Chapter 11

Jiang Cheng had been pressing against the door, peering through the peephole ever since she heard the commotion in the hallway. When she heard Li Jiangbing's voice, she pulled the door open. "She's not one of them."

Everyone turned to look at her.

The girl leaned against the doorframe, bare-faced, no makeup. She looked a little haggard, probably from lack of sleep.

When a person looks haggard, they tend to come across as cold. Like when you've worked overtime too long and you're too exhausted to talk to anyone on your way home.

"She's someone I rescued in the garden last night," Jiang Cheng said. "At that hour, we couldn't find any police or ambulance. To take her home—she lives in Building 6—we'd have had to cross the garden. We didn't dare. So I took her in at my place. She was bitten. She mutated later in the night."

Li Jiangbing understood. "She's the one you wrote about in your post!"

The neighbors had an "aha" moment. "You're the owner who posted that stickied thread!"

Everyone had seen Jiang Cheng's two posts, but on the owners' forum everyone used screen names, so nobody knew which unit the poster was from. But hearing the exchange between Li Jiangbing and Jiang Cheng, they now knew.

So she was the first person in the complex to encounter a mutant, warn everyone, and post about it!

They looked at Jiang Cheng again and noticed that although she leaned against the doorframe with a tired, casual air, there was a baseball bat in the hand hanging at her side.

Her eyes were dark, clear, and bright. No panic, no frantic energy. Completely calm.

Last night, everyone had seen through their windows that some of the people who woke up in the garden were killed on the spot the moment they ran into the mutants. And she—being the first one to wake up and run into a mutant—had survived without a scratch.

Jiang Cheng said, "Take a look at her. Doesn't she seem different from the other two?"

Jiang Cheng also wanted someone else to confirm whether her own observation was off.

The neighbors had been looking for a while and all nodded. "Yeah!"

"Just like you described in your post."

"So she's really stronger?"

Jiang Cheng nodded. "A lot stronger. I almost died."

She briefly explained again the difference between an Original Mutant and an Infected Mutant.

Among the neighbors on the same floor, only she and Li Jiangbing had come into direct contact with the Original Mutant, and only she had come into contact with the Infected Mutant. Even Li Jiangbing listened intently.

"I think..." Jiang Cheng said, "it feels like evolution."

Everyone exchanged glances.

A younger male neighbor said, "Sounds like the virus is iterating."

Jiang Cheng sighed. "Yeah. That's exactly the feeling."

Li Jiangbing said in admiration, "You're pretty damn tough."

Without Mo Li, she'd probably be dead. Jiang Cheng gave a slight shake of her head and said to Li Jiangbing, "Since everyone's here now, let's get the bodies cleaned up. Can't just leave them lying in the hallway forever."

Li Jiangbing asked, "How do we handle it?"

Jiang Cheng said, "The ones from 0315 and 0317 go back to their own apartments. As for mine, can you take it into 0308?"

Last night, Jiang Cheng had essentially saved Li Jiangbing's life, so it came naturally for her to delegate tasks to him, and he also naturally agreed. "Okay."

And then it also came naturally to Li Jiangbing to delegate tasks to others. "You two, take the one from 0315 back. You two, take the one from 0317 back. Does anyone know which unit each one belongs to? Doesn't matter. If you get it wrong, you get it wrong. The police can sort it out later. Go, go, go, move it! Be men about it! You wouldn't make the girls do this, would you?"

Li Jiangbing held a tactical baton in each hand, tall, burly, loud-voiced. Last night, several neighbors had watched through their peepholes as he killed Li Ziqing. When he barked orders, no one dared to argue. The male neighbors he pointed at all moved, dragging the bodies by the ankles into the units.

People have a natural curiosity. Everyone followed to watch.

Li Jiangbing dragged Shen Wei into 0308, which was next to Jiang Cheng's place.

"Little White got it bad, huh." He dumped the body in 0308, then came out and said with a sigh.

The dog was pitiful, too—bitten to death by its own owner, its throat practically chewed through.

But Jiang Cheng's gaze swept across his hands—

Li Jiangbing had his baton tucked under his armpit, both hands free, clutching a few packs of instant noodles and a bag of chips.

"I don't have much food at home," he quickly explained. "I usually eat meal-prep for fat loss at the gym. I'm afraid if I keep food in the house, I won't be able to control myself. I never stock up. All I have at home is protein powder."

So seeing food at Little White's place, he'd grabbed some on a whim.

Jiang Cheng didn't call him out for "borrowing" without asking. She just said, "That won't keep you full. You should see if he has rice or flour."

Li Jiangbing said, "I don't know how to cook. I only know how to boil chicken breast. I figured I'd survive on instant noodles for the next couple of days."

"And then?" Jiang Cheng asked.

Li Jiangbing said, "When things get back to normal in a few days..."

Jiang Cheng's eyes were clear and bright, reflecting his burly figure.

Li Jiangbing couldn't finish his sentence. A thin sweat broke out on his forehead.

"It'll be fine, right?" he asked in a lower voice. "The police will take over soon, right? The government has to do something, right? They can't just leave us hanging?"

"How would I know?" Jiang Cheng's voice was also quiet.

It sounded like the common type of gentle, polite, soft-spoken young woman. In fact, that had always been Li Jiangbing's impression of her. He'd even once thought about trying to hit on her.

But last night, Jiang Cheng had completely shattered that impression.

"Still, if you don't have food reserves, I'd suggest you take whatever you can from 0308," she said.

Li Jiangbing didn't dare to think too deeply about it. Cold sweat on his forehead: "Right. I'll go find a bag—no wait, I'll look for one in his place."

He turned and dove back into 0308.

Jiang Cheng glanced down the hallway. The neighbors dragging the bodies had also taken things from 0315 and 0317. Unsurprisingly, all of it was food.

Someone protested: "How can you just take other people's stuff?!";

Someone defended themselves: "I don't have any food at home."

Jiang Cheng didn't listen any further. She stepped back into her own apartment and closed the door.

Faint arguments drifted in from outside—about whether it was right to take things from other people's homes. The debate only ended when everyone saw Li Jiangbing taking things too.

Li Jiangbing said, "If I don't take it, I'll starve, won't I? Fine—if the family comes to collect the body later, I'll pay them back in full."

Obviously, everyone was a bit intimidated by Li Jiangbing now. When he said that, the other men who had taken items from the dead chimed in loudly: "That's right, that's right!"

The rest of them stayed quiet.

For now, they could still call it "taking." But what about later? Jiang Cheng thought behind the door.

Mo Li was on the bed. He'd open his eyes whenever he heard a sound, look at Jiang Cheng, then close them again. Which meant he wasn't unconscious or in a coma. He was just weak.

Jiang Cheng went over and stroked the black cat's head.

He kept his eyes closed, motionless.

Jiang Cheng refreshed the owners' forum.

Everyone was awake now. Some people, like her, had experienced a terrifying night. Others, while safely hiding in their own homes, had watched the horror unfold down in the garden from their windows.

But even under these circumstances, on Sunday morning, more and more posts in the forum were asking: "Is work tomorrow still on or not?"

This question struck a chord with many people, and forums across the board were abuzz with people asking and discussing what to do about Monday.

The residents of the youth apartment complex were mostly young men. As everyone knows, when three single men get together, they automatically spawn one idea guy.

Soon, Jiang Cheng saw someone post on the youth apartment owners' forum: 【Screw it, let's go out and take a look.】

More than one person echoed: 【Yeah, let's go check it out. We can't just suffocate in our rooms either.】

【Anyone got weapons?】

【I've got a hammer. Not insulting anyone—I literally have a hammer, and I've also got a wrench.】

【I've got a length of steel rod.】

【How the hell do you have that at home?】

【Passed by a construction site next door, saw this perfectly straight piece, had an itch to pick it up.】

The group was passionately brainstorming in the forum.

Half an hour later, Jiang Cheng stood by the floor-to-ceiling window and looked out. From the various buildings, several male residents emerged—they had agreed on a time to head out together.

Each of them carried a weapon—hammers, wrenches, a length of steel rod, dumbbells, nunchucks, mops, kitchen knives, and all sorts of other things.

A few had even put on motorcycle helmets.

Almost every building responded to the call with at least four or five people coming out, and one building even sent out eleven men.

After the first wave of skirmishes in the garden during the mass awakening last night, the ones who were doomed had already died, and the survivors had fled back into their buildings. There were no more living people in the garden. The mutants drifted like boats that had lost their power in the water, wandering slowly and aimlessly.

Dozens of young men, pumped up with adrenaline, took the initiative to strike out, and the garden immediately became a frenzy of chaos.

Jiang Cheng watched from upstairs as the male residents encountered the mutants. For this group, who were armed and had done their homework on mutant characteristics, the hardest hurdle was actually swinging their weapons at the mutants.

In the end, they still had human forms. Deep down, many people still thought of them as "people."

Everyone was law-abiding citizens, good-hearted regular folks. Suddenly having to strike hard, to strike to kill, at a "person"—it wasn't nearly as easy as they had imagined.

Several people charged out with bravado, only to find when they came face-to-face with a mutant that they simply couldn't bring themselves to do it. They just couldn't get past that mental barrier.

Just within Jiang Cheng's line of sight, he could already see three or four people turning around and running back into their buildings.

Fortunately, among this group were a few who had already clashed with mutants last night, whose hands were already stained with blood.

These people who had experienced life-and-death situations didn't hesitate at all. They swung hard at the heads.

When someone took the lead, others followed, and adding a hammer or wrench hit to a mutant's head didn't feel like such a huge psychological hurdle anymore.

As soon as they personally killed their first mutant, the initial mental barrier was passed.

Jiang Cheng watched their movements go from hesitant and timid to aggressive and bold.

After killing their first mutant, they seemed to be suddenly endowed with courage. They shouted and charged at the next mutant.

But everyone had seriously underestimated the number of mutants in the garden.

Yesterday was Saturday, and at that time on a summer evening, far too many people had been out in the garden—some just returning home, some heading out.

Last night, people upstairs had only seen what they could see. Many who woke up later had only heard some distant noises, and the first wave of battle was already over. The ones that happened behind trees, in unlit shadows, couldn't be seen at all.

But now, under the clear bright sky, with the blazing sun, everything was perfectly visible.

As the excited young men shouted and yelled, mutant after mutant was drawn out from the greenery, emerging into everyone's view.

One after another.

Another.

Another.

The beautiful plan of "picking them off one by one" fell apart because the number of mutants far exceeded expectations.

The young men, who had just been pumped up, began to feel the strain. Just as they took down one, another would roar and lunge at them.

At that moment, many residents watching from their own floor-to-ceiling windows saw several figures among the mutants down there that stood out—fast, steady, moving in straight lines toward the young men.

Instinctively, many residents slapped their own window glass and shouted in alarm: "Watch out——!"