Chapter 63 – Not ⑨⑨⑧, Just ⑤⑧⑧

The moment Su Lifeng got back to where they had hidden the car, his body suddenly went weak. Still holding Tang Tang in his arms, he toppled into the grass with her.

“Are you okay?” Cheng Xiaomei had still been somewhat dazed and lost, but now she snapped back to herself at once. Anxious, she hurried after him and reached out to support Su Lifeng.

Only then did she realize that Su Lifeng had at least a dozen wounds of varying sizes across his body. He looked badly hurt.

In particular, near his shoulder blades, an “old wound” seemed to have been torn open again, and a great deal of blood was flowing from it.

Thinking back, before those guards appeared, when she had looked in through the window, she seemed to have faintly seen strands of blood-red “light” extending from Su Lifeng’s back. Together, they had looked like wings…

Had this wound been caused when that pair of wings was injured?

Cheng Xiaomei knew that her understanding of Su Lifeng had deepened once again. But at the same time, many more questions had arisen.

“I’m fine. Just some superficial injuries. I’ll be all right after I rest for a bit. Xiaomei, I know now why that change happened to your body.” The first words out of Su Lifeng’s mouth instantly pulled Cheng Xiaomei out of her complicated thoughts.

“Right now, you’ve absorbed a Xenospecies and become a Mutant. While gaining the inhuman power of a Xenospecies, you also inevitably gained one of the Xenospecies’s traits. Absorption. Xenospecies obtain nutrition and evolve by absorbing other living organisms. That’s their instinct. If they remain hungry for too long, driven by instinct, the Xenospecies will take control again and absorb the Mutant itself instead. Just like your current situation. In other words…”

“I have to absorb other living organisms.” Cheng Xiaomei’s body went limp. She sat down on the ground and murmured.

When she saw Su Lifeng nod, Cheng Xiaomei’s face suddenly went pale. In a low voice, she said, “When I accidentally killed the first guard, it was because he was injured, and the Black Thread on my body touched his blood. Then it started absorbing on its own… just like living creatures are born craving food. But I was terrified, so I stopped it right away. After absorbing the blood, though, the Black Thread became much stronger. It was like I hadn’t eaten my fill all this time, so I couldn’t use any strength.

“After that, I couldn’t control how much force I used when I attacked… especially one of them. He saw my face clearly. At that moment, I really did want to kill him…”

Su Lifeng listened quietly without speaking. Perhaps because he had been constantly “facing disasters” since he was young, Su Lifeng felt that he was highly adaptable. He understood very clearly that many things would not simply stop happening just because you wished they would. But he could also understand Cheng Xiaomei’s current confusion, because he had gone through the same thing again and again back then.

“Thank you,” Cheng Xiaomei suddenly said.

“Hm?” Su Lifeng looked up in surprise, only to feel Cheng Xiaomei’s hand brush quickly past his ear.

He had just blinked when he saw an extra blade of grass between Cheng Xiaomei’s fingers. “It’s nothing. I just felt like I should thank you…”

As for those questions, from the moment Su Lifeng opened his mouth, she had already buried them deep in her heart.

“By the way, are you really okay…?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Su Lifeng had absorbed quite a few Mutant organisms, and he was currently digesting and recovering. Although he looked a little miserable on the outside, there really wasn’t anything seriously wrong with him. On the contrary, once he recovered, his strength would definitely be greater than before. He probably was not very far from E-rank now.

Earlier, when faced with Cheng Feiwen’s provocation, Su Lifeng had felt such intense anger for the first time. Holding on to the determination to kill that man no matter what, he had relied entirely on instinct and beaten him to death with his bare hands. Although he had calmed down afterward, the sensation of all the blood in his body boiling with fury still lingered inside Su Lifeng.

“I suppose that was the moment I truly fused the Xenospecies cells with my own.” Su Lifeng thought to himself, “An opportunity like that is something you can only stumble into by chance. In that sense, I really ought to ‘thank’ Cheng Feiwen properly.”

As far as he was concerned, Cheng Feiwen deserved every bit of death he had gotten. In terms of sheer disgust, Su Lifeng might even find him more repulsive than the Xenospecies.

Still, when he thought about how Cheng Feiwen had used the Xenospecies to “create” so many Mutant specimens, Su Lifeng felt there had to be more to the story.

“Judging from what he used on Tang Tang, it was clearly a Xenospecies that had transformed a small animal. But how did he manage to catch a Xenospecies like that?” Su Lifeng was deeply suspicious. Still, everything Cheng Feiwen had been carrying was now in his pockets. Maybe he would find something once he got back and took a closer look.

“We’ll rest for a few minutes, then leave. No telling when those survivors will wake up, but it’s better to be safe. Once what happened here gets exposed, this entire area is definitely going to be sealed off,” Su Lifeng said. Fortunately, Cheng Feiwen had been a deeply calculating man. He had clearly chosen this place after weighing all sorts of factors. Not only were there very few vehicles passing through, there weren’t many surveillance cameras along the road either, saving Su Lifeng a great deal of trouble afterward.

But so many people had died this time. Deep down, Su Lifeng still felt a faint unease…

“Then… what about this little girl?” Cheng Xiaomei glanced at Tang Tang, who was lying off to the side, and asked tentatively. She really wanted to know who this girl was. Surely she had to be someone Su Lifeng knew…

“Her?” Su Lifeng frowned and looked at Tang Tang. After hesitating for a moment, he reached toward the wound on her back and examined it carefully.

Probably because she felt the pain, Tang Tang twitched in her coma.

“It’s healed…” In that case, that animal Xenospecies really had been killed by her. But the Black Thread that emerged afterward seemed to have fallen into Cheng Feiwen’s hands. It was only when the “carnival” began that he theatrically stuffed the Black Thread into Tang Tang’s body.

However, judging from Tang Tang’s reaction, she probably had no idea she would go through something like this. Perhaps in her imagination, or in the way Cheng Feiwen and Xie Yu had embellished it, the process had been made to seem a little more “sacred” rather than so bloody and terrifying.

But only she knew what she had truly been thinking.

“Find her somewhere safe. She’ll wake up on her own,” Su Lifeng said.

“Right… I put some clean clothes in the trunk. Help me get them. And while you’re at it, bring me the gasoline bottle and lighter…”

More than an hour later, Tang Tang’s eyes snapped open in terror. When she suddenly sat up, she was shocked to discover that she was lying on a mattress. Darkness surrounded her. She looked to her left and saw a price tag: Mattress, 50% off, only 588.

This was a furniture store…

Tang Tang shuddered again and hurriedly felt around her own body.

The wound was gone. Only a dull, lingering ache remained on her back.

It was only then that she realized the clothes on her had been changed.

But this oversized T-shirt was probably men’s clothing, right? Unfortunately, it wasn’t long enough. Even if she stood up, it would only barely cover her butt…

“Was it… Lifeng-Ge?” Tang Tang thought, pinching the hem of the shirt.

She vaguely remembered seeing Su Lifeng while she had been half-conscious, but to be honest, she felt she no longer had the face to meet him and his sister again.

Only now, she was facing two much more immediate problems…

“In a few hours, people will come open the store for business. How am I supposed to get out? And… couldn’t they at least have left me a pair of pants?”

In the darkness and silence, Tang Tang curled up and silently hugged her knees…