“However, the trajectory isn’t as precise as I wanted to be…” Upon checking the hole, he found that the position of the hole was lower than where he aimed – this meant that the trajectory was curved. Since the crossbow was already much heavier than guns, it was harder to aim. Also, the weight of the bolt also altered the trajectory. If it was to be used in close combat, it could cause more harm than a gun, without a doubt. However, if the bolt needed to fly more than 50 meters, the effect would be significantly reduced.
Fortunately, in the shrouded fog, even Chang himself could barely see beyond 8 meters. Therefore, anything beyond 50 meters was out of his consideration.
The most important thing he needed to do now was to test out the properties of the bolts and to operate the crossbow fluently. Before sunset, he made countless holes on the same tree. Of course, if the tree was mutated and acted aggressively, Chang would have been easily torn apart before he even dared to make a second hole.
It was a pity that the evolutionary pace of this tree was much slower than the one he previously encountered – it didn’t turn into a horrifying monster and remained a stout tree.
The whole afternoon practice helped Chang learn how to wind the crossbow as fast as he could, as well as distinguish the functions of long and short bolts. He could now make a relatively accurate shot within 10 meters; everything seemed too smooth to believe.
The sky gradually became darker and Chang could see less and less in the dense red fog. When Chang could no longer see beyond three meters, he packed up the crossbow and took all the bolts back from the tree. Walking in the world of red and black, the fog slowly flew by his body, and he felt like a rat in a soup pot.
As Chang approached his dorm room on the first floor, his sensitive nose noticed a hint of a familiar reek from the room. Then, his heart sunk – this stench meant that there was a corpse in his room, and a corpse meant that someone had died. What was worse was that a person died in his room.
Chang already had an idea of who had died.
As he pushed open the door, he saw a corpse covered with a bed sheet lying on the bed of the family of three. The sheet covered most of her body and only her head was exposed in the air. Beside the body was another old man lying on a bed, bit his breathing wasn’t any better than the lifeless body; he was truly at the gates of death.
The person guarding the bed was their daughter. She never spoke anything when living in this dorm room, and at this moment, she straddled on the edge of the bed like a puppet, emotionless and tearless. No one could tell whether she was sad or not from her face. She just occasionally wiped off the sweat from her father’s forehead.
Even though she hid the sadness in her face, her behavior sold her emotions.
“…” Chang sighed heavily before walking into the room, and the corpse exuded an intense reeking stench as he expected. He walked passed the family and sat on his own bed. A surge of compassion and sadness raised from the bottom of his heart.
Last night, Chang was still hesitating whether or not he should give his bed to one of her parents, but today the girl’s mother had passed away. He wasn’t sad about her death, but rather in his own actions – if he showed his kindness last night, even though it wouldn’t prevent their deaths, it could still provide warmth at the end of their lives.
However, if he let one of her parents sleep on his bed, he would have had a restless night. Would he have been able to escape from the attacks of the giant dog? Would he still be able to sit on his bed right now?
While Chang was struggling, a hand patted on his shoulder.
It was Qing Shui.
“Come with me,” Qing Shui said. He took out a crumpled pack of cigarettes and took two from the pack, handing one to Chang.
Staring at the cigarette, Chang noticed that even the dried tobacco had molded slightly in this terrible world; the white cigarette paper had turned green and yellow, causing him to recall the old man lying on the bed.
“Come on.”
“Okay.”
They didn’t talk much; each holding a cigarette, they walked away from the depressing atmosphere.
They leaned on the wall in the hallway. Chang lit his cigarette and said, “Do you know when was the last time I ever lit a cigarette?”
“I don’t know.”
“It was when I found out that Tao was dead.” Chang touched the finger bone necklace on his chest and said, “On the first day of the red fog, Tao asked me for a cigarette, but I didn’t have any. We went out together to look for antibiotics, but then…. then we took the pills together. I survived, but he died. When I woke up beside his body, I lit one for him.”
Chang inhaled the smoke deeply.
“Are you sad when you saw one of her parent dead?” Qing Shui didn’t comment on Chang’s story, but instead glanced at him and asked something else.
“A little bit, but I wouldn’t say I was sad…” Chang thought again and said, “It was more like compassion; after all, I don’t know them at all.”
“Compassion…that’s a good term. But this is exactly what I want to talk to you about.” Qing Shui said, “I just want to let you know that you shouldn’t be sentimental and show too much sympathy. It will demotivate you.”
“Why?” Chang was confused.
“Because sympathizing for the weak, in essence is betraying nature.” After a brief moment of silent, Qing Shui’s words made Chang speechless.
Qing Shui then added more as he felt like his statement wasn’t strong enough “What kind of world do you think we are living in? It’s no longer a society of order and discipline, and you should know this. It’s all about natural selection now; the fit will survive. The decision you made last night was absolutely right, so don’t let this kind of incident affect your judgment. Next time, you shouldn’t be affected by sympathy or compassion and make a wrong decision! After all, we can’t stop those who are doomed to be eliminated by nature. I don’t want you to end like that.”
“…”
Qing Shui’s words made Chang lost in thought.
“Thank you…” Shortly after, Chang nodded his head and gave Qing Shui a bitter smile. “But if I don’t even have sympathy and compassion, isn’t that a betrayal of humanity?”
“Don’t think too much about humanity; it’s just a philosophical concept. As long as you live on, you aren’t betraying yourself, your family, Pang Zi, Jing and me. More importantly, you won’t betray your own life.”
As Qing Shui finished his speech, he threw the cigarette butt on the ground and stepped on it. He left Chang in the hallway and entered the dorm room.
Chapter 40: Deadly evolution
This was the first time Chang saw Qing Shui show such strong emotions and speak in such a forceful tone. The Qing Shui he knew was exactly like the meaning of his name – as calm as still water. Expressing such emotions, Chang felt that those words weren’t only for him, but also to numb Qing Shui himself.
“It seems like he’s also feeling the pressure of his morality.” Chang sighed and threw away the cigarette butt.
He opened the door slowly and walked to his own bed. The door was opened again – it was two soldiers and the mother of the family of four.
When the woman showed up with two soldiers behind her, she started yelling, “See, I told you someone died in our dorm. It’s been more than 2 hours and she still hasn’t decided to bury her mother. How can she do that? I can bear the stench, but what if it spreads a disease? Who else would be willing to live in here?”
Chang glanced between the woman and the daughter; her body showed a sign of shock and eventually she started talking.
“I just want to stay with my mom longer.” She said as she looked at the bloated corpse again.
“Miss.” One of the soldiers frowned, “We completely understand why you want to accompany your mother, but right now the situation is urgent; please hand over the body to us. As you know, a large epidemic is usually followed by a disaster, and leaving the body here can easily s
pread the plague.”
“We also received a command from our captain – dead bodies are to be forcibly cremated. I hope you understand the policy and cooperate with us.” As they said, they stood there quietly to wait for the daughter’s reaction.
However, the soldiers waited more than two minutes and the daughter still didn’t move an inch, so one of the soldiers helped her up and the other came up and dragged her mother’s body away.
Oddly, the daughter didn’t struggle at all, but she began to sob. She didn’t cry loudly; streams of tears ran down her shallow eyes.
The other soldier didn’t look at her too much, nor did he speak. He wore two layers of rubber gloves and grabbed on the body’s ankle, pulling the body to the edge of the bed. He did it professionally – apparently, he had handle quite a lot of corpses these days.
But just as he was going to lift the body into the body bag, the old man on the bed suddenly moved.
He started to tremble and turned his face to the soldier who was going to carry away his wife’s body. The old man stared at her body and shed tears. After he stared at the body for a while, he opened his mouth widely, and a loud “Ahhhh—” sound came from his throat.
Hearing this heartbreaking mourning, Chang knew that the old man was dying too. This was his last breath, and it quieted down as he approached death.
Sure enough, the old man uttered a burp-like sound as his last syllable. Then, he lost all signs of life.
The soldiers were stunned by his death for a good minute. The one who was holding the daughter went up to the bed to examine his pupils and pulse. A moment after, he shook his head to the young woman, and then helped his partner lift up the body to the body bag.
“So this is what the apocalypse looks like…” The scene reminded Chang of his father; he was afraid to look at the daughter’s face. He dropped onto his bed, and clutching his father’s finger bone, he let his mind wander as far as it could.
He was afraid to look at the young woman’s face because he felt that it could be him in the future – as he got to know more about this world, he clearly knew that the chance that his parents were still alive was extremely low. However, he didn’t want to believe it, so he didn’t look at her face.
Unfortunately, humans had exceptional imagination. The more he repressed his thoughts, the more likely those thoughts would appear in his mind; they harassed his mind in the most uncomfortable way. From the death of this old couple, he thought of the death of his own parents. From the word “death”, he thought of corpses, and then zombies, the walking dead.
He used to read a lot of zombie fiction in the past, and he sometimes wondered why people would be scared by such creatures. In this cruel moment, he understood the reality that he never wanted to face – the reason why humans feared zombie more than tigers was probably due to the fear of seeing how they would look after they die.
Carrying these chaotic thoughts, Chang didn’t know when and how he fell asleep. A day full of danger and complicated emotions had passed in this way.
Today, he starved… he wondered… he almost died and cried, but he also laughed and ate until he was full… it seemed like the emotions he experienced in one day in the apocalypse was more than what he ever felt in the past ten years. Chang never knew that all these strong emotions could burst out altogether when he witnessed death. He felt that these feelings would continue to linger on for many days.
During the next few days, Chang went out for hunting in the daytime and when he came back, he always saw bodies being thrown into a large temporary cremation furnace in the courtyard. Within a few days, more than half of the humans in this base had died – hunger and disease finally struck this area coldheartedly.
The first two days, the elderly and the children were the first group to die; the former was weak from aging and the latter was weak due to undeveloped immune systems. Their bodies were thrown into the flames and turned into ashes accompanied with the cries of their loved ones.
And in the following three or four days, the grim reaper’s scythe visited adults and adolescents. Those who were not strong enough also died at this time. For the survivors in this game with death, they gradually adapted to the environment, and some of the lucky ones even acquired abilities. Firstly, their digestive systems improved significantly so that they could eat plants that were not normally edible before, including those with slight toxins, hard stems and nutrients that were not easily absorbed.
Therefore, even though the survivors were still struggling to get food and were starving, they already had a better chance of survival compared to a week before.
Naturally, their immune systems also evolved along with their digestive systems, and the survivors barely got sick anymore and became more accustomed to the environment.
Everyone had evolved to different degrees, some people’s bones were thicker, while other’s muscles were firmer. As mentioned before, a very small amount of people acquired special abilities.
In the week of the “deadly evolution”, Chang’s body also showed improvements. He became more robust and his special abilities in perception slightly improved as well. As he planned, he went out hunting every day, but he only succeeded twice. He had caught a water snake and a chicken – indeed, it was a chicken which used to live in a chicken farm, but now it was half the size of a human adult.
Chang came to the kitchen with the poor chicken in his hand and found the personnel responsible for food in the military – Mao Yi Xuan.
Chapter 41: Encephalon
Chang knew Yi Xuan during the “Deadly evolution” period. He was one of the chiefs who was responsible for the captain’s meals, and during this special period, he became one of the leaders of the commissariat department.
It was quite a coincidence for Chang to meet Yi Xuan; when Chang and his friends were cooking the snake in the kitchen a few days ago, Yi Xuan happened to drop by the kitchen. And because they had different reasons of coming to the kitchen, they only had a quick chat. On the same day, they decided on an agreement of exchanging food – Chang exchanged the excess snake meat for 15 pieces of hardtack.
It was a beneficial trade for both sides; Chang wanted storable food and Yi Xuan wanted protein. It was also a win-win exchange, although 15 pieces of hardtack weren’t usually worth the amount of snake meat that he offered to Yi Xuan. Chang completely understood the reason behind such depreciation – the snake meat would become inedible in two hours; it was instead a fortune for them to find someone willing to take the meat in time.
Yi Xuan was a kind man.
Therefore, Chang took the initiation to find Yi Xuan after the first exchange.
“Hey buddy, see what I got this time?” Chang walked into the kitchen and deliberately made a big smile to attempt to raise the value of his prey. “Chicken! I got a chicken! How long has it been since you had chicken? Unlike the snake, this is something we usually had before the red fog, can we exchange this for more hardtack?”
“Chicken? Great! Great!” Yi Xuan kept looking at the chicken in Chang’s hand, his eyes couldn’t move away from the blood dripping chicken and he praised “You are really an expert, you succeeded twice in one week! The soldiers in my troop can’t even achieve that.”
“Pure luck. How is our deal? The chicken weighs at least 25 kilograms, I can share 15 kilograms with you but I want 5 kilograms of hardtacks in return” Chang lifted the chicken to the counter and asked.
“5 kilograms? That is a little too much…although the chicken weighs over 25 kilograms, but the edible portion is way below than that. Not to mention the meat is not storable, if you want some dry food, the 2:1 ratio is not fair enough. You have to know there isn’t that many pieces of hardtacks left in the military either.” Yi Xuan spoke with a soft tone, he was a kind man even when he was bargaining, his attitude seemed exceptionally sincere.
However, Chang wasn’t buying it. He risked his life for this chicken, and this chicken, could keep someone alive —
“Don’t fo
ol me, even though the hardtack can be better preserved compared to the chicken, they will still grow mold eventually; it’s better to trade them with me before I regret it.” Chang’s brows furrowed and made a face of the stingy businessmen he had seen in the market. He continued to argue, “In the 15 kilograms of chicken I’ll give you, at least 12 kilograms is edible. I believe you understand that consuming protein will help you regain strength faster than those who only had plants and vegetable. This is how powerful protein is!”
“Besides, don’t tell me bullsh*t like that; there are more than a thousand soldiers in this base, 15 kilograms is far from enough to feed these people. Telling me how chicken is not storable is total nonsense to me; this deal is beneficial to you in any ways. No bargain!”
“Well, well.” Yi Xuan looked at the chicken, and then grinned. “Forget about it, I can give you this amount of hardtack only for the sake of chicken. Give me a minute.”
As he was talking, he left the kitchen. And at the same time, Jing with Qing Shui and Pang Zi showed up at the door.
“Jing told us that you guys got a chicken today.” Qing Shui ‘s attention was directed to the chicken on the counter “What are you going to do with it?”
“I am trading part of it for hardtack and we’ll eat the rest, just like what we did last time.” Chang answered.
“I see,” Qing Shui nodded.
They all knew what was going to happen, so Qing Shui and Pang Zi boiled a big pot of water and quietly waited for that person to come.
About 10 minutes later – Yi Xuan came back with a small box of hardtacks. He beamed broadly to the people in the kitchen and subsequently took away the pot of hot water. He began to bleed the chicken and remove its feathers.
Once all that was done, he put the chicken on the scale and sliced off the portion they agreed on.
Global Evolution Page 17