Chapter 22: We Deserve to Die
Dusk was fast approaching. In three hours, the world would be swallowed by complete darkness.
Zombies grew hyperactive and unrestricted under the cover of night, yet the base lacked the power grid to provide sufficient illumination. If the horde converged after nightfall, a brutal, bloody meat grinder was practically guaranteed.
Only Su Han knew the truth: Shen Chengyin fully intended to slaughter every single soul residing in Hope Base.
He made no move to stop him. Had Su Han lived through the agony and desecration detailed in the novel, he wouldn’t have forgiven these survivors either.
When an avalanche falls, no single snowflake is innocent. If none of them had dared to raise a voice on Shen Chengyin’s behalf, they had to swallow the bitter fruits of his absolute disillusionment.
Every survivor capable of swinging a weapon had already mobilized toward the main gate according to previous emergency protocols. By the time Su Han, Shen Chengyin, and Li Tiangan arrived, the guard corps was hauling heavy crates of munitions up the stone ramparts.
Su Han swept his eyes across the perimeter, but Tang Qiao was nowhere in sight.
Under normal circumstances, with an incident of this magnitude exploding in their faces, it made zero sense for Wang Jiafu’s most loyal hound to remain silent.
Strange.
“Sh-Sh-Shen… Shen…”
One of the guards hauling ammunition crates looked up and froze, locking eyes with Shen Chengyin standing at the head of the group.
The man gaped in disbelief, his finger shaking as he stammered the surname over and over without managing a coherent sentence.
An ability user who had already witnessed the standoff in the office strode over and shoved him hard on the shoulder. “Shen what?! Leader Shen is back! Are you deaf and dumb? Forgot how to salute your commander?!”
Snapping out of his stupor, the guard darted panicked, bewildered glances at the surrounding soldiers.
Though Shen Chengyin had returned in the flesh, the sordid reality of Wang Jiafu’s treason hadn’t yet circulated through every rank of the base.
To the vast majority of ordinary survivors, Shen Chengyin was still the selfish, corrupt despot who deserved to rot in the bellies of that previous horde.
Su Han took a firm step forward. “Wang Jiafu attempted to assassinate Leader Shen and failed. Leader Shen survived that catastrophe, and fortune always follows calamity. Li Fu, step up and tell everyone exactly what went down today.”
Su Han shot the metahuman a pointed wink.
Li Fu was a loud-mouthed, hot-tempered earth ability user. Catching the cue instantly, he cleared his throat and boomed at the top of his lungs, laying bare every detail of what had transpired in the administrative building.
This was the main distribution hub for firearms, and the crowd of guards and survivors queuing for weapons only grew denser by the minute.
Every newcomer was immediately hooked by Li Fu’s booming voice, leaning into the front ranks to demand details. Passed from one mouth to a hundred, the sequence of events spread like wildfire through the ranks.
“Leader Wang was really capable of that?”
“I don’t know… he never treated us poorly. It’s all just talk without proof,” someone muttered under their breath.
Wang Jiafu’s calculated favoritism had indeed paid off, successfully grooming a loyal pack of lapdogs.
Shen Chengyin watched the speaker, the corner of his mouth curling into a razor-thin, mocking smirk.
Unable to distinguish loyalty from treachery, bowing only to whoever fed them grain and salt.
The mere thought that he had once laid down his life to protect this spineless rabble made bile rise in his throat.
Sensing the dangerous shift in the male lead’s aura, Su Han whipped around and kicked the speaker straight in the shin.
Crack! The man collapsed hard onto the pavement with a sickening thud, his kneecap nearly splintering under the impact.
“Talk without proof?! Wang Jiafu confessed it with his own mouth in front of dozens of ability users, and you have the nerve to call it baseless?! Are you trying to make enemies out of every single metahuman in Hope Base, huh?!”
The fallen man seethed with humiliation, but choked back every word of protest.
With Su Han slapping such a massive label onto him, voicing a single rebuttal would be treated as an open declaration of war against the entire metahuman circle.
Li Fu’s chest heaved with frustrated exasperation, yet he had nothing tangible to offer either. After all, they lacked a shred of physical evidence to present.
He could only let out a heavy sigh. “Wang Jiafu truly betrayed Leader Shen, and Leader Shen’s name was systematically dragged through the mud. Once this siege is dealt with, we’ll have Zhao Guang stand before everyone and testify himself.”
Faced with such conflicting claims, the gathered survivors could only disperse with furrowed brows and unresolved doubts.
The crowd buzzed with noisy whispers, and loose tongues were inevitable.
Su Han caught fragmented murmurs drifting through the evening air: “How does he have the nerve to show his face here again?” “Didn’t Zhao Guang swear on his life back then that Shen Chengyin was a monster?” “Is Leader Wang going to be alright?”
Su Han’s brow locked tight, a heavy knot of suffocating fury wedged in his chest.
Without undeniable proof, getting these fools to embrace the truth was an uphill battle.
The path was simply too grueling. It was little wonder Shen Chengyin had opted to raze the whole damn thing to ash instead.
As the crowd cleared out, the courtyard fell desolate. Su Han leaned in and murmured a few quick instructions into Li Tiangan’s ear before spinning on his heel to leave.
With Wang Jiafu’s atrocities laid bare before an armed crowd, Tang Qiao—as his right-hand enforcer—was deeply implicated.
Tang Qiao must have caught wind of the shift and gone into hiding.
As long as he kept his head down, no one would spare the attention to hunt him right now.
The only question was: where would he burrow?
Twilight gave way to murk. Blazing torches and heavy-duty spotlights were hoisted along the parapets of Hope Base’s outer wall.
Beyond the barricades, shadows twitched in the gloom. To bleed off pressure before the main body arrived, small squads of ability users armed with melee weapons patrolled the immediate perimeter, silently putting down stray walkers that drifted too close.
The entire compound was locked down under emergency martial law; eighty percent of the settlement’s firepower was massed near the main gate.
By contrast, the inner plazas, the mission hall, and the exchange depot were eerie ghost towns.
When Tang Qiao slipped into the infirmary, he found only two on-duty medics slumped over the reception desk, nodding off from exhaustion.
He stepped forward and rested a palm on each of their shoulders, releasing a faint prickle of purple electricity.
Before the medics could even catch a glimpse of his face, their eyes rolled back and their bodies went limp against the wood.
Tang Qiao glided unimpeded down the corridor, pushing open the doors to the private trauma ward.
Wang Jiafu had regained consciousness long ago, but had been playing dead on the mattress. Hearing the floorboards creak, he didn’t bother opening his eyes.
“Leader,” Tang Qiao called out in a low rasp.
Wang Jiafu snapped his eyes open.
Without his tongue, he couldn’t form a single word. He sputtered and choked on his own saliva for several agonized seconds, his bloodshot eyes widening into furious, bulging spheres.
Prepared for this, Tang Qiao reached into his tactical pouch and calmly produced a notepad and a pen.
Grabbing the pen with his mangled, trembling grip, Wang Jiafu slashed heavy strokes across the paper.
(Shen Chengyin is alive! How the fuck did you handle the execution?!)
Tang Qiao pressed his lips together. “Leader, back then Shen Chengyin was carved open from chest to groin, his internal organs practically hollowed out. You watched with your own eyes as I threw him down into the swarm. It was impossible for him to survive.”
(And that brat A-Han! He’s Shen Chengyin’s man! Did you fail to purge the circle completely back then?!)
“Every single one of Shen Chengyin’s inner circle—including their dependents, old and young, men and women—was put to the sword. Not a single soul was spared,” Tang Qiao paused, his brow furrowing slightly. “From what I’ve gathered, this A-Han never set foot in the base before. He’s a complete newcomer.”
(A phantom manifesting out of thin air?! How is that possible?!)
Tang Qiao lowered his chin, maintaining a stoic silence.
Wang Jiafu gritted his teeth so hard the muscles in his jaw spasmed. Clamping down on the pen, he scrawled viciously across the pad:
(They have no physical evidence. The guard corps won’t take their word for it. Once the siege kicks off, use the chaos to put bullets through Shen Chengyin and A-Han. I will handle the fallout afterward.)
As long as Shen Chengyin and A-Han were wiped out, he could play the wounded martyr once more, and absolute authority would fall right back into his grasp.
Tang Qiao stared at the jagged scribbles, his gaze turning dark and indecipherable.
“Leader, that is precisely why I came to find you. I need authorization to check out a heavy sniper rifle.”
Once the siege began, the air would be torn apart by gunfire and screams; putting a high-caliber round through someone’s skull from a distance would be child’s play, completely impossible to trace.
The request was entirely logical. Wang Jiafu harbored no suspicion; after all, executing Shen Chengyin’s lieutenants during the first siege had required the use of several sniper teams.
The master override code to the central armory was known to the Leader alone.
Wang Jiafu raised the pen and rapidly penned the string of digits across the page.
The moment the final numeral was completed, the notepad was violently ripped from his hand. Staring up in shock, Wang Jiafu found the frigid muzzle of a handgun pressed dead against his forehead.
“After all this time, you finally decided to spit out the code.”
Tang Qiao’s eyes were dead and merciless, devoid of a shred of warmth.
“You sure kept your fucking jaw locked tight.”
