“Who opened the gate?!”
“Hao was perfectly fine just a second ago! He even rattled off his employee number for me!”
In the chaos, Wu Hao, his muscles seizing up and stiffening, lunged toward the nearest people, mouth gaping wide to tear off a savage mouthful of flesh.
The students who’d been trailing behind him scattered in an instant.
On reflex, the workers ducked behind the espers—An Ran, Zhao Xin, and the others.
Cheng Qian and Wang Yi were jammed in at the back of the crowd, a good few dozen meters from Wu Hao.
But everyone at the shipyard had at least been out scavenging in shifts, so the sight of a zombified Wu Hao only threw them for a moment.
Soon they were grabbing weapons and bracing for the fight.
The hand gripping Zhao Xin’s iron rod trembled faintly.
Less than half a day ago this zombie had still been grinning and joking with him.
Wu Hao was the apprentice he’d trained with his own two hands!
“Watch out, Uncle Zhao!”
An Ran let out a sharp shout and pulled the children behind her into a swift retreat.
Cheng Qian wavered for a moment between Zhao Xin and An Ran, then chose to follow Zhao Xin, who looked sturdier and more capable in a fight.
Wu Hao’s eyes bulged, the whites rolling outward.
His arms hung loose and limp before him, swinging back and forth, side to side, with his movements.
A few of the male workers tried to box him in together, but facing a familiar coworker, a single flinch of hesitation cost them any chance to strike back.
They could only watch, helpless, as the fangs opened up right in front of them, a scream, and blood splattered across the ground.
Zhao Xin rushed forward a few steps and just barely raised the iron rod in time to block one of Wu Hao’s punches.
Flesh met iron, and Zhao Xin could have sworn he heard the sound of bone and muscle shattering.
But Wu Hao’s assault didn’t let up in the slightest.
Zhao Xin braced both hands against the rod.
The zombie’s razor-sharp, blood-streaked fangs left him no room to relax even a fraction.
Then, suddenly, the resistance against his hands went light.
Zhao Xin watched, stunned, as the iron rod was cleanly sheared in two right down the middle, the cut ends smooth and even.
Wu Hao’s hands had transformed into long blades.
Hard, thick steel was as flimsy as soft clay beneath them.
Zhao Xin had no time to react—Wu Hao’s hand-blade came down hard and bit into his left shoulder.
The blade was sharp, the wound stalled for a few seconds before the blood came gushing out.
The warm, sticky blood drenched Wu Hao’s head and face. Like a death-god crawling up out of hell, he swung his blades at everyone in his line of sight.
Cheng Qian scrambled to dodge but still got Zhao Xin’s blood splashed across his chest.
In his panic he fled blindly, turning and bolting toward where An Ran and the children were.
Zhao Xin clutched his wound and staggered a step aside, dodging Wu Hao’s follow-up attack.
The wound was only a slash from the blade, at least he hadn’t been bitten, so he wouldn’t turn.
Zhao Xin let go of the broken rod, under his esper power the bloody gash on his hand was already starting to knit shut.
But the wound was too deep, and the healing too slow.
He had to fight and retreat at the same time, buying himself time to recover.
“Behind you, Uncle Zhao!”
An Ran screamed at the top of her lungs.
Zhao Xin twisted around and snatched up a wooden stick from the ground, blocking the snapping, serrated jaws of a zombie.
It was one that had gotten in through the gap at the gate.
An Ran strained to shield the young children.
She’d kept her eye-based esper power active for so long that her eyes burned with a searing, stabbing pain.
The children’s parents were nowhere to be found.
All she could do was protect these kids in the moment of crisis.
The people Wu Hao had bitten joined the zombie ranks too, surging out in all directions after the shrieking humans.
The shipyard was in utter chaos, blood soaking great patches of the muddy ground, the reek of human flesh and gore filling every nostril.
An Ran’s gaze drifted, and suddenly she spotted Bai Long standing in the shadows, far from the crowd.
Once Wu Hao turned, he’d lost all sense of self.
On reflex he chased after the moving prey in his sight.
Wang Yi, who’d finally found a corner to hide in and let out a breath of relief, suddenly locked eyes with those vicious, terrifying zombie eyes.
In an instant it was like a current of electricity shot through her whole body.
Wang Yi’s hands and feet went numb, she froze in place for several seconds before it even occurred to her to run.
“Ahhh, help!”
She burst into an ear-piercing scream, tears streaming down her face.
Wang Yi instinctively ran toward Zhao Xin, only to see him drag his wounded body around and turn away.
And Cheng Qian, not far from him, met Wang Yi’s eyes, his own full of disgust, and dodged her gaze without a moment’s hesitation.
The zombie was right on her heels, relentless, Wang Yi could practically feel the cold, sticky drool dripping onto her legs.
“Can somebody save me?! Please!”
She broke down sobbing, and her eyes landed on Bai Long, standing a short distance away. In her blind panic she gritted her teeth and ran straight for her.
“Please, save me!”
“You forgot already, that fast? I’m a beastwoman, remember.”
Bai Long met her gaze and let out a soft laugh.
The way she looked at Wang Yi was like looking at trash on the side of the road.
Wu Hao had been led on a chase for a good while now, his frenzy mounting, he sped up and reached out a claw toward Wang Yi.
Wang Yi’s legs gave out and she slammed down right at Bai Long’s feet.
She crawled toward Bai Long in a sorry state.
“I was wrong, I was wrong! Please save me! I’ll trade you food for it!”
In that very instant, the cleaver Wu Hao’s hand had become was already falling toward Wang Yi.
Wang Yi rolled to the side with everything she had.
Dust flew up and coated her from head to toe, filthy beyond words.
Wang Yi felt her head suddenly lighten, the better part of her hair had been shaved clean off.
I’m done for…
Wu Hao’s hand-blade swung up and came down, but this time it didn’t cleave open the “food” in front of it as smoothly as before.
Bai Long stepped nimbly forward, and riding the momentum of Wu Hao’s downward lunge, she raised her leg, bent her knee, and slammed her foot up into his jaw.
Wu Hao’s neck snapped backward from the kick with a crack, it even bounced.
Bai Long seized the moment, reached out to spin his body around, and planted a kick on his lower back, shoving him hard in a particular direction.
A beastwoman’s superior physique let her self-defense techniques reach their full potential.
She was a good deal more lethal than your average ordinary man.
The wailing around them seemed to quiet a touch.
Everyone’s attention had been fixed on Wu Hao, so naturally they all saw the moment the zombie that had been chasing them all over the yard was sent flying in a single instant.
It was as if a thorn had suddenly been jammed into their panicked, anxious hearts, stuck there, neither going up nor down.
Not long ago they’d still been thinking she was all show, a paper tiger out to fool people.
But with two simple moves, Bai Long made the gulf between them crystal clear.
Compared to their frantic flailing against the zombies, Bai Long was so calm she might as well have been a mannequin.
The people who’d just been badmouthing her suddenly felt their faces lose all their luster, stinging hot with shame.
But Bai Long didn’t spare them so much as a glance, she ignored them entirely, turned, and melted back into the dark.
That left them even more on edge, a knot of frustration stuck right in their chests, smothering them.
…
Having been toyed with again and again, Wu Hao let out a furious roar and charged toward where An Ran and the children were.
At the critical moment, a thunderous crash sounded from the gate.
It drew the eyes of more than half the zombies.
“It’s Sun Jie! Sun Jie’s back!”
Along with that overjoyed shout, a silver whip, thick enough to take several people’s arms to wrap around, and tens of meters long, descended out of nowhere from the gateway.
A single crack of the whip pulped more than half the zombies into mush.
Wu Hao’s hand-blade met the whip, ringing out with the screech of metal grinding against metal.
“Everybody, don’t panic…”
Sun Jie waved a hand behind her, ordering people to shut the front gate first.
She and her squad quickly linked up with An Ran in the crowd.
Bai Long, standing by the gate, noted that Sun Jie’s esper power was clearly the high-offense type, very effective at clearing out zombies within a certain radius.
Most of the zombies that got near her were dealt with.
With his esper blades, though, Wu Hao couldn’t be finished off by Sun Jie’s whip alone.
She could only bind him up tight with the whip for now and post someone to keep watch.
Wu Hao kept his mouth gaping, snapping up and down like a stapler in pointless struggle.
…
“Remember what you said.”
Bai Long crouched in front of Wang Yi and held out a hand.
Wang Yi looked up and saw her own wretched reflection in Bai Long’s clear, bright eyes.
Clothes caked in mud and grit, face smeared with tears and snot.
A stark contrast to Bai Long’s neat, clean appearance.
“I won’t forget.”
Wang Yi gritted her teeth and pulled two packs of bagged bread from the bag she’d been carrying the whole time.
Bai Long took the bread, turned, and walked off.
Not long after she left, Cheng Qian and a few students sidled up to Wang Yi.
“Wang Yi, it’s not that I’m scolding you, but you clearly had all that bread. Why didn’t you tell us from the start?”
Cheng Qian sounded plenty reproachful.
“Exactly. With this much bread, we wouldn’t have had to go out scavenging for supplies so soon.”
He Tian chimed in, his eyes unable to stop darting toward Wang Yi’s bag. “Do you have any more? At a time like this and you’re still hoarding supplies!”
Wang Yi swallowed her anger. “There’s no more. That was all the food I had.”
She lay sprawled on the ground, listening to He Tian and the rest complain, watching Bai Long’s retreating back, her eyes venomous.
Why?!
She clearly could have just saved her, so why did she have to humiliate her like this too?!
She clearly could have found more supplies, so why did she have to take the ones she’d hidden away?!
…
While Sun Jie and the others dealt with the remaining zombies, Bai Long slipped close to the warehouse where the food was stored.
The worker who’d been watching the gate earlier had already rotted away where Wu Hao bit him, and was now swaying along as a new recruit in the zombie army.
Bai Long kicked open the warehouse door, grabbed two big sacks of food from right by the entrance, and turned to run for the gate.
“You there, by the gate, come, let’s have a chat.”
Sun Jie’s gaze fell straight on Bai Long, a smile on her face.
“Jie, she’s a beastwoman, you know.”
A worker leaned in close to Sun Jie, muttering in displeasure.
By now Wu Hao was tied up and the rest of the zombies had been cleared out.
The people who’d been scrambling around in panic moments ago were slowly coming back to their senses, and the looks they gave Bai Long mixed hostility with a hard-to-read wariness.
Sun Jie waved a hand, her smile unchanged. “We’ll talk about that later.”
Bai Long looked at her.
A beastwoman’s instincts told her this woman was a merchant.
“You’ve got quite the skill. Care to have a chat with me?”
Under the complicated, baffled looks of everyone else, Sun Jie walked up to Bai Long.
“Sun Jie. I’m something like the half-boss of Hongyun Shipyard.”
She extended a hand to Bai Long.
“Bai Long.”
Bai Long kept both hands tucked under her cloak, showing no intention of shaking.
Sun Jie wasn’t fazed, she withdrew her hand smoothly, expression unbothered.
“I know you’re a beastwoman. But I think now isn’t really the time for us to be debating that.”
With the apocalypse here, the first priority laid before everyone was how to survive this disaster, and survive it longer.
Sun Jie was a merchant. For her, there were no permanent enemies, only immediate interests.
And clearly, Bai Long had an ability she needed.
“I watched your fight with Wu Hao just now, very crisp, very clean handiwork.”
There was plain admiration in Sun Jie’s eyes.
If you asked her what was most precious in the apocalypse, she’d say it was the ability to keep yourself alive in the face of zombies.
And besides, Wu Hao had once been an esper.
To survive the hands of a zombie that had mutated from an esper, plus that on-the-spot reaction to danger—Bai Long clearly had what it took.
“Just say what you mean.”
Bai Long could tell Sun Jie’s words weren’t coming out of nowhere.
The arc at the corner of Sun Jie’s eye deepened. “I do love talking to a straightforward person.”
“I know my people did some things just now that didn’t sit well with you. I’ll apologize on their behalf, and I hope you’ll give serious thought to the deal I’m about to propose.”
Sun Jie’s smile reined itself in a little. “I need medicine.”
“You’re sick?”
That was Bai Long’s first reaction.
Sun Jie was rendered momentarily speechless. “I’m starting to think you’re not so much gutsy as just a little dim.”
Bai Long shrugged. It didn’t affect her one way or the other.
“I took a squad out just now precisely to look for medicine, but the few pharmacies I checked were all ransacked, everything unusable. We’ve still got a fair number of children here. Forget basics like gauze and disinfectant, if someone gets hurt, the odds of infection are very high.”
Symptoms that were ordinary back in peacetime could be fatal in the apocalypse with no medicine.
And besides zombies, the apocalypse held other lurking dangers.
“I want to find a team to go check somewhere with a much larger stock of medicine.”
Sun Jie met Bai Long’s eyes, the hand at her side clenching tight.
She wasn’t as composed as she appeared.
“You mean… you want me to go to the hospital with your people.”
Bai Long caught her meaning.
If there was anywhere with a bigger medicine supply than a pharmacy, it could only be a hospital.
Sun Jie nodded. “In exchange, once it’s done, I’ll give you a piece of information.”
“You don’t want to stay here forever either, I’d imagine.”
Sun Jie said that last line quietly, low enough that only Bai Long could hear.
Her words were veiled, but Bai Long understood her meaning.
As it happened, she’d already been planning to go find medicine that matched the original host’s condition, so this deal was no loss to her.
“Done.”