Chapter 29

Chapter 29: What Should She Eat

Feng Ling’s eyes went cold.

Two bone blades crossed in front of her in a blur, catching the polluted entity’s strike with a shuddering impact.

The flashlight beam hit it full-on.

Up close, it was worse.

Its mutated body carried the same insect shape as the swarm monsters, but it was laced with human hair and patches of human skin—two sets of biology twisted together until nothing looked right. It was bigger than the others, heavier. And its neck—its neck could telescope in and out like a living hose, stretching meters, snapping back with obscene speed.

At the front, the mandibles clamped a human head.

By squeezing and tugging, it forced the face into exaggerated, grotesque expressions. Its throat worked, and a voice came out—human, wrong, scraped raw by something that wasn’t built for speech.

“I want… ability card…”

Feng Ling jerked a bone blade free and stabbed straight for the face.

The polluted entity’s neck snapped back. The blade cut air.

The head slid deeper into the throat like it was being swallowed alive, and the mandibles at the neck opening flared outward, jagged and hungry, surging at Feng Ling like a spinning cutter.

In open space, she would’ve swung and severed the neck.

But the tunnel was too tight.

She couldn’t swing wide. Only thrust.

Feng Ling retreated fast, stabbing as she went, rage tightening her jaw. She wanted out of this cramped choke point—wanted somewhere she could move and butcher properly.

The mandibles kept opening and snapping shut. Her bone blades started to lose the exchange. She hit again and again, but the puncture wounds didn’t seem to slow it.

She knew how bugs died.

You split them.

You pierce clean through.

A few holes meant nothing.

The tunnel was almost at its end. If she backed up much farther, she’d hit the near-vertical pit in the parking garage—and then she’d need rope to climb.

If she got forced there, she’d be trapped.

And Huang Fu Miao Miao had one arm. Without help, she couldn’t climb at all.

The mandibles opened again. The throat flexed. The human face reappeared, stretched into a warped smile. A dry, ugly laugh rasped out.

“Heh-heh…”

Feng Ling’s mind clicked.

Chao Qiang Chao’s face had been shot.

So why didn’t this face have a single wound?

Was this even his face?

The features were pulled too far. The skull distorted. You couldn’t tell what it had been before.

Doesn’t matter.

She needed to change the situation.

If stabbing its shell and limbs wasn’t enough, she’d hit something it couldn’t shrug off.

Feng Ling clenched her teeth and drove her bone blade straight into the gap between the mandibles.

Her speed was brutal, precise—

And still, the moment the blade entered, the mandibles snapped shut and clamped down.

Pain tore through her.

Feng Ling’s whole body went rigid, cold sweat spilling down her forehead. It turned into a tug-of-war. She wouldn’t pull back. The polluted entity wouldn’t let go.

Her vision blurred at the edges.

In her ears came a sound like metal screaming across a chalkboard.

Then—crack.

The bite force punched through the bone blade.

Feng Ling cried out, her body trembling with the kind of pain that made your bones feel hollow.

The mandibles kept grinding.

Her bone blade was about to be chewed apart.

Behind her, Huang Fu Miao Miao shook like a leaf, tears spilling. She lifted an iron hammer, torn between helping and freezing.

Feng Ling cut her with a vicious look.

“Back off,” Feng Ling snarled.

She twisted and drove her other bone blade into the same gap, jamming it between the mandibles too.

Her eyes were bloodshot. Sweat slicked her face. Her gums were bitten raw enough to bleed. She looked wrecked.

And Huang Fu Miao Miao saw something in her expression that made her stomach drop.

Enjoyment.

“Crazy…” Huang Fu Miao Miao whispered, shaking. “She’s really crazy…”

Feng Ling sucked in a breath and forced herself to accept the pain like it was part of the air.

Then she controlled the second bone blade and started to saw—hard, steady, vicious, like cutting through gristle.

The serrated edge bit.

The polluted entity shrieked. It realized what she was doing. The mandibles tried to open, to escape—

Feng Ling wouldn’t allow it.

The pierced, broken bone blade twisted sideways, hooking the mandibles and locking them in place. The other blade kept sawing, deeper, harsher, like cutting wood.

Pinned at the mouth, the polluted entity’s body thrashed in the tunnel, wild and frantic.

The stone shook. Dust burst from the ceiling and rained down.

Feng Ling held on.

At the cost of one bone blade, she sawed through mouthparts, then into the neck, then the chest—then the belly armor and back shell.

Blood and slime poured out together.

Slowly, brutally, like a dull blade grinding through meat, the insect body split open.

The human head inside was shredded into pulp.

The shaking stopped.

Dust drifted down.

Feng Ling let out a long breath and sank to the ground, drained. Her back was soaked through.

She pulled out the bone blade that had been bitten through.

A hole the size of her palm. Chips. Cracks. Dullness where there used to be edge.

Huang Fu Miao Miao finally found her voice again, sobbing. “I don’t have any points left to redeem medicine for you!”

Feng Ling sat for a moment, catching her breath. Her face stayed blank when she said, “That wasn’t the one from earlier.”

“What?” Huang Fu Miao Miao stared. “You mean there’s more than one polluted entity down here?”

“I don’t know how many,” Feng Ling said, pushing herself upright with a hand on the rock wall. “But it wasn’t the same. I marked the last one. This one didn’t have the mark.”

Her eyes sharpened. “Zhou Zhou’s side is probably in trouble.”

Huang Fu Miao Miao looked like she might fold. “Then… what do we do?”

“First we get out,” Feng Ling said, turning toward the climb. “Then we go back and save them.”

No matter what, the chip had to reach the surface first.

“What about your injuries?” Huang Fu Miao Miao blurted, frantic. “Can you recover fast enough? What if another polluted entity shows up—if it comes again, you won’t be able to hold—”

Feng Ling stopped.

She turned back.

In the flashlight’s weak edge, her face sat half-swallowed by darkness, eyes unreadable. Blood marked the corner of her mouth, giving her something sharp and inhuman.

Vampire-cold.

Huang Fu Miao Miao’s heart lurched. The rest of her words died in her throat.

Feng Ling stared in silence for a few seconds, then looked away and kept walking.

Huang Fu Miao Miao didn’t dare speak again.

What she didn’t know was that Feng Ling was hungry again.

The moment she split the polluted entity open, a fierce craving surged through her—an urge to feed.

She knew that hunger.

When she’d gained killer bee and the mantis ability card, she’d felt it too—an appetite that didn’t care about manners or reason.

She couldn’t bring herself to eat an aberrant corpse.

And she couldn’t stomach a filthy, ugly polluted entity.

So what was she supposed to eat?

If her stomach never stayed full, was it because she’d been choosing the wrong food?

Her gaze slid to Huang Fu Miao Miao.

Small. Tender. Delicious.

And full of nutrition.