Chapter 36: Berries
Kevin took quick, light steps, his footing swift as the wind, completely devoid of his previous vigilance.
Holding a dry, slender stem of foxtail grass between his fingers, he extended it beside Chi Xiaoxian’s face and waved it gently, teasing Chi Xiaoxian like a cat, while uttering continuously, “Come on then, eat me—”
Perched on Fang Yue’s back, Chi Xiaoxian couldn’t win the argument, simply turning his face away directly.
In the end, he had still succumbed to the fate of being carried on Fang Yue’s back and held back and forth, entirely stripped of dignity.
Fang Yue, however, gave a gentle shift of his body, dodging the foxtail grass in Kevin’s hand, saying flatly, “Don’t pick on him.”
Chi Xiaoxian knew Fang Yue was shielding him, but hearing these words made him feel even more embarrassed.
Since ancient times, there had only been cases of warning zombies not to pick on humans—where had there ever been warning humans not to pick on zombies…
Chi Xiaoxian let out a silent, gloomy sigh in his heart.
Suddenly, his eyes rolled, and he discovered the dry grass in the surrounding area was growing extraordinarily tall. The weeds reached past his knees, resembling Kevin’s head of malnourished, withered hair, making Chi Xiaoxian’s heart stir slightly.
Kevin was still chattering away non-stop, boasting that his amateur bread-baking skills could make even zombies drool with craving, proving that opening a bakery as an owner in the future would be zero problem.
Chi Xiaoxian didn’t refute him. His mind was entirely focused on a specific spot, competing secretly.
With a heavy *thud*, Kevin took a spill out of nowhere without any preparation.
When he scrambled back up, his face carried a trace of utter bewilderment, even glancing down at his feet.
The fluffy, crispy dry grass was blown by the heavy wind into a uniform tilt, looking as though combed through by a giant comb, forming a clearly textured carpet that was smooth and neat.
How did he feel like something had tripped him just now?
Impossible—there was nothing beneath his feet at all!
While Kevin was questioning his life choices, Chi Xiaoxian had already broken into a fit of mischievous giggles.
“And you still mock me after doing that?” Chi Xiaoxian said at a leisurely pace. “Tame your own four limbs first before talking.”
Kevin dusted the mud off his pant legs, baring his teeth as he stood up. Hearing Chi Xiaoxian’s words, a sudden surge of suspicion arose, his eyes narrowing carefully as he stared at Chi Xiaoxian: “Was that your trick?”
Chi Xiaoxian dodged his line of sight, humming casually, and wrapped his arms around Fang Yue’s neck.
—
After walking for nearly forty minutes, the wild grass gradually grew sparse, and the distant horizon presented a straight contour—the main road lay just ahead.
“Set me down,” Chi Xiaoxian said in a low voice. “I can walk on my own now.”
Laziness and a man’s dignity had already waged a battle in his heart, with the latter ultimately winning out by a narrow margin. Even so, he held onto Fang Yue’s arm, hanging halfway off him, leaving most of his weight to Fang Yue, treating him as a human crutch.
Fang Yue merely raised an eyebrow, offering neither approval nor disapproval of his self-deceiving behavior.
“How did you pull that off just now?” Fang Yue gave a slight nod toward Kevin’s direction, asking Chi Xiaoxian.
Chi Xiaoxian extended his wrist, indicating the side with the scar: “Relied on this.”
“You can control it?”
“No.”
Chi Xiaoxian thought a bit further, saying, “I seem to have a bit of telepathy with it, though. I have to think hard, and it can sense it and cooperate with me. Just now I was thinking about tripping Kevin up, and then it surprisingly emerged.”
Chi Xiaoxian’s plan had been to use the thread to bind two patches of grass situated close to each other, pulling a line across, waiting for Kevin to walk over and trip his foot. He had successfully accomplished it—the thread’s personality seemed identical to his own, bearing a touch of minor mischief.
Furthermore, it appeared capable of remaining a single thread, or coiling up into a wider scale layer by layer. Chi Xiaoxian was merely experimenting, unsure of how much potential it possessed, and even less certain whether he should define this white fine silk as “it” or “them.”
The sole certainty was—this was an anomaly that had appeared in his body only after he was infected with the zombie virus.
“Can you demonstrate it once more?”
The glint in Fang Yue’s eyes grew increasingly fiery, clearly having been stirred to immense research interest. Burned by this gaze, Chi Xiaoxian even felt somewhat nervous.
Taking a deep breath, he stared at that patch of skin on his wrist and began meditating, but after half a day, zero movement occurred.
“Doesn’t seem to sense it,” he mumbled, even shaking his wrist, as if hoping to shake the thread out.
Suddenly, his wrist halted. Unexpectedly, the skin there began itching slightly.
“…Sensed it.” Chi Xiaoxian lowered his voice, beginning to mentally rehearse the operation of tripping Kevin up just now.
This time, the thread wasn’t a solitary strand, but a small cloud-like, mist-like substance emerging gently from his wrist bone. Chi Xiaoxian felt a subtle sensation of coolness at his skin.
Bit by bit, like a white paintbrush dancing and smearing through the air, its outline grew clear gradually, turning into a silk-like texture.
That white silk wrapped around his wrist. Chi Xiaoxian didn’t think much of it at first, but by the time he noticed, it was too late—it had wrapped around the adjacent wrist belonging to Fang Yue as well, binding both their wrists together, the backs of their hands pressed tightly against each other…
As if deeply afraid this human crutch, Fang Yue, would slip away.
“What were you thinking so hard about?”
Fang Yue cast a cool glance toward Chi Xiaoxian, placing heavy emphasis on the word “hard.”
“I am a proper man!” Chi Xiaoxian’s face darkened. “It obviously made a mistake!”
No sooner had his words landed than that white silk tightened even further. Fang Yue raised an eyebrow slightly, casting an inquiring gaze toward Chi Xiaoxian once more.
“I told you long ago I can’t control it,” Chi Xiaoxian said sheepishly. Shaking his wrist, bringing Fang Yue’s hand along into a shake, he said, “I give up. Do whatever.”
With a sudden *swoosh*, however, that silk seemed to melt in an instant, transforming back into a cloud-like, mist-like substance while releasing its restraint simultaneously.
Chi Xiaoxian choked on his words, “You’re pretty rebellious, huh?”
The mist answered with silence. It couldn’t speak, yet transformed back into a soft silk form once more, subsequently twisting in midair as if displaying its graceful waist and superb tenacity, before finally coming to a halt. A milk-white, translucent tiny tentacle extended out from the silk, propping itself up floating lazily in midair, pointing toward a specific direction ahead.
Kevin was finally drawn by the commotion produced by the two, turning around to catch sight of that floating tentacle in a single glance. Baffled, he asked, “What is this doing?”
Chi Xiaoxian and Fang Yue looked toward that direction simultaneously, however.
“Is it pointing a path out for us?” Chi Xiaoxian offered his guess. “Is that the direction of the main road?”
Fang Yue looked—the general direction was roughly similar, but differed from the route he had mapped out.
“We can give it a try.” He was very curious about Chi Xiaoxian’s thread, wanting to know what it was trying to express.
Just as Fang Yue went to step forward, Kevin couldn’t help saying, “Placing our trust in this tiny thing—isn’t that a bit too reckless?”
The tiny white tentacle halted floating in midair, as if processing the words Kevin had spoken, before turning sluggishly toward the direction where Kevin stood.
A human and a thread stood in a standoff like that. Kevin thought to himself: *Could a living man like him actually be intimidated by this thing?* And so he let out a huff, “What, you wanna trip me up again?”
The thread offered no movement, as if observing something.
“What is it doing?” Chi Xiaoxian asked in a bit of a daze.
“I don’t know,” Fang Yue shook his head.
Right in the middle of this exchange, that thread charged toward Kevin like lightning. Unable to dodge in time, Kevin had no choice but to extend his hands and wave them wildly in front of his face, attempting to brush the thing away.
Yet after waving his hands for half a day, he touched nothing at all.
*Where was the thing?*
Kevin lowered his hands, looking around in utter bewilderment.
Suddenly, a pain struck the roots of his hair. He realized abruptly that the thread had actually crawled into his hair.
The tiny white tentacle nimbly burrowed back and forth through his messy, withered hair, plucking at this clump, tugging at that clump, and finally happily tying two clumps of hair into a dead knot.
Fang Yue looked at the frantic Kevin flatly: “It seems to be taking revenge.”
—Earlier, Kevin had tossed it into a plastic bag and tied the plastic bag in a knot.
Choking down cold air, Kevin shouted at Chi Xiaoxian: “Control it, will you?!”
Chi Xiaoxian shrugged, falling into slacker mode: “I can’t control it.”
After being playful for a bit, the thread seemed somewhat tired, sliding down from Kevin’s head sluggishly, leaving Kevin behind to untangle his matted hair in distress.
The thread crawled back to Chi Xiaoxian’s wrist. Chi Xiaoxian stared at it for a moment, suddenly saying, “Kevin, when was the last time you washed your hair?”
Kevin: “?”
Kevin: “Can you be a bit kind?”
Kevin: “Everyone has soaked in the river; let’s not look down on each other’s hair!”
—
In the end, the three decided to advance in the direction indicated by the white thread.
Walking straight for half an hour, the terrain grew steadily higher, and the surrounding grass grew even denser, though scattered specks of green faintly showed through these withered weeds—it seemed new life had quietly visited this wilderness.
“Is this really the direction to the highway?” Kevin couldn’t resist saying. “Feels a bit off.”
To see more clearly, Chi Xiaoxian narrowed his eyes carefully to gaze into the distance, suddenly noticing something unusual.
“What is that?” He pointed a finger.
The wind of the open field blew with loud whooshes, bending the wild grass down, exposing clusters of eye-catching deep blue low to the ground. This was the very first time another color had appeared after walking through this wilderness for so long, aside from withered yellow, black, and green.
The three walked over to take a look—it turned out to be clusters of berries. Small individual berries gathered into clusters, adorning the undersides of dark green deciduous shrubs, swaying gently with the wind like splendid dance dresses in a fairy tale.
Bending down, Chi Xiaoxian reached out to pick a berry. Though small in size, it had striven to grow a plump appearance in this wilderness, its exterior covered in a layer of pale white fruit frost. The color resembled a blueberry, yet its shape differed from that of a blueberry.
Bringing it beneath his nose tip to sniff, Chi Xiaoxian caught a refreshing, pleasant fragrance emanating from the fruit.
Suddenly, his wrist itchy once more.
Looking down, sure enough, the white thread drifted out again, transforming into a silk shape, wrapping gently around his palm.
Chi Xiaoxian felt his palm go empty. Looking down, the berry had actually been enveloped by the white silk.
The silk twisted gently a few times in midair, and when it unfolded once more, the fruit was nowhere to be seen, a tiny black seed dropping onto the dirt with a gentle *snap*.
Taking another look at the white thread, it surprisingly displayed an extremely pale shade of blue.
“Can you eat this?” Chi Xiaoxian touched that silk-like fluid in surprise. “What on earth are you?”
Before his words landed, the silk leaped like a rabbit with nimble agility, burrowing into the bushes, devouring those deep blue berries like a whirlwind, making the bushes rustle loudly.
Kevin said in a low voice: “I suspect it pointed out a path for us purely because it was hungry itself.”
Chi Xiaoxian was completely in the dark as well.
Fang Yue squatted down, brushing aside the leaves at the very bottom of the bushes, exposing the soil. Gathering a small handful in his palm to crush finely, he rubbed it, observed for a moment, and said out of nowhere: “It adapted to the soil here.”
“It? This fruit?”
“Yes,” Fang Yue explained. “There are many barren lands in the Highlands. The reason they are barren is because the soil suffered severe contamination—possibly heavy metals, or other pollutants. In short, all lead to vegetation being unable to grow normally. Coupled with the severe climate in the Highlands, where extreme cold and extreme heat frequently occur, survival becomes even more difficult.”
“So these berries—”
“Yes, nature is never lacking in miracles. There are always plants that ultimately adapt to such environments and even begin multiplying.”
Kevin asked in confusion: “But wasn’t the Highlands established precisely by humanity finding ways to avoid existing contaminated lands? Why would there still be contaminated lands inside?”
Fang Yue shook his head: “In theory, yes, but it’s completely unavoidable. Because contaminated lands are not concentrated areas, but distributed in scattered patches here and there.”
“Since it’s contaminated land, why not set up protection? Just letting it lie openly like this by the roadside and riverbank?” Kevin asked again.
“There are two reasons. First, as the Highland government has always claimed, resources were extremely limited at the inception of the Highlands, lacking sufficient supplies to implement protection over vast wilderness areas. Furthermore, this matter brings no direct benefits or GDP, so the government has no motivation to do it.”
“Second, the functional zones of the Highlands are very clearly defined. Crops and fruits have adopted indoor cultivation methods, industry develops strictly within industrial parks, and residential zones are highly fixed—scarcely anyone would run out here to plant things or look for things to eat.”
Fang Yue paused slightly, adding: “Of course, there is one more reason—these pollutions look very severe already, but compared to the nuclear-contaminated lands outside the Highlands, this level of pollution is far from significant.”
Both Chi Xiaoxian and Kevin felt a tremor in their hearts.
Neither of them knew what kind of scene lay beyond the Southern Highlands. Although Chi Xiaoxian had cast a glance past the boundary when standing before the boundary marker that time, it was merely a fleeting glance, and while experiencing hallucinations at that.
“Ah!” Chi Xiaoxian pointed at the patch of berries as if realizing something out of nowhere. “Does that mean humans can’t eat this?”
“Heavy metals concentrate inside the fruit, reaching higher concentrations than in the soil, so the fruit counts as a pollutant as well.”
Chi Xiaoxian pointed at the white thread devouring food like a whirlwind: “Then if it returns to my body after eating this, will something happen to me?”
Fang Yue fell silent for a long moment before saying, “You asked a very good question.”
Chi Xiaoxian: “.”
—
The thread appeared to be full, curling into a deep blue fluffy ball, rolling lazily across the ground twice, and then remaining unmoving.
They waited for a long while, yet that ball still hadn’t transformed back into a thread to return to Chi Xiaoxian’s wrist.
“Is it still alive?” Kevin poked the hairball with a finger cautiously. “This color looks like it’s been poisoned.”
As if to prove itself, the hairball rolled half a turn with a gurgle. Its size allowed Chi Xiaoxian to hold it with a single hand. Picking it up, Chi Xiaoxian realized it was considerably heavier than when it had first burrowed out earlier.
Even placed in his hand, it underwent zero morphological change, remaining a fluffy ball, neither transforming into a mist-like substance nor into specific fine threads.
It looked as though it had eaten so much it couldn’t retract.
Chi Xiaoxian stowed it silently into his pocket, only to hear Kevin sigh: “Great, finished pointing the way, stuffed itself full, so where do we walk now?”
As far as the eye could see, wild grass fields lay everywhere, with zero sign of a road appearing.
Fang Yue saw a large, flat rock higher up the hillside. Walking over there, he climbed onto the rock, intending to overlook the surrounding terrain.
Upon walking over and looking down, however, he froze in place.
Beneath the hillside, a straight highway stretched far into the remote unknown.
