“Big… Brother?”

The feeling of being swept away by memories was simply too painful. Wen Chu curled up all his tentacles uncomfortably, turning into a round ball.

He unconsciously murmured to the person in his memory.

So familiar, yet so strange.

Was this his memory?

Xiu frowned at the curled-up tentacle ball, hesitated again and again, but still reached out and poked it: “Hey, what’s wrong with you?”

Wen Chu suddenly broke free from the memory.

He looked dazedly at the blond mercenary in front of him, stared blankly for a while, then abruptly said: “I’ll give you some treatment.”

Xiu: ?

Xiu intuitively felt that this treatment wasn’t anything proper and immediately wanted to refuse: “No…”

The rest of his words were swallowed by the tentacles sticking to him.

Wen Chu directly wrapped the blond mercenary firmly with his two tentacles.

The slime of the tentacles stroked every inch of the other party’s exposed skin, bringing a sticky, cold, and strange sensation.

Xiu had just been dragged into the cave and f*cked around, and was forced to be pregnant with tentacles twice. He was extremely sensitive right now and reacted immediately.

“Mmh!”

He wanted to break free, but having been completely drained of his strength just now, he couldn’t use any ability at all. With his whole body aching, he was even more unable to shake off the restraints of the tentacles.

He could only lie awkwardly on the ground, entangled by the hideous tentacles.

If this continued, he would really die.

Xiu gritted his teeth, looking at his strangely bulging pregnant belly, and already had thoughts of self-destructing and fighting to the death.

However, just then, he suddenly felt the wounds on his body beginning to heal slowly.

Even the most indescribable places gradually lost the soreness from excessive use.

Xiu widened his eyes in astonishment, looking at the tentacle monster in front of him that had clearly shrunk by a circle: “What are you doing?”

After finishing the treatment, Wen Chu climbed down from Xiu’s body with splattering sounds, carefully feeling the mental connection with the other party that had strengthened significantly again, and answered casually: “Giving you treatment.”

Incidentally, strengthening their mental connection.

Although completely controlling someone like Xiu would require at least a few thousand treatments to possibly achieve, after this treatment, the originally faint mental thread that could break at any time became more solid.

Wen Chu was also able to feel Xiu’s emotions more clearly and catch a glimpse of the other party’s partial memories.

He didn’t notice Xiu’s gaze suddenly becoming much more complicated and silently began to examine the other party’s most superficial memories.

The memories here were only hazy fragments, but enough for Wen Chu to see a blond man standing on the ruins with a child beside him who looked no more than ten years old.

Wen Chu felt he had found the truth.

It turned out he had absorbed too much of Xiu’s power at once just now and accidentally saw Xiu’s memories.

Scared him to death; almost thought he was human.

Wen Chu couldn’t tell if he was relieved or tense again. He slowly moved to the corner to curl up again and said sarcastically: “Treatment done. Rest quickly. Stop thinking about people while looking at the moon here.”

Xiu: …?

Xiu was baffled: “Who am I thinking about?”

Wen Chu continued sarcastically: “You know it yourself. Anyway, don’t think about running. You must give birth to all the tentacles for me before I can consider letting you go.”

Lying to Xiu; he wouldn’t let him go.

Let Xiu go so he could reunite with his little husband?

The mutated plants he worked so hard to grow were destroyed in an instant. He didn’t want Xiu to destroy everything and run away to live a happy life ever after.

Thinking this, Wen Chu added: “Otherwise, go accompany those teammates of yours.”

Xiu was stunned for a moment before realizing who the “teammates” Wen Chu referred to were.

He didn’t have the strength to bicker with Wen Chu now, and even inexplicably yielded a bit because of the treatment just now, explaining helplessly: “Those aren’t my teammates; they are enemies I want to kill.”

Wen Chu was stunned: “Enemies?”

Xiu lowered his eyes: “Mn.”

Anyway, he couldn’t go back in a short time. With his current strange appearance with a belly, even if he killed Wen Chu and went back, he would be heavily scrutinized when entering the base for inspection, thereby losing the chance to approach those people.

Xiu sighed, suppressing the unwillingness and pain in his heart, and said calmly: “Not only them, but the current base leader of the Ability User Base, the president of the Ability User Association, and all the captains of the ability user squads are enemies I want to kill.”

Wen Chu was dumbfounded: “Why do you have so many enemies?”

Xiu opened his mouth, not knowing where to start for a moment.

After a long while, he said: “They killed my younger brother.”

Wen Chu was astonished.

The child he saw in the memory just now actually died?

He felt he seemed to have said something wrong and was a little at a loss, while also harboring a secret, more indescribable emotion.

If he died, then Xiu was alone.

So it wasn’t a husband raised from childhood, but a late husband.

Wen Chu tried to keep his voice steady and asked: “What did they do?”

Xiu pursed his lips.

He didn’t really want to recall this memory, but at this moment, sharing a room with this strange monster and looking at the bright moon in the sky, he couldn’t help but start reminiscing.

“At that time, the apocalypse had just begun. Mutated plants hadn’t evolved to an unstoppable level, so the main threat we faced was wandering zombies.”

“I was a mercenary before the apocalypse. Although I didn’t awaken abilities after the apocalypse, I could survive safely with firearms.”

“Later, during a supply search, I picked up a child—”

As Xiu spoke, the appearance of the child appeared before his eyes.

About ten years old, wearing an ill-fitting small cloak, with a pair of round, beautiful blue eyes.

When seeing him, the child was tiptoeing to take banknotes from the cash register, widening his eyes in astonishment instantly, like a frightened kitten.

The hood fell, revealing a childishly beautiful face and snow-white long hair.

Xiu, who intended to pass by, stopped.

Too beautiful.

Beautiful, frail, harmless. Such a child couldn’t survive in the apocalypse at all.

…If he didn’t save him, the next time he came, he might see the child’s corpse.

Xiu paused in his steps, but finally followed his heart, turned around, and grabbed the white-haired child.

“Kid? What’s your name?” Xiu asked in Chinese first.

The white-haired kid blinked his azure eyes at him, blank and helpless.

Xiu asked again in German and English respectively, but the other party still didn’t react.

Finally, when speaking Swedish, the white-haired child’s eyes lit up, stammering out broken syllables.

Xiu didn’t understand.

His Swedish was limited to simple daily words like “Hello” and “Thank you.” He gestured and made up words to ask why the other party was here.

The child opened his palm to him, revealing the banknotes in his palm, and whispered a word.

“Eat.”

…Dummy.

He didn’t know which couple came for tourism and happened to run into the zombie apocalypse, leaving such a small child wandering in a foreign land without understanding the language.

Xiu reaffirmed his determination to take the other party away.

He explained to the other party that it wasn’t something to eat and stuffed a piece of chocolate into his hand.

Looking at the child’s suddenly brightening eyes and the empty supermarket that had long been looted, Xiu sighed and took his only harvest—a child—back to the temporary camp.

He also raided a bookstore on the way and brought home a Swedish dictionary.

Speaking up to here, Xiu suddenly stopped.

“And then?” Wen Chu listened quietly and couldn’t help asking.

“And then…” Xiu’s eyelashes trembled. “I raised him for a year. One day he suddenly started awakening an ability and had a high fever for three days.”

“Antipyretics, physical cooling, crystal cores, I tried them all. There were no hospitals outside. At that time, the Ability User Base had begun to take shape, so I took him to the Ability User Base, wanting to find a doctor to take a look.”

“But after handing him over to the doctor, I waited outside the emergency room for a day and a night. The news I finally received was that rescue efforts failed and he died.”

Xiu’s tone suddenly became agitated: “How could he die? When I sent him there, except for the fever, all his bodily functions were normal. He could even eat food. I raised him so healthily that year; how could he suddenly die after just one day?”

“I didn’t believe it and demanded to see the body, but was refused by the dean and thrown out of the hospital directly by the ability user squad.”

Wen Chu listened to Xiu’s words in a daze.

He should have gloated; after all, the person who caused him such misery was actually living miserably too.

But for some reason, with Xiu’s words, countless sourness and throbbing pain surged in his heart.

“Later, I infiltrated the city again, squatted near the hospital for three days, and finally discovered the underground passage from the Ability User Base hospital to the laboratory.”

“I traced it all the way to the laboratory and only found his body in the morgue next to the laboratory.”

As Xiu spoke, he took out a metal nameplate from his chest pocket.

“This is the number placed next to his body.”

Wen Chu moved slowly over and leaned in to take a look.

It was a rectangular metal nameplate, shining with a cold silver light under the moonlight, with “Subject 001” written on it.

“He was taken for experiments?” Wen Chu couldn’t help saying.

Xiu gave a “Mn”.

“I investigated for four years and figured out all the intricate connections within the Ability User Base. The base leader and the president of the Ability User Association colluded with the hospital dean. All outsiders sent to the hospital, as long as they awakened rare abilities, would ‘die’.”

“These ostensibly dead ability users were sent to the laboratory for human experiments, fusion experiments between ability users and mutated plants, limit tests on ability users… And ability users who died in experiments would have their crystal cores dug out. The energy in their crystal cores would be made into energy supplements and sent to ability user squads to improve their strength.”

“I sorted out the intricate relationships between them, recorded the people who deserved to die one by one, and waited another four years until finally waiting for this general election, so I entered the Ability User Base as an independent mercenary a year in advance.”

Xiu calmed down again, his voice cold.

“According to my plan, I would find a reason to leave the city a few days before the election to lower their vigilance, then detonate the bombs hidden in the laboratory and ability user squads on the day of the election, make everything public, and execute these people personally.”

“Just that now…”

Xiu looked at his tattered clothes and slightly protruding lower abdomen, whispering softly: “…Forget it, maybe this is fate.”

“Regarding your matter, I am very sorry. I didn’t know the mutated plants here were all yours at the beginning; I was just hunting normally. Those few people were the captain and vice-captain of the first ability user squad and the base leader’s son. I intended to take this opportunity to eliminate them, but I didn’t expect to involve you.”

“It’s not that I’m unwilling to compensate you, it’s just that I still have things unfinished.”

Wait until he killed all his enemies; even if Wen Chu wanted his life then, he wouldn’t care.

Wen Chu felt slightly sour hearing this, then stubbornly said: “Playing the emotional card with me is useless.”

Xiu smiled bitterly: “I know.”

If talking about feelings with a monster was useful, he would have said it earlier; how could he have been dragged in and f*cked by this guy for so long.

Wen Chu was even more displeased.

Xiu didn’t refute him, acting resigned to fate; what did that mean?

He didn’t bully him.

Wen Chu asked stiffly: “When is the election?”

Xiu said: “Seven o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“Oh.”

Wen Chu asked as if casually, didn’t continue this topic, but instead said sourly: “You liked that kid so much? Eight years, and you still insist on avenging him.”

A trace of confusion appeared in Xiu’s gaze: “I don’t know.”

When he picked up Wen Chu, he was only nineteen himself.

As a mercenary without nationality, wandering in the gray areas, Xiu never felt there was any difference before and after the apocalypse.

Just that the people to kill turned into zombies.

Until picking up that child.

He, who had always just been getting by, suddenly had a new meaning in life.

The child was very pretty. He had to find clean water to wash him clean every day, learn a new language to communicate with him. The compressed biscuits and energy bars originally stockpiled were too monotonous in nutrition; he should find some clean fresh vegetables and meat, and learn to cook for him following recipes.

While raising the child, Xiu was also re-understanding the world.

A year after the apocalypse arrived, he finally understood what life should be like.

Comfortable accommodation, clean meals, accompanying family…

But just as he possessed all this, the dream was shattered by the Ability User Base.

It had been too long. The white-haired child’s face had long blurred in his memory. Xiu couldn’t even distinguish whether he was persistently wanting to avenge the other party, or if hatred had become all the meaning for his survival.

Anyway, no matter what, one thing was certain.

He couldn’t forget him.

Thinking of the child who listened to him too much, being left alone at home and resolutely not talking to strangers, ending up having his food snatched by a roommate sharing the temporary camp without knowing to talk back, Xiu’s gaze couldn’t help softening a bit.

“He was so stupid and had no family, couldn’t even say his own name clearly. If even I don’t avenge him, then he really is dead.”

All alone, a small skeleton lying in the morgue.

He couldn’t even take his bones away because it would be discovered by the base, causing alarm.

Wen Chu had nothing to say.

He mumbled: “Then you are really affectionate and righteous.”

Xiu hooked his lips into a smile, noncommittal.

He poked the transparent little ball: “Anyway, thank you for listening to me say all this. Please take me to find some food tomorrow; if I don’t eat, I’ll starve to death.”

Wen Chu gave an awkward “Oh” and moved away a little.

Someone with another man in his heart shouldn’t poke him.

Xiu looked amusingly at this transparent ball, gently placing his hand on his lower abdomen.

Things were messed up like this anyway, irretrievable, so he was a bit resigned.

The tentacle monster in front of him obviously didn’t intend to let him go.

Just as well, he didn’t really want to continue living either. Dying like this wasn’t a bad ending.

Xiu was a little tired.

Although the physical injuries were healed, the mental exhaustion couldn’t be dispelled. He slowly closed his sore eyes.

“I’ll rest first. See you tomorrow.”

Wen Chu didn’t reply to him.

Wen Chu curled up in the corner for a while.

One moment it was memory fragments, the next it was Xiu’s dim expression. He curled up his tentacles irritably, and uncurled them even more irritably after a while.

So annoying, the bad guy pretending to be pitiful on purpose.

He slept after pretending to be pitiful, but how could he sleep.

Wen Chu slapped the ground with his tentacles in anger, and finally crawled out of the cave with splattering sounds using two tentacles.

Wasn’t it just failing to kill people? being so depressed. He would go kill the people tonight and bring their heads to Xiu.

Humans were really pretentiously dying.

Thinking this, seeing his lonely two tentacles under the moonlight, Wen Chu’s originally spirited momentum suddenly weakened again.

It seemed killing people like this wasn’t very easy.

The transparent tentacles twisted in conflict, and finally stingily pulled the connection threads, summoning the mutated plants and animals he had tamed over the years.

Only summoned one-third.

Not meaning any heartache, mainly because one-third should be enough.

This wasn’t a face-to-face fight, but a night raid.

Wen Chu looked at the mutated creeper climbing in front of him, countless red fire ants pouring out of the ant nest, bees flying with buzzing sounds, mutated bamboos rising from the ground, etc., and waved his tentacle: “Go! To the Ability User Base!”

Saying this, he jumped onto the back of a mutated rat that came upon hearing the sound.

The mutated rat was the size of a piglet, more than enough to carry him.

Receiving Wen Chu’s order, it let out a sharp “squeak” and led a mighty group of animals and plants, quietly approaching the Ability User Base.

.

Ability User Base.

3:00, four hours before the general election at seven tomorrow morning.

People who had been busy preparing for a day had fallen asleep, leaving only the ability user squads on night patrol.

A patrolling ability user yawned: “It’s so late, why hasn’t the captain come back yet? Didn’t he say he would be back in the afternoon to participate in the general election tomorrow?”

Another ability user looked around, then leaned over sneakily: “Let me tell you, according to the news I found out, the captain went out with Chen Yaozu this time to—”

He made a throat-slitting gesture.

The ability user listening to gossip widened his eyes, sleepiness gone, and almost exclaimed: “What about Xiu?”

“Of course also—”

The other ability user gave a “you know” look.

“So I suspect our captain might have come back long ago, but because he knew too much, he was silenced by the president.”

“Hiss—” The ability user listening to gossip sucked in a breath of cold air.

After a while, he realized something was wrong: “How do you know?”

The other ability user took it for granted: “The president is my brother-in-law.”

The ability user listening to gossip: …

Okay, he wondered why this person advanced so fast.

So he had a president brother-in-law; the enhancement potions were probably smashed at him by the box.

Just as he was thinking about how to curry favor with this connection in the future, he suddenly heard rustling sounds from under his feet.

“What noise?”

He looked down, and then saw the most unforgettable scene of his life—

Countless rats, cockroaches, and ants swarmed out from every crack.

Manhole covers were flipped by rats, countless black masses of cockroaches surged out of sewer openings, and countless ants were in the cracks of the road.

These rats were just ordinary mutated animals, at most second rank, but they were densely packed like an invading army, their eyes glowing with eerie red light in the dark night.

“Mutated animal attack!! Sound the alarm quickly!!” The night-shift ability user quickly pressed the communication button while running towards the alarm.

However.

“Boom—”

Before he could run to the alarm, he was knocked to the ground by a sky-rocketing explosion.

In the distance, in the direction of the ability user squad, firelight lit up, illuminating the dark night.

“Boom—Boom—”

Several more continuous explosions woke up the sleeping people from their dreams.

People then saw.

Under the burning fire, wherever the sewers were connected in their homes, there were densely packed cockroaches and rats, still surging out constantly.

“Ah!!”

Screams resounded through the night. Black ravens hovered over the Ability User Base like dark clouds blocking the sun. Their hoarse cries and the buzzing of bees converged into a prelude to slaughter.

Black feathers fell, and bamboo roots quietly spread to the base of the city wall.

New bamboo shoots broke through the earth, cracking the stones of the city wall.

The Ability User Base leader and the president came out upon hearing the noise, their expressions changing drastically upon seeing the scene before them.

“How can there be so many mutated animals?”

“The laboratory exploded? Who is it?!?”

.

Outside the city, the culprit Wen Chu was crawling darkly with his tentacles, drilling into the rat hole pushed out by bamboo shoots at the corner of the city wall with the rats.

Night raid; didn’t care how much damage was caused, just causing chaos was enough.

The mutated animals and plants in his forest were all carefully raised, with levels much higher than those outside. Wen Chu directly controlled these animals to summon their kin, carrying out indiscriminate attacks on the Ability User Base.

Fifty cockroaches weren’t scary, but five million densely packed cockroaches were a disaster.

Not to mention rats, bees, and a series of other existences. It could be said that in the current Ability User Base, the number of mutated animals could reach more than a hundred times the number of people.

Many ants could bite an elephant to death. Plus, he controlled the animals to trigger the bombs Xiu buried in advance, making it even more chaotic.

“I’m really a genius.” Wen Chu was proud.

But no one around echoed his words, only the creeper silently climbing up the city wall shook its leaves.

Now wasn’t the time to care about so much. Controlling so many animals was already strenuous for Wen Chu. He quickly crawled into the city.

Had to be faster.

If he had ten tentacles, a mere fifty-plus types of animals and plants would be nothing.

But now he only had two tentacles, and they were shrinking constantly with the use of power.

If they shrank to nothing, he wouldn’t be able to maintain the tentacle monster form.

He had no way of knowing what terrible appearance he would turn into after losing the tentacle monster form.

Wen Chu looked up at the bright moon.

After all, he was a monster living in the forbidden zone since he had memories.