After spinning for a full minute or so, the excavator finally came to a stop.
With a loud bang, the cab door flew open and a head popped out.
Shi Zuo An crawled out of the seat, dizzy and unsteady.
“L-let me rest for a bit.”
Xia Ao: ……
When he finally managed to get back on his feet, Xia Ao stared at him, and only after confirming that he truly understood the function of every single control lever did he, at last, climb onto the bucket, glancing back every few steps.
“My life’s in your hands now. When it really matters, please don’t screw this up.”
Xia Ao had never felt himself be this humble before.
But with his life entirely entrusted to Shi Zuo An this time, he couldn’t help feeling jittery.
“Don’t worry, I really have learned it this time!” Shi Zuo An still tied a rope around his waist, fastening it to the joint between the bucket and the arm.
The rope wasn’t very sturdy, but at least it offered some psychological comfort.
“Remember, once you’re done tying them, shout right away. I’ll lower you down and we’ll retreat immediately,” he instructed. After tying two solid knots, he patted Xia Ao on the waist. “All right, go on. Be careful.”
“Mm.”
Xia Ao crouched into the bucket and waited as Shi Zuo An started the excavator and slowly drove it directly beneath the suspended rebar.
The height beneath his feet gradually increased. Xia Ao steadied himself with one hand on the edge of the bucket, dirt and dust trickling down through the gaps between his fingers.
Before long, the excavator’s mechanical arm extended to its maximum reach.
But there was still a bit of distance between him and the cables above.
He looked toward Shi Zuo An inside the cab.
Helplessly, there was indeed no way to go any higher. Shi Zuo An could only shrug.
With no other choice, Xia Ao swayed as he stood up, rising onto his tiptoes to try to reach.
Still, he came up short.
“Can you do it? If not, forget it, we’ll think of another way!” The cab door opened and Shi Zuo An stuck his head out, shouting to him.
Xia Ao compared the distance between his fingertips and the rebar.
“Don’t move. Let me try again.”
With that, he tied all three prepared bombs to his waistband.
Then he actually stepped onto the joint between the bucket and the arm and climbed upward along the hard metal.
Wherever his body passed, the thick layer of dust was scraped away, revealing bright yellow metal beneath.
Shi Zuo An watched from the side, his heart in his throat.
“Be careful!!!”
He shouted loudly, but the climber was so tense and focused that the words never reached him.
The skin of his hands rubbed hard against the smooth surface.
After climbing another three or four meters, Xia Ao finally reached the height of the rebar.
But his back was to it, if he wanted to grab the rebar, he would have to turn around.
Right now, his hands and feet were clamped tightly just to maintain his position. How was he supposed to turn and grab a new point of support?
Shi Zuo An swallowed unconsciously, a dull pounding sounding in his ears.
He saw Xia Ao gather his strength and, like a nimble leopard, leap toward the rebar hanging in midair!
The steel cable suddenly took on the weight of a person, letting out a creaking squeal as it began to sway violently.
Xia Ao’s palms turned white from gripping so hard. He lowered his body, trying to steady the wildly swinging cable.
Gradually, it stabilized, and the scenery beneath his feet came into focus.
The city lay in total darkness, the pitch-black glass windows inexplicably lent the scene a chilling, ominous air.
In the distance was the high-speed rail station they had left not long ago, its doors tightly shut. He wondered how the Chen father and daughter left behind there were doing.
At the position of the construction site gate, Jiang Si and Song Zi Qiao were also watching him with anxious faces.
Then his gaze met Shi Zuo An’s below, inside the excavator cab.
Under the faint moonlight, soft strands of hair were edged with a pale silvery sheen.
As the night wind blew, the disheveled hair veiled his face, making even the outlines of his features blur.
When Xia Ao looked again more carefully, he realized it was just that his glasses had slipped down the bridge of his nose.
Freeing one hand to push his glasses back up, he took the bombs from his waistband and carefully wrapped them around the steel cable.
At last, he secured the final bomb directly above the rebar.
Xia Ao let out a heavy breath.
“Shi Zuo An!” he shouted. “They’re all tied on, I’m getting ready to come down!”
As soon as he finished speaking, he lit the fuse with the lighter he carried.
Shi Zuo An was just about to ask how he planned to get down when his heart skipped a beat, this guy actually jumped straight down from the rebar!
When he landed in the bucket, there was a loud thud, and it rocked for quite a while before he finally steadied himself.
“Fuck, this idiot!”
Shi Zuo An had been so scared his mind went blank, but he quickly pulled himself together. The instant Xia Ao dropped into the bucket, he rapidly worked the controls to lower the excavator arm.
He smoothly helped Xia Ao down to the ground, then jumped off the excavator himself.
Before leaving, he even gave the cab door a friendly pat.
Good buddy, hope we get to work together again sometime!
“Go!”
The two of them sprinted back toward where they’d parked earlier, where Jiang Si and Song Zi Qiao were waiting to cover them.
Seeing them charging over at full speed, the two hurried to place the two bombs beneath the preselected section of the barricade.
Once everything was lit, they rushed back into the car, even opening the rear doors for Shi Zuo An and Xia Ao along the way— so the two of them could dive straight inside the moment they arrived.
The length of the fuses had been calculated by Shi Zuo An beforehand.
A fuse burns at roughly 0.1 seconds per centimeter. From the suspended rebar to where they’d parked was about fifty meters.
Shi Zuo An and Xia Ao’s sprinting speed ranked high among adult men, they could cover fifty meters in about 6.9 seconds at their limit.
Rounding it to seven seconds, and factoring in the time needed to operate the excavator, the fuse had to burn for at least twenty seconds.
By that calculation, they would need a fuse about two meters long. But Shi Zuo An had pointed out that when three cords were twisted together, the flame burned much more slowly at the knots.
Which meant they only needed to prepare about a meter and a half of fuse.
As for the fuse on the other side, after careful calculation, it only needed to be lit when Xia Ao and Shi Zuo An appeared at the corner, roughly a thirty-meter distance.
At this moment, the fuse was burning rapidly. Jiang Si’s eyes flicked back and forth between the base of the barricade ahead and the two figures running in the rearview mirror.
It felt as if even the sound of breathing inside the car had stopped.
Finally, when the fuse had burned down to just thirty centimeters, the car lurched downward and the rear door slammed shut.
Jiang Si immediately released the clutch he’d been holding down, the vehicle rolling forward slowly. Then, at the instant the bomb beneath the barricade directly ahead exploded, he floored the accelerator!
The SUV shot outward in an instant, ignoring the scattered debris smashing against the body.
Amid the burst of firelight, they leapt over the wall and sped onto the empty main road.
Behind them, the suspended rebar crashed down with a thunderous roar, the impact shaking the ground like an earthquake.
They were certain that every zombie within at least a one-kilometer radius, drawn by the noise, would be converging on this spot.
From what they could see through the car windows alone, hundreds of zombies were already charging toward them like a tidal wave of corpses.
With his superb driving skills, Jiang Si weaved around the oncoming horde and headed for the supermarket.
Shi Zuo An and Xia Ao had been nonstop since earlier, only now did they finally get a chance to let their backs sink against the soft seatbacks.
“Xia Ao.” Shi Zuo An let out a heavy breath.
“Hm?”
“Are you a fucking idiot? Yesterday at the high-speed rail station, did you check your brain in as luggage?”
Wow, that was brutal.
In the front row, Jiang Si and Song Zi Qiao quietly pricked up their ears.
Xia Ao immediately understood, he was angry about how he’d ignored the danger and jumped onto the rebar just now.
“Sorry… the situation was urgent. I had no choice but to do it.”
Oh. He’s mad, and he’s explaining himself.
Jiang Si’s gaze was practically drilling a hole through the rearview mirror.
“Didn’t I tell you? If it didn’t work, don’t force it, I could’ve thought of another way!” Shi Zuo An folded his arms across his chest, not sparing Xia Ao even a glance, his tone icy. “And you clearly promised me last time that you wouldn’t do something this dangerous again!”
Xia Ao was choked by the barrage of questions.
After a long moment, all he could offer was still the same line—”emergency situation, emergency response”…
The car ran over a deep pothole and jolted violently.
Xia Ao’s hand, which had been adjusting his glasses, was knocked upward, and the glasses flew under the seat.
“Alright, alright, you two, stop arguing.” Jiang Si saw one of them turning his head away to glare out the window, bristling with anger, while the other, normally sharp-tongued, seemed to have lost his ability to talk, unable to say a word for ages.
If this kept up, who knew when it would end.
She turned the wheel and drove the car up to the supermarket’s main entrance.
“We’re here. Get ready to get out.”
The supermarket’s entrance was also made of glass, but unlike the high-speed rail station, the exterior walls weren’t entirely glass panels, most of it was built from white wall tiles.
The shattered entrance they’d seen days earlier was still a dark hollow, but there were no zombies lingering around anymore.
At least, they could be grateful, their plan had worked!
Everyone got out of the car. Xia Ao went around to the back to open the trunk, only to bump straight into Shi Zuo An, who had come over to do the same.
“Hmph!” Shi Zuo An turned and walked away.
“……”
In the end, Xia Ao ended up dragging the suitcase by himself, while everyone else had their hands free.
Before going in, the four of them reapplied mosquito repellent all over. Song Zi Qiao couldn’t help exclaiming that in his entire life, he’d never used as much mosquito repellent in one summer as he had in just these past few days.
“You’re just bad at it,” Jiang Si teased. “Back when I was in college, my roommates and I were all pretty extra, every time we went to the bathroom after taking a dump, we’d spray floral water.”
“Hahahaha, four whole years went by and none of us ever knew what the other person’s shit smelled like.”
Ms. Jiang, that was way too crude!!!
The remaining three all shuddered in unison and didn’t dare pursue the topic any further.
After confirming that there really were no zombies lingering around the supermarket entrance, they crouched low and slipped in through the broken glass opening.
Taking a closer look this time, they saw that most of the shattered glass was indeed concentrated inside, and they boldly concluded that it had been caused by zombies.
To prevent any more zombies from getting in, the four of them discussed it briefly and decided to move the glass display counter at the entrance over to block the doorway.
“Come on, give me a hand,” Song Zi Qiao said, pushing hard on one side of the counter. But with its thick glass construction and metal base, the counter was seriously heavy.
Even putting his whole body into it, it still didn’t budge an inch.
The rectangular counter had four legs. Shi Zuo An was closer to the corner opposite Song Zi Qiao, so he figured he’d help by pulling from this side.
He hadn’t expected that the moment he put his hands on it, Xia Ao would step in beside him.
The guy didn’t look awkward at all. When Shi Zuo An glanced at him, he met the look head-on, completely straightforward.
……
Hey! Shi Zuo An’s bad temper flared up!
He had originally thought about just moving to another spot and pushing from the same side as Song Zi Qiao.
But Xia Ao’s gaze was blatantly provocative, and now he absolutely wasn’t moving!
Song Zi Qiao and Jiang Si stood opposite them, watching the bright sparks flying between the two pairs of eyes: ……