The carrion scavenger would, in the years to come, become the nightmare of countless survivors. In her previous life, Jing Shu hated it the most. The carrion scavenger also became one of those emergency rations people only turned to when there was absolutely nothing else.
Red nematodes, though tasteless, could at least be eaten without falling ill.
But carrion scavengers? They were so bitter one could barely swallow, and worse, eating them led to sickness and diarrhea. Unless someone was literally starving to death, no one would touch them.
In her previous life, in the fifth year of the apocalypse, Jing Shu was so hungry she was about to die. She forced down a bowlful of carrion scavengers, green juice spurting out as she bit into them. The taste was bitter, gritty with hard residue, and reeked with a stench as foul as the world's most infamous fermented herring.
Yet desperate with hunger, Jing Shu followed the advice of others: carrion scavengers must not be chewed, only swallowed whole. She endured and gulped them down for two days, barely surviving until rescue came. But those two days of diarrhea left her half dead.
From then on, Jing Shu swore she would rather die than eat carrion scavengers again. That year, even maggots and red nematodes—once considered delicacies—had frozen to death, leaving only the hardiest creature, the carrion scavenger, thriving.
The carrion scavenger was omnivorous, with a special preference for rotten corpses. Where there were carcasses of even the smallest animals, there the beetles would be found. Eating one meant filling your stomach with bacteria, as if consuming rot itself.
A voice message from Wang Cuihua came through: "This must be Heaven's punishment! I just opened a new bag of rice, and half of it was filled with black-green little bugs, crawling everywhere the moment I opened it. Some even flew! Now my whole house is full of them. My rice, oh my rice!"
Wang Cuihua's panic quickly sparked replies.
[Luo Zhu No. 9]: "These past few days, my water barrel kept having a layer of dead flies floating on top. Today I looked again, and the whole barrel was swarming with those dark green, squirming bugs. I was so terrified I threw out the entire barrel."
[Feng No. 3]: "(╥_╥) I was injured and couldn't take out the trash for days. I had tossed meat with maggots into the garbage bag earlier. Today I found the whole bag crawling with green squirming bugs. Did maggots evolve into these? But why are they so much smaller now?"
[Luxury Car Dealer No. 5]: "I got bitten! What do I do?! I woke up this morning to find my whole bed covered in the damn things, and now I'm covered in red bumps, swelling and itching. The stupid doctor at the hospital told me it was too mild to prescribe medicine!"
At this point, nearly every household had encountered carrion scavengers. Whether it was rice weevils, rotting meat, or maggots, all could give rise to these things.
The origin of the carrion scavenger lay in the early days of the apocalypse. Fish corpses rotted in seas and lakes, uncollected. Dead poultry buried hastily in the ground decomposed. With no sunlight to sterilize, new species mutated and invaded.
At first, carrion scavengers were tiny, even smaller than fleas—just 0.3 millimeters long. But like mealworms, they lived in swarms, packed together in writhing clusters. Finding one meant there was already a massive clump.
The females could fly and burrow. Once they found a corpse, they ate while constantly breeding thousands of wriggling offspring. Within days, new flying females would emerge to seek fresh food, repeating the cycle endlessly. Their survival needs were minimal—just one tiny weevil could sustain a female beetle's reproduction.
Normally, carrion scavengers did not eat grain. But in the current heat, food spoiled easily, attracting microscopic bugs. When those bugs died, they drew in carrion scavengers. Human corpses were, of course, their favorite.
On land, they had many natural enemies: maggots, red nematodes, other insects, chickens, ducks, and humans. But because in the first year the lakes were stripped of fish and other life, carrion scavengers multiplied unchecked, disrupting the ecosystem. For years afterward, every tide brought waves of them ashore, crawling everywhere, females buzzing as they sought anything edible.
People being bitten, like Luxury Car Dealer, was commonplace. When carrion scavengers bred beyond control in one spot, with no food left, they would consume anything—including humans. Jing Shu guessed Luxury Car Dealer's house already had an unchecked infestation, though he had not noticed.
Soon after, Jing Shu discovered carrion scavengers in the villa's pigsty. In a blink, though, they were devoured completely by the fat chicken, Xiao Dou. With the rapid-fire frequency of a woodpecker, she pecked furiously until the initial small, squirming pile of worms was utterly gone. Jing Shu thought the plump hen deserved one more nickname: Phantom Chicken
Unsatisfied, Xiao Dou scoured the cow pen, the sheep pen, even under the apple trees, searching for more. The only forbidden place was the second-floor chicken coop, which Jing Shu would not allow it to enter. Otherwise, it had free rein during its daily roaming time.
Jing Shu carefully checked the basement next. The temperature there was kept at 0°C, meant for food and grain storage. Thankfully, it was well protected. She had foreseen this problem and had stored much of the supplies inside her Cube Space to prevent infestation.
She switched on every light in the villa, combing through the mushroom racks, the greenhouse, the small upstairs storeroom of feed. With beetles so tiny, especially during egg-laying, they could be lurking anywhere. Left unchecked, they would appear as swarms.
This life, Jing Shu refused to allow carrion scavengers anywhere near her living quarters. The trauma ran too deep.
Finally, in the greenhouse, she found several clusters of egg-laying beetles. Su Lanzhi cleaned daily, so these had only just flown in to breed.
With so many fruits in the greenhouse, it was inevitable there would be small flies and pests. Any fruit left for days would attract them. Even soil in pots could draw them. Spraying essential oils like medicated balm could handle beetles, but Jing Shu disliked spraying where food grew.
Looking out from the second floor at Xiao Dou's shadow pecking in the vegetable patch, Jing Shu had a sudden thought. The carrion scavenger had many natural enemies—could bees be one of them?
She released bees from her Cube Space into the greenhouse. At first, they circled the fruits. But finding no nectar, they turned to the beetles. Within moments, the clusters of egg-layers were wiped out.
Seeing results, Jing Shu quickly built a small hive in the greenhouse, raising dozens of bees. She did not expect honey, only that they would eat every intruding beetle.
Afterward, Jing Shu sprayed diluted medicated balm throughout the villa, added floral water to the humidifiers, and left the air faintly scented. It was an effective barrier against beetles.
Perhaps because she had raised them in her Cube Space for half a year, the bees recognized her, just like Xiao Dou did. They never stung her. Maybe it was her imagination, but she took no chances with family—everyone still had to wear head nets when entering.
That evening at dinner, Jing Shu mentioned she had found a hive under the eaves and planned to move it into the greenhouse. She also said she would take charge of it herself. Su Lanzhi happily agreed, relieved of the chore.
"By the way, can you get more frogs?" Jing Shu suddenly asked Wu You'ai.
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The author use "腐尸虫" (Fǔ shī chóng) when write about this species.
腐 (fǔ): Rotten, decaying, decomposed.
尸 (shī): Corpse, dead body.
虫 (chóng): Insect, bug.
Based on the description of them as omnivorous, swarming, land-sea creatures that consume rot, I decide to use "carrion scavenger". It feels like prioritize the narrative function—a symbol of omnivorous decay and ecosystem collapse—over a failed attempt at scientific accuracy.
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Didn't I say back in the early chapters that I would use bloodworms instead of red nematodes? Well… when I actually started translating, it felt super weird to me. Like something was missing.
Remember, I told you I've reread this novel 5–6 times already, and every single time it was with red nematodes, not bloodworms. So while working on it, I kept thinking:
"Where's my red nematode??" (＃｀д´)ﾉ
That disoriented feeling was unbearable for me, so I gave in and went back to writing it as red nematode. (≧▽≦)
Sorry about that, LOL (￣▽￣;)