Chapter 48
Chapter 48: Hummingbird
“This is the ecological park?” Bai Yi asked. Although he knew that New Zealand was a large country with a low population, he was still shocked to see the vast and endless forest enclosed in front of him.
“Yep, this is the ecological park of Otorohanga Middle School.” Heloise nodded.
“Let’s enter then, be careful!” Bai Yi reminded them.
The few of them entered the ecological park carefully, preparing to find suitable animal genes to fuse with inside. The ecological park belonged to a school, so it only reared some small animals, even if there were any large ones they were few in number. Moreover, it had already been 10 plus days since the activated cells proliferated, so these animals had long run somewhere else.
Walking on the man-made road, Bai Yi suddenly stopped!
“What happened?”
“It’s too lush! This is an ecological park belonging to a school, the paved path we are walking on right now must’ve been what students would normally use to walk, but now the path is almost completely covered by vegetation. There’s only one possible reason why it is like this now, and that is within the 10 plus days these plants grew by this much!” Bai Yi explained.
“What are you trying to say?”
“I’m saying that the activated cells accelerated the growth of these plants!” Bai Yi chuckled, Woolf was really quite slow, he couldn’t understand until he laid it out in black and white.
“So that’s what happened!” Woolf was suddenly enlightened.
The few of them moved carefully inside the park, being cautious and on guard for anything that might happen. However, the entire ecological park was abnormally silent, and they didn’t find any animals around. This made Bai Yi, who was on guard against evolved lifeforms, extremely surprised. Where are the animals? Where are all the animals that were originally here?
“What’s going on here?”
They stopped at a small open patch of land that hadn’t been overtaken by vegetation yet. It was strange that the ecological park had suddenly become so empty, and the few of them wouldn’t continue moving until they figured this out. Bai Yi, Heloise and Mavis looked at the park and pondered hard, but as for Woolf, it was better to spare him. Thinking was definitely not his job.
“This became really dangerous!” Bai Yi said, slowly looking at his surroundings.
“The introduction of activated cells would definitely completely destroy the original food chain in the natural world. We don’t know what would happen to the organisms in the future, but just the Binging Stage now would ruin the entire food chain. That frightening hunger and appetite would cause various animals to hunt and eat each other, resulting in a great number of animals dying and being eaten by the small minority in a short period of time.” Bai Yi didn’t wait for Woolf to question him and started to explain.
“The ecological park is so quiet because… a great majority of the animals are already eaten. Under the same reasoning, the animals that are still alive must be those that evolved to become the peak predators in the food chain.” Bai Yi said while his right hand held the handgun and his left hand grabbed onto the hilt of the broadsword.
“They’re coming!” Bai Yi’s eyes looked towards the left, where a bunch of small black shadows were rapidly approaching them.
“What are those!”
“Run!” Bai Yi saw the black shadows, and though he couldn’t clearly what they were, he very decisively gave the command because the group of black shadows looked like a swarm of bees. Even if it wasn’t a bee swarm, it would be something similar. To the few of them now, it was definitely something extremely dangerous.
“Over there to that building!” Bai Yi pointed to a small house in the middle of the ecological park.
The rest of them immediately followed. Even Woolf, whose confidence had boosted greatly recently did not have any objections. If a few meter tall monster appeared, then he might’ve had the confidence to clash with it, but with such a big group of bee-like creatures, he wouldn’t be able to deal with them even if he had a few more limbs.
The few of them ran crazily, and the black cloud behind rapidly closed in on them.
Bai Yi was the first to barge inside the house and rapidly dashed to the nearest window. Behind Bai Yi, the rest of them followed closely behind him, and Woolf, who was last, slammed the door shut. The moment the door closed, numerous ‘Pa Pa Pa Pa’ sounds like nails banging on the door rang out. The entire door was shaking nonstop from all the collisions, and their hearts sped up in fear of the door getting broken.
Such great power!
“Go inside, the window won’t hold!” Bai Yi saw how violent the banging was and immediately made his judgement. Those small creatures were just following their path and banging on the door. When they try to find another way later, the window definitely wouldn’t stop them.
They immediately ran inside the room, and with Woolf’s huge size, he almost couldn’t squeeze inside. Not long after entering the room, everyone heard the sound of the window glass breaking. Then there was a dense buzzing sound, and immediately after that were the sounds of numerous impacts on the door again. Only after a long while did the sound outside slowly disappear.
Only then did everyone ease up slightly and have the spare attention to observe the room they were in.
“This is a mini-observation room!” Heloise looked around and ascertained. Bai Yi also looked around the room to see if there was anything useful. However, this place was really quite simple, and he couldn’t find anything.
“What are those things outside?” Woolf asked.
“I don’t know, but it looked like a bee swarm.”
“I’ll take a look, a few probably died from the collisions.” Woolf said as he went to open the door.
“Wait, open a small crack first!” Bai Yi said to Woolf and gestured for Heloise and Mavis to move away. At this time, Bai Yi walked right beside the door and raised the broadsword in his right hand. “Close the door immediately if there’s anything!” Bai Yi said to Woolf and nodded his approval.
Seeing Bai Yi being so cautious, Woolf couldn’t help but be careful as well, and he cautiously opened the door. The door slowly opened wider and wider. It seemed like the small creatures just now had already flown away. The moment Woolf wanted to relax, the buzzing sound suddenly appeared again. Recalling Bai Yi’s words, he immediately tried to shut the door and at this moment Bai Yi also focused his eyes and the broadsword cut down like a ray of light.
‘Pom!’ the door was shut by Woolf again and at this moment Bai Yi already shifted himself quickly in front of Mavis.
I didn’t get everything!
The moment Bai Yi’s broadsword fell, he realised he missed two, and immediately placed himself in front of Mavis. Mavis was the doctor here, so everyone had to prioritise protecting her.
Two small shadows shot over like bullets, and Bai Yi instantly moved his sword vertically in front of him.
With a soft ‘chi!’, one of them just happened to ram into the edge of the sword, and the sharp blade instantly sliced it in half. Bai Yi twisted his head at this moment; the blood splattered a trail of his face, and his changing irises completely captured the process of the small bird being cut in half in detail. However, the remaining one sped past him and Bai Yi instantly raised his left hand to intercept it. The small shadow instantly started spinning and landed on Bai Yi’s palm.
‘Puchi!’, Bai Yi and Mavis let out a groan at the same time.
The small shadow pierced through Bai Yi’s palm and landed on Mavis’ thigh. Just like a drill, the small shadow dug deeply into her thigh.
“Don’t move!” Bai Yi said to Mavis and instantly switched to a reverse grip, the tip of the blade viciously stabbing into the bloody hole in her thigh before stopping the blade by force. After Bai Yi’s stab, the thing spinning in Mavis’ thigh finally stopped moving and apparently died from his blade.
In this short moment, Woolf and Heloise hadn’t even begun to react. Only now did they realise just how big the difference was between them and Bai Yi. It wasn’t about absolute strength, but the ability to adapt and react to sudden situations.
With only a few movements, although it wasn’t clashing with some giant monster, Bai Yi was still breathing rapidly as cold sweat dripped down. The few of them saw how Bai Yi was, and knew that his injuries were affected again. Woolf and Heloise wanted to say something, but Bai Yi waved his hand, indicating that he was fine, just that it was really hard to act with this injury-ridden body.
Only now could everyone look at the thing that was killed by Bai Yi on the floor.
It was very small, about the same size as a bee, but it had a long and sharp beak that was almost the same size as its body.
“It’s a hummingbird… sword-billed hummingbird!” Heloise instantly recognised it. Of course, these hummingbirds were very different from normal sword-billed hummingbirds. All of them took a few more looks, and found that even though they were all sword-billed hummingbirds, there were still differences between them. Apparently, even if the genes they fused with were the same, how it manifested on their bodies would still be different.
“I’m sorry Doctor Mavis, I didn’t protect you well!” Protecting the medical personnel was everybody’s responsibility.
Looking at how Mavis and the hummingbird’s blood mixed together, everyone knew that she had definitely fused with the hummingbird genes. Luckily, from their analysis before, hummingbird genes weren’t too bad. It could improve the speed at which her nerves and muscles reacted, just that they didn’t know how much they would improve by.
“It’s fine, isn’t the hummingbird gene one of the genes we were considering?” Mavis waved her hand too.
Mavis had heard much from them during this period of time, but she still hadn’t been in any battles with evolved lifeforms, so she was still in shock. Although Bai Yi didn’t manage to protect her perfectly just now, his reaction and movements in that moment were simply astonishing. Mavis felt that she couldn’t even do one tenth of what Bai Yi did, she had completely forgotten to even dodge.
Mavis didn’t use the anaesthesia, as things like that were extremely valuable now. Her body trembled while she extracted the hummingbird corpse from the bloody hole in her leg, and instantly sucked in a breath of cold air.
Heloise brought out a test tube from the case beside Mavis, intending to put the dead hummingbird inside it. Collecting genes from various useful organisms was the purpose of this trip.
“Wait, take this one!” Bai Yi said to Heloise and pointed to the one that avoided Bai Yi’s first slash but slammed itself onto his blade in the end.
“Although they are all hummingbirds, this one was the most threatening just now. Maybe its genes are of superior quality.” Bai Yi explained.
There was still something like superior quality? The rest of them immediately started chuckling upon hearing his words.