Something was wrong. The man in white naturally wasn’t stupid enough to rush to the front himself. Instead, he casually pointed at two of the newcomers and ordered them to go ahead and test the waters.
One of them was the young man who had been vomiting uncontrollably when they first arrived.
After being fed to their fill the previous night, the newcomers all seemed somewhat different. There was less fear between their brows and a little more ruthlessness in their expressions.
The young man, however, was still somewhat timid. He had suffered at the hands of those fine, hair-thin demonic vines himself, so he was naturally afraid of them.
“Don’t be afraid. I’ll go with you.”
The speaker was none other than the one-armed man who had stepped forward to help him out of his predicament the previous day.
The man in white didn’t care who went. He merely waved his hand impatiently, his thoughts entirely occupied by the missing fine vines.
Thus, the two men hunched over and slowly approached the “trap” they had set.
“Brother Xu, thank you,” the young man whispered gratefully.
The one-armed man glanced at him and replied, “There’s no need to be so polite between us.”
In truth, as he looked at the young man before him, disheveled and miserable, no longer possessing any of his former arrogance, the one-armed man felt nothing but contempt.
He still remembered the first time they had met here. The young man had been as arrogant as a peacock, relying on the shelter of a powerful family to enjoy the shade. He had been utterly useless, yet had benefited simply because he had been lucky enough to be born into the right family!
Yuan Shaohua was exactly that kind of person. And so was Quan Xiaoyu!
At the thought of Quan Xiaoyu, the one-armed man couldn’t help grinding his teeth in hatred. If not for him, how would Wen Tong have died? How would he have lost an arm?
If Wen Tong were still alive, and if he still had his arm and hadn’t suffered such a reduction in strength, how would anyone dare look down on him? How would he have been forced into the position of obeying that Wei Li, escorting Yuan Shaohua northward and relying on the latter’s connections to seek refuge in the capital with some so-called uncle who held an official position there?
And if they hadn’t left the base, how would they ever have encountered such a terrifying ordeal?
The one-armed man brooded resentfully.
That’s right. He was Jia Lunxu, the man whose arm Quan Xiaoyu had severed outside J City back then. And the young man beside him was none other than Yuan Long’s son, Yuan Shaohua.
After J City fell, they managed to survive. Jia Lunxu followed Master Lei, while Yuan Shaohua followed Cai Yuanhan, and together they helped establish Tianze Base.
Things had been all right at first. Out of consideration for their past relationship, Master Lei had treated Jia Lunxu, who had lost an arm, reasonably well. Yuan Shaohua hadn’t been so fortunate. A foolish young man who had lost his father’s protection was lucky that someone like Cai Yuanhan had even agreed to take him in. How could he expect anything more?
Tianze Base’s development hadn’t remained static, either. As time passed and the base grew stronger, Jia Lunxu received less and less attention. Faced with the increasing number of powerful ability users who joined the base, his presence became weaker and weaker.
In the end, he had fallen from being one of the team’s leaders to becoming an ordinary, low-ranking ability user.
But he was unwilling to accept it!
Having once possessed formidable strength and great ambitions, he could no longer resign himself to an ordinary existence. He wanted to reclaim his former position and rise to the top of the power structure once more.
Yuan Shaohua’s situation was even more miserable. In a world where zombies were growing stronger and ability users were becoming increasingly numerous, an ordinary person without anyone to protect him could barely survive.
He had abandoned all his former pride and dignity, struggling to cling to life.
The arrival of Wei Li and the eldest daughter of the An family marked a turning point in their lives.
After arriving, they spent more than a month secretly working on something with the upper management. Then they began recruiting volunteers within the base.
Both ability users and ordinary people were eligible. The experiment was supposedly capable of awakening abilities and enhancing existing ones, although the results depended on probability. As for the actual success rate, no details were provided.
For the sake of his future prospects, Jia Lunxu had decisively signed up for the experiment. At the time, Yuan Shaohua was also living in dire circumstances and had joined out of sheer necessity.
Only later did they learn that the experiment’s success rate was frighteningly low. Of the one hundred people who participated, only three or four survived. Everyone else had turned into zombies.
Nevertheless, they believed they had uncovered the secret of using zombie crystal cores to upgrade their abilities.
Thus, Wei Li and his people turned their attention to Dawning Base.
Dawning Base had developed far better than they had anticipated. Xiao Ziran had transformed it into a thriving, prosperous place, fortified like an iron fortress.
Because Xiao Ziran disliked them, Tianze Base had attempted to establish contact several times, but no one had responded. Since both sides wanted to develop peacefully, the underhanded schemes lurking in their hearts had ultimately come to nothing. Each base went its own way, and for the time being, they coexisted without incident.
Chu Tian’s return gave Wei Li the impetus he needed to make up his mind to visit Dawning Base.
That man Quan Xiaoyu had recently taken a liking to had returned to Dawning Base in an absolutely spectacular fashion. The entire upper management of Dawning Base, which had previously ignored Tianze, had turned out to welcome him.
When the news reached him, Jia Lunxu felt as though a thorn had been driven viciously into his heart.
Everything seemed to be mocking his own incompetence.
Even Wei Li, who held a lofty position in Tianze Base, had hurried off to visit Dawning Base. After returning, he addressed Chu Tian as “Young Master Chu” at every turn.
And what about himself? Wei Li probably thought that even looking at him was beneath him!
While personally negotiating with Dawning Base, Wei Li had also dispatched a trusted subordinate to deliver certain information to the capital. What exactly this “information” was, Jia Lunxu had no way of knowing.
As a result, Jia Lunxu became one of the people specifically assigned to escort the messenger. The other three survivors of the experiment were also selected, including Yuan Shaohua, who had developed a first-level healing ability.
This was another reason Jia Lunxu had repeatedly tried to cultivate a good relationship with Yuan Shaohua. It wasn’t just because Yuan Shaohua was a healing-type ability user, but also because he had mentioned an uncle who held an official position in the capital.
This was an opportunity.
Jia Lunxu was desperate for opportunities. At present, he was like a drowning man, unwilling to let go of even the slightest chance of survival.
His recollections ended there. Jia Lunxu didn’t dare dwell any further on what had happened to them over the past few days since being captured. He shook his head forcefully.
The “trap” was right in front of them.
Neither man dared to charge directly into the clearing to investigate. Instead, they hid behind a tree and peered through the forest. From where they stood, they could just make out traces of fire damage on the ground.
Had everything been burned away?
At the thought of those fine vines, Jia Lunxu felt his scalp tingle again.
It was true that the things feared fire. Their group had included a fire-type ability user, but the fireballs produced by a level-three ability user hadn’t been enough to burn through them. The vines were simply too fast, and the black mist surrounding them was poisonous.
Aside from fire, those things feared nothing. Once they touched a person’s body, it was over. That was how their entire group had been captured.
And now, some of those demonic creatures were still alive inside their bodies, lurking in their blood vessels. That was how the man in white controlled them!
Jia Lunxu gritted his teeth, slowly stepped out of the forest, and walked toward the place where the trap had been set.
Rather than suffer the man’s torment afterward for being too slow to act, he might as well take the risk and inspect the place properly.
Seeing Jia Lunxu leave the cover of the trees, Yuan Shaohua reached out to stop him. Then, as though suddenly remembering something, he shrank back. He gritted his teeth and hurried after him.
“Huh! Well, look who it is! An old acquaintance!”
Chu Tian and the others were standing atop a tree with a good vantage point, looking down at the small clearing where the battle had taken place the previous night.
The tree’s branches and leaves were dense, making it difficult for anyone to spot them anytime soon, while allowing them to see everything happening below with perfect clarity.
More importantly, Chu Tian had used his mental power to create a mental barrier around their position, preventing others from detecting them through their senses.
That was precisely why the group could speak freely without worrying about being discovered.
“People from Tianze Base!” Xiao Ziran’s expression was so dark it seemed as though water might drip from his face. He had never imagined that the mastermind behind these deeds would be Tianze Base, a place they had always considered beneath their notice and with which they had never wanted to associate.
Quan Xiaoyu’s expression also grew rather complicated when he saw Jia Lunxu appear. He hadn’t expected the man to be so good at staying alive—and somehow, he kept running into him.
At the same time, Quan Xiaoyu glanced nervously at Chu Tian. Fortunately, Chu Tian didn’t display any particularly strong emotional reaction.
“Just because the people are from Tianze doesn’t necessarily mean Tianze is behind this,” Chu Tian said calmly, his eyes fixed on the two men’s movements.
“Oh?” Xiao Ziran looked at Chu Tian questioningly.
“Knowing their character, if they had something like those demonic vines in their hands, they would have used them as leverage to squeeze us dry a long time ago. Why would they have stayed quiet all this time and let us develop without interference?”
“There are so many people joining Tianze every day that they have no shortage of manpower. Why would they need to secretly engage in some kind of missing-person scheme?”
“Then why are these two here?”
“Do you remember how Tianze secretly sent a group of people north some time ago? I still don’t know exactly what was going on, but we’ll have our answer soon enough.” Chu Tian lifted his chin toward the people below.
After searching the area several times and confirming that there was no danger, Jia Lunxu sent a signal to the man in white.
The others then emerged from the forest together.
When the man in white saw the charred earth ahead, he let out an enraged roar. At the same time, however, he could tell from the extent of the burned area that the fire hadn’t been intense enough to destroy all his fine vines.
So where had the remaining vines gone?