"Wei Liqin......" After the unhappy parting that day, I haven't seen Wei Liqin for a long time, he looked at me expressionlessly, I could feel a lot of estrangement between us, and I even felt a trace of hostility.

"Wei Liqin is acting with us this time." Xie Tao stood between us and forced an awkward laugh.

"I'm just here for work." Wei Liqin explained very simply, as if he deliberately wanted to dissociate himself from me.

The person standing in front of me used to be a classmate and friend, but now he is so cold, I don't blame him, the world is supposed to be like this.

"Well, let's go first." Ban Zhiyu opened the car door and motioned with his eyes for us to get in the car quickly to escape this embarrassment.

I couldn't help but respond to Ban Zhiyu's call, but I was embarrassed to be the first to get in the car, Xie Tao saw this and hurriedly helped me open the car door, got into the car first, and then came out of his body and waved to me. "Du Yuheng, come inside, I want to control the machine gun."

Wei Liqin ran into the driver's seat of the van as the driver, while Ban Zhiyu sat in the passenger seat, and the rest of us found a random place in the back compartment. Xie Tao was in the seat near the modified sunroof of the van, as he said, so that he could get out of the roof at any time and use the machine gun that was fixed to the roof.

Sitting in the car, the sense of security that arises spontaneously makes me immediately forget the conversation with Wei Liqin just now, and the scenes of the street scene passing by outside the car window are more attractive to me, after all, I haven't seen the world outside Wanxiang City for a long time; For some reason, I suddenly felt a familiar familiarity with this dilapidated post-apocalyptic city, as if it were the way it was, as if I had been born to belong here.

"Today's task is to take samples in these places and conduct simple experimental tests," Xie Tao pulled out a map of the city from his backpack, pointed out a few areas circled with red pencils with his fingers, and confirmed to Liao Zhuojun, "I'm right, right?" ”

"Yes." Liao Zhuojun's face is relatively round and long, his cheekbones are slightly prominent, his eyebrows are not thick, he wears a pair of round-framed glasses, and he has a teacher's face, but his serious expression makes people feel nervous, "We will collect some at the edge of the forest now, and then enter the forest." ”

"You do this...... Is it any use? Although I felt that it was a bit rude to say this, I still couldn't help but ask Liao Zhuojun, "I mean, we don't have time to save ...... now."

"I see what you mean." Liao Zhuojun looked at me, her eyes did not show anger, but blinked very gracefully, and explained gently, "You may have heard that it is not only us humans who are sick now, but also these plants. Don't you think this forest is abnormal? ”

Liao Zhuojun said while motioning for me to look at the street scene outside the window, the cement buildings that are gradually wrapped in green, the streets swallowed by plants, are not just described as "desolate", although it has only been a year, but even if we ignore the resilience of nature in the past, we can't explain such a crazy expansion of the Dead City Forest, if we follow this progress, I really don't know if we will live in the tree hole next winter to keep warm.

"You're right, I think so too......" I sighed.

"The medicine that drove you crazy last time was said to be to cure these plants." Liao Zhuojun realized that he had touched on my sore spot, "Yes, I heard about you, and I also brought a little bit of that medicine to drive you crazy when I came out this time." As she spoke, she patted the aluminum cooler at her feet, "But I'm going to tell you, you should be glad you're alive, especially since it's not your fault." Liao Zhuojun's tone was not so much comforting, but more like avenging me from my point of view. Before I could thank her, she continued, "To use the simplest analogy, someone is using pesticides to treat you, is this not clear that it is trying to harm you? So that person should be punished, not you. ”

"I think you have to keep an eye on it." Xie Tao suddenly interjected, "I have a bad premonition. ”

"It's okay, you're here." I patted Xie Tao with a forced smile and turned my head to ask Liao Zhuojun, "So, since you already have a medicine to treat plants, what is the purpose of your experiment this time?" ”

Liao Zhuojun saw that I was down to business, and continued: "It's also rigorous, I have conducted a small-scale sample experiment before, and the effect is indeed as ideal as the officer said, but ......"

"But what?"

"But unrealistic. I mean it's unrealistic to roll out the drug across the board. Because the rate of plant disease is much higher than the rate of vaccine cure, the treatment of a single sample is indeed effective, but if it is promoted in the forest, it is simply a drop in the bucket. ”

"So the drugs developed in Hainan don't work?"

"You can't say that." Liao Zhuojun sighed, "I had an exchange with that officer named Yang Shanao. He said that a hypothesis had been put forward in Hainan that there was some kind of connection between infected plants in the forests formed by infected plants. They share a common abnormal sequence structure in their plant genes and come from the same pathogen. ”

"You're saying that these plants have a common source of infection." I'm still thinking about what Liao Zhuojun said, and Xie Tao has summed it up in one sentence, "As long as there is a way to eliminate the source of infection, the infection of the entire forest can be stopped." ”

"That's right. So I'm going to try to find the source of the infection in this forest this time. Liao Zhuojun motioned for Xie Tao to bring the map in his hand, and then pointed out the shadows drawn with pencil on the map, "You see, I have asked people to draw the general distribution of the so-called forests in the city, and these shadowed areas are the most densely covered by vegetation. If the assumptions reached by the people in Hainan are correct, then the source of infection should be in these areas, because as the source of infection, the area where it is located should have the greatest degree and scope of plant mutation. ”

"No, it won't." After learning about the mission that came out this time, I couldn't help but complain, "Let's not say that the so-called assumption is not true, just a few of us will go to the Dead City Forest, which is simply sending us to death...... Do you know how terrible that forest is......"

"In the past, it was true that if you let people into the forest, you would die, but now it's different." Speaking of this, Liao Zhuojun locked on me with a firm gaze, "With you, the problem is much easier to solve." ”

"Me?"

"Because you have the ability to deter mutants." Xie Tao added, "This is also the main purpose of your coming out this time. No one can do it but you. ”

"But it's not just mutants in the forest, but also the madmen who live in it with their own set of barbaric rules." I frowned and glanced at my fellow men in the carriage who were confident in me.

"Zhang Xing has already arranged for Huang Weizheng and them to find a safer place in the forest to establish a base area, so that we can go deep into the forest."

"What!" As soon as Ban Zhiyu finished speaking, I shouted, "They're already in the forest?" ”

"Yes, we'll turn around at the predetermined location and then head to the base."

Ban Zhiyu obviously didn't understand the reason for my question, but Liao Zhuojun took over again, pointed to a shadow closest to the edge of the forest, and said, "This is the first place we are going to in the dense forest, and your friends should already be waiting for us there." ”

"Huang Weizheng, they went to do such a dangerous thing, and no one of you even mentioned it to me......"

"Chen Mo also went to ......"

"Chen Mo also went?!"

"Hmmm......"

I whispered to Xie Tao, and then Liao Zhuojun explained, as an outsider: "Du Yuheng, don't worry, your friend is acting with a group of powerful mercenaries, not to mention driving that armed bus." ”

I know that Liao Zhuojun said about the armed bus, that car is the loot that the scavengers snatched from the bikers, I heard that it can easily deal with any situation that suddenly occurs in the Dead City Forest, and together with the Dead City Forest map, it is the most useful asset of the Bikers, but now it is all owned by Wanxiang City.

Wei Liqin drove the car and didn't speak all the way, and Ban Zhiyu's occasional lack of words with him naturally ended in embarrassment. He wasn't that guy before, and now he's just a taciturn driver. Like him, Cao Lige, who has been observing the city outside the car, seems to be recalling what the unrecognizable street used to look like.

We drifted into the dead city forest in a bump; Damn, I really hate the feeling of being back in the forest. According to Liao Zhuojun's request, we first asked her to collect some plant samples in several areas before entering the first dense forest area. Although I am not an expert in botany, I can tell that she seems to be trying to collect samples from different locations in the form of an outside, perhaps so that she can analyze the extent to which plants are affected by the forest.

When I secretly guessed Liao Zhuojun's experiment, we were getting closer and closer to the location of the dense forest area, and the strange plants around us gradually increased. A few blocks ahead, you can see a huge banyan tree rising seven or eight stories above the building, branches of the aerial roots also sinking into the ground, and the lush branches and leaves like a wig covering the building. A tall building with vines and leaves towering in the jungle, despite the python-like vines tightly binding, the tall building still stands, and it has become a puppet of vines towering in the endless dense forest, just like the tree of the dead city forest that Liao Shuzhen said at that time, as if that was the root of the mutated forest.

On top of that, the streets near our location were more damaged than we had seen before, the cracked asphalt road was strewn with brown and blue vines, the shops on both sides were basically a paradise of vegetation, the wild growth of small trees blocked the doors and windows of most of the shops, and the empty houses sealed the last memories of the people who lived there gradually faded into the silence of the wind over time.

Maybe because of my presence and the good weather conditions, we didn't see too many mutants on the road; The two or three groups of mutants I occasionally saw were also staring at me motionless like statues, and then waiting to be stabbed in the head by Xie Tao and them. Because of this, I followed her closely as if I had become the "insect repellent" that Liao Zhuojun carried with me, watching her bury her head in the sample, adding the drug reagent that drove me crazy, watching the gray-green epidermis attached to the plant sample fall off little by little, and then talking to myself about the academic analysis that I didn't understand.

Xie Tao and they were not far from me and Liao Zhuojun, Wei Liqin parked the car in the middle of the road, and Ban Zhiyu and Xie Tao scattered separately to patrol within about ten meters of the van. It seems that for me, the most interesting thing now is to observe Liao Zhuojun's scientific sampling demonstration teaching.

I don't know how long it took for Liao Zhuojun to finally complete the last plant that looked like a turtle back sunflower for laboratory sampling. We were just about to pack up our things and turn back when several people shouted nervously from the other end of the van. I looked back and saw that Xie Tao was raising his gun and confronting a guy who had held Ban Zhiyu hostage. Wei Liqin just wanted to get into the car, but he didn't expect Cao Lige to suddenly draw his sword and put it on his neck, and led him to the person who held Ban Zhiyu hostage.

"Hell." I pulled on the bolt of the gun, just opened the safe, and was about to leave with Liao Zhuojun, who was hurriedly packed, when I suddenly felt someone holding something behind my back, and through my coat, I seemed to be able to feel the coldness that penetrated deep into my spine - someone was pointing a gun at me.

"Don't mess around, little ghost." A middle-aged man's hoarse voice came from behind me, and Liao Zhuojun was immediately stopped by him as soon as he screamed in panic, "Shut up!" The two of you are now slowly moving forward. ”

I couldn't grasp the other person's current situation, I couldn't determine his height, size, appearance, and posture at this time, the only thing I knew was that if he pulled the trigger, I would be finished. In the distance, Xie Tao was still confronting those uninvited guests, and at some point two people with homemade modified knives and axes popped out nearby, because Xie Tao had a gun in his hand and knew that it was difficult to deal with at a glance, they did not act rashly, but they were also shouting and laughing.

"Who are you?" I walked forward as they asked, trying to get to the bottom of them.

"Less nonsense." The man thought we were walking slowly, and with a muzzle of a gun, Liao Zhuojun and I were both pushed forward several steps in a rough manner.

Liao Zhuojun and I were reluctantly pushed into the middle of the confrontation, and Xie Tao to my left was still a few meters away from us, his eyes were looking around for a reversal, as if trying to find an opportunity to reverse, but obviously in this passive situation, we can only wait for the other party to make the next move.

"Cao Lige, is this kid?" The man behind me knocked me on the head again with the muzzle of his gun and asked our traitor as if he were buying livestock.

"Yes." Cao Lige didn't seem ashamed of his betrayal of us, and he pointed his chin at Liao Zhuojun beside me, "That woman is a scientist, and the boss should need her." ”

"So you can kill the others?" The man holding Ban Zhiyu hostage with a dagger laughed wickedly.

As soon as I heard this, I immediately shouted anxiously with Xie Tao, but the group laughed even louder, as if they were playing tricks on us prey in the first place.

"Cao Lige! Why did you betray us? Xie Tao asked one of the most common questions that is usually asked when betrayed by teammates.

"Betrayal? I'm not a scavenger in the first place. Cao Lige shrugged his shoulders and smiled, "The reason why I'm in Wanxiang City is to wait for something like this to happen. ”

"Today's ......"

Xie Tao stared at Cao Lige, whose expression was distorted, in bewilderment, and I boldly guessed after realizing that the cold weapons used by several of them and the clothes were not as shabby as those who had lived in the forest for a long time: "They are from Jiangshang." ”

After hearing my judgment, Cao Lige and the others all laughed out loud, and one of them shook his head and laughed: "Oh, it seems that this little ghost is really worth taking away." That's right, we are from Egami. ”

"Sure enough, after Qingshan was hit hard, the people on the river couldn't sit still and wanted to make a move?"

"Oh, don't say it so ugly, everyone eats with a mouthful. What you're talking about is the boss's business, and we just need to stay alive. Cao Lige said disapprerovingly, "But then again, the boss has been betting on Qingshan and Wanxiang, originally he was more optimistic about Qingshan, but he didn't expect Wanxiang City to make a breakthrough first." It also happened that you guys became the key to the vaccine, and I knew that he wouldn't let you off the boat in the first place. ”

"A merchant is a merchant."

"Well, let's not talk so much useless. Du Yuheng, you ask your friends to put down their guns and go with us, I can guarantee that they will get out of the dead city forest alive. Cao Lige pressed Wei Liqin's sweaty cheeks with the cold sword face, "Anyway, you won't be welcome in Wanxiang City, so it's better to go with us." ”

I glanced at Xie Tao, who happened to be looking at me too, and after the two of us met their eyes, he quietly shook his head, hinting at me not to do it. But in the current passive situation, I don't have any bargaining chips with these people at all.

"How are you going to keep them safe?" My body was motionless, and I didn't even dare to turn my head, so I had to ask Cao Lige.

"Hehe, of course we're not going to just let them go, at least not now." Cao Lige looked at Xie Tao, "Let him put the gun down first." ”

Xie Tao glanced at me and quickly aimed at Cao Lige. I had no choice but to persuade: "Xie Tao, put down the gun." Xie Tao was still holding the gun, but I was sure that his belief in firing the gun had been shaken, "Put down the gun, we can only do what he says." ”

Xie Tao held his breath and glared at Cao Lige angrily, the green tendons on his arms burst out, and after the rifle trembled for a few seconds, he could only shake his hand angrily, drop the rifle, blushed face, and stared at Cao Like with a slanted head, as if he was saying that he wanted to kill and chop.

"Don't worry, the most important thing for us Jiangshang people is credit." Cao Lige motioned for the man standing closer to Xie Tao, armed with a fire axe, to search Xie Tao's body and seize his weapon.

At this point, we are really at the point of being slaughtered by others. The people of the river gathered us in the open space they surrounded us, while they put away their cold weapons and pointed their guns at us; No matter how bad their marksmanship is, I'm sure they can easily shoot us to death when we resist. The man behind me finally walked into my line of sight, and after seeing his nearly 1.9 meters tall, tiger-backed appearance, I had to be glad that I didn't have any cleverness just now.

"Listen, you're going to search for all the weapons on your companions and tie their hands to them." The one-meter-nine big man ordered Liao Zhuojun to say.

I wasn't surprised that the people did this, but when they threw out a few pairs of handcuffs, I realized that they were more difficult to deal with than the enemies I had encountered before. Liao Zhuojun honestly took turns disarming us and handcuffing us, and after clasping her hands, she turned around and looked helplessly at Cao Lige and his Jiangshang friends.

"Alright, now let's go." As soon as Cao Lige's words fell, the van behind him was started, and a person from the river poked his head out and waved at him to signal that it was ready.

"Where are we going? Your 'Wanderer'? ”

"Do you remember our ship?" A man from the river seemed a little surprised, but I don't think he would change his attitude towards the few of us just because I remembered their mother ship.

"Don't worry, we'll go back sooner or later." Cao Lige pointed at the van with the butt of his gun and urged us to get in the van quickly, "But before we go back, our boss wants you to finish what you need to do." ”

If I'm not mistaken, the boss in Cao Lige's mouth should be Wei Jiahui, and we had a relationship with him, and he also entertained us on the boat because he saved his sister. I didn't expect that businessman-turned-fellow to become our enemy.

Ban Zhiyu and Wei Liqin were the first to get into the car, and Xie Tao got special treatment, and he was tied to the seat in front of a Jiangshang; I think they are probably worried that Xie Tao, who has received professional military training, will break free halfway. And Liao Zhuojun and I were "useful people" because Cao Lige was the last to get in the car, and we should have sat slightly forward. It just so happened that the van we drove out this time had a lot of space and just filled all of us.

Liao Zhuojun and I were both surprised by Cao Lige's next arrangement, but she didn't dare to talk too much at this time. But I'm different, no matter what, I just can't control my mouth, and I must get to the bottom of it before getting into the car, so I asked in front of the car door: "Now that you take us people, the original sampling work is probably not so easy to complete, and there are still people in Wanxiang City in this forest, aren't you afraid of bumping into them?" ”

"Bumped into? We were about to go to them. Cao Lige laughed and ran to the passenger seat, it seemed that he was not going to continue answering my questions.

However, the words he left behind puzzled me even more, in fact, it was more uneasy. "What? Don't you ......?"

"Yes, those people were dealt with before you." The one-meter-nine man pushed me impatiently, "You kid talks so much nonsense!" Get in the car! ”

I felt like a puppy about to be caged in, trying to keep my weight in front of the car door. The big man's words made me feel uneasy, and the uneasiness immediately turned to anxiety. "If they have any strengths and weaknesses, I won't die and go to the Wanderer with you!"

"You can try."

The big man behind me had already used up his patience, and he kicked me in the back so hard that I lost my center of gravity in an instant, and before I could get ready, I collapsed on the seat of the car, and as soon as I turned around, I saw the man with a rifle in his hand, smashing the butt of his rifle on my head.

Before the pain hit, my eyes were blackened. Xie Tao's roar, Liao Zhuojun's exclamation, and the noise in the car were fleeting, and my consciousness suddenly dissipated like a wisp of green smoke, and I fell asleep in the endless darkness.