Yang Zhang followed the sun while marking a few trees with either Chestnut's static or Lt. Spicy Wing's flames, so he wouldn't get lost on the way back.
It took a while for him to get far enough from his hut that the area no longer seemed familiar.
"Squeak, squeak!"
"Huh, a lake?"
Chestnut pointed at an easily missable spot while they were swinging around on Ivy's vines. When Yang Zhang looked in the pointed direction, he saw a calm lake in the middle of the lush forest. It wasn't a big one, but the water was dark, and it seemed to be really deep.
"Ivy, let's go down and check!"
"Vii!"
Learning from his encounter with the catfish with four legs, Yang Zhang instructed Little Ivy to stop well before reaching the lake. They landed at least five feet away from the lakeside, afraid that they'd get ambushed by another weird mutated fish.
The water was so deep when he stretched his neck to check from five feet away, he still couldn't see any sign of fish swimming in it.
"Should we check the water?" Yang Zhang mused.
He cast his eyes down, looking at Chestnut, who was hiding inside his jacket pocket. Yang Zhang tried to convince himself, "I have an electric type anyway. I can win if there is a random water type jumping out, right?"
Gathering his courage, he advanced a few steps into the murky water. He wanted to check whether he could find any sign of unmutated fish that would be good as a source of protein for him.
But as soon as he was only a foot away from the lakeside, he heard a soft hum coming from somewhere on the other side of the small lake. Since the forest was quiet, the mellow sound echoed gently among the trees.
"Oh, shit—" Yang Zhang quickly scurried and hid behind a bush near the lake. He peeked from between the leaves, trying to check what caused the hum. He suspected that another mutated animal or plant was making the sound which reminded Yang Zhang of a woman humming.
But what he saw was definitely outside his expectations.
There was a woman, probably around Yang Zhang's age, early twenties, with wavy, shoulder-length hair. The sky blue color of the woman's hair was very unusual in this apocalypse world. Hair dying was practically extinct due to the focus of most people being survival rather than beauty.
She had round eyes and thin lips, and Yang Zhang would be lying if he said he wasn't stunned by the beauty that hummed while walking toward the lake.
The only thing she wore was a towel covering her chest and reaching down to her thighs, exposing her smooth and slender shoulders. A necklace hung around her neck with a pendant shaped like a teardrop.
The song was one that Yang Zhang recognized, Doja Cat - Say So.
Yang Zhang continued peeking without blinking, lost in the image of the girl walking towards the lakeside and touching the dark water with her toe.
In an instant, the dark lake turned crystal blue. The water that had seemed scary before, so dark it didn't show a thing inside, had magically turned into a clear pool filled with fish.
The girl smiled thinly at the water and was about to take off the towel. Yang Zhang continued peeking, but Lt. Spicy Wing thought it was shameful for a soldier to peek at a lady, so the little chick protested.
"Chirp! Chirp! Chirp!"
"Sshh, silence, Spicy Wing," Yang Zhang ordered, ignoring the chick to continue peeking.
When Lt. Spicy Wing saw that the lady was about to take off her towel, the little chick tried to think of a way to distract Major General Yang Zhang.
"Chirp!" Spicy Wing jumped from Yang Zhang's head and did a fiery spin around the bushes, setting them on fire instantly.
It took a few seconds for Yang Zhang to realize that he felt something burning, "Wait—"
When he looked around, he found that the bushes had caught fire, and so had his jacket and pants.
"AAHHHH! My pants! Pants on fire!"
"Squeak! Squeak!"
"Viii!"
Yang Zhang quickly dashed to the crystal blue water and dove in. Little Ivy and Chestnut also followed Yang Zhang to jump in because they were also burned by the fire. Only Lt. Spicy Wing was spared, chirping around the lakeside, telling his soldiers to be proper in front of a lady.
After putting out the fire, Yang Zhang quickly swam to the surface while Little Ivy and Chestnut clung to him.
The moment his head popped out of the surface, he made eye contact with the girl, who was so shocked that she couldn't even speak.
Yang Zhang showed an embarrassed smile and tried to break the awkward tension of the situation, "G—Good morning, Miss. The weather is nice today, isn't it?"
…
…
"GYAAAAAHHHHHH!" The girl screamed hysterically, and the sound summoned an enormous wave out of nowhere that quickly swept Yang Zhang out of the lake.
"Whaaaaa!" Yang Zhang and his pets were thrown by the giant wave into a nearby tree, and his back hit the solid mass of the trunk behind him. He slumped to the ground with the wind knocked out of him. "Ouch!"
Grimacing in pain, he rubbed his back and stared at the girl across the lake. Suddenly, she jumped into the lake, summoned a water tentacle, and slammed it into Yang Zhang.
"Oh shit!" Yang Zhang's adrenaline kicked in, and he grabbed all his pets, rolling to the side to avoid the water tentacle.
CRASH! CRACK!
The water tentacle hit the tree and directly uprooted it.
"HOLY FUCK!" Yang Zhang paled instantly. He would've died immediately if he'd been hit by that.
The girl summoned another water tentacle, but before attacking this time, she asked, "WHO ARE YOU?!"
"M—Miss, please don't misunderstand, I wasn't meant to peek on you—"
"YOU'RE PEEKING AT ME?! PERVERT!" The girl attacked with another giant tentacle towards Yang Zhang.
Yang Zhang looked at his pets. Ivy was the only one who had recovered from all the water attacks thrown at them, so he hastily called out to her, "Ivy!"
"Vii!" Little Ivy stretched two vines and grabbed a tree branch on their left. She quickly pulled Yang Zhang to the side, narrowly avoiding the giant water tentacle.
CRASH! CRACK!
The huge tentacle crashed into and uprooted another tree.
Yang Zhang swung to the side, but because Little Ivy was still somewhat wet, the vines slipped and lost their grip, causing Yang Zhang to fall to the ground.
"Ouch!"
When the girl found that Yang Zhang was unable to avoid her this time, she summoned two giant tentacles at once and aimed them towards Yang Zhang, demanding, "Tell me who you are before I drown your ass!"