Chapter 296 - 154: Luochuan City Settlement

Chapter 296: Chapter 154: Luochuan City Settlement

"Take Mr. Xu to get some rest. Put him in..." Luo Li paused for a moment. "Building Three, the empty room."

"Alrighty," Old Zhou replied. He turned to Xu Mo, cracking a smile that was a bit stiff but clearly trying to be warm. "You’re Mr. Xu, right? Come with me, it’s this way."

Xu Mo glanced at Luo Li.

She said nothing more, simply nodding at him before taking Tiantian by the hand and turning to leave.

Xu Mo followed Old Zhou, walking deeper into the residential complex.

Old Zhou walked at a leisurely pace. As Xu Mo followed, his eyes were secretly scanning his surroundings.

It didn’t take long for Xu Mo to notice something was off—or more specifically, something was off about the way Old Zhou walked.

His gait was odd. His body swayed from side to side in an uncoordinated way, as if something were throwing off his balance. Xu Mo looked closer and finally saw the problem—

Old Zhou’s right shoulder was noticeably wider than his left—not wider in a muscular way, but wider as if something extra were there. Beneath his right arm, he could vaguely make out the silhouette of another arm.

It wasn’t a normal arm. The extra limb was thinner and shorter, hanging limply at his side as if it were undeveloped. It was hidden beneath his clothes, swaying faintly with his movements. You wouldn’t even notice it if you weren’t looking carefully.

Xu Mo’s heart skipped a beat. He remembered the broadcast from Jiang City that warned consuming the meat of mutated creatures leads to malignant mutations. ’Mild cases result in disability and deformity,’ he recalled, ’while severe cases lead to a loss of humanity.’

The Old Zhou in front of him was a clear example of what that broadcast was talking about.

Xu Mo didn’t let his shock show, however. He just kept following Old Zhou, his gaze sweeping over the few people they passed along the way.

A man was squatting by a building entrance, smoking. A patch of black scales the size of a palm covered his left cheek, gleaming faintly under the streetlight.

A woman walked out of a building carrying a bucket. Her left hand was a full size larger than her right, its fingers thick and misshapen, resembling the forepaw of some mutated beast.

And another...

Mutations!

Mutations!!

Mutations!!!

Every single person Xu Mo saw had some trace of mutation, large or small. Some were obvious, others subtle, but there were no exceptions.

’Then I thought of Luo Li,’ he mused, ’the woman who bundled herself up so completely, the woman who wore a thick coat with the collar fastened tight even on a rainy late-summer night. Now I understand why she dressed that way.’

Back in Jiang City, Xu Mo had already anticipated this kind of situation. The human desire for power, for survival, will always drive some to take desperate measures. The warning from Jiang City was, in the end, just a warning. It couldn’t stop those who were desperate or ambitious.

Now, that very problem was appearing right here in this Luochuan City settlement.

Old Zhou brought him to the door of a room in Building Three.

"Mr. Xu, this is it." Old Zhou pushed the door open and gestured inside. "The accommodations are simple, so please bear with us. The bedding is clean; it was just aired out a few days ago. The toilet’s at the end of the hall. As for water, it’s supplied for two hours every night from eight to ten. There’s no water any other time."

Xu Mo nodded and thanked him.

Old Zhou hesitated, then said, "Mr. Xu, I don’t know why Leader Luo invited you here. But since you’re her guest, you can rest easy. If you need anything, just give a holler."

After he finished speaking, he turned and left, his footsteps disappearing into the darkness at the end of the corridor.

Xu Mo closed the door and surveyed his new room. It wasn’t large, maybe about a hundred square feet, and was sparsely furnished with just a single bed, a table, a chair, and an old-fashioned wardrobe. The window was boarded up, with only a narrow slit left open for air. The bedding was indeed clean and even carried the faint scent of sunshine—in the apocalypse, this was excellent treatment.

Instead of lying down right away, Xu Mo walked to the window and peered out through the crack between the boards.

The rain was still falling. Occasional sounds drifted from outside, and distant lights flickered through the downpour.

Xu Mo stood there for a few minutes before turning, sitting on the bed, and starting to process the information he had gathered that day.

’The first question, and the one that concerns me most: Luo Li said she *used to be* a Superpower User.’

’What does that mean?’

’She can obviously still control zombies, and her power is so strong that even a Tier-2 Mutated bows in submission to her. Those are clearly the traits of a Superpower User. So why say she *used to be* one?’

’Unless...’

Xu Mo thought about the mutated people, the warning from Jiang City, the way Luo Li kept herself completely covered... ’Unless they’ve started classifying themselves as "New Humans."’

’Not Superpower Users, not normal people, but something else entirely. People who became mutated by eating the flesh of mutated creatures. People whose bodies have undergone irreversible changes. People who have physiologically deviated from the category of "normal human."’

’If that guess is correct, then what Luo Li said about "used to be" makes perfect sense.’

’She used to be a human Superpower User. Now, she’s something else.’

’The second question is Tiantian.’

’That little girl’s condition is just too bizarre.’

’She’s on the verge of zombification, but Luo Li is using some method to "control" her. She can still barely communicate and hasn’t completely turned into a zombie, but her eyes turn red, she’ll suddenly stare at people, and she... licks people.’

’She retains her human form and a portion of her consciousness, but she also has the characteristics and abilities of a zombie. On top of that, she even awakened a Superpower that amplifies the range of Luo Li’s own power.’