Chapter 168.1: Absolute Control
Half of the room’s roof was made of dirty transparent plastic, while the other half was sheet metal. Two narrow windows were set into the walls, small and dark.
Yang Ao took out a few stools with crooked legs and let them sit first. In the corner, a haggard, emaciated woman holding a child stared in shock at the group of people who had suddenly crowded into her home.
“This is my sister,” Yang Ao briefly introduced. Then he pulled open a cabinet and lifted out a half bucket of water from the bottom. “Sis, help me get a few cups.”
Yang Yu looked like she wanted to say something but stopped herself. She went to fetch several glass cups and placed them on the table. “They’re washed,” she said.
Yang Ao poured a little less than half a cup of water into each glass. Screwing the lid back onto the container, he said awkwardly, “The water pipes only reach the city. There’s none out here. Drinkable water sources are few and far away, so we have to fetch water ourselves. Heh, have some—but leave a little for me.”
At the bottom of the bucket he put back, a thin layer of brownish-yellow sediment had settled. The water poured into the cups had already settled once and looked fairly clean—but for a moment, no one took the initiative to drink it.
Wu Heng suddenly remembered how, in the past, when he sometimes rushed to school on an empty stomach, Yang Ao would share his biscuits with him.
The young man reached out and picked up the cup in front of him. Xie Chongyi’s brow furrowed slightly, almost imperceptibly.
Lin Mengzhi was much more direct. He let out a surprised sound. “Are you sure this water is drinkable?”
“It is! It’s been disinfected—just not filtered. It might look a little dirty, but it’s definitely drinkable,” Yang Ao said.
Wu Heng tilted his head back and drank the water in the cup in one gulp. After all, he was a plant—drinking anything was the same. Pesticides wouldn’t work, though.
Yang Ao moved the chair he usually sat on next to Wu Heng and sat down. He rubbed his hands together between his knees, his gaze flickering.
“You’re all ability users?”
Shen Ping’an nodded. Yang Ao immediately showed a look of deep envy.
“Ning Bizhen is really strict with the rules,” he said. “The higher your ability level, the better the benefits and treatment you get in the base. Which zone were you assigned to? Area C should definitely be no problem.”
Everyone tacitly avoided mentioning exactly where in the base they had been assigned.
Xie Chongyi spoke up and asked, “You’ve been in Hanzhou this whole half-year?”
“Yeah,” Yang Ao said. “Back then, not that many people actually left Hanzhou. A lot of people who did leave didn’t get far before coming back. It was really miserable at the time—no one had even processed what was happening yet. The streets were full of zombies, and mutated animals were running around everywhere, eating people.”
“And then the base was established?” Xie Chongyi prompted him to continue.
Yang Ao shook his head. “It wasn’t that simple. At the beginning, ordinary people like us who didn’t have abilities didn’t even know such a thing as superpowers existed. We just grabbed whatever weapons we could find and fought. Later the mayor was gone, and someone with the surname Zheng took charge—but he ran off with a bunch of ability users!”
“But whatever. In that situation, even if he’d stayed, he probably wouldn’t have been much help. In the end we still had to rely on ourselves. After he left, the principal of Handa University stepped forward to manage things. Those days were actually pretty good. Ability users didn’t bully others with their powers. They worked with us to rebuild, search for supplies, and fight off zombies. But the principal was old—after holding on for two months, he collapsed from exhaustion. That was when Ning Bizhen arrived in Hanzhou with a team of people.”
Xie Chongyi leaned forward, resting his chin on his hand, listening as if completely absorbed. “Oh? How capable was he?”
“Definitely stronger than the ones before him. As soon as he arrived in Hanzhou, he cleared out a lot of the zombies. Then he had the ability users under him reinforce the walls and gathered professionals to rebuild the city. After that came the heavy snow and the extreme heat—honestly, we were lucky to have him then.”
“But after that, he started doing less and less like a human being. First he added several layers of walls inside the base and gathered all the survivors together. Then he divided everyone into ranks according to his standards. People like us who don’t have abilities were all driven into this area he casually designated—the slum district. High-level ability users can freely enter the areas where lower-level ability users operate. But if a low-level ability user enters their territory without permission, they can be executed on the spot—by anyone. Family members of ability users aren’t included in that rule.”
“Every morning, we even have to kneel three times and kowtow nine times toward the direction of his residence. He’s seriously out of his damn mind!”
“And the other ability users don’t object?” Xie Chongyi asked.
“As long as they have power, they get to stand above everyone else. Why would they want to be equal with us? That’s how they think anyway,” Yang Ao said.
“There should be people protesting,” Shen Ping’an said, leaning back in his chair, clearly disgusted by Ning Bizhen’s actions. “Not even one?”
“It’s not that there’s none. But when people from the slum district protest, it doesn’t matter. We can’t even get into Area E. There’s a market over there—you can go take a look later. Basically every day people gather there holding signs in protest, or staging sit-ins. But nobody pays any attention to us. Even if we sat there until we died, no one would care.”
“What about the ability users?” Shen Ping’an asked.
“The good ones are rare—very rare. The decent ones are powerless anyway. They can’t beat Ning Bizhen; the moment they protest, they lose their lives.” Yang Ao’s shoulders slumped. “Still, some of them come to our slum district to do charity work or provide aid. Those people are actually pretty good. But most of them are terrible. Absolutely rotten!”
“Oh, right—have you eaten yet?” he asked in a tone that sounded casual and homely, though his dark face had suddenly flushed red.
Xie Chongyi straightened up, pausing his probing.
Wu Heng looked at Yang Ao for a moment, then at the woman behind him. After a long pause, he finally spoke.
“Mengzhi.”
“Yep, coming.” Lin Mengzhi shrugged off the backpack on his shoulder and took out a large bag of jerky made from some kind of meat—no one really knew what kind, but they ate it often, especially the various jerky sticks and rolls they brought for Wu Heng to chew on when he was craving something.
Yang Ao swallowed hard and, without thinking, reached out to grab it.
“Yang Ao!”
The woman spoke for the first time, her voice so sharp it scraped the throat. Seeing everyone looking at her, she lowered her head, clutching the child tighter, and said nothing more.
Yang Ao still reached out and took it. “Sister, they’re my classmates. They’re not like those people.”
“Those people?” Lin Mengzhi quite liked people this straightforward and guileless. He reached into the bag again and took out two boxes of biscuits.
“It’s people from Area E,” Yang Yu said. Only after seeing that Yang Ao had eaten the food without any severe reaction did she continue. “Our place is closest to Area E. They think we smell and that we’re an eyesore. They say the slum district is a garbage dump and that we’re cockroaches. Two months ago, they mixed a lot of rat poison into the food they gave us.”
A huge question mark practically appeared above Lin Mengzhi’s head.
“Even in the apocalypse, you can’t just kill people like that,” Shen Ping’an said.
“It seems like that’s how it is in other bases. But here…” Yang Ao had no heart left to continue. He stuffed biscuits into his mouth in large bites. After being hungry for so long—after eating grass and garbage until his sense of taste had gone numb—his mouth suddenly came alive again. The taste of food was the taste of being alive. As he ate, he wiped away tears, not forgetting to call to Yang Yu behind him.
“Sister, you eat too.”
Yang Yu’s eyes slowly fell on the food on the table. She shook her head. “I’ll eat later.”
Wu Heng took a piece of jerky from Yang Ao’s leg and fed it into his own mouth, chewing thoughtfully while watching Yang Yu.
“Mengzhi, give me the bag.”
Lin Mengzhi didn’t ask anything. He tossed the backpack to Wu Heng. Wu Heng lowered his head, pretending to rummage through it, then pulled out a container and pushed it toward Yang Ao.
Everyone looked closely.
It was a can of powdered milk.
Yang Ao stared at it the longest. The biscuit in his mouth almost fell onto his pants; he quickly shoved it back in, chewed a few times, and swallowed. His voice came out hoarse as he asked, “How do you still have powdered milk?”
Wu Heng zipped up the backpack, his eyelashes trembling slightly. “The class monitor drinks it often.”
Shen Ping’an and Lin Mengzhi both turned their heads toward Xie Chongyi at the same time. The latter showed little reaction—he simply broke into a sudden smile and then gave a reserved nod.
“Th-this… this is too… too valuable,” Yang Ao stammered. He had only wanted a little food—if he couldn’t get any, that would’ve been fine too.
Seeing that it was powdered milk, Yang Yu finally stood up from her chair. She looked even thinner than Yang Ao, and she wasn’t tall either. If not for her face, she almost looked like someone already about to enter old age.
“You actually have powdered milk. In the base, all the milk powder is reserved first for children with abilities. And it’s even more expensive than gold used to be. Forget about people like us—even ability users might not be able to afford it.”
Although Yang Yu had stood up, she still pushed the can of milk powder back toward Wu Heng.
“We can’t take this. If we’ve never had it, then it’s the same as not having it. But if I let her have even one sip, I might not be able to keep her alive anymore.”
Wu Heng had only offered his supplies because he remembered that Yang Ao had once shared food with him. After being refused, he didn’t insist; he simply pulled the can of powdered milk back, preparing to put it into the bag.
“I want it, I want it!” Yang Ao reacted quickly, snatching it away and hugging it tightly to his chest. “She doesn’t want it, but I do!”
After saying that, he stuffed all the food on the table toward Yang Yu. “You eat some too, then hurry and put the rest away.”
When Yang Ao turned back again, he let out a hiccup from eating too fast. Seeing that things had settled down, Wu Heng finally asked,
“I heard that recently Ning Bizhen has been preparing a birthday celebration for Shen Miao.”
“Tch, who cares about his stupid birthday celebration?”
“How so? Who doesn’t care?” Xie Chongyi asked with interest.
“Shen Miao doesn’t care, of course. Shen Miao doesn’t even like Ning Bizhen,” Yang Ao muttered while carefully picking up biscuit crumbs from his pants and eating them.
Lin Mengzhi looked confused. “How do you know Shen Miao doesn’t like him?”
“Who would like their own obsessive fan? I heard that back then, Ning Bizhen even secretly hid under Shen Miao’s bed once. But his family had connections—he was only locked up for two days after the police were called before getting out. Someone like that—how could Shen Miao possibly like him?” Yang Ao said disdainfully.
“From the way you talk, Shen Miao sounds like a good person,” Wu Heng said.
“Of course!” Yang Ao raised his head, eyes wide, then continued picking up crumbs—even the ones on the table weren’t spared. “Ning Bizhen is cruel by nature, but he listens to Shen Miao. Because of that, Shen Miao has helped quite a lot of people.”
“You make him sound like some great saint,” Shen Ping’an said, becoming more cautious instead. “Isn’t it possible he’s just pretending to be good?”
“To be honest with you,” Yang Ao said, scrunching up his face and lowering his voice to a very soft whisper, “I once ran into Shen Miao when he was about to commit suicide. It was by the riverside. But I guess he’s still afraid of dying—he didn’t jump into the river in the end. He just sat there until dawn and then left.”
“What if he was just looking at the scenery?”
“No way, no way. Maybe before the apocalypse that could’ve been the case. But after the apocalypse, people jumping into the river was like dumplings being dropped into a pot. Later it happened less often, but there are still people doing it every day. I can tell at a glance now whether someone still wants to live or not.”
“Look at me, look at me!” Lin Mengzhi leaned closer.
He had only meant to lighten the mood, but unexpectedly Yang Ao actually began examining him seriously.
The boy in front of him had purple hair that clearly hadn’t been carefully styled, skin a shade lighter than wheat-colored, and handsome brows and bright eyes softened by two dimples that gave him a puppy-like charm. Whoever his owner was must have taken good care of him to raise him this well.
Yang Ao didn’t know Lin Mengzhi and had no idea what he had been like before the apocalypse. Everyone had changed after the end of the world arrived.
But behind him, Xie Chongyi and Shen Ping’an had barely changed at all. The class monitor was still the same—aloof and arrogant, as if he saw everyone but cared for none of them.
Wu Heng had even improved. Perhaps because of his ability, the boy now had long hair. His complexion was no longer dull and lifeless, and the wounds that used to appear frequently on his face and neck had disappeared.
More importantly—and this was what Yang Ao felt most strongly—Wu Heng finally seemed to have some vitality about him. Before, he hadn’t.
“You guys are living well. You won’t die,” Yang Ao said eagerly. “Give me a bit more food.”
“Give a man a fish is worse than teaching him to…” Lin Mengzhi trailed off mid-sentence.
Right on cue, Yang Ao chimed in, “Teaching me can wait—give me some fish first. If you want to know anything else, just ask.”
When they were leaving, Wu Heng pulled an entire wolf rib and a fifty-jin sack of rice out of his backpack.
Yang Ao wasn’t a pig—he naturally found it strange that a single backpack could hold so many things. But he didn’t ask a single question. Instead, he thanked them over and over again and kept escorting them out.
When they reached the intersection, Yang Ao saw the two large tabby cats lying on the ground and froze.
“You’re actually from Area B?! Now I feel terrible.”
After the brief joke, Wu Heng and the others climbed back onto the cart. The clerk who also acted as the driver hadn’t received any signal to depart yet, so he didn’t give the cats the command to move.
“To run into you guys again at a time like this—just like back at school—and chat for a while, and even get some food for me and my sister… I’ve got no regrets even if I die now.” Yang Ao waved his hand. “I’ll just live day by day, however long that is. Bye.”
After saying goodbye, the boy didn’t linger where he stood. He simply turned around and walked away. Wu Heng leaned against Xie Chongyi’s shoulder, watching his figure grow more and more distant.
“Still not leaving?” the clerk asked quietly from the front.
A foul smell—one that seemed familiar from not long ago—was suddenly caught by Wu Heng’s sharp sense of smell. He straightened from Xie Chongyi’s shoulder, and the unfocused look in his eyes sharpened instantly.
“Bugs,” Wu Heng murmured.
Xie Chongyi poked his cheek from the side, his tone carrying a hint of warning. “Don’t call me that.”
“….”
This time it was Lin Mengzhi and Shen Ping’an who stared blankly at the scene.
Wu Heng pushed away the finger that kept poking him. “I wasn’t talking about you, I—”
At that moment, Xie Chongyi’s gaze caught a red, blood-colored shadow appearing at the end of the street. His brows shifted slightly.
“I see it.”
“Stay here and wait for me.”
The moment the words fell, Xie Chongyi vanished from the cart as if out of thin air. The sudden loss of weight startled the two cats pulling the cart.
At the far end of the street, the bloody shadow seemed to touch something, and in an instant it burst apart into a spray of blood. Yang Ao’s terrified, despairing scream rang out.