Chapter 119

After finishing the armor, they moved on to making crescent shovels.

The advantage of an assembly line was that everyone’s proficiency in their assigned task steadily improved.

The superpowered individuals realized that using their abilities to work wasn’t merely a way of contributing labor for everyone’s sake. At the same time, it also trained and strengthened their powers.

Young Wang even started a knife-sharpening service for everyone.

Those who used edged weapons brought them to him. Most people’s weapons weren’t very large; many of them were simply kitchen knives.

He became faster and faster at sharpening them. In the end, all it took was a pinch of two fingers—whoosh—and an extra line of icy brightness appeared along the blade, gleaming sharply.

Jiang Cheng ate by herself at home. Lately, she had been finding cooking more and more of a hassle.

She planned to leave the dishes in the sink and wash them when she got back that afternoon.

She stood up from the dining table. The dishes on the table vanished, followed immediately by the table and chairs, then the sideboard.

She walked over to the sink, and the used dishes appeared there.

When she returned to the dining area, the vanished table, chairs, and sideboard reappeared.

She passed by the sofa and coffee table. The sofa and coffee table disappeared for an instant, then reappeared. The same happened with the bed and computer desk.

Jiang Cheng wandered casually around her home. Wherever she went, the furniture and belongings vanished for a second before reappearing.

If someone had been there, they would have thought their eyes were playing tricks on them, as though everything in the room were constantly flickering.

In reality, Jiang Cheng was practicing her superpower every moment.

With repeated practice, not only did she grow faster at storing and releasing things, but she no longer needed to touch an object directly with her hands.

This meant that there could be a distance between her and whatever she wanted to store.

The significance of this was enormous.

Although the distance was tiny for now, Jiang Cheng believed that as her superpower grew stronger, it would eventually reach a range that was both convenient and safe for her.

Jiang Cheng walked over to the bed, and it vanished.

The floor beneath it wasn’t dirty, because after storing the bed in her storage space for the first time, Jiang Cheng had mopped the floor.

From that perspective, having a space-type superpower made mopping incredibly convenient.

But that was beside the point. Jiang Cheng walked through the spot where the bed had been and came to the recliner. The bed reappeared behind her.

Jiang Cheng stored the recliner, then released it again. When she looked up, she saw a little bird perched on a branch outside.

Jiang Cheng narrowed her eyes.

[Mo Li.] She called him through telepathy. [Mo Li.]

In the blink of an eye, Mo Li appeared at the window.

Through telepathy, Jiang Cheng told him, [Bird. I want it alive.]

Mo Li turned his head and disappeared.

Before long, the mysterious little black cat appeared at the window again, a bird dangling from his mouth. He placed it in Jiang Cheng’s hands.

Then he curled up on the recliner, watching to see what Jiang Cheng intended to do.

Jiang Cheng held the little bird in her hands.

Her mental link connected to the storage space. It was empty now, a state of pure nothingness.

She wanted to test whether a living creature could enter the space.

She stared at the bird and focused her thoughts.

Yet the little bird merely looked at her with its beady green eyes. Nothing happened.

Jiang Cheng tried several times, but every attempt failed.

It seemed that living creatures could not be stored in the space.

[Safety protocol.]

Jiang Cheng’s pupils widened slightly. She had caught the information as it drifted through her mind.

There seemed to be something else as well.

Jiang Cheng struggled to grasp it.

Mo Li lay on the recliner in the sunlight, looking up at Jiang Cheng curiously.

From his perspective, Jiang Cheng was still holding the bird and standing motionless.

He had no idea that an intense battle was taking place inside Jiang Cheng’s mind. She could sense that there really was a crack in whatever had been locked away deep inside her brain. All the information was leaking through that crack.

She desperately tried to force the crack completely open, but encountered an obstacle that was almost impossible to overcome.

Something deep within her mind seemed to have wrapped itself around her, as though it wanted to devour her.

The sudden ring of the telephone interrupted the struggle in her mental world.

Jiang Cheng’s shoulders abruptly relaxed, and she broke free of that spiritual realm. Her forehead was covered in sweat, and she was breathing hard.

After steadying her breathing, Jiang Cheng finally freed one hand to answer the call.

“Li Jiangbing?”

Li Jiangbing’s booming voice came through the phone. “Jiang Cheng, are you coming?”

Jiang Cheng composed herself and glanced at the bird in her hand. “Come over here first.”

“Huh? Sure.”

Li Jiangbing arrived almost immediately. Since they would be fighting later, he had already put on his extra-large suit of armor.

In his hand was the new crescent shovel.

Its design was extremely anime-like.

The moment he entered, he asked, “What do you need me for?”

Jiang Cheng closed the door and handed him the bird. “Hold this.”

“What the—hey, holy crap!”

Li Jiangbing hurriedly set down the crescent shovel and cupped the little bird between his two bear-sized paws.

“Where’d this bird come from? Are you going to keep it as a pet?”

Instead, Jiang Cheng said, “Try to draw the water out of its body.”

Li Jiangbing, who had been looking down and teasing the bird, froze. He lifted his head.

Jiang Cheng continued, “I was thinking about this earlier. Since you can extract water from the air, what about extracting it from a living body?”

Li Jiangbing hesitated. “You want me to test it on this one?”

“No. This one is for you to keep as a pet. Test it on me instead. Drain all the blood from my body.”

Li Jiangbing: “...You’re starting to sound like Jingshuo. He’s been acting completely nuts these past two days. Don’t let him infect you.”

Song Jingshuo had completely lost it over the obvious potential of his wood-based superpower for growing vegetables.

He had abandoned his former, leader-like air of making everyone feel warmly cared for. Instead, he had begun pulling faces and making all sorts of sarcastic remarks.

Strangely enough, this hadn’t made people dislike him. On the contrary, some people who had previously only had an average relationship with him began drawing closer to him.

Zhao Yi and Gao Yuxuan, for example, had started calling him “Jingshuo” all the time.

Li Jiangbing slowly spread his hands apart. The bird lifted its round head, its eyes as tiny as green beans.

Li Jiangbing looked a little reluctant. He sighed. “I’m sorry.”

He brought his hands together, closed his eyes, and activated his power.

A second later, he opened his eyes and let out a huge sigh of relief. He was even a little pleased.

“It doesn’t work.”

The bird was completely unharmed.

Jiang Cheng got straight to the root of the matter. “Why not?”

Li Jiangbing explained, “Extracting water from the air is like lifting a 120-kilogram barbell. Extracting water from its body is like lifting a 500—no, a 1,000-kilogram super-heavy barbell.”

At 120 kilograms, he could still excitedly regard it as a shortcut to training, pushing himself to exhaustion each time in the hope of achieving rapid progress.

At 1,000 kilograms, perhaps he really could manage it someday, after his superpower had reached a certain level. But for now, it was something he could give up on without the slightest guilt.

Jiang Cheng asked, “Is the force of attraction between the molecules greater than the attraction between the water vapor molecules in the air?”

“It’s a little different.” Li Jiangbing gave Jiang Cheng a detailed explanation. “With the water in the air, it’s basically a matter of me wrestling with it. My strength is still small, but when I put all my effort into it, you can see that I can still extract a tiny bit, right?”

“But it’s not just that the molecules have a stronger attraction. I also feel like it has a layer of something around it—something invisible and untouchable, but still perceptible. It gathers all of this—all this, um, liquid? Blood and whatever?—together, holding it tightly in one mass. It seems to be a single entity. It’s very difficult to separate.”

“Is it some kind of safety protocol?”

“What kind of existence is it?”

“Protecting living organisms?”

Jiang Cheng nodded. In the past, whenever they turned on the faucet, the water would gush out.

Jiang Cheng raised her hand and waved it a few times. “Can you make the water follow my hand?”

That was relatively simple.

Li Jiangbing’s supernatural ability had improved at astonishing speed. He focused and controlled a ball of water, pressing it against Jiang Cheng’s palm. “Hey, I can make you a hydrating facial mask, hahaha.”

Jiang Cheng moved her hand to the side, and Li Jiangbing hurriedly made the water follow.

She waved her hand several times. Li Jiangbing stopped joking around and concentrated on controlling the water ball. It could basically catch up with her on the very next instant.

But that difference of “one instant” still created a noticeable lag.

Jiang Cheng began waving her hand continuously without letting it pause in any one position. “Chase me.”

“Whoa, no way.” Li Jiangbing tossed out a cheeky remark before continuing to make the water ball chase Jiang Cheng’s hand.

With continuous movement, the water ball’s lag became obvious. It kept chasing, but could never catch up.

Jiang Cheng lowered her hand. “All right. It still has a long way to go.”

Li Jiangbing had long since grown used to the way Jiang Cheng gave instructions without explanation. He would simply do as he was told first, then ask why afterward. “What’s this for?”

Jiang Cheng said, “I want you to achieve this: seal someone’s head in a ball of water. If you can’t cover the whole head, then the face will do. No matter how much they struggle, they mustn’t be able to break free.”

Li Jiangbing sat down on the sofa and ran a finger over the feathers on the little bird’s head. “That won’t work.”

He said, “I already tried. I poured water into the zombies’ brains, but they weren’t afraid. They can’t drown.”

Jiang Cheng walked over, braced one hand against the wall, leaned down close to Li Jiangbing, and said softly, “But humans can.”

Li Jiangbing jerked his head up.

The room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

The two of them stared into each other’s eyes.

“You—you—you!” Li Jiangbing jabbed a finger angrily through the air. “Stop trying to scare me all the time!”

“Psycho!”

Li Jiangbing had realized it a long time ago: everyone was a psycho now.

He didn’t know whether everyone had already been crazy before the zombie outbreak, or whether the zombies had driven them all insane.

Either way, they were all lunatics.

Song Jingshuo was a psycho. Hell, with so many people unable to get enough to eat, he still insisted on maintaining his elite persona.

Jiang Cheng was one too. She looked like such a refined, clean, beautiful girl, yet all of a sudden she would calmly say something that scared the living daylights out of you.

He was a psycho himself. When he killed zombies with the militia, he was genuinely happy. He felt happier than he ever had in peaceful times. If that wasn’t insanity, then what was?

A lot of people were crazy.

You couldn’t tell from how everyone joked and laughed on the little plaza during the day.

Many people would suddenly sit bolt upright in bed in the middle of the night and burst into heart-rending sobs.

So many people couldn’t get in touch with their parents or families. They were probably orphans in all but fact.

How could they not go insane? Deep down, everyone had already lost their minds.

Only by gathering together could they manage to keep up the appearance of being normal human beings.