RHWHEG -Chapter 48 Swarms of Wild Bees

This should have been 060’s work shift, but her location showed “outside the compound — unable to display.”

In 060’s uploaded work log, her last recorded task was delivering an order to Building One.

And the little crocodile admin who applied to go out to develop the foreign server also came from Building One.

Yu Qunqing found it hard not to connect those two things. Considering 060’s actions in his previous life, he had to prepare for the possibility that she might defect from the compound. But since fate had given him a second chance, Yu Qunqing also wanted to give 060 one — he would check after she finished dealing with the Klein bottle.

Thinking of the giant twin-tailed mermaid that had been forty meters long in his past life, and the diligent wage-worker 060 in this life, Yu Qunqing drifted off for a moment — this time none of them would repeat the same mistakes.

Snapping out of it, Yu Qunqing steered the car into an extreme S-curve. The teammates in the backseat screamed. She Lulang didn’t react much; his expression was rather resigned. He reminded him, “Concentrate.”

Yu Qunqing managed to get the car onto a lane where they could drive steadily.

“That’s strange,” Sun Min suddenly said. “This area ahead is the Shajia Ancient Town zone — I remember there were many drainage channels there. How are we climbing up?” He was local and more familiar with the area. Jiangbei City sits in a hilly region; from the third to fourth ring the terrain dips, and floods often occur there.

But now the horizon ahead kept getting higher. Looking closely, jagged steel piled up before them like the bones of a city.

Dong Changxin said, “That heavy rain earlier must’ve washed the buildings here.”

Their car climbed steeper and steeper; gravity pressed them back into the seats and the hazy sky gradually filled more of their view. They almost had to look straight into the sky.

Lin Luyi grabbed the car door and protested, “I’m afraid of heights!”

Yu Qunqing: “Alright, alright — we’ll stop here.” The car obeyed and crashed into some ruins beside them, wedging itself on a slope.

Lin Luyi banged into the sidewall. “Have you ever taken a driving test?!”

Yu Qunqing fell oddly silent for a moment, then admitted, “I actually never learned to drive.”

Everyone in the backseat who wasn’t carsick grew quiet.

“Did any of you learn?” Yu Qunqing tried to defend himself. “At least I’m a Wild Racing 400-hour player.”

She Lulang suddenly said, “Actually, I learned.”

Under everyone’s gaze — especially Yu Qunqing’s incredulous look — he cleared his throat and said, “I was just watching because you seemed to be having fun…”

Yu Qunqing: You sure weren’t like that last life! In the last life the deputy squad leader let them all gather around the car in a panic! He watched him crash over and over!

She Lulang: Luckily Yu Qunqing doesn’t know about last life. This life he corrected his bad habits in time.

The three teammates in the backseat shot reproachful looks.

After a serious discussion about who should be responsible for driving, they carefully climbed out through the car door and onto some protruding rebar, finally getting a clearer view of this section of the third–fourth ring.

The shattered buildings formed a long ridge of triangular hills. Because the interiors of the buildings were full of gaps, it looked like a hollowed mountain range. Once inside, enemies could appear from any direction, so exploration would be very difficult. The foothold they’d just climbed onto was a financial trade building that had been shoved up from the city center.

Sun Min tested the sturdiness of the spot underfoot and told everyone it was safe to walk. They squeezed through the trade building’s windows; original walls had become tilted floors, and steel bars jutted everywhere. They had to bend double to move.

From the trade building offices they entered a corridor; the other side of the corridor had been cut away cleanly. Looking up, they could glimpse a small patch of sky.

On the left was a green locker for Hive Express deliveries; on the right was a room blocked by debris; ahead stood a foreign building’s exterior wall; and below an unknown gap exhaled a foulsmelling hot wind.

Yu Qunqing greeted his teammates, tied the rope, and slid down. Below was pitch black. She Lulang made a round and confirmed there were no living things. Yu Qunqing fired a cluster of light arrows modified with magnesium powder to illuminate the next landing, then notified the teammates to descend.

Beneath the trade building lay shabby residential blocks; they saw half a toilet, a clothes-drying rod, and a tilted sofa. The lower structures were more fragile, so they had to move slowly. It took them a full half hour to get out of the trade building area.

It’s easy to lose one’s sense of direction in the city ruins. Dong Changxin thought they’d reached firm ground, so he leaned a heavy ammo crate against the floor — and suddenly there was a thunderous roar.

The wreckage underfoot immediately split in sections and many black shadows emerged. This patch of ground was not solid!

Calling them “black shadows” wasn’t exactly right. On closer inspection you could see dense tan hairs beneath black bristles, silver-hooked forelegs reflecting light; their long antennae quivered, and their bowl-sized compound eyes stared coldly at them; their scissor-like mandibles opened and closed, and the fine sawdust fell with a rustle. Behind them their wings thundered; in the cramped quiet the noise was piercing.

They were a gregarious G-class calamity: black-hive bees.

Lin Luyi yanked Dong Changxin to a more stable footing.

“Hit the heads first,” Yu Qunqing advised. “Don’t hit the stingers in the tail region, otherwise you’ll have to fight the bigger ones after the small ones.” He fired an arrow and neatly took two in one shot.

His bow had been modified with the compound’s tech — it now fired faster and with a longer draw.

“It’s trying to sting me!” Lin Luyi retracted his hand that had turned into a plant and shuddered. “They won’t be out gathering nectar, will they?”

Sun Min considered, “Not impossible…”

He searched for the next stable foothold. The space here was too small for Dong Changxin to move freely, so he picked up the ammo crate and ran to the rear.

A quicker figure flashed by; most of the black-hive bees had already been dealt with by She Lulang from behind. This kind of terrain was his specialty — he could travel through gaps too narrow for most humans.

She Lulang bent to pick up a dead black-hive bee, cut open its mandible with a knife, and dug out a half-hand-sized something, frowning.

A few seconds later the remaining black-hive bees were eliminated. Yu Qunqing, seeing human limbs and flesh still threaded with threads of blood in their mouths — obviously freshly ripped — said, “Keep going down. Let’s go fight the big ones.”

The teammates nodded.

Below this floor of the building pressed down an internet café strewn with broken PCs. Further down were illegal structures, big red characters meaning “demolish” painted on a wall. The sky was no longer visible; the temperature dropped. They turned on flashlights and moved forward holding their breath.

The buzzing of wings grew louder, like an aircraft’s engines starting up before takeoff.

Sun Min lifted a steel plate and found, to everyone’s surprise, light beneath it. They all cautiously gathered to look. Yu Qunqing grabbed She Lulang to stop him charging in.

The light source below was a high-quality disco ball; rainbow lights spilled into the enclosed space. The creature in the middle was the most conspicuous.

It was a solid, half-buried hive blocking the middle of the road — the exposed part alone was as big as three stories.

While building the hive the black-hive bees had even cut metal nearby. A rusted “Hive Express locker” sign happened to be stuck in the middle; swarms of worker bees poured in and out, disco lights casting colors across them in a silent, grand, surreal performance.

They heard human cries for help:

“Ahhh, help me — is anyone there — don’t come near — it hurts —”

The wails echoed heavily in the space.

Sun Min made a hand gesture: group attack?

Yu Qunqing shook his head and pointed to the ground, indicating the lower level might be hollow.

Dong Changxin pointed to herself, meaning she could try a cone-shaped displacement to extract that person.

Lin Luyi pointed at his stomach and wiggled his hands, meaning he smelled something delicious and was a little hungry.

She Lulang split off three black birds — one a bee, two representing themselves — meaning they’d split up and attack from different directions.

Yu Qunqing agreed with the plan, then drew the layout on She Lulang’s palm: a ranged team and a melee team. She Lulang, perhaps feeling a little itchy, slightly retracted then flattened his palm and nodded.

He took Sun Min and Lin Luyi around to the other side of the hive. Yu Qunqing stayed to instruct Dong Changxin how to attack.

Dong Changxin said she could throw a small cone.

Yu Qunqing shook his head, tied his small cone to an arrow, and silently sent it into the layer below. Then he told Dong Changxin to try displacing it.

Dong Changxin looked uneasy and said the cone was moving too fast and she lost the target.

Yu Qunqing thought, you’ll still be handling real sniper rifles later — how could a mere arrow compare in speed. He fired another arrow and warned that if she lost it again he’d toss her down.

Dong Changxin dared not argue but improved fast; the second cone easily shot out.

Yu Qunqing, in a voice like a demon’s whisper, reminded her to be more accurate next time and not to shoot the hostage through.

Dong Changxin: This person and She Lulang are both big villains!

“Bang! Bang!”

Apparently the deputy squad over there had set an aggro-trap.

Hearing the unusual sound, Yu Qunqing thought this to himself.

Some bricks fell from that wall; the worker bees at work were startled and called more comrades, forming a denser mass.

The opposite wall suddenly split open as if by an invisible force. The worker-bee cloud was suddenly cut in two; some got flattened on the ground, and the swarm went into chaos.

“It drew the swarm’s enemy.” Yu Qunqing told Dong Changxin to stay calm.

The invisible force swept at the swarm again, and something stranger happened: the chaotic mass of bees danced wildly, and the air suddenly sprayed out thick, sweet pulp — like a net — which at last traced the shape of that invisible creature. The air filled with the fragrant sweetness of honey; it clouded their minds.

The invisible monster’s outline was finally etched by the honey: it looked like a chameleon but with an extra pair of huge foreclaws, clinging to a balcony of some building; a long tail protruded from another stairwell entrance, swinging lazily. It seemed to be trying to shake off the honey that coated it, agitatedly shaking its head and scraping off a few bricks with its claws.

The airborne hive guards regrouped and charged in waves, baring their stingers.

But those attacks were nothing to the mutated lizard. It waved a forepaw and brushed off the annoying bees. With a sudden leap it pounced on the black hive, clamping down with its claws and ripping out a section of the hive.

Yu Qunqing and the others saw the hive’s interior: in the center a giant queen-platform; a swollen queen bee wriggled into the depths. Below were ravenous larvae, then storage rooms containing spore-bodies and several humans. At the bottom was a trash heap where dismembered limbs accumulated, and a few luminous “Ji Guang” mushrooms attracted by light.

The mutated lizard ate honey; black-hive bees ate spore-bodies and Ji Guang mushrooms; humans were an extra — this place had obviously formed a new calamity food chain.

The humans caught by the black-hive bees wailed and cried; their lower bodies were stuck in thick honey and they couldn’t move.

Yu Qunqing and the others crouched low, letting bees buzz past overhead.

He fired a first arrow; Dong Changxin concentrated her energy. Then the second arrow carried many small cones that smashed and scattered; Dong Changxin tried to remember the sequence frantically.

She slammed into an ammo crate nearby; the special cones flew up and, trailing a rope, ricocheted in the sequence she remembered. The rope looped around and successfully bound the person.

Yu Qunqing pulled on the rope and jumped down to the next level to help drag the person and the transparent honey-capsule out. The person was knocked temporarily unconscious.

The mutated lizard and the black-hive bees were fighting furiously. He also noticed what looked like a gun in the hive’s trash heap — if it was there, he’d better take it. So he moved a bit closer to scavenge.

He felt something furry brush his ear and, glancing aside, was suddenly startled by a huge compound eye near his face.

Above, the mutated lizard tore into the black hive; the Hive Express locker sign clanged to the ground next to its foot.

Yu Qunqing saw the monster clearly: most prominent were its knee-like antennae; the inverted-triangle mandibles gleamed in the light; the oval compound eyes were the size of a fist; black-orange dense hair made its face look almost human-shaped, a long oval. Its hook-like forelegs were pinned on his back, and its bulk pressed against his lower waist. Its wings were translucent, but because its body was so large it could only fly short distances; it was lucky it could get onto him at all.

— It was the queen bee with no combat ability.

Yu Qunqing thought to himself: might as well pluck the queen bee too!