Chapter 193

Killing intent was impossible to hide.

From the moment Li Feng recognized Jiang Cheng, killing intent began to radiate from him. Mo Li noticed it at once.

But Jiang Cheng raised a hand to stop Mo Li.

She looked at the old acquaintance pointing a gun at her. “Li Feng?”

Li Feng’s eyes were filled with fury. “Talk! Which country sent you? Talk—! Which country’s spy are you?”

On August 29, the military camp suffered heavy casualties.

It was not until August 30 that Li Feng finally had time to catch his breath. He remembered to open the locker and retrieve the phone he had been required to turn in at headquarters. He wanted to contact his family and friends—to see whether any of them were still alive.

The moment he turned on his phone, he saw the text message from Jiang Cheng.

Accidents couldn’t be predicted in advance. Only planned attacks could be anticipated.

What kind of person could foresee a virus attack capable of destroying an entire nation?

Li Feng had felt ice-cold all over.

He instinctively dialed the number, but just as the phone began to ring, a comrade shouted, “Li Feng! Move—!”

He had no choice but to hang up and run after them.

At some point during the battles that followed, his phone was lost. He had no time to look for it, either.

Losing the phone meant losing the numbers of the people he had added at the time. From then on, he lost contact with all of them.

The next ten months were a long period of wandering and hardship.

Fighting. Surviving. Searching everywhere for an organization, only to find none.

People’s hearts fractured. Everyone clung to their own opinions, and paths diverged.

When they met again, they had no choice but to personally eliminate those who had fallen.

It was easy to be a single screw within a complete organizational system. You could even become an excellent screw.

Only after the organization collapsed did you realize how difficult it was to become a leader.

The hardest thing was never the zombies. It was people’s hearts.

Leadership was an innate talent, and most people simply didn’t possess it.

Li Feng had endured a great deal of painful growth before becoming the person he was today.

In his search for an organization, he and his comrades traveled through several cities.

But he had never forgotten Jiang Cheng’s text message. He had always wanted to go to S City and ask her about it in person.

Yet when he finally set out for S City, the extreme cold that descended across the central region stopped him once again.

In the end, he returned to D City and put down roots there.

By then, D City had no law or order left.

After arriving, they clashed violently several times with the other factions in the area.

Li Feng showed no mercy, killing decisively and establishing his authority. Only then did they manage to secure their position.

With them around, the other factions no longer dared to act so recklessly.

What he had never expected was that Jiang Cheng would one day appear in this little city.

The veins in Li Feng’s forehead bulged. “Talk—!”

In those ten months, he had seen too much darkness. The fury had seeped into his bones.

If Jiang Cheng said even one wrong word, he would shoot her dead!

He didn’t know whether she had a superpower.

One person’s superpower wasn’t necessarily stronger than another’s.

But no one could dodge a bullet.

They had tested it before—even someone with an exceptionally powerful metal-based ability couldn’t control a high-speed bullet in time.

Bullets might not be particularly effective against zombies, but against humans, they were the most useful weapon there was.

The local toughs gathered around to watch the spectacle.

The people from the Tech New District were deeply surprised.

Zhao Yi, Zhang Lesi, and the others didn’t dare make any rash move. They were visibly tense.

Song Jingshuo understood the situation the moment he heard it.

He turned to Jiang Cheng. “You sent him a text too?”

Jiang Cheng said, “I sent it to everyone in my contacts.”

Li Feng barked, “What are you two talking about!”

Song Jingshuo sighed. “She mass-sent that message to everyone in her contacts that day. More than four hundred people from our residential compound came back.”

He continued, “Have you ever seen a spy expose their own identity like that?”

It was a powerful counterargument.

Li Feng stared at the two of them for a moment before finally lowering his gun.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

The local toughs secretly regretted that the show was over.

Jiang Cheng shifted her gaze toward them and politely asked them to leave. “Sorry, but we—”

The local toughs immediately said, “Oh, sure.”

“We’ll head out, then.”

“Take your time.”

They left reluctantly, disappointed at having missed the rest of the spectacle.

Once there were no outsiders left, Li Feng said, “Explain.”

Jiang Cheng tipped her chin toward the road. “In the car.”

She climbed into a Blade vehicle, and Song Jingshuo followed her.

Li Feng got in as well without hesitation.

Zhang Lesi clicked his tongue. “He’s got quite a temper.”

Zhao Yi sighed. “He must have been through a lot.”

Zhao Yi had been very familiar with Li Feng during that period.

But the warmhearted, passionate young man he knew was completely gone. The Li Feng standing before them now seemed like an entirely different person.

The three of them talked in the vehicle for nearly an hour.

When they got out, all three wore solemn expressions.

Zhang Lesi, Zhao Yi, and Li Jiangbing hurried over. “What happened?”

Jiang Cheng’s face was cold. “Li Feng has never heard of the Corpse Emperor.”

Everyone turned to look at Li Feng.

Li Feng explained, “Supplies are extremely scarce in D City. We’ve been searching for supplies in the major cities nearby.”

“It’s been raining in the west for the past two weeks, so I haven’t gone there recently. But the last time I went was about two weeks ago. There were zombies, yes, but I never heard anything about a Corpse Emperor.”

Everyone exchanged glances.

Li Jiangbing said, “Could he be... messing with us?”

If so, that alien was unbelievably bored.

Jiang Cheng said, “It’s not that simple.”

“They” could create extreme cold. They could trigger earthquakes. They could reap countless lives as casually as if they were chatting.

Even if they were merely toying with them, it wouldn’t be as simple as making them waste a trip.

This game they were playing involved human lives.

Li Feng called over one of his men. “Go bring Old Cheng here. Quickly!”

His man immediately drove off in a Jeep.

Li Feng explained, “Old Cheng is a local. He operates a radio. We brought him into the group.”

Being cut off from the world was terrifying in its own way. In D City, they had met this man surnamed Cheng, who listened to the radio using a hand-cranked generator. Li Feng and the others wanted access to the broadcasts, so they took him in.

They brought him over in twenty minutes.

Old Cheng was a middle-aged man. He looked like someone who could scrape by as long as he followed Li Feng.

He said, “That’s right. Brother Jiang and Sister Mao—I listened to them too. That’s how I knew about the extreme cold in the central and eastern regions.”

“The Corpse Emperor? What Corpse Emperor?”

“I haven’t received their broadcasts for three days—no, four days now.”

“There was an earthquake at the time. I don’t know where it happened, but we felt it here. I figured the two of them might have died in the earthquake.”

Four days ago had been the great earthquake in S City.

After that, the radio station began acting strangely.

“They” had stopped pretending.

But not everything they said was a lie, because Li Feng confirmed, “The north really has become a massive canyon.”

“We were in E City yesterday. Some people had come there from the north.”

“The earthquake was extremely severe. The canyon must be at least a mile wide, running east to west. I don’t know how long it is. In any case, the north and south have been cut off.”

“Those people were afraid the ground would continue collapsing, so they fled south.”

Uncle Jiang had said that there was a canyon in the north, that the coastline had advanced in the south, that the extreme cold was moving westward, and that a Corpse Emperor had appeared in the east.

It wasn’t frightening if everything was true.

It wasn’t frightening if everything was false.

What was frightening was when truth and lies were mixed together, making you want to grind your teeth in hatred.

Since Uncle Jiang had been able to come up with a name like “Corpse Emperor,” “they” must certainly have been capable of creating such an existence.

The question was, where was the Corpse Emperor?

It couldn’t be that it was in...

How infuriating.

Although Jiang Cheng had said that splitting the group in two would help share the risks, deep down, she still believed the danger was on her side.

She had always felt that she should be the one to face the most difficult, grueling, and dangerous challenges.

Once she drew the danger toward herself, the risks on the other side would be reduced, and their chances of survival would be higher.

She had already begun to sense that “they” were toying with her.

Perhaps they simply wanted to make things more interesting.

But she had overlooked one thing: What if the way they toyed with you wasn’t by playing with you directly, but by playing with the people you wanted to protect?

Jiang Cheng gritted her teeth.

It was rare to see such an expression on her face. She usually kept her emotions tightly under control.

If even Jiang Cheng lost control of her emotions, it meant the situation was truly serious.

“Jiangbing! Tell everyone that we’re—no, forget everyone. Get me a team. We’re taking one vehicle to Q City!”

Jiang Cheng had to see it with her own eyes.

Uncle Jiang had said “to the east,” and Q City was already on the coast. It was as far east as they could go.

If they reached Q City and didn’t see the Corpse Emperor, that would prove they had been tricked!

Li Feng said, “We can’t get to Q City right now. It’s been raining there for nearly half a month. The roads have been washed away.”

Jiang Cheng turned around and stared into his eyes. “Is it a disaster on that scale?”

Li Feng didn’t know why she was looking at him like that. He said, “More or less. There have been flash floods, and quite a few places have been washed away.”

Jiang Cheng turned back.

Li Feng saw her cheeks twitch slightly as she gritted her teeth.

They quickly assembled a team. Jiang Cheng told Song Jingshuo to stay behind. “You’re in charge here.”

Song Jingshuo didn’t argue. He was a wood-type ability user. Although his combat ability was actually quite strong, the responsibility of providing food was simply too important.

What happened when people didn’t have enough food? D City was a ready-made example.

He nodded. “Even if it really is there, don’t make contact. Retreat immediately.”

He was talking about the Corpse Emperor.

Jiang Cheng agreed, then led the group aboard the vehicle.

Li Feng climbed in as well. “I’m going with you.”

No one objected.

Q City was less than two hundred kilometers from D City. When the roads were all open, they could make the round trip in a morning by taking the expressway.

Their driver was an experienced veteran who had driven Blade vehicles for years. Once they left the urban area of D City and stopped seeing any living people, he began flooring the accelerator.

Li Feng asked, “What if it isn’t there?”

Jiang Cheng would rather it be there.

She would rather face the Corpse Emperor herself.

“If it isn’t,” she said, “we’ll turn around immediately and go after Su Yu.”

Li Feng knew she meant the other half of the group—the people who had headed west. During the past hour, Jiang Cheng and Song Jingshuo had explained everything to him.

It was a tremendous shock to his worldview.

But considering that zombies and supernatural abilities existed, what could be more shocking to the worldview than zombies and supernatural abilities?

“Su Yu?” Li Feng thought for a while. “Is she the quiet one, the girl who speaks softly? I remember she was wearing a blue-and-white striped T-shirt.”

Li Jiangbing glared at him. “You even remember what she was wearing?”

Li Feng was baffled. “Because it looked like a sailor shirt. What’s wrong with that?”

Sailor shirts were part of the navy’s training uniform.

Li Jiangbing turned his head away. “Nothing.”

Mo Li rested his head on Jiang Cheng’s shoulder.

He could now overcome most of his feline habits while in human form. But his obsession with Jiang Cheng’s shoulder was something he just couldn’t get over.

Li Feng had already noticed Mo Li.

As a man, Mo Li had an almost perfect face and physique, and his entire body radiated strength. Li Feng, who had once been a soldier, could especially sense the way Mo Li always seemed ready to spring into action.

He followed Jiang Cheng everywhere, never more than a step away. Once they got into the vehicle, he sat directly beside Jiang Cheng, and everyone else had clearly grown used to it.

There was an unmistakable physical intimacy between him and Jiang Cheng.

But even if they were a couple, Li Feng still found it jarring to see such a big man insist on resting his head on Jiang Cheng’s shoulder.

Li Feng had once been attracted to Jiang Cheng, but feelings like that faded with time and physical distance.

Over the past few months, he had repeatedly suspected that Jiang Cheng was a foreign spy connected to the zombie virus. He had also endured countless painful experiences, and when all was said and done, those hardships had been caused by the zombie virus.

He had hated Jiang Cheng over and over again in his heart.

Now that he knew it had all been a misunderstanding, his hatred had faded. But it was difficult to recover the feelings he had once held.

Jiang Cheng was no longer the Jiang Cheng she had been before, and Li Feng was no longer the Li Feng he had once been.

They had been apart for less than a year, yet they could never go back to how things had been.

Li Feng simply felt uncomfortable watching an adult man behave in a way that was inappropriate for his age and gender.

He asked Li Jiangbing, “Who’s this handsome guy? I’ve never seen him before.”

Everyone fell silent for a moment.

Everyone in the group had already grown accustomed to accepting that this handsome young man was actually a cat.

But when it came time to explain it to an outsider, they suddenly realized how difficult that would be.

Zhang Lesi leaned over from the back. “You know him.”

Li Feng said, “Huh? Have we met?”

That couldn’t be right. The man stood out so much in a crowd that he was impossible to miss. If Li Feng had seen him before, he couldn’t possibly have no impression of him at all.

Zhang Lesi smiled slyly. “You held him before.”

Li Feng said, “...What do you mean?”

Hearing them talk, Mo Li raised his head and looked back.

He actually recognized Li Feng.

But the moment this man had appeared, he had shown murderous intent toward Jiang Cheng, so Mo Li didn’t like him very much.

“That’s right. You held me before,” he said. “I’m Mo Li.”

Li Feng was still trying to figure out why the name “Mo Li” sounded so familiar.

Zhang Lesi leaned close to Li Feng’s ear. “Mo Li. Jiang Cheng’s black cat. Remember? He evolved and became human.”

It took Li Feng half a minute to process those words.

He stared blankly at Mo Li.

Mo Li was sitting in the front and looking back at him the entire time.

Only then did Li Feng notice that, with the light shining in from the side, the young man’s eyes weren’t actually black. They had a faint green tint.

Li Feng truly felt that the entire world had gone wrong.

What had the aliens done to this world?

Why?