The briny seawater came crashing down like a curtain over the sky. In the blink of an eye, the whole world seemed to dissolve into a single sheet of murky blue.
Water surged in through her nostrils and ear canals, a sharp, stinging ache spreading out along her nerves.
Chi Wan couldn’t stop her mouth from opening, and within a single second of breathing she could feel more and more seawater swelling her whole body.
One tiny bubble after another floated upward.
Chi Wan half-opened one eye. Through her blurring vision, all she could make out was a single black silhouette closing in on her.
The seawater seemed to have seeped straight into her brain, her consciousness growing hazier and hazier…
Chi Wan closed her eyes.
The water poured down, and the sheer force of the impact scattered Bai Long’s entire group.
More than half of the city’s coastal districts were submerged.
Glass windows shattered, the shards sinking into the churning current.
“Sss…”
Bai Long felt a sudden stab of pain in her arm and leg.
Stirred up by the seawater, she thought she caught the faint smell of blood.
Bai Long looked down.
A gash that ran clear across half her left forearm was oozing blood.
She pulled out the shard of glass embedded in her flesh, while her right hand caught hold of the still-sinking Chi Wan.
Within a few breaths, the smell of blood seemed to fade a little.
Bai Long didn’t have the spare attention to dwell on it, chalking it up to the seawater’s overpowering reek masking the blood on her body.
“Pwah!”
Chi Zao broke the surface with a gasp, swiped a hand across his face, and gradually steadied himself in the water.
He spotted Bai Long’s position in an instant.
She was towing the unconscious Chi Wan toward a streetlamp.
The lamppost was extremely tall. Although its base was drowned beneath the water, there was still a section jutting above the surface that they could grab onto.
“Boss, let me help you!”
Chi Zao swam over to Bai Long’s side and took Chi Wan from her hands.
Bai Long didn’t hesitate. Once Chi Wan was secured, she twisted back around and dove into the water again to look for the others.
Chi Zao fished out a floating metal door panel, laid Chi Wan on top of it, and patted her cheek, but she didn’t respond.
Fortunately, since his father was a doctor, Chi Zao had learned basic first aid.
Without pausing, he crossed his hands and began CPR on Chi Wan.
Chi Wan coughed up the seawater clogged in her chest and slowly came to.
By then Bai Long had returned, bringing Xie Yinyin to Chi Zao.
Xie Yinyin was in slightly better shape than Chi Wan, still conscious, and Bai Long pushed her up onto the floating board.
All the students had been scattered.
As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but deep blue seawater. A person submerged in it would be almost impossible to find.
“What do we do? There’s no way we’ll find the others like this!”
Chi Zao couldn’t see any of his buddies, and his hands gripped the edge of the float tightly.
Water dripped down from the strands of his hair. His face was deathly pale.
Whether it was from being soaked in the freezing seawater or from something else, no one could say.
The water surged, and zombies were mixed in among it.
Zombies were different from living people.
Zombies didn’t need to breathe. Even if they were submerged, they wouldn’t die.
But people would.
“If we crash into a zombie, we’re done for.”
Xie Yinyin panted, eyes wide as she tried to search out the others.
The seawater blurred her vision. She raised a hand and roughly scrubbed at her eyes, then squinted and looked around.
Bai Long propped herself up on the float.
A zombie drifted past, and she knocked it out cold with a single punch.
But instead of letting the zombie slide away, she gripped it by the back of the collar, who-knew-what going through her head.
In the distance, faint purple-and-violet figures could be seen bobbing up and down on the surface of the water, all zombies floating along.
Chi Wan noticed the wound on Bai Long’s arm. The gash, several centimeters long, stood out starkly against her cold, pale, slender forearm.
“Let me bandage it for you.”
Chi Wan had some sealed gauze in her pocket that she’d grabbed on the way out earlier, thankfully it hadn’t gotten waterlogged.
Only now did Bai Long spare a thought for the wound on her arm.
Hm? Why does it look like it’s smaller than it was underwater?
Did I see it wrong earlier?
Bai Long found it strange.
Chi Wan worked quickly, and in just a few deft motions she had the wound neatly wrapped.
It might still get soaked by the seawater, but it was better than leaving it exposed.
“There’s no way we’ll make it in time searching like this.”
Bai Long noticed the display screen on a tall building in the distance, the clock showed it was already past seven.
The supply starship wouldn’t wait for them. The moment it hit eight and they hadn’t reached the transfer station, the starship would leave.
In fact, given that the city was now more than half submerged, there was a very real chance the starship wouldn’t stop at all.
But meeting the starship at eight was their only chance to get out!
“Could we find a few more floats? As long as we can hang on…”
As Chi Zao spoke, he started looking around for more floating door panels.
But aside from the one beneath them, there wasn’t another float in sight.
What he did see, though, was a pair of underwear bobbing in the water…
And by the look of it, pure cotton, too…
No telling which underwear shop had gotten washed out.
Bai Long and the others saw it too.
Mostly because the water’s surface was covered in a vast spread of lace, silk, and pure cotton, there was even a style that was just a few straps strung together. It was impossible not to notice.
Chi Wan: “…”
Chi Zao: “Even a floating plastic mannequin would’ve been better than this…”
What is the deal with all this merchandise?!
Look how awkward it’s gotten now! Just like that, all the tension is gone!
But what shocked them was still to come.
They watched, wide-eyed, as Bai Long, picked up the underwear floating past!
She even grabbed the style that was just a few straps!
“B-Boss, what, what are you…”
Chi Zao abruptly lost the power of speech, stammering, with no idea how to even comment on this.
“What are you standing there for? Hurry up and grab them, they’re useful!”
As Bai Long spoke, her hands moved even faster, and in no time the float was piled with several pairs in different styles.
Before Chi Zao could even ask what they were for, he watched his own gentle, refined sister start picking them up without the slightest hesitation.
Chi Zao… Chi Zao was struck dumb.
Xie Yinyin didn’t ask either, she just joined the underwear-gathering army.
The two of them were clearly the type who’d simply do whatever Bai Long did.
Chi Zao stopped asking. He joined in too.
Because if he didn’t pick any up, it would only make his reaction look even weirder.
For a moment, amid the dense cluster of high-rises, among a crowd of people fleeing in panic, there were four people who stood out abnormally.
They were all immersed in the great cause of underwear-collecting, never once lifting their heads.
Like a gang of four perverts.
On a rooftop terrace of a tall building.
A few armed figures looked down at the surging waves below, their expressions cool and indifferent.
“Captain Luo, this building’s been searched too. No one’s here.”
After the armed man finished reporting to the man by the railing, he didn’t hear a reply, and for a moment he was not sure what to do.
“Did we figure out the identity of that esper who got away?”
The man—Luo Yan, the same one who’d led the team on the junk planet earlier, looked down at the people struggling and crying below, his heart utterly unmoved.
To them, those people were nothing more than lowborn riffraff, not worth spending the time to save.
What’s more, saving people wasn’t the main objective of this mission anyway.
“She’s an unregistered resident from the junk planet. That whole place is full of unregistered residents, the Star Alliance never logged any of their information. All we know is that she grew up on the junk planet.”
As he said this, the armed man was clearly thoroughly disgusted by how irregular the junk planet was in every respect.
In his heart, he refused to accept that a place like that fell within the Star Alliance’s jurisdiction at all.
Just a bunch of garbage people anyway.
Luo Yan folded his arms across his chest. After sweeping his gaze back and forth over the scene below a few times, he noticed four people somewhere down there moving strangely.
He and his men came from the middle stratum and above, a dedicated department under the Star Alliance.
They had undergone genetic modification from a young age, and their five senses were far superior to those of the lower-stratum inferiors.
Because of this, Luo Yan could see clearly what those people were doing, though the distance was still too great for him to make out their faces.
Luo Yan saw it plainly: those three women and one man were, in the water, collecting underwear.
Luo Yan’s face went cold. “…”
Unsightly lowborn wretches!
He couldn’t bear to look at the scene any longer, it was practically a stain on his eyes.
He didn’t want to spend another second down in the lower stratum.
Breathing the same air as these inferiors made him physically ill.
Luo Yan didn’t think the esper who’d escaped could possibly do something as unsightly as collecting… underwear.
That would be an utter disgrace to espers everywhere.
“Withdraw.”
Luo Yan turned on his heel and strode toward the exit, his expression even colder and harder than before.
She was just someone out of the junk planet anyway.
No citizen registration, no esper ranking, he’d like to see just how long she could survive after running off.
The armed subordinates following Luo Yan also noticed the abrupt chill that had come over their captain’s expression.
Curious, they trailed behind him and looked in the direction Luo Yan had been staring.
And then…
The armed men: “…”
Unsightly!
They retreated all the way down to the ground floor, where a starcraft was hovering steadily above the surface of the water.
Once Luo Yan and the others were all aboard, the starcraft powered up, leaving a long trail across the water before finally vanishing into the far reaches of the city.
Meanwhile, Bai Long, who was leading Chi Wan and the rest in collecting underwear, seemed to sense something and lifted her head to look toward a certain tall building.
She felt as if someone had been watching her.
She could only vaguely make out a few figures, but they did seem somewhat familiar.
Still, there were obviously more important things at hand right now.
Bai Esper Long went back to her underwear-collecting, head down.
She clearly didn’t see any problem with an esper collecting underwear.
After all, even her funeral shrouds had slits cut everywhere, what was a little underwear?
These pairs would come in very handy in a moment!
…
Beside one of the buildings, a single hand clung fast to a jutting corner of the structure.
The muscles on Chen Lei’s arm bulged, and you could even see the veins straining beneath his skin in cords.
His other hand still had a death grip on Yue Li’s hand.
Yue Li had her eyes closed, alive or dead unknown.
“Damn it… if you don’t wake up soon I’m not gonna be able to hold on much longer…”
Chen Lei gritted his teeth, his fingers nearly gouging into the metal wall.
Just then, a zombie was swept over by the seawater, sliding straight toward Chen Lei and the others.
“Crap! Can my luck not be this bad?!”
The savage fangs were right in front of his face. Chen Lei threw himself desperately to the side.
He and Yue Li pressed their bodies tight against the wall, wishing they could pass straight through it.
The zombie slid past right before their eyes, but got caught on a tree trunk behind them, stuck halfway. From an arm’s length away from Yue Li, it strained upward, trying to bite off a chunk of flesh.
“Lady, if you don’t wake up the two of us are gonna feed the zombies together!!”
Chen Lei felt like his whole body was about to be torn in half.
The zombie seemed to realize it couldn’t close the distance between them, and had already started climbing the wall beside them.
The metal wall was smooth, but the zombie drove its sharp nails viciously into it, inching closer and closer toward Chen Lei and the others.
“Damn it!”
Chen Lei didn’t think their flesh was any harder than the wall, but hauling Yue Li against the pull of the seawater and keeping them both from dropping was already taking everything he had.
He had no strength left to deal with the zombie.
“Come on! I’ve never even dated! Never won a championship! I just dropped 648 yuan on a game! How can I die here?!”
Chen Lei let out a mournful cry.
Maybe it was because his wailing was just that pitiful.
Chen Lei felt movement in the hand he was gripping, and when he looked down, Yue Li seemed to have woken up.
The moment Yue Li opened her eyes, she saw a hideous, ugly face right below her feet, with a gaping, foul mouth wide open.
“What the f—!”
Yue Li jolted in shock, and on instinct kicked out.
Her foot landed square on the bridge of the zombie’s nose, and under the force, she caved in most of its face.
Once Yue Li registered that it was a zombie, her movements grew faster and more brutal, she stomped down a dozen times in a row on the nails it had hooked into the wall.
Just then another wave surged through, and the zombie lost its grip and was washed clean away.
“Beautiful…”
Snatched back from the jaws of death, Chen Lei looked at Yue Li with newfound respect.
Yue Li didn’t catch what Chen Lei said.
After she calmed down, it belatedly dawned on her that the zombie just now had seemed somewhat familiar.
“That person just now, they looked like they were wearing the shipyard’s work uniform…”
Yue Li sank into thought.
Chen Lei didn’t answer.
He was holding his breath. “Sis, let’s worry about what the zombie was wearing later, how about you support yourself for a bit? I’m about to give out!”
Only then did Yue Li realize she was still hanging off of Chen Lei. She hurriedly found a few footholds on the wall and eased the strain on his survival.
“Thank you.”
Yue Li said it solemnly.
If Chen Lei hadn’t kept hold of her just now, she’d have died in a zombie’s mouth long ago, and before it even got to the zombie, she might have just drowned.
“We’re classmates, was I just gonna watch you die and not lift a finger? Actually, I should be thanking you. Those kicks of yours were something else, headshotted that zombie right off.”
Chen Lei shook out his half-numb arm and grinned.
“What do we do now?”
He scanned the area around them, but couldn’t see any sign of Bai Long and the others.
“We need to find a way to regroup with everyone first.”
Yue Li knew that on their own, the two of them basically wouldn’t get far.
Just as they were at their wits’ end, far in the distance, they seemed to see something speeding toward them at an extraordinary rate.
A row of purple-and-violet heads lined up in a row.
It was zombies!
“Dammit! Could this be any more rotten luck?!”
Chen Lei cursed and quickly motioned for Yue Li to find somewhere to dodge.
“There’s no time!”
Yue Li’s eyes went wide as she watched the cluster of zombies sliding straight at them, fast as a boat!
Hm? A boat?
Yue Li and Chen Lei exchanged a look, suddenly realizing something seemed off.
“Hey! It’s Chen Lei and Yue Li!”
“Am I hallucinating because I’m about to die? Why does it sound like I just heard Chi Zao’s voice?”
Chen Lei muttered.
“It shouldn’t be, I heard it too.”
Yue Li forced the words out.
A few seconds later, they witnessed a scene they would never forget for the rest of their lives.
A raft made of zombie corpses was advancing steadily and rapidly across the surface of the sea.
And who else could be sitting on the raft but Bai Long, Chi Zao, and the rest?
That’s right, they’d fastened the zombies together one by one with who-knew-what, lined them up in a row, and assembled a corpse raft.
After the zombie surfboard, Bai Long and company had pressed onward, scaling ever greater heights, and at last evolved something bigger and stronger—
, the corpse raft.
“Hurry, get on. We’ve got to rush to the transfer station, you two are the only ones left.”
Chi Zao reached out a hand to them, clearly already well-adapted to whatever was beneath his rear end.
Shocked as they were, when they met the numb, resigned eyes of everyone else on the raft, Chen Lei and Yue Li resigned themselves to it too.
The two of them clambered onto the corpse raft, hands and feet scrambling.
Chen Lei even accidentally jammed his foot into the nostril of the zombie below him.
Chen Lei: “My bad, my bad.”
Foot-impaled zombie: Amen.
“Boss, everyone’s accounted for.”
Chi Zao reported the headcount.
Bai Long nodded, nudged the head of a zombie below her with her foot, and cast out the fishing rod in her hand.
Dangling from the fishing line was a piece of sponge from who-knew-where, with a visible bloodstain on it.
The blood had been graciously donated by Chi Zao, who’d been cut by glass in the water.
It was only after he climbed out of the water that he’d noticed a bloody gash on his leg, so he’d just gone ahead and maximized the utility of his blood.
The zombies caught the scent of human blood and immediately grew agitated, their submerged limbs thrashing wildly, paddling back and forth, transforming into corpse oars.
The zombie raft slowly started up and began moving through the water.
Fully automatic, no less.
The wave-riding corpse-corps.
Only then did Chen Lei and Yue Li notice.
The zombies beneath their feet were bound together by a long, stretched-out “rope.”
Except there was no telling what this rope was strung together from, each knotted segment looked very short, and the fabric seemed to vary from piece to piece.
Some were cotton, others silk or something.
Chen Lei didn’t catch on that something was off, but the more Yue Li looked, the more wrong it felt.
This rope, why does it look like…
“That’s right.”
Xu Yunyi confirmed it darkly from behind Yue Li.
“It really is under—”
Yue Li abruptly cut herself off.
After getting a confirming nod from Xu Yunyi, she fell silent.
She could clearly see that one of the strands beneath her feet was a strappy thong!
How sturdy were these straps, anyway?! They looked like they’d snap in one good yank!
Looking at the zombies trussed up beneath her feet with underwear-rope, bound up like crabs, with only their limbs left free to paddle the water, Yue Li felt a moment of utter blankness.
“Ha-ha. Pretty good quality.”
Yue Li said dryly.
Whatever the case, Bai Long and company sailed onward toward the transfer station aboard the good ship “Underwear Lament.”
Hearing the name “Underwear Lament,” Chi Wan stiffened for a moment.
She thought the zombies, treated like this, really did have something to lament…
Yue Li felt like she’d forgotten something, but couldn’t quite recall it.
The whole way there, she racked her brains, what on earth was it that she’d forgotten?
…
It had to be said, the motivational effect of human blood on zombies was remarkable.
Bai Long held the fishing rod, guiding the “Underwear Lament” to turn and drift through the waves the whole way.
Because the zombies’ bodies were fixed in place, and their hands and feet, with their direction controlled, could only swing back and forth, they actually stayed steadily afloat on the surface instead of sinking.
The “Underwear Lament” was far faster than traveling on foot would have been.
At the entrance of the transfer station, Bai Long gave the fishing rod an elegant flick, and the “Underwear Lament” promptly drifted to a stylish stop at the entrance.
She carefully stowed the fishing rod away, in case she ever needed to rebuild the “Underwear Lament” again someday, it might still come in handy.
Right up until they disembarked, the strappy thong style, which had Yue Li and the others on edge the whole way, still hadn’t snapped.
There was really no telling whether or not to credit it for being genuinely well-made.
Owing to the lay of the land, the transfer station had originally been situated on high ground in the city.
One of its floors was even left open, having originally served as a parking lot for hover-cars. Now that it was flooded, it didn’t affect the starship’s landing and takeoff procedures.
“Hurry, hurry, it’s already seven forty-five!”
Chi Zao supported Chi Wan with his left shoulder, his right hand still gripping the supply pack tightly.
What moved Bai Long was that even after being swept off by the waves, these people hadn’t forgotten to protect the supply pack.
That was the instinctive reaction of people who’d been starved out of their minds.
The other students in better shape were also supporting their companions injured in the tsunami, helping each other forward.
Xu Yunyi glanced at her star-ring.
The interstellar Star-Link signal blanketed the cosmos and didn’t rely on signal stations or power sources to transmit information.
So even though the entire city had now lost power, the star-ring could still be used to communicate with the outside world.
“The starship coming to pick us up should be here any minute. They’ll land at Gate A on the third floor.”
When Xu Yunyi finished, the group went pounding up the stairs.
The hover-lifts were all out of service, so they could only climb the stairs on foot.
Fortunately, the building wasn’t very tall.
But on the open level between the second and third floors, they ran into some old acquaintances.
Cheng Qian was being held in place by Zhao Xin, who had a grip on the back of his neck. The scald-blisters on Cheng Qian’s face had all burst and were oozing pus.
His formal suit was soaked through with seawater and smeared with some kind of unidentifiable filth, giving off wave after wave of a rancid, nauseating stench.
If his clothes hadn’t still barely retained their original appearance, Bai Long and the others wouldn’t have dared to believe this was Cheng Qian.
Zhao Xin wasn’t faring much better. His whole body was drenched in seawater, and there were a number of bloody gashes on him too, no telling where he’d gotten hurt.
By the looks of it, they’d barely escaped the tsunami with their lives, except…
“All the other staff are gone.”
Chi Wan looked around.
On this floor, aside from Cheng Qian and Zhao Xin, there was no sign of the staff who had originally been following them.
Seeing these two, Yue Li suddenly remembered what she’d forgotten earlier.
“Chen Lei and I might have run into one. There was a zombie wearing a shipyard work uniform, looks like it was probably one of the people who’d been with their crew.”
Yue Li said gravely.
Since they’d run into one, and only Cheng Qian and Zhao Xin had made it to the transfer station now, the fate of those other staff, dead or alive, was obvious.
They’d probably already joined another work unit.
The Zombie Corporation.
“Never thought you’d still be alive.”
Zhao Xin no longer bore any trace of the warm, honest, mild-mannered man he’d been at their first meeting.
His five fingers were clamped tight around Cheng Qian’s throat.
Cheng Qian looked like he was being kept going by nothing more than his last breath.
In the apocalypse, the desire to survive was enough to turn a man who’d been honest and dutiful for most of his life into something else entirely, vicious and ruthless, in the blink of an eye.
“You’re all still alive, why would I be dead?”
Bai Long found the question rather peculiar, and even felt a little like laughing.
Has this guy’s brain gone soggy from being soaked in water?
“You two, on the other hand, out of so many people, only the pair of you are left now. Pretty sure you’ll be heading down to a family reunion soon.”
Bai Long might have been unwilling to interact with people much because of her work, but those same idle gossipers had also honed her into a sharp-tongued one.
Back in the day, she’d never lost a head-to-head trash-talking match against any of those people.
It’s just that…
Bai Long’s nostrils twitched faintly.
It seemed there weren’t only Cheng Qian and Zhao Xin here, there was the scent of someone else too.
Her gaze followed the source of the smell, drifting over without a trace.
It was a garbage-collection bot-cart that hadn’t yet been hauled away.
The trash, left untended for so many days, had long since fermented and turned foul.
The transfer station’s air-purification system had also shut down entirely with the power and energy supply cut off.
Wave after wave of a foul, stomach-churning stench hung in the air.
Bai Long looked toward that direction, her nose twitching.
It couldn’t be that someone was hiding inside the garbage cart… could it?
That was too perverted, too freakish for words.
After a moment, she withdrew her gaze and looked back at Zhao Xin.
So Cheng Qian’s means of escape lay at the transfer station too.
Another starship? Or something else?
Bai Long’s group and Zhao Xin’s stood off against each other, the atmosphere stiff.
Just then, another group of people emerged from a different stairwell.
It took Sun Jie one second to recognize the Cheng Qian in Zhao Xin’s grip, and another second to lash out the whip in her hand.
The silver whip flew toward Cheng Qian’s position with lightning speed.
In the end, Zhao Xin still needed Cheng Qian to escape, and he couldn’t just watch him get whipped to death by Sun Jie.
He could only grit his teeth and yank Cheng Qian by the back of the collar to dodge the strike.
The whip, once launched, couldn’t be pulled back, and it struck the garbage cart head-on.
“AAAAH!!!”
A blood-curdling scream rang out from behind the garbage cart.
Like a pig being slaughtered.
The garbage cart was split clean apart by that single whip-stroke, exposing the person hiding inside.
That person, perhaps because, hidden inside the garbage cart, they couldn’t see what was happening outside, took the whip square across the face. A red welt stretched from the left temple all the way to the right jaw, and the welt had already visibly swollen and bulged.
“Wang Yi?”
Bai Long was a little surprised to see who it was.
She didn’t expect this person to be… actually this perverted, hiding inside a garbage cart the whole time.
No wonder the transfer station’s zombies hadn’t found her.
With that fermented, sour reek of garbage masking everything, the zombies couldn’t smell any human scent on her at all.
Bai Long recalled that back at the fire, Wang Yi had already been nowhere to be seen. She’d never expected the woman to have managed to make it to the transfer station all on her own.
But from the look of Wang Yi, the journey clearly hadn’t been easy.
Her once relatively neat clothes were in tatters and stained with brown filth.
Her hair was matted into greasy clumps, and the bangs on her forehead had turned into three big stiff locks, jutting out from her head like a trident.
She gave off the same sour stench as the garbage cart, of a single source. Her hands, her legs, her face, every exposed part of her was covered in wounds.
There was no longer the slightest trace of the affected, posturing woman she’d been back at the shipyard. Now she looked more like a madwoman.
“Pfft…”
Chi Zao genuinely couldn’t hold back a laugh.
It was mainly because the trident hairstyle was just too avant-garde, like that comic-strip kid Sanmao with his three hairs, and he just couldn’t process it for a second.
The previously deadlocked atmosphere was suddenly broken by Wang Yi’s appearance.
Wang Yi’s face was twisted with fury, but the slightest movement of her facial muscles tugged at that whip-wound, making it hurt even more.
Cheng Qian’s eyes went wide, he never expected Wang Yi to turn up here.
His sharp, scheming mind worked it out almost instantly.
“You damn well ran off ahead all by yourself?! What the hell were you planning? Huh?”
Cheng Qian’s ruined face abruptly contorted as well.
He remembered how, while he and Wang Yi were doing that, she’d coaxed and wheedled him into letting slip that a starship would come pick them up at the transfer station.
So she’d been planning to sneak off ahead even then?!
No wonder he hadn’t seen her at all when the shipyard caught fire!
The thought of nearly dying in that shipyard, and then being treated this way after getting out, by the very workers he’d looked down on—Cheng Qian was already furious enough to spit blood.
Now, seeing that Wang Yi, who had relied on bootlicking him to climb up, had actually betrayed him, Cheng Qian could have rushed over and beaten her to death.
He felt it was an affront to the authority he’d always held.
Cheng Qian had known Wang Yi had a few little schemes of her own, but he’d never imagined she’d dare turn them on him!
Under Cheng Qian’s glare, Wang Yi flinched instinctively.
She didn’t say anything, just crouched beside the garbage bin, neurotically biting at her fingernails, which were caked with garbage and bleeding freely.
“I have to survive… I have to survive… I don’t want to die… die…”
Wen Li heard her words and was a little frightened. “What’s wrong with her? Has she… has she lost her mind?”
Yue Li and Xie Yinyin weren’t as kindhearted as Wen Li.
They’d long since had no patience for Wang Yi’s old behavior, and right now they practically wanted to set off some firecrackers to celebrate.
“Best if she’s gone crazy, she was never a normal person to begin with.”
Xie Yinyin rolled her eyes.
Of Sun Jie and An Ran’s group, there weren’t many left either.
Apart from the two of them, nearly everyone else had been wiped out, only a few children remained.
The two women, too, were covered in wounds from fleeing the whole way while having to protect the children.
Zhao Xin was now hell-bent on protecting Cheng Qian, come what may. So no matter how much Sun Jie hated him, the most she could manage was a stalemate with Zhao Xin.
What’s more, if they wanted to leave, they really did still need to rely on Cheng Qian’s mouth.
So however unwilling and resentful Cheng Qian felt in his heart, he couldn’t backstab Zhao Xin once the starship arrived.
With the back of his neck clamped firmly in Zhao Xin’s hand, the instant Cheng Qian dared to resist, Zhao Xin could throttle him in a second.
And with Sun Jie’s whip glaring menacingly off to the side, and both his legs now broken, if Cheng Qian didn’t let Sun Jie’s group board the starship too, there was no way he could escape!
Sun Jie could whip him to death in a single stroke.
Cheng Qian, who had been so sure of victory and so smug just before, had suddenly been reduced to a fish on the chopping block.
If they hadn’t needed to keep him alive to get out of the city, he’d have died who-knew-how-many times over by now.
For a moment, the transfer station was filled with a strange and rigid atmosphere.
No one dared to move, everyone was waiting for the starship Cheng Qian had spoken of to appear.
The sound of chaotic footsteps came drifting over.
Steady, yet laced with a touch of disorder.
From far off, Bai Long spotted the familiar uniforms and, without a moment’s hesitation, ducked behind a nearby counter to hide.
Seeing her do this, the other students hurried to find places to hide too.
The transfer station had long since been thrown into chaos when the zombies broke out.
Hidden among it all, they were unlikely to be discovered.
Bai Long peered out from her blind spot.
Sure enough, it was Luo Yan and his armed men.
It’s just…
For some reason, the espers trailing behind them were far fewer than there had been on the starship, only a handful remained.
Those few walked with shuffling, unsteady steps, blood on their bodies, eyes blank and lifeless as they followed behind the armed men.
There was no telling what they’d been through, they looked nothing like the relaxed, curious crowd that had been aboard the starship before.
Luo Yan’s Martin boots struck dull thuds against the ground, as though stamping down on people’s very hearts.
When Cheng Qian saw that squad of armed men, he abruptly began struggling in Zhao Xin’s grip.
Then, as if something had occurred to him, his movements calmed, and he even raised a hand to straighten his clothes.
Walking out front, Luo Yan naturally noticed Cheng Qian and the others too, but he merely glanced at them, quickly looked away, and said to the armed men behind him, “How’s the starship coming along?”
“It’s fully prepped, Captain. Ready to depart at any time.”
At these words, the excitement in Cheng Qian’s eyes burned a little brighter.
He stretched out a hand to bar Luo Yan’s path and, smiling mildly just as he had before, said, “Hello, Officer. I’m a Distinguished Professor of Songdu Marine University in Region 64—Cheng Qian.”
Luo Yan looked at the hand barring his way, his steps coming to a steady stop just a few centimeters short of it, not letting it touch him in the slightest.
Luo Yan lifted his eyes and looked at Cheng Qian.
Cheng Qian thought he was smiling quite graciously.
But his face had long since been poked through entirely by the blisters, not one patch of good flesh remained, and now his smile looked like a twisted lump of meat.
Luo Yan said nothing, his gaze cold.
Cheng Qian was taken aback, seemingly not expecting Luo Yan to give him no reaction at all.
“You may not be aware, but I attended a conference up in the middle stratum before. I’m acquainted with Captain Wang of the Guard!”
Cheng Qian’s voice rose without his realizing it, as though to lend himself more confidence.
Luo Yan didn’t react at all.
After a while, he let out a cold sneer. “You, what exactly are you?”
With that, his utterly emotionless gaze fell on that hand.
Somehow, Cheng Qian shuddered and swiftly withdrew his hand.
In that instant, he felt that if he’d been even a fraction slower to pull it back, his hand might not have survived.
That single look from Luo Yan wasn’t like looking at a person, more like looking at a heap of rotting, stinking garbage.
Cheng Qian collapsed limply to the ground.
Hearing Luo Yan’s words, Zhao Xin understood: everything before had just been Cheng Qian’s own wishful self-aggrandizement.
In the eyes of the great ones of the upper and middle strata, Cheng Qian was absolutely nothing!
After Luo Yan left, an armed man following behind him cast a contemptuous glance at the limp Cheng Qian sprawled on the floor.
“Nothing but a lowborn inferior with no esper powers, doesn’t even know how good he’s got it.”
“It’s the apocalypse, and there’s still someone who thinks he’s hot stuff because he’s some lousy professor? On top of that, a garbage professor from the lower stratum.”
The armed men weren’t speaking loudly, but every last mocking word still fell into Cheng Qian’s ears.
Esper powers?!
Hearing those two words, the despair-ridden Zhao Xin’s eyes suddenly blazed with intense light.
“Sir! Sir, wait! I have esper powers! I’m an esper!”
Zhao Xin lunged toward Luo Yan and pleaded abjectly. “I’m an esper! Can you take me with you?!”
He, too, had noticed those people following behind the armed men.
They weren’t wearing the armed men’s standard uniform, they were very likely the chosen espers!
Zhao Xin was an esper himself, so could he also follow along and get out?!
And the limp Cheng Qian, sprawled on the floor like a heap of mud, hearing this, felt that the professor’s identity and dignity he’d always prided himself on had been stomped into the muck.
How could this be happening?!
He was a professor! How could his status, his standing, his worth fall short of a mere worker like Zhao Xin?!
Cheng Qian couldn’t understand it.
He just felt like he’d been slapped hard across the face, burning every bit as fiercely as the spots scorched by fire on his body.
“You’re an esper?”
Luo Yan didn’t speak, it was the armed man behind him who stepped forward to confirm it.
The armed man produced an instrument Bai Long had never seen before.
It was a light-screen, but much thicker than an ordinary entertainment light-screen.
The armed man aimed the light-screen at Zhao Xin’s head.
A beam of blue light shot out from a point on the back of the light-screen, scanning Zhao Xin’s whole body twice, from top to bottom.
This instrument was different from the one they’d used for testing back on the junk planet.
Bai Long guessed it was a new device they’d switched to after arriving in the city, it looked far more advanced than the old one.
“Rank-E esper, enhancement type.”
The cold mechanical voice of the light-screen echoed through the empty transfer station.
Hearing the result, Luo Yan walked straight past Zhao Xin without pausing for even a second.
The armed men followed closely after, and no one paid any more attention to the bewildered Zhao Xin.
Zhao Xin couldn’t even understand why, he was an esper just the same, and yet he’d still been cast aside.
“I’m an esper! I’m an esper too! The test said I’m an esper, didn’t it?! Why won’t you take me with you?!”
Zhao Xin flung himself forward frantically and seized Luo Yan’s pant leg in a death grip.
Luo Yan stopped, his gaze falling on the hand clutching his trousers.
His trousers had been smeared dirty by the filthy grime on that hand, now crumpled and unsightly.
“Bang!”
A gunshot suddenly rang out in the transfer station.
“You few, throw him out. Don’t sicken people in here.”
The armed man ordered the few espers behind him.
Those espers, faces blank, didn’t hesitate to throw Zhao Xin, shot clean through the brow, out through the transfer station’s floor-to-ceiling window.
The corpse hit the ground with a dull thud, immediately followed by the chilling sound of chewing and gnawing.
Luo Yan glanced in disgust at his soiled trousers and quickened his pace to leave.
Watching Zhao Xin’s fate, Sun Jie, An Ran, and the others trembled as they shielded the children.
They no longer dared go up and claim to be espers.
But those armed men had no intention of letting them off.
“What did you just see?”
An armed man looked down at them from on high.
“Nothing, we didn’t see anything!”
Sun Jie insisted, denying it flatly.
Even though she was trembling all over with fear, she didn’t dare so much as glance elsewhere, only staring fixedly at the floor before her.
The armed man said nothing, took out the instrument, and gave Sun Jie and An Ran a scan.
“Rank-D esper, weapon type.”
“Rank-D esper, perception type.”
“Two more espers, huh.”
The armed man chuckled softly.
But they had no intention of taking Sun Jie and An Ran with them either. Instead, they had the espers behind them snatch the star-rings off the two women’s wrists.
“Just to be safe.”
The armed man took the star-rings and, without hesitation, crushed them on the spot.
The fragments of the star-rings scattered across the ground and were blown away by the wind.
Sun Jie and An Ran didn’t dare utter a word, only watching that pile of fragments in despair.
Without star-rings, they had no way to receive news or to contact the outside world.
Luo Yan and his men left.
Behind them they left Cheng Qian, and Wang Yi, who had long since been frightened witless, and the rest.
The sound of a starship powering up rang out not far off.
Bai Long made no rash moves, crouching behind the counter as she watched the starship take off.
Meanwhile, Wang Yi had completely broken down.
She’d clawed her way here with everything she had, only to have her sole hope of survival lightly snuffed out in an instant.
Looking at Cheng Qian, who was now no different from a heap of mud, all the resentment she’d been storing up came pouring out.
“Are you a goddamn idiot?! Professor this, knowing people in the middle stratum that, it’s all dogshit! What the hell did I put up with the disgust of getting tangled up with an old man like you for?! That reek of old-man stink on you, I could smell it from a thousand meters off! And now you’re telling me you’re a damn nobody?!”
Wang Yi crawled over to Cheng Qian on all fours, grabbed him by the collar, and shook him wildly.
“You, you, you!”
Cheng Qian had never imagined that, on top of being humiliated by the middle-stratum men, he’d now be treated this way by a mere plaything of his. He shook all over with rage, his trembling finger pointing at Wang Yi, unable to get out a single word for the longest time.
“You what, you?! At this point I don’t even care anymore. I’ll tell you the truth, if it weren’t for the awards and for surviving, you think I’d have wanted to do that with you? Disgusting as hell, you three-second poser!”
Wang Yi had now thoroughly fallen out with Cheng Qian, and was letting it all spill out.
She’d never been the demure type to begin with, the earlier act had just been put on to get Cheng Qian’s backing.
Now that her hopes were dashed, she’d stopped pretending entirely.
Bai Long and the others, forced to swallow a big juicy piece of gossip: …
It was one thing for Bai Long, who’d only known them a short while, but she met eyes with Chi Wan and the others a little ways off.
By the looks of Chi Wan and her group, this was also the first they were hearing of the whole Wang Yi–Cheng Qian affair.
“You’re only finding out now too?”
Bai Long wasn’t quite sure how to react.
She really did not want to know how long Cheng Qian could last!
He just looked so frail, after all, she never imagined it was only three seconds…
Chi Wan flushed, embarrassed. “I… I’ve never heard any of it!”
Before, she’d had nothing in her mind but studying, and never cared about this sort of thing at all.
Yue Li and Xie Yinyin, on the other hand, looked rather in the know.
“I thought they were just teacher and class-pet… Wait, no, being with an old man like that, didn’t the old-man stink choke her half to death?!”
Xie Yinyin was floored.
For the sake of a few measly awards, Wang Yi had been willing to go this far?!
The main thing was, by the frail look of Cheng Qian, he wouldn’t even live long enough to collect a pension!
Cheng Qian looked about ready to roll his eyes back and pass out from sheer rage.
He snarled viciously, “Without me, do you think you’d have survived this long?! And what makes you think you’re any better?! Sleeping with me for the sake of an award, do your classmates know how much trash you talked about them behind their backs?!”
He was a Distinguished Professor, after all!
And what exactly was Wang Yi?! How dare she clamor at him like this?!
“You’re threatening me?! You actually dare threaten me?! You think I won’t air out all the rotten things you’ve done?!”
Wang Yi advanced on Cheng Qian step by step, her venomous, vicious gaze fixed on him.
As though she meant to drag him down to die with her.
Cheng Qian seemed cowed by the look in her eyes and fell silent.
Wang Yi was like someone who’d gone completely mad.
The prolonged tension and terror of running for her life since the apocalypse began had already left her psyche teetering on the edge. Now that her hope of survival was utterly gone, she threw all caution to the wind.
Like a woman possessed, she laid bare all the dirt Cheng Qian had done.
“Those papers of yours, you think you actually wrote any of them?! Stealing your students’ work and slapping your own name on it, what skills do you even have?! You’re nothing but a brown-nosing little weasel! And you call yourself a professor? Drop the act!”
“Dumping coffee on students, making students transfer you money to treat you to meals, you’ve truly got no shame! A person like you deserves to go eat shit!”
“You old pervert! Forcing yourself on so many girls and secretly filming videos to watch on the sly! Even maggots aren’t as goddamn disgusting as you!”
One after another, every single one of the shameful things Cheng Qian had done was dragged out into the open by Wang Yi.
The two of them, utterly heedless of their old images and dignity, began grappling and tearing at each other right there on the floor.
Wang Yi’s sharp fingernails gouged through the skin of Cheng Qian’s face, leaving terrible bloody streaks.
Cheng Qian was, after all, still a man. And while he might only last three seconds, his strength was still considerably greater than Wang Yi’s.
He landed several savage slaps across Wang Yi’s face. Wang Yi’s cheek instantly swelled up high.
While the two were locked in their struggle, the sound of shattering glass abruptly rang out.
All of the transfer station’s floor-to-ceiling windows shattered.
The sea wind howled past, accompanied by the snarls of the zombies below.
Bai Long’s expression abruptly darkened.
Ordinarily, a transfer station’s windows were made of blast-proof glass and wouldn’t simply shatter on their own.
Given the present situation, the only possibility was that Luo Yan’s armed men had done it.
It seemed they’d never had any intention of letting these people leave alive at all.
Sun Jie and An Ran clearly arrived at the same realization, their faces going ashen.
Only after confirming that the armed men’s starship had departed did Bai Long emerge from behind the counter.
Her position had been quite close to the floor-to-ceiling windows to begin with.
As she stepped out, something seemed to glint in the corner of her eye.
Bai Long lowered her gaze and saw Zhao Xin’s corpse, no longer recognizable.
A large chunk of his scalp was missing, and because of the force of the fall, most of his brain was exposed.
And within his exposed brain, something seemed to flicker.
Without a trace of movement, Bai Long reached out a hand, water condensing into a rope between her fingers, and probed toward Zhao Xin’s brain.
What she fished back out was a white stone.
What is this?
A brain stone? They’re that ahead of the curve?
Bai Long didn’t understand, but she put it away for the time being all the same.
For some reason, the moment she saw this faintly glowing stone, instinct told her to hide it.
The students like Chi Wan stared at the gaping window frames, their expressions blank.
They didn’t understand, none of what had just happened made any sense to them.
“…Why? Wasn’t the Star Alliance… coming to… save us?”
Wen Li asked haltingly.
In their minds, the Star Alliance was the entity that governed the entire star region.
And they were people of the star region, so naturally they were under the Star Alliance’s protection.
So why was it that the armed men under the Star Alliance, far from saving them, were actually trying to kill them?
Bai Long had a guess, but she didn’t want to share it with these students.
Those armed men were probably not like the Star Alliance department they imagined.
They belonged to the Star Alliance and acted on the Star Alliance’s orders, but the mission they’d been given did not include saving people.
Or rather, it did not include saving the lowborn ordinary folk of the lower-stratum districts.
In the silent, despairing, oppressive atmosphere, Bai Long quietly had Chi Wan and the others gather close around her.
They slowly moved toward the gaping window opening.
“In a moment, once the supply starship arrives, don’t hesitate, run aboard as fast as you can.”
Bai Long lowered her voice, careful that Wang Yi and Cheng Qian wouldn’t hear.
“Those who aren’t hurt, grab the injured and run together, don’t stop for even a second.”
She looked at the frenzied Wang Yi and Cheng Qian.
These two were now indiscriminately attacking lunatics. If any of these students lost focus and got tangled up with them, it would likely be hard to get away.
Not long after she finished speaking, several low lights appeared on the horizon.
It was the supply starship Xu Yunyi had mentioned.
The starship wasn’t large, compared to the armed men’s starship from earlier, it could even be called mini.
It looked only a dozen or so meters long.
Presumably those families weren’t about to risk sending over a large starship.
This little starship was already the upper limit of what they were willing to accept.
The people on that starship had clearly noticed the situation at the transfer station too. Rather than landing, they hovered a few meters off from it.
“Run!”
Bai Long gave the order.
Hearing it, Chi Wan and the others instinctively sprinted toward the starship at top speed.
The starship had already lowered a rope ladder.
Wang Yi and Cheng Qian also noticed the starship.
A fierce desire erupted in their eyes, and heedless of their own wounds, they ran toward the starship with everything they had.
“You’re not allowed to leave! Wait!”
Sun Jie and An Ran saw the starship too, and without hesitation dashed toward it with the children.
Chen Lei, running out front, had already leapt up and grabbed the rope ladder.
His overwhelming will to survive let him take the rungs three at a time. He scrambled up onto the starship in no time, then turned and reached down a hand to pull up the classmates below.
The boys were faster and had more stamina than the girls.
After a few of the boys made it up, none of them left, instead, they knelt at the boarding hatch and reached down to haul up the girls.
“Give me your hand!”
Chi Zao and the few remaining boys brought up the rear, guarding the girls as they climbed up rung by rung.
In this life-or-death moment, the girls drew on the greatest strength they possessed.
Even though their hands were chafed raw and bleeding on the rough rope, they didn’t make a sound, gritting their teeth, swallowing their fear, climbing for their lives.
Faster! Just a little faster!
As Bai Long clung to the rope, she suddenly felt a chill at the back of her head.
On instinct, she dodged to the side.
A head-sized shard of glass grazed past her hair and crashed to the ground, sending the zombies below into a frenzy of snarling.
“Stop! Stop right there! Take me with you!”
Cheng Qian had gone mad.
He wanted to live!
His first throw missed, so he snatched up another shard of glass from the ground, this time he took aim at the girls in the middle of the rope ladder.
If he could just smash them to death, he’d have a chance to board!
Kill them!
Cheng Qian had completely lost all reason.
Bai Long caught his intent, and her gaze turned ice-cold in an instant.
Clinging to the rope ladder now, they had nowhere to dodge and no free hand to fend him off, they were simply living targets hanging in the air.
If one of them got hit by Cheng Qian, they’d either be killed outright or fall down to feed the zombies.
This man was truly incorrigible! Beyond all redemption!
Wang Yi had gone mad too, and somehow she’d managed to leap onto the tail end of the rope ladder.
But she didn’t have enough strength in her arms, so she could only clutch the very end of the rope in a death grip, blood seeping from all ten fingers, refusing to let go.
“I have to survive, I have to survive!”
Under the pull of gravity, Wang Yi’s arm, which had been hidden by her sleeve the whole time, was exposed.
In a single glance Bai Long saw the wound on that arm, unmistakably torn open by a zombie’s bite.
Wang Yi had already been infected by a zombie.
Running here all alone, she’d been attacked by a zombie at some point along the way.
Watching Wang Yi grow more and more deranged, it was obvious she was on the verge of fully turning into a zombie and losing her sanity.
Her body had also been enhanced by the zombie transformation, otherwise she’d never have been able to leap up to the rope ladder.
And Cheng Qian, who’d just been grappling with her, was likely no more able to escape infection than she was.
Seeing Cheng Qian about to throw the glass again, water swirled around Bai Long’s fingers.
Bursting out of the fire earlier had drained a great deal of her esper power, and she didn’t have much left to use now.
She condensed a tiny water-arrow between her fingers.
The arrowhead gave off a faint, cold glow in the light.
Just this much would be enough!
The arrow was nocked, ready to loose at a touch!
The water-arrow shot out from between her fingers, flying straight at Cheng Qian’s heart.
The icy water-arrow pierced through the flesh of Cheng Qian’s chest and then melted away in his body heat.
But the searing pain at his heart still made Cheng Qian instinctively arch his back.
That one moment was enough, the glass in his hand dropped, shattering into pieces on the ground.
Cheng Qian, who had been standing at the very edge of the window frame for his attack, lost his footing, and in one careless instant pitched straight out the window.
The zombies gathered below by Zhao Xin’s blood and flesh were already gaping their mouths wide to welcome him.
“AAAH!”
A scream that rang through the sky.
Cheng Qian’s back slammed hard onto the shattered glass covering the ground.
The sharp glass pierced through his thick layers of flesh, but not enough to kill him, it was only agony sweeping through his entire body, more than any ordinary person could bear.
The smell of blood only stirred up the zombies around him all the more.
Bai Long and the others could only hear Cheng Qian’s shrill screaming below, going on and on without end, as the heavy reek of blood spread through the air.
And Wang Yi, who had already been at the very end of her strength, finally couldn’t hold on any longer.
The fingernails on all ten of her fingers snapped clean off against the rope.
“NO!!!”
The pain that shot straight to her heart from all ten fingers made her eyes fly wide, and she watched helplessly as she drifted farther and farther from the starship, until she too was finally devoured by the zombies below.
The interwoven screams of a man and a woman seemed about to pierce everyone’s eardrums.
Chi Zao instinctively glanced down, and nearly fell off the rope ladder from revulsion.
Cheng Qian and Wang Yi no longer had whole bodies to speak of.
All that could be seen amid the swarm of zombies were blood-mottled severed limbs, jagged muscle jutting high up toward the starship, and two heads with their flesh torn away and white bone exposed.
On those skulls, the eyeballs dangling out of the sockets still seemed to be telling of their unwillingness to die.
“Snap out of it!”
Bai Long barked.
Only then did Chi Zao scramble up in a fluster.
Bai Long was the last to climb into the starship. Turning her head, she saw Sun Jie and An Ran below, faces upturned, gazing up at her.
“Please! Please save us!”
An Ran met Bai Long’s eyes and begged, breaking down into sobs.
But this time, Bai Long would not come dropping down from the heavens to pull her out of the fire.
An Ran knew, too, that she’d long since forfeited any right to beg Bai Long for help.
After saying those words, looking into Bai Long’s calm beast eyes, An Ran couldn’t bring herself to say anything more.
“I know I don’t have the right, but could you please, please take these children? They’re still so little, they’re innocent!”
An Ran lowered her head, gritting her teeth.
“The children are innocent?”
Chen Lei looked as if he’d just heard a joke. “She’s pulling a moral-blackmail move, isn’t she? This is absolutely moral blackmail!”
Xu Yunyi sat on the floor, panting and watching An Ran and the others.
“To be honest, if it were me, I wouldn’t even have the nerve to open my mouth. How many times has Boss saved them already? And they’ve got the gall to ask now? There was the supply incident before, and the materials room, and the fire. Why don’t they just have Boss take care of them in their old age while they’re at it?”
She’d always been merciless with her snide remarks.
Every word the two of them said carried perfectly to the ears of An Ran and Sun Jie.
An Ran hung her head in shame, not daring to look up.
She, she really had meant exactly that.
She’d hoped Bai Long might soften her heart just once more, and save them one more time.
But it seemed she’d forgotten: back at the shipyard, not a single one of them had stood by Bai Long’s side, not even those children’s own parents.
They’d brought the children along and, all together, turned hostile, disgusted eyes on her, driving her out of the shipyard.
And yet she’d still gotten them out of the shipyard alive.
That time, Bai Long had already done all that conscience could ask.
“An Ran, I’m not a god.”
Bai Long said only this one sentence, then turned and stepped into the starship’s cabin.
An Ran’s lips moved faintly. Watching the students under Bai Long’s protection, her heart ached with grief.
Once, she too had been someone Bai Long fought desperately to protect.
But in the end, she had only said one thing.
“I’m sorry…”
But whether the one who should have heard it ever did was now impossible to know.
The starship set sail from the transfer station, leaving all the regret and all the unwillingness behind in Region 64’s seaside city, carried away on the sea wind.
“Where are we going?”
“District 15. Songdu.”