Chapter 217.1: Club
The name of the base was decided just like that.
The people who had been assigned tasks gradually left, while all of their own dozen or so members stayed behind.
The atmosphere immediately became much more relaxed.
“Doctor Chen still stinks. We should lock Doctor Chen up.”
“Doctor Chen, you’ve really disappointed me.”
“Shut up. A doctor can’t heal himself.”
A few of them chattered on for a while before Xie Chongyi finally cleared his throat and said, “There’s something I’d like to ask everyone.”
Too polite.
Too strange.
Everyone in the meeting room—except Wu Heng—suddenly felt like running away.
Sunlight slanted in from the side of the young man. He slightly narrowed his eyes, gray shadows falling beneath his lashes, making it impossible to tell what he was thinking at that moment.
“Wu Dian brought news from the mainland. There are currently only seven bases left there, and the total population is under five hundred thousand. Before all the bases fall, he hopes we can take in these survivors. They are willing to offer everything they have in exchange,” Xie Chongyi said slowly. “I agree with him, but I won’t make a unilateral decision. I’ll listen to your opinions. If you don’t agree, I’ll go talk to him.”
Lin Mengzhi had always been the quickest to react. He picked at his fingers. “That seems like a lot of people.”
Dou Lu kicked him from under the table, gritting her teeth. “Compared to what we had before and what we have now, is that really a lot?”
After saying that, she looked at Xie Chongyi. “I agree.”
“Me too,” Xue Qi said. “Suyou City is big enough to accommodate tens of thousands of people easily, and with more people, there are more workers. Actually, we’re still very short-handed. Didn’t Captain Wen say he alone needs to transfer a thousand people just for the base security system?”
“When did he say that?”
“Just now. You were asleep.”
The people closest to Wu Heng and Wu Heng himself had no objections, and neither did Xue Zhiqiu and the others. In the end, when they asked Wu Heng, he shook his head.
“I have no objections.”
His reasoning was very simple: first, this was something the class monitor wanted to do, so he would support it; second, the base was currently in a state of rebuilding and desperately needed population; third, after last night, he had realized that those who refused to obey inside the base could be used to feed the system anyway—and a few thousand people was still too small a number to matter.
“However,” Wu Heng considered, “I’m not comfortable with them coming and going freely. If we’re going to bring them into the base, I hope you personally go to the other bases beforehand to ensure everything is in order, with no omissions or abnormalities, and only then bring them back.”
Xie Chongyi and Wu Heng exchanged a glance and immediately reached an agreement.
“So I’ve specially established a club for you that allows you to bypass everyone except me and Wu Heng when executing decisions. This doesn’t conflict with your other positions in the base. The club itself is not a classified organization, and for all non-sensitive matters, you can participate directly.”
“I already named it last night,” Xie Chongyi said with a faint smile as he looked at Lin Mengzhi. “Lin Mengzhi and Dou Lu, you are the vice presidents.”
“Who’s the president?”
“Wu Heng.”
Lin Mengzhi stood up in disbelief. “Wow, you figured out a way for us to do more work last night, huh!”
Xie Chongyi smiled like a fox.
On the table was a stack of pre-prepared papers. Xie Chongyi took one and leisurely wrote the words “Kuhuang” on it, then had Xue Shen pass it to Lin Mengzhi.
The paper lingered in Xue Shen’s hand for a few seconds before Lin Mengzhi impatiently snatched it away.
He looked at it. “Kuhuang? Are they about to fall too?”
“Kuhuang Base currently has 53,000 people. Send someone to receive them.”
Lin Mengzhi’s expression kept changing. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to go, nor that he was afraid to go—it was just that he was used to Wu Heng giving orders and him simply carrying them out. Suddenly being asked to arrange things for others left him completely at a loss.
“Uh, I—uh…” Under everyone’s gaze at the table, Lin Mengzhi’s face turned bright red. “Well, lead by example,” he forced out an idiom. “I’ll go on this trip with Wu Zhi.”
The meeting room fell silent.
The light on the table seemed almost multicolored, and Lin Mengzhi felt dizzy from all the attention. He jumped up and blurted, “Watch me set a good example for you all! Just follow my lead!”
“Wu Zhi, let’s go!”
He stood up, kicked his chair aside, and quickly walked out.
Wu Zhi also hurriedly got up. She looked toward Wu Heng. “Brother… then wait for me to come back.”
Wu Heng nodded. Only then did Wu Zhi turn and run after Lin Mengzhi.
“Xiao Zhi is still so clingy. Hasn’t changed at all,” Ruan Silian said with a smile.
“Like this is fine,” Dou Lu replied while twirling her pen. Her gaze accidentally drifted to Ruan Silian’s stomach. “Your belly has gotten so much bigger.”
She then asked Doctor Chen, “Doctor Chen, do snakes also have a ten-month pregnancy?”
“Let me see.” Doctor Chen stood up and walked over to Ruan Silian, taking her wrist. After a moment he said, “It’s almost time. I estimate the child will be born in one or two months.”
“What child…” Dou Lu muttered, staring at Ruan Silian’s swollen abdomen for a long while. Unable to resist her curiosity, she placed her hand on it. The moment she made contact, she instantly jerked her hand back.
The people nearby who had been watching quietly all changed their expressions.
“It hit me! I felt it!” Dou Lu exclaimed, her palm faintly burning. She paced around the meeting room. “It actually dared to bump me—when it comes out, I’m going to strangle it.”
A few laughs drifted into Dou Lu’s ears, but she paid them no attention.
Before this, Dou Lu had treated the thing in Ruan Silian’s belly as a little monster, a blood-sucking parasite. She didn’t even want to touch it. Sometimes, she even found herself vaguely disliking Ruan Silian—who had become increasingly gentle and calm because of it. Of course, she could never truly hate Ruan Silian. She just resented why something like that had to appear in her best friend’s body. To her, it was even more terrifying than cancer cells.
But today, she realized something.
It wasn’t some alien creature. It was actually the same kind of thing as what pregnant women had always carried inside them before. It moved around. It was alive. It was a life that would one day be born.
She even thought back to what happened in the snow mountains, how it had once supported Ruan Silian and helped her climb upward. And suddenly, she wondered if she shouldn’t hate it so much after all. Maybe in the future, it could even be like Old Fork—a pet.
While she was lost in thought, the others continued talking. At the beginning of any situation like this, there were always many matters to discuss.
Wu Heng rarely spoke. Sitting in this position, there were always people around him willing to exhaust every ounce of effort thinking for him. All he had to do was choose the best option among their proposals.
X crouched on his lap. Its back feathers had been smoothed out by his fingers until they were sleek. It tilted its head, peering just over the edge of the table, listening even more attentively than Wu Heng. Occasionally it would blurt out a “no,” but no one ever took its objections seriously.
“I went out these past couple of days and found a few places suitable for growing crops, but I’m not sure whether the soil there can support the seeds we brought from outside,” Ao She, who was responsible for agriculture, reported. And he really did take responsibility—before official assignments were even finalized, he had already cleared his fields the day before, just waiting to plant. “We can only try first.”
“I’ll go with you,” Shen Ping’an, who managed logistics for the entire base, said.
Wu Heng took out all the seeds he had previously collected from his space. He had swept them up in bulk when raiding stores before—everything from more than a dozen kinds of peppers, eggplants, cucumbers, long beans, soybeans, cabbage, to sweet potatoes, potatoes, corn, yams, and pumpkins. They almost covered every type imaginable.
Ao She was practically buried in them. He still managed to raise one hand, steady as ever. “Let’s start with these.”
And even then, this was only a very small portion.
“If our seeds can be successfully grown in Suyou, then can wood-type ability users directly accelerate their growth? If we plant them today, wouldn’t we be able to harvest them tomorrow? The base has thousands of people now. The food they’ve stockpiled themselves definitely won’t last long,” Xue Qi said.
“I’ll go with you too,” Zhou Yi added.
At that moment, Wu Heng moved. He looked at Zhou Yi, his pale green eyes coated with a faint golden sheen.
“Zhou Yi, you should go follow Wen Yuan instead.”
Zhou Yi froze in his seat. “Are you trying to send me away?”
Wu Heng shook his head very lightly. “There’s still a place for you in Dawn Club. It’s just that he understands you better—and knows more clearly what you’re suited to do.”
After Zhou Yi left, the meeting room fell silent again.
“Then…” Ruan Silian hesitated before speaking. “What about Yang Ao and Yang Yu?”
The two of them were capable of very little. The kind of work inside the base wasn’t something that could be handled just by physical strength. What an ordinary person might take a full day to accomplish, an ability user could finish in a second. During this period, they had been accompanying Ruan Silian to collect information, and after that was done, they helped clean everyone’s houses and did whatever tasks they could, trying to stay useful and keep a low profile.
But that had been during the chaotic period. Now most people had returned to assigned roles, and the two of them were like extra screws left over with no place to go.
“As long as they can support themselves, that’s enough,” Wu Heng said. In his view, those who had little use could live in whatever way suited them.
“Understood.”
Wu Heng even had several boxes of milk powder sent to Yang Yu afterward.
That night, news arrived: today would be designated as the naming day of Suyou City—their new beginning.
Gregorian calendar: January 16, 2039
Lunar calendar: December 22, 2038
—
A week passed quickly.
Since the day Suyou City was officially named, the weather had been dropping sharply. Fortunately, thanks to the joint efforts of both ability users and ordinary people, production within the city had managed to barely keep up—winter clothing and food supplies were just enough to get through the season.
In the following half month, Yang Xiaoyun first had the team’s ability users restart the water, electricity, and communication systems. Then, after consulting engineering experts, he led people to connect the main road between the entrance to Suyou and the city itself, as well as the roads linking the nearly 100,000 mu of farmland—divided into more than ten sites by Ao She—to the city.
In this way, transportation of grain and movement of non-ability users to assist were greatly eased.
The workload on his side in the early stage was no less heavy than Ao She’s. Ao She and Shen Ping’an led a group of people and almost ended up living in the fields outside. Wood-type ability users could no longer instantly accelerate crop growth within a day or two; the fastest still required at least a week. During that time, the farms could not be left unattended. The local organisms of Suyou behaved like they had suddenly encountered divine nourishment, swarming in groups to steal and loot.
Harvested radishes—red and white—potatoes, taro, cabbages, spinach, wheat, and rice were transported into the city at different times, cart after cart. It was the freshest produce anyone had seen since the apocalypse began.
Everyone could exchange labor points stored on their identity magnetic cards for the newly collected vegetables and staple foods. Labor points were calculated in fractions, and even ordinary humans could earn them through their own work.
That night, the city celebrated until midnight. Brilliant flames lit up half the sky.
Wu Heng sat in the living room, watching a Harry Potter disc until late into the night.
Not only had life for the survivors inside the base undergone earth-shaking changes—Wu Heng’s own life had changed as well. He no longer needed to go out. Every morning, food, daily necessities, books, paintings, and even video discs that looked like they had been copied hundreds of times over would appear at his door. They were barely watchable, but still usable. Wu Heng watched them day and night.
Occasionally, he would even be dragged into the meeting room by Xie Chongyi, where he sat as a kind of “lucky mascot,” listening to them talk endlessly with flying spittle.
Not to put too fine a point on medical or educational reconstruction, just the rewriting of French legal statutes alone had kept Wu Heng sitting in the conference room listening to arguments for an entire week.
“When people are full, they start doing bad things.” Ying Liuquan, that timid and honest man, surprisingly advocated that anyone who made a mistake should be executed outright.
Wu Heng’s occasional spacing out didn’t matter—Xie Chongyi would help him keep track of what was being said.
After the meeting ended, dusk had already fallen.
Xie Chongyi looked at Wu Heng, who was once again absentmindedly eating something. He no longer ate those rough, poorly made jerky strips; instead, he now ate meat pies, dried fruit, and meat slices enthusiastically gifted by various households.
Knock knock.
Just as Xie Chongyi was about to remind Wu Heng that they could leave, someone knocked on the door.
It was Lisa.
She pushed the door open, hesitated for a moment, and then voiced the thoughts of the residents’ district.
“They want to change the president of the association.”
“Come in,” Xie Chongyi said, patting the table and resting his chin on his hand. “Why?”
Lisa walked in softly and pulled out a chair to sit down.
“Chairwoman Jiang is a soldier—and also an ability user. She can no longer think from the perspective of ordinary humans. She doesn’t understand what they truly need.”
Seeing that neither of them responded, Lisa grew tense.
“I know everyone has been very tired during this period, and everyone has contributed a lot to the base’s development. But systems need to be constantly improved, don’t they?”
“Ability users can just lift a finger and earn hundreds of labor points in a day, enough to exchange for hundreds of pounds of grain. But those hundreds of pounds of grain were also grown and cultivated with the participation of non-ability users… An ability user can exchange in a single day what took them a month to produce…”
Lisa stood alone facing the two of them. They both had faces that were far from fierce—rather refined, almost gentle—but their absolute power gave them an overwhelming sense of presence, so much so that it was difficult to even fully raise one’s head in front of them. She forced herself to continue.
“They don’t think it’s unfair. They aren’t trying to demand special treatment. They’re afraid. Afraid of being excluded, discriminated against, pushed to the margins. They cannot accept an ability user speaking on their behalf. It’s like… like a man speaking for a group of women. If nothing changes, they’ll soon begin to protest.”
Wu Heng slowly finished what he was holding.
“Replace it with Ruan Silian?”
Lisa looked troubled. “Miss Ruan is very good, and I did suggest her. But they said Miss Ruan is the ‘Snake Mother,’ so…”
Wu Heng lifted his eyes.
“I said, replace it with Ruan Silian.”
His gaze, green like silk satin, carried no emotion at all. Lisa immediately fell silent, unable to say anything further.
After Lisa left, Xie Chongyi finally spoke.
“Even though I don’t want to interfere with your decision, I wouldn’t recommend replacing the chair with Ruan Silian right now.”
“They don’t want privilege. They want stability and a sense of belonging. Our so-called ‘natural assumption’ is actually a form of neglect toward them.”
Xie Chongyi reached out and lightly stroked Wu Heng’s cheek.
“Among the people who send you food, there are also those ordinary residents. Food means far more to them than it does to ability users—far, far more.”
Wu Heng lowered his eyes, thinking for a moment. Then he suddenly looked up again.
“Class Monitor, are you going to die soon?”
Xie Chongyi’s hand shifted from stroking to pinching.
