Chapter 196

Li Feng said that seventy-three people would go with him.

Li Feng had more than two hundred people under him, but only seventy-three were willing to go with him. He was delighted.

“Because,” he said, “those seventy-three are all my comrades.”

The survivors from the command post had eventually gone their separate ways. Everyone had their own ideas and chose what they believed was right.

After learning the whole truth, Li Feng and his seventy-three comrades made the same choice: they chose to join Jiang Cheng.

The superpowers of these former soldiers were astonishingly formidable.

Li Feng had a fire-based ability. Wu Jiancheng and Cao Jiacai would have to combine their powers to barely match him.

Finding out what conspiracy lay behind the zombie virus had become Li Feng’s obsession.

Whether it was foreigners or aliens, he had to go and see for himself.

The convoy headed west.

They were 1,500 kilometers away. The journey was not going to be quick.

Some roads had been destroyed by earthquakes, while others had been ruined by freezing during the extreme cold. The drivers did their best, pressing the accelerator to the floor.

After driving for a day, they encountered survivors fleeing eastward the next day.

Only half of them remained.

It was the first time so many people had burst into tears upon seeing Jiang Cheng.

Li Jiangbing listened woodenly as they told him how Su Yu had stayed behind to cover everyone’s retreat.

Zhao Yi’s lips trembled faintly.

Those who had escaped naturally had not seen what happened at the very end, but from their descriptions, it was clear that those who stayed behind could not possibly have survived.

“All right. I understand. Everyone, get some rest first, then...” Jiang Cheng said.

Jiang Cheng thought she had kept her emotions under control quite well, just as she usually did.

But everyone was staring at her in utter silence.

Jiang Cheng was puzzled.

Even Song Jingshuo was staring at her, looking as though he wanted to say something but couldn’t.

Under everyone’s gaze, Jiang Cheng raised a hand and touched her face.

Her fingers came away wet with tears.

Jiang Cheng herself did not know who she was crying for.

She still clearly remembered that in June and July, she had not particularly liked Su Yu.

That girl’s heart was too soft. In an environment like that, being too kind and soft-hearted was, in Jiang Cheng’s eyes, a burden.

When had things changed?

How many people whose names she knew had fallen behind along the way?

And what about those who had been injured on June 16, when the first group had gone downstairs to kill zombies?

Looking back now, Jiang Cheng realized how heartless she had been toward them then.

She should at least have asked their names.

At least offered them a word of comfort.

At least shown them some respect.

Every one of them had been worthy of respect.

How had she been able to remain so cold back then?

When had she become the person she was now?

Song Jingshuo led people in settling everyone down.

Amid the crowd, he spotted Auntie Qian.

Auntie Qian was watching him with a somber look.

Song Jingshuo hurried over, delighted to see her.

Auntie Qian had also narrowly escaped death.

Song Jingshuo comforted her gently.

But Auntie Qian told him to lower his head, then whispered something in his ear.

Song Jingshuo’s expression changed.

He straightened and stared at Auntie Qian.

Auntie Qian stared back without flinching.

Everything she had told him was true.

She had no personal grudge against that person, nor any motive to frame a powerful ability user.

She simply was not good at fighting, so she had always stood beside Su Yu and watched the front line. When they had been talking, she had actually been standing right behind him.

At that moment, with everyone’s lives hanging in the balance, she had not dared interrupt them. The little old woman had gone completely unnoticed.

He had not realized that anyone was standing behind him. Auntie Qian had heard their entire conversation and witnessed everything that had happened.

Song Jingshuo turned and found Jiang Cheng, then quietly told her what Auntie Qian had said.

Jiang Cheng turned to look. Through the crowd, she met Auntie Qian’s eyes.

People walked back and forth between them.

Auntie Qian looked at the two young people in the distance and left the choice to them.

Zhao Yi asked many questions about the zombie army.

Someone said, “I don’t know if I saw it wrong, but I think I saw someone I knew.”

Zhao Yi initially thought he meant that some of those who had died in battle had quickly turned into zombies and joined the zombie ranks.

“No, that’s not what I mean,” the person said. “It was my neighbor. He died back in June.”

It was not just one person. Once someone had spoken up, others began saying, “I think I saw someone I knew too. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me.”

He had seen people who had frozen to death during the extreme cold.

Many people said that during the battle, they had caught fleeting glimpses of zombie faces that looked like people they had once known.

All of those people had died one after another during the ten months since the first outbreak of the zombie virus.

They had died at different times and in all kinds of ways.

Zhao Yi stood in the open space, lost in thought for a long time.

The temporary buildings were finished, and the cadres were notified to attend a meeting.

Zhou Wang hurried over.

Everyone of any importance was there.

Auntie Qian sat in a corner.

Song Jingshuo was speaking with Li Jiangbing. They were standing so close that they were practically whispering to each other.

Li Jiangbing suddenly turned his head, his eyes red.

As soon as Zhou Wang arrived, he asked, “Jiang Cheng, what do we do next? Where are we going?”

He spoke first, asked the first question, and seized the initiative.

When people felt guilty, they tended to do unnecessary things to prove that they were not.

Mo Li stood in the doorway.

Song Jingshuo toyed with the vine bracelet around his wrist, pinched off a leaf, and tossed it onto the muddy ground.

Jiang Cheng looked at him with a strange expression.

Could he be called a bad person? His contributions to the group were actually greater than those of many others.

Could he be called a good person? And yet he had done something like this.

“Zhou Wang.” It was Li Jiangbing who spoke.

His voice was hoarse.

Zhou Wang knew that he was grieving. Everyone knew that Li Jiangbing had feelings for Su Yu.

Zhou Wang was about to say a few words of comfort.

But Li Jiangbing asked, “You told her to hold on and said you were taking people to lure the enemy away, didn’t you?”

Zhou Wang’s face changed drastically.

The wind-type ability user turned and ran without hesitation, only to trip and land flat on his face.

At some point, thin vines had sprouted from the ground and wrapped around his ankles. Those who knew the truth watched indifferently.

Those who did not know what was happening were utterly stunned.

They looked at Jiang Cheng, then Song Jingshuo, then at everyone else.

No one spoke.

No one wanted to defend someone who had deceived a comrade into going to her death.

“She volunteered to stay behind!” Zhou Wang shouted. “She volunteered!”

Li Jiangbing said, “That happened later. It has nothing to do with what you did. I’m asking you: did you trick Su Yu into holding on, then run away by yourself?”

Zhou Wang struggled desperately to defend himself. “She was that kind of person! She was bound to stay behind anyway! She would have done it even without me! She was a saint!”

But in truth, at that moment, Zhou Wang had not known that Su Yu would give up her life to cover everyone’s retreat.

He had thought she would escape with the others.

He was simply afraid they would not make it out if they fled together.

Zhou Wang had actually regretted what he did back at the gas station.

If he had known Su Yu was that kind of person, he would never have gone out of his way to do it. Then he would not have had to suffer the guilt afterward.

Li Jiangbing’s eyes were deep and cold as a frozen abyss.

“She may have been a good person. She could choose to sacrifice herself for everyone,” he said. “But you had no right to trick her into dying.”

A sphere of water appeared out of thin air.

A long time ago, Jiang Cheng had told Li Jiangbing that water could not kill zombies, but it could kill people.

She was always teasing and frightening him.

How could water possibly kill someone?

The sphere of water closed around Zhou Wang’s head.

Zhou Wang charged left and right, struggling to escape, but the vines held fast to his feet, leaving him no way out of the room.

And Mo Li was standing in the doorway.

Zhou Wang collapsed onto the ground and rolled around, desperately slapping at his own face, trying to disperse the water.

But the water ball followed him with deadly precision. There was no escaping it.

Before long, Zhou Wang drowned before the eyes of everyone present.

The floor opened, and his body sank into it, buried on the spot.

Suddenly, the room filled with the crackle of electric current.

Everyone turned around. Sitting on the platform specially built by Zhao Yi was the shortwave radio.

It had started again.

Playing tricks and pretending to be supernatural.

In a house where someone had just died, it was especially chilling.

The mysterious man’s voice rang out: “Run. Run now. He’s coming.”

Jiang Cheng asked, “Who?”

“The Corpse Emperor.”

Jiang Cheng asked, “Does he really exist?”

“If you don’t run, you’ll see him.”

“Where should we run?”

The mysterious man laughed. “There’s nowhere to run.”

Li Feng flew into a rage. He rushed over and smacked the shortwave radio. “Who are you? Who the hell are you?”

The mysterious man only kept muttering:

“Run. Hurry and run.”

“If you don’t run, he’s coming.”

“...He’s here.”

“I’m here.”

The room fell deathly silent.

“I’m here.”

A massive block of concrete came crashing down from above, smashing the shortwave radio into a heap of parts before vanishing without a trace.

Everyone turned to look at Jiang Cheng.

Her eyes were pitch-black.

“Go tell everyone,” she said. “The zombies are coming again. Anyone who wants to run should leave now.”

But where could they run?

That was the question everyone asked most often.

Those who had fled from the west and those who had come from the east gathered together and exchanged information.

The north had truly split open into a vast canyon.

There was a zombie army in the west.

In the east, there were tsunamis and floods. The water had spread all the way from Q City to D City. When the people from the east left D City, the water was already up to their knees. The people of D City were scattering in all directions as well.

The central region had become a dead zone after the extreme cold. Now that the weather was warming up, it was about to become a plague zone.

No one had gone south. But since the ghost radio had said that the continental shelf was sinking and the coastline was advancing inland, it clearly had no intention of letting anyone survive.

Zhao Yi’s theory had been completely proven correct.

Everyone now understood. The people who had created the zombie virus had never intended to let humanity live.

Many people sat on the ground, sobbing uncontrollably.

Finally, someone asked, “Where’s Jiang Cheng? Where did Jiang Cheng go?”

They still hoped that Jiang Cheng could lead them somewhere—anywhere, even the ends of the earth—as long as there was a direction to follow and some hope to cling to.

Night had already fallen. The fire-type users had lit the fire boxes and torches.

Firelight danced across Jiang Cheng’s face, making her look both calm and insane.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “I’m staying right here.”

“I want to see the Corpse Emperor.”

“I want to ask him why he’s toying with us like this.”

“Anyone who wants to leave, leave now.”

But they had already been driving for two days, covering at least seven or eight hundred kilometers.

If the zombie army could still catch up after traveling that distance, then it meant there was nowhere safe left in the world.

Jiang Cheng herself was extremely curious: What did the Corpse Emperor look like?

But no one had seen the Corpse Emperor.

All they had seen was the zombie army—every kind of grotesque, bizarre, and terrifying creature imaginable, as though they were the collective product of someone’s entire imagination.

There were even giant zombies leading the rear guard.

The Corpse Emperor should have been somewhere behind them, but no one had seen his appearance yet.

This man who was always putting on mysterious airs...

Perhaps in response to the question of what the Corpse Emperor looked like, he arrived in grand splendor at daybreak the following morning.

How grand was he?

The zombie army opened the way, an endless sea of corpses.

The giant zombies had been reduced to laborers, carrying a palace.

Yes, a palace.

It was tall, magnificent, and gilded from top to bottom, as though he were afraid Jiang Cheng might not see it.

If this were a comic, Zhao Yi would definitely have cursed at this point:

“What the hell is wrong with the author?”