Chapter 150

Of the more than five hundred people rescued from the television station, some said they wanted to go home.

Li Jiangbing asked just one question: “How are you planning to get there?”

No one had anything to say after that.

It simply wasn’t realistic.

Even those who wanted to go home would have to wait until later.

These people were all weak in the legs, with vacant stares. Some kept muttering to themselves, while others cried and laughed for no apparent reason. None of them looked entirely sane. If they were allowed to leave on their own, they would be dead the moment they stepped outside the television station compound.

For now, the people from the High-Tech New District planned to take all five hundred of them back to the development zone. The first problem was transportation.

The two hundred members of the High-Tech New District team had driven four large 535 buses, each carrying fifty people.

Each bus could squeeze in as many as one hundred and fifty to two hundred passengers. Without packing them in too tightly, another fifty people per bus would be no problem. That would take care of two hundred more.

Yue Chao said, “The station has shuttle buses.”

The television station’s employees lived in various districts across S City. The station had opened sixteen routes in total, with sixteen shuttle buses. All of them were thirty-six-seat coaches.

Counting the aisle, each one could manage fifty people without a problem.

After a final discussion, they decided to take six coaches.

There were too many vehicles, and fuel would only be wasted. They would pack as many people as possible into each bus.

Just then, when they looked outside through the large hole in the second-floor wall, they saw several zombies wandering into the courtyard after Director Guo’s death.

Earlier, when the convoy from the High-Tech New District had entered, the vehicles had made a tremendous racket, but the zombies had not followed them in. They had simply scattered on their own.

“Mind control,” Zhao Yi said.

Gao Yuxuan agreed. “The range probably isn’t small either. It covers a certain area and has already formed a domain.”

Zhou Wang felt that he wasn’t actually that old, and he had no trouble communicating with the other people from the Youth Apartments.

The problem was that he often couldn’t understand what these two were saying. They were always tossing out strange terms he had never heard before.

Su Yu used her protective shield as an example and explained it to him. Zhou Wang more or less understood. He rubbed the back of his neck and said, “This isn’t science anymore. What are these things, demons and monsters?”

Gao Yuxuan said, “Why does it have to be demons and monsters? This is the evolution of the human brain. Brother Zhou, you should read more science fiction. What do you usually read?”

Zhao Yi was firmly on Gao Yuxuan’s side. “I’ve always believed that human beings never stopped evolving. The next direction of human evolution should be the brain. I never imagined I’d live to witness it with my own eyes. If you trace our superpowers back to their source, they all come from the brain.”

Zombies had brains too.

A zombie was basically a dead thing. The only part that seemed alive was its brain, directing that dead body as it walked beneath the sun.

The human brain had developed superpowers, and the brains of zombies had advanced as well. The newly mutated zombies could now control ordinary zombies.

Zhao Yi was deeply worried.

Wu Jiancheng led people in searching every floor. They found more than a dozen additional survivors on the upper levels.

Ironically, their survival was thanks to Director Guo.

Director Guo had eaten all the other zombies. They had nowhere to hide. Whenever he summoned them with his mental power, they obediently came to him and allowed themselves to be eaten.

As a result, there were no zombies left upstairs, giving these people room to survive.

Director Guo was enormous, and he made an especially loud commotion whenever he moved. Whenever he went upstairs, the survivors would immediately hide. There were many nooks and crannies that Director Guo’s huge body couldn’t enter, so he missed these people.

Besides, he had an entire granary of people to eat at his leisure.

In the end, all four 535 buses and all six coaches were crammed full of people.

Cui Haiyang and the other metal-element superpowered individuals modified the coaches into blade vehicles as well. Then everyone set off together for the High-Tech New District.

They had come from the city government building, but they took a different route back.

There were zombies everywhere along the road. The drivers were thrilled, flooring the gas and plowing straight into them. Heads burst into the air one after another, while corpses fell to the ground and had their intestines and chunks of feces crushed out by the tires.

Gao Yuxuan and Cui Haiyang spent the entire journey sitting together and discussing how to turn the vehicles into new weapons.

During the previous disaster, they had also driven large vehicles around, ramming and crushing zombies. Now that they had seen how effective blade vehicles were, they realized they were especially suited to clearing areas in the city center where zombies were densely packed.

They were absolutely devastating weapons for attacking groups.

Even small cars could be modified this way. Gao Yuxuan badly wanted to drive a small car covered in blades alone, charging into a horde of zombies and fighting his way back out.

Just imagining it made his blood race.

When they passed a gas station, the convoy stopped to refuel.

The people from the High-Tech New District had become fuel hoarders. Whenever they saw a gas station, they were certain to fill up.

There were two gas stations in the development zone, and they needed to conserve their own fuel. Whenever possible, they used fuel from the city first.

Zhao Yi asked Jiang Cheng, “Can you store fuel in your space?”

“There has to be a container,” Jiang Cheng said.

Jiang Cheng had already tested it. Things like water and fire could not be placed directly into her storage space.

But a bottle or bucket of water could be stored.

If someone lit a ball of paper in a bowl, she could store the bowl and the flame together.

However, a puddle of water on the ground, or a ball of flame held by a fire-element superpowered individual, could not be stored.

[Unable to define the boundaries.]

That was the information that floated through her mind.

Before her memories had been locked away, she must have been extremely familiar with her storage space and known all its rules. Now, however, she had to figure everything out from the beginning.

When the bowl was taken back out, the fire had gone out.

Jiang Cheng deduced that this was because there was no oxygen in the space, so the fire could not continue burning.

The large steamed buns the aunties had made that morning were still lukewarm when they were taken out at noon. Heat dissipated, and time did not stop flowing inside the space.

Zhao Yi began seriously contemplating the nature of Jiang Cheng’s space.

Watching him, Jiang Cheng suddenly felt that everything happening now was very strange.

If time had gone back two months, Jiang Cheng felt that she would never have casually revealed her superpower. At the very least, she would not have let anyone know its limitations.

She would have kept every advantage in her own hands and made sure no one knew her trump card.

Yes. That was the kind of person she was.

But now, she had calmly told Zhao Yi and Gao Yuxuan everything, trusting them completely.

When had she changed?

...Unable to define.

Jiang Cheng could not determine exactly how she had changed.

Some changes had no specific event or point in time. They happened unconsciously, little by little, through imperceptible influence.

Even so, everyone managed to find a large number of fuel drums in the gas station’s storage room. They filled them all and had Jiang Cheng store them in her space.

There was even a giant zombie in that space of hers.

It could really hold a lot, Zhao Yi thought admiringly.

The convoy of ten large vehicles returned to the High-Tech New District in grand fashion.

The people who had stayed behind felt as if they were facing a formidable enemy—for now, they had to prepare dinner for seven hundred people.

Song Jingshuo looked a little exhausted.

Of course he was exhausted!

“Try preparing food for several hundred people sometime,” Song Jingshuo said mournfully. “And you only get three hours to do it.”

It had nearly cost Song Jingshuo his life.

Everyone who had stayed behind was mobilized. Even the elderly men and women from Auspicious Garden came to help.

The stoves in the clubhouse were obviously not enough. The earth-element superpowered individuals set up cooking stoves directly in the small square, the metal-element superpowered individuals quickly made cooking utensils, and the fire-element superpowered individuals were responsible for stoking the flames.

Every potato and eggplant that Song Jingshuo had forced into rapid growth was as big as a basketball.

Everyone was given a vegetable peeler to peel the potatoes and eggplants. The potatoes were steamed and mashed, then sprinkled with salt and pepper. The eggplants were steamed into a mash and topped with garlic sauce.

The survivors lined up to receive metal mess tins.

Each person got a scoop of mashed potatoes, a scoop of mashed eggplant, a piece of braised pork, a scoop of rice, a bowl of seaweed soup, and a strawberry as large as a pear.

Compared with a proper meal, it was a little plain, but considering how many people there were and how little time they had, it was already quite good.

These five hundred people had even drunk urine before. What right did they have to complain?

They had eaten a small piece of compressed biscuit that afternoon. It had expanded in their stomachs and served as a good stopgap, giving their stomachs time to adjust. Now they were hungry again, so it was time to eat.

As a result, almost everyone refused the braised pork. Some even threw up.

The uncles and aunties were completely baffled.

“Just give the meat to our people,” Jiang Cheng told them with her arms folded. “It’s fine. Let them eat vegetarian for now. They may have to eat vegetarian for quite a while.”

Possibly for the rest of their lives.

Some memories simply couldn’t be forgotten, no matter how hard one tried.

Song Jingshuo quietly asked Gao Yuxuan what had happened, and Gao Yuxuan told him.

Song Jingshuo had already learned from Wu Jiancheng’s earlier phone call that a zombie had mutated into a giant, but he hadn’t expected there to be so much more to the story.

These survivors were now refugees in the Technology New District.

The refugees found spots wherever they could and sat down right there to eat. No one complained about the dirt on the ground.

Compared with the broadcasting studio where they had spent seven days, the ground here was practically spotless.

Jiang Cheng asked Song Jingshuo, “Have you arranged somewhere for them to stay?”

“It’s arranged,” Song Jingshuo said with a nod. “They’ll all be staying at Jixiang Jiayuan. We don’t let outsiders into this area easily.”

Song Jingshuo was indeed dependable.

There were plenty of vacant apartments in the Youth Apartments, of course, but neither Jiang Cheng nor Song Jingshuo intended to let just anyone move in.

The Youth Apartments were the core of the entire Technology New District, and many things had to be carried out there. The unity and understanding among the four hundred residents had been forged through two waves of zombie disasters. It was best not to introduce any destabilizing elements.

Zhou Wang was also willing to take these people in.

He now understood ancient rulers especially well. After waging war, they had to let the country recover and give the common people time to have children.

Population. Population was incredibly important.

There was no way for Zhou Wang to make the more than one hundred elderly residents of the complex disappear, so he could only bring in people from outside to help share the burden.

The last time, they had accepted more than thirty middle-school students and two teachers from a private school. This time, there were another five hundred able-bodied adults, and they already knew that several of them had supernatural abilities.

There were probably more. Many people were in poor mental condition and weren’t speaking up yet.

They could let them recover first.

At the food distribution station, a group of people holding metal plates were swallowing hard and asking pitifully, “Could we have another piece of meat?”

The aunties were delighted!

They had assumed that these refugees hadn’t eaten properly in six or seven days and had felt so sorry for them that they had gone to considerable trouble to cook all this braised pork. Yet the refugees hadn’t appreciated it at all. One after another, they insisted on eating vegetarian food and couldn’t even stand the smell of meat.

All the aunties’ kindness had gone to waste.

It was enough to make anyone lose heart.

Then, all of a sudden, a group of people showed up who wanted meat. The aunties couldn’t have been happier.

“Here you go, here you go! I’ll give you a few extra pieces. Is that enough?”

Mr. Xu was practically in tears. “Enough, enough.”

Mr. Xu, who normally ate so much lobster and sea cucumber that he was sick of them, never imagined that one day he would shed tears over a few pieces of braised pork.

This group was Mr. Xu and his companions, who had struggled their way out of an office building and driven over to seek refuge in the Technology New District.

They had driven straight toward the Technology New District, but since they weren’t familiar with the area, they followed the road signs and ended up at the industrial park.

Fortunately, the zombies there were all inside the various companies’ buildings or factory courtyards, so the roads themselves were relatively safe. Their blade vehicle fought its way through, only to take a wrong turn and end up in the western section of the residential district.

There was no one in the western section.

There weren’t even any zombies. The place looked like a ghost town, a vision straight out of the apocalypse.

It was nearly dark by the time Mr. Xu and the others finally reached the eastern section. They made their way to Deqingli, asked for directions, and eventually managed to find the Youth Apartments.

There were so many people around the Youth Apartments. What were they all doing?

So many of them were holding metal plates. Weren’t those the kind used in cafeterias?

They looked around and spotted a young man in a security guard’s uniform among the crowd.

“Hey, young man! Young man!” Mr. Xu and the others went over to speak to Little Fang. “Could we ask you—”

Little Fang turned around and nearly gagged from the smell.

One look told him everything. Their clothes clearly hadn’t been changed in days. Their faces were reasonably clean, but every time one of them opened his mouth, the stench of seven days without brushing their teeth came rushing out. They were obviously refugees.

“Over there, over there. Get your plates there,” Little Fang said, pinching his nose as he pointed. “Then go over there for food. Someone will handle lodging later. Eat first.”

And that was how Mr. Xu and his companions, in a daze, joined the ranks of the refugees in the Technology New District.

They ate braised pork with tears in their eyes.