Jiang Shengyue quickly turned off the light, and the bright illumination went out in an instant.
With a click, she locked the door.
Pressing her body against the wall, she looked outside through the glass.
A car with its headlights on was driving toward the gas station.
Jiang Shengyue flipped a watermelon knife in her hand and held it at her side.
“Why is this gas station closed?”
“That’s not right! I clearly saw light here just now!”
Jiang Shengyue watched a man and a woman get out of the car.
“This is the only station nearby. Go take a look inside and see if anyone’s there.”
The woman was already soaked through by the rain, her voice trembling.
The man beside her had shifty eyes and hesitated.
“What are you being a coward for! We’re almost out of gas—the streets are full of lunatics. Without a car, we can’t escape at all!”
Seeing the man cowering, the woman cursed at him.
The man lost his temper too, glared at her, and walked toward the station building.
He carefully pushed the door—it was locked.
He cupped his hands around his eyes to block the reflection and pressed his whole face against the glass to peer inside.
There was nothing in the room; even the shelves were empty.
Just one wall away, Jiang Shengyue was gripping a watermelon knife that gleamed coldly, her expression ruthless.
“This is an abandoned gas station—forget people, even the shelves are empty!”
The man sighed, his tone disappointed yet relieved.
Disappointed that the place was abandoned, relieved that there were thankfully no zombies inside.
Hearing the man’s words, the woman couldn’t help showing a look of disappointment.
Jiang Shengyue was just about to put away her knife when the man suddenly exclaimed in delight: “That’s right! The card!”
“What card?”
The man said excitedly, “We saw light here just now, which means there’s still power.
Let’s go in and search. If the staff card for pumping fuel is still here, we can gas up!”
Delighted at his words, the woman hurriedly urged the man to find a way to open the door.
Jiang Shengyue silently raised her knife again and stood behind the door.
That card was long gone—where would they find it?
She had meant to let them off, but since it was like this, they couldn’t blame her.
Watching the two return to the car and come back with a hammer, she quietly unlocked the door to prevent them from smashing the glass and making a huge noise.
The man had barely struck it once when he felt the door give.
He pushed, and the door opened.
The two exchanged a puzzled look.
By the light of blue-purple lightning and the distant lamps, they saw nothing unusual inside.
The moment the man stepped into the room, Jiang Shengyue swung her blade down, striking him right on the neck!
Before he could react, the man clutched his neck and collapsed.
The woman behind him was startled by the sudden event and froze in place.
Jiang Shengyue stepped out from beside the door.
Before the woman could scream, another slash—the two fell together.
Blood splattered across a raincoat.
Their faces were full of disbelief, and they quickly breathed their last.
Jiang Shengyue lowered her eyes and coldly studied the two for a few seconds.
Then she said softly, “This is a crucial part of my plan—it allows no mistakes.
You had a chance to leave, but you insisted on coming back to break down the door.
With such a commotion, others would be drawn here, and today’s business would fall through.
So—I can only send you to your deaths.”
Jiang Shengyue dragged the bodies inside, too lazy to bother with the bloodstains on the ground.
She closed the door, sat in a corner to rest, and recovered her Ability.
Her whole body was sensing the energy particles around her.
Absorbing these vibrant fluorescent glimmers into every cell of her body, she converted them into strength and stored it in her hollowed-out frame.
If another person with a Plant-type Supernatural Ability had been present at that moment, they would have noticed that the emerald-green points of light around Jiang Shengyue were so dense they nearly solidified into substance.
Ribbons of verdant energy swirled endlessly around her.
Half an hour later, Jiang Shengyue stood up, opened the door, and stepped outside.
She observed and confirmed the location of the underground fuel storage tank.
Kneeling on the ground, wrapped entirely in a black raincoat, she looked like a small pitch-black mushroom growing in the pouring rain.
She stretched out her two hands, frozen blue from the cold, and pressed them against the ground.
Her mind kept channeling that faint Space power, trying to draw the underground fuel directly into her Space.
“Whew—”
She failed.
She wasn’t discouraged, though. The tank was simply too far away—roughly four to five meters underground.
It truly exceeded the limits of her ability.
Jiang Shengyue took a deep breath and once again channeled all the strength in her body, concentrating the Space power into her palms, the veins on the backs of her hands bulging—
“Hnn.”
She let out a muffled groan as a streak of bright red blood spilled from the corner of her mouth, startlingly vivid.
She raised the back of her hand to wipe away the blood at her lips, her gaze stretching toward the distance.
There, a glow of fire was already rising faintly—some kind of blaze had apparently broken out, and the sounds of shouting drifted intermittently into her ears.
Jiang Shengyue’s pale lips pressed into a thin line. She had to complete this task today—this was her only chance.
After the Apocalypse began, there might still be gas stations that hadn’t been drained dry, but those would surely be targets fought over by multiple factions.
An opportunity as good as today’s would come only once!
Amber eyes flickered with firelight, gleaming brilliantly in the dark night.
One more try!
She lowered her head again, her eyes filled with determination and a stubborn refusal to give up. From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed the fragments of the surveillance camera she had destroyed—
A flash of inspiration struck Jiang Shengyue.
At full power, she could only retrieve objects from about one to two meters away, but that was with dispersed power.
If she condensed it into something slender like a vine, wouldn’t the extended force be able to reach farther?
Using her mind, she pulled the Space power in her palms back and forth, stretching it as far as it would go, like a tentacle extending endlessly.
“It worked!”
Jiang Shengyue felt it with delight—fuel had gathered into a mass inside her Space, floating within it.
She transferred that mass of fuel directly into a sealed barrel, then repeated the process.
The Space power became like a hose, siphoning diesel from the underground tank and flowing it into the sealed barrels in her Space.
Jiang Shengyue held her half-kneeling position without moving. About thirty minutes passed before she withdrew her hands.
Slowly flexing her numb feet and legs, she stood up.
It had taken less time than she’d estimated.
The gas station was now completely emptied by her, and her Space was full.
An absolute bumper harvest!
Satisfied, Jiang Shengyue stripped the gas station clean, released her car, and climbed in, the rainwater on her body soaking the entire driver’s seat.
A hazy layer of fog formed on the windshield from the temperature difference.
She opened the map on her phone and found the route home, noticing that the return trip would pass right by the police station.
Jiang Shengyue’s eyes gleamed—she decided to try her luck there.
If she could pick up some firearms along the way, it would be more than worth it!
No time like the present!
Jiang Shengyue sped along the whole way, but as she approached the police station, she found the situation was worse than expected.
When a zombie attacked someone, everyone’s first instinct was to call the police. In the early days of the disaster, all the station’s staff had been dispatched to deal with the chaos.
That is, assuming no one inside the police station had mutated into a zombie.
At the moment, several passersby’s mangled remains lay scattered by the entrance, blood staining the steps red.
Jiang Shengyue slipped into the police station with a furrowed brow.
It seemed this place fell into the former category—there wasn’t a single person inside.
Though there were no bodies, it was extremely messy.
Documents and computers lay smashed across the floor.
The once-spotly floor was covered in footprints caked with mud and blood.
After searching around, Jiang Shengyue only managed to find two boxes of pistol ammunition.
She had expected as much, so she wasn’t too disappointed.
Two boxes of bullets were still a gain—she wouldn’t complain about it being little.
As she was leaving, she thought she heard someone calling for help in the rain.
“Help me—”
Jiang Shengyue listened carefully. The voice sounded familiar.