Chapter Fifty-Six: The Trap

“What is this? And how did Bell manage to find such a thing again?” Ye Hai glanced at Jack, who was once more kneeling on the ground with broken legs after waking Joe with his noise.

Perhaps he had grown accustomed to having his legs broken; Jack showed no sign of pain this time. Instead, he grinned at Ye Hai and said, “Our boss knew you corpse hunters would be interested in this…”

After a brief silence, Ye Hai asked, “What does Bell want?”

“Surely he wouldn’t pay such a heavy price just to drive the northern forces back…”

Jack replied, “As expected, the black market is right to call you a clever man, Ye Hai! Our boss wants everything that Lakan and Hukun possess.”

Ye Hai let out a mocking laugh. “No wonder they call him the Devourer—his appetite is truly astonishing. He wants to swallow up two-thirds of the black market.”

After studying Jack for a moment, Ye Hai continued, “How much of this solution do you have?”

Hearing this, Jack realized the negotiation was essentially complete. He answered, “An inexhaustible supply… We discovered an underground river. The water in the test tubes comes from there. We’ve done many experiments with it; everyone who drinks it, without exception, turns into a zombie. But those first-stage zombies all possess some strange powers…”

“The one you saw just now spits out light spheres; others can unleash fire, lightning, or other bizarre abilities. If it weren’t for the fact that the merchants from Chaos Star won’t arrive at the black market until next month at the earliest, you corpse hunters might have missed out on this miraculous underground river water…”

Ye Hai turned and called Zela over.

“Even a guy like Bell has healing serum on hand. I’m sure your beloved wouldn’t let you enter the Radiated Zone without some preparations… Am I right?”

“Mr. Zela, please give me one vial. Our guest has suffered some unfortunate treatment.”

“Mr. Joe, I think you owe Mr. Jack an apology for breaking his legs—twice.”

Joe, dark circles under his eyes, shrugged helplessly. He’d already heard from Liana about everything that had happened during his brief slumber. Though his body was still weary, his mind was now ablaze with excitement.

He was well aware that the zombie planet’s environment was saturated with viruses. A solution that could turn people into zombies and grant them abilities like Tang Jie’s light attacks could very well be a new virus, or a peculiar mutation of the old zombie virus. For a virologist, an unknown virus was an instant stimulant—for Joe, all fatigue vanished.

When Ye Hai gave the instruction, Zela dutifully handed over a syringe of healing serum.

Ye Hai nodded to him, “Thank you, Mr. Zela. You’ve been a great help.”

Handing the serum to Joe, Ye Hai said, “I’ll leave it to you. You really should apologize for your recklessness.”

Joe grinned, holding Jack’s head steady with his left hand. He drove the needle forcefully into Jack’s nostril.

“My apologies, Mr. Jack. I think there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding between us… I sincerely hope you can forget this little, insignificant incident between us.”

With those words, he twisted the syringe with his right hand before injecting the serum.

Jack howled in agony, his face contorting into a grotesque yet oddly touching mask of pain. At least, that’s how Joe interpreted the expression.

“A misunderstanding, just a misunderstanding!”

Joe nodded, satisfied, and yanked the half-buried syringe from Jack’s nose, tossing it outside with a look of disgust. He turned and smiled at Ye Hai, saying, “Boss! See? Our esteemed Mr. Jack has already forgiven me… When do we set out?”

Ye Hai returned the smile. “Mr. Jack’s magnanimity is as vast as the stars. If you’re ready, we can leave now.”

Liana and Javier watched, dumbfounded, as the two men bantered, tormenting Jack within an inch of his life. Both quietly took note of the corpse hunters’ peculiar method of apologizing.

Liana felt a faint wave of nausea; Javier, on the other hand, found the whole ritual oddly invigorating. It reminded him of the days he led pirates onto hijacked merchant ships, beginning with: “Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize for interrupting your meal…”

At that moment, Javier felt a strange sense of belonging, briefly lifting him from the gloom of missing his wives.

Joe, still holding Jack, cheerfully bundled him into the Star Tail 7 hovercar and began boasting endlessly. Jack smiled, though his expression was a little stiff.

The group sped off toward the Plati Black Market in their hovercar, leaving behind the other guests who, like Jack, had arrived but had both legs broken. Abandoned in the wilderness, their fate was left to chance.

Liana asked in confusion, “If we leave those guys in the villa, won’t they starve to death?”

Ye Hai replied with lazy indifference, “In the Plati Black Market, aside from slaves taken by Mr. Blackhand, not a single one of them is anything but scum. If they die, so much the better—it’s my humble contribution to cleaning up this zombie-infested world.”

…

At last, some ten minutes after Ye Hai and his companions had departed, the five abandoned men exchanged glances.

Their bodies began to change.

The shattered bones of their legs burst through flesh, the bones of their hands protruded outward. Soon, four ribs twisted and grew, transforming their forms into grotesque human-spider hybrids.

Five ugly, human-faced spiders, each over three meters tall, crawled atop the villa, gazing in the direction Ye Hai and his group had gone.

The lead spider spoke: “A strange bunch… There’s something inside their bodies—a virus we’ve never seen before.”

Another spider moved to the side, rumbling, “There’s a familiar scent coming from the car ahead. I think it’s the same as the queen egg we saw last time when we visited ART-3 in the Radiated Zone.”

“They say ART-3 used the spider mother’s fusion technology to create that hybrid.”

The leader shook its head. “Let’s continue on to the Radiated Zone to see ART-3. The Psionic Consortium is pressing harder than ever. The spider mother has no choice but to fuse humans with her offspring to create psionic entities to resist the Consortium.”

“That matter over there is not our concern. This time, we must form an alliance with ART-3, or our ART-2 tribe may be doomed.”