Chapter 213: He wasn’t the law. He was her brother.
Liu Shen arrived with a group of people banging gongs and drums.
Inside the house, a crowd was making a racket. Wu Heng stepped out and stood at the doorway, looking down the few steps at Liu Shen and the row of unfamiliar people behind him.
“What’s this supposed to mean?”
Liu Shen raised a hand, and the musicians behind him immediately stopped. Turning back with a friendly smile, he said, “Well, of course—congratulations to our lord on moving into a new home!”
“…”
Wu Heng fell silent for a moment, then tilted his head up to look at the heavy rain pouring down like a curtain. Aside from Liu Shen, who was holding an umbrella, the others were all drenched, like soaked chickens. The way they looked at him carried unease—even fear.
“Don’t you have anything better to do?” Wu Heng asked softly.
The tall, jade-like young man didn’t appear cold, yet he felt like a massive venomous serpent coiled in the clouds, slowly lowering itself toward the ground, breathing danger.
A thunderclap exploded above Liu Shen’s head.
He froze for just a moment. Without even turning back, he swung a heavy slap behind him, sending a man flying straight out of the courtyard. Blood choked in the man’s throat as he coughed violently.
“Look at the stupid idea you came up with,” Liu Shen said darkly, neatly washing his hands of the matter.
When the tattooed man turned back again, Wu Heng was still watching him quietly.
“Don’t let it happen again.”
Liu Shen forced a smile onto his face, saying nothing more about what had just happened. Instead, he peeked toward the house.
“Having a gathering? Why don’t I see Wu Zhi?”
Wu Heng shut the door.
It would have been easy for Liu Shen to find Wu Zhi—he had a parasitic tree attached to her—but he didn’t go looking for her directly. Instead, he drove away the people he had brought like dogs, then sat under a tree not far from the government building for most of the day.
With no one around, he couldn’t understand why his life had turned out this way. The flowers and applause that should belong to the strong—he had none. And the grand, notorious life of a villain—he didn’t have that either.
Wearing a face that anyone would find terrifying, the man wandered once more through the residential area. When he left, he was carrying two lunchboxes in his hands.
Wu Zhi chose where she lived herself—a small house near Wu Heng’s, the smallest one available. No one took care of it; moss had grown into a thick carpet over the surfaces, and creeping vines climbed from the courtyard up the windows, making it look like a massive green fortress.
She sat behind the window, hugging her knees. In the distance lay the place where Wu Heng and the others were. Her pale white pupils were dull and lifeless—she wasn’t thinking about anything at all.
Bang bang bang!
Smack smack smack!
“Open the door.”
Wu Zhi blinked, a trace of awareness returning to her eyes, but she didn’t get up to answer. She hadn’t figured out how to face Liu Shen yet.
Just as Liu Shen had said, no matter which side she stood on, she would always be a traitor. She could never return to her brother’s side, and Liu Shen, for his part, practically wanted to strangle her.
But the person downstairs clearly had little patience. With a sharp crack, Wu Zhi’s calf snapped, and a wave of intense pain surged through her. Limping, she had no choice but to go downstairs to open the door.
After opening it, she didn’t even glance at the person outside, instead dragging her injured leg as she walked back inside.
“Tragic—!” Liu Shen howled in an exaggerated tone, one hand clasped behind his back while he swaggered in after her.
The house was so dim it seemed to swallow all light, like a pitch-black cave. With a loud clang, Liu Shen tossed the lunchboxes at Wu Zhi’s feet, sneering, “You can stare your eyes out here all you want—it won’t do any good. You betrayed me to curry favor with your brother. You’d better hope you’re doing even worse over there than I am.”
Wu Zhi didn’t pick up the lunchboxes, nor did she respond. She turned and went back upstairs. She slept on the floor anyway—an ice-type ability user wouldn’t feel cold in this kind of weather.
After quite a while, Liu Shen followed her upstairs and threw the two boxes of food up from below.
Wu Zhi curled up, saying softly, “I’m not eating. You can have them yourself.”
Liu Shen let out a cold laugh. “I’ll be more than happy to come collect your corpse.”
Facing away from the doorway, Wu Zhi didn’t react at all. To her, Liu Shen was nothing but a sinister, twisted madman—growing older without ever making anything of himself, his behavior not only cruel but increasingly bizarre.
She closed her eyes. Even when the clanging and banging sounds from downstairs started up not long after, she couldn’t be bothered to go check.
—
That afternoon, Jiang Xun made a special trip to see Wu Heng. She gave a full report on the past two days’ work and also presented the identity magnetic cards she had designed. These cards would be used for identification within the base, covering everything from access control to transactions—essentially all areas involving personal data collection. She also handed out cards to Wu Heng and his group.
“So there are already places to spend money?” someone asked.
“No,” Jiang Xun replied. “There aren’t even roadside stalls yet. But there should be soon—new survivors will need ways to make a living. As for a trade currency… no one here specializes in that. We’ll have to wait for the people the colonel assigns to arrive.”
“Speaking of making a living, there’s something even more urgent—the base needs to start production as soon as possible.”
Before they knew it, two hours had passed. After taking a few sips of water, Jiang Xun hurriedly took her leave.
“Those people who used to follow Liu Shen—every single one of them is a troublemaker. The moment no one’s watching, they start causing problems,” she complained before leaving, her tone full of disdain. “And Liu Shen only keeps the ruthless ones around. A bunch of extremists—I’d bet they’ll cause a major disaster sooner or later.”
Once the sharply dressed, stern-looking Captain Jiang left, the people in the living room—who had been putting on serious airs—instantly collapsed into a heap without any regard for appearances.
Wu Heng rested his head on Xie Chongyi’s lap, absentmindedly nibbling on food. Beside them, Lin Mengzhi suddenly stood up.
“What are you doing?” Dou Lu asked with a yawn.
“Going to take a piss,” Lin Mengzhi said, shaking his waistband. “Then I’ll cook a couple of dishes and bring them to Wu Zhi. She’s probably too embarrassed to come over—haha, serves her right for always targeting me.”
Wu Heng somehow produced two cans of milk and set them on the table. “Bring these to her too.”
“What’s this?”
“Boil it,” Wu Heng said, continuing to snack. “Goat’s milk Doctor Chen got.”
Someone nearby suddenly shouted, “Wu Heng, you’re playing favorites!”
Wu Heng paused for a moment, then said, “No rush—Doctor Chen is still milking.”
“I’ll make sure Wu Zhi knows this is from you,” Lin Mengzhi said, stuffing the two bottles of milk into his arms before leaving. Not long after, he came back loaded with bags of various things in addition to the milk, then ran out into the now lighter rain.
Wu Zhi was still asleep. The two lunchboxes lying crosswise behind her back hadn’t been touched. When the knocking downstairs began—loud and rapid—she opened her eyes but didn’t react. It wasn’t until Lin Mengzhi started shouting that she suddenly sat up in alarm. As she hurried downstairs, she first hid the two lunchboxes Liu Shen had brought.
She ran down excitedly, but before opening the door, she noticed the living room looked completely refreshed—only then did she recall the intermittent noises from downstairs hours ago. Most likely, Liu Shen had cleaned and tidied up the entire house for her.
She stood there for a moment before going to open the door. She had already heard Lin Mengzhi’s voice upstairs, so she wasn’t surprised to see him. Taking the items that were about to slip from his arms, she asked softly, “Where’s my brother?”
“He’s busy,” Lin Mengzhi said as he squeezed past her into the house. “You had nothing to do today either?”
“Nothing,” Wu Zhi replied, closing the door.
“Then why didn’t you come over to us? There’s not even internet here. Actually, you don’t even know pinyin, right? Even if there were internet, it’d be useless.”
Lin Mengzhi rambled on to himself as he took out the dishes he had just cooked one by one, quickly pressing the back of his hand against the lunchboxes to check the heat.
“Come on, eat. This is a special meal just for you.”
Wu Zhi sat directly on the floor beside the coffee table, rummaging through the plastic bags until she found a pair of chopsticks. Closest to her was a box of stir-fried beef with greens, still steaming hot. Before the apocalypse, Lin Mengzhi had worked in a kitchen as a prep cook—his knife skills were excellent, and he had even picked up techniques from several experienced chefs. His cooking was naturally top-notch.
The girl picked up a small bite of beef and brought it to her mouth.
The moment she swallowed it, tears began to fall.
“Holy—holy shit!” Lin Mengzhi shouted in alarm from the side. “If only I had a camera, I’d take a picture of this!”
“I’m sorry…” Wu Zhi bit down on her chopsticks, lowering her head as she sobbed.
Lin Mengzhi hadn’t expected that to be the reason. Honestly, he had never really taken what Wu Zhi did that seriously. Whether it was right or wrong—that was for the law to decide. He wasn’t the law. He was her brother.
He even naively believed that even if their positions were reversed—if he, A’Heng, and Wu Zhi each grabbed two knives and stabbed at each other—it still wouldn’t affect their bond. That’s just how they were. They’d willingly tear themselves open for one another.
“Hey, hey, don’t do this!” Lin Mengzhi hated this kind of emotional scene. Damn it, it was getting a bit too sentimental—almost making him want to cry too. He wiped at Wu Zhi’s face with his palm a few times, then smeared the tears from his hand into her hair. “If anything, just let me stab you later or something. This is annoying.”
Wu Zhi pulled the chopsticks out of her mouth. “Then wait until I finish eating.”
“…”
Lin Mengzhi had nothing to say to this pair of siblings.
After a long silence, he pulled out two bottles of warmed goat’s milk from his oversized jeans pocket.
“Here. A’Heng told me to bring these to you—no one else gets any,” he said exaggeratedly.
Wu Zhi froze for a moment, then her face lit up with a bright smile.
—
Building an entirely new base was no easy task. The rain in Deathlands had continued for two straight days. Many of the buildings that seemed repaired on the surface—having been worked on by non-professionals—turned out to be leaking in seventy to eighty percent of cases.
It was then that they discovered a problem they had overlooked from the very beginning—the base’s drainage system.
Fortunately, among the two thousand people from the former Xianghu Base, there were a few survivors who had some knowledge in this area. When floodwater began to cover the streets, Lisa found them and brought them to Wu Heng.
“Right now, no matter what, the only thing we can do is drain the water first! Rebuilding a complete drainage system for the base isn’t something we can accomplish with abilities alone!”
In front of the government building, Wu Heng stood in a black raincoat. The upper half of his face was hidden beneath the shadow of his hood, while his dark green eyes glimmered quietly.
Before he could speak, Xue Qi came rushing over from the opposite side, wading through the flooded ground without stopping.
“The people the colonel sent have arrived. Do you want to go receive them?”
With his home flooded, Wu Heng was clearly not in a good mood. He lifted his gaze slightly, his tone unhurried.
“Me? Go receive them? Shouldn’t it be their team leader coming to see me instead?”