Chapter 182

On Jiang Cheng and Mo Li Living Together

Back when Mo Li was just a kitten, no one thought there was anything unusual about it. Later, when Mo Li learned to transform into a giant cat and became overwhelmingly the strongest fighter of them all, everyone could do little more than envy him.

But now Mo Li was human. Although he could still turn into a cat, Jiang Cheng had ordered him to stay in human form whenever he had nothing to do during the day, so that he could get used to being human.

Everyone felt as though they had an itch they couldn’t scratch!

They all wanted to know whether Mo Li was human or a cat at night!

Computers could still be used, but there was no internet anymore, so people could no longer create dozens of small chat groups and discuss things to their hearts’ content as they had in the past.

They could only exchange a few whispered words during breaks at work. They were as furtive as the old aunties who used to gossip at the entrance of a village.

Women, from middle-school girls to elderly aunties, generally accepted the situation quite readily.

He was so tall, so handsome, and had such a good figure. Who cared what kind of animal he had been before?

The men, meanwhile, were more interested in whether Mo Li was stronger in human form or in his giant-cat form.

Some people even went to ask Mo Li directly.

“They’re both me,” Mo Li replied.

In any case, they were both him. He could transform however he pleased.

Mo Li was clearly different with Jiang Cheng. With other people, he didn’t refuse when familiar acquaintances patted his head or scratched under his chin.

Strangers, on the other hand, were strangers. They could look all they wanted, but they weren’t allowed to touch him.

Mo Li also kept trying to perch on Li Jiangbing’s head as he had in the past.

Li Jiangbing refused with absolute determination.

He could accept a pair of adorable cat bells on his head, but he absolutely would not accept those belonging to a human male.

Ever since Mo Li had become human, the rumor that “Jiang Cheng and Song Jingshuo are dating” had collapsed on its own.

Song Jingshuo suddenly found himself with a great many more admirers.

As for Jiang Cheng... things remained just as they had been before.

First there had been Song Jingshuo, and now there was Mo Li.

Even those who liked Jiang Cheng would take one look at the competition, make a realistic assessment of themselves, and quietly give up.

A great many temporary couples appeared among the refugees.

It was much like the couples formed on construction sites in the old days.

Whether they had lovers or were already married before, if two people happened to hit it off now, they simply got together and made a life.

Working together to earn performance points and exchange them for supplies was much more economical than doing it alone.

With Jiang Cheng’s approval, the teachers from No. 14 Middle School opened a school.

It was mainly for the little children.

Middle-school students—especially high-school students—had already completed their basic education. Even the younger middle-school students had learned most of the general knowledge they needed.

But if the little ones weren’t educated, they would grow up illiterate.

There were very few forms of entertainment left. Fortunately, the library in the Development Zone had not been burned down. After being tidied up, it reopened.

It was crowded every day.

After losing television and computers, humanity began returning to books.

Most people’s work involved physical labor. With their minds free to wander, they lived simple lives from day to day and, strangely enough, didn’t feel that the work was especially hard.

Sometimes, they felt that life wasn’t impossible after all.

They even felt that things were going fairly well.

Changxing District, which had first proposed using radio communications, had someone skilled in amateur radio who upgraded the equipment into a shortwave radio station.

The amount of information they received increased dramatically.

Some broadcasts came from other cities and regions. Some were even in languages no one could understand, presumably from foreign countries.

That person drove specially to the major residential areas and delivered the new equipment he had tinkered together to each district.

The Tech New District also acquired a shortwave radio station and could now receive all kinds of information.

It felt... as though an isolated island had suddenly reached the shore.

They learned that there were still people alive beyond S City.

Everyone’s circumstances were different.

In some places, the water and electricity had stopped around forty-eight hours after the second zombie-virus outbreak, and people had been struggling desperately from the very beginning.

Other areas, like S City, had well-organized communities and capable leaders who guided everyone in saving themselves.

Some of the people transmitting over the radio represented organizations, while others were individuals.

Organizations like the one in S City mostly exchanged useful information: where resources could be obtained, where water sources and arable land could be found, what plants were suitable for cultivation, and where to locate a particular piece of equipment when a problem required it.

Many genuine difficulties and problems were solved over the radio.

But there was even more useless information.

There were plenty of lunatics and crazies, too. In any case, they were mostly not right in the head.

Some sounded as though they lived alone, as if there wasn’t another living person around them. They seemed determined to chatter endlessly over the radio twenty-four hours a day without saying a single useful thing.

They sounded as if they had already gone mad.

But even mad people had an audience.

Somehow, there were listeners who enjoyed them, saying that the broadcasts helped them unwind.

Amid the large crowd of rambling lunatics, one frequency stood out and unexpectedly attracted a considerable audience.

There was a man and a woman on it. The man’s voice sounded old, as though he were elderly. The woman was somewhat younger.

The two did not seem to have any connection, nor did they appear to be in the same location. Whenever the old man was broadcasting, however, the woman often cut in.

The two of them held lengthy discussions about the zombie problem.

They debated constantly and often argued.

It sounded like a talk show, yet it was extremely popular, and many people enjoyed listening.

By coincidence, the time they most loved to argue was exactly the period when the Youth Apartments had electricity every evening.

At everyone’s request, during that time each night, the radio station was connected to the building’s broadcast system so that everyone could hear the “program” echoing through the corridors.

It became the Tech New District’s most popular “show.”

The old man seemed to have the surname Jiang, so everyone called him Uncle Jiang.

The somewhat younger woman appeared to have the surname Mao, and people called her Sister Mao.

Many of Uncle Jiang and Sister Mao’s theories about zombies and superpowers aligned with those of Zhao Yi and Gao Yuxuan. Zhao Yi, in particular, loved listening to them.

During that time, the lights were on, every household left its door open, and people listened to the debates coming through the corridor speakers.

It was much like the days decades ago, before televisions had become widespread, when neighbors crowded together to watch a television set.

One day, Uncle Jiang said, “It’s getting cold. A major drop in temperature is coming.”

He said this at the end of October, around the time Zhao Yi had told Zhang Lesi and Gao Yuxuan about his fears.

The temperature suddenly began to fall.

Since it was already the end of October, the drop was normal enough. Winter was coming, after all.

Everyone spent their performance points exchanging them for padded clothing and thick quilts.

But surviving the winter could not depend on individuals alone. Otherwise, a great many people would probably freeze to death.

The temporary government of the Tech New District held several meetings, pooling everyone’s ideas and trying to find a way to solve the problem of winter heating.

Fortunately, the Tech New District had its own heating company, which provided centralized heating for the residential area.

Because the explosion on October 5 had destroyed many of the underground pipes, centralized heating was no longer possible.

But the heating company had coal.

A heating company did not wait until autumn to hurriedly transport in the coal needed for winter. The coal for winter was prepared during the summer—indeed, it had even been stockpiled before the first zombie disaster.

Ever since the disaster in June, the heating company had been nothing but an empty compound. There had been no living person left there, and no one had returned to work after the disaster passed.

There were simply too many things that needed dealing with at the time. Arranged by urgency, the Development Zone government clearly didn’t consider the heating company a priority. Or perhaps it was already somewhere on the list.

Heaven had still left everyone a way out.

On October 5, the day of the massive explosion, underground wells in the heating company’s yard had also erupted in flames, but they were far enough from the coal piles that the fire never reached them.

Besides, the heating company was right next to a residential area. The superpowered people were dispatched to cut off the underground utility lines, and before long they had brought the fire in the Technology New District’s residential zone under control.

No one had been thinking about the heating company, but somehow its entire yard of coal had been saved.

So those who save themselves are saved by Heaven.

Now, that coal could finally be put to use.

The plan they ultimately settled on was to provide each household with an individual iron stove, burning coal briquettes or honeycomb briquettes.

A vigorous campaign to build stoves and manufacture fuel began.

The design for the iron stoves came from Engineer Yu.

He sighed. “We’ve gone back to the old days.”

And it wasn’t just Engineer Yu. Many of the younger people had experienced the era of burning honeycomb briquettes when they were children.

They really had gone back to the old days.

When travel was slow, and people had time to spare.

Metal-type superpowered people worked together with the mechanics to develop crushers and coal-briquette presses.

Honeycomb briquettes were laid out to dry all over the heating company’s yard and along the roads outside.

A great many new jobs were created.

Besides padded clothes and thick quilts, old-fashioned kettles, vacuum flasks, and hot-water bottles also became hot-selling items.

Song Jingshuo watched the inventory dwindle at a frightening speed.

Aunt Pan said, “I wonder if the wholesale market in Yuezhuang is still there. Or whether it burned down.”

Before all this, Song Jingshuo had never known anything about one wholesale market or another.

When he bought name-brand clothes, they had to be from the current season. He wouldn’t buy anything from an out-of-season sale, much less from an outlet store.

There were plenty of wealthy people in his circle. You could tell at a glance.

They immediately organized people and vehicles to go there.

Fortunately, the wholesale market had taken good fire-prevention measures. The warehouses stood separately, with firebreaks between them.

Two warehouses had burned down, but several others remained completely intact.

A wholesale market really did have everything.

It was a huge haul.

They brought it all back and began an extensive exchange program using merit points.

The merit points everyone had saved up finally became useful.

The iron stoves were distributed to households free of charge.

Pairs of earth- and metal-type superpowered people went door to door to install them.

They had to punch a hole through the wall and extend the chimney outside. That required the earth- and metal-type users to work together.

Zhao Yi was also so busy during this period that his feet barely touched the ground.

There was no need to worry about Zhang Lesi, though.

She had to see patients, and they had assigned her a personal aide to accompany her during the day.

She still couldn’t see a thing, which worried everyone terribly. She herself, however, was the least concerned.

She calmly analyzed the situation. “Maybe I’ve been living too comfortably. Being unable to see hasn’t affected me, so psychologically I don’t have a strong enough desire to recover.”

Then she boasted, “I have excellent taste in men.”

Coal was allocated according to the number of people in each household. Anyone who wanted more had to exchange merit points for it. If you wanted to make it through the winter warmly, you’d better not be lazy. Go to work.

At the same time, communities throughout the area began building free public warming rooms.

Some were made with glass, others with plastic sheeting.

Fire-type superpowered people took shifts keeping the warming rooms heated.

There were so many fire-type superpowered people that they weren’t worth much. The pay for this job was fairly good, so competition was fierce.

Once inside, you would often see a fire-type user sprawled in a deck chair, dozing.

Several small-to-medium-sized fireballs floated in the air.

If they were too large, they might burn someone. If they were too small, they wouldn’t provide enough heat, so there had to be quite a few of them.

The job demanded extremely fine control over the fireballs, which was why it paid well.

Sometimes, when you saw the fireballs suddenly shrink as though they were about to go out, you knew the fire-type user had nearly fallen fully asleep while dozing. You had to hurry over and kick the deck chair, jolting him awake.

The fireballs would swell up again.

It was so warm and cozy that it really did make people sleepy.

During the day, if they had no work, people could save coal at home by staying in the public warming rooms. Many liked to spend their time there.

In an era when entertainment options were scarce, the warming rooms became social hubs, much like public restrooms had been several decades earlier.

The warming rooms had little stools, though people were also welcome to bring their own more comfortable chairs.

Some even brought bedding, swept a clean corner with a broom, and lay down to sleep.

Buckets of peanut shells were carried outside one after another.

That was because roasted peanuts were provided free of charge.

They not only gave everyone something to occupy their mouths while listening to gossip, but also supplied plenty of calories to help ward off the cold.

No one knew exactly how many zombies Song Jingshuo and Zeng Qiang’s group had buried underground. In any case, ever since they started using zombies as fertilizer, the peanut harvest had become absurdly abundant. Now the peanuts were being distributed as a public benefit.

They had manure fertilizer now, too. According to Auntie Xue and Auntie Qian, their superpowers made handling it particularly easy.

Xiao Dan stuffed Wang Yunya into a heating shift at the warming room. The pay was high, and the work was easy.

Every day, the young Wang Yunya listened to all kinds of gossip until her eyes went wide.

“What happened yesterday?”

“The first wife brought the mistress and the second mistress along to catch the fifth mistress in the act.”

“Wow. Did they fight?”

“They did.”

“Then didn’t they all get whipped?”

“No. The first wife took the whole beating herself. He was the only one who got whipped. The fifth mistress even hugged him and cried, saying she was sorry.”

“...What happened afterward?”

“Afterward, they picked dates and made arrangements so that no one’s schedules conflicted.”

“Exactly. As long as there’s no conflict, it’s fine.”

Under these special circumstances, the institution of monogamy had lost its power to restrain people.

Many were, in practice, living in multi-partner relationships.

Both men and women.

As long as you excelled in one area—looks, figure, superpowers, or specialized knowledge and skills that could earn merit points—as long as you had one outstanding strength, it was easy to find a partner.

Because the fights over catching people cheating in these multi-partner relationships never ended, there was always an opening in the whipping-execution post.

To avoid being whipped, everyone now advocated not resorting to violence. Catch your cheating partners civilly.