Though the awkward gap between them gradually vanished, and despite his deep bond with Liao Muqing, Cai Yongfang’s words and actions inevitably led Huai Si to wonder what kind of people his own parents had been.
In truth, he rarely talked about his family background with Liao Muqing. For one thing, he subconsciously avoided it, though why he did so remained unclear to him. Perhaps he felt that the less he probed, the better he could truly die for the sake of the plot.
For another, knowing wouldn’t change anything anyway; after all, in the original plot, he was supposed to die before ever reaching the main base, serving merely as stepping stone to pave the way for the protagonist, Xie Shouhan.
Yet Huai Si was unwilling to directly discuss this sudden shift in mood with Liao Muqing, so he instead steered the casual conversation toward the days of the past. He had lived alongside Liao Muqing since he was a child. In fact, they hadn’t started out living in Shelter Eight; back then, Liao Muqing had actually lived at a branch base, only leaving it because of matters concerning Huai Si and entering Shelter Eight instead.
When all was said and done, he was still the one who had dragged Liao Muqing down. Otherwise, given Liao Muqing’s looks and personality, he likely would have married long ago.
“Uncle, at your age, shouldn’t you have gotten married long ago? After all these years, hasn’t there been anyone you liked? Have you ever considered—”
“What nonsense are you thinking” Liao Muqing smiled with helpless resignation, though his gaze drifted far into the distance as if tracing something back in time, and his expression gradually softened.
Although Huai Si’s perception of human emotions wasn’t as sensitive as it had been when he was alive, Liao Muqing looked quite different right now.
Usually, Liao Muqing maintained a gentle demeanor, but at this moment he looked soft to an extreme, carrying an eerie, out-of-place contradiction.
He looked like a young man experiencing his first awakening of love.
Did he really have a romantic history?
Huai Si stared at Liao Muqing, even his sharp pupils narrowing into vertical slits as he scrutinized Liao Muqing’s expression.
After all, Liao Muqing had never talked to him about his romantic past. Huai Si had simply assumed he didn’t have one, partly because Liao Muqing had vaguely mentioned that his family upheld strict traditions, and that his time had been consumed entirely by his studies, leaving no room for wandering thoughts.
Yet upon closer reflection, Liao Muqing’s youth had taken place before the zombie apocalypse. The stricter a youth was guarded, the more intensely they yearned; how could there never have been a moment when his heart was stirred?
Suddenly, Liao Muqing turned his head to look at him. Huai Si widened his eyes slightly; being caught red-handed left him flustered. Before he had time to feel awkward, however, he noticed something abnormal about Liao Muqing.
The look Liao Muqing directed at him didn’t feel like he was truly looking at him. Although his gaze lingered on Huai Si’s face without any sense of offensive scrutiny, it felt as though he were looking past him at someone else. His peach-blossom eyes shimmered like ripples on jade-green water, gleaming and bright for a moment, with peach petals seeming to carpet the river of his eyes as they flowed slowly toward the deepest recesses of memory.
This was an expression Liao Muqing had never once shown in front of Huai Si.
Nor was it an expression an elder and mentor ought to show toward a child he had raised from youth.
Caught off guard by his own astonishment, Huai Si forgot to react, staring back at Liao Muqing in a daze. Lost deep within a particular emotion, Liao Muqing even slowly reached out a hand toward his face. When his fingers brushed against Huai Si’s cheek, the icy touch lacked human warmth; it felt as freezing as if a phantom bubble had suddenly been popped, bursting away all at once so that every single possibility ceased to exist.
Liao Muqing snapped back to his senses. Seeing Huai Si’s stunned expression, he finally realized what he had just done.
What on earth am I doing to this child!
Liao Muqing yanked his hand back abruptly, turned away, and sat in silence for a long while without moving a muscle, dropping his head to stare fixedly at a spot on the ground an eerie stillness that made one’s heart skip a beat.
“Uncle?” Huai Si called out tentatively.
Liao Muqing slowly turned his head to look at him, slipping back into his usual demeanor. His gaze grew gentle once more, and the lapse in composure vanished entirely from his peach-blossom eyes, replaced by the appropriate detachment of an elder, while his tone carried a note of lingering concern. “I was just thinking about some things from the past. Did I startle you?”
Huai Si shook his head quickly. “No, but…” Seeing that Liao Muqing seemed normal again, he weighed his words before asking anyway, “Uncle… do I look like someone you know?”
Liao Muqing’s gaze had been far too conspicuous just then; he couldn’t help but overthink it.
Liao Muqing’s expression froze, a fleeting look of panic flashing across his eyes before he forced himself to act casual. “We look a little alike, yes. He was a friend I knew many years ago.” He then added an earnest defense: “But he is him, and you are you. You two are different.”
Huai Si, however, didn’t believe it. Surely it was more than just “a little alike.” To make his uncle lose his composure and display such a look and action, they had to look exceptionally similar.
“Then where is he now? Do I know him?” Huai Si sensed there was more to the story than met the eye. Why hadn’t the plot in his head mentioned this? He bore a striking resemblance to someone else, which by all accounts shouldn’t have been the case.
“He… should be dead.” Liao Muqing’s gaze darkened. Glancing at Huai Si, knowing what he wanted to ask, he said, “He was a friend of mine from many years ago. You don’t know him, perhaps the two of you…” At that point, Liao Muqing cut himself off and pivoted to a different topic: “Never mind, let’s not talk about this anymore. I just want to tell you not to carry any burden. My not getting married is due to my own reasons, and you aren’t dragging me down.”
“I decided to take care of you starting from the year you turned five; that was my own choice, too. As for the accident that happened on your tenth birthday, that wasn’t your fault it was mine.” Liao Muqing said earnestly, “It was my negligence that led to you going missing. Choosing to enter Shelter Eight later on was also my decision. None of this happened because of you.”
Huai Si’s expression turned somewhat peculiar. On his tenth birthday?
That wasn’t right. In his memory, the incident should have happened the day after his tenth birthday. He still remembered spending his birthday at the branch base, where Liao Muqing had cooked him a bowl of longevity noodles. He had been very happy, and Liao Muqing had promised to bring him a cake, keeping him filled with eager anticipation all through the night.
The next day, he learned that Liao Muqing still hadn’t returned. Having missed him, Huai Si had been gripped by panic. Later, incidents occurred at the branch base, and someone deliberately lured him out that person actually had feelings for Liao Muqing, but after being rejected time and again, they grew angry out of humiliation and deliberately shoved him out during that window.
Fortunately, he hadn’t run into any zombies. When Liao Muqing finally managed to track him down, he found himself powerless to touch the culprit because the person was an esper from that same branch base. Decisive as ever, Liao Muqing had simply packed up and brought him straight to Shelter Eight.
“On my tenth birthday? Uncle, are you sure you didn’t remember wrong?”
Liao Muqing didn’t notice anything amiss as he replied, “How could I forget? I cooked longevity noodles for you back then, but then a temporary mission came up. You only let me go after I promised to bring you a cake. I remember that mission quite vividly although it came up very urgently, thankfully I managed to get back the same day to keep celebrating your birthday with you. But when I returned, I found out you had simply vanished.”
That’s wrong! That’s wrong! Where did the details go wrong?
Huai Si clutched his head as a stabbing pain suddenly flared up in his mind, feeling like an electric drill burrowing into his brain and halting all of his thoughts.
He was twenty years old now, and having been brought into Shelter Eight by Liao Muqing at age ten to live there for a decade was an unquestionable fact. Yet the details were wrong? Had he remembered incorrectly?
The headache flared up again.
“What’s wrong?” Liao Muqing noticed Huai Si’s distress. Huai Si hurriedly forced himself to stop thinking, and the pain subsided slightly. Fearing that Liao Muqing would notice, he quickly turned around and said, “We’ve rested long enough; it’s time to get moving again. The branch base is just up ahead, let’s hurry.”
Liao Muqing watched Huai Si’s retreating back with a complex expression.
Guided by the location provided by the plot in his mind, Huai Si led the shelter’s residents straight to the branch base. This branch base was evidently far better equipped than their own shelter; while they had merely used a prison as living quarters, this branch base boasted towering outer walls built from materials far sturdier than the weather-beaten walls of Shelter Eight, looking immensely solid. Atop the walls sat sharp spikes alongside a dense web of electric wiring clearly not the long-abandoned grid they were used to, but something fashioned from an unknown material that shimmered faintly with silver light.
This reminded Huai Si of an unpleasant experience: the restraining grid that had trapped him that night.
The outer walls stretched out over a massive expanse, covering a far greater area than Shelter Eight, resembling a defensive city wall.
In truth, the branch base they had arrived at happened to be the largest among all those under the main base’s jurisdiction, which explained why it looked so extraordinarily vast. Otherwise, Xie Shouhan wouldn’t have ended up coming here either.
“How is it? Not bad, right? You managed to walk all the way here unscathed with ten people you’re certainly impressive. But without official clearance, they aren’t going to open the gates easily.” Qi Hongyu spoke with blunt frankness to the group behind Huai Si, before smoothly shifting tone with a hearty, bold demeanor, “Good thing you ran into me on the road, otherwise you wouldn’t even have a way to get inside.”
Qi Hongyu was an esper Huai Si had encountered right as they were nearing the final stretch of their journey to the branch base. She hadn’t been traveling alone, but rather with a whole vehicle of people.
In the zombie apocalypse, off-road vehicles were scarce resources, possessed only by branch bases with a certain level of resources. This was because even if one found gasoline, they still needed a working vehicle; both were indispensable.
That group had run into trouble when their vehicle suddenly broke down while traversing an area infested with zombies. Logically speaking, two of them were experienced combat espers, so dealing with those zombies should have been a relatively minor issue.
However, the zombies that appeared this time proved trickier than usual, and their numbers exceeded anything they had faced before. Ordinarily, the zombies wandered about in a disorganized fashion, allowing them to be picked off one by one, but during this encounter, the creatures swarmed forward en masse, moving with far greater agility than before.
One of their experienced combat espers had ended up getting bitten, losing a combatant while inadvertently adding another hostile zombie to the mix, pushing their situation from bad to worse.
Just then, they ran into a strange man. Even stranger was that this man used some unknown ability to wipe out the majority of the zombies on the spot, causing the remaining creatures to flee for their lives as if escaping execution.
Only later did they learn this man was named Huai Si. Even more bizarrely, he had led a group of old, weak, and disabled people all the way to the branch base completely unscathed.
Initially, they hadn’t believed Huai Si’s claim that he had guided these people here on foot, until their vehicle refused to start and they had no choice but to head back to the branch base to report in and figure out a way to send mechanics back out.
As for Qi Hongyu, she was one of the three combat-experienced espers and served as a minor squad leader. With bold decisiveness, she had opted to abandon the vehicle and return to the branch base.
Thus, they ended up traveling alongside Huai Si to the base and throughout the entire journey, they hadn’t encountered a single zombie!
How eerie is that?!
Moreover, they noticed that this team of the weak and frail kept stopping to rest! In the middle of life-and-death survival, such a leisurely pace left the espers utterly dumbfounded.
Combined with Huai Si’s unfathomable ability, in their eyes Huai Si was an immensely powerful expert! Recruiting him into the branch base would undoubtedly bring colossal benefits!
Despite Qi Hongyu’s bold outburst, Huai Si merely stared thoughtfully at the branch base ahead, grunted an affirmative, and said, “Thank you.”
His brief, concise words refusing to waste any breath on idle chatter along the way only deepened Qi Hongyu and her companions’ impression of him as cold and aloof.
Aloofness paired with an unknown ability made Huai Si appear all the more mysterious and formidable in their eyes.
Qi Hongyu cleared her throat to brush off the awkwardness of her prior enthusiasm, stepping forward to negotiate directly with the closed steel gates. The heavy steel plate slowly lifted, granting the group entry. However, as each person passed through, a faint red beam swept across their entire body.
Seeing this, Huai Si paused in his tracks, prompting Qi Hongyu to explain, “That red beam scans automatically to shoot down zombies if any try to burst in.”
Even so, Huai Si still asked, “Can it detect zombies?”
Qi Hongyu looked at him in bewilderment. “Aren’t zombies obvious at a glance? Why would you need a scanner?”
Huai Si let out a sigh of relief. “Just joking.” With that, he walked openly through the gate. The red beam swept across his body, and sure enough, it raised no alarms.
Qi Hongyu: “…” Where was the joke in that?
Once inside the branch base, Huai Si deeply felt what post-apocalyptic technological advancement truly looked like, unlike the impoverished 1980s-style hardship of Shelter Eight. Electronic surveillance cameras monitored the perimeter along the high walls. The buildings inside lacked the crumbling concrete walls of their old shelter; everything looked fresh and renewed.
Many people walked about outside, dressed in clean, neat attire whose overall demeanor far outshined anyone from the shelter.
Even Huai Si was astonished by the base’s luxury, to say nothing of the refugees who had arrived with him, looking thoroughly battered after the long trek. Aside from Liao Muqing, who maintained his composure, the others felt out of place, shrinking under the stark contrast against the base’s residents.
Eager to recruit Huai Si, Qi Hongyu and her group acted as tour guides, showing him around the base.
“This place is divided into a residential zone, an administrative zone, an office zone, and an equipment zone. As for the residential zone, although we espers generally live there too, the quarters for espers are different from everyone else’s…” Before Qi Hongyu could finish her tour, a middle-aged man in a crisp suit walked toward them, followed by several stern, highly capable-looking men and women.
Qi Hongyu whispered, “That’s one of the senior administrators of our branch base. He must have received word about what I mentioned at the gate just now.”
The middle-aged man came to a halt in front of Huai Si, extended a hand with a polite smile, and said, “Hello, I am Hu Biwei, the deputy director of the South China Branch Base. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Shaking Huai Si’s hand, he smiled with impeccable poise, the angle of his lips unshifting. “I hear you’re an esper? Would you be interested in joining our esper organization? Of course, it belongs to the main base’s organization, but you’d be assigned to carry out missions through our branch base’s branch.”
He released Huai Si’s hand, glanced briefly at the disheveled group of shelter residents standing behind Huai Si, and his smile faded slightly. Yet his tone remained flawless as he continued: “As for the friends you brought along, they can be granted special permission to stay in the branch base for one day before leaving. Ordinarily, outsiders aren’t allowed to enter the base casually, but if an esper like you joins us, we can accommodate your situation and grant them a one-day visitor pass.”
Naturally, the branch base had no intention of casually taking in ordinary people without abilities, and they had no current need for miscellaneous talent.
He stated what he considered a very lenient condition, but to Huai Si, it was far from good news.
Huai Si immediately cut him off, fixing his sharp pupils directly on the man in a way that sent an involuntary chill running down Huai Biwei’s neck.
“Mr. Hu, I believe we need to have a talk. Let’s find somewhere private.”