Chapter 20

Everyone first split up to take their purchased items home.

Yin Shi returned to her own place, set her backpack down on the floor, and first lifted up her shirt to check on Mo Li.

Mo Li was still curled up like a baby, pressed tightly against her body. He didn't feel as cold to the touch as before—actually starting to warm up. Jiang Cheng's body was continuously supplying him with heat.

But at this current temperature, if she set him down, he might get cold again.

Jiang Cheng decided to keep carrying Mo Li with her.

The members of the interim owners' committee dropped off their things at home and quickly regrouped downstairs, then headed together to the property management office.

Master Luo and the others were already there too. When they saw the group arrive, everyone moved aside from the computer monitors: "Take a look yourselves."

They watched the surveillance playback.

After they had left at noon, the people in the conference room were in rough shape. Someone was pounding on the door and cursing, someone was crying inside, someone was throwing things.

Among them, one person looked unwell—paced around a couple of times, then huddled in a corner, sitting with knees drawn up. Everyone else was caught up in their own emotions, nobody paid him any attention.

He buried his face in his knees, like he was resting. He stayed in that position until just before Jiang Cheng's group was almost back to the complex—the ones bringing up the rear. Then that person suddenly lifted his head, eyes pitch black.

He had mutated.

It was clear to see that a mutated individual's physical capabilities were enhanced. This one didn't even bother standing up first—he practically "sprang" from his seated knees-drawn position, lunging at the nearest person.

That person was caught completely off guard and tackled to the ground.

Everyone watching the surveillance footage instinctively flinched backward—the common reaction when watching a horror movie. But then they all realized that the people inside were already potential infectees who had open wounds.

The guy from Building 6 reacted fastest. He grabbed a sledgehammer and bashed the mutated individual right in the back of the skull. The others snapped out of it and grabbed whatever they could to help.

Working together, they took the mutant down in a few blows.

But when they rolled the mutant off, Jiang Cheng and the others saw that the person who'd been pinned and bitten had half his face and neck torn to shreds, convulsing on the ground.

The surveillance footage seemed to freeze for a moment.

But it hadn't actually frozen—the wounded person on the floor was clearly twitching. It was the people surrounding him who had gone still.

Even through the screen, you could feel the helplessness.

They all knew they too would mutate, or had been bitten badly by the first one to turn, and were as good as dead.

The basement had no windows. The door was not only locked but also blocked. There was no escape.

Despair filled the room.

The surveillance camera was installed in a corner of the ceiling, so what Jiang Cheng and the others saw was the backs of these people.

But then the man from Building 6 suddenly turned around—through the screen, he glared at them with venom.

Even Jiang Cheng felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up for a split second.

The man from Building 6 dragged a chair over, climbed up onto it, and swung his hammer at the people outside the screen.

The image vanished. The screen filled with static, flickering wildly.

Everyone exchanged stunned looks.

Song Jingshuo said, "This is trouble."

Li Jiangbing: "Huh?"

Jiang Cheng explained: "If any exposed wound means a hundred percent mutation rate, then at the very least, one mutant would remain in that conference room at the end. If several people mutated simultaneously and the others failed to take them out in time and got taken out themselves instead, and mutants can recognize each other and won't attack each other—then there could be multiple mutants left in that room."

Song Jingshuo continued: "That bastard smashed the camera, so we can't know exactly how many mutants are in there. If we open that door without being prepared..."

Everyone understood.

Someone sighed: "What was he thinking?"

It was just harming others without any benefit.

Actually, there was a way to understand it. His mind had snapped, and he wanted to take his revenge on society. The other residents in this complex without exposed wounds—mainly Jiang Cheng, Song Jingshuo, and their group—were the "society" standing right in front of him.

Jiang Cheng sighed faintly and said, "We're not opening that door."

That was a complete rejection of the possibility that there might be survivors—a full death sentence.

No one said a word. The atmosphere in the property management office was heavy.

Then someone said: "The news!"

Everyone turned.

There was a TV mounted on the wall, left on the whole time. Earlier, because everyone was watching the surveillance footage, someone had muted it.

Now the TV was cutting to another final bulletin.

They quickly turned the sound back up.

[...extremely dangerous. We urge all citizens to arm themselves in self-defense. If you encounter a mutated individual, kill them immediately.]

Everyone in the office fell silent, watching the government's second broadcast.

Compared to the morning, it was different. In the morning, they had advised citizens to "stay at home as much as possible" and only "use force to fight back if necessary."

By the afternoon, the guidance had changed.

What had happened between the morning and the afternoon?

"Everyone, brace yourselves. There's no rescue coming," Jiang Cheng said softly. "The military is probably done for."

Everyone stared at her in shock.

Master Luo said frantically, "Miss Jiang, don't say such things."

Jiang Cheng's gaze swept over, her eyes dark and deep.

"I've said before, not every place is as lucky as our complex. The vast majority are people living alone, quietly isolated in their homes."

"Those high-density, concentrated-living places are absolute disaster zones. College dorms, prisons, and the military."

"In military barracks, one room could house a dozen or even dozens of people. That's ultra-high-density accommodation, and their areas of activity are also highly concentrated—mess halls, parade grounds."

"Even in our own complex, open spaces like the garden were disaster zones. But our population density can't compare to the military's."

So many people concentrated in one place, all collapsing together, producing the first wave of original mutants. And when ordinary people encountered the mutants for the first time, how many more would be wounded and exposed before they knew what was happening?

Even if they managed to control the first violent encounter, the next thing would be the wounded starting to mutate.

The agility of an infected mutant wasn't something an original mutant could compare to.

"Military personnel are physically on a level ordinary people can't match. If the degree of enhancement is proportional to their baseline stats, then infected mutants from the military would be far stronger than those made from ordinary civilians."

"Soldiers are the ones who can climb walls, dive into water, and fight."

Just imagining those already powerful bodies being enhanced further... people's faces started going pale.

Fear came from that overwhelming sense of losing control.

Yes—loss of control.

The military's open spaces were too vast, the density of people too high. By the time the upper echelons realized that the wounded would become even more terrifying infected mutants, the situation would already be out of hand.

The sense of security they felt when they returned to the complex had come from the iron gate blocking external mutants out, from the fact that their own internal mutant problem was cleared, from the fact that their supplies would last through the first chaotic days.

Then, they would wait for the government to sort everything out.

But now, being told "no one is coming"—that newly built sense of security shattered in an instant.

The property management office fell into a terrifying silence.

Fortunately, everyone gathered there was part of the interim owners' committee, all of whom had been among the first—or at least among the earlier—respondents to the call to go downstairs and eliminate the mutants.

Compared to other residents, the people on the interim committee were clearly braver or more decisive, and relatively calmer in the face of crisis.

The property management staff, by contrast, showed obvious signs of panic.

"It can't be..." Master Luo muttered. "It can't be..."

One of the younger property employees asked in a daze, "Then... what do we do now?"

Song Jingshuo's mind was also in a whirl. The situation had developed beyond what he'd expected, and he too was still thinking, "What do we do next?"

That was when Jiang Cheng spoke up.

"First," she said, "Master Luo, until the property manager can return to his post, you need to take charge of the property staff."

"We've already stocked up enough food for the property team for half a month. At least for now, things are stable—no need to panic. What matters right now is to guard the main gate well. We worked hard to clear all the mutants inside the compound together; we can't let the ones from the streets outside come back in."

"Master Luo, can you handle managing the property team?"

Jiang Cheng looked straight into Master Luo's eyes, her gaze filled with expectation.

People who work office jobs have a strange trait: when you're running around like a headless chicken and lose all sense of direction, if someone gives you a clear task to do, the working person calms down instead—they even feel like they've grabbed hold of something solid.

Master Luo's panic was pressed down by Jiang Cheng's gaze, and he looked composed again.

He didn't agree right away. He thought for a moment, then nodded firmly. "Yes! Leave the property stuff to me. I've already told the gate crew—they're locking everything up."

Jiang Cheng praised him. "You're thoughtful."

She added, "But I don't think the gate should be manned by just one person. There should be at least two there at the same time. If something happens and one goes down, the other can still raise the alarm. Can you arrange that?"

This time Master Luo agreed immediately. "Sure. You're right."

Jiang Cheng's gaze turned to the others. "Next, what we talked about this afternoon—going floor by floor through the buildings."

"There must still be mutants trapped inside their own apartments. We need to clear them out."

"And there are also still some bodies in the buildings that we didn't have time to deal with this morning. We'll take care of those while we sweep the floors too."

"You there, what's your name?" Jiang Cheng turned to ask one of the young female property employees.

The girl quickly replied, "Yang Xinyan."

In a property company, young women usually end up in either finance or customer service. They already knew the finance person didn't live in the staff dorms and couldn't come to work today anyway. So Yang Xinyan was most likely customer service—essentially an office clerk.

Jiang Cheng assigned her a job. "The owners' forum has a post about the interim committee, with everyone's names, apartment numbers, and phone numbers registered on it. Make a spreadsheet and put together a contact list. Does the property office have a printer? Print it out—everyone here gets a copy, and the property office puts one up too."

Yang Xinyan indeed did clerical work on a daily basis—this was exactly the kind of task she was good at and used to. Having been assigned a job, she immediately felt grounded.

She gave a quick "okay", sat down at the desk, and started moving the mouse.

Jiang Cheng turned back around.

Song Jingshuo knew she was about to assign the next tasks to everyone.

She'd taken control of the room again. How did this keep happening?

He started to reflect on where he'd gone wrong. Why did this girl always beat him to it?

His mind had just been in chaos for that brief moment. Anyone who encounters such a major situation needs half a minute or a minute to process it, right?

Everyone needs a moment to pull themselves together.

Yes—the gap between them was just that time spent pulling himself together.

Anyone faced with a sudden crisis goes through shock, acceptance, processing, calming down, and only then starts thinking of solutions.

But Jiang Cheng didn't. She skipped straight to the final step.

The reactions that ordinary people have in between—she didn't have any of them.