Chapter 53

No one could understand how Shen Cong felt.

No one could tell just what he was thinking about when he stared at the two fat larvae rolling in the plastic box.

After some time, he mumbled to himself, “Have I ended up rearing two ant larvae as pets?”

He had never kept pets before. There was no need for him to do so before the apocalypse.

After the apocalypse, sometimes, when he felt a little lonely, he would think about keeping a dog, just like Will Smith a German Shepherd in I am Legend, or Citizen Z a Husky in Z Nation. But the dogs he met on his way had all turned into evolved beasts.

He did not manage to get any dogs as pets, but he did manage to get two ants as pets.

He added a sufficient amount of metal scraps into the plastic box and stopped paying attention to the ant larvae.

The sun in the evening dyed half of the sky and clouds in red. A bloody shade of red was spread through the land, and it looked strangely beautiful. Shen Cong had already finished welding more than twenty bear traps, so he buried them partially in the sand and stones around Titan.

Since the field strength in the form of the tornado was the greatest bait, Shen Cong did not add any lure. He just placed the bear traps at the paths that the evolved beasts might take.

Once he finished preparing everything, he returned to the truck and turned on his laptop to start learning about the various electrical components in Titan. During the past six years, he might have modified Titan, but most of the time, he just bought all the spare parts he needed from other people. He did not design or create any himself.

Right now though, he needed to repair micro electrical components. This meant that he had to come into contact with completely new knowledge.

Who would have thought that Titan would end up being rammed into by the dog crocodile during a flood?

And it was damaged incredibly badly.

Anhui was not situated in a coastal area with a low sea level, so Shen Cong seldom had to worry about floods. There were no volcanoes nearby either, and earthquakes rarely happened as well. Besides, since he believed that the apocalypse would arrive, he had designed his war truck based on apocalypses caused by disasters like war, viruses, or sudden appearances of wasteland.

He had seen too many movies and drama series related to people in apocalypses killing zombies. The Walking Dead was his favorite. When he saw the various schemes as well as fights against zombies and humans, he was certain that he should not believe in anyone easily. Only him and his war truck were reliable.

That was why he modified Titan into a truck that was a fusion between a war truck and a caravan. He did not design it based completely on the designs of a war fortress. It was inevitable that many aspects were not ideal.

Time passed as he continued learning.

Titan absorbed wandering Activity tirelessly while the field strength remained stable. The truck also occasionally gave Shen Cong Activity to strengthen his body.

The feeling of being able to improve even when laying down caused Shen Cong to feel relaxed and happy.

The Demonic Bull King Totem could be said to be his greatest discovery and invention in the post-apocalyptic world. Now, he just needed to wait for the moment Titan reached Level 1 a day later.

*****

It was sunny on the 10th of August. The world had welcomed many days of scorching sun back to back.

The bear traps outside did not manage to capture anything. It appeared that there were fewer evolved beasts than Shen Cong had expected.

The water level at the river bend was dropping at a visible rate every day. The earth by the bank was already starting to crack.

Shen Cong had previously been able to catch evolved fish and dry them up into sashimi to store them, but he caught less and less. As the water level dropped, the evolved fish seemed to leave the river bend and return to Yuxi River.

But Shen Cong did not dare go to Yuxi River to fish. One morning, he had checked out Yuxi River to observe the situation over there and noticed a huge head stretching out of the river.

It belonged to the dog crocodile.

Shen Cong was so terrified that he quickly fled into the distance. For the time being, he did not want to provoke the dog crocodile, which was an existence that was equivalent to a boss in video games.

‘There’s a dog crocodile in Yuxi River, and there’s another dog crocodile in Dagu’s reservoir. There sure are a lot of dog crocodiles. I wonder just which one is the one who bit Titan…

‘It should be the one who swam over from Changjiang.’

Changjiang passed through Anhui, and Jiangbian was a good place for crocodiles to rest. Yangzi’e Protection Zone was in Jiangbian. Quite a number of farmers in Hanjiang reared crocodiles. The thunderstorm might have turned the entire region from Changjiang to Chaohu into a pond. Hence, the crocodiles and evolved beasts like them near Changjiang ran over.

Shen Cong could no longer fish for evolved fish, but that did not affect him, because the sashimi he stored was enough to last him for around a month.

As for Titan, it would reach the borders of Level 1 by the next night. The entire truck would then be filled with Activity.

Shen Cong did not know what sort of changes would occur when it reached Level 1, but he could imagine that his level of evolution would have far surpassed all the evolved humans in Chengnan and even Juchao District.

It was time for him to enter the city.

*****

The five second generation green-headed flies did not kill each other, even though they were so hungry that they could no longer fly. This was vastly different from the fight between Mutated Green-headed Fly 1 and Mutated Green-headed Fly 2.

Upon meeting each other, Mutated Green-headed Fly 1 ate Mutated Green-headed Fly 2. This caused Shen Cong to come up with an assumption: perhaps flies of the same batch had a sensory connection, which was why they were able to exist harmoniously.

When he linked this to how the brachyponera ants and seven fanged wolves had hunted together, he could deduce that evolved beasts were influenced by their mutation, and that included their intellect and personality. But violence was not their only personality. They also possessed emotions.

The ant larvae respected Shen Cong, loved him, and showed a sense of closeness to him.

“How touching,” Shen Cong commented in boredom. Then, he tossed a second generation green-headed fly into the glass bottle where Mutated Green-headed Fly 1 was.

The next second, Mutated Green-headed Fly 1 started to tear into the second generation green-headed fly. Mutated Green-headed Fly 1 had a clear advantage in terms of size. It was as big as a fist, and while the second generation green-headed fly’s level was higher, it was just the size of a baby’s fist. The two were simply not of the same class.

Hence, after a short fight, the second generation green-headed fly was bitten to death and eaten by Mutated Green-headed Fly 1.

It was reduced to a pile of fly poop.

Shen Cong decided to toss all the remaining second generation green-headed flies into Mutated Green-headed Fly 1’s glass bottle to see whether the four small flies could kill the big fly.

He originally intended to use flies to catch fish, but there were no more evolved fish in the river bend.

He was just reusing trash for an experiment.

There were not many twists and turns leading to the results. The four second generation green-headed flies were still not a match for Mutated Green-headed Fly 1. They were all bitten to death and eaten.

Now, of all the mutated flies Shen Cong had, only one second generation green-headed fly along with Mutated Green-headed Fly 1 was left.

Shen Cong named second generation green-headed fly he reared alone as “Revenge Seeker”. After all, he had always intended to rear it so that he could do a full comparison with Mutated Green-headed Fly 1 so that he could figure out just what were the differences between a naturally mutated fly and a second generation mutated fly. A fight in the end was inevitable. The second generation green-headed fly would take revenge for his brothers.

As of then, Revenge Seeker was already about the same size as Mutated Green-headed Fly 1, and it was still growing in size. It was at Level 0.042 right now, far surpassing Mutated Green-headed Fly’s Level 0.033. But levels were obsolete when evolved beasts fought, so Shen Cong could still look forward toward whether Revenge Seeker could successfully take revenge.

Shen Cong only thought of experimenting with the green-headed flies since they were pests.

But his feelings toward the ant larvae were ambiguous. In the beginning, he was averse to the connection they shared in terms of their senses, but now, he felt that it would be pretty good to rear two ants.

He watched the ant larvae shed their skin for the second time and turn into mature larvae. He found himself looking forward to the day they completed the pupal stage and turned into brachyponera ants.

If they truly turned into large ants who were sentient, it would be pretty good.

*****

Another day went by quickly. Titan set up camp in another place, and at 9:36 P.M., the most important moment for it arrived.

It had reached Level 0.999, and it was still absorbing the wandering Activity from the tornado.

“Whew…”

Shen Cong’s emotions surged. He was about to witness an unknown future.