Chapter 154

Shouts rang out from deep inside the third floor.

Everyone’s heart clenched, and they charged over with a thunderous rumble.

Fortunately, the shouts weren’t cries of pain. They were battle cries as people exerted themselves.

Two students with electrical superpowers had lured the “tentacle” into a trap by using themselves as bait. The moment one of them was caught, the student with the electrical ability immediately unleashed electricity at full power.

Electricity worked on any living organism with some remaining biological activity. In fact, even corpses could conduct electricity.

The tentacle did indeed begin twitching and slowed down, but it still hadn’t come to a complete stop.

The other student caught up, grabbed hold of it, and shouted, “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” as he poured out every last bit of his strength.

Superpower at maximum output!

The tentacle writhed a few times before finally dropping to the floor, motionless.

The student hurriedly freed the other student from the tentacle strangling his neck.

The rescued student gasped for breath and began coughing.

The students, teachers, and parents all came running over.

“Check whether it’s pretending to be dead,” the teacher said.

This tentacle was extremely cunning, so nobody dared let their guard down. Everyone carrying a shovel rushed forward and hacked at it, one blow after another, as if they were chopping vegetables with cleavers.

The tentacle was cut into many pieces, yet it still didn’t move.

After all, it had been hit with the full-power output of two students with electrical superpowers.

Following the tentacle’s trail, everyone found a curtain shop.

No wonder it had been so cunning—it had hidden itself beneath a huge pile of curtains and fabric stacked on the floor!

Who could possibly have found it there? What a nasty thing!

Several groups had already passed right in front of this curtain shop without noticing a thing.

The cunning tentacle must have retracted itself at the time.

When everyone scrambled to pull away all the curtain fabric and saw what was underneath, they were utterly stunned.

The boy whose mouth had just been wrapped by the “tentacle” turned deathly pale.

He spun around and vomited again. “Blaaaargh—”

That was just tragic. His classmates all felt terribly sorry for him.

Because someone had shouted “tentacle” first, everyone had been imagining an octopus monster from a horror movie.

But in reality, this was a person. No—that was too generous. She had once been a person, but now she was a zombie.

It was an old woman.

“Old woman” was a concept as understood by middle school students.

After all, to a middle schooler, anyone in their twenties was already ancient.

In reality, she was a vigorous, middle-aged auntie.

How vigorous was she? The kind of vigorous that could knock you off a crowded bus during rush hour if you happened to ride with her.

The “tentacle” wasn’t a tentacle at all. It was the auntie’s tongue.

Her mouth had split sideways all the way toward the roots of her ears. Her tongue had become wide, thick, and incredibly long, stretching out from her mouth and trailing across the floor for more than a hundred meters. Judging from what had just happened, it might be able to extend even farther.

What kind of monster was this?

The auntie was dressed in flowers.

Her top had a tiny floral pattern, and so did her pants. Looking at her made everyone’s eyes feel dazzled.

The teacher walked over and took a careful look.

“Oh. It’s her.”

The students were astonished. “You know her?”

The teacher sighed. “This is Hong'an's Quarrel Queen, famous throughout the area.”

The teacher rode a bicycle to work. Every day, when passing through Hong'an Market, she would first go in to buy groceries, carry them to school, and then take them home after work.

The produce was best in the morning. If she waited until after work to buy it, all the good stuff would already have been picked over.

The teacher had worked at No. 14 Middle School for many years, so she had also been a regular at Hong'an Market for many years. She was extremely familiar with “Hong'an's Quarrel Queen.”

This auntie was a terrifyingly gifted scolder, unbeatable throughout Hong'an Market.

The teacher had heard all sorts of gossip about her while buying groceries. At home, she had scolded her daughter-in-law so relentlessly that the woman wanted to jump off a building, and she had driven her own daughter to leave home. At Hong'an Market, she had cursed out every vegetable vendor and gotten into fights with many of the clothing-shop owners on the third floor.

One of the parents pulled out a cellphone. “Teacher, move aside for a moment. I want to take a picture.”

It was a new model with a camera.

This zombie was far too unusual. Nobody had ever seen anything like it before, so they had to take a photo.

The students began discussing it among themselves.

“Is this a third-generation one?”

“Definitely not. Third-generation zombies know how to run away and use tricks. This isn’t even the same level.”

“A mutant zombie! Didn’t that auntie on television say something about mutant zombies?”

“Right, right, I remember that too. She said mutant zombies.”

The children had no idea how lucky they were.

This mutant zombie was merely a sharp-tongued, foul-tempered ordinary woman from the neighborhood. Unlike Guo the Great Embezzler, who had seen the wider world and harbored grand ambitions, she had never aspired to anything beyond her own little corner.

No matter how fierce and quarrelsome she had been, all that had happened was that she had turned into a long-tongued monster. Although she was somewhat difficult to deal with, she wasn’t truly that dangerous.

They had been very lucky.

Everyone searched the market and found several survivors in the small general store on the first floor.

The shop owner had promptly pulled down the metal rolling shutter, cutting the store off from the zombies in the produce section. There had been food and drink inside, allowing everyone to hold out.

The only problem was that they had used basins and buckets whenever they needed to relieve themselves. Even though they had deliberately placed them in a corner, the stench had still been overwhelming.

But the students didn’t mind.

The shop owner, an older woman who had survived the disaster, waved her hands generously.

“Take whatever you want. Go ahead, take it. It’s free. What use is money now?”

The students cheered and rushed into the store to grab things.

Outside, the teachers and parents found several flatbed cargo tricycles, along with the kind of three-wheeled carts elderly people rode—ones with a large rear compartment for carrying passengers or cargo.

The meat displayed outside the butcher shop had all gone rotten, with flies buzzing everywhere.

But the meat in the freezers was still frozen solid. All of it had to be transported back to the school.

The students had already started eating snacks and drinking soft drinks.

The past seven or eight days had been miserable, and everyone was desperately craving something to eat. They needed to replenish themselves.

Only when the teachers called them over did the students reluctantly wipe their mouths, stuff snacks into their pockets, and go back to work.

Most of the vegetables were no longer fresh, and many had already rotted.

The adults searched through them and picked out whatever was still edible, mostly things like radishes and potatoes.

“These potatoes have sprouted. We can plant them,” one parent said.

The teachers’ hands all paused.

The unspoken meaning was that they would have to prepare for a prolonged struggle.

Sigh.

The students went up to the second floor of the market and carried down many handcarts, one for each person.

The teachers instructed them to carry food first and get other things on the next trip. Even so, many students secretly took items they needed.

For example, the girls quietly went up to the third floor and took underwear.

In the end, several tricycles of various sizes were packed to the brim. Everyone had a handcart.

They had returned with a full load.

The shop owner and the few lucky customers had nowhere else to go. They wouldn’t have dared take to the road on their own, so they followed the students from No. 14 Middle School back to campus.

By the time the large group transported the meat and vegetables back to school, it was already noon, and the cafeteria had finished preparing lunch.

After eating, everyone rode the tricycles back to Hong'an Market to “stock up.”

The school had housing for faculty and staff, and there was a bathhouse on the first floor where everyone could wash. But they needed clean clothes. There were also countless other necessities, such as toothbrushes and toothpaste.

The teachers needed to find quilts and bedding for everyone.

Over the past few days, all the metal parts of the desks had been taken apart and turned into armor and weapons.

The desktop panels had been joined together to make bed boards, while schoolbags served as pillows. Everyone had been sleeping in their clothes.

That had been fine a few days ago, but the temperature had clearly dropped over the last couple of nights. It was too cold now.

They had to find quilts and bedding.

The bedding and clothing stores in Hong’an Market had been completely stripped bare. The curtain shop hadn’t been spared either. Curtain fabric wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it was thick, and folded into several layers, it could serve as bedding.

The second trip was loaded up too. If they wanted anything else, they’d have to make another trip.

“Don’t rush,” the teacher said. “We’ll have to come several more times. We can come again tomorrow.”

There was simply too much they needed.

Everyone dragged their handcarts back. Then someone suddenly turned around and narrowed their eyes.

“Huh? What’s moving over there?”

It was across the road.

And not just some little street—it was a major thoroughfare, broad and divided by iron railings. On the other side stood a building that housed the vehicle administration office.

One of the upstairs windows was open. Someone was leaning out and frantically waving a curtain they had torn down.

It was too far away to shout. They didn’t dare risk attracting the zombies. If that person hadn’t torn down the curtain and waved it like a flag, they would have been almost impossible to spot from such a distance.

“Someone’s calling for help!” Everyone understood at once.

What should they do?

They looked at one another, exchanging glances.

Before the teacher or any of the parents could say a word, the students had already dropped their handcarts, rolled up their sleeves, and gripped their crescent-shaped shovels.

“Let’s go—! We’re rescuing them!”

Heaven helps those who help themselves; heaven saves those who save themselves.

They didn’t need to wait for someone to rescue them. They could save themselves.

They could even save other people!

New Tech District.

Zhou Wang arrived with Auntie Lin, Auntie Qian, and the new Master Luo to meet up with Song Jingshuo.

Everyone had already reached an agreement. Although the refugees would all be housed at Auspicious Garden, everyone—including the original residents of Auspicious Garden—would be placed under the unified management of the temporary district government.

In simple terms, everyone would be relying on the district government for food.

All the wood-type superpowered people would be assigned to work at the Youth Apartments, and their food supplies would be distributed through the Youth Apartments.

Xiao Dan had still failed to think things through.

There were few original residents at Auspicious Garden. Although it had several superpowered people, its overall fighting strength was insufficient.

What would happen if so many people suddenly moved in? If the crops were kept inside their own housing complex, what if these newcomers refused to follow orders and simply tried to seize them by force?

During the first zombie disaster, whenever anything happened, it was always the men who stepped forward—as long as a family still had a man in it.

That was why, during all the incidents last time, it had been Wang Yunya’s father, Xiao Dan’s husband, who had dealt with matters outside while Xiao Dan stayed home to look after Wang Yunya.

She had eventually learned what had happened, but she had never faced it directly.

She had never confronted the distortion of human nature firsthand, and lacked the experience.

Her thinking was still rooted in the rule-of-law society of the past.

Song Jingshuo took the others to a meeting.

In fact, Imperial Scenery Garden also had a wood-type superpowered person. But its population was currently small, and it was self-sufficient, so that person did not need to be called up for now. They would remain there to help their own community.

From now on, the old, small-workshop approach of planting whatever they felt like eating—and planting it the day they wanted to eat it—was over. From now on, everything had to be properly planned.

The staple crops would be potatoes and sweet potatoes. The main vegetables would be radishes and napa cabbage.

These crops not only produced high yields but were also easy to store. They needed to be planted on a large scale and stockpiled in advance, in preparation for the refugees they would take in later.

The peanuts needed to be planned out as well. They would provide cooking oil.

The beans needed to be planned too. The cafeteria aunties had said they could be used to make bean paste and brew soy sauce.

In fact, all vegetables could be planted, as long as priorities were clearly established.

Fruit would be strictly controlled.

There also had to be clear tiers in the benefits people received.

Jiang Cheng said to Zhou Wang, “You don’t have to go today. You can stay here.”

More than five hundred refugees had entered Auspicious Garden, and Jiang Cheng felt that Zhou Wang ought to remain behind. If anything happened, at least they would have someone dependable to take charge.

Zhou Wang placed both hands over his stomach. “It’s fine. Xiao Dan’s here.”

His eyes flickered.

“And Xiao Song is here too. She has plenty of management experience. If anything happens, she can go to Xiao Song.”

The look in his eyes made it obvious that something had happened.

Jiang Cheng didn’t want to involve herself in Auspicious Garden’s internal problems. As long as nothing major went wrong, it was none of her concern.

She nodded. “All right. Then go.”