Chapter 55: Do Not Stare at the Wheat for Too Long
After whispering that cryptic warning, Number 73 paid them no further mind.
Bowing their head once more, they resumed watering the crops.
Eerie giggles leaked from beneath the hazard suit, raising goosebumps on anyone within earshot.
Inside her own suit, Long Ya quietly clenched her fists.
What was going on here?
Number 73 had to be from the previous lottery draft, the same cohort as Gerry and his group.
They had been here for barely a month, so how had they unraveled like this?
Her gaze landed on the immobile, black tentacular stalks of “iron black wheat” rooted in the soil. Was it because of these things?
“Water the crops, log their status every two hours, harvest mature iron black wheat, and… and promptly collect the black crystals exuded into the soil, right?”
Number 86 began muttering in a hurried whisper under her breath.
Long Ya glanced at her, offering no reply.
“Those… those convicts shouldn’t attack us, right?”
…
“This is an official government black field. Things shouldn’t go wrong that easily, right?”
Number 86 buzzed in Long Ya’s ear like an incessant fly, her terror practically tangible.
Long Ya’s brow furrowed, but she held her tongue.
—No one could read that entire wall of rules in the dormitory and remain calm.
A list of precautions that exhaustive meant every single horror detailed on that door was a genuine possibility during one’s term of service.
This was fundamentally different from scavenging outside the city walls.
Scavenging within the safe zones meant you at least had comrades by your side if you crossed paths with mutated flora or fauna.
Veterans of the wasteland knew which mutated plants grew across familiar terrain and roughly how they tended to strike.
The outside world was treacherous, but you at least had a sense of what to expect.
What people feared above all else was the unknown.
And here, each laborer had to face the unknown entirely alone during their shift.
Face to face with these bizarre, black tentacular organisms.
Worse still, a living cautionary tale stood right before their eyes: Number 73.
The person had clearly been driven half-mad by the grueling labor.
To say nothing of this unscheduled emergency draft.
Everyone knew what that implied in their bones—the previous labor cohort had suffered severe attrition.
And the cause of those casualties required no explanation.
Peril stared them right in the face, yet rather than steer clear, they were forced to step forward every day and “meticulously tend” to it. It was a brutal test of psychological endurance.
Listening to Number 86’s nervous rambling, Long Ya kept her eyes pinned on Number 73 in the field.
…
“The time is nine fifty-five! All units, initiate shift turnover! Off-duty personnel, follow your assigned overseers out!”
The command fell, followed immediately by a sharp blast from Overseer Ten’s whistle.
Number 73 had shown no reaction to the spoken order, looking up only when the whistle pierced the air. Pausing for a second, they shuffled stiffly toward the perimeter of the plot.
The bucket, the collection bin strapped to their torso, and the long tongs were unbuckled one by one.
Then, with the same sluggish gait, they trudged toward Overseer Nine.
Long Ya glanced at Number 86, who was clumsily strapping the gear onto herself in a panicked scramble. Lowering her head, Long Ya whispered in a low voice, “Do not stare at the wheat for too long while working.”
Number 86 froze in surprise.
Having dropped the warning, Long Ya turned and fell in behind Number 73, following Overseer Nine toward the exit.
She had spent considerable time studying Number 73’s routine. After watering, they had used the tongs to retrieve the black crystals embedded in the earth.
Long Ya had noticed that every single time Number 73’s eyes locked onto the black tentacles, they would freeze blankly for a beat before resuming their motions.
Like a malfunctioning automaton.
Fixating one’s gaze on the iron black wheat likely warped the human mind—that was Long Ya’s deduction.
Passing along a passing warning cost her nothing.
…
Crossing through the decontamination airlocks, Long Ya collected her daily ration brick alongside the other off-duty laborers and followed the overseer back to the dormitories.
The moment the heavy door shut, all outside noise vanished completely—she couldn’t even hear the snores of the freshly relieved shift next door.
The soundproofing here was vastly superior to the timber shacks in the residential quarter.
Being assigned to the night shift right out of the gate meant her waking hours were flipped entirely upside down compared to regular city life.
Practically hell-tier difficulty.
Long Ya didn’t sleep. Perched on the edge of the cot, she stared unblinkingly at the regulations pasted on the back of the door, drilling them into her memory.
The ration brick sat untouched on the nightstand.
Having seen the black tentacles writhing from the dirt, she couldn’t stomach the thought of shoving that thing into her mouth as she once had.
Auntie Qian and Gerry had certainly kept their lips sealed.
…Then again, when that was the only edible substance in the entire wasteland, there was no point burdening others with the grim truth.
It wasn’t as if they had an alternative.
Yet the Chinese Restaurant had thoroughly spoiled Long Ya’s palate. Short of genuine starvation, she truly lacked the stomach to choke down that brick.
Though she usually wore an irreverent, swaggering grin, Long Ya understood perfectly when it was time to lock in.
For over seven hours, she turned the rules over and over in her head. When her memory slipped, she read them aloud, repeating them dozens of times until they were branded into her brain.
She didn’t even shed the hazard suit, intending to acclimate her body to its suffocating enclosure.
Until a shrill whistle blasted from the corridor.
“Laborers on the eighteen-hundred shift, assemble!”
Long Ya rose and shoved the door open.
Trailing behind the overseer through the security airlocks once more, she emerged into the subterranean fields she had visited that morning.
Darkness had fallen, and the emerald mist hanging in the air had visibly thickened.
Long Ya took a longer look around.
Since the cataclysm, electrical power was a scarce luxury completely withheld from ordinary sectors of Seed City.
Here, however, it was squandered with generous abandon.
Industrial floodlights illuminated every contour of the soil in stark relief.
Beneath the glare, those black tentacles looked all the more grotesque.
The emerald haze was noticeably heavier than during the day.
Thankfully, the hazard suit filtered out the worst of the toxic vapors.
Following protocol, Long Ya checked the hermetic seals along her seams before stepping up to the boundary of plot E-5 to wait.
As she walked up, Number 86 lifted her head.
A visible wave of relief washed over the woman’s face.
She looked as though she was thanking whatever gods remained that her shift had finally come to an end.
Long Ya surveyed the plot; it looked virtually identical to when she had left that morning.
Nothing out of the ordinary seemed to have transpired.
She stood in silence at the edge of the dirt until the overseer blew the shift-change whistle.
Number 86 stripped off the gear with palpable relief. As Long Ya stepped forward to strap the harness on, the older woman murmured a quiet “Thank you.”
It was at that exact moment that disaster struck.
Long Ya was crouched low, cinching the collection bin against her left thigh, when Number 86 suddenly cried out in sheer panic, “Look out!”
Long Ya felt herself yanked violently to the side.
Snapping her head up in alarm, she caught sight of a jet-black silhouette lunging toward them at blinding speed.
Bang—!
Bang, bang—!
Gunfire erupted as the overseers drew their sidearms and fired.
“Numbers 86 and 87! Evacuate the plot immediately!” an overseer bellowed.
The officers moved with lethal speed.
Yet the black tentacle in the soil moved faster.
Before the rounds tore into it and forced it to wither, a gaping “maw” split open, lunging viciously toward her and Number 86.
The mouth sat right at its apex, ringed with four dense concentric rows of needle-sharp fangs.
Long Ya scrambled backward with everything she had, but the sickening sound of shredding fabric tore through the air.
Rrrripp—
The hazard suit was breached.
Bang—!
Pounded by several more heavy rounds, the black tentacle slumped into the dirt like limp rubber.
A searing, blinding agony flared along Long Ya’s left calf. She looked down—
Blood.
A jagged bite wound the length of half a finger had gouged out a chunk of flesh from her leg.
Number 86’s hand was in far worse shape.
Because she had lunged to yank Long Ya clear, the mutated iron black wheat had clamped down hard on her palm.
Blood instantly drenched the torn sleeve of her suit, dripping steadily—drip, drop—onto the dark soil.
Long Ya’s heart plummeted like lead—she could feel an aggressive, virulent burn eating into the wound.
The toxicity was far stronger than anything she had ever encountered from mutated flora outside the walls.
