“Do you really have a way to get us out of here?”
Zhao Xin had sought out Cheng Qian, both hands clenched into tight fists.
He didn’t quite know what he’d come to confirm, or perhaps what comfort he was looking for.
To survive, he had betrayed Sun Jie, the very person who had given people like him a place of refuge.
It was Sun Jie who, the moment the apocalypse struck, had called them all back to the shipyard first thing.
She had even led a team out in person to retrieve the first batch of supplies.
Cheng Qian wanted to smile in his usual gentle way, but with that thorn named Bai Long still lodged in his heart, the smile came out stiff.
“I’m an honorary professor at Ocean University. How could I possibly lie to you all?”
Seeing that Zhao Xin didn’t react, Cheng Qian clicked his tongue inwardly, but his words stayed mild. “I’ll let you in on it, then. In a day at most, the armed-forces team the higher-ups sent down as reinforcements will be leaving here. When that happens, I’ll go ask them to take us along.”
“I attended a meeting up in the mid-tier district before. They can hardly ignore someone of my standing.”
Cheng Qian smoothed out his cuffs.
There was no trace left now of the messy state he’d been in when he first arrived at the shipyard.
Every edge of his clothing was tidy and neat, as if he were about to go deliver an academic lecture.
Before the apocalypse, Zhao Xin had been an ordinary foreman, no great worldliness, surviving purely on his hands-on skills.
Deep down he held men of learning like Cheng Qian in respect and good favor.
Hearing this, Zhao Xin rubbed his fingers together, murmured a word of thanks, and turned to leave.
Facing the workers who had thrown in their lot with him, Zhao Xin relayed Cheng Qian’s words.
Quite a few of them still had wives and children here, and hearing this set their long-restless hearts considerably more at ease.
“Don’t worry too much, everyone. We’ll definitely get out of here.”
Zhao Xin’s voice was low and steady, consoling them, and consoling himself as well.
One shipworker, thinking of what they’d done, couldn’t help covering his face. He choked out, “We’ve wronged Sister Sun and An Ran and the rest of them…”
“You’ve still got a wife and kids. Trapped in here, sooner or later it’d mean death anyway, there was no other choice… If you want to blame something, blame this apocalypse…”
The man beside him patted his shoulder in comfort.
“Right, it’s all the apocalypse’s fault… We just wanted to live. If one day we died out there scrounging for supplies, our families would be finished…”
With Cheng Qian’s solid assurance, the shipworkers felt a bit steadier inside, and looked forward all the more to the day they’d leave.
Not long after Zhao Xin left, Wang Yi walked over to Cheng Qian carrying a cup of hot tea.
“Professor Cheng, please have some tea.”
She handed the cup toward him with a faint smile.
Cheng Qian looked at the chipped, rough metal cup and frowned hard.
That metal cup was clearly the kind the shipyard workers used.
Even though Wang Yi had scalded it out with hot water, there were still years-old tea stains clinging stubbornly all over the inner walls.
Even the tea leaves inside were some inferior stuff from who-knew-where, giving off a cheap smell once steeped in hot water.
“No need.”
Disgust flickered in Cheng Qian’s eyes as he pushed the cup away. As his hand moved, it brushed against Wang Yi’s, which was resting on the table, and he took the chance to stroke it.
Wang Yi stiffened, but the smile on her face didn’t change, she only lowered her eyes slightly to hide whatever was in them.
“You went to see those people just now?”
Cheng Qian had noticed Wang Yi’s little maneuver earlier.
He drew her hand down beneath the table, out of everyone else’s sight, his voice gentle as ever. “I believe I told you not to provoke them, didn’t I?”
Wang Yi’s body trembled, but she forced a smile. “I just wanted to go talk to Chi Wan and the others. And that beastwoman was so rude to you earlier, I really couldn’t stand it!”
Her tone was indignant, as if she were genuinely championing his cause.
Cheng Qian’s hand didn’t stop, sliding up along her arm.
Thinking of Chi Wan, he sighed. “Chi Wan’s good in every way, she’s just too pig-headed. Otherwise that prize last time wouldn’t have ended up in your hands.”
Cheng Qian had once hinted to Chi Wan that, as long as she was willing to listen to him, he’d give her any award she wanted.
But to his surprise, Chi Wan was one who couldn’t take a hint, and had refused him outright on the spot.
Wang Yi didn’t dare make a sound, her lowered eyes brimming with revulsion.
“Are you really just going to let them off, Professor?”
Wang Yi tried her best not to look down, fixing her gaze on a single point on the table, not daring to move.
“Of course not.”
At the thought of the humiliation Bai Long had dealt him, the smile vanished entirely from Cheng Qian’s face, and his hand instinctively tightened.
Wang Yi couldn’t hold back a pained gasp, then stifled it utterly for fear someone might hear.
“She’s just a beastwoman. I refuse to believe she’s stronger than an esper!”
A streak of viciousness entered Cheng Qian’s tone.
The way he saw it, Bai Long’s earlier clash with Wu Hao had only gone her way because Wu Hao had turned into a brainless zombie, his command over his own ability greatly diminished, and on top of that, he’d already been worn down considerably by Zhao Xin and the others beforehand.
Beastmen and their kind were born with nothing but inexhaustible brute force.
Cheng Qian didn’t believe an ordinary beastwoman like Bai Long stood any chance against a proper esper.
“Once the armed-forces team gets here, let’s see if she can still strut around like she’s some big shot, beastwoman or not…”
Meanwhile, on the other side, Bai Long, Xu Yunyi, and the rest were discussing their next move.
“You said you have a way out. How?”
Bai Long wasn’t surprised that Xu Yunyi had a way out.
From the moment she’d met Chi Wan and Chi Zao, seeing how desperately they’d wanted to find Xu Yunyi, she’d more or less guessed as much.
Xu Yunyi was a little surprised by how calm Bai Long was, but right now leaving mattered more.
“Both my parents are starship operators. They fly back and forth between star regions all the time.”
“Not long after the apocalypse hit, they sent me a message.”
Xu Yunyi tapped a few times on her star-ring and pulled up the exchange between her and her parents for Bai Long to see.
【Three days from now, eight p.m., a starship transporting supplies will be making a stop in Region 64. We’ve already arranged it, they’ll take you out of there.】
The interstellar age here was different from the world Bai Long had once known.
Ownership of starship docks was split between Star Alliance management and private management.
People like Xu Yunyi’s parents worked at a privately run starship dock.
Privately owned starships also had far greater operational freedom than those under Star Alliance control.
With the apocalypse here, it wasn’t out of the question that the great families who owned starships would use them to gather supplies across the various regions.
The “three days from now” in the message was today.
“The biggest problem right now is how to shake off Cheng Qian and his people.”
Xu Yunyi frowned.
In the end she was just a kid who’d only recently come of age, running into this much at once, she inevitably lost her bearings.
“They’ve got an esper, and they outnumber us, and after everything that’s happened, there’s no way they’ll let us go easily.”
It had been a long time since Chi Wan had felt this kind of total cluelessness in the face of a hard problem.
Even when she’d competed in the inter-region university mathematics competition, she could always quickly trace a path to the solution.
Not like now, completely without a clue.
“Wait, speaking of espers, shouldn’t Yunyi have awakened a power too? That’d put us at one esper each.”
Chen Lei looked at Xu Yunyi.
“What power did you awaken?”
Only then did Xu Yunyi remember she’d awakened a power.
Her body felt unprecedentedly light. She tried following the sensation and stirring the energy within her.
Something seemed to register, and for an instant a strange look crossed her face.
“What is it? Some kind of problem?”
Bai Long was a little curious about her power too, and when Xu Yunyi went a long while without doing anything, she asked, puzzled.
Xu Yunyi’s expression shifted through several changes. “It’s… it’s nothing… it’s just, this power of mine… might not be very convenient to use right now.”
Bai Long was even more puzzled.
What kind of power wasn’t convenient to use right now?
Could it only be used under certain conditions?
“You’ve got to be kidding. We finally get an esper and now she can’t use it?”
Chen Lei was the impatient type and blurted out exactly what he was thinking.
“Anyway, if it really comes down to going up against Cheng Qian’s lot, I can definitely be of use.”
Xu Yunyi held it in for a long while, her face flushing an oddly suspicious shade of red.
Since she’d put it that way, Chi Wan and the others, close with Xu Yunyi, naturally believed her, simply assuming it was some special power that wasn’t convenient to show right now.
Curious as she was, Bai Long didn’t press any further.
Whatever Xu Yunyi’s power was, she had a power too, and her combat ability shouldn’t fall too far short of Zhao Xin’s.
“Let’s set the power aside for now. There’s still some time before eight o’clock, and first we need to find Sun Jie and the rest.”
Bai Long hadn’t told them she was an esper herself.
For one, her power was her current trump card, the more people who knew, the less secure it was. If Cheng Qian’s side found out and came up with a countermeasure, it would be even more trouble.
And for another, Sun Jie’s group still hadn’t shown their faces. Whether they were alive or dead, or being held by Cheng Qian as his own ace in the hole, there was no telling.
Bai Long had seen plenty of this sort of thing working at the funeral home.
A family would settle things with you nicely, then turn around in the next breath and deny everything, producing some piece of evidence you were utterly unprepared for and demanding compensation.
A little caution never hurt.
If Sun Jie’s group were on hostile terms with Cheng Qian, then winning their support would lend Bai Long’s plan that much more security.
Cheng Qian’s people had a way out too. If she simply let them leave like this, whatever schemes they cooked up afterward would only be harder to deal with.
To weed something out, you pull it up by the roots.
Through everything she’d been through these past days, Bai Long had come to understand clearly: this was already a time when you could kill someone and no one would do a thing about it.
If she wasn’t ruthless, the only thing left for her would be a dead end.
“Yinyin and the others might know something. Let’s go find them.”
Chi Wan rose and headed toward the shipping container.
After they’d all scattered to think things over, Bai Long lowered her head and looked at her own two hands.
A crystalline, translucent arrow of water lay quietly in her palm.
The once-soft flow of water had condensed into a sharp, slender arrow, its keen point driving straight into the concrete floor.
After leaving a pit a few centimeters deep, the water arrow dissolved back into ordinary liquid, soaking into the ground, leaving nothing behind but that one hole.
What Bai Long didn’t notice was that, as she used her power, both her eyes glittered with a faint golden light, like the pupils of some kind of beast, solemn and imposing.
No one knew what had happened.
Every trace would vanish entirely as the water evaporated…
Chi Wan and the others came back with Xie Yinyin and the few hiding with her.
“Sun Jie and the others should still be inside the shipyard.”
After such a long time crammed inside cargo sacks, Xie Yinyin’s hair was a tangled mess.
The girls who’d hidden with her were all in a sorry state too, faces and clothes coated gray, their original appearances unrecognizable.
They looked like refugees who’d just fled some disaster, and carried an unidentifiable acrid smell.
“There’s an underground materials warehouse in the shipyard.”
Yue Li’s voice was unsteady, there were scabs on her face where she’d been scraped.
“We don’t know what method Cheng Qian used to trick Sun Jie into going in there and lock her up, and he split everyone else off to hold them separately. Opening the materials warehouse requires identity authentication, we can’t get in.”
Bai Long had no wish to look at Cheng Qian’s people, and neither did Chi Wan and the rest.
So they simply gathered a heap of the shipyard’s cargo crates and stacked them into a dividing wall, cutting themselves off from Cheng Qian’s side.
The shipyard area was split in two, with Bai Long’s group occupying the small section near the entrance.
The shipyard had only one exit, that enormous stone gate, which took several people working the controls together to open.
Cheng Qian figured Bai Long’s group couldn’t open the gate anyway and had nowhere to run, so when he saw them building the wall, he didn’t bother to interfere.
It just so happened he didn’t want to look at Bai Long’s face either, it really did sour his mood.
With the dividing wall up, Xie Yinyin and the others could finally come out of the cargo crates.
“Cheng Qian stole Sun Jie’s ID card. That’s probably something only the shipyard manager would have, ordinary workers most likely don’t carry one.”
Yue Li pressed her parched lips together.
“What was the situation when it happened?”
Bai Long needed to know the details of how Cheng Qian had ambushed Sun Jie.
Xie Yinyin and the others filled in each other’s accounts, telling Bai Long everything that had happened to them after the others had set out.
Not long after Bai Long had finished talking with Sun Jie, Cheng Qian had gone to find her.
After the two of them finished speaking, Sun Jie’s manner had turned a little strange.
Then came Cheng Qian seeking out Xie Yinyin and the girls, sending them out to gather supplies.
“Now that I think back, he wasn’t trying to get us to find supplies at all, he just wanted us to die out there!”
The more Yue Li thought about it, the angrier she got.
He’d given them no weapons and sent them out bare-handed to fight zombies.
“It’s outrageous. I’d assumed he was just a coward who wanted us out scrounging supplies for him to use, but I never imagined he’d be shameless enough to go this far.”
Xie Yinyin was thoroughly sickened too.
Cheng Qian had shipped them off precisely so they wouldn’t learn he had a way out of Region 64, viewing them as nothing but in-the-way deadweight.
Once they were gone, he could go about turning the shipyard workers against Sun Jie.
“Pah, as if anyone wants in!”
Xu Yunyi spat fiercely. “Back then somebody just had to gather us all up to follow him the second the apocalypse hit. Never saw him charge to the front when things went bad, he leeched off us the whole way to the shipyard, then turned around and disowned us.”
“That’s so on-brand for him!”
Chi Zao sneered.
“We weren’t planning to come back either. We figured we’d go find you, Yunyi.”
Xie Yinyin took a few deep breaths and steered back to the main point.
“We’d already made it to the gate, but I was afraid we’d run into trouble on the road, so I turned back to look for some scrap building material to defend ourselves…”
As if recalling some horrific scene, the color drained instantly from Xie Yinyin’s and the others’ faces.
“It was all blood…”
“Zhao Xin ambushed Sun Jie and slashed her while she was off guard. The other shipworkers seized the chaos to suddenly attack the women and children, and their husbands and fathers were cut down trying to protect them…”
Those people had taken up cleavers and, without a moment’s hesitation, hacked at the colleagues and old friends they’d once worked beside, hacked at children and women who had no power to fight back.
Blood had nearly flooded the entire shipyard.
All Xie Yinyin and the others could remember was Cheng Qian’s face, standing in the distance, wearing a full smile.
He was smiling, yet they felt he was like a demon out of hell, more terrifying than any zombie.
“Once Sun Jie was wounded, the others had no room left to resist. Zhao Xin and his men locked all of them up in the underground materials warehouse deep in the shipyard.”
“We were afraid Cheng Qian would notice us, so we hid in a nearby shipping container…”
Yue Li gripped Xie Yinyin’s hand.
Only by leaning on each other had they barely managed to calm down.
Those few sentences had just now split open Yue Li’s already cracked, dry lips, warm blood trickled out along with the sting.
She pressed her lips together, and the blood ran down her throat, slightly easing the parched, burning dryness in her mouth.
With the information from Yue Li and the others, Bai Long now had a rough grasp of the current situation.
“Let me sum up what we know so far.”
Bai Long pulled up the notepad on her star-ring and began writing and sketching on the blank page with her finger.
“First, what we can basically confirm: Cheng Qian himself has no power. His combat strength is essentially the same as an ordinary person’s.”
“Right now their side has only one esper, Zhao Xin, and the other shipworkers’ combat strength adds up to roughly fifty people. Sun Jie and the rest probably number no more than fifty as well, and accounting for their casualties, cut that in half, and you’re left with somewhere around twenty-odd.”
Bai Long drew a big dividing line down the middle of the notepad and continued on the blank side.
“On our side, the espers are even with theirs, but we have to acknowledge that Xu Yunyi only just awakened her power, so her control and familiarity with it fall short of Zhao Xin’s. That’s a fact.”
Hearing this, Xu Yunyi felt no displeasure, no sting at being underestimated.
She thought Bai Long’s analysis was perfectly rational.
Thinking of her own power, Xu Yunyi was even starting to doubt whether she’d actually be able to pull it off when the time came…
“In numbers, we’re at about fifteen people right now. If it really comes to a fight, they have weapons and we’re bare-handed, it’ll be hard for us to gain the upper hand. Best case, counting Sun Jie’s people, we can just barely scrape together around forty.”
When it was all laid out, the situation on Bai Long’s side still wasn’t optimistic.
“If worst comes to worst, we just take them all down with us. Boss, don’t you have a siren? Just blast it and call our zombie brothers in to settle it with them.”
Chen Lei figured their odds of getting out unscathed were slim, so he gave up and went for broke, he’d already decided to join the zombie faction.
He was even considering picking out a pretty zombie girl to bite him, that would be a death without regrets.
“If you went and rapped on top of the stone gate, you might actually summon a zombie horde.”
Bai Long shot a glance at Chen Lei, who looked all set to die a hero, and tossed off a teasing remark.
Hearing it, the tense atmosphere seemed to ease a little.
A sudden growl of a stomach rumbled in the air, not loud, but enough for everyone huddled together to hear clearly.
Despite the layer of grime, Bai Long still saw Wen Li’s face flush instantly red.
The girls had hidden in the shipping container for nearly an entire night, not daring to sleep, not daring to move, terrified that a single lapse would get them spotted by Cheng Qian’s people and thrown out to feed the zombies.
From the moment they’d reached the shipyard, none of them had eaten or drunk anything. Lasting this long was already the limit of what their bodies could endure.
“Hold on just a little longer. We’ll be out of here soon…”
Chi Wan held Wen Li’s hand and comforted her softly.
Wen Li nodded rapidly like a chick pecking grain, pulled her arms around her knees, and curled herself up, looking a bit embarrassed.
Pressing on her stomach helped dull the feeling of hunger.
“Hold on.”
Bai Long stood and headed toward Wang Yi’s side.
There’d been so much going on that she’d only just remembered: a big chunk of the supplies those people were eating rightfully belonged to her.
She hadn’t even eaten yet, how could she let those people eat in comfort?
Wang Yi had been sitting off to the side chatting idly with He Tian when she suddenly noticed He Tian had gone quiet, and everything around them had fallen silent.
She looked up to see Bai Long’s expressionless face.
“What do you want? Come to your senses and decided to join us?”
The corner of Wang Yi’s mouth lifted into a mocking smile.
“Dreaming before dark, are you?”
Without the slightest sense of danger from being in the enemy camp, Bai Long shot the sarcasm right back.
Wang Yi’s face fell at once.
“As I recall, part of the supplies you’re eating are mine. Bring them over to me.”
For a second Wang Yi thought she’d misheard.
“Ha? You, what are you saying?”
Bai Long ignored her and walked off in the direction of the supply storeroom, going by memory.
Wang Yi shot to her feet and rushed to block her.
“This is our stuff. What gives you the right to take it?!”
“Your stuff? Did you bring it back? Or did you give birth to it?”
Their commotion had long since drawn Cheng Qian’s attention.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Cheng Qian forced down his anger.
“Eating.”
Bai Long answered every question she was asked, infuriating Cheng Qian to no end.
“Do you think I’m easy to push around? Don’t push your luck!”
Cheng Qian raised a hand and slammed the table, the metal surface letting out a dull boom.
Bai Long turned her gaze toward him, then changed direction underfoot and walked straight at him.
“What are you doing?”
Cheng Qian watched Bai Long advancing toward him, his expression ugly.
Zhao Xin and the others quickly moved up to ring Cheng Qian, shielding him securely.
That only confirmed for Bai Long that Cheng Qian himself had no combat strength to speak of.
She drew out the alarm button and dangled it threateningly between her fingers.
In an instant, Cheng Qian and Zhao Xin’s group didn’t dare move.
Zhao Xin could maybe stop Bai Long, but even he couldn’t walk away unscathed from a zombie siege all on his own.
So all they could do was retreat step by step as Bai Long advanced step by step.
Bai Long laid her palm flat on the table.
In a spot no one else could see, a sphere of water condensed in her palm, gathering into a ridge of water about half a finger long.
“Bang!”
A tremendous crash, and from the point where her palm rested, a web of cracks spread outward across the metal table.
The metal table shattered into pieces in an instant.
There was only a little of the transparent liquid, and it vanished down into the concrete floor at once.
If they hadn’t seen the thick internal structure of the table where it had split, and that jagged, uneven break, they might almost have thought Bai Long had rigged the table somehow beforehand.
“I didn’t catch that just now. What were you saying?”
Bai Long smiled.
The shipyard fell into a brief silence.
Even Zhao Xin, an esper himself, was stunned for a moment.
So this was the strength of a beastman?
It was on par with the level he reached after his own power-enhancement!
Zhao Xin might only be startled for a moment, but the others had no powers.
And they understood perfectly well that their heads weren’t as hard as that table.
Under the dual threat of that strength and the zombies, for the moment no one dared step forward to block Bai Long again.
Her pace leisurely, she strolled to the storeroom where the food was kept and, like a person taking a casual walk through a garden, carried off a large share of the supplies, then ambled back behind the dividing wall without a care in the world.
Bai Long split off a portion of the supplies to Chi Wan and the others, then took out a bag of bread for herself and started gnawing on it.
Holding the bread they’d been handed, Chi Wan and the rest thanked Bai Long, flattered and overwhelmed.
It wasn’t much, and the portions were small, but it was the first thing they’d eaten in all these many days.
And the food came not from their teacher, but from someone they’d known for all of one day, who had already saved them again and again.
From a beastman, someone they’d never once imagined they would ever have anything to do with.
Holding her bread bag, Wen Li absentmindedly kneaded the corner of it, an indescribable ache welling up in her chest.
“Not eating? Aren’t you hungry?”
Bai Long seemed not to understand why Wen Li wasn’t eating when her stomach was empty. She reached over, grabbed a bottle of water, and tossed it to Yue Li.
“Wet your mouth.”
“Thank you!”
Delighted, Yue Li caught the water, unscrewed the cap, and gulped it down with her head tipped back.
After so long without water, her swollen, aching throat was soothed by the clear, cool liquid.
A faint sting, and then came complete, utter release and relief.
“…Thank you.”
Wen Li said quietly.
Xie Yinyin, leaning against her, thought her voice sounded a little off, almost choked with tears.
Just as Xie Yinyin was about to offer a few comforting words, she watched Wen Li wipe the corner of her eye, get up, and trot over to Bai Long.
“I’m sorry.”
Wen Li clutched the bread in her hand. Starving as she was, with her stomach caving against her spine, she still had to say it.
“Before, I thought you were just a beastman, and behind your back I… said bad things about you…”
Wen Li’s voice slipped into a slight sob again despite herself.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have misjudged you just because you’re a beastman. You’re a good person.”
Bai Long was a little taken aback.
She didn’t expect the girl to be so direct.
Wen Li stood before her, a small, thin girl in black-framed glasses, looking every bit the well-behaved, shy child from a good home.
But now, face flushed red, she’d still summoned the courage to stand in front of Bai Long and apologize with complete honesty.
Bai Long raised a hand.
Not knowing what she meant to do, Wen Li instinctively shut her eyes.
E-even if she wanted to hit her to vent, th-that would be only fair!
But the next second, a pair of slightly cool hands came to rest gently on hers, and tenderly ruffled her hair.
“It’s all right.”
She heard Bai Long’s soft voice.
Wen Li opened her eyes, meeting Bai Long’s black beast eyes head-on.
Eyes that should have frightened her, yet now she found herself sinking deep into them, unable to look away.
It was like…
a gem bearing the weight of a thousand years of time.
“So beautiful…”
Wen Li murmured without realizing it.
Catching that she meant her eyes, Bai Long gave a soft laugh. “Thank you. Your eyes are very beautiful too.”
Only then did Wen Li realize she’d said her praise out loud, and her face went redder still.
Clutching her bread, she returned to her spot and began nibbling it in tiny bites.
It was the most ordinary bread, carrying even a whiff of cheap artificial flavoring, yet it tasted better than anything she’d ever had.
So sweet…
Bai Long leaned back against a nearby surface, looking over the supplies she’d brought back.
Interstellar age though it was, after passing through two star regions over all this time, Bai Long had noticed this place wasn’t quite like the interstellar world in the books, people here still lived eating normal food.
None of that nutrient-fluid business.
With the bread in her stomach, the feeling of fullness still wasn’t strong.
But it was enough.
“Let’s go. We’re heading to the underground materials warehouse.”
Bai Long stood and stretched out her limbs.
She said it as calmly as she might have said, before the apocalypse, “Come on, let’s go to the bathroom.”
“Huh?”
Chen Lei was slow to catch on and instinctively stood up along with her.
It was only after he was on his feet that he realized something was off.
“But we don’t have an ID card.”
Chi Zao was a little dazed too, staring blankly at Bai Long.
“I get it, you’re definitely about to go for a forced breakthrough, right?! I’m ready, Boss.”
Chen Lei snapped to attention on the spot, his face all excitement.
Bai Long gave him a wordless look. “Good attitude, but that won’t be necessary.”
She raised a hand. Pinched between her index and middle fingers was a semi-transparent square card.
“We’re walking straight out the front gate.”
Chen Lei and the others were dumbstruck.
“…Boss, this card, where did you get it?”
Chi Zao asked, stammering.
Bai Long flipped the card over in her hand. “Off Cheng Qian, of course.”
Her gaze passed through the dividing wall and landed on the completely oblivious Cheng Qian.
Or to be precise, on the right pocket of his trousers.
Just a moment ago, while Bai Long had stood before Cheng Qian and his men, with all their attention fixed on her, she had manipulated the water on the floor, gathering it into a fine thread that crept upward just a few millimeters from Cheng Qian’s trouser leg.
The tip of the water thread condensed, like a claw with a will of its own, and gently caught the edge of the ID card, easing it ever so lightly out of his pocket.
Overawed by Bai Long’s sheer presence, Cheng Qian hadn’t felt the faint disturbance at his pocket.
The water thread bore the ID card along the ground, looping around from behind into Bai Long’s hand, which she held at her back.
With a flick of her fingers, Bai Long tucked the card into her sleeve without leaving a trace.
A clean job, and a clean retreat.
She’d even left Cheng Qian a little surprise on the side.
And that was the whole story of how Bai Long got the ID card.
But she didn’t spell it all out to Chi Wan and the others, she just said she’d found a way to get hold of the card.
Even though they couldn’t figure out how, in these students’ eyes Bai Long was already an all-capable being.
The Boss probably had her reasons for not telling them, and being sensible kids, they didn’t ask too much.
Knowing they now had the ID card to open the underground materials warehouse was enough!
“Does anyone know how to operate the stone gate?”
By Bai Long’s plan, getting the stone gate open was a crucial link.
“We can give it a try.”
Chi Zao and another boy raised their hands.
“We came to the shipyard before for a social-practice thing, and we saw how they operate it. We should be able to.”
Right now Chi Zao was endlessly grateful for those days when he’d done anything and everything for course credit.
“Good, the stone gate’s on you two, then.”
Bai Long nodded, placing her full trust in Chi Zao and the boy.
The two of them suddenly felt the weight of the burden on their shoulders, their eyes as resolute as if they were about to be sworn into the Party.
“I’ll go to the underground materials warehouse to find Sun Jie and the others. You wait here by the gate, and the moment we come over, we leave.”
No sooner had Bai Long finished than Chen Lei refused, his face full of disapproval.
“Boss, what are you talking about? The ones locked up in there are our classmates. There’s no way we’d let you go alone.”
Chen Lei stood. “I’m coming with you. Don’t worry, I trained in athletics, I can definitely run fast when it counts!”
Before Bai Long could speak, Chi Wan and the other girls stepped forward too.
“Exactly! How could we just hide in the safe spot? If we’re going, we’re going together! We want to save our classmates too!”
“That’s right, I’m an esper too. I can help you block some of Zhao Xin’s attacks!”
Xu Yunyi clenched her fist, resolve set.
Setting aside the few oddballs like Wang Yi, the students of Shipbuilding Class 2 had all escaped the school’s zombies together.
They’d supported one another the whole way, and a firm bond of friendship had long since taken root among them.
What’s more, Bai Long had saved them in the first place, they were already the ones imposing on her.
In the apocalypse, everyone looked out for themselves first, saving one more person just meant inviting one more burden onto yourself.
They’d been a drag on Bai Long this whole way, there was no chance they’d stand by and watch her go take risks for their sake all over again.
Bai Long pressed her lips together. The calm lake of her heart rippled, as if a small stone had been dropped into it.
No one had ever stood beside her before.
She’d been alone since childhood, and after growing up and taking work at the funeral home, she’d been all the more unaccepted by ordinary society.
She had long since grown used to doing everything, whatever it was, alone.
But now, looking at these students, their faces still so young, yet so resolute, she found herself at a loss for what to say.
“Boss, we’re ready!”
Chen Lei grinned wide.
He looked nothing like a man about to risk his life on a rescue, more like someone about to take on an athletic competition with friends.
“All right. Let’s go.”
…
A frontal breakthrough wasn’t realistic, so Bai Long planned to use an outside force to pin down Cheng Qian’s people first, and find Sun Jie and the others.
If there was one thing the shipyard had in abundance, it was all manner of shipbuilding machinery.
Interstellar technology had advanced at breakneck speed, with energy supplanting most of the need for fire and electricity.
But in manufacturing, the high cost of running pricey energy through a shipyard’s daily operations made it too wasteful, so cheap fire-and-electric power remained the backbone of low-end production.
Water City’s power grid had been cut off, but the shipyard had its own independent set of power equipment for emergencies.
Right now the equipment inside the shipyard was hooked up to the backup power source.
Chi Zao and the others positioned themselves by several machines near the stone gate, holding fuel and igniters they’d dug out of the shipping containers.
In the shadows, Bai Long, Chi Wan, and the rest got ready, and she turned her head and signaled Chi Zao.
Receiving the command, Chi Zao took a deep breath and doused the machine in a full ring of fuel.
A faint glow of fire flickered up in the gloom, like a single star in the dead of night.
The star fell.
In the blink of an eye, the flames roared skyward.
With several thunderous explosions, the shipyard was swallowed in a sea of fire.
Before Cheng Qian and his people could even work out what the sudden blasts were about, they saw Bai Long charging straight at them, more than a dozen people at her back.
“Quick! Quick, stop them!”
In an instant Cheng Qian lost all his earlier composure, screaming at the top of his lungs as he shoved Zhao Xin out in front of him.
Zhao Xin triggered his power at once, power-enhanced, and rushed forward a few strides to meet Bai Long.
Bai Long was just about to pull out her rod to meet him when she saw a figure accelerate ahead of her.
Xu Yunyi sucked in a deep breath and opened her mouth:
“How much sorrow can one man bear, I’ll draw my blade and split your dog skull there!”
Bai Long: “?”
Zhao Xin: “??”
Chi Wan: “???”
Before anyone present could react, a forty-meter-long blade materialized out of thin air in Xu Yunyi’s hands, and she brought it down in a horizontal slash at the unable-to-brake Zhao Xin.
A forty-meter greatsword, in her hands, was as light as a flimsy sheet of paper.
…if not for the wind that single swing kicked up, which beat the nearby flames down to less than half their height.
The girl gripped the great cleaver in both hands, muttering curses as she swung:
“Endless falling leaves come rustling down, I’ll send you home to see your mom and pop!”
Two lengths of round timber appeared in the air, striking twice in alternation and slamming straight into Zhao Xin’s head.
Fully automatic targeting. Precision strikes.
Recalling the thorough cursing-out Xu Yunyi had delivered up on the rooftop before her power awakened, Bai Long got it.
No wonder Xu Yunyi had kept refusing to say what her power was, so this was the kind of route it took?
“Go, hurry! I can hold him off!”
Without looking back, Xu Yunyi raised the great blade and hacked at Zhao Xin.
Zhao Xin’s power-enhancement was a close-combat type, but Xu Yunyi’s was ultra-long-range magic attack.
Xu Yunyi successfully tied Zhao Xin down with her power, buying Bai Long and the others time.
The moment Cheng Qian saw Xu Yunyi’s blade, his already twisted face looked ready to mutate.
Damn it!
Xu Yunyi actually had a power?!
To him, Bai Long’s interference had cost him a top-tier general who should have been his!
And now it had even pulled Zhao Xin halfway out of the fight!
“What are you all standing around for? Don’t you want to leave?! Get on them, now!”
In a furious panic, Cheng Qian grabbed the nearest worker by the collar and shoved him at Bai Long.
They were nothing but a pack of unimpressive students!
He refused to believe they could conjure up yet another esper!
As long as they couldn’t reach Sun Jie, he still had a chance to turn it all around!
The heat of the flames came rolling in, sweat pouring off the shipworkers’ heads like rain.
It felt as if every drop of water in their bodies had been baked dry, every breath was like a knife scraping their throats.
The iron rod flew in Bai Long’s hands.
A beastman’s strength wasn’t something an ordinary person could easily withstand.
Chi Wan and the others gripped the kitchen cleavers Bai Long had given them.
Students who’d never killed before, cleavers in hand, shouting to psych themselves up.
The shipworkers were, in the end, human too, and they’d weathered the onset of the apocalypse safely under Sun Jie’s protection.
They had none of Zhao Xin’s power-enhancement, and faced with the sharp cleavers, their first reaction was to fall back and dodge.
More than that, the searing heat of the flames left their vision swimming, sweat blurring their eyes.
But Bai Long’s group seemed entirely unaffected by the heat, surging forward all the way toward the underground materials warehouse.
Still, the shipworkers had far more experience than Chi Wan and the others, and quickly recovered, raising their weapons to fend them off and trying to wrest the cleavers from their hands.
Chi Wan and the rest were outmatched in stamina, and the shipworkers gradually gained the upper hand.
Cheng Qian’s face was flushed crimson, whether from the heat or the fury it was hard to say.
Watching so many shipworkers fail to stop Bai Long, he grabbed He Tian, who was cowering off to the side, and hurled him into the battle too.
He Tian was a frail, bespectacled man who’d only managed to tag along by buttering Cheng Qian up with flattery.
In fact he was even less use than Chi Wan, who at least dared pick up a blade.
The battlefield was wordless, one rod or another swept across and caught He Tian in the neck.
A person’s neck is far more fragile than one might imagine.
By the time his head lolled limply to one side, He Tian’s eyes were still wide, unable to comprehend what had happened.
Searing pain crashed over him, he crumpled to the ground, gasping in great rasping heaves.
The bone had broken but the sinew still held it together, an indescribable agony tore through his entire body, nearly enough to knock him unconscious.
But he kept his consciousness, watching helplessly as the chaos of feet trampled down on his body, his face…
He couldn’t even cry out in pain before he could never speak again.
In all that chaos, only Bai Long noticed He Tian being shoved into the battle and then stomped to death underfoot by the shipworkers.
Her gaze fixed with precision on Cheng Qian.
Her beast eyes, lit by the flames, looked plated in crimson-gold light, blazing radiantly.
Caught under that stare, Cheng Qian couldn’t stop himself from trembling all over.
He was about to order the others to charge forward, only to find there wasn’t a single person left at his side. Even Wang Yi, who’d been with him not long ago, had vanished somewhere.
And there was nothing he could do to stop Bai Long. He watched, helpless, as she pressed an all-too-familiar magnetic card against the door’s access panel on the wall.
Amid the din, all that could be heard was a single “beep”, and a straight seam appeared in the floor.
The ground split open along the seam on both sides, and a silver whip came lashing up out of it.
“Cheng Qian, I’m going to kill you!”
Sun Jie crawled up out of the underground, dragging a body covered in blood.
Like a vengeful demon from hell, she came for Cheng Qian’s life, step by step.
Cheng Qian’s legs shook violently, he wheeled around and stumbled toward the stone gate.
“No, I can’t die, I have to live! I did nothing wrong!”