Chapter 26: I Can’t Explain
Those few short sentences were like a bucket of ice water dumped straight over his head.
Zhao Guang froze, his neck stiffening as if rusted solid, lifting his chin inch by agonizing inch.
How… how did he know?!
Su Han was even more dumbfounded.
He pounded frantically on the system in his mind. What the hell is going on?! The novel never mentioned this!
The system was equally baffled: [Uh, word counts are limited. The author couldn’t have written every single detail into the book… Just like how you don’t know what color underwear the male lead is wearing today?]
Su Han: ?
Actually, now he was a little curious.
“No… how could that be…” Zhao Guang’s Adam’s apple bobbed violently as he forced out a dry, strained laugh. “I—I just saw everyone heading to the front lines. Leaving me alone in the rear… didn’t feel right.”
Zhao Guang spoke the words aloud, but among the throngs of people gathered around, not a single soul believed him.
His cowardice and desperate terror of death were infamous throughout the base.
He didn’t know how to throw a punch, and he couldn’t shoot a gun; standing before the undead, his only role was to wait for the slaughter.
How could someone like that suddenly develop the heroic resolve to charge into battle?
“Zhao Guang, fuck your mother!”
A furious roar detonated through the air. A figure lunged forward like a striking beast, an iron fist whistling through the wind before slamming hard into Zhao Guang’s jaw.
Crack! Zhao Guang’s head whipped sideways, stars exploding across his vision. His gaunt frame swayed once before crashing flat onto the pavement.
“Framing Leader Shen?! Who the fuck do you think you are?!”
“Who built this base in the first place?!”
“If Brother Shen hadn’t saved your sorry ass, you’d have been zombie shit months ago!”
“Get the fuck out! Take your sister and get lost!”
Fists and heavy combat boots rained down like a sudden tempest. Curling into a tight ball with his arms clamped over his skull, Zhao Guang wailed like a slaughtered pig.
Several more fighters surged in, kicking and stomping him into the dirt as he screamed and rolled across the ground in sheer agony.
Unable to stomach the sight any longer, Su Han waved his hand to clear the crowd, dropped into a crouch, and drove a dagger straight into Zhao Guang’s side.
The thrust wasn’t fatal; it intentionally steered clear of vitals and major arteries, designed to do little more than deliver a searing bite of pain.
“Zhao Guang, you backstabbing mongrel.”
Had he known this bastard had betrayed the male lead from day one, he would have made him beg for death long ago.
Zhao Guang’s shriek pitched into a piercing screech as his body arched like a boiled prawn. A sharp, searing stab flared in his flank; hot crimson gushed forth immediately, soaking through his tattered shirt.
His face turned ghostly pale, cold sweat mingling with the blood dripping down his cheeks.
Snapping his head up with bloodshot, bulging eyes, he rasped in a frantic, ragged bellow: “What about them?! Look at all these ability users in the base—which one of them isn’t selfish to the bone?! Who gave a flying fuck about whether Shen Chengyin lived or died?! They bowed to whoever tossed them rations! A leader?! It didn’t matter who sat on the throne, as long as they got fed!”
The raw roar reverberated across the battlements. Numerous metahumans looked away, their faces alternating between flushed shame and bitter indignation.
Not a single person opened their mouth to refute him.
Within that humiliating, suffocating silence, the distant snarling of the undead drew closer and closer, punctuated by the sharp crackle of stray explosions echoing through the dark.
From beginning to end, Shen Chengyin never spared a glance at the pathetic farce unfolding at his feet. His gaze drifted past the crowd, settling squarely on the distant ruins of the armory.
Through the jagged breach in the fortification, a churning tide of dark silhouettes was crawling, squirming, and pouring inside without pause.
The survivors’ scattered resistance was as feeble as foam against a tidal wave, snuffed out almost instantly by the encroaching shadows.
The infected that had breached the perimeter already numbered in the hundreds—if not thousands.
Ignoring the blood welling from his wounded side, Zhao Guang scrambled on his knees across the pavement until he hit Shen Chengyin’s boots, his forehead slamming against the frigid concrete with heavy, sickening thuds.
Thump! Thump!
“Leader Shen, I’m sorry! I deserve to die! I should never have betrayed you!”
“I was blind! I was brainless! I’m a worthless, stupid piece of trash!”
“I’m subhuman! I deserve to rot! Please, Leader Shen, I’m begging you—save Hope Base!”
“Please, I beg of you! Leader Shen, please save Hope Base!!”
He regretted it—he truly, deeply regretted it!
He never should have turned his back on Shen Chengyin! He never should have swallowed Wang Jiafu’s venomous lies! He shouldn’t have bitten the hand that fed him! He shouldn’t have…
Blood smeared across Zhao Guang’s forehead from the violent impacts, his voice cracking into desperate, broken sobs.
Watching the spectacle, the remaining survivors fell into a heavy, leaden silence.
Before long, a first person dropped to their knees alongside Zhao Guang.
“Leader Shen, we beg you… save Hope Base!”
Then came a second, and a third.
One after another, the survivors sank to the ground—among them ability users, veteran perimeter guards, and even those who had once served as Wang Jiafu’s lapdogs.
Like stalks of wheat felled by a scythe, the dense sea of people lowered themselves into the dirt, wave after wave, beneath an atmosphere heavy with the stench of copper blood and acrid gunpowder.
“Leader Shen, please save Hope Base! Save us!”
Their pleas coalesced into a trembling, desperate tide of supplication, echoing through the night sky above the crumbling fortress.
Su Han glanced over at Shen Chengyin with curious eyes, only to find the man’s expression entirely unchanged—frigid, detached, and bone-chillingly cold.
Drawn by the collective commotion, a pack of zombies soon began scaling the outer stone barricade.
Their rotted, torn fingertips couldn’t find purchase in the tight masonry seams, so they trampled over the bodies of their fallen kin, clambering upward over one another.
One, two, stacking higher and higher, steadily forming a writhing, ascending ramp of rotting flesh.
Su Han lightly bumped his shoulder against Shen Chengyin’s, murmuring under his breath:
“Well? Not a bad gift, right?”
A dark amusement flickered behind Shen Chengyin’s eyes.
It seemed this boy had already figured out that he had no intention of sparing a single living soul.
Apocalypse: Becoming The White Moonlight Of A Possessive Mad Dog
