“I’d advise you not to go.”
Bai Zhuo’s voice was firm. She’d more or less figured out how the system worked, anyone it would proactively issue a mission for had to be an important person, all the more so when it was an emergency mission.
Professor Jiang Yongnian regarded Bai Zhuo calmly. “Why?”
“Have you been to the Linzhou survivor base before? Do you know what the base’s leadership is like? Nearly a year after the outbreak, in a place where heaven is high and the emperor is far away [1]a remote spot beyond the reach of any real authority jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2936282_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2936282_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });, do you dare bet on what people’s hearts have become?”
Bai Zhuo’s string of questions left the old man across from her silent.
He didn’t care much about many things, but…
The old man’s gaze fell on his granddaughter, still sleeping deeply. He might not care for himself, but for the child’s sake, he couldn’t afford not to.
Bai Zhuo was about to say more when faint footsteps sounded outside the door, and everyone’s expression tensed at once.
Xue Yanhen gripped the blade in her hand, ready to deal a fatal blow the moment the person came through.
The footsteps stopped at the doorway, and then the door was thrown open. Xue Yanhen instantly slashed down, only to cut through empty air!
“Wait!”
Hm? That voice, it sounded a little familiar.
Bai Zhuo and Xue Yanhen looked up at the same time, only to find Chongming standing in the doorway, clutching her sniper rifle.
Bai Zhuo suddenly remembered Chongming mentioning she had an important mission. She raised a hand and pointed. “Your mission target, is it him?”
Chongming instinctively looked in the direction Bai Zhuo was pointing. On seeing Professor Jiang Yongnian, she nodded, her expression turning grave at once. “Yes.”
On learning that her mission target had been rescued by Bai Zhuo, Chongming couldn’t help letting out a breath of relief. If Professor Jiang Yongnian had died here, how would she ever have explained herself when she got back?
Chongming told Professor Jiang Yongnian who she was, and at the same time filled him in on the internal situation at the Linzhou survivor base, thoroughly dispelling any thought he’d had of going there.
“I’ll take you back to the Jing City base.”
Chongming turned to Bai Zhuo and Xue Yanhen. “Are you two coming with me?”
To her surprise, Bai Zhuo declined.
“No. Once you’re over there you won’t have the bandwidth to look after us. Besides, we don’t have any abilities yet, what use would we be going there?”
“Really not coming?”
“Really not coming.”
Chongming felt a pang of regret. Once she left, there was no telling when they’d meet again, and she’d taken quite a liking to these two girls.
Bai Zhuo smiled. “We’ll get a chance to meet again.”
She had the system in hand, and she believed she’d see both Chongming and Gu Zhun again.
Before leaving, Chongming looked back at Bai Zhuo and Xue Yanhen. “The research Professor Jiang is working on will be a great help to awakening abilities. If the experiment succeeds, I’ll come find you two.”
Bai Zhuo waved at her with a smile. “All right.”
“Those two corpses, I’ll take them back as well, and hand them up the chain.”
“All right.”
Chongming still felt it was a shame. “Really not coming with me?”
Bai Zhuo laughed out loud. “Really not coming with you.”
Having sent Chongming and the professor and his granddaughter off, Bai Zhuo and Xue Yanhen returned to where they were staying.
Bai Zhuo was in high spirits. After completing the emergency mission to rescue Professor Jiang Yongnian, her safe house progress had shot straight up to 34%, a full 16% increase in one go.
【Sys, more emergency missions like that would be great.】
System: …
Was she treating emergency missions like cabbages at the market?
Bai Zhuo hadn’t actually meant for it to issue an emergency mission right that second, she was just running her mouth.
As she mused, Bai Zhuo shifted a case of self-heating rice meals from her system inventory into the kitchen cupboard. These days, no matter what she pulled out, Xue Yanhen acted as if she hadn’t seen a thing, so by now she dared to take out just about anything.
The self-heating rice was something she’d only started drawing after the system upgrade. She’d been wanting to eat it and never found the chance.
Xue Yanhen sat quietly in the living room. She looked down at her own hand and clenched it with a bit of force.
“Yanhen! Come quick!”
Hearing Bai Zhuo’s voice, Xue Yanhen collected her thoughts, rose, and walked briskly into the kitchen.
The moment she saw the self-heating rice, Xue Yanhen was stunned, her whole mind filled with: Bai Zhuo, you’ve really got some nerve.
A dull clap of thunder rolled, and both of them looked up out the window at the same time.
It was raining again.
“Chongming said earlier there might be a zombie horde. Should we slip into the Linzhou base to lie low for a while?” Xue Yanhen poked at her rice and proposed in a low voice.
Bai Zhuo had been weighing this too. What the Linzhou base’s leadership was like had nothing to do with her, the thing was, her safe house wasn’t fully unlocked yet. If they stayed here and a zombie horde really did break out, they might not be able to hold out.
But…
Bai Zhuo pressed at her brow. She still didn’t much like living crammed in with a crowd of people.
Xue Yanhen said nothing more and, as usual, went to deal with the trash after the meal.
When she came back, Bai Zhuo spoke up in a low voice. “Let’s go. But I don’t have any abilities, so getting in might be tricky.”
“It’s fine, I do.”
Bai Zhuo looked up. Xue Yanhen gave her a little smile. “Fooling their detector won’t be a problem.”
Since they’d made up their minds, the two of them quickly gathered their things. Anything that couldn’t be allowed to draw notice went to Bai Zhuo, who quietly stowed it away in the system warehouse.
That included the frying pan, Bai Zhuo planned not to take it out at all for the duration of their stay at the Linzhou survivor base. Who knew whether the people who’d come to ambush and kill her that day had been sent out by the Linzhou base.
Once they’d dealt with the other traces, Bai Zhuo and Xue Yanhen took advantage of a break in the rain and set off for the Linzhou survivor base.
Tables and instruments had been set up at the base entrance, and a good hundred-some people stood in a long line, all anxiously waiting to get in.
The arrival of Bai Zhuo and Xue Yanhen didn’t attract much attention, though when Xue Yanhen went to stand in the ability-user detection line, some people turned their eyes toward them.
A young man, smiling gently, sidled up to Xue Yanhen. “Are you an ability user? Want to form a squad together?”
Xue Yanhen raised an eyebrow. “Form a squad?”
“Yeah. Once we ability users get into the base, we have to form squads to take on missions. All those people before us already have set teams.”
Xue Yanhen pointed at Bai Zhuo. “I have a team.”
The smile at the corner of the young man’s mouth stiffened. “I meant an ability user.”
He stressed the words “ability user,” and after saying it he shot a glance at Bai Zhuo, contempt flickering in his eyes, clearly he looked down on the “ordinary person” Bai Zhuo.
Bai Zhuo rolled her eyes. What was his problem.
Seeing that Xue Yanhen had no intention of changing her mind, the young man was instantly furious, deciding she couldn’t tell good from bad, and turned and left.
The people waiting in line around them also thought Xue Yanhen was out of her mind, turning down another ability user’s offer to form a squad, and instead insisting on teaming up with an ordinary person.
Of course, some people envied Bai Zhuo: she had an ability user looking out for her before she’d even entered the survivor base, so her life afterward was bound to be better than theirs.
Bai Zhuo stood there perfectly serene, chatting idly with the system in her mind.
On learning that the system was only three missions away from its next upgrade, Bai Zhuo instantly perked right up.
Just missions, was it? She could do that!
References[+]