The impact sent leaves flying into the air, falling over An Zhe.
The monster's head landed not more than half a meter away from him, its blood-red compound eyes still looking in his direction.
In the past, An Zhe had seen creatures in the "Abyss" who could still move even after being cut into thirds. Just as he thought to get a little further away from it, he suddenly heard sounds nearby.
"That was the last uranium shell. After harvesting the carcass, we're going back to the base." The man’s voice was rich.
"Arthropod-type carapaces aren't cheap. I didn't think we'd end up snagging some." Another male voice, reedier than the previous one.
After a short exchange, they stopped talking, and the sounds of their footsteps traveled over. It was the sound of thick-soled leather boots treading on the sand mixed with the rustling sound of friction.
Humans.
After An Ze’s death, An Zhe had not seen any humans for a long time. He furtively raised his head from the shrubbery.
The shrubbery rustled. He heard the first speaker quietly urge, "On your guard!"
In the following second, three pitch-black gun muzzles were aimed in his direction.
An Zhe looked at the men.
His muddled recollection of the night he lost his spore inexorably came to mind, but An Ze's existence had shown him the kindness and goodwill of humans. He thought over his current predicament, then said, "He-... hello."
Beneath the aurora’s illumination, the scene before him could be taken in at a glance: three humans clad in dark gray clothes, all male. Wrapped around their waists were wide brown belts with magazines for their guns tied to them. The man standing in the middle towered over the other, shorter two.
He had been the one speaking just now about uranium. His voice was very calm as he asked, "You human?"
An Zhe hesitated briefly. Thinking of the weapon that blew up the monster at its midsection, he said, "Yes."
"What're you called? What's your ID number? What about your teammates?"
"An Zhe. 3261170514. We got separated."
The man looked down at him with a frown. He had thick and dark eyebrows, clear black eyes, a high nose bridge, and thick lips. Unlike the wild beasts of the Abyss, the combination of these facial features didn’t make An Zhe feel a sense of peril, so he pursed his lips and returned the gaze.
Three seconds later, one of the men at that man's side—a short and dark-skinned man—loaded the gun once more with a click, the action full of implied threat. He looked at An Zhe and said, his voice low and words fast, "Take off your clothes."
An Zhe stood up from the shrubbery and undid the first button on his gray shirt, then the second, revealing the skin at his neckline. His skin was a smooth, milky white that looked a bit like the color of his hyphae.
Then he heard the third man whistle. That man had pallid skin tinted with a red flush and blond hair as well as many wrinkles on his face, which were signs of human aging. The man's eyes, gray-blue and turned up at the corners, were looking straight at him.
An Zhe lowered his head, undid the rest of the buttons, and took off his shirt.
The blue-eyed man walked closer to him, whistled a second time, and began to examine him from top to bottom.
This man's gaze was very sticky, similar to the saliva of the animals in the Abyss. After examining An Zhe once, he looped around to An Zhe's side.
Then he seized An Zhe's wrist and swiped the skin there with his fingers. With his thumb rubbing against An Zhe's wrist bone, he asked in a slightly piercing voice, "What's this?"
An Zhe looked down at the back of his hand and wrist. There were some random and irregular red marks there, which were scratches he had gotten from the shrubbery when he was dodging the monster's attacks earlier. He turned his head, using his gaze to indicate the shrubbery behind himself. "Leaves."
A brief silence followed. After a while, that man clicked his tongue and said, "You taking off the rest yourself, or shall I take it off for you?"
An Zhe didn’t move.
He knew more or less what they were doing, for there were similar scenes in An Ze's memories.
Genetic contamination would occur between monsters and monsters or between monsters and people. The method of tentatively verifying whether someone had been contaminated was to check for wounds.
However, the man behind him made him feel uncomfortable. When he was still a mushroom, the feeling he got when snakes slithered past his stem and cap was just like this.
He lifted his head and looked at the man in the middle. He had seen many ferocious beasts in the Abyss and was also able to roughly judge how much of a threat they posed. Right now, he intuited that this man was the least aggressive out of the three.
”Hosen." After a brief exchanged glance, that man spoke up again, his voice very grim. "Don't fall back into your old habits while we're out here."
Letting out a derisive laugh, Hosen examined An Zhe with an even more unrestrained gaze.
Three seconds later, that man said to An Zhe, "Come to the back with me."
An Zhe obediently followed him around the monster's head to the other side. Apart from the scratch marks left by the branches and leaves, he didn’t have any other wounds.
The man asked, "How long have you been separated from your teammates for?"
An Zhe thought for a while, then replied, "One day."
"You're very lucky."
"It seems that there aren't many monsters here."
"But there's no shortage of bugs." While the man's speech was always very curt, he seemed dependable.
An Zhe buttoned up his clothes, looked at the man, and asked in a soft voice, "Are you going back to the Northern Base?"
The man replied, "Yeah."
"Then... can you take me along?" An Zhe asked. "I have my own food and water."
"It's not up to me," the man said.
Just as the man finished speaking, he stepped out and looked at the other two men. "No wounds. Shall we take him along?"
Hosen smiled, looked at An Zhe with his arms crossed, and whistled a third time. Then he said, "Why not? It won't matter if we do."
Then he looked at the last man. "What do you think, scum?"
An Zhe looked over as well and directly met the dark-skinned man's dour gaze.