Chapter 12

Compared to the original mutants, the infected mutants were an entirely different class of being.

Stronger, faster, and more agile in their limbs.

The first one to tackle a person was an infected mutant.

The person who was brought down let out a loud scream, which quickly turned into a shrill cry of agony. His companions immediately rushed to help, swinging hammers and wrenches at the back of the infected mutant's head.

The mutant was beaten to death on the spot.

But when they pulled the mutant off the fallen man, they saw that his face had been chewed to a bloody pulp. The pain had him writhing and gasping.

No wonder he'd screamed so horribly.

Someone grabbed him and pulled him up: "Get up!"

Lying there wasn't an option—with that many mutants around, you'd be waiting to die.

The wounded man knew it too. Gritting his teeth against the agony, he scrambled to his feet, let out two muffled grunts, and ran toward the building entrance. Everyone understood he was heading back inside.

Someone blurted out, "Don't let him back in! He'll turn into an infected mutant too!"

Everyone who heard paused mid-motion and couldn't help glancing over. The wounded man clearly heard it as well, because he immediately quickened his pace into a sprint, terrified someone might stop him.

A few people let out an "Hey!" but there was nothing they could do—they couldn't abandon the mutants right in front of them to chase after a man who was wounded but not yet turned.

More mutants kept lunging at them, so everyone had to refocus on the immediate threat.

An original mutant could be handled by one person alone, though the sheer numbers made it exhausting. An infected mutant was harder to take down solo, but with several people ganging up on it, it became much more manageable.

The commotion in the garden was so loud that nearly every household had people standing at their floor-to-ceiling windows, watching.

Jiang Cheng noticed that those who hadn't joined the forum-organized activity at the very start were now trickling out of the buildings one after another, carrying all sorts of weapons.

The pressure in the garden eased up.

Jiang Cheng thought it over, stood up, patted Mo Li's head, grabbed her baseball bat, and headed out the door too.

Just as she pulled the door shut, she heard a "bang" from farther off in the same direction. Turning her head, she saw the big guy Li Jiangbing stepping out, tucking his baton under his arm.

"Hey?" Li Jiangbing was delighted to see her and called out across the distance, "You're heading downstairs too?"

There were elevator lobbies at both ends of the building, and Li Jiangbing was closer to his side. Jiang Cheng walked over: "Everyone should pitch in, right? I can't just stand by and watch."

Li Jiangbing said, "Exactly, that's what I was thinking. I went to bed too late last night and woke up late, just saw it now—otherwise I'd have gone down earlier."

People tend to over-explain when they feel guilty.

Jiang Cheng didn't call him out on it. Because she herself hadn't been among the first to join in either—she'd let others take the lead first, observed the situation, and only then decided to participate.

A perfectly understandable mindset, a very human impulse.

The two of them went downstairs together.

It was Li Jiangbing's first time going down since he'd woken up from his coma on Saturday. On the steps outside the building entrance lay the guard's body, and at the bottom of the steps lay another body—probably kicked down by someone coming out, since leaving it sprawled on the steps would have been too much of a blocker.

Li Jiangbing took a couple of looks and recognized him, letting out a sigh: "Little White's Dad."

Little White's Dad had died an awful death.

Li Jiangbing couldn't help but give Jiang Cheng a somewhat odd look.

Jiang Cheng stated the facts plainly: "The wrist got snapped when he chased me through the hallway and slammed into the wall himself. The legs were broken when he jumped straight out of the third-floor window and landed badly."

Li Jiangbing's face lit up with understanding: "So that's what happened."

Jiang Cheng summarized, "It seems like they keep chasing after sounds or living things."

"Be careful in a bit," she added. "From upstairs, I noticed that the infected mutants seem to see better during the day than at night. It's like they can actually see—they're probably sensitive to light."

Li Jiangbing gripped a tactical baton in each hand and said boldly, "Got it."

Ever since he killed Li Ziqing with his own hands, it was as if he had crossed some threshold—he'd overcome his fear psychologically.

The first wave of suicide squads from each building kept making noise, and by now the mutants had been drawn into a tight cluster around them.

Groups had gathered near every building.

Jiang Cheng and Li Jiangbing tightened their grip on their weapons and made a beeline for the nearest group. The ones surrounded in this group were also neighbors from their own building.

A baseball bat is designed for swinging with force, and the grip feels especially good in the hand.

Jiang Cheng stepped forward and swung from behind, knocking one mutant flat on the ground. She followed up with several heavy strikes, and the mutant stopped moving.

Li Jiangbing whistled in admiration. "Whoa!"

He wasn't just standing around, either—his tactical baton was swinging too.

Even though he worked out, he'd only ever trained in boxing; he'd never really practiced with weapons. His tactical batons, nunchucks, and the like were mostly for show—pure entertainment.

Using a tactical baton like a fire poker didn't give him as much leverage as a bat. But luckily, brute force worked wonders—Li Jiangbing's muscles weren't for nothing; he had real strength.

He swung his baton around and took down a mutant in just a few hits.

Jiang Cheng kept her eyes on everyone's movements, occasionally glancing over at Li Jiangbing.

"I think I got stronger after I woke up yesterday," she said. "I mainly came down to test that out. What about you? Do you feel anything?"

"Huh? That's a thing?" Li Jiangbing swung his baton as he spoke. "Nope, I don't. Feels the same as before."

A muscle-head like Li Jiangbing wasn't a good frame of reference.

Jiang Cheng took down another mutant. She observed that the male neighbors from her building seemed to have roughly the same strength as her—maybe even less.

The way they smashed open mutant skulls looked much more laborious than how she and Li Jiangbing did it.

So the "strength boost" wasn't a benefit everyone got—it seemed to apply only to her and the mutants.

Jiang Cheng nodded, said no more, and just reminded him, "Let's not split up. Be careful they don't bite you."

There were too many mutants. Even if they weren't that agile, the sheer numbers meant that with one careless moment, they could get you from the side or behind and you'd be infected.

Jiang Cheng did not want to turn into one of them.

With two heavy hitters like Jiang Cheng and Li Jiangbing joining the fight, the pressure on their building's group lightened considerably.

At first, only six people had come out from their building. Now, counting Jiang Cheng and Li Jiangbing, the squad had grown to twelve. After clearing out the mutants gathered in their area, they teamed up and went to help the other buildings.

More and more residents were coming out of their buildings.

By around 10:30 in the morning, the mutants in the garden had been completely cleared. Everyone from all six buildings gathered in the central square, and a rough headcount put them at nearly three hundred people.

The crowd buzzed with chatter.

"Work" and "does this count as us killing people" were the two phrases Jiang Cheng heard the most.

All law-abiding citizens, and in such a bizarre situation, the two things everyone was most worried about were those. Jiang Cheng didn’t know why she found it ridiculous—she was just another wage slave among the corporate drones, and she too should have been worried about work.

Someone asked, “What do we do now? We can’t just leave the bodies lying around, can we?”

Many people echoed that. With this many bodies in summer, if they weren’t dealt with, it could trigger an epidemic.

Li Jiangbing agreed too, and he was about to chime in when Jiang Cheng suddenly stepped forward and raised her voice: “This isn’t the most urgent thing. The most urgent thing is to immediately put the injured under watch, to prevent them from turning into infected mutants.”

The crowd went quiet and looked at her.

The girl had fair skin and looked quite refined, holding a baseball bat covered in blood and some sticky substance.

“A normal person bitten by a mutant becomes an infected mutant, and they’re tougher than the ones that turned yesterday. Everyone should have seen that,” she said. “I came down late—when I was upstairs, I saw someone injured and run back into the building. There must be others who are hurt. Let’s assume it spreads like rabies, through blood. Anyone bleeding could turn. So my question is—does anyone know the injured person who ran back? Which floor, which unit?”

The crowd buzzed with discussion.

Someone from Building 2 said, “From our building, I only know he’s on the eleventh floor, I see him in the elevator all the time. But I don’t know the exact unit.”

Jiang Cheng nodded and asked, “Are there any injured people here right now? Don’t hide it.”

Everyone looked at each other.

Li Jiangbing shouted loudly, “If you’re hurt, speak up!”

His arms were thick with muscle, propped out on either side of his tall frame, and standing behind Jiang Cheng backing her up, he was quite intimidating.

Someone asked, “And what do we do with the injured? We can’t just... you know.”

Killing mutants didn’t carry the same psychological weight, mainly because the changes in their appearance gave you a strong sense of “not human.” You knew clearly that person could no longer be called a person—they were a monster.

But the injured, as long as they hadn’t turned yet, still looked entirely human.

Kill them? That was hard to stomach.

Jiang Cheng said, “Look, we can’t be sure that being injured definitely means infection. But we have to take precautions. The best way is to put them under restraint first, and if they really do turn, then we deal with it then.”

Everyone agreed with that: “That’s right.”

“Makes sense.”

“If they don’t turn, they’re human; if they turn, we deal with it then. Lock them up first—that’s correct.”

Jiang Cheng had gained the crowd’s support, and swept her gaze over them: “Alright then, everyone here, check each other next to you—see if anyone is bleeding or injured.”

As she spoke, she set the bat on the ground and pulled at her collar herself, letting those around her see her neck.

Her snow-white neck was spotless.

Then she lifted the hem of her pants—her ankles were clean too.

She lifted the bottom of her shirt a little, her belly and lower back were clean, no injuries anywhere.

She set the example, and the two or three hundred people in the square began checking each other. In no time, they found a dozen or so with injuries.

One guy tried to sneak away quietly, but someone grabbed him.

He shouted, “I just scraped my skin! Just a little scrape!”

There were scratches on his ankle, bleeding. They had been made by the fingernails of a mutant that had fallen but wasn't dead yet.

The injured person had been found. So what came next?

Everyone naturally turned their gaze toward Jiang Cheng.

The girl wasn't especially tall, nor did she look particularly strong, but her eyes, clear and sharp as black and white, made people feel she was the one they could rely on.