'Damn, that squirrel turned into a Pikachu… or Pachirisu? Dedenne? Emolga? Ah, whatever, they are all Pikachu 2.0 anyway.'

After witnessing how the squirrel turned into a Pokemon after eating this dead man's Mana Bead, Yang Zhang was in deep thought.

Sitting beside the corpse of this middle-aged uncle, he started thinking of the possibilities.

Of course, he knew that animals and plants had also mutated due to the spread of the Z-20 Virus. Yang Zhang still remembered the news on the T.V. one year ago. They showed how the zoo animals had turned feral and zombified like humans.

Some plants had also mutated. They could move around and even launch attacks of their own free will.

But that was one year ago. Since that day, Yang Zhang had not left the shelter of the Dufan town base. As one of the 5% of surviving humans with virus immunity in the world, he was treated like a king at first, before they realized that the government didn't need all of the humans to survive because all of them had the same immunity. Even though the development of the cure hadn't been successful thus far, the government said they only needed a few samples to start the zombie virus vaccine and cure.

Thus, normal humans became a dead weight. They couldn't fight like those ability users, and their physiques were generally weaker. Thus, Dufan town started kicking out some of the humans that had bad behavior. After a food shortage, they also started kicking out regular humans without any history of misconduct, like Yang Zhang.

"Man, those ability users never told me that animals can mutate by eating Mana Beads…." Yang Zhang mumbled. "I guess that's what we call evolution."

However, there was one thing that bugged Yang Zhang's mind. He knew there were mutated plants, but he had never seen one with a face before. It was so creepy because the face carved on the tree could move and glare at him. It could even grunt like a human.

Yang Zhang stared at the tree that attacked him from a safe distance. The face carved on the tree closed its eyes, seemingly sleeping. But once Yang Zhang got up and took one step forward, the eyes were wide open, and the giant vines started swinging around wildly, forcing Yang Zhang to back off.

"So creepy…"

Yang Zhang then connected the wild vines swinging around and the corpse of a middle-aged man. From the bewildered face of the man, it seemed that it was an unsuspecting attack.

"Could it be… this uncle is dead because of the vine? He might have come too close to the tree's territory and gotten killed."

The vines might have struck his head and crushed it instantly.

Yang Zhang was still curious about how a tree could mutate to have consciousness and know its territory.

He continued staring at the tree from a safe distance until he noticed something peculiar. He saw something embedded in the forehead on the face of the tree.

He squinted to see better and saw a red nucleus embedded on the tree's face. That red nucleus was only found inside the brain of a zombie.

"Hold on, isn't that… a Brain Bead? How could a tree have a Brain Bead on it?"

Out of curiosity, Yang Zhang decided to investigate. But before he walked away, he looked down at the corpse. Yang Zhang prayed for the uncle's soul, "I'm sorry for your death, uncle. Please rest well."

He took a big leaf that had fallen near him and covered what was left of the dead uncle's head with it. He then circled the territorial tree from a safe distance, trying to discover what happened to it, when he stumbled upon a corpse that had been decaying for a while right behind the tree.

Although Yang Zhang couldn't determine whether it was a zombie or ability user that died there, judging by that Brain Bead embedded on the tree, he bet it was a zombie that died from an ability user's attack.

The zombie had probably been decapitated cleanly, and the head had rolled towards the tree stump.

"Wait, does this mean the Brain Bead of the zombie fell to the soil and got absorbed by the tree, turning it into a living mutated tree monster like this?" Yang Zhang hypothesized.

Honestly, nobody knew the use of Brain Beads and Mana Beads. They mostly just killed the zombie and crushed the Brain Bead because the government told them they must destroy the Brain Bead, or the zombie would constantly regenerate.

But, by observing the chain of events that happened just now, that meant the Brain Bead and Mana Bead had another function, maybe it was well-hidden by the government, or perhaps nobody had discovered it yet.

Then, if his hypothesis was correct…

"That means eating a Mana Bead would make an animal absorb the power of the previous ability user while absorbing a Brain Bead would give consciousness to a plant?"

Of course, this was just his hypothesis. He needed to do more research.

"But I can use this information to protect myself, right? If I can raise my own plants and animals, I can basically create an army of mutants to work for me!" Yang Zhang optimistically theorized that he could survive this apocalyptic world even as an average human.

"But how am I going to find those Brain Beads anyway? I can't even kill one zombie!" Yang Zhang was hit with an obstacle once more. He also didn't have any fighting skills. "Ah, truly, I really need a partner to help me in this uh… grotesque research. But how do I find one?"

Yang Zhang was stumped. He was desperate again until he heard the sound of a squirrel nearby, "Squeak, squeak."

Yang Zhang raised his head and searched the voice source until his eyes locked on the squirrel that ate the Mana Bead, making its body constantly discharge electricity.

The squirrel was calm as it continued scavenging for food around.

And an idea popped into Yang Zhang's head. He fixed his red cap and said, "Alright, Pikachu, I choose you!"