The next day, Fang Ling left to rendezvous with the company.
Bai Long and the little red bird stayed home, waiting for word from him.
But Bai Long wasn’t idle either. She was busy with something else.
“Sit still.”
Bai Long lifted the little red bird off her shoulder and set it down across from her.
She sat cross-legged on the floor, the little red bird sitting opposite, looking utterly clueless.
“That fire, in the urban village back in Shuicheng. Did it have something to do with you?”
When it had spat fire yesterday, Bai Long had realized something was off.
Back then, she hadn’t noticed anything strange about that fire-wreathed building right up until they left Shuicheng.
She’d assumed it might have been one of those armed men using an esper power, but now it seemed far more likely that it had to do with this bird, back then, still nothing more than an egg.
The little red bird clearly didn’t expect Bai Long to suddenly bring this up.
It froze for a second, then cocked its head. “Chirp?”
“Don’t play dumb. I know you understand me.”
Bai Long crossed her arms, refusing to be charmed.
No matter how she looked at it, this was no ordinary bird. It understood human speech, and it could breathe fire…
Was it some kind of mutated creature?
Forced into a proper sitting position by Bai Long, the little red bird had nowhere to escape.
With no other choice, it stepped forward twice, raised a wing to tap Bai Long’s hand, then pointed the other wing at the water cup set off to the side.
“You want me to release some of my power?”
Bai Long considered it.
Judging by the amount of fire it had spat last time, she could snuff out anything dangerous instantly. There wouldn’t be any real problem.
Once she’d thought it through, Bai Long didn’t hesitate. A thin thread of water spilled from between her fingers.
The little red bird eagerly hopped forward, pressing its body close to the finger where Bai Long’s water thread had formed.
When the water touched its body, it slowly grew paler and thinner.
In the end, just like when Bai Long had first met the little red bird, it dissolved completely into its body.
Feeling the power vanish from her fingertips, Bai Long confirmed her suspicion.
This bird could absorb her power.
She’d never heard of such a thing, absorbing esper power.
Bai Long propped her chin on her hand and studied it closely.
Having absorbed the power, the little red bird sprawled lazily on the floor and let out a remarkably human-sounding burp. Its belly had even gone round.
It looked thoroughly stuffed and content, and didn’t forget to cover its belly with one wing.
Watching it, Bai Long suddenly remembered something else.
By all rights, birds were supposed to eat bugs.
But this bird had never eaten a single bug. It just mooched off her and Fang Ling’s meals. At night it didn’t even sleep in a tree, it slept in a little nest it had somehow put together.
And it wasn’t a nest built from twigs. It had torn open one of Fang Ling’s pillows and piled up the cotton stuffing inside.
When she’d first seen that cotton next to her own pillow, Bai Long had been stunned for a moment.
This bird sure knew how to live the good life.
After eating Bai Long’s power, the little red bird digested for a bit, then stood up and raised a wing.
In the air where its wing pointed, a line of words written in flame appeared.
【That fire did have to do with me. Think of it as a kind of self-defense mechanism.】
Bai Long looked at the words and narrowed her eyes.
This bird really was suspicious.
Without hesitation, she snatched the little red bird up with a water thread, threw open the window, and got ready to toss it outside.
She wasn’t going to give it a single chance to explain.
As if. She’d give it a chance to explain? It could absorb esper power, who knew whether it had some kind of mind-bending ability too.
“Chirp? Chirp!”
Sensing things had taken a turn for the worse, the little red bird scrambled to struggle free, its wings carving another line of words into the air.
【I’m not a bad guy! This is just what I look like for now, once I eat enough esper power, I can return to my original form!】
Well, would you look at that. It really did eat esper power.
Bai Long grew even more certain about tossing it out.
A bug-eating bird, fine. She could’ve lived with that.
But she didn’t have enough power for herself, and she was sick on top of it. Hand her power over to this thing too, and she’d just die that much faster.
Bai Long had already dangled the water-wrapped bird outside the window, about to let go and close it.
【Wait! I’m useful! I can make money for you! I’ll give all the money to you, okay?】
Magic words.
Bai Long let out a soft snort. “How exactly are you going to make money looking like that? Draw your own ring of fire and jump through it?”
It was the apocalypse. Who was watching the circus anymore?
Seeing the window about to close, the little red bird gritted its teeth, absorbed some of Bai Long’s power, and shot off in a streak toward its little nest by the bed.
It bent down and dragged something out with its beak.
When Bai Long turned around to grab it and toss it out, she immediately saw what it was holding.
The little red bird set the thing down and nudged it toward her, blinking its little bead eyes at her, all ingratiating.
It looked just like a pitiful little puppy begging with big, watery eyes.
To see “dog” in a bird was downright bizarre.
But for the moment, Bai Long had no time to dwell on what was dog and what was bird.
Her gaze was fixed on that object.
It was, unmistakably, a gleaming gold ring.
“You… this… where did this come from?”
For an instant, Bai Long was speechless.
【Found it on the road.】
The little red bird answered honestly.
Bai Long: …
The look she gave the little red bird turned profound.
【I really did find it!】
Afraid she wouldn’t believe it and would toss it out anyway, the little red bird grew even more frantic, flapping its wings and dancing about.
“You can find gold? This is your money-making method? It’s obviously a fluke.”
Bai Long wasn’t moved.
She didn’t have the luck to find gold, but she didn’t believe anyone could just casually find it on the regular.
Once or twice, sure.
【My luck’s actually pretty good! If you don’t believe me, just let me tag along for a while and you’ll see!】
The little red bird wrote with flame quite naturally.
An ordinary bird couldn’t possibly write human characters.
Unless it had learned to at some point.
Which probably had to do with its original form.
Seeing the word “luck,” Bai Long suddenly thought of how it had rolled out that C-rank commission for her earlier.
Could that, too, have been one of its so-called lucky incidents?
Bai Long propped her chin on one hand and gazed at the earnest little red bird, sinking into thought.
By its meaning, it clearly knew its own luck was strong, and it sounded like it had experience to prove it.
“Besides that, do you have any actual, practical uses?”
Luck was too vague and intangible.
If it wanted her to keep it around, it had to show her some more concrete value.
The little red bird hesitated for a second, then wrote, very cautiously:
【Warming the bed… does that count?】
Bai Long stared at it: …
The speechlessness in her eyes nearly took on physical form.
Setting aside how absurd the whole “warming the bed with a bird” thing was to begin with—
with that tiny body of its, smaller than her fist, what exactly could it warm? Was it going to warm her fist?
【I’ll grow bigger!】
As if stung by Bai Long’s contemptuous look, the little red bird puffed out its little chest.
Like a heroic, spirited red balloon.
Watching it, Bai Long figured that even fully grown, it would probably only level up from little bird to big red rooster.
Speaking of roosters…
She felt like having some chicken hotpot.
Bai Long decided to keep it for now.
“Fine, you can come with me. But whether I give you power depends on my mood.”
In fact, the amount of power the little red bird had eaten those few times was nothing to the current Bai Long.
It was like sharing a single cup of water out of an entire lake.
That thought made Bai Long realize something else.
“Can you take other people’s power?”
She’d started scheming about Fang Ling.
At that very moment, far away at the hospital with the mission she’d given him etched into his mind, Fang Ling sneezed for no apparent reason.
He blew his nose and went back to his scouting mission.
Realizing who Bai Long meant by “other people,” the little red bird put on a disdainful expression.
【Only you.】
Bai Long felt a touch of regret at that.
But she knew it wasn’t lying.
After all, if it could eat other people’s power, it wouldn’t have needed to wheedle with her this long.
She scooped up the gold ring, her eyes brimming with satisfaction.
No one could resist the lure of gold.
Seeing that Bai Long no longer meant to throw it out, the little red bird finally breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed.
It cautiously flew up to Bai Long’s shoulder and leaned against her neck.
Not thrown out.
The little red bird relaxed completely.
Bai Long put the gold ring away, checked her star-ring and saw no message from Fang Ling, so things were probably going fine.
She switched over to the commission interface to see if there were any other commissions she could knock out along the way.
The moment she logged into the Esper Commission Center, she saw a message Liang Qiu had sent her.
He was asking about that earlier plan to team up, farm crystals, and head to the middle layer.
Bai Long thought it over and flatly declined.
【I’m a C-rank esper. I don’t meet the requirements.】
Receiving the message, Liang Qiu assumed Bai Long had found a better teammate and was just using that as an excuse to turn him down.
“There’s no way she’s only C-rank.”
Liang Qiu gave a wry chuckle. He wasn’t surprised by Bai Long’s refusal, he just didn’t expect her to use that excuse.
By his judgment, the strength Bai Long had shown fighting the octopus last time was absolutely not something a C-rank could pull off.
Having lost a prime candidate for the push to the middle layer, Liang Qiu was deeply discouraged, but he had no choice but to start scouting for someone else.
With Bai Long’s strength as the benchmark, though, everyone else he found now felt like they fell a little short.
Powerful espers were already scarce in the lower district, and ones with strong combat ability plus quick, sharp reflexes in the field were rarer still.
Liang Qiu mourned the loss in his heart.
What he didn’t know was that Bai Long had told him the plain truth.
The result of her esper assessment really was C-rank.
But Bai Long had no intention of giving up on the middle layer because of it.
If there were conditions, there was bound to be a roundabout route.
Bai Long entered the Star Net and began searching for relevant forum posts.
There were very few posts about entering the middle layer, almost none.
The handful she dug up using keywords like “lower layer” and “middle layer” were all clickbait designed to drive traffic.
【Things you absolutely must know, how the lower district can rise to the middle layer!】
【First, for us in the lower district to enter the middle layer, we have to understand what the lower layer is and what the middle layer is. So how do we enter the middle layer district? Today, let’s take a look at how to enter the middle layer…】
Bai Long: …
She tapped the X and exited at once.
It seemed there was nothing to be found online.
She had no idea what channel Liang Qiu had learned about this through.
Bai Long thought for a moment, then changed her keyword.
【Esper Base】
This time, the Star Net searched for a while before any result popped up.
There was only one post, and it had a star marked at the very front of it.
It was the first time Bai Long had seen a post with a star. When she clicked it, instead of jumping to the content like other posts, a prompt box appeared.
【This post is only open to certain users. Please verify your credentials.】
Beneath the prompt was a “Verify” button.
When Bai Long clicked it, the page spun for a moment, then automatically jumped to her esper certificate screen.
After the star-ring let out a “beep,” it returned to the prompt-box screen.
【Verification successful】
The prompt box vanished quickly, revealing the post’s true content.
Was this a post open only to espers?
Bai Long found it odd.
By the time she’d read the post’s first entry, several thousand characters long, she’d confirmed that to access the post, you first needed an officially issued esper certificate.
The post’s content was information about esper bases, published by the middle-layer authorities.
It roughly explained what an esper base was and what it was for.
In simple terms, an esper base was a refuge-like zone organized and established by middle-layer-and-above espers to protect human peace.
The key word was “peace.”
You had to understand, after the apocalypse began, even espers couldn’t guarantee their homes would stay safe forever.
For all you knew, you might wake up one day to find a ring of zombies gathered around your bed.
But an esper base gathered all the espers of a certain caliber, and it was equipped with officially developed weapons that were lethally effective against zombies.
Ordinary zombies simply couldn’t break in.
You could call it a zone of peace built in the apocalypse. Inside the base, you could live as normally as you had before the end times.
Espers who voluntarily joined and pledged to a base even received considerable benefits provided by the base.
Including but not limited to assigned housing, cars, and food.
To nearly everyone, this was deeply alluring and tempting.
No wonder…
Reading the long section at the front of the post praising base living conditions, Bai Long understood why so many espers were willing to go.
It wasn’t just for the middle-layer environment, the bases themselves were extremely attractive.
The crystal and esper-rank screening criteria basically ensured that the espers who joined had enough combat ability.
And a base that recruited powerful espers was, by that very fact, more confident facing zombies, and safer.
It was a roundabout form of mutual selection.
But Bai Long didn’t object to this kind of selection.
Natural selection, survival of the fittest.
Bai Long lifted the little red bird drowsing on her shoulder. “It’s time for you to show what you’ve got.”
“Chirp?”
Jolted awake from its dream, the little red bird blinked groggily.
“Roll one. Let me see what you can do.”
Bai Long set it down in front of the commission interface.
“Crystals. You know the drill.”
Facing the huge light-screen, the little red bird raised a wing under the scorching gaze at its back.
The refresh button was pressed.
Bai Long watched the little red bird unhesitatingly select one of the commissions.
【D-rank commission: Clearing zombies outside the city.】
The commission payment had no fixed amount, instead, it offered one hundred credits per zombie cleared.
It looked like a commission published by the Songdu authorities.
Bai Long still remembered that when she’d first arrived in Songdu, she’d glimpsed the scene outside the city walls from a distance aboard the starship.
They were currently inside Songdu’s walls. There were zombies here too, but only a small number.
Most of the zombies had earlier been driven outside the city by the Star Alliance and sealed out behind a thick stone wall.
Would this commission really have any crystals?
Looking at the D-rank label, Bai Long was a little doubtful.
The commission interface was also full of posts offering hefty sums in exchange for crystals.
And it had managed to roll one up this casually?
Bai Long, used to bad luck, instinctively didn’t quite believe it.
But she figured she had nothing to lose by going, there were still a few hundred credits in it.
After sending Fang Ling a message, Bai Long gathered up the little red bird, threw on her cloak, and set out for the commission site.
…
The commission site was at an entrance through the Songdu city wall.
Several squads of armed men on routine patrol were in the middle of a shift change.
When Bai Long arrived, several other espers who’d taken the same commission had shown up too.
Exactly how many espers had taken it wasn’t yet clear.
The moment she got there, an armed man took her aside to brief her on the task.
“The main thing is to clear out the zombies near the wall. If you need a weapon, you can grab one from that little kiosk over there, but you have to return it when you’re done.”
The commission was simple: it was meant to keep too many zombies from massing near the wall, which could eventually trigger a small zombie tide. That would put enormous pressure on the wall’s defenses and threaten the safety inside the city.
There weren’t many armed men to begin with, and they were all juggling patrol-and-protection duty within the city, with a portion of them assigned to Sinai Hospital, so the Songdu authorities periodically issued clearing commissions to espers.
Bai Long went to take a look at the kiosk he’d mentioned.
The weapons he’d spoken of were a big pile of cleavers heaped together. They looked like they’d been taken from a slaughterhouse and carried a heavy reek of blood.
Most likely zombie blood. There was no telling how many times they’d been recycled, a lot of the blades were chipped.
Bai Long figured that using these cleavers, you’d be sawing zombies more than chopping them, and there was no telling how many ages it’d take to grind through.
She decided to just use her power.
The armed men hadn’t required grouping up, so naturally Bai Long wasn’t going to find anyone to team with, that would only make hunting for crystals inconvenient.
After a word with the armed man in charge, she headed straight out through the small gate.
Outside the wall and inside the wall were two completely different pictures.
If inside the wall life had gradually begun to recover some of its old air under the authorities’ intervention, then outside the wall it was a state of utter ruin.
Collapsed, shattered buildings, nothing like the old days. Decaying severed limbs lay everywhere, maggots visibly weaving through bone and flesh. Bloodstains covered every wall and every patch of ground, painted over who knew how many times, drying and dampening, dampening and drying again.
“Hrgh, hrgh…”
Zombies wandered in droves outside the city, scattered across the buildings and streets.
Catching the scent of a living person, the zombies lunged violently toward Bai Long’s position.
Without hesitation, Bai Long raised her left hand and released a water rope.
A water thread as thick as half an arm shot upward from her palm, but its target wasn’t the oncoming zombies.
The armed men patrolling the wall suddenly saw a glittering thing latch onto a stretch of the parapet.
It looked like a grappling hook.
With a flicker of her will, the water rope snapped taut, carrying her flying upward.
The zombies rushed in, their savage fangs scraping past the soles of Bai Long’s shoes.
Having missed the living flesh, the zombies grew more frantic, leaping in place to try and grab Bai Long’s feet.
Bai Long raised her right hand.
Several water arrows appeared from thin air in front of her palm, lined up in a row, their tips aimed at the frenzied zombies below.
The little red bird flew up from Bai Long’s shoulder and circled around her.
Bai Long was in no hurry to kill the zombies.
She kept herself suspended in midair, her gaze sweeping over the zombies gathering below.
Since the bird had taken this commission, the odds were high that a crystal was inside one of these zombies.
The chance of a crystal being in an ordinary zombie was low.
What Bai Long was looking for was whether any of these zombies were esper zombies.
Zhao Xin had been an esper zombie.
A pity that it had been too early back then, when she hadn’t known about crystals. Otherwise, she could’ve just cracked open Wu Hao’s head and known whether esper zombies had crystals.
Facing the zombies’ pursuit, Bai Long wasn’t the least bit flustered. She calmly looked them over one by one.
For now, it seemed there were no esper zombies in this batch.
Once she’d finished checking, Bai Long cleanly released the water arrows in her hand.
The water arrows fired in unison, precisely piercing each zombie’s skull.
The water detonated inside their brains, blowing their heads apart on the spot.
Blood and brain matter splattered everywhere. Bai Long didn’t see any crystal drop, just rotten flesh and white bone covering the ground.
Drawing in the water rope, Bai Long descended from the air.
“Chirp!”
The little red bird suddenly swooped toward the corpses on the ground, breathing fire at one of them.
Bai Long summoned a water shield to guard against it, but the little red bird seemed to control the flames quite well, she didn’t feel the slightest discomfort.
Once the flames died out, the little red bird gestured for Bai Long to dig up the ground.
Bai Long shot it a dubious glance, but still summoned a water sword and turned over the earth.
When she saw what was beneath, Bai Long was stunned.
Below the spot the little red bird had indicated was a ruby shimmering with iridescent light!
It wasn’t a crystal, but the gem was clearly worth a fortune.
After the apocalypse, the original currency had been abolished in favor of credits, but precious jewels like gold and gemstones, expensive by their very nature, still commanded high prices.
This gem had been buried in the corpse and the dirt. Without digging, you’d never have found it.
A normal person wouldn’t think to go digging up soil, either.
Now Bai Long began to believe.
This bird really did have something going for it.
“Hurry up and sense it, where’s the crystal?”
The look Bai Long gave the little red bird grew increasingly eager.
From now on, it wasn’t just a chicken-hotpot reservist, it was her dear little treasure-hunting rat!
The little red bird, unaware it still hadn’t escaped its chicken-hotpot fate, took it to mean Bai Long had finally acknowledged its worth.
It grew even more motivated.
After circling in the air for a while, it pointed in a certain direction.
“Go!”
Bai Long broke into a run in the direction it indicated.
Crystals, here she comes!
…
Meanwhile, Fang Ling was still scouting, scared stiff.
“Fang Ling, you have to stay calm! This is the first mission Boss gave you, you have to complete it! Pull it off, and it’ll be the opening shot of you saving the world!”
Muttering pep talks to himself, Fang Ling cowered in the back seat of the hover car.
His voice was as faint as a mosquito’s whine and didn’t draw the attention of his teammate in the driver’s seat at all.
That’s right, because his social anxiety was so severe that he didn’t want to sit too close to the others in his group, he’d hauled several crates of supplies straight to the front passenger seat and crouched in the spot where the supplies had been.
To which his teammate’s response was: I don’t understand, but I accept it.
You could only say Songdu was a highly tolerant city.
The people here would silently accept all manner of inexplicable things.
In fact, because he saw that Fang Ling really, truly didn’t want any human contact, the teammate even said considerately, “I’ll go deliver the supplies to them in a bit. You just stay in the car and watch it.”
Fang Ling thought he was a good man, and watched him carry ten crates of supplies up the building alone.
The doctor escorting them helped carry two crates.
His good-man teammate’s esper power was super-strength.
To him, those ten crates were no different from carrying groceries, as long as he had hands, it was fine.
Once they vanished from his line of sight, Fang Ling quickly climbed out of the car and scanned the area, finding the dormitory building Bai Long had mentioned.
The dormitory building was ringed by a thick iron wall, with only a small sensor-activated sliding door at the entrance that required a keycard to open.
Fang Ling trembled for a good while, then finally made up his mind…
and pulled out his black face-covering cloth and tied it on.
Once the black cloth was knotted at the back of his head, when Fang Ling raised his head again, every trace of fear and tension had vanished from his eyes.
“Hmph. A trivial little matter like this, and it still requires me, the Dark Demon Emperor of the Eternal Night, to take the field in person.”
Fang Ling—Emperor Edition, let out a soft snort and strode toward the dormitory building with great, purposeful steps.
At the gate in the iron wall, two armed men stood guard with rifles, one on the left and one on the right.
Fang Ling watched from a distance for a minute and decided: a mere two men, what was there for him, the Demon Emperor, to fear?!
He set off straight toward the two men.
Before he went, he remembered to send Bai Long a message reporting his mission progress.
【Demon Sovereign: I have successfully infiltrated the Holy Realm. I shall soon break through its defenses in a single stroke and strike straight at the dragon’s lair!】
Having sent it, Fang Ling swaggered forward.
The two armed men at the dormitory gate looked up to see a strangely dressed man walking toward them.
His stride so unflinching, his gaze so resolute!
“Halt. What’s your business? No idlers or unauthorized people allowed in here.”
The armed men leveled their rifle barrels at Fang Ling and barked sternly.
Fang Ling glanced at the guns in their hands and said scornfully, “Hmph. Mere trash. You think the likes of you can stop me? You overestimate yourselves.”
The armed men: ??
“Let me tell you, I am the Dark Demon Emperor of the Eternal Night. If you know what’s good for you, lay down your weapons, and I shall spare your lives.”
Fang Ling crossed his arms, the very picture of arrogance and lofty pride.
The armed men: Is this guy nuts??
The one on the left studied him for a moment, then had a sudden realization. “He’s here to deliver supplies today. He was in the photo they sent from the gate.”
“You sure? He gets to make a delivery looking like that? And why didn’t he go haul cargo with the doctor?”
The armed man on the right was skeptical.
Left guard: “Look, he’s got the mask on, but you can tell by the hair color it’s him.”
The person in the photo had a head of sea-blue hair and matching eyes, unusually striking features.
“It really is him…”
“I’m guessing he’s the son of that esper who came with him. So young, and he looks like he’s got something wrong with him.”
The look the left guard gave Fang Ling clearly took on a note of pity.
Right guard, skeptical: “Seriously? A nutjob gets to tag along on a delivery run?”
Left guard, with conviction: “How could it not be true? Look how dim he looks in the photo. His mother must’ve gotten bitten by a zombie, so his dad had no choice but to bring him along to earn money.”
In the photo, Fang Ling didn’t dare look at the camera, his eyes unfocused, staring off who-knows-where. Combined with his face flushed red from nerves, he looked like there was something wrong with his head.
“So pitiful. His dad raising a kid this big all on his own, and still having to come out and work delivering cargo…”
The left guard had already sunk into his own train of thought.
He remembered the heart-wrenching melodrama he’d just watched a couple of days ago—
—Devil’s Stepfather.
The right guard was moved by his words too. “It really is too tragic. He looks seriously ill. Hey, isn’t Director Li from psychiatry over in the dorm right now? Should we get him to take a look?”
The left guard thought that made sense, turned his head, and used his star-ring to put through a call, rattling off the situation to Director Li in psychiatry.
Director Li arrived quickly.
Ever since the apocalypse, it had been a long time since he’d encountered a live psychiatric patient.
The higher-ups had him studying zombie brains day in and day out, and he felt he was about to start going “hrgh, hrgh” right along with the zombies.
“Where’s the psychiatric patient? Let me have a look!”
Director Li spotted Fang Ling standing at the gate at a glance.
“Young man, don’t be afraid. Come in and have a cup of tea with me. Let’s have a chat.”
Director Li smiled kindly.
“Hold on, Director Li!”
The right guard suddenly frowned and intervened.
“There’s one more thing.”
The right guard walked up to Fang Ling and looked at him gravely.
“We haven’t checked his physical condition yet. We have to make sure he’s safe before he can go in.”
So saying, the right guard pulled out the device used to detect zombie infection.
Once they’d confirmed Fang Ling wasn’t infected, they let him through.
“Be quick about it, Director Li. Don’t let anyone else see.”
The left guard murmured.
Fang Ling crossed his arms and gave a scornful snort. “Consider yourselves lucky you know better.”
And just like that, he followed Director Li into the dormitory building.
Meanwhile, Bai Long, who was cutting down zombies in tandem with the little red bird, received a message.
After dealing with the last zombie that had swarmed in, she found a moment to glance at it.
The newest message was the one Fang Ling had just sent.
【Dark Demon Emperor of the Eternal Night: I have successfully entered the great hall of the Holy Realm. The Gate of Soul-Reaving of the Netherworld may now be opened.】
Bai Long looked at the message and was momentarily baffled.
She knew the one sending messages was one hundred percent the Emperor, but if she hadn’t misread the words he’d sent…
The Emperor had made it inside the dormitory building???
How had he gotten in???
Bai Long fell silent for a moment, then replied:
【As expected of you, Emperor, a man among men.】
Since Fang Ling had pulled off his end, she’d have to hurry up too.
“How much farther?”
Bai Long looked at the little red bird in the air.
“Chirp chirp!”
The little red bird pointed behind a door.
A few flame-words appeared in the air:
【Right behind here】
Without hesitation, Bai Long cleaved the door open with a single water sword.
Behind the door was only one zombie.
The instant she saw it, Bai Long froze.
It wore a tattered long gown whose original color was no longer recognizable, the flesh of its neck rotted away to expose the stark white bone beneath. On its chest was an ID badge crusted with blood, most of its outer casing peeled off.
This zombie had once been a doctor.
The little red bird circled the zombie a few times.
The crystal was probably on him.
Bai Long raised her sword, about to attack, but happened to meet the zombie’s eyes.
That single glance made Bai Long freeze her attack.
This zombie… why did it seem to have awareness?
Bai Long thought she’d misread it, but after she stopped attacking, the zombie merely glanced at her, it didn’t anxiously lunge over like the others.
It seemed to have no powerful urge to devour her.
No, rather, it was restraining its own urge to devour.
The zombie stood in place, its lips and tongue chewed to a bloody pulp by its own fangs.
It bit down hard on its lips, refusing to let itself drool and rasp “hrgh, hrgh” like the other zombies.
Bai Long found it strange, and was suddenly in no rush to attack.
She only knew that zombies with crystals were somewhat different from other zombies, but this was the first time she’d seen a zombie with self-awareness.
You had to understand, the biggest difference between zombies and humans was that they couldn’t restrain their craving for flesh and blood.
Keeping a certain distance, Bai Long began observing the zombie.
The largest wound on its body was the one on its neck, but bite marks could also be seen here and there on its exposed wrists and ankles.
This hadn’t been done by a single zombie.
Bai Long watched as it bit down on its lower lip and lurched over to the desk, hands unconsciously banging against the tabletop.
What was on the desk?
Bai Long went around and peered at it from a distance.
It was a light-screen with a faulty connection.
The screen flickered on and off, the image too blurry to make out, but it dimly appeared to be a medical case file.
Many case files.
Electronic case files floated in the air one after another, page after page, covered in dense annotations and notes.
A single glance was enough to see how diligent the doctor who’d handled them had been.
Bai Long fell into thought. A water thread sprouted from her hand, wound around the ID badge on the zombie’s chest, and yanked it off.
【Sinai Hospital】
【Emergency Department】
【Attending Physician】
【Sun Shijing】
When the zombie outbreak first began, the symptom had been sudden death.
Bai Long still remembered the news that had swept across the Star Net in a frenzy.
The emergency departments of every major hospital had been filled with hordes of sudden-death patients.
Doctors rushed back and forth among them, but still couldn’t bring back those whose hearts had stopped.
“Save…”
“Resuscitate…”
“Why…”
The doctor-zombie kept muttering something. Bai Long couldn’t make it out clearly, she could only watch it repeat the motion of banging the desk.
Under its pounding, the image on the light-screen shifted again and again.
From case files to research papers, report after report flashed past, yet not a single key cause of the disease had been found.
“Can’t save them…”
He couldn’t save them…
In an instant, the image of Lin Xi’s white-clad figure rushing frantically outward flashed through Bai Long’s mind.
Although the color could no longer be discerned, what Sun Shijing wore was, without a doubt, a doctor’s white coat.
Water coiled around her palm, and after a moment, it flew toward Sun Shijing.
Sun Shijing didn’t move.
What was he thinking about?
He had to find the cause of the disease.
The patients were still waiting for him…
The clear, crystalline water soaked his coat, washing away the long-dried, congealed plasma and flecks of flesh.
That garment slowly revealed its original appearance.
It was white.
“Let’s go.”
Bai Long withdrew her hand and called to the little red bird.
The little red bird made no sound, quietly and obediently alighting on her shoulder.
Just as Bai Long turned around, a black arrow shot out from behind her at an angle.
Thunk!
It was the sound of flesh being pierced through.
“Save…”
Sun Shijing collapsed, his mouth ceaselessly making that “hrgh, hrgh” sound, like the gasping of a human in his dying moments.
“Let me see… Damn! There’s a crystal! We hit the jackpot!”
A delighted voice came from behind Bai Long.
Bai Long came back to herself.
Sun Shijing, fallen to the ground, would never move again.
A black iron arrow ran clean through the middle of his brow, its tip having even pierced out the back of his skull.
Beneath the arrowhead, a pure white crystal gave off a clean, pure glow.
In the blink of an eye, the crystal vanished into thin air.
“Hurry, hurry, before anyone else finds out! Just one more and we’ll hit the quota!”
“That crystal was way too easy to get. We were that close, and the zombie didn’t even attack us.”
“It’s just a zombie, where would it get the brains? Worked out nicely for us…”
…
The delighted, gleeful voices faded into the distance, and Bai Long stepped out of the shadows.
The spot she’d been standing in was exactly the dead angle between the long desk and the wall, so the people, being far off, hadn’t spotted her.
Sun Shijing’s corpse still lay on the ground, eyes half open, gazing toward the light-screen, as if there were still something he couldn’t let go of.
The little red bird sensed that Bai Long seemed to be in a very bad mood, and obediently kept quiet, only watching her with concern.
Bai Long walked softly over to Sun Shijing’s side, looked at that black iron arrow, and water began to gather in her hand.
Gently, the water entered along the edges of the black iron arrow, bit by bit.
Bai Long worked her five fingers, controlling the water so it would do no further damage to Sun Shijing’s body, and drew the arrow out.
The black iron arrow felt piercingly cold in her hand.
Bai Long reached up and closed Sun Shijing’s eyes, the water in her hand washing him clean, and hung his ID badge back over his chest.
In the dim room, a faint golden light flickered deep in Bai Long’s eyes.
Having silently laid Sun Shijing’s remains to rest, Bai Long left the room and closed the door.
“Weld it shut.”
She said softly.
At her words, the little red bird beat its wings, flew to the door lock, and breathed out a fine flame.
The metal lock gradually melted and fused together under the high heat.
Bai Long reached out, a thread of water flying from her fingertips to pour over the half-melted lock.
Steam curled up, and after a sharp drop in temperature, the lock was set into a shape that could never be opened again.
For the rest of the time, Bai Long had no heart to keep searching for crystals.
She cleanly dispatched a few dozen of the zombies near the wall, and counting those she’d cleared earlier, collected over three thousand credits, turned in the commission, and left.
In her hand, she still held that black iron arrow.
When Fang Ling finished his delivery mission and returned, he saw Bai Long staring unblinkingly at a black arrow on the table, her expression graver than any he’d ever seen.
The black cloth on Fang Ling’s face had already been taken off.
Back at Sinai Hospital, after his teammate had finished the delivery and come down, he’d seen two armed men standing by the car.
He’d thought something had happened.
But the two armed men said nothing, they just patted his shoulder, told him he’d worked hard, and walked off shaking their heads.
Fang Ling’s teammate: I don’t know what happened, but the look in their eyes really rubbed me the wrong way for some reason.
He’d even asked Fang Ling what it was about. But Fang Ling had already taken off the black cloth.
No matter how he asked, Fang Ling wouldn’t say a word.
“What happened?”
Fang Ling knew Bai Long had gone to do a commission today, but seeing her like this, something was clearly wrong.
“Do you know anywhere in Songdu that makes this kind of thing? Like a weapons shop?”
Bai Long pointed at the black iron arrow on the table.
Before the apocalypse, things like this might have counted as dangerous goods, but afterward, to deal with zombie assaults, all kinds of weapons shops had sprung up.
Although no one said so openly, plenty of people would go buy weapons from those shops on the sly.
Bai Long remembered that big sword Fang Ling used for showing off, it wasn’t your average plastic-and-rubber prop.
She’d held it before. Its weight was the real deal, a genuine metal sword.
Sure enough, Fang Ling really did know a thing or two about these shops.
“This arrow doesn’t look like an ordinary commercial product. It looks custom-made.”
Fang Ling normally loved reading chuunibyou hot-blooded manga and playing firearms games, so he had a certain knowledge of weapons.
The moment he took it in hand, he knew this arrow wasn’t something an ordinary person could get their hands on.
“I’ll go look into it for you.”
Fang Ling didn’t ask much.
Since Boss had said so, all he had to do was go take care of it.
He didn’t doubt Bai Long’s purpose.
Bai Long nodded.
Although Fang Ling hadn’t asked, she still told him what had happened.
They were teammates now, there was nothing worth hiding about these things.
This was the second thing she had to do after finding Chi Shen.
“The location for the portal is settled, the third floor of the hospital dormitory.”
Fang Ling hadn’t just completed the mission Bai Long had given him, he’d gone above and beyond.
Bai Long was curious how he’d managed it.
But no matter how long she pressed, Fang Ling absolutely refused to say, so she had to let it go.
“Once I wrap things up tomorrow, we’ll move tomorrow night.”