White Mountain

Her survival instincts kicked in, and she grabbed at whatever was coiled around her neck.

A clatter rang out as the bike, which had been speeding along moments before, lost control, skidded, and toppled over.

Song Weishi clutched at something like a rope, her body swinging like a slab of cured meat strung up on a line.

Her vision darkened in waves. When she finally came to, she realized she was hanging from a tree by the roadside.

The cord around her neck held her body taut, forcing her to dangle helplessly. She managed to grab the rope above her head, just barely keeping herself from being strangled outright.

Without hesitation, she whipped out the dagger stored in her space and sliced through the branch wrapped around her neck.

In an instant, she was back on solid ground, gasping for air, her vision still swimming with black spots.

But her mind was razor-sharp. She was definitely not the only one who had been yanked up.

Song Weishi staggered to her feet. The System, sounding anxious, called out repeatedly, "Host, host, are you all right?"

"I'm fine."

The System didn't want her to die so easily—especially not like this, in such a place. It would be far too wasteful.

The branches that had snagged them hung low, just two steps above the ground.

Song Weishi jumped up, the rough bark scraping her hands raw as she grabbed hold. She slashed through the branch without hesitation, then raced on to free the next person.

In less than thirty seconds, everyone was lying on the ground like the dead. After a moment, they struggled to their feet, coughing and wheezing weakly.

"God... what... what just happened to us?"

"A branch caught us," Song Weishi replied.

Xie Huiying was the first to recover her wits. She looked up at the branches above her head. They were all still sitting on the ground, and the branches that had wrapped around their necks now hung quietly at their sides, looking utterly harmless.

Sister Chen's mouth fell open, staring at the branches in disbelief. "How is that possible?"

Song Weishi shook her head, pointing to the severed branch lying on the ground right next to her, clearly matching the ones above.

"Why not? Look at these cuts—they're from when I just saved you all."

The whole branch drooped so low because of their combined weight. Now that the weight was gone, it had retracted back up.

"God, thank you, Xiao Song. So what do we do now?" Aunt Huang said, rubbing her neck, still shaken. Her throat was raw and painful, and the others let out faint murmurs of thanks as well. Song Weishi told them not to talk for now and to stay alert.

"Let's move. We need to get away from this area. It's still too dangerous here."

"Xiao Song's right. Let's go."

They were definitely not the only ones who'd been caught. She crouched low and crawled forward, retrieving the flashlight she'd strapped to the bike. Fortunately, it hadn't broken in the fall, and the bike itself was still in decent shape—otherwise, she would've really been upset.

She slowly righted the bicycle. The tree seemed to need a certain height to snag people, and following Song Weishi's gesture, none of them stood up.

Just then, a gust of wind swept through, and from above came a dry rustling sound, like strips of dried beef scraping together.

Song Weishi suspected she was just hungry and hallucinating. She instinctively shone her flashlight up into the tree. Shadowy shapes hanging from the branches swayed in the breeze—rows of flattened, desiccated human bodies arranged neatly like strung-up bamboo slats, rustling as the wind passed through.

The women's throats were too raw to scream, but the shock still forced out more than a few strangled noises.

Song Weishi finally understood why the branches had recoiled so high. Their weight had pulled the branches down low, and when the sun came up, everyone would be baked dry by the scorching heat.

Just like the people during the day. The tree was bare, with no other branches, and on the ground lay brittle shards of human remains, baked hard.

They had already been absorbed into the soil, becoming its nourishment. In this world, it wasn't just people who ate people—even plants devoured humans.

The group crouched dumbfounded beneath the tree, staring at the shriveled corpses swaying overhead. A strange, tantalizing aroma drifted into their nostrils—the smell of cured ham. If she'd caught that scent at any other time, Song Weishi would have been salivating, but now she just wanted to vomit.

Someone in the group actually threw up, retching as she pushed her bike desperately, desperate to get away from this place. All she could see were the emaciated bodies, the clothes flapping in the air. One of the aunties, with remarkably sharp eyesight, spotted a skull wrapped in skin, with piles of white maggots crawling in and out of its mouth, heaped up like a small hill. A few of them even fell onto her face.

An itchy sensation spread across her cheek. She wanted to scream, but she didn't dare open her mouth for fear they'd crawl inside. Instead, she just flailed her arms and charged ahead, taking the lead.

"Move!"

Song Weishi couldn't stand the things dangling above her head, so she flattened herself against the bike, hunched over the handlebars, propelling herself forward with a single leg.

This place was too disgusting. Why hadn't reality been this gruesome when the authors described it? The apocalypse wasn't just about hoarding supplies and surviving—the whole environment turned the world into a foul nightmare.

Like the entire trek so far, it was one garbage dump after another. You couldn't even smell clean air. Stench was everywhere.

Song Weishi just pushed on as fast as she could. Everyone held their breath and pedaled, blowing right past that bizarre tree. They didn't stop until they'd covered more than a dozen kilometers, finally collapsing to catch their breath.

Everyone was thoroughly shaken by what they'd just seen. The mere thought of those skin-and-bone corpses made them want to vomit.

Song Weishi shut her eyes, and her mind filled with those withered bodies, their bloated, squirming stomachs surely teeming with flies.

The tree had absorbed the nutrients from the bodies after the insects had decomposed them. She remembered seeing black debris scattered around the fragments—she'd thought it was dirt, but now she realized it was excrement. To feed those insects, the tree kept killing people. More insects meant more nourishment. The killer tree and the decomposing maggots formed a cycle, reaping every passerby.

She had to get out of here fast. This was far more terrifying than the snowfields.

The group leaned against the roadside guardrail in silence, resting for a while. No one could stomach a single bite of food. Just as they were about to get up, Song Weishi heard a faint rustling sound.

Her alarm bells went off immediately. She hurriedly motioned for everyone to get up.

"Go! We need to move!"

The moment they were on their bikes, a cockroach appeared in the beam of her flashlight. A wave of revulsion washed over Song Weishi. She fought the urge to hurl the flashlight away, flicked the roach off with her blade, and pedaled for dear life.

A constant, grinding crunch sounded beneath their tires, like riding over dead leaves, as they crushed the swarm of roaches covering the road ahead.

Many of them even took flight, wings flapping wild and aggressive as they lunged at Song Weishi. She was going too fast—she mowed them down before they could reach her. The ones behind her weren't so lucky. Shrieks rang out without pause as everyone clung tight to Song Weishi's tail.

If any of them fell behind now, they might never catch up again. One roach even flew straight into an auntie's mouth. She'd just swatted a maggot off her face, and now she got a mouthful of bitter cockroach. She pedaled and vomited in dizzying waves.

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Author's note: Eh, wrote it a bit simply. Updating here during the New Year—I'm afraid everyone won't be able to finish their meal after reading this. It reminds me of when I went to my grandmother's house last summer. Back then, they still had a squat toilet, and staring into that pit was something I'll never forget...

Anyway, I hope you all have a good appetite.