CH 1.2

Chapter 1.2 – Little Monster

The gang approached with guns.

It was the first time Shi Yuan saw so many humans.

Then Shi Yuan was held down by them, several pairs of hands pinned him to the ground, and the cold muzzle hit his head. He could barely see someone coming over with a needle and drawing a few large tubes of his blood.

“The results will be out in half an hour.” The person drawing the blood said, “Then we’ll know if he’s infected or not.”

“What else is there to check?” One of the people holding him down said, “Look at his scales, his head, and tail, at first glance, it is the late stage of infection, it is already kindness to give him a quick death. Who knows what kind of monster this kid will turn into?” The barrel of the gun against the back of Shi Yuan’s head was pressed harder.

“Be rigorous.” The blood drawer replied, “You can’t rule out a serious post-infection, the possibility is less than one in a million, but it’s still there, right?”

The man snorted: “One in a million… you also saw that he just tried to touch the queen bee, this is a normal person? Who does that kind of thing?”

“That’s not the decisive evidence, my lab results are.” The blood drawer’s attitude was firm, “Captain Cai, by the way, Admiral Lu is about to return to the city, he will know about this matter.”

This time, the “Captain Cai” did not speak.

Shi Yuan felt very frustrated.

He had done his best to imitate human beings, but he was still seen through at a glance. The good thing is, the humans don’t mean to kill him for now.

He was a kind and harmless monster who just wanted to find his human.

But Shi Yuan had no chance to defend himself. He was escorted all the way to the convoy and stuffed into a cage. The cage was wide and airtight, specially prepared for suspected infected people, with simple tables and chairs, and hot water brought for him.

People were tidying up the mess after the battle, arranging firearms, dealing with wounds, and cutting up the queen bee’s tissue to go back to study. In the midst of all this, they set aside three people to watch over Shi Yuan.

Shi Yuan didn’t know when the “test results” would come, but he saw no reason why he could pass the test.

He had to escape.

Before he escaped, he had to ask which direction the city was in.

The cage had only a small window blocked by perforated iron sheets. He drank the hot water and felt much more comfortable. Then he went to the small window and asked the guards, “Hello, can I ask a question?”

The guards didn’t make a sound.

Shi Yuan said, “Which direction is the city in?”

No one answered him, he asked several more times, and after a long time, one said in a jarred voice: “If your lab results are okay, we will take you into the city.”

This is the meaning of not wanting to answer.

Shi Yuan had no concept of time and did not know how long it had been since the blood was drawn, but it was time for him to escape. He put his right hand over the right side of the cage, that was where he felt the weakest…

“Wait, are you sure the test results are okay?” A conversation came faintly from outside.

Shi Yuan paused and withdrew his hand to listen carefully.

“I’m sure.” It was still the voice of the blood drawer.

“Didn’t you say it would take half an hour? How come it’s so fast.”

Blood drawer: “That’s a conservative estimate. It won’t take long to test a person. The report is here, and the process is the same. Go, take a look. I guess you can’t understand it. But your Captain Cai said you can release him, so quickly release him and eat, the tomato soup is going to be cold.”

“Okay, okay, wait for me to open the door.” The guard sighed, “Why is it tomato soup again?”

Shi Yuan couldn’t believe it. Why wasn’t he found abnormal?

After a scraping sound of metal, the door of the cage was opened.

A petite woman in a white coat stood outside the door, the one who drew his blood. She raised her eyebrows and said, “Come out and follow me.”

She turned around and left, and Shi Yuan quickly followed in her footsteps.

People were busy in the distance, and a dozen off-road vehicles were parked together. Before he could see a few people, he was pulled by the woman into a tent next to the convoy.

“Go inside and rest.” The woman told him, “We’ll be traveling all night in the latter half of the night.”

Shi Yuan said, “Thank you.”

“It’s alright, just doing my job.” The woman hesitated for a few seconds, before speaking, and finally looked at Shi Yuan and said, “If the empress bee appears, there are evacuation vehicles at the end of the convoy, someone will take you there, at least this way you can survive.”

Shi Yuan: “Empress bee?”

The woman explained: “The purple light bug has a queen bee and an empress bee. You have to be lucky that we only met the queen bee. The empress bee is much more dangerous than her. We have to leave this area before it appears.”

A trace of unease crossed her face.

Not only her, everyone rushed to reorganize and guard, some people were holding guns and their eyes were red, some people buried their heads to wipe the blade, some people knelt on the ground to check the vehicles, their hands were full of oil. The mud was full of footprints, lights illuminated half the sky, and modified vehicles were ready to start. Although no one said so explicitly, the tension seeped out from every corner.

No one wanted to meet the furious empress bee, whose wings were like sharp blades, whose body was like steel, and who craved endless and frenzied reproduction.

The woman finally said: “Hurry up and rest, this is not something you need to worry about.”

And then she left.

There were clean clothes in the tent. After Shi Yuan put it on, he wrapped himself in the quilt and lay on the bed.

He took a deep breath.

He had just been so nervous that until now the tip of his tail was still curled up, afraid that the other side would notice his abnormality.

What the woman didn’t know was that the empress bee had already appeared.

This matter started five days ago when Shi Yuan met the dead man by chance.

The man’s name was Xie Qianming. When he first saw Shi Yuan, he looked at his appearance and believed that Shi Yuan was an infected person.

“I’m also infected.” Xie Qianming showed a dry smile, “So I don’t mind you getting in my car.”

Xie Qianming said he encountered a swarm of bugs and accidentally got bitten. The infection was worsening and the bugs were growing rapidly inside him.

He felt like he was in the same boat as Shi Yuan.

And Shi Yuan didn’t say anything to deny it.

The first four days were calm, they ate and chatted together, and on the fifth day—that is, this evening, they met the empress bee of the swarm.

The empress bee was wandering in the green forest, sucking the nectar of a giant flower, covered with yellow and black markings, and three pairs of wings of metallic color as if they were works of art, the off-road vehicle was as small as a toy in front of it.

Xie Qianming fiercely turned the car, but the two-meter-long bee needle overturned the car!

After a while, Xie Qianming roared, “Get out!” He kicked open the car door and climbed out. He was exhausted because of the infection and fell to the ground. Shi Yuan also escaped from the car, looking at the weak man and the huge empress bee, thinking that he should do something.

He did not consider himself human, or he would not have tried to make friends with the queen bee.

But Xie Qianming was his companion, and Shi Yuan could not stand by and watch him get eaten.

So the empress bee died.

Black crystals burst out of its body. The empress bee was screaming silently before it died, but more crystals gushed out of its mouth, cascading and sharp and jagged, gluing half of its body to the ground. Two minutes passed, it was like a specimen wrapped in black crystal, forever frozen in the moment of struggle.

When Shi Yuan went back to find Xie Qianming, he saw him lying weakly on the stone.

The empress bee catalyzed the growth of the larva, he was covered in blood and was about to die.

Shi Yuan took his hand.

Xie Qianming said ‘you lied to me, you are also a damn monster.’

Then, Shi Yuan met the queen bee and the team.

Outside the tent, the crowd could be heard talking about the empress bee in a tense tone. The wind from the moor and the forest intertwined, whimpering as if countless monsters were whispering.

Shi Yuan wrapped his tail around himself, holding the cup in both hands, sipping hot water. He didn’t know if the woman could see his nervousness, or if that Captain Cai was still suspicious of him. In short, he got through and mixed into the human race.

He was a little liar.

The empress bee was dead, and the thousands of aliens in the forest dared not approach him. He was the most terrifying monster in this brutal wilderness.

However, Shi Yuan thought expectantly, ‘I can go to the city soon, will my human be there?’

He could probably touch my head, scratch my chin, and stay with me all day without getting bored.

‘In this world, only he belongs to me.’

Shi Yuan drank the hot water in one go.

The night was long, he wrapped himself in a blanket and curled up into a fluffy ball.

At the same time.

Main City, East Defense Line.

A fierce battle had just ended. Supply trucks lined up in silence, the ground covered in shell casings, mud, bloody footprints, and monster corpses, with a few infected struggling to die. The young, handsome officer stepped over the filth and, as if sensing something, stopped to look back.

That was the direction of the wasteland.

“Admiral, what are your orders?” the adjutant asked.

The man did not speak, the light of the searchlight outlined his straight back. After a few seconds, he shook his head slightly: “Nothing.”

He stepped on the writhing monster on the ground, pointed the gun at its head, and pulled the trigger.

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**TN

Queen Bee (蜂王/fēngwáng) and Queen Bee (蜂后/fēnghòu) – I changed the latter to Empress Bee to differentiate them.