Chapter 165

Jiang Cheng had never imagined that even she could run into something so baffling.

Some of the distress messages they received contained reports of mutated zombies. Those mutated zombies now fell under Jiang Cheng’s jurisdiction.

Because of the special nature of their abilities, Zhou Wang, Little Huang, and Brother Dong had joined Jiang Cheng’s team to deal with the mutated zombies.

They had taken down one that morning, then hurried to another location at noon to deal with a second. They had just finished in the afternoon when Yang Xinyan called to say that someone in Guangxiu District had established a provisional government and wanted to get in touch with them.

Jiang Cheng called the number back.

The person who answered had a rather deep male voice. Though he sounded rushed and not particularly steady, there was no telling his age from his voice alone.

Jiang Cheng arranged to meet them at the television station later. From the other end of the call came bursts of cheering.

There were both male and female voices, mixed with the childish voices of young children.

After hanging up, Jiang Cheng frowned.

“What’s wrong?” Zhou Wang asked.

“They seem to have children with them,” Jiang Cheng said.

“Why would they bring children along?”

That was exactly what had made Jiang Cheng frown.

If they didn’t even have a safe base where children could stay, what were they planning to use as the foundation for a government? The responsibilities a government had to take on couldn’t be handled with empty words.

“We’ll see what they’re like first,” she said.

Under normal circumstances, the trip took an hour and a half. Now, with no traffic and no need to obey traffic lights, they could usually get there in twenty or thirty minutes.

When they arrived, the others still hadn’t shown up.

Jiang Cheng and the other core members waited on the first floor of the television station. The driver took the vehicle around the nearby area. They had been to the station several times, and every time they came, they drove back and forth along the surrounding streets to clear out the zombies.

By now, if anyone wanted to see a zombie near the television station, they would have to go at least four streets away.

Half an hour passed. The vehicle returned, but the others still hadn’t appeared.

Jiang Cheng called them. “Where are you?”

The only thing she could hear through the phone was the howling wind. The man shouted, “I have no idea where this is! Where are we? Liu Gang, go take a look at that road sign!”

He was shouting at the top of his lungs.

Jiang Cheng: “...”

“Oh, it says Zuoliang South Road. Do you know where that is?”

Jiang Cheng: “...”

This was getting harder and harder to describe.

“You’ve only just gotten there?” Jiang Cheng asked. “At this rate, it’ll take you at least another half hour.”

“Right, right, that sounds about right. Wait for us, okay? We’ll definitely make it!”

That last sentence sounded more like he was trying to encourage himself.

After hanging up, Jiang Cheng told everyone, “There’s a problem.”

They all had a very, very unreliable feeling about this.

Everyone had heard it too. They exchanged looks.

While they waited, they cleared several floors of zombies from a building next door.

They didn’t go any higher. It would look bad if the others arrived and found no one there. After clearing a few floors, they came back down and returned to the entrance of the television station to wait.

Fortunately, Jiang Cheng carried a great deal of supplies with her. She took out drinks and handed them around.

The sun was shining down, and they were drinking cold beverages. It was an unexpectedly rare moment of leisure.

More than ten minutes later than expected, the other group finally appeared.

From far away, their main force could be seen emerging onto the road.

A bizarre metal cage covered a bizarre multi-person vehicle powered by foot.

There were quite a few people, and the whole thing was made of metal. Rolling toward them, it even created the illusion of an iron cavalry charging forward.

That was, until they huffed and puffed their way to the entrance of the television station.

Everyone: “...”

They had really worn the students out.

That metal cage was no lightweight. They had set out early that morning and pedaled all the way to the Huairou Road district government office.

They had spent the entire morning killing zombies, which had drained a tremendous amount of their strength.

At noon, they drank tap water and gnawed on toasted mantou.

They found some ham sausages, biscuits, chocolate, and other food in the district government offices. The first zombie disaster had practically given everyone a hoarding disorder. This time, many people had managed to survive in office buildings by relying on all sorts of instant noodles, cookies, chocolate, biscuits, and even compressed biscuits that people had kept in their workplaces.

Then they went on a frantic search for phones.

The children didn’t have phones, so they picked up a huge pile at the district government office. Now everyone had one.

Nobody wanted the black or silver-gray high-end business phones. Everyone scrambled for the ones with bright, attractive, or stylish cases.

Phones with cameras and music functions were especially popular.

Some even had to be assigned through rock-paper-scissors or odd-or-even hand games.

Then they cycled from the Guangxiu District government office to the television station.

Guangxiu District was way up north! Only after looking at a map did they realize that the television station was over by the West Second Ring Road!

A car could maintain its speed, or even floor the accelerator and race along. A bicycle carrying a huge metal cage, however, could only get slower and slower.

After all, human stamina was limited, and by the end of the day, they had nearly exhausted theirs.

The fire- and metal-type ability users were especially listless.

They had also needed to kill zombies along the way.

The electric-type ability users were doing somewhat better. But because the metal cage conducted electricity, they were afraid of accidentally electrocuting their classmates, so they hadn’t dared use their abilities on the road.

In short, by the time they reached the television station on the West Second Ring Road while pedaling that metal cage, the students were utterly spent.

Little Huang could hardly believe his eyes.

It wasn’t until the group of strange geniuses “opened” the metal cage and emerged one after another, looking utterly exhausted, that he was finally able to confirm it.

“Number Fourteen Middle School?!”

The students had actually brought back plenty of clothes from Hong’an Market, but for the sake of looking impressive when they acted as a group, they all wore their school uniforms whenever they went out.

They looked incredibly neat and their spirits were lifted.

A short boy who looked like an elementary school student rushed forward.

“Senior Huang Xuetao!”

Several others ran over after him.

“Huang Xuetao!”

They threw their arms around Little Huang, laughing and crying at the same time.

Little Huang had lost his father on the very first day of the first zombie disaster. After that, everyone had instinctively treated him as an adult.

They had been doing so for so long that they had grown used to it.

Only now, seeing Little Huang embrace a whole crowd of children of every size, tears of excitement in his eyes, did everyone suddenly realize—

He was still just a kid.

And there weren’t just one or two children.

They were all children.

Older boys whose voices had already changed, and younger ones whose voices had not.

The smallest few looked practically like elementary school students.

Jiang Cheng: “...”

Everyone fell silent.

Jiang Cheng stepped forward and asked, hands clasped behind her back, after scanning the crowd, “Are you the ones who want to establish the Guangxiu District provisional government?”

The students all knew her.

Whenever this auntie appeared on television, she wore silver armor and carried a crescent-shaped shovel. When she spoke, her eyes seemed to pierce through the television screen and stare directly at every single person.

The students thought she was incredibly cool and had all been looking forward to meeting her in person.

But only after facing her for real did they understand how much pressure she could bring to bear.

Her pitch-black eyes swept over them, and none of them dared meet her gaze.

Leader.

The concept surfaced naturally in everyone’s mind.

So this was what someone had to be like to lead other people.

“Ah, yes, yes. That’s us,” said a tall, burly boy, stammering.

A thick layer of black fuzz covered his upper lip.

The others, meanwhile, were all staring at the drink cans in the adults’ hands or lying on the ground nearby, secretly swallowing.

They had carried a huge metal cage and ridden bicycles for an hour. They had drunk all their water, and their throats were parched!

Jiang Cheng nodded without immediately pressing for more details. In a gentle voice, she said, “It must have been exhausting riding all this way. Have something to drink first.”

She pointed, and everyone quickly moved aside. In the middle of the plaza outside the television station was an inflatable swimming pool—brightly colored and printed with cartoon designs.

Large chunks of ice floated inside, drifting slowly with the current. Even more drinks were bobbing along with the ice.

The people from the Youth Apartments had practically cleared out Mai Duoduo.

They had hauled away large quantities of freezers, including commercial ice-making machines. The fish in the aquatic section had been scooped out first, and the tanks, water and all, had been stored in Jiang Cheng’s space. The purifiers and water-circulation oxygenators had been transferred to the Youth Apartments as well.

Basically, anything that might be useful had been carried away. Take it all, take it all.

There were now people specifically assigned to raise the fish.

When they had left that morning, they had loaded the tanks with huge blocks of ice.

Jiang Cheng’s space could not prevent heat from escaping, but it lost heat more slowly than an ordinary space would. Even now, there were still plenty of large ice chunks in the water, glittering beneath the sunlight.

The sight left the students, whose throats felt ready to burst into flames, staring wide-eyed.

They were led over to collect drinks. Though everyone was desperately thirsty, they still lined up properly. Once they received their drinks, they passed them to the people behind them first.

The boys gave theirs to the girls, and the older students gave theirs to the younger ones.

Those who received drinks said thank you.

They were polite and orderly.

The adults took it all in, realizing that these were good kids.

After all, they were all top students from a prestigious secondary school. Not only did the school have strict discipline and an excellent atmosphere, but its students had already been selected from among countless others.

Only after the children had gulped down their ice-cold drinks and seemed to come back to life did Jiang Cheng turn to the student leader and ask, “Do you have a safe base?”

“Yes. We’re staying at the school.”

“Do you have food?”

“Yes. We cleared out a nearby produce market.”

“Do you have anyone with wood-based abilities who can provide a steady supply of food?”

“...Ah, no.”

“How have you arranged the management of your supplies? How do you prevent warehouse managers from abusing their positions? How do you deal with theft and embezzlement?”

“Ah?”

“How do you coordinate the distribution of supplies between refugees and the local residents? How do you determine the ratio of supplies allocated to combat personnel and noncombatants?”

“Ah?”

“How do you encourage and attract refugees to participate in collective action and labor? What are you offering them as compensation?”

“Ah? No, we... They just stay there... We’re the ones doing all the work...”

It was not surprising in the least.

Jiang Cheng nodded and asked, “So, do you still want to be this provisional government?”

The students fell silent.

In truth, many of them had already begun to lose heart halfway through the bike ride.

What was stranger was that back at school, when they faced a few teachers and parents—and even the survivors they had rescued—they had never felt like children. Instead, they had thought, We’re amazing.

But once they arrived at the television station and stood face-to-face with Jiang Cheng, the feeling that she was an adult and they were children became overwhelmingly strong.

The grand, surging confidence they had possessed that morning had mostly faded by afternoon.

No one said a word.

Jiang Cheng began by offering them some encouragement. “Everything you’ve done up to this point is astonishing. You’ve already taken on far more than anyone your age should have to.”

Praise finally allowed the students to straighten their backs a little, and their morale recovered somewhat.

“But the responsibilities a government has to shoulder are enormous, and there are far too many problems it has to face.” Jiang Cheng began to turn the conversation in another direction.

By this point, the students no longer felt especially disappointed. After everything they had gone through that day, by the time they reached the television station, they had already begun reassessing themselves.

“Are there no adults at the school?” Jiang Cheng asked. “Refugees don’t count.”

“There are. Three teachers and nine parents.”

Jiang Cheng hit the nail on the head. “You came out without permission, didn’t you? The adults disagreed with you, didn’t they?”

The students looked up at the sky, down at the ground, scratched their heads, and cleared their throats.

Jiang Cheng smiled.

They really were still children. They had not truly been tempered by society. Even if they were adults by age, their minds were still those of children.

Jiang Cheng extended an olive branch. “Come back to the High-Tech New District with us.”

But the children exchanged glances, communicated their decision without words, and still refused.

“We still want to stay in Guangxiu District. We may not be able to run a government, but our school is large, and there are lots of empty classrooms. We have plenty of clothes and quilts, and we can shelter many people.”

“We’ll do our best to rescue them.”

“Auntie Jiang, is that okay?”