Little Pink Starfish

An Zhe accepted Lu Feng’s evaluation. He felt that Lu Feng was once again emphasizing his weakness—this was the first time the man had said such a thing.

—Although he truly couldn’t contaminate the entire Eden. He couldn’t even contaminate a single person.

But he could accept the lie being exposed not because of his weakness, but because the lie wasn’t clever enough. He could no longer comfort himself with the thought that maybe Lu Feng believed his story.

Lu Feng was hateful.

He said, “You can sleep here.”

“Hm?” Lu Feng said.

An Zhe muttered, “You can.”

Lu Feng: “Why?”

An Zhe turned his back to him, burying himself in his coat. He had originally intended to say nothing, to firmly drive the colonel out of his territory, but after a brief internal struggle, he earnestly explained, “Might be infected without contact.”

“Oh.” Lu Feng’s voice was very low. “The bee was alive.”

An Zhe: “…”

Then he heard Lu Feng say, “It was alive, so why was it unconscious?”

At this point, even if you beat An Zhe to death, he wouldn’t speak. With someone like Lu Feng, if you revealed even a tiny bit of information, he could guess everything perfectly.

But tonight the colonel did not press him. He said, “I’ll take the night watch.”

An Zhe softly responded with an “mm.” He then asked, “Are you cold?”

Lu Feng said, “Not cold.”

Only then did An Zhe close his eyes. He held the badge, curled up his body—his emotions had been overdrawn too much tonight, and he fell asleep quickly.

But halfway through the night, he was awakened by the cold.

In recent days, magnetic field accidents had caused solar winds to rage. The atmosphere had thinned, and the temperature difference between day and night had reached terrifying levels.

An Zhe was freezing all over. He opened his eyes, sat up, and instinctively looked around for Lu Feng’s figure.

He easily saw the colonel in the distance. Lu Feng was leaning against a strangely shaped rock eroded by the wind, neatly arranging some branches from shrubs in front of him—stacked into a cone shape.

An Zhe rubbed his eyes and walked over, holding Lu Feng’s coat. The colonel had draped the coat over him earlier, and now he wore only his uniform lining on the upper body.

He handed the coat back and asked again, “Are you cold?”

Lu Feng was fiddling with a lighter in his hand.

“Wear it yourself,” he said. “I thought you could sleep a bit longer.”

An Zhe: “…Huh?”

Lu Feng tossed the lighter into his arms: “Come gather firewood with me.”

So, the colonel had already known he might wake up from the cold and had planned to start a fire.

And then he said, “I thought you could sleep a bit longer”—An Zhe translated this rare gentle statement from the colonel and concluded that what he actually meant was: “You’re even more delicate than I thought.”

An Zhe: “.”

He followed Lu Feng. For a while, the only sounds in the air were their footsteps, the wind, and the distant, faint howls of monsters. They walked out into the wild. Scattered shrubs grew on the wasteland. Under the assault of solar winds, the plants were all dead, dried by the scorching heat—perfect for burning.

An Zhe asked, “Have you been looking for branches all this time?”

“No,” Lu Feng said blandly. “There are monsters—I couldn’t go too far.”

An Zhe gave a soft “oh.” He wanted to tell Lu Feng that many monsters actually had no interest in a mushroom like him, but he quickly realized Lu Feng was protecting him. Thinking of this made him feel a subtle warmth.

The sandy desert ground was soft, making a slight friction sound underfoot. An Zhe’s legs were still not easy to walk with. Lu Feng didn’t make him keep up closely but ensured he stayed within sight while collecting branches around them and handing them to An Zhe to hold.

The branches in his arms grew more and more, to the point that he could barely hold them. Then Lu Feng said, “That’s enough.”

So they walked back side by side. Under the moonlight, the dunes rose and fell like snow piles in their vision, and the wreckage of the plane in the distance looked like an ugly tumor rooted in the ground.

Suddenly, Lu Feng stopped.

An Zhe also stopped immediately.

—A strange instinct made his back go cold, and he heard a sound.

In the silent wilderness, a noise suddenly rang out—indescribable, but clearly heard. He knew Lu Feng had heard it too.

“Shhh-shhh.”

“Shhh-shhh.”

“Shhh-shhh.”

The eerie sound echoed rhythmically through the wild. It was low, but very clear, as if it were right beside the ear. The first two instances were far apart, the third one came much closer.

“Shhh-shhh.”

When the sound rang again, Lu Feng pushed An Zhe’s shoulder down. The two of them lay flat on the sand, hiding behind a layer of shrubs.

“Shhh-shhh.”

Under the aurora, a huge black shadow appeared at the edge of the undulating dunes. It was generally oval in shape, its body structure unclear and indistinct. Its surface was rugged and uneven, like a lump of decaying flesh crudely mashed together. A smooth lump of flesh bulged at the center of its body—this was its head—covered in numerous tiny eyeballs. Underneath its massive body grew countless limbs of various kinds: some thick and thin, some like reptile hind legs, some like insect pincers, some like human arms.

—Those limbs undulated, supporting its heavy movements, leaving a wave-like trail over five meters wide on the gravel-covered ground. Each time it moved a distance, the “shhh-shhh” sound emanated from its body, as if coming from evenly distributed vocal organs.

An Zhe held his breath. A crack opened in the center of the monster’s body, revealing rows of dense fangs and sharp teeth.

“Ka-cha—”

A piercing metallic scraping sound arose, followed by chewing and swallowing noises.

It was eating.

An Zhe had never known a monster that could feed on metal. In the Abyss, there were also shattered parts of firearms, but no monster had ever cared for them. Or perhaps it wasn’t the metal—it was the corpses of the two pilots in the ruins. One could imagine, for a creature capable of crunching and swallowing alloy materials, human flesh and bones were just as chewable.

But it did not lower its head to enjoy the huge wreckage and burning debris. It ate no more than five bites.

“Shhh-shhh.”

When that mouth closed again, the sound returned. It turned toward a direction—about 100 meters ahead, where the black bee was still sleeping.

Ka-cha.

The black bee’s entire head disappeared into its body. An Zhe stared wide-eyed as one end of the monster’s body extended. A pair of semi-transparent, metallic-colored wings drooped down and fluttered a few times, making a sound like autumn leaves trembling in the wind—the organs that had once belonged to the black bee now appeared on its body.

“Shhh-shhh.”

In the next second, all the eyes on its head turned toward the direction where An Zhe and Lu Feng were hidden.