buying it. He could smile all he wanted, but the female Xenospecies and the others around her did not so much as change their expressions.

“Enough of that. We brought you here. It’s time you gave us the list you promised,” the female Xenospecies said.

“There’s no rush on that, is there? What we agreed on wasn’t quite like this…” Zhang Huazhu said.

At that moment, the director suddenly snapped back to his senses. “List? What list?”

“Oh, right. You don’t know yet.” The mayor turned to him with a smile and said, “In order to secure better protection for the two of us, I had no choice but to make a new deal with them…”

“What list?!” The director’s breathing suddenly grew rapid as he pressed him for an answer.

Zhang Huazhu chuckled. “All right, all right, don’t get so worked up. I know you feel guilty because you just killed a police officer, but, my friend…”

“I asked you what list, damn it!” Li Yao grabbed Zhang Huazhu by the collar, pressed his pistol against Zhang Huazhu’s forehead, and said with his face flushed red, “I didn’t kill him on purpose! But you! You’re outright helping the Xenospecies hurt people!”

“Li Yao, don’t you want to protect your old mother? Your wife and children?” With the gun barrel pressed to his forehead, the corner of Zhang Huazhu’s eye twitched. He immediately barked the question in a stern voice.

Li Yao froze. His expression gradually dimmed, and he slowly loosened his grip.

“That’s more like it. Think about it. If those people were really worth dying for, why didn’t they protect us properly from the start? Shortage of manpower? That’s all a lie. In the end, they simply didn’t trust us, and they never planned to waste resources on us. Otherwise, why was the one acting alongside Lv Zifeng the man surnamed Wang instead of you? Think about it…”

But at that moment, Li Yao suddenly stiffened. Then, in disbelief, his eyes widened as he stared at Zhang Huazhu in front of him.

Pfft!

Zhang Huazhu pulled his hand out of Li Yao’s abdomen, then took out a handkerchief and wiped it clean. As Li Yao collapsed to the ground, the earnest, well-meaning expression on Zhang Huazhu’s face vanished as well. “The reason is that you don’t have Deputy Director Wang’s decisiveness. You’re irresolute and weak-willed. You’ll never accomplish anything great. Since you’ve already done what should and shouldn’t be done, why keep acting so conflicted? You’re only making a fool of yourself!”

Zhang Huazhu crumpled the bloodstained handkerchief into a ball and threw it onto Li Yao’s face.

Li Yao was still gripping his gun, but there was no longer any chance of raising it. The other man had reached straight into his body, grabbed his internal organs, and crushed them…

“Zhang…”

Li Yao’s mouth hung open, and his eyes gradually began to lose focus. Through the blur, he heard Zhang Huazhu turn to the female Xenospecies and say, “It shouldn’t matter that I killed him, right?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Then let’s discuss the list inside. Looking at him here just feels unlucky…”