Chapter 108

Song Jingshuo drove the van straight back to Jixiang West Street. By the time Gao Yuxuan called Jiang Cheng, they had already returned to the complex.

Everyone divided up the fresh vegetables, fruit, and meat they had bought from Maiduo.

With fewer people around, the supplies suddenly seemed like far too much.

Apparently, in the month since the last disaster ended, sales of refrigerators and freezers had skyrocketed.

Because the Youth Apartments had such small units, few residents had bought freezers. But while Jiang Cheng was away, many people had replaced their refrigerators with larger models.

Delivery trucks arrived every day.

Song Jingshuo had gone even further and replaced his with a side-by-side refrigerator. Those were still extremely rare. They had only just entered the market, and there were no domestic models yet—only imported brands. For the moment, they were still luxury goods.

But they had an impressive capacity and could hold a great deal more.

They were perfect for the hoarding sickness people had developed after the disaster.

This time, though, everyone had brought back a truly enormous amount of supplies. Having already been through this once, they skipped many steps altogether—paying, for example, or bringing their own transportation.

It was obvious that many people’s refrigerators wouldn’t be able to hold everything.

At the Youth Apartments, plenty of people simply opened the doors of their neighbors’ units.

There were far too many vacant apartments. Jiang Cheng lived on the third floor of Building Two. Including Aunt Pan, there were now only seven people left on her floor. Every other unit was empty.

And Building Two still had the highest population in the entire complex.

Some other buildings even had several consecutive floors with no one living in them.

When the second zombie disaster broke out, people no longer seemed to feel much of anything about refusing to pay, pushing shopping carts away, entering other people’s homes without permission, or taking resources that didn’t belong to them.

They had simply pushed carts piled high with supplies out of the supermarket.

Even Su Yu, a girl with a strong sense of morality, didn’t feel that anything was wrong.

She stared at the mountain of goods piled into Li Jiangbing’s cart and exclaimed, “You got that much meat?”

“You need meat to have the strength to kill zombies,” Li Jiangbing replied.

“True.” Su Yu asked, “How do you usually cook meat? Braised pork?”

Li Jiangbing honestly admitted, “I can’t cook.”

Su Yu let out an “ah.” After thinking it over, she suggested, “Why don’t we team up for meals?”

Su Yu thought it was an excellent idea. Now that they had become quite familiar with each other, she had discovered that Li Jiangbing was a dependable man—rough around the edges, but thoughtful and meticulous. Compared with the other men she didn’t know well, Su Yu felt she could trust his character.

Cooking together would also be more efficient, and they could make one extra dish.

Li Jiangbing waved both hands and refused. “No, no, it’s fine. I’ve already arranged things with Aunt Pan. I’m joining her group and eating with them.”

Aunt Pan was cooking for the property management company employees, so all the meat he had taken wasn’t just for himself.

Su Yu praised him. “You’re really good at finding solutions. Aunt Pan’s cooking always smells amazing.”

When the security guards were on duty, they would take their food containers to be filled, then eat at their posts.

Whenever anyone passed by, the delicious aroma would make their mouths water. You could tell just by the smell that the food had to be wonderful.

Another girl called out to Su Yu from behind while pushing a cart. Su Yu said, “Go on ahead.”

She stopped to wait for the girl behind her.

Li Jiangbing continued on, pushing his cart piled high with meat.

Someone sidled up to him and said, exasperated, “Are you an idiot?”

Eating with Aunt Pan and the security guards was nothing like teaming up with a young woman like Su Yu!

How could he be so dense?

Li Jiangbing said, “What are you talking about? Aunt Pan’s cooking is amazing. It makes my mouth water.”

He hummed to himself as he pushed the cart away, ignoring them completely.

Whether he was genuinely clueless or merely pretending, no one could tell.

Jiang Cheng put the things she had taken into her home, then emptied her storage space and took out everything she had stored there from Maiduo.

The moment she did, there was no room left in the apartment.

The difference between the physical laws governing her storage space and those governing real space became immediately obvious.

In the real world, storing objects depended on their volume.

The storage space Jiang Cheng had dismissed as “not big enough” had somehow managed to hold four hundred quilts. The entire Youth Apartments had only a little over four hundred residents.

Now came the problem: she couldn’t leave all these things occupying her storage space forever, but her apartment was tiny.

There was no time to solve the problem just then, however, because Gao Yuxuan called her.

Jiang Cheng immediately called a young woman. “Lesi, go to the east gate. I’ll be there soon too. They’ve brought Little Huang back.”

The girl’s name was Zhang Lesi, and she was an intern at Renxin Hospital.

During the previous zombie disaster, when everyone had been trapped inside the complex, anyone who fell ill would go to her. She would perform a basic preliminary examination and advise them on what medicine to take.

After Renxin Hospital was reclaimed, she was temporarily put in charge of the pharmacy, and remained there until everything returned to normal.

But her supervising physician was gone.

Although businesses and government offices had resumed operations everywhere, many organizations were still in chaos. Numerous essential and nonessential employees had died, leaving countless positions vacant, and internal procedures were far from running smoothly.

Even now, no new supervising physician had been assigned to her.

As Zhang Lesi put it, she had enjoyed the easiest month of her medical career.

If she were given the chance to start over, she said, she would never choose to become a doctor again.

Anyone who encouraged someone to go into medicine would be struck by lightning.

It was simply too exhausting.

According to her, after society returned to normal and Renxin Hospital resumed regular operations, the hospital wasn’t under particularly heavy pressure despite having lost so many medical workers.

There simply weren’t that many patients.

There had been a rush in the first few days after Renxin Hospital was reclaimed, when all the people who had endured their illnesses during the disaster finally crowded in for treatment. That was when it had seemed especially busy.

But once everything truly returned to normal, the number of patients actually dropped.

“How should I put it?” she had said. “One way of explaining it is that the old, the weak, and the sick didn’t survive.”

It was true. The first zombie disaster had killed a great many people, and some hadn’t died directly because of zombies. Many of the elderly, weak, and sick had failed to survive that month and a half. They hadn’t lived long enough for the supply lines to reopen, or for the food and medicine sent by the government to reach them.

Zhang Lesi had said, “When you think about it carefully, it’s terrifying. It was almost as if humanity had been put through a process of selection and elimination.”

The van drove directly to the spot between the two gates on Jixiang West Street.

The road was technically one-way, and they had entered against traffic. But who cared now? No one was going to stop them.

Besides Zhang Lesi, a large crowd had gathered at the entrance, most of them residents of the Youth Apartments.

Many people had received the notice that Little Huang was in critical condition and might need help, so they had all come.

This was where Li Jiangbing’s practical wisdom proved particularly useful. When he heard that Little Huang was mostly unconscious, he called for someone to bring over two wheeled office chairs from the property management office.

When the van arrived and the door opened, Zhou Wang had barely stepped out before applause erupted all around him.

Deep down, people still yearned for goodness, kindness, and all the positive things in life.

Even if they had fought over vegetables and competed for meat in the supermarket, they could still applaud one another’s heroic rescue.

They pushed two office chairs together, and everyone worked together to lift Little Huang down.

The boy was completely spent.

Compared with adults, a middle schooler's frame was still smaller—especially thin and slender, with the look of someone who hadn't fully grown into himself yet.

And this child had gone alone to rescue his mother.

Someone quietly asked Gao Yuxuan, “What about his mother?”

Gao Yuxuan sighed. “Ah—”

Everyone understood.

Their hearts ached for him even more.

Both office chairs had wheels, making them difficult to control. Cui Haiyang pulled a steel pipe from the small of his back, crouched down, and pressed it against the central axles of the two chairs. The three pieces of metal connected without any welding, joining the chairs into a single unit.

They tilted back one of the chair backs, and Li Jiangbing was able to lift Little Huang onto it by himself.

When everyone saw the bloody tear tracks on Little Huang’s face, they were stunned.

Li Jiangbing had experience. One look was enough for him to know what had happened. “He overused his superpower.”

“Can his eyes bleed too?” everyone asked in astonishment. “Isn’t it only the nose?”

“The nose, eyes, and ears can all bleed. His mouth might too. My throat felt sweet when I was practicing last night. Now that I think about it, I was probably about to throw up blood.”

“Holy shit, wouldn’t that mean bleeding from all seven orifices?”

“...Seems like it.”

Jiang Cheng asked first, “Does he have any external injuries?”

Zhou Wang hurriedly said, “No, no. We checked him thoroughly.”

“This kid’s incredible. He went in there alone, with the whole stairwell crawling with zombies, and somehow didn’t suffer a single injury.”

“It’s just that his mother...” Someone sighed.

Zhao Yi asked Gao Yuxuan, “What kind of superpower does he have?”

Gao Yuxuan was curious too. “I don’t know. He was unconscious when we rescued him. Let Zhang Lesi take a look first.”

Zhang Lesi went over and tried to lift Little Huang’s eyelid, but the moment her hand touched him, she froze.

Everyone noticed that something was wrong and hurriedly asked, “What is it?”

“Is he all right?”

They all thought something had happened to Little Huang. But then Zhang Lesi raised her head, her voice trembling slightly.

“I...”

She said, “I have a superpower.”

According to the superpower experts, the sign that someone had developed a superpower was a stabbing pain in the brain. If that was true, Zhang Lesi was certain she should have a superpower too.

Since yesterday, she had touched all kinds of things. She had tried metal, wood, water, fire, and earth, but nothing had awakened her superpower.

Who would have thought that the moment her palm touched the unconscious Little Huang, the blocked, stabbing area in her brain would suddenly burst open.

Zhao Yi and Gao Yuxuan pushed their way over at the same time. “What is it? What’s your superpower?”

Zhang Lesi was about to answer when Gao Yuxuan thrust a finger toward her.

“Don’t tell me, don’t tell me—let me guess! Is it healing? Is it?”

Zhang Lesi was thrilled. “That’s right! You’re amazing!”

She continued, “There’s nothing seriously wrong with this child. He’s just exhausted. He’s still extremely weak, and he has acid reflux. I’m guessing he hasn’t eaten for a long time.”

In short, he was exhausted and starving—he had collapsed from weakness.

The moment her palm touched Little Huang’s face, she knew the condition of his body.

Gao Yuxuan and Zhao Yi excitedly pumped their fists in the air, then slapped each other’s palms in celebration.

The resulting clap was incredibly loud.

Li Jiangbing understood at once. He planted his hands on his hips and said, “You two figure it out? Once you do, come back and explain it to me! I need to know!”

Li Jiangbing desperately needed to understand how to make his own seemingly useless superpower work.

Everyone else’s superpowers were so useful. It was driving him crazy.