When she and Jiang Ran arrived back at the villa, Su Ya, Nie Fei, and Xiao Jingcheng were all waiting in the first-floor living room.
Seeing Jiang Ran and Lin Buyu return together—and with entirely composed expressions—the three exchanged quiet, bewildered glances, no one daring to speak first.
Nie Fei’s eyes were darting wildly, practically pleading with Lin Buyu to stay behind.
Noticing their eager expressions, Lin Buyu waved at Jiang Ran to go ahead upstairs. “Go on up without me. I’ll be right there.”
The trio’s clumsy attempt at sending secret signals was so obvious it was almost laughable. Jiang Ran was far from blind, so naturally, he caught every bit of it. He cast a sharp glance at Nie Fei, silently warning him not to blab, before turning and heading up the stairs.
The second he vanished from view, Nie Fei and Su Ya grabbed Lin Buyu and dragged her over.
“Did Jiang Tao say anything line-crossing?” Xiao Jingcheng asked immediately.
Just bringing it up made Lin Buyu’s blood boil. That disgusting excuse for a human didn’t have a single decent word in his mouth.
“Line-crossing? The man wasn’t just talking—he was spewing sewage.”
Xiao Jingcheng’s expression darkened instantly. “Did he insult Brother Ran again?”
Half the time, he couldn’t wrap his head around why Jiang Ran tolerated Jiang Tao and Jiang Congwen time and time again. They didn’t need to stay in this base; if they walked out of Yulan Base today, plenty of other sanctuaries would fight over them.
It wasn’t just Xiao Jingcheng—Su Ya and Nie Fei were fuming just as hard.
Lin Buyu nodded. “Yeah. He said a lot of foul things.”
“Damn that piece of trash!” Nie Fei, always hot-headed, whirled around toward the door. “I’m going to break him in half.”
“Hey, get back here!” Lin Buyu grabbed his arm and yanked him backward.
Nie Fei, a solid six-foot-one man, was jerked off his feet in a single pull.
The force behind her grip felt like a hundred-pound weight clamping down on him. Stunned, he turned to stare at Lin Buyu’s slender arm, suddenly questioning his entire life choices. “Wait… was that you pulling me?”
Knowing what had thrown him off, Lin Buyu gave a light cough to switch the subject. “Don’t bother looking for trouble with Jiang Tao.”
Assuming her soft heart was getting the better of her, Su Ya frowned. “Are you seriously sticking up for Jiang Tao?”
“Sticking up for him? As if a piece of trash like that deserves my sympathy!” Just remembering Jiang Tao’s vile words—and the terrible things he had done—made Lin Buyu grit her teeth in rage.
“Then why are you stopping me from messing him up?” Nie Fei asked, thoroughly confused.
Lin Buyu rubbed the tip of her nose sheepishly. “Because he’s dead.”
“Dead?!”
All three shouted at once. Taking in Lin Buyu’s guilty, shifting eyes, a sudden realization hit them. “It wasn’t… you who killed him, was it?”
Again, in perfect unison.
Under the weight of three completely shattered, incredulous stares, Lin Buyu sprinted up the stairs, acting coy. “Oh, stop staring at me like that, you’re making me blush!”
Like hell they were.
The sudden shift in mood was utterly baffling.
The three left behind struggled to digest the bomb that had just dropped.
“Our little delicate flower actually killed someone?” Su Ya muttered.
Xiao Jingcheng gave her an odd look. “You’ve seen her butcher zombies before, and you still thought she was a delicate flower?”
Su Ya shook her head. “Well, no… it’s just that girls who look like her are usually soft-hearted and easily scared. I mean, I know she isn’t timid, but still… it’s a bit hard to process.”
Nie Fei glanced back down at his arm. Because he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, several deep purple bruises were already blooming where Lin Buyu had grabbed him—a permanent souvenir from her absurd brute strength.
He said with utter seriousness, “I definitely don’t think she’s a delicate flower.”
She’s a maneating beast.
“Now that Lin Buyu has killed Jiang Tao, I doubt Jiang Congwen will let this slide,” Xiao Jingcheng said, adjusting the black-framed glasses on the bridge of his nose. He added, “Get ready. We might need to relocate to another base at a moment’s notice.”
Su Ya nodded. “Alright, I’ll go grab my sledgehammer.”
Nie Fei couldn’t resist running his mouth. “You’re practically built like a giant muscle babe already, and you still need a sledgehammer?”
Su Ya spun around and threw a solid punch straight into Nie Fei’s back. “Mind your own business!”
Meanwhile, after heading upstairs, Jiang Ran stood quietly by the window, gazing down at the pedestrians below.
From this vantage point, he could see the area where the ordinary citizens lived.
Without powers or specialized skills essential for running the base’s day-to-day operations, they had no choice but to cram into that tightly packed cluster of buildings.
A dozen people squeezed into a single room barely nine square meters in size.
Although safe from the immediate threat of zombies inside the base, many lived lives worse than death itself.
Xu Feiyan, the leader of Group B, treated the women there like brothel workers, forcing them to serve the members of his group.
These women were nothing like those who willingly became companions for survival.
Their pre-apocalyptic skill sets held no value here, yet refusing to become men’s playthings left them with only backbreaking manual labor.
Even so, they had no control over their own fate and remained subject to coercion.
Xu Feiyan could steal another man’s wife or snatch away someone’s daughter without hesitation—a man guilty of every imaginable evil.
Yet a monster like him held tremendous authority as a powerful squad leader within the base.
The victims had filed complaints time and time again, but it was useless.
Jiang Congwen showed far greater leniency toward superhumans than toward ordinary civilians.
Countless people burned with rage, yet none dared to speak out.
Xiao Jingcheng had once asked Jiang Ran why he didn’t just leave this miserable base.
Based on Jiang Tao’s continuous barking, everyone assumed Jiang Ran was staying out of loyalty to a promise made to his grandfather—to protect both Jiang Tao and Jiang Congwen.
Jiang Ran let out a cold, bitter sneer. Before awakening his powers, this godforsaken world had tortured him within an inch of his life, practically stripping away every last shred of his humanity. Yet he was still expected to cling to some nonexistent moral conscience.
He had promised his grandfather that he wouldn’t kill Jiang Congwen and Jiang Tao.
And because Jiang Congwen turned a blind eye to the atrocities committed by superhumans, Jiang Ran’s presence was the only thing keeping squad leaders like Xu Feiyan in check, preventing them from completely overstepping the line.
His grandfather had died saving him, but…
Jiang Tao had spoken the absolute truth.
Grandfather had loved him, yes—but he had also loved Jiang Congwen and Jiang Tao.
Sensing Jiang Ran’s murderous intent toward the father and son, and knowing persuasion would fall on deaf ears, his grandfather had intentionally stepped in front of a lunging zombie—even though he knew full well that Jiang Ran could have easily avoided the attack himself.
He had weaponized the lifelong bond of raising Jiang Ran to beg him to spare Jiang Tao and Jiang Congwen, even demanding that he protect them when push came to shove.
Before that moment, Jiang Ran had genuinely believed his grandfather loved only him.
Only then did he realize that in this entire world, no one had ever truly loved him.
Those starved of affection were always the quickest to play the fool.
And he had played the fool time after time, never once escaping the fate of being abandoned in the end.
He had known from the very beginning that when his grandfather made that ultimate decision, his mind was filled entirely with thoughts of Jiang Tao and Jiang Congwen, without a single shred of consideration for how Jiang Ran would feel.
Even so, he had willingly shouldered that heavy burden of moral blackmail.
When Lin Buyu pushed the door open, she saw Jiang Ran standing by the window with his back turned to her.
His tall, lean figure carried a profound, solitary shadow—as if he had been cast aside by the entire world.
Lin Buyu recalled the vile words Jiang Tao had spat earlier.
On her way to confront him, she had unlocked and read through all the hidden plot points regarding Jiang Ran’s past.
As it turned out, his cold and ruthless nature stemmed from the fact that his parents had never loved him.
Theirs had been a cold, strategic marriage arranged solely for business, forcing both parents to miss out on the true loves of their lives.
Jiang Ran’s mother had only fallen pregnant with him through an unwanted accident. To both of them, his very existence was nothing more than a disgusting mistake.