Lin Buyu was also looking up at him.
Jiang Ran stood against the wind, Lin Buyu’s words echoing in his mind.
I’m afraid Jiang Ran will get hurt…
Heh.
In this world, nothing was real.
Parental affection was fake. Friendship was fake. Even the care he had once received from his elders had been fake.
Even she was fake.
Yet no one had said such a lie to him since the apocalypse began.
When he wasn’t strong enough, people only feared that he wouldn’t die. Why would anyone be afraid that he might get hurt?
When he became strong enough, everyone saw him as an omnipotent god who could never be injured.
Jiang Ran’s dark eyes were like deep waters concealing turbulent currents, churning violently beneath the surface.
Slowly, he descended from the sky and landed in front of her.
Seeing that the killing intent in his eyes had diminished considerably, Lin Buyu breathed a sigh of relief.
Thankfully, she had arrived in time and driven the zombies away.
She had genuinely been afraid that the Big Boss would get carried away with killing and suddenly decide to destroy the world, awakening the terrifying energy hidden within his body.
The system had never told her what that hidden energy was. It had only warned her that if Jiang Ran accidentally awakened that power, this entire fictional world would completely collapse.
If the world collapsed, she would never be able to complete her mission.
And if she failed the mission, she would never be able to save her little brother.
The relief on her face was misunderstood by Jiang Ran. He thought she was relieved because she had seen that he hadn’t been injured.
“You were worried about me?” he asked expressionlessly.
Lin Buyu immediately realized this was a chance to score some points. She put on a bright smile and said cheerfully, “Of course! You’re my life. If anything happened to you, I wouldn’t want to live either.”
“That’s a bit much.”
Jiang Ran reached out and pushed her face away. A faint, almost imperceptible smile appeared in his dark eyes.
Whenever she spouted cheesy pickup lines, they were obviously fake and insincere.
Yet, unexpectedly, they sounded rather pleasing to him.
“I’m serious, Group Leader. These are my heartfelt words!”
Jiang Ran: “Shut up.”
Lin Buyu: “Okay!”
The Yulan Base was located in a remote mountainous region. The sudden outbreak of the zombie tide had made everyone in the base uneasy.
Everyone had the feeling that their peaceful days were about to come to an end.
Therefore, Jiang Congwen, the leader of the Yulan Base, immediately summoned the leaders of all the ability-user groups for a meeting.
The atmosphere in the conference room was tense.
Jiang Congwen had never looked so grim before.
After the apocalypse began, he had awakened his ability relatively early, which allowed him to establish this base.
As the base leader, he had access to more high-level zombie cores than anyone else. As a result, aside from Jiang Ran, he was probably the strongest ability user in the entire base.
However, he valued his life dearly.
After enjoying a comfortable life for so long, the sudden arrival of a zombie tide represented an unknown threat to him.
And he wasn’t the only one.
The other ability-group leaders in the conference room also looked deeply troubled.
Only Jiang Ran looked completely unconcerned. He lounged lazily in his chair, casually playing with the exquisite pistol in his hand.
He hadn’t given it to her yet.
After Jiang Ran had threatened him last time, Group B’s leader, Xu Feiyan, had finally realized that he was nowhere near Jiang Ran’s level.
He no longer dared to cause trouble for him.
Still, he couldn’t stand Jiang Ran’s indifferent attitude, as though none of this had anything to do with him.
But he held his tongue.
“This zombie tide is extremely strange,” Xu Feiyan began. “Although only ordinary zombies came, there were an astonishing number of them. Our base is located in a remote mountainous area, and there simply aren’t that many zombies nearby. These zombies clearly came from a great distance, and then they suddenly left.
“I suspect that zombies capable of independent thought have already appeared among them. A zombie with awakened intelligence may have been controlling these ordinary zombies and directing them to attack our base.
“This is not good news for us, Leader. We must eliminate this threat. Otherwise, the safety of everyone in the base will never be guaranteed.”
“That was a whole lot of words for nothing,” Jiang Ran sneered. “Who here doesn’t understand something that obvious?”
“You!”
Xu Feiyan’s face flushed with anger.
“Then perhaps Group Leader Jiang has a better idea?”
Tsk. He sure liked to speak in a roundabout, pretentious way.
Jiang Ran casually dug at his ear and sneered.
“Not really. I just wanted to make fun of you.”
Don’t think he didn’t know about all the shady things Xu Feiyan did behind everyone’s backs.
If this base were destroyed by zombies, that might actually be a good thing.
After all, rather than waiting for Xu Feiyan and his men to humiliate the people living in the base, it would be better for those people to become zombies—or simply die and be done with it.
On the surface, the base accepted all the displaced survivors who had nowhere else to go.
In reality, under Jiang Congwen’s leadership, it had long since become rotten to the core.
The people who entered this place had merely found somewhere they could stay alive while continuing to wait for their own personal hell.
Jiang Congwen had always cared only about what the ability users thought.
As for ordinary people?
Hmph. As long as they didn’t all die, he didn’t care.
Xu Feiyan and Jiang Ran had never gotten along, so everyone was already accustomed to seeing the two of them clash.
Thus, apart from Xu Feiyan’s ugly expression, everyone else merely watched as though it were perfectly normal.
At this point, Jiang Congwen finally put on the dignified air of a base leader.
He raised his hand and pressed it downward.
“Enough. This isn’t the time to argue. Group Leader Xu is also concerned about the safety of the people in the base. Jiang Ran, watch your tone.”
He knew that Jiang Ran usually gave him face when other people were present.
Sure enough, after he spoke, Jiang Ran merely gave him a cold look and didn’t say anything else.
Only then did Jiang Congwen continue.
“Does anyone have a good solution?”
The leaders of the other groups began offering their opinions.
“I don’t think this necessarily means that zombies with awakened intelligence have appeared and are trying to fight humans for territory. It’s also possible that there’s something inside our base attracting the ordinary zombies. Perhaps we can try to identify what that thing is.”
Someone immediately objected.
“But we don’t even know what attracts zombies. How are we supposed to find it?”
Another person suggested, “Why don’t we capture a few zombies and bring them back? We can study them carefully.”
Many people spoke up, but not one of them offered a genuinely useful suggestion.
This left Jiang Congwen increasingly worried.
He was afraid that the position he had worked so hard to obtain would be lost because of a single zombie tide.
Everyone was frightened by the danger lurking behind this outbreak.
Although this zombie tide had ended, what about next time?
What if the zombies came again in an endless stream, determined to attack their base?
After all, nearly eighty percent of the world’s population had now turned into zombies.
The number of surviving humans was pitifully small.
Zombies vastly outnumbered humans.
And this time, only ordinary zombies had come.
What if mutant zombies came next?
What would they do then?
Just as Jiang Congwen was becoming increasingly anxious, the conference-room door was pushed open from outside.
A young man dressed in a white suit walked into the room with a group of people behind him, looking confident and full of himself.
The moment he entered, he called out,
“Dad.”
Jiang Ran glanced sideways at Jiang Tao.
That bastard is back.