Chapter 137: Li Qingshui Is Dead

“Whew!”

After sitting upright, the man let out a heavy sigh, then rose from within the protective field.

The clothes on his body disintegrated into scraps the instant he stood, scattering across the interior of the barrier. A naked man climbed down from the bed and set foot on the floor.

Li Qingshui stood before the full-length mirror and looked at his body. Black eyes, yellow skin, all four limbs intact, neither more nor less than before. It seemed that the dozen or so most potent genetic enhancement agents had not transformed him into a monster after all. He still looked much as he always had—except that his hair had turned completely white, as though he had expended far too much of his life force.

At first glance, he appeared no different from an ordinary man. But if anyone had been standing beside him, they would have felt the strange, overwhelming aura emanating from his body.

Repeated cell division and death had nearly exhausted his lifespan. Simply standing there, he seemed to possess the frailty of an old man nearing the end of his days. Yet at the same time, he carried the pressure of a higher life-form, a sense of vitality that transcended the ordinary limits of life.

He was like a god on the verge of falling: in essence, a hundred or a million times more powerful than humanity, yet in reality already at the end of his strength.

Standing on the floor, Li Qingshui slowly walked to the cabinet beside the full-length mirror. From within, he took out a suit of clothes he had prepared beforehand and put them on one piece at a time—a work shirt and tie, all arranged with meticulous neatness.

Neat, but not overly elegant.

The most ordinary casual work clothes took on the air Li Qingshui had possessed when he was once a teacher: quiet, composed, and full of knowledge. When he had finished dressing, he smoothed his snow-white hair, then went to the drawer beside the laboratory table and took out an old-fashioned CD player.

It was a model from ten years ago, apparently one he had used in his student days. A girl’s headshot was pasted onto it, but after so many years, the colors had faded until her features were no longer clear. From the outline of the photograph, however, she must have been smiling brightly.

A line of tiny words had also been carved into the CD player:

“To my beloved first love, that boy Li Qingshui—may you always be happy. From your dearest wife, Little Bean.”

Li Qingshui stroked the inscription and smiled. He found two old-fashioned batteries and fitted them into the player, then put on his earphones. The gentle melody of a serenade slowly emerged, peaceful and tranquil, yet touched by a hint of sorrow.

Hanging the CD player from his waist, Li Qingshui continued rummaging through the drawer and took out two photographs. One showed him with two old people and was clearly very old. The other was somewhat newer; it depicted Liu Chang, Xiaojing, and Li Qingshui himself, each wearing a different expression.

Liu Chang’s smile was stiff, but he was making an effort to smile.

Li Qingshui was expressionless, as though burdened by heavy thoughts.

Xiaojing had turned her face away, refusing to look in Li Qingshui’s direction.

Li Qingshui studied the photograph carefully. After staring at it for several dozen seconds, he smiled. He then placed both photographs neatly into his pocket, opened a bottle of red wine he had prepared for himself on the laboratory table, and poured a full glass, draining it in one gulp.

He poured another glass and sipped it as he followed the melody of the serenade out of the laboratory. Taking the elevator, he made his way to the rooftop of the compound, where he sat on the edge of the building. He drank his wine, listened to the music, and gazed southward.

“The birds and beasts are on the move.”

Li Qingshui’s gaze seemed to cross hundreds of meters, reaching the outskirts of Zhengzhou.

As his words fell, the ground of the experimental compound began to tremble. Along the southern edge of Zhengzhou, countless ferocious beasts came charging forward, fleeing northward with terrified howls.

The sight of ten thousand beasts running wild was enough to shake the human heart. The sight of a hundred million beasts running wild was enough to move heaven and earth.

Hundreds of millions of poisonous insects and savage beasts raced desperately from south to north. The entire earth was covered in a black mass. The area occupied by the swarms and herds exceeded the whole of Zhengzhou City. The impact of their feet alone caused the buildings within the city to shed dust and grit from their walls, yet they ran faster and more frantically still.

At the very front were the strongest and swiftest individuals: insects more than ten meters long, enormous, powerful wild oxen, and bizarre creatures whose identities were impossible to determine. These gigantic beasts charged into Zhengzhou like an army of bulldozers. They ran wherever there was a road; where there was no road, they smashed one open. Houses collapsed and streets were destroyed wherever they passed, leaving devastation in their wake.

Behind them came an even greater tide of animals. The species within it were not as powerful, but they were far more varied. The rat-monkeys and spider-frogs Liu Chang had once seen were among them. Yet at this moment they had lost their former savagery, each one racing northward in terror.

Those that ran too slowly and fell behind were immediately trampled into the mud by the hundreds of millions following them, crushed into bloody pulp.

Standing atop the highest building in the compound, Li Qingshui seemed to see everything, yet also seemed indifferent to it all. His gaze remained fixed on the far south, as though only something in that direction could truly arouse his interest.

Though the immense herds of beasts charged wildly through Zhengzhou and destroyed more than half the city, they instinctively skirted the experimental compound. Whether because of animal instinct or some other reason, certain beasts would stop when they reached this place, unwilling to take even one step farther. They would rather be overtaken and trampled to death by the herds behind them than cross that invisible chasm.

Yet the beasts that came rushing from behind to trample their companions behaved the same way. After crushing those in front, they too sensed something, slammed on the brakes, changed direction, and continued running.

They resembled pitiful ants caught between two gods—fleeing in panic without knowing where to go.

Thus, Li Qingshui stood at the top of the experimental compound, quietly drinking his wine. Aside from the tremors beneath his feet, the cataclysm raging outside seemed to have nothing whatsoever to do with him.

The beast tide lasted a very long time—longer than the bird swarm a few days earlier.

It continued for more than a full day and night, and was still raging into the afternoon of the following day. Li Qingshui continued to hold the same posture, still gripping the bottle that was now more than half empty.

The creatures on the ground had changed from giant beasts and enormous insects into a sea of tiny insects, rolling like black waves. Though these short-legged creatures were not slow, they could not match the true beasts or the oversized insects, and so they had been dragged along in the running tide until they reached its very rear.

At the same moment that they surged forward like waves, the earth finally began to tremble with the force of what seemed like a magnitude-seven earthquake.

Boom!

Boom!

The thunderous sound approached from afar, growing from weak to powerful, until it became a vibration like mountains collapsing and seas raging, accompanied by a deafening roar capable of shattering the eardrums.

The black sea of insects on the ground was instantly shaken into “waves,” twisting into all manner of shapes. The buildings, already damaged by the beasts several days earlier, could no longer withstand the shaking and collapsed completely. Bricks and tiles crashed into the insect swarm, crushing countless black creatures beneath them.

“Lord Willow, you have finally arrived.”

The wine bottle in Li Qingshui’s hand slipped as the rooftop swayed. It struck the roof and shattered into glass fragments, while the remaining red wine splashed across the ground.

Standing atop the trembling building, he felt the vibrations beneath him grow more violent by the moment. His gaze seemed to cross tens of millions of meters and behold the world outside the city collapsing into chaos.

The willow had arrived.

In the jungle south of Zhengzhou, colossal branches a hundred meters in diameter descended from the heavens. Like pillars supporting the sky, they writhed and twisted across the ground. Their undulating movements resembled those of giant serpents. Wherever they passed, soil and ancient trees alike were ground into powder, then absorbed and transformed into part of the canopy.

What did a diameter of a hundred meters signify?

Some small mountains were no more than a hundred meters high. Yet these vines, each a hundred meters across and stretching for who knew how many kilometers, numbered beyond counting. Every movement they made blotted out the sky and shook the earth. Every slow animal, every plant incapable of fleeing, was smashed into pulp and drawn inside. They burrowed deep into the soil and pierced the heavens.

Though they moved like enormous snakes, they were more agile than any serpent and more voracious than any serpent. Their hunger seemed endless. They devoured trees when they encountered trees and animals when they encountered animals. Even as they advanced, they extended thinner branches underground, constantly absorbing the nutrients within the earth. When they raised their heads, they could pierce the clouds and bask in the sunlight. When they lowered them, they could plunge deep into the ground and dig eight hundred feet beneath the surface.

There was no other living thing on Earth that could rival these vines in size, nor any creature capable of wreaking such devastation upon heaven and earth.

The colossal vines swept forward like a tsunami that joined sky and land together. Everything in their path was submerged, leaving behind only a dense, emerald-green vitality, exuberant and overflowing.

Vitality. Exuberance.

This was a hymn to life, as though God had reached down a hand from the firmament, transformed its fingers into vines, and intended to seize the entire Earth within his palm.

“Lord Willow, it has been a long time.”

The earthquake intensified. God’s fingers spread wide, and after a brief moment, their tips finally touched the edge of Zhengzhou City.

Then the fingers opened completely. Within the space of a few blinks, more than half of the city of steel and concrete was pulverized into dust by that color of life. The largest vine descended from the sky, blocking out every ray of sunlight above Li Qingshui’s head. Like the collapse of the heavens, it folded toward the body he had raised his head to behold.

“Lord Willow, it has been a long time! You came at just the—”

With a sharp crack, the wineglass slipped from Li Qingshui’s hand and struck the ground. His face bore an expression of utter calm and utter madness.

“How magnificent!”

Those four words were the final elegy of Zhengzhou’s human inhabitants—the last human voice to echo through the city that had once held several million people.

“Li Qingshui is dead.”

Liu Chang’s traveling party suddenly halted at those words. In that same instant, the three children—the eldest, the second, and the third—murmured the same sentence together. Then they all turned around at once, looking southward.

To be continued.