Chapter 109

Zhang Lesi suddenly became the center of attention.

Actually, she had always been something of a focal point. While everyone was trapped and resources were scarce, they had already realized how important having a doctor was. Almost everyone treated her with courtesy, even those who barely knew her.

But now, she was even more important.

“Can you use your superpower to treat him?” Jiang Cheng asked.

“He doesn’t need treatment,” Zhang Lesi said. “He isn’t sick or injured—he’s just exhausted and starving. He needs rest and food. We have to replenish his energy as soon as possible. He needs to eat. Who lives nearby? Get him some sugar-salt water first! Anyone from Building Three?”

Building Three was the closest to the east gate. Someone immediately ran home to prepare the sugar-salt water.

The weather was still a little hot, so everyone moved Little Huang beneath the shade of a tree and fed him two sips of plain water first.

Little Huang opened his eyes, looking somewhat dazed.

Surrounded by a circle of adults, he tried to sit up, but they stopped him.

“Lie down, lie down. Don’t move.”

Little Huang’s mind gradually cleared. He remembered everything that had happened, but said nothing. Half reclining, he stared at the branches overhead.

The leaves swayed constantly in the breeze. Sunlight broke into fragments and flashed over and over. Every so often, blue sky and white clouds appeared between the branches.

It all looked so beautiful. Under such beautiful sunlight, why had the world become a living hell?

What had turned the world into what it was now?

Where had the zombie virus come from?

Although his eyes were vacant, Zhang Lesi said that there was nothing seriously wrong with his physical condition.

Jiang Cheng was more concerned about the situation at the development zone government offices.

Zhou Wang and Brother Dong said, “Anyway, we didn’t see any living people from the first floor to the third. We don’t know about the fourth floor and above. It didn’t look like anyone was alive in there.”

Zhao Yi and Gao Yuxuan asked Zhang Lesi, “Can you treat people? Illnesses or injuries?”

Zhang Lesi looked at her palms. “I don’t know. I’ve never tried before. But I can feel something inside my body. Should I call it ‘qi’ or ‘energy’?”

The two experts hurried to settle the matter.

“Energy! Energy!”

They firmly believed in science.

“Energy” sounded scientific.

“Qi” sounded a little too much like qigong healing and snake-oil salesmen. It lacked sophistication.

Zhang Lesi could sense the energy inside her body, and she could tell that it had a certain affinity with the human body. It should be capable of affecting the body in some way. However, they had yet to conduct any experiments to prove that this was the case, so she couldn’t give a definite answer.

She was a medical student, after all, and she believed in science.

Zhao Yi and Gao Yuxuan exchanged a look, then tacitly extended their fists. Without a word, they shook them three times before stopping together.

Zhao Yi had thrown scissors. Gao Yuxuan had thrown rock.

Gao Yuxuan won.

Accepting his fate, Zhao Yi went to find Cui Haiyang.

“Do you have a knife? A small one.”

Cui Haiyang had been practicing his ability nonstop since yesterday. After bending the steel pipe yesterday, he had found it quite difficult to straighten it again, and had ended up drenched in sweat.

Today, he could already reshape these metals with ease. In his hands, they were as pliable as modeling clay.

The steel pipe he had was being used to secure the two wheeled office chairs, so he looked around.

Everyone was standing outside the east gate of the Youth Apartments, on Jixiang West Street.

The elderly residents from Jixiang Gardens had also heard about what happened and kept coming over to see Little Huang.

Cui Haiyang swept his gaze around and spotted a metal plate on a concrete utility pole—the kind engraved with the pole’s identification number. He went over and placed his hand on it. The plate transformed into a small knife.

The blade was very thin and looked quite sharp.

Zhao Yi did not take it. He stared at it. “You’re not going to give me tetanus, are you?”

The plate had looked a little rusty around the edges.

“You’re awfully fussy.” Cui Haiyang snorted. As he laughed, he focused for a moment while holding the knife.

Zhao Yi felt as though his vision blurred for an instant, but the little blade didn’t seem to have changed at all.

“What did you do?” he asked suspiciously.

Cui Haiyang must have done something. As fellow superpowered individuals, they could vaguely sense one another’s abilities at such close range.

Cui Haiyang looked pleased with himself. “I refined and purified it.”

Zhao Yi understood immediately. “Holy crap?”

Cui Haiyang raised the blade. “Look. It’s perfectly clean now. You can use it without worrying. You absolutely won’t get tetanus.”

Tetanus bacteria are anaerobic. The porous surface of rust can create an environment suitable for them to survive, which is why wounds caused by rusty metal are prone to tetanus infection.

After Cui Haiyang had refined and purified it, the blade was now made of clean, pure iron.

Zhao Yi took the blade and promptly cut his own arm with it. His skin split, and bright red blood immediately came pouring out.

“Quick!” Gao Yuxuan urged Zhang Lesi.

Zhang Lesi was both excited and nervous. Medical students didn’t get nervous at the sight of wounds or blood. She was nervous because the moment had come to verify her superpower.

Even Zhou Wang and Jiang Cheng stopped to watch.

Zhang Lesi brought her fingertip close to Zhao Yi’s wound. She began channeling her power when her finger was close enough to brush the fine hairs on his arm.

The sunlight was so bright that it was almost impossible to see unless one narrowed their eyes. In fact, a faint white glow was emanating from her fingertip.

When she moved her hand away, the wound had become nothing more than a pale pink scar, as though it had healed perfectly. There was no raised scar tissue, either.

A chorus of “Holy crap!” rang out from the crowd.

Zhao Yi examined the fresh scar on his arm and pressed on with his question. “That’s healing an injury. What about treating an illness?”

Zhang Lesi put her hands on her hips. “How are we supposed to test that?”

Several elderly people in the crowd from Jixiang Gardens immediately stepped forward, all clamoring for attention.

“Miss, miss! I’m sick! I’m sick!”

Just like that, it became a free medical clinic.

Zhang Lesi examined them one by one.

One had high blood pressure.

Another complained of leg pain, which turned out to be varicose veins.

A third had lower back pain and suspected a slipped disc, but it was actually a misaligned facet joint. Technically, that could not even be considered an illness. It was simply the result of aging and physical deterioration.

Zhang Lesi could diagnose all of them by touch alone. When it came to diagnosis, she was already a miracle doctor.

But after trying, she found that she couldn’t treat them.

Her superpower’s energy could only heal physical injuries.

“That makes sense.” Zhao Yi pushed up his glasses. For some reason, his eyes had been bothering him all day.

He offered his theory. “Although we don’t yet know where these abilities originated, as far as their application is concerned, all superpowers are external forces acting upon the world and the human body. Physical injuries are also caused by external forces acting upon the body. That’s why a superpower can heal an injury—the two forces can counterbalance each other.”

“But conditions like these are natural changes and the effects of aging. They’re an inevitable part of life’s journey toward its end.”

“If everything could be cured with superpowers, wouldn’t that mean people could avoid illness and aging and live forever?”

“In that case, life itself would become unbalanced.”

Those with higher education could easily understand and appreciate what he meant by balance and imbalance.

But the atmosphere at the scene became distinctly strange.

Song Jingshuo had no choice but turn his face away.

Zhao Yi looked confused.

The elderly people were so angry that their eyes nearly rolled back in their heads.

The young man wasn’t even bad-looking, so how could he be so tactless?

Why did he have to talk about growing old and dying? How unlucky!

Zhao Yi was horrified.

No, no, no! That wasn’t what I meant!

The person from Building Three who had run home for water finally returned.

They unscrewed a bottle of mineral water, added sugar and salt, and mixed it into a sugar-and-salt solution. They even thoughtfully gave him a packet of bread.

Little Huang drank the solution, then wolfed down the entire packet of bread. It was obvious he had been starving.

After eating and drinking, Little Huang rested for a while, and the color gradually returned to his face.

When everyone questioned him, they learned that he hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday afternoon.

People bombarded him with questions about the situation in the city and at the school. They were amazed to hear that so many children had survived at the school, that some of them had awakened superpowers, and that they had even retaken the campus without any adults leading them.

Several elderly women began to cry. “Their parents would be heartbroken if they knew.”

But that was assuming their parents were still alive.

“They said they were going to rescue the senior high school students. I had to come back to look for my mom, so I didn’t go with them.” As Little Huang spoke, his eyes dimmed.

There were three great tragedies in life: losing one’s father in youth, one’s husband in middle age, and one’s child in old age.

Everyone felt a pang of sympathy.

“My parents died in a car accident when I was in college,” Jiang Cheng said gently. “At the time, I felt as though the world had ended and my own life was over.”

“But it wasn’t. Look at me—I’m living just fine here.”

“Actually, every one of us will eventually become someone without parents.”

“All you can do is live your own life well from here on.”

“That’s what Mom and Dad would want to see.”

Little Huang knew Jiang Cheng very well. Of course, Jiang Cheng knew Little Huang too, but his familiarity with her was decidedly one-sided.

Among the survivors, the two people Little Huang admired most were Zhou Wang and Jiang Cheng.

Huang’s mother admired Jiang Cheng as well. She had always encouraged Little Huang to grow into someone like her.

“She looks like the kind of person nothing can bring down,” his mother had said. “And she doesn’t look like someone who would let others bully her.”

“Look at the two people beside her. One is so strong, and the other is so tall, yet they both listen to her.”

“People who can command a voice for themselves are never the ones who get bullied, no matter the circumstances.”

Little Huang had asked, “What about Uncle Zhou?”

His mother had replied, “Old Zhou is pretty good too. But he’s like me. People like us are adaptable, but we can’t compare with your father when it comes to taking the lead. Old Zhou was forced into it—like a duck herded onto a chopping block.”

“Jiang Cheng is better. She’s young and sharp-edged, unlike us middle-aged people, whose edges have already been worn down. That’s why Mom hopes you’ll learn from her.”

Little Huang looked into Jiang Cheng’s eyes and nodded. “Okay.”

Zhou Wang sighed as well. “That’s how it is. That’s how it is for everyone. The only difference is when it happens. You’re still young now. When you grow up, you’ll marry a woman, have a child, and build a family of your own.”

His words resonated with many of the people there.

After all, among the survivors in the youth apartment complex, many had already been unable to contact their families since yesterday.

They had simply already lived through one zombie disaster and witnessed too many deaths to openly display their grief so easily anymore. Many of them were even moved by Jiang Cheng, assuming that someone with her personality must have been tempered by life after losing her parents at an early age.

Of course, no one knew that Jiang Cheng was merely borrowing “Jiang Cheng’s” life story to comfort Little Huang.

Jiang Cheng was more concerned about something else. She asked, “What is your superpower?”