“Actually, this idea came from the note you left me.”
Since the apocalypse began, Fu Erdie had faced only a handful of major crises; most of the time, life had been relatively peaceful. So much so that she was only now discovering she had a ability and was just beginning to explore what it actually was.
Sang Wenhao, on the other hand, had fought his way through everything. He had to scramble for every survival necessity, pushing his abilities to their limits just to make it this far.
During his battle with the metal-hardening zombie, he had learned to change the shape of metal, reinforcing it and layering it over his body to turn himself into a weapon.
This kind of manipulation looked simple, but it required extremely fine control.
For instance, when Sang Wenhao exerted force, his muscles bulged. The metal needed to stretch with flexibility to follow the sharp movements of his muscles. Failing to do that would make the metal a hindrance rather than an asset.
With that goal in mind, Sang Wenhao had been constantly training.
That morning, while waiting for Fu Erdie to come eat breakfast, he had been practicing shaping metal into the form of a sniper bullet, designing it to be hollow so he could insert a note inside.
“My idea is this: we put the information we want to send into these shaped bullets and fire them toward the university town. When the bullets hit the ground, they’ll burst open, revealing the note inside.”
As he spoke, he casually demonstrated, shaping a discarded piece of metal into a bullet. The tip was sharp and especially thin, if you looked closely, you could even see a faint crack.
He handed it to Fu Erdie, waited for her to examine it, then said, “Try gently tossing it at the wall.”
Fu Erdie did so.
The bullet arced toward the wall with a soft scrape.
The next moment, the tip split open, and a note popped out.
【Get some good rest today. Tomorrow, we’ll go out together to look for livestock we can raise and eat.】
It was the very note Fu Erdie had left for Sang Wenhao that morning.
“Impressive,” Fu Erdie said admiringly.
Sang Wenhao: “I’m an engineering major. I do a lot of modeling for experiments and design work. And I used to go to the shooting range my family runs, so in my free time, I simulated bullet trajectories, how long it takes for bullets to land under different firing angles and how far they go.”
“If fired straight up, bullets usually land within about two minutes, not far from the launch point. If fired at a 45-degree parabolic angle, they land in about fifty seconds, roughly thirty kilometers away.”
“These figures are very rough, I just did some casual simulations without carefully comparing data across different conditions. In actual practice, variables like air pressure, air resistance, wind direction, humidity, and rain would cause significant deviations. But one thing is certain: a sniper rifle can shoot an information bullet into the university town’s range.”
The straight-line distance from the neighborhood to the university town was only about twenty kilometers. The roads between them were winding and clogged with obstacles, driving out might not be easy, but a bullet’s trajectory in the air wouldn’t be affected by those.
“The only issue is that the terminal velocity of a bullet on a parabolic trajectory is still very high. If it happened to hit someone, it could cause injury. Even though the probability is extremely low, the risk exists.”
Fu Erdie found the idea rather thrilling. Sending messages by bullet, what a unique way to communicate!
But she quickly calmed down.
Suppose they could actually deliver the message to the university town, and someone found it, and that person managed to locate edible livestock and decided to come to the agreed-upon location to trade with them.
Then the question arose: where should the trading location be? Not everyone had a map, and not everyone had the ability to reach that location.
Those who could make it out of a zombie-infested area would either be ability users or particularly united ordinary survivor groups. Would Fu Erdie and Sang Wenhao, just the two of them, be able to handle such people?
If someone suspected she had water-based or plant-based abilities and tried to capture her to exploit her abilities, could Fu Erdie fight back?
Could Sang Wenhao handle those people? Or, would he even have a reason to?
She didn’t want to think of him that way, but given the current situation, she had to prepare for the worst.
If he turned out to be someone with ulterior motives, witnessing her fall into danger, or even pushing her into it and fleeing, would allow him to take over her house and her mutated plants, and she would be powerless to stop him.
Ultimately, she liked him, but she couldn’t fully trust his character yet, nor did she know how he compared in strength to other ability users.
Still, Sang Wenhao’s method of delivering information did open up new possibilities. If used wisely, there were always more solutions than problems.
Even if there was no safe way to trade now, that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be later.
“Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind.”
Sang Wenhao nodded.
This kind of plan also involved exposing water and food resources, it wasn’t something that could be decided on a whim. He wasn’t the impatient type.
After the meal, Fu Erdie took the potato seedling to clean up Building 6.
The potato seedling’s roots had now grown as large as a bathtub. But instead of anchoring itself in the building, it kept searching for pots or barrels that could contain it, hoping Fu Erdie would take it with her every time she went out.
Fu Erdie was now much stronger. Even with the tub and the potato seedling combined, she could carry them while treating it as exercise as she made her way to Building 6.
Sang Wenhao offered to tag along and help out, but he was mindful of the potential suspicion, being in close proximity might raise questions about him taking things. So instead, he stayed on the 16th-floor hallway, snacking on unlimited fruits while training his abilities.
In the afternoon, Fu Erdie cleared out all the garbage from every floor of Building 6.
The salvaged supplies were sorted into four categories. The first was seeds, which she carried with her for experimentation. The second was daily consumables that couldn’t be replenished, such as cooking oil, salt, and sugar. The third was electronic items, chargers, power strips, power banks, desk lamps, fans, and heaters.
The last category was useless, broken metal scraps.
Fu Erdie gathered the discarded metal from each floor and stacked them by the windowsills, so that in the future, if Sang Wenhao needed any, he could easily access them from most windows.
There was a lot of stuff in the building, and for now, these were just the items she had extracted.
She worked like a diligent ant, hauling load after load.
From the 16th floor, where he was practicing his abilities, Sang Wenhao could see Fu Erdie coming and going. By the time she carried her third large box back, he couldn’t help but fly down from the window. “Where does this need to go? Let me help you carry it.”
Fu Erdie paused for a moment.
Sang Wenhao added, “I won’t take anything. I’ll bring you along.”
Fu Erdie frowned slightly, feeling a bit unhappy.
She genuinely wanted him to rest.
If it were her, let alone struggling through the apocalypse for half a year, even after the intense cramming for the college entrance exam back in the day, she would have wanted to crash completely, sleeping until she couldn’t sleep anymore. The last thing she’d want to do is work for someone else.
Still, she had been guarding against him, so it was only fair that he’d pick up on it.
“Thank you. Please take these to 16-3. I’ll go back to the building to get more.”
Sang Wenhao was a bit surprised.
She wasn’t going to watch him?
He wasn’t one to talk much anyway, so he simply nodded and got to work.
Since he could fly, he was much faster than Fu Erdie. By the time he finished unloading and went back downstairs, Fu Erdie hadn’t even returned to Building 6 yet.
“If you trust me, let me handle the rest.”
Fu Erdie paused for a moment, then didn’t insist and let him take over moving the remaining items.
As the sun set, she sat on a flowerbed beside the pothos plant, watching the busy figure.
She was gaining a new understanding of him.
He was a very perceptive person.
He had noticed her wariness, so he proactively kept his distance.
He had noticed her displeasure, so he skillfully addressed it and eased the tension.
Even though Fu Erdie’s flicker of unhappiness had been brief, quickly suppressed by her rational thinking, he still picked up on it.
Leaning her chin on her hand, she watched him finish moving the fifth load back to the building and start on the sixth. Suddenly, she felt that if he were a genuinely good person, he must be feeling pretty wronged right now.
He had spent two hours coming up with a way to deliver messages, and she hadn’t given him a response.
He had offered to help out of goodwill, only to be held at arm’s length by her wariness.
He had mustered the courage to take that step forward, only to end up making her unhappy…
Fu Erdie: …
She couldn’t help but feel like she was being awful.
If she were in his position, she’d definitely feel wronged.
During dinner, Fu Erdie said, “I plan to spend the next while alternating, one day going out to explore and look for livestock, and one day cleaning up the buildings. That way, it won’t be as exhausting as cleaning buildings nonstop, nor as tense as going out all the time. Actually, going out is the only part I really need you to join me for. I can manage cleaning the other buildings on my own, but if you’re willing to help, we can split whatever supplies we find according to each other’s needs. How does that sound?”
Sang Wenhao swallowed the food in his mouth, looked at Fu Erdie seriously, and said, “You’ve already put all the metal I need by the windows where I can easily reach it. I don’t need to move it, just knowing where it is means I can use it anywhere in the neighborhood. Thank you.”
Fu Erdie was once again struck by how perceptive he was. She hadn’t even mentioned why she had placed the metal by the windows, yet he already understood everything.
A weight lifted off her heart.
It was best that he had noticed on his own. If she had brought it up, it would have felt like she was trying to take credit or do him a favor, “See, I got all your things ready for you.”
She wouldn’t have known how to say it.
Sang Wenhao had given her the most effortless outcome.
A genuine smile spread across Fu Erdie’s face. “Thank you too, for helping me move all those things.”
“It wasn’t helping you. It’s because I want to keep living here.”
Fu Erdie’s chopsticks paused mid-air.
Looking at Sang Wenhao’s earnest, puppy-like eyes, she suddenly understood what he meant and could already predict what he was about to say.
Sure enough, the next moment—
“I want to earn your trust. I want to make this place my long-term home. Everything I do here, I do for myself.”
“I’m not helping you. I’m doing what I should be doing.”