Chapter 148
Everyone rushed into the cafeteria in a frenzy.
“Is that Vice Mayor Zheng?”
Vice Mayor Zheng had earned the people’s deep respect during the last zombie disaster. The citizens who had survived adored him.
Unfortunately, the person appearing on the television was not the mayor who had risen to the occasion and performed outstandingly in the crisis. Instead, it was a young woman in her twenties, and she was very beautiful.
She raised her eyes, her gaze so sharp that it startled the children.
【...My name is Jiang Cheng.】
【...The Technology New District...Jixiang Jiayuan.】
“Technology New District’s Jixiang Jiayuan?” While the adults were mourning the apparent annihilation of the government, a middle school girl suddenly said, “Huang Xuetao lives in that residential community.”
The middle school students all turned around.
“Really?”
They were clearly very concerned about this person named Huang Xuetao.
The high school students asked, “Who’s that?”
Wu Shuchen reminded them, “He’s our Student Council President—the senior who led us in fighting the zombies. He can predict danger. We told you about him.”
The high school students said, “Oh, him!”
Wu Shuchen continued, “He went back to save his mother. I don’t know whether he managed to save her.”
Wu Shuchen admired Huang Xuetao greatly. He had something of a fledgling’s attachment to him and kept hoping that Huang Xuetao would be able to save his mother.
Even though Wu Shuchen himself had been unable to contact his own parents.
S City Television Station, news studio.
Jiang Cheng stared directly into the camera in front of her, looking straight at everyone watching the live broadcast.
【...I believe everyone has already noticed that this wave of zombies is different from the last one.】
【Clearly intelligent zombies have appeared. They can flee, trick their enemies, lie in ambush, and launch sneak attacks. We call them “third-generation zombies.”】
【Today, we even encountered a mutant zombie at the television station. We are unable to classify it for now, but I believe this is not an isolated case.】
【However, everyone, please do not panic because of this.】
【Because there must also be superpowered individuals among you.】
【As the zombies mutate, humanity is evolving as well.】
【At present, we know of the five elemental abilities associated with metal, wood, water, fire, and earth, as well as two elemental abilities outside the five elements—wind and electricity—and the special ability known as the mental type.】
【Regardless of which type of ability you possess, please take note of the following: superpowers can be improved and advanced through constant practice and repeated use.】
【Using your ability at high frequency can effectively improve your control and precision. Prolonged use, or pushing your ability to its limits with extremely high output, can increase its upper limit.】
【The side effects include headaches, nosebleeds, pain and bleeding in the eardrums, pain in the eyeballs, and bleeding from the eyes. Headaches and nosebleeds usually occur first, while bleeding from the eyes occurs last.】
【So far, there have been no reported cases of anyone dying from bleeding from all seven orifices. However, we recommend that you stop practicing once your eyes begin to ache or your vision becomes doubled.】
【The above is a summary of the experiences of all the superpowered individuals in the Technology New District. We hope it will be helpful to everyone.】
【At this time, I would like to say something to all superpowered individuals—】
【Heaven has granted us the opportunity to evolve and given us superpowers. We were not given these gifts so that we could hide in a corner and merely scrape by.】
【I urge every superpowered individual to do everything in your power to help protect others.】
【In particular, I urge metal-element users to step forward and use your abilities to provide armor for as many people as possible.】
【Yes, the armor I’m wearing is exactly what I mean. It was made for everyone by our metal-element users.】
【The zombie virus spreads through blood with extreme efficiency. This puts humanity at an unfair disadvantage.】
【Armor allows us humans to fight the zombies on equal footing.】
【Every suit of armor you make gives us one more comrade-in-arms, and humanity one more soldier.】
【Every person has a purpose. Metal-element users, you bear a tremendous responsibility!】
【Finally, with no survivors in the municipal government and no way to contact any of the other governments, the temporary government of the Technology New District is currently the only government in existence.】
【Until a formal government of higher authority emerges, we will do our utmost to shoulder the responsibilities of government.】
【At present, the central urban areas appear to contain enormous numbers of zombies. The Technology New District has essentially completed its cleanup and also has a large number of vacant homes.】
【Any survivors who have nowhere to go may come to the Technology New District for shelter.】
【For anyone trapped and in need of rescue, the following three numbers are emergency contact numbers.】
Jiang Cheng announced three mobile phone numbers.
Earlier that day, they had collected a large number of phones from the municipal government and planned to take them back with them. They belonged to public servants who had perished.
While they were eating, they had found some chargers and plugged the phones in.
Gao Yuxuan finally had a chance to try charging a phone.
He had actually wanted to try it for a long time, but he only owned one phone himself. A phone was not merely an expensive electronic device; it was also a vital means of communication.
He hadn’t dared to experiment with his own phone. If he broke it, he would be in serious trouble.
Now that he had so many unclaimed phones, he could finally practice.
During the meal, he blew out three phones before finally finding the right balance. After that, he was able to charge phones steadily.
When he tried increasing the output, he discovered that he could charge them even faster than a regular charger—he was practically a living fast charger.
Jiang Cheng selected three phones from the pile and announced those three numbers as hotlines.
【These three numbers will begin operating tonight. We have not yet completely finished our current operations, so we do not have time to answer calls.】
【Please send requests for help by text message whenever possible. Include your location, the surrounding conditions, and the number of survivors.】
【We have limited manpower. We will not answer calls to mobile phones; we will only answer calls made to landlines.】
Those with mobile phones could send text messages requesting help.
Only those who had lost their phones would have no choice but to call a landline.
【I call on the surviving governments in each district to gather their forces as quickly as possible.】
【I also call on all survivors to remember: Heaven helps those who help themselves, and salvation begins with self-rescue.】
【Please make use of every resource around you and stand together.】
【Above all, survive.】
The children of No. 14 Middle School all began to cry.
Heaven helps those who help themselves. Salvation begins with self-rescue.
Yes. Yes, they were people who had helped themselves and rescued themselves. That was why they had survived!
The boys and girls wiped away their tears and rallied their spirits.
“Come on! Let’s practice our superpowers!”
“There are so many of us! We don’t need rescuing!”
“That’s right!”
The parents and teachers exchanged glances.
They would wait and see.
It wasn’t that they were afraid to act, nor that they distrusted the resolute-looking young woman on television.
It was simply that they were only a group formed by combining the residents of several communities. How much strength could they really have?
They would wait and see.
Several adults were responsible for protecting so many minors. They could not make decisions lightly.
For now, the school appeared to be a relatively stable safe zone.
There were actually quite a few survivors still trapped inside the office buildings in the city center.
More than a dozen people were trapped in one company office.
The company had been burglarized before. In a fit of anger, the owner had installed a steel security door outside the company’s main entrance. During the second zombie outbreak, it became a barrier between life and death.
More than twenty survivors had hidden inside the office.
For the past several days, they had been drinking from a few barrels of bottled water and the water in the owner’s luxurious fish tank.
They had tomatoes and celery to eat.
All the office plants were rented. Ownership belonged to the landscaping company, which was also responsible for their maintenance and upkeep.
As it happened, on August 29, a landscaper had finished tending the plants at several companies in the same building and then arrived at this one. That was how he ended up trapped inside with the people there.
This rural middle-aged man awakened a wood-type superpower.
Even luckier, the administrative manager had seen someone selling vegetables by the roadside on her way to work that morning. The vegetables were cheap and fresh in the morning, so she had bought a bagful of tomatoes and celery.
The wood-type uncle began propagating the tomatoes and celery to make food for everyone.
But by the next day, he could no longer propagate anything.
If this had been Song Jingshuo, with no one there to guide him, he would have been completely stumped.
Fortunately, the uncle wasn’t some finance guy from a major city. He had gotten a job at the landscaping company precisely because he was good at growing plants.
After thinking it over, the uncle understood. Rapid propagation had depleted the nutrients in the soil of the plant pots. They needed fertilizer.
The boss had survived too.
The uncle gave him a choice: everyone’s urine and feces—or the arowana in his fish tank.
The boss didn’t want to eat shit, so, suppressing his heartbreak, he chose to sacrifice his beloved arowana.
The employees: “Boss, your contribution is immeasurable.”
And so, they managed to hold out for seven days.
On the seventh day, everyone sat in the reception area, watching Jiang Cheng speak on the television mounted on the wall.
The boss sighed and stood up. “All right. Time to save ourselves.”
“But we only have one person with a wood-type superpower. How are we supposed to save ourselves? We don’t even have any decent weapons, let alone armor.”
Armor was the most important thing.
You could grab a chair and, at a stretch, call it a weapon.
But without armor, humans and zombies were on completely unequal footing.
“Ahem!” the boss said. “If we don’t have armor, then we’ll just make some.”
With one hand resting on an abstractly designed metal chair, the boss suddenly made it begin to change shape. Slowly, it formed the shape of a suit of armor.
The employees: “...”
The boss: “I actually just realized I had a superpower.”
The employees: “...”
Yeah, right.
He’d just been saving all his scheming for office politics.
Truly, no businessman was free of treachery. He kept his trump card hidden until the very last moment.
What a sly old fox.
They already had the materials needed to make armor and weapons.
The company had a fitness room, and all the equipment inside was made of metal. There was more than enough.
After all, working out was also known as “pumping iron.”
And the boss was a fitness fanatic.
But while everyone watched the boss huff and puff as he made the armor, someone said, “Even with armor, it’ll still be dangerous. Can we make something like a turtle shell—a cover we can carry over our heads while we walk?”
“That would be so heavy. Would we even be able to move?”
“What if we attached the wheels from the office chairs?”
“Huh?”
The boss stopped and thought for a moment. “Let’s try it!”