Global Evolution

by Steffen Schmidt

  “Ming Yi!” Chang hastened to shout as he saw Ming Yi by far.

  “You got out!” Ming Yi’s excitement was written all over his face. They didn’t come out together because they took a different route.

  “Yes I got out…” Chang held Jing tightly, but he sat on the ground dejected, “It wasn’t easy, did you see anyone else?”

  “No, it has been 10 minutes since I got out.” Ming Yi lowered his head with shame, “I feel so bad, as a soldier, I should have made ensuring your safety my priority, but I ran away.”

  “Come on, nothing should be your priority in that situation except for protecting yourself! It is already honorable to me that you even thought of that under the pressure of death.” Chang patted Ming Yi’s shoulder and forced a wry smile “Don’t think about it, we’ll let Qing Shui take care of the duty of thinking, we just need to run for our lives. Let’s look for others for now.”

  “It is difficult because everyone spread out. Hopefully they were all on the same direction to here, if so, they shouldn’t be far away.”

  “Alright.” Ming Yi nodded, “We’ll go separately and we’ll meet under this billboard every ten minutes, what do you think?”

  “Absolutely!” Chang agreed, as he held Jing with both his arms and went to the opposite direction of Ming Yi.

  Ten minutes later, he found Qing Shui, who had just ran out of the jungle. Twenty minutes after, Ming Yi brought over another soldier, and that was the last person they found in the subsequent 40 minutes.

  “Is Pangzi okay? I can’t find him.” Chang returned to the billboard worried.

  “I don’t know, it was chaotic in there, I couldn’t see what happened back there.” Qing Shui shook his head helplessly. Even Qing Shui cannot pay attention to everything.

  “I was pretty slow, and I heard several screams from a distance, but I am not sure if Pangzi was one of them.” The survived soldier was clearly traumatized. “I didn’t dare to look back when I was in there, I couldn’t think of anything else but run, and…” His voice became lower and lower.

  “I know this can be hard to hear but it is very likely that they have lost their lives in the jungle.” Ming Yi sighed heavily, “There were 27 of us when we left Kaifeng, and now, the five of us may be the only remainders. I simply don’t think they could get out.”

  “It is a certain fact, we weren’t very far away from here when the millipedes came around, it has been an hour, if they can’t get out, then death is doomed to be their fate.” The soldiers voice drifted in the dim red fog “Let’s go, please, the sun is nowhere to be seen now, and it’ll only get more dangerous if we stay here, we just need to find a shelter.”

  “He is right.” Ming Yi pulled Chang’s forearm, showing that he agreed with the soldier.

  “I was thinking…” Chang stood still as if he was not affected by Ming Yi and the soldier’s reasoning, he looked at Qing Shui’s eyes, and spoke with consideration. “I was thinking about going back into the jungle. Although he may be dead, I just want to confirm that. What if he is still alive but just trapped?”

  “I thought so too.” Qing Shui nodded and smiled.

  “What? Did you just agree? This is out of my expectation!” As he saw Qing Shui agreeing on his proposal, Chang was deeply surprised. “Using your reason… you wouldn’t do anything that has no benefit at all, to be honest, my suggestion can even kill us all.”

  “But things like this don’t need to be beneficial for me to act.” Qing Shui raised his fist in front of Chang, “And you thought I will let go of our friend so easily?”

  “You are right.” Chang made a fist bump with Qing Shui, and smiled with trust.

  Chapter 71: Micro

  “Are you kidding me? Do you want to go back in there for real?” Ming Yi was shocked by their decision as he saw their bumping fists. “Are you crazy? It is all dark in here, and it will be even worse in the jungle. We almost got killed when the Sun was up, and what if the millipedes didn’t leave?”

  “Then we’ll just run back.” Chang laughed, “I just need to make sure that he was not left behind. Although we didn’t know each other for long, we have been through rough times, I can’t and I will not abandon my friend.”

  “Well, I guess everyone thinks differently. Whatever, but I just won’t go with you.” Ming Yi sighed. It was a long sigh mixed with pity and praise. “I am not scared, but I am just not obligated to go back in there with you. In fact, it is my courtesy to let you go. Our mission was to protect Mr. Li to Zhengzhou safely. Now that you are leaving, even if I get to the institute, we will still fail our mission. Who knows what our punishment is going to be? Of course the institute have no idea on what is going on here, but getting there without Mr. Li is not making me better off.”

  “Therefore, it’d be a great loss for me if you go!” Ming Yi sighed again deliberately loud.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll come out alive. And… could you do me a huge favor?” Chang was almost begging as he handed Jing to Ming Yi, “She is one of ours. Can you please take care of her for me? Trust me, If we get out from there safely, we’ll certainly come back to you.”

  “Of course I believe in you, you can risk your lives for someone lost in the jungle without knowing if he is dead or not, you won’t abandon this one for sure.” Ming Yi took Jing who was still in coma.

  “Where do we meet if you come back?”

  “There.” Chang pointed at the direction of north east, spoke “If you keep going along the road, you’ll see the campus of North China University of Water Conservancy and Electric Power, do you know that school?”

  “I’ve heard of it before, it isn’t that far from here.” Ming Yi nodded.

  “Just go there and wait for us, it should be relatively safer in the college campus. If we come out alive, then we’ll go there immediately.” Chang lingered beside Jing, “Please, please take care of her, if we don’t come back, then she…”

  Chang paused, he rephrased his words “Then…please just don’t give up on her, she is useful.”

  He firmly pressed on Ming Yi’s shoulder to show his determination. He took a deep breath and looked in to Qing Shui’s eyes and asked, “Shall we?”

  “Let’s go.”

  The duo waved to Ming Yi saying goodbye and again they entered the jungle of fear.

  Both Chang and Qing Shui walked in quick steps, and as the path gradually became covered with thick grass, the trees became taller and denser by their sides. The green world welcomed them with a taste of horror.

  “It is getting too dark in here, your vision must be limited too.” Qing Shui slowed down after stepping into the lushness that they had been trying to running away from, “How far can you see now?”

  “Not too far.” Chang tried hard to estimate, “6 or 7 meters maybe? It reduced half of what I can see in the morning, what about you?”

  “Less than a meter!” Qing Shui spoke against Chang’s ears “I can’t even see your face if I am a few steps back!”

  “No way…that’s almost blind. Chang looked at Qing Shui, “Follow me tightly.”

  “I will.” Qing Shui answered.

  They walked shoulder to shoulder, and returned to where they almost got trapped by the millipedes. It wasn’t too far away from the edge of the jungle here, but there was almost no trace of any of the troop to be found; the power of nature erased the marks of the previous tragedy.

  All the millipedes were gone and so was Pangzi, Dr. Huang, and the others.

  The night in the jungle seemed serene.

  “There is nothing left.” Chang looked around and said.

  “There must be something! I bet at least one person in the troop was taken away by the millipedes, just search for clothes or backpack pieces.” Qing Shui squatted down, trying to find some clues with his poor vision.

  “Okay.” Chang also squatted down, carefully searched for traces.

  Five minutes after, their effort seemed to have paid off.

  “There is a piece of cloth
torn apart.” Chang lifted that cloth with a slim branch.

  “The millipede must have eaten this person, leaving the clothes behind in this mess.” Qing Shui carefully took that piece of cloth that was soaked with blood and flesh, and he shook off the small insects that were foraging on the cloth.

  “Wait, there are some messy footprints over there.” Chang literally lying on his stomach trying to search, “They don’t look like they came from the same person, I am just not sure if there are some that belong to Pangzi.”

  “Where? Let me see.” Qing Shui went closer.

  “There.” Chang pointed at the messy footprints.

  “Wait, there are some belong to him!” Qing Shui examined and measurements of those footprints, and he then pointed at 2 of them confidently “They are Pangzi’s for sure!”

  “No way…how can you tell them apart?” Chang kept his eyes wide open in order to tell the differences between the footprints, but failed. “They seem the same to me, how do you know they are Pangzi’s?”

  “It’s a natural thing for me. A difference of millimeter to me is probably as obvious as a meter difference in your eyes. And those footprints are more than one millimeters in difference, I just can’t ignore that. I can’t be wrong.” Qing Shui followed the footprints as he reasoned.

  “But how? Can you even remember the size of our shoes? That’s a little creepy to me.” Chang hurried up. He found the footprints and now it was Qing Shui’s turn to tell them apart. They groped forward along the marks.

  “Well, don’t you remember my ability? It falls into the cognitive category, but more precisely, I am extremely good at information collection and memory analysis. I simply can’t forget anything I’ve seen.” Qing Shui didn’t stop as he spoke, “It seems like he was in panic. He took huge steps and they are all over the place. There must’ve been a millipede that hunted him.”

  “I hope he fled…” Chang walked on the other side of the footprints, and after about 50 meters, Qing Shui no longer needed to distinguish the footprints. There was only one kind left here, and it was Pangzi’s.

  “He ran pretty far away from where we were.” Qing Shui kept chasing after the footprints and murmured to himself, “This doesn’t look right though.”

  “Really…” Chang was only able to say one word until his body became stiff and rigid all of a sudden. He was stuck in a weird posture floating in the air and tilted forward, as if he was a marionette. He was frozen.

  “Hey, what happened?” Qing Shui became attentive immediately with a knife in his hand.

  Chapter 72: Opportunities

  “Don’t come over, it seems I’ve gotten stuck on something sticky.” Chang attempted to wave his arms in the air, but the effort he put in only caused a slight shake. As if there were a set of invisible shackles, his movement was completely restricted by them.

  “Okay you should stop moving.” Seeing Chang struggled, Qing Shui picked up the high-powered flashlight that was tucked on his belt. He turned on the light to illuminate his surroundings.

  “Jesus, what did I just see? It’s spider silk!” In the light, Chang noticed his body was wrapped around by threads of pink spider silk. The spider silk was crystal clear and it became invisible in the red fog and blended in perfectly to the environment. In the darkness of the night, even humans with good vision like Chang would be unable to find their presence.

  “The spider silk seems as tenacious as steel.” Qing Shui carefully approached Chang, “The more you move, the more it will get onto you.”

  “Then what do I do?”

  “Don’t worry, I know how to deal with it.” Qing Shui took out a lighter from his pocket, and teared off a piece of cloth from his jacket. He wrapped the cloth around a branch and said, “We’ll just need to burn it.”

  “Okay.” Chang was slightly relieved, he rolled his eyes from side to side to observe his surroundings. “Can you do it quicker? I feel like the vibration from my struggle has informed the weaver spider.”

  “You are correct, it is coming.” As Qing Shui had just finished wrapping the branch, a dark shadow passed by swiftly in front of him. He threw the branch on the ground in a hurry and clenched his knife.

  “Where??” Chang struggled to turn his head, but his head had spider silk pasted all over, he couldn’t move at all.

  “Don’t even try, you can’t see it, it is behind you!”

  “Kill it! Don’t let it bite me!” Chang shook his body even harder as if that could shake off the spider from his web, “How big is it?”

  “Not too big. Don’t move.” Qing Shui concentrated fully on the spider that was the size of his face. On its body there were alternating red and white stripes. The spider stopped right behind Chang before making next move, while staring at Qing Shui with its eight eyes.

  A man and a spider confronted each other for half a second.

  Then they moved at the same time.

  The spider seemed not to care much about the man that was immobile on the web, as it threw itself on Qing Shui directly.

  Qing Shui moved the knife to the front of his chest.

  The spider was fast. Compared to the spider, Qing Shui was much slower indeed. If things had gone the normal way, there would have been a certainty that the spider would have landed on Qing Shui first. He would have then lost balance, and died to the venomous spider. Perhaps it was precisely calculated by Qing Shui when his knife had not gotten in front of his chest. Instead, the knife was halted by the spider, crushing itself on the knife.

  As if it was a bizarrely coincidental accident, the spider stabbed itself onto the blade.

  Even more unexplainable was the fact that the spider hit itself in its own weak spot where the head connected with its torso, out of protection from its hardened fur. Yet that was not the end, Qing Shui reacted fast enough after the spider’s failed attempt to kill him, and quickly swung the knife to his side and sliced off the spider’s head effortlessly.

  The spider must have had really bad luck to encounter Qing Shui in this way. It wasn’t even able to touch an inch of skin of its murdered. The spider fell onto the grass lifelessly.

  However, the whole process took less than a second.

  “The spider is dead.” Qing Shui wiped off the bodily fluids of the spider using a leaf nearby and then picked up the branch again.

  “Really? That was quick.” Chang was astonished by how quickly Qing Shui handled the spider, “Was it weak?”

  “I don’t know. I only know that if it is a species I can fight with, it is usually effortless to me. I can’t tell whether the spider was weak or not.” Qing Shui lit up the rags on the branch, making it into a small torch.

  The small torch went under the spider silk and softened the spider silk around Chang’s limbs. Chang regained his power as the spider silk loosened.

  “Finally! It doesn’t feel good as a fish on the chopping board.” Chang jumped off the web, and took over Qing Shui’s flashlight, “We need to keep it on, otherwise I can’t see the web.”

  “Sure.” Qing Shui nodded “But I feel that it’s a bit strange around here, we need to be more careful.”

  “Of course.”

  With help from the flashlight, Chang was able see further again. Illuminated by the warm, yellow light, a cruel fact cooled down his heart – the spider web was everywhere.

  The jungle ahead, as much as Chang could see, was weaved together by all kinds of spider webs They were large and small, thick and thin. It wasn’t hard to give an estimate on how many spiders resided here – countless.

  “How dangerous did you think the spider was?” Chang was staggered by the numerous spider webs as he asked Qing Shui.

  “1.5 if you were to put it in that danger index. It is merely my estimation though. And they seemed to be venomous.” Qing Shui gave a truthful answer.

  “If there are more than 8 of them that come together, we’d be in danger. And looking around here, I feel like there are much more.” The flashlight swept across the jungle. “B
ut interestingly, I don’t see any of them. Where are they? One spider can’t weave these many webs.”

  “I don’t know either, but I agree with you, there can’t be only one spider.” Qing Shui frowned, “Where did they go?”

  A sharp squeak flashed across the jungle.

  Something they were familiar with…the roar from a millipede! The roar sounded like it came from the further end of the jungle.

  It was a painful shriek though.

  “This is why!! Most of the spiders are attacking the millipedes that entered their territory. Let’s take the opportunity to find Pangzi!” Qing Shui was ecstatic, he immediately pulled Chang to go with him.

  “Hurry up, time does not wait for us.”

  “Yes.” Chang looked down on the ground to find more footprints.

  With the help from the flashlight, they dodged layers of spider webs, and, soon, a familiar figure hung above the end of the footprints.

  Chapter 73: Redemption

  “It’s Pangzi, those spiders hung him up on the tree!” Chang looked up with concern as he whispered to Qing Shui. “He is not moving, I can’t be sure if he is dead or not.”

  “Let’s go up and check him out.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Chang replied in haste. They jumped through the gaps between the spider webs carefully. The flashlight illuminated Pangzi’s face.

  “Pangzi…Pangzi!” Qing Shui hailed gently, and poked Pangzi on the arm with a branch. “Are you with me? Hey!”

  “Ah……” Pangzi muttered. It was obvious that he tried to lift his eyelids, but they barely moved at all.

  “He is not dead!” Chang and Qing Shui exchanged glances and saw the unexpected joy in each other’s eyes.

  It really was a surprise to them. Before they found Pangzi, they had been preparing to accept the fact that he might be dead. After all, Pangzi had been lost in the jungle for almost an hour, and he had been chased by gigantic and deadly millipedes. The chance for him to survive was nearly zero.