Chapter 211.2: Infected
In the apocalypse, everyone understood what that meant. Having finally found a potential new shelter, the hope on their faces quickly faded. A shadow of gloom spread, and as whispers grew among them, the atmosphere became heavier and more oppressive.
Finally, it erupted.
“What gives you the right to say we’re infected?!”
Dou Lu was already distressed, and the sudden outburst from the man made her body flinch. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that Wu Heng and the others nearby showed no intention of stepping in to assist her. She quickly forced herself to calm down.
“With my ability level, there is no way I could make a mistake in determining whether a person’s internal energy field meets the standard!” Dou Lu stared at him coldly. “Next.”
“You little—what the—ugh—”
A streak of blazing white flashed past from behind Dou Lu. The man suddenly felt an itch at his throat, and in the next instant, arterial blood sprayed out from his neck. He clutched at it, letting out broken, breathy sounds as he staggered backward.
Neither Dou Lu nor Zhou Yi had expected something so sudden. Both of them turned their heads at the same time.
Wu Zhi stood there, blade in hand. Not a single drop of blood stained its tip. She looked at the line and calmly repeated, “Next.”
Dou Lu blinked in a daze, then suddenly realized—Wu Zhi’s change wasn’t just about her personality anymore.
The man seemed to be alone. After he collapsed into the pool of blood, no one stepped forward to speak up for him. The crowd grew much quieter, but also far more wary.
But Wu Zhi didn’t care about these people. Aside from Wu Heng and Lin Mengzhi, she cared about no one—neither their lives nor their opinions.
Leaning back in his chair, Xie Chongyi tapped his fingers lightly on his knee. “Our little sister seems to have changed quite a bit.”
Wu Heng hadn’t even realized who “our little sister” referred to when Liu Shen let out a cold snort. “What change? When I picked her up, she was already a little mad dog.”
Liu Shen was the talkative type, but unlike Lin Mengzhi—whose chatter was mostly nonsense—his words always carried hidden meanings, often laced with sarcasm and mockery. Wu Heng listened for a moment, then lost interest. As he lifted his gaze, his pupils froze briefly—his eyes locked onto the corpse lying in the pool of blood in the distance, its fingers twitching faintly.
Before anyone else noticed, his back had already arched. The spine beneath his skin undulated and twisted—then suddenly, the flesh split open. Two pairs of pitch-black insect wings, streaked with white patterns, burst out. The people closest to him were caught off guard, struck by the wings, and sent tumbling far away.
The person who had been sitting beside Xie Chongyi vanished almost instantly.
Wu Heng reappeared behind the infected individual. Without hesitation, he drove a dagger into the man’s tailbone. With a twist of the blade, he ripped the entire spine out.
The infected person immediately collapsed to the ground, his body twitching uncontrollably. Wu Heng stepped forward again and drove his blade into the man’s temple. The spine slipped from his fingers into the dark red pool of blood on the ground. Then he turned around, looked at the shaken crowd, and gave a faint smile.
“It’s fine now. Nothing to worry about.”
The scene made everyone swallow hard—there was fear, but also something else. They had never seen a base deal with infected individuals so swiftly and cleanly.
Dou Lu felt a dull ache in her chest. “Continue the inspections.”
Wu Heng returned to his seat. Xie Chongyi wiped the blood from his fingers, even leaning in to sniff it before grimacing. “That’s disgusting,” he said. “Call X over.”
The dog and the bird had already fled far away.
Lin Mengzhi stood in line with Bo Ying and her grandmother. When they finally reached Dou Lu, she could tell at a glance what he was thinking and rolled her eyes. “Captain, you’ve got too much free time.”
“What do you know?”
The two bickered as Dou Lu took hold of Bo Ying’s grandmother’s arm.
“How is it?” Bo Ying asked nervously.
“No problem.” Dou Lu released her and then grasped Bo Ying’s arm. This time, the faint smile at the corner of her lips faded slightly.
Lin Mengzhi didn’t notice. “Bo Ying’s fine, right?”
Dou Lu forced herself to speak. “Go to the line on the left.”
After both rounds of inspection, the group split into two sides. On the right were the survivors who had passed both checks. On the left were those infected—still awaiting an unknown fate.
Lin Mengzhi looked at the left side, then at the right. His expression changed drastically, and his eyes reddened almost instantly. “You’re joking, right?”
“I’m not.”
In front of him, Bo Ying’s grandmother closed her eyes briefly, then resolutely took the girl’s hand. “Come on, I’ll go with you.”
Watching the figures of the old woman and the young girl walk away, Lin Mengzhi felt tears well up in his eyes. It wasn’t that he had developed any deep feelings for Bo Ying—they had known each other for less than half a day. It was more that he was reminded of his own grandmother… and of the harsh, unfiltered cruelty of reality that came rushing in when there was no one around to joke and distract him.
He clenched tightly the bundle of cotton cords Bo Ying had given him. “We can’t just kill them.” He looked at Wu Zhi.
Wu Zhi turned her gaze away and muttered, “It’s not up to me anyway.”
“You’d just act without thinking.”
Wu Zhi looked back at him. “Are you going to argue with me over these people?”
Out of fewer than three thousand survivors, after two hours of screening, less than two thousand had passed. Such a terrifying ratio threw the crowd into turmoil once again.
“The results could be wrong—we request a second test!”
“Yes! We want a second test!”
“Abilities aren’t instruments. Instruments can give different results due to various issues—abilities don’t,” Dou Lu said. As she spoke, there was a shadow of Jiang Xun in her demeanor. She stood up, unable to bear looking at the pleading, grief-stricken faces, and walked toward Wu Heng and the others.
“What should we do with those who failed the test?” she asked quietly.
Wu Heng fell silent for a moment. “Send them back.”
“No!!!” The loudest shout came from Qi Songshi—he, too, had failed the test.
“If you send us back, we’ll die! The outside world has already become like that—soon the desert will spread across the entire world, everywhere will be full of monsters. We’ll definitely die!” The man shouting had veins bulging across his neck. In his agitation, he knocked several people over.
“There’s no difference,” Wu Heng said coldly. “If there is, it’s only the difference between dying now and dying later after the mutation completes.”
“You’re going to kill us?”
“Won’t someone save us?!”
Several people in the crowd suddenly dropped to their knees one after another. But they weren’t begging Wu Heng—they knew very well that begging anyone at this moment was useless. Humanity could no longer save itself. What they were begging for… was the heavens.
Lin Mengzhi ran straight up to Wu Heng. “Isn’t there any other way?”
By then, Doctor Chen had already strolled leisurely to stand behind Wu Heng.
“Its infected individuals were turned because their genes had already been rewritten. Besides—if there had been a way, would I still be a zombie? Accept it.”
“Ah!! Let go of me!”
A piercing scream suddenly stabbed into everyone’s ears.
“They’re biting people! They really are infected!”
Lin Mengzhi whipped his head around. Before he could even locate where the fully mutated infected person was, Wu Zhi had already appeared within the crowd.
She mimicked her brother’s method—barehanded, she tore out the spine of the creature. Then she straddled its collapsing body, both hands gripping the blade’s hilt, and drove it down with force.
This time, the mutated being had a pair of pale green-white wings. After losing all signs of life, the wings spread out like silk across the grass.
Lin Mengzhi saw its face as it struggled to turn toward him.
It was Bo Ying.
“Grandma.” Bo Ying formed the words silently with her lips. Her eyes closed so quickly that Lin Mengzhi didn’t even have time to react.
This was already the second mutated creature in such a short time. No one could be certain anymore—what about the third, the fourth… and more importantly, when would they themselves become monsters?
Silence fell over everything.
Then someone committed s**cide.
Before their breath had fully faded, terrifying non-human wings erupted from their back. Their body convulsed like an insect, emitting a buzzing sound. Their normal eyes turned pitch-black and swollen, and green light shimmered across their face.
Wu Zhi walked over, stripped the spine, and pierced the head. Everything returned to silence once again.
Lisa distributed several vehicles to them. No matter how unwilling they were, they could only get in and leave. Fortunately, the paths they had opened earlier had not yet closed, so their return would not take too long.
Xie Chongyi assessed the situation and instructed Lin Mengzhi and Dou Lu to accompany the convoy, personally seeing them off.
“If any of them mutate into infected beings on the way, you know what to do.”
—
Inside the base, Jiang Xun quickly divided the area into five sections: residential zone, public activity zone, political-military zone, research zone, and student campus zone.
The people from Xianghu Base were sent directly to the residential area upon arrival. Yue Shanqing and Ruan Silian were responsible for collecting and organizing their information.
Wu Heng also got off the vehicle in the residential district. The buildings in front of him were nearly half as tall as before—clearly cut down by ability users. The patchwork repairs on them were crude at best; they could barely serve as shelter from wind and rain. As for becoming a “home,” they were still far too rough and unfinished.
He and Xie Chongyi found Lisa, who was currently speaking with Ruan Silian and Yue Shanqing, to deal with Jiang Lian’s situation.
“It’s Jiang Lian,” Lisa said, clearly familiar with everyone from Xianghu Base. She knew she couldn’t cause any extra trouble at a time like this, so she quickly pulled Jiang Lian closer to her side. “He used to stay with his uncle. After his uncle passed away, he followed a neighbor aunt instead. That probably didn’t work out either… so for now, he’ll just stay with me.”
Wu Heng and Xie Chongyi turned and left. Jiang Lian let Lisa lead him around, occasionally glancing back in the direction Wu Heng and the others had gone. The two figures grew smaller and smaller until they disappeared completely.
The government building had been classified under the political-military district. Compared to the state it was in when they left that morning, it had now been renovated again and looked considerably more presentable. The surrounding structures and overall planning had also changed—a large plaza that hadn’t existed before had been forcibly constructed. Many unstable, barely usable concrete structures were flattened entirely. A cold, empty wasteland-like atmosphere naturally emerged.
Liu Shen walked ahead of them like some kind of high-ranking palace eunuch.
“Captain Jiang insisted on building an airport. I overruled it and told her to build it farther away—putting it near where we live and work would’ve driven us insane from the noise.”
“The military and political zones are separated.”
“Given how many things there are to handle and how few people we have, we all just live directly in this area anyway. There are plenty of houses.”
“I had my two carpenters pick out some houses that only needed minor repairs to keep living in. The rest were all demolished. The ones I picked for you are standalone lake-view villas. They’re a bit far from the work area, but that shouldn’t be a problem for you.”
The lake was eerily quiet. There were quite a few houses around it, but after selection, the gaps between each one had become even wider. Lush reeds filled the shoreline, and the setting sun dyed both the plants and the water into a single sheet of blood-red.
Halfway up the hill, Liu Shen pushed open a door. After a cloud of dust fell, he finally stepped inside.
“Dusty. Just clean it with your abilities. Easy.”
“No water or electricity yet. Mo Zhaohong hasn’t gotten around to this area.”
“Right now it’s just a shell anyway. Do whatever you want with it…” Liu Shen kept an earcuff on. As he spoke, he pressed it and stepped aside. “What the hell are you rushing me for? The lord’s matters are the priority. Don’t f*cking threaten me with that bastard dog Ying Liuquan. If you’ve got the guts, curse me to death.”
Despite his foul language, after turning around, Liu Shen still bid Wu Heng and Xie Chongyi a somewhat reluctant farewell.
“I’ve still got work to do. I’m leaving. Call me anytime if you need anything—I’m available on demand.”
He placed two earcuffs on a massive marble table in the center of the living room.
Just as he was about to leave, Xie Chongyi called him back.
“That bed you mentioned earlier—where is it?”