Chapter 19: I Saw Leader Shen
“Oh! Coming, Brother!” Zhao Yue carefully hopped down from the windowsill and ran to unlock the door for Zhao Guang.
Blind to the unnatural tension written across his sister’s face, Zhao Guang grasped her hand and led her outside.
“I’m taking you to see Wang Jiafu. You don’t need to do or say anything—just stay right behind me.”
“Okay.”
Zhao Yue followed behind Zhao Guang, her heart hammering wildly against her ribs.
This deviated completely from the plan A-Han had laid out beforehand. Without his direction, how on earth was she supposed to handle this on her own…?
At this point, she could only take things one step at a time.
With Zhao Yue in tow, Zhao Guang led the assembled cohort of ability users straight toward Wang Jiafu’s administrative building.
Aside from the official guard corps, the twenty-odd ability users flanking Zhao Guang made up the true backbone of the independent metahumans in the base.
Guilt gnawed at Zhao Yue’s conscience. Tucking herself close behind her brother, she darted her eyes left and right along the way, desperately hoping to spot Su Han’s silhouette or catch some kind of cue from him.
Yet as they marched onward, she never caught a glimpse of Su Han. Instead, a strikingly familiar silhouette ahead froze her in her tracks.
Broad shoulders and long legs, clad in a black jacket, cargo pants, and combat boots, the cuffs caked in dry, gritty grime.
Zhao Yue shuddered violently, her eyes blowing wide as a piercing shriek tore from her throat:
“Big Brother Shen!”
With that single cry, the entire march ground to an abrupt halt.
Veins instantly bulged across Zhao Guang’s forehead. Fighting to keep his volcanic temper in check before the crowd, he hissed, “Zhao Yue! What kind of nonsense are you babbling?!”
Frantic with desperation, Zhao Yue practically jumped in place, pointing an outstretched finger at the distant silhouette. “Look! That’s Big Brother Shen right there!”
Following her trembling finger, the entire crowd shuddered in unison.
From behind, the figure bore an uncanny resemblance to Shen Chengyin. The height and the width of his shoulders were practically identical, barring hair that looked slightly more tousled than usual.
“I told you Big Brother Shen wasn’t dead, but none of you would listen to me! If Big Brother Shen had really died in that zombie wave back then, such a mountain of supplies would have burst out and scattered across the entire ground!”
Zhao Yue rambled incoherently, flushed with overwhelming excitement.
A-Han had said Big Brother Shen was alive, and it was true! A-Han hadn’t lied to her!
Her trust in Su Han deepened tenfold.
As the figure rounded a corner and vanished from sight, several people in the group could no longer contain themselves.
“Let’s move! Trail him and see for ourselves—maybe it really is Leader Shen!”
“Zhao Guang, your sister has a point. That man is walking toward Wang Jiafu’s office anyway. It’s right on our way.”
“Fuck it! If Leader Shen really is alive, I’ll drag Wang Jiafu down from that goddamn chair and bury the bastard alive!”
“Exactly! I never believed Leader Shen was that despicable to begin with. The whole thing was probably slander spun by Wang Jiafu.”
“Weren’t Wang Jiafu and Leader Shen childhood friends, though? No matter how you look at it, how could they frame each other like that…?”
Zhao Guang’s brow was locked in a tight, tormented furrow. He burned to know the truth just as badly.
“Let’s go. We’re going to see for ourselves.”
The group pursued the retreating silhouette of “Shen Chengyin,” tracking him all the way to the foot of Wang Jiafu’s administrative complex.
Zhao Yue was practically beside herself. Had Zhao Guang not maintained an iron grip on her arm, she would have sprinted forward to throw herself into Big Brother Shen’s arms and weep.
Zhao Guang shadowed him closely. Under normal circumstances, anyone trailed by a pack of armed people would have sensed something was amiss, but this “Shen Chengyin” didn’t spare a single backward glance, striding straight into the administrative building.
At this stage, even if this person turned out to be a trap, they had to uncover the truth.
The group pressed forward on his heels, watching the man come to a halt right outside Wang Jiafu’s office door.
Tearing free from her brother’s grasp, Zhao Yue bounded forward in three frantic strides.
“Big Brother Shen!” A choked sob laced her voice.
Feeling a hand clap onto his shoulder, the man slowly turned around, finally exposing his face to the onlookers.
It was a total stranger. Zhao Guang had never laid eyes on this man within the base.
Behind them, one of the ability users recognized him on the spot. “Hey… isn’t that what’s-his-name? The guy working over at the power station?”
“I remember you—you’re a lightning-element user, right? With the guard corps.”
Li Tiangan’s face betrayed not a single seam of deception. He offered a polite, casual smile. “That’s me. Are you all here to see Leader Wang as well?”
The ability users traded awkward glances. They couldn’t very well admit they had tailed him thinking he was a ghost.
“Uh, yeah! We came over to discuss defensive measures for the upcoming horde.”
Seeing Li Tiangan’s true face, Zhao Guang let out an inexplicable sigh of relief.
He wanted Shen Chengyin to be alive, yet dread gripped him at the mere thought of facing a living Shen Chengyin.
Zhao Yue stood rooted to the floorboards like a wooden post, scanning Li Tiangan’s face over and over in pure, disbelieving shock.
How was this possible…? In clothing, build, and even sheer presence, he had looked so much like Big Brother Shen…
Lowering her head, tears pooled heavily in her eyes.
While the men exchanged stiff pleasantries by the threshold, a sudden, violent crash detonated from inside. The sound made Li Tiangan flinch.
It came straight from the office door right beside him.
It sounded as though a heavy object had been hurled forcefully against the panel.
This was Wang Jiafu’s personal office.
The other ability users grew frantic on the spot. Li Tiangan’s expression shifted; feigning an attempt to rush forward and wrench the door open, he subtly positioned his broad frame to block the men behind him.
Moments later, Wang Jiafu’s sarcastic, venomous sneer drifted clearly through the timber.
“Ha… Are you insane? How could Shen Chengyin still be alive?!”
Inside the room, Su Han withdrew his hand from where he had just hurled a heavy glass ashtray, letting out a soft chuckle.
Gazing at Wang Jiafu, who sat sprawled across the sofa with an air of arrogant invulnerability, Su Han slowly pulled off his cap.
“I know what you’re trying to say. Shen Chengyin couldn’t possibly be alive—because back then, you carved open his chest, gutted him, and threw him over the fortress walls straight into a swarm of zombies.”
The instant those words pierced the air, the corridor outside fell dead silent.
Every single person out in the hall traded wide-eyed glances of raw horror.
Inside the room, the corner of Wang Jiafu’s mouth twitched violently.
Back when he had Shen Chengyin’s butchered body dumped over the ramparts, the sentries had reported that someone made off with the corpse. He had immediately dispatched a pursuit squad, only for them to run headfirst into several mutated infected along the road.
The guards had suffered devastating casualties, and the corpse was naturally lost for good.
Still, Wang Jiafu had never lost sleep over it. How could a spatial ability user whose inner dimension had ruptured and vomited out all its contents possibly cling to life?
Later, after discovering that metahumans harbored crystal cores of their own, he had only ever regretted one thing: that he hadn’t carved out Shen Chengyin’s heart before tossing him down.
“I have no idea what you’re babbling about. Shen Chengyin died in the thick of the zombie siege back then. What corpse? Did you see one?”
Wang Jiafu countered with a smug scoff.
No living man, no dead body—who could pin the crime on him?
“Yes. I saw it,” Su Han replied, a disdainful smirk playing on his lips. “I was the one who stole Shen Chengyin’s corpse.”
Wang Jiafu froze, his eyes narrowing into lethal slits as suffocating bloodlust radiated from his frame.
He knew something was rotting in his base lately, that someone had been systematically undermining his rule from the shadows.
So the ghost seeking vengeance on Shen Chengyin’s behalf was this little bastard, A-Han!
“Shen Chengyin was my senior in school, my mentor,” Su Han fabricated smoothly, without batting an eye. “If I had only arrived at this base a step earlier, he never would have died so horribly!
“You slandered and smeared Shen Chengyin’s name, abusing the trust he placed in you to crown yourself a savior!
“During the last siege, it was Shen Chengyin who threw his life on the line to save that water-element user named Zhao Guang! Yet you held his sister hostage, coercing him into lying, into dirtying Shen Chengyin’s honor so that he would die branded as a monster!
“You claimed he abused his spatial ability to embezzle the settlement’s supplies, yet you never once told the survivors that eighty percent of the rations sitting in the central depot were scavenged and brought here by Shen Chengyin himself!
“Wang Jiafu, do you have any shame facing the trust Shen Chengyin placed in you?!”
Every syllable dripped with pure, vitriolic hatred, as if Su Han longed to flay the man alive where he sat.
Out in the corridor, every gaze instantly whipped toward Zhao Guang—including Zhao Yue’s.
Zhao Guang went pale as a corpse, thick beads of cold sweat rolling down his temples. His legs turned to jelly, slumping against the corridor wall, barely able to keep himself upright.
This was not the righteous indignation of an innocent man who had been falsely accused. This was the crushing, hollow terror of having his darkest secret laid bare in the light.
Tears brimming in her eyes, Zhao Yue lunged forward and grabbed her brother tightly by the collar.
So many horrifying details… Her own brother had never breathed a word to her. He had deliberately kept her in the dark!
He had hidden all of it from her!
Acting with razor-sharp reflexes, Li Tiangan clamped a hand over Zhao Yue’s mouth, shooting her a warning glare that commanded absolute silence.
Everyone gathered outside was sharp. Even if a thousand screaming questions raged inside their minds, they swallowed them down, holding their breath.
From beyond the wood, Wang Jiafu’s voice sounded once more, laced with irritated fury:
“Enough! Had I not summoned you here today, I wouldn’t have dreamed you shared such a history with our former leader. But all this posturing is useless. Who is going to believe you?”
Wang Jiafu let out a low, mocking chuckle.
Baseless accusations. Every piece of physical evidence and every potential witness had been wiped off the face of the earth. Wang Jiafu had all the confidence in the world that he was untouchable.
And Su Han truly possessed no hard evidence.
Wang Jiafu had executed his treason with terrifying thoroughness. Anyone privy to the truth who wasn’t part of his inner circle had been put to the sword. Any physical evidence had long since been trampled into oblivion by the zombie siege.
Su Han was gambling—gambling on Zhao Guang’s remaining conscience standing outside the door, and gambling on the seeds of distrust he had painstakingly sown in the hearts of the survivors over the past month.
Without a word, Su Han’s fingers slipped into his pocket, wrapping around the hilt of his favorite combat knife.
Seeds took time to break through the soil. Before the shoots sprouted, he would execute Wang Jiafu with his own two hands.
Catching the shift in body language, Wang Jiafu drew his sidearm with blinding speed.
Su Han was entirely confident his blade could move faster than Wang Jiafu’s trigger finger.
The crisis erupted in a heartbeat. Yet what accompanied the crack of the hammer wasn’t just a bullet, but the violent, rushing roar of surging water!
A torrential cascade of water slammed directly into Su Han’s face with crushing momentum, completely drenching him from head to toe in freezing liquid.
The sudden sensory overload forced Su Han to squeeze his eyes shut on pure physiological reflex, costing him the crucial split-second needed to evade the trajectory of the shot.
Wang Jiafu’s power had already crossed into the primary tier; his mastery over water was frighteningly refined. That he had advanced this far in a few short months was a development Su Han had never anticipated.
Bang!
The instant that deafening gunshot tore through the air, the crowd waiting outside completely lost their restraint.
This time, even Li Tiangan made no effort to hold them back.
During their planning, Su Han had repeatedly guaranteed he could protect himself, but Li Tiangan knew for a fact that Su Han didn’t know how to handle firearms.
BOOM!
A metal-element ability user punched a gaping hole straight through the reinforced iron door.
Kicking the mangled door off its hinges, Li Tiangan charged into the office—only to freeze dead in his tracks.
The ability users piling in behind him were struck equally dumb.
Wang Jiafu was writhing on the carpet, clutching his right wrist and howling in ungodly agony. The palm of his right hand had been blasted into a shredded pulp of bone and gore, his sidearm knocked several yards away across the floorboards.
Standing nearby was Su Han, thoroughly drenched, water droplets still clinging to his trembling eyelashes.
Seeing Li Tiangan barge in, Su Han blinked, stunned.
He looked for all the world like a lost, utterly bewildered rabbit.
Yet what truly sucked the breath from the lungs of every person in the room was the silhouette standing silently by the window.
Shen Chengyin slowly lowered the smoking barrel of his gun. His pitch-black pupils were devoid of sorrow or joy, looking down at Wang Jiafu as if beholding an already rotting corpse.
“The witness you asked for has arrived, Wang Jiafu.”
