Chapter 3: Wang Jiafu Conceals His Sordid Desires
Wang Jiafu wasn’t an ugly man. In fact, he had rather delicate features, but his narrow, slit-like eyes radiated deep calculation and deceit.
The moment Su Han walked through the door, Wang Jiafu’s gaze swept across the boy’s face before drifting downward—lingering over his shoulders, his waist, and his legs.
Few women had survived the apocalypse, and those who did were closely guarded commodities. Burdened with the pristine persona of a righteous, benevolent leader, Wang Jiafu had been forced to suppress his carnal urges for far too long.
Now, unexpectedly faced with such a striking youth, he felt an itch stirring inside him that cared little for whether the person was male or female.
Wang Jiafu kept his sordid desires carefully concealed beneath an affable expression, busying himself by pouring a cup of warm tea for Su Han.
“You’re the new ability user who arrived today?”
Su Han scratched the back of his head with feigned bashfulness. “My name is A-Han. While out scavenging for supplies, I happened to run into people from your base. That was how I learned humanity had actually established a large shelter like this.”
“I am the current leader of Hope Base, Wang Jiafu.” Wang Jiafu raised his right hand, and within seconds, several fat droplets of fresh water condensed out of thin air across his palm. “A water-element ability user.”
The immense prestige Wang Jiafu commanded in Hope Base was inextricably linked to this power.
No matter how powerful Shen Chengyin had been, what good was it? A spatial ability merely meant having a bit more room to store clutter. Vice Leader Wang, on the other hand, could literally create water for the survivors to drink!
What the fools didn’t understand was that time was completely frozen inside Shen Chengyin’s spatial void, ensuring stored rations would never spoil. Meanwhile, the meager drops of water Wang Jiafu squeezed out were a mere drop in the bucket amid the dire drought of the apocalypse.
Lowering his lashes, Su Han buried his true feelings beneath a placid expression.
Seeing no reaction from Su Han, Wang Jiafu prompted him: “A-Han, what kind of ability do you have? Mind giving us a quick demonstration?”
“To be honest… I’m not entirely sure what my power is called.” Su Han reached into his pocket, drew out the low-tier mutated zombie core, and placed it on the desk. “I used to be just an ordinary college student. But after waking up from a burning fever, I suddenly became insanely good at fighting. I don’t fear zombies at all anymore.”
Such an excuse could only fool people in the early days of the apocalypse. Later on, once human research into metahumans advanced and rigid ability categories were established, there would be no such vague classification as the one Su Han had just invented.
Wang Jiafu’s expression shifted drastically.
He picked up the crystal core, turning it over and over in his hand to inspect it. These were the opening stages of the apocalypse, and the undead were evolving far faster than mankind.
A low-tier mutated zombie was already a terrifyingly lethal threat. Even within Hope Base, bringing one down required mobilizing at least three top-tier physical ability users to surround and slaughter it.
If what this kid claimed was true…
Then he was nothing short of a walking humanoid weapon!
The look in Wang Jiafu’s eyes transformed instantly. He shot a subtle glance toward the guard standing by the door, and the man stepped forward at once.
“Whether you’re telling the truth or blowing smoke isn’t for you to decide. If you’ve really got what it takes, spar with me.”
This guard was ex-military, an exceptionally skilled hand-to-hand combatant.
The moment the challenge left the guard’s mouth, Su Han rose from his seat and gave a compliant nod.
In the next breath, he lunged forward like a striking viper. Wang Jiafu couldn’t even track the boy’s movement before a resounding bang echoed through the room. The provocateur took a vicious punch square to the face and crashed face-first into the floor in an utterly pathetic sprawl.
So fast!
Wang Jiafu’s eyes gleamed with undisguised admiration.
Su Han was an experienced fighter in his own right. Coupled with the system dampening his perception of pain, he could throw hands without the slightest hesitation or fear of injury.
In fact, that little exchange just now had been mostly theatrics on his part.
“Do you believe me now, Leader Wang?” Su Han asked, offering a harmless, radiant smile.
“Of course, of course!” Wang Jiafu let out a hearty laugh. “I’m only a few years older than you, so just call me Big Bro. Hurry and take A-Han to his quarters. Make sure he’s settled in comfortably.”
The latter instruction was directed at the guard groaning on the tiles.
Grimacing in pain, the soldier pushed himself up and rubbed his bruised backside. “Follow me.”
Hope Base hadn’t been established very long, so its regulations were still rudimentary in many respects.
The only thing proving one was a registered survivor of Hope Base was a flimsy little identity card.
The guard led Su Han to a detached little villa near the center of town. Though modest in square footage, it boasted two full floors and a private courtyard—a remarkably lavish arrangement under the circumstances.
Wang Jiafu clearly regarded him with great importance.
“The real currency circulating in the wasteland these days is the crystal cores from zombie heads. We’ve set you up with lodging, but if you want to keep your belly full, you’ll still have to head outside and scavenge for supplies.”
Listening to the guard rattle off the litany of rules, Su Han nodded with an air of half-comprehension. When the man finished, he cracked a wide, bright grin. “Thanks, big bro! Got it loud and clear.”
The guard was momentarily dazzled by that radiant smile, feeling a twinge of pity stir in his chest.
A naive, simple kid like this won’t last long in the apocalypse.
Once the guard took his leave, Su Han grabbed the low-tier zombie core and headed to Hope Base’s central trading hub, exchanging it for a bit of medicine and bottled water.
Immediately afterward, he slipped away under the pretense of venturing beyond the walls to scavenge.
He was genuinely terrified that if he left the male lead unattended for too long, the man’s brain would fry from the fever.
Rushing back to the safehouse where he had stashed Shen Chengyin, he found the man still unconscious, lying stiff as a board on the mattress with his brow locked in a tight knot.
Su Han coaxed the medicine past Shen Chengyin’s lips, then sat on the edge of the bed to sort through the plot in his head.
During the zombie siege Hope Base had just weathered, the reason Shen Chengyin was critically injured was that he had shielded another water-element ability user when the undead breached the barricades, taking a mutated zombie’s claw clean through his chest.
It had been an undeniable act of heroism. Yet by the time the tale circulated among the survivors, the narrative had warped into Shen Chengyin cowardly abandoning an injured ally to save his own skin.
Supposedly, it was only because Vice Leader Wang rushed to the scene in the nick of time that the water user survived.
Something was rotten behind the scenes here, and Wang Jiafu was almost certainly the architect pulling the strings.
[Huh? The male lead’s hand just twitched,] the system suddenly piped up.
Su Han whipped around, fixing his eyes on Shen Chengyin.
The man’s eyelids remained shut fast; there wasn’t the slightest sign of him regaining consciousness.
“He didn’t wake up at all. Don’t scare me like that,” Su Han muttered under his breath.
If Shen Chengyin actually opened his eyes right now, Su Han wouldn’t even know how to explain who he was.
It would be far better if Shen Chengyin woke while he was away. That way, whenever their paths crossed again, Su Han could simply claim to be an ordinary Hope Base scavenger who stumbled across him by pure chance.
Dusk was beginning to fall; Su Han needed to head back.
Before leaving, he pulled the blanket over Shen Chengyin and carefully tucked in the corners.
On his return trek, Su Han dispatched a handful of ordinary walkers, pockets lined with fresh cores as he stepped back into the base.
Ordinary folks entering the gates were subjected to thorough physical inspections for open wounds. Ability users, however, had unlocked their powers precisely because their systems had already withstood the zombie virus, granting them immunity to secondary infection.
Riding that privilege, Su Han strolled right past the checkpoint without even needing to strip down.
Returning to his villa, he splashed water over his face and caught sight of his reflection in the mirror for the very first time.
Staring back was an elegant, delicate-featured youth, framed by soft, fluffy light-brown hair and remarkably captivating eyes.
Su Han’s heart gave a sudden lurch.
With looks like this, he was practically walking around with a target on his ass.
Sensing his anxiety, the system chimed in to reassure him: [Relax, Wang Jiafu is strictly, definitively straight.]
“It has nothing to do with straight or gay. When people are driven mad by base desires, they’re capable of anything.”
Collapsing onto the sofa, Su Han chewed through a couple bites of a stale, dry steamed bun—provisions he had traded for with the zombie cores.
If he wanted to uncover how Wang Jiafu had framed Shen Chengyin, his best lead was that water-element ability user Shen Chengyin had thrown his life on the line to protect.
The following day, under the guise of looking for a squad to team up with, Su Han wandered over to the mission hall to fish for intel.
With a few spare cores tucked in his palm, he slipped them into the hands of a couple of thuggish base scoundrels. Instantly treating him like their long-lost benefactor, the men loosened their tongues without hesitation.
“Vice Leader Wang… ah, no, Leader Wang is our base’s true savior! If it weren’t for him, this place would never have flourished like it has.”
Feigning starry-eyed innocence, Su Han baited the hook: “Leader Wang sounds incredible! Did he build Hope Base from scratch with his own two hands?”
The thug’s expression flickered before he waved a dismissive hand. “Nah. We had another leader before this. Dead now. Bastard had it coming.”
Overhearing the mention of Shen Chengyin, the thug’s companion leaned in, brimming with self-righteous indignation:
“Damn right he had it coming!”
“Selfish prick didn’t give a damn about our lives. Hoarded all the base’s resources away in his personal dimension!”
“Exactly! If Vice Leader Wang hadn’t exposed him, we’d all still be kept in the dark.”
“A scumbag like that didn’t deserve to lead. Dying was too good for him!”
“And don’t forget the zombie siege the other day—he ditched the wounded and ran for his life. Utterly sickening.”
The mission hall was packed, and one by one, the surrounding survivors began echoing the venomous jeers.
A chill crept through Su Han’s veins.
That wasn’t how the original novel went at all. Shen Chengyin had only stored the provisions inside his spatial void to prevent the food from spoiling—and it was Wang Jiafu who had suggested it in the first place!
Now, that very act was weaponized against him, twisted into damning evidence for Wang Jiafu’s slander.
The louder the crowd’s furious shouts grew, the colder Su Han felt inside. He couldn’t fathom how Shen Chengyin, a man who fought to protect these survivors until his dying breath, had been rewarded with nothing but desecration and hatred.
Amidst the deafening clamor, Su Han’s gaze swept across the hall, catching sight of a gaunt young man in the far corner. Head hung low, the boy was trembling violently from head to toe.
He hadn’t joined in on the vicious chorus against Shen Chengyin.
Instead, he looked… thoroughly heartbroken.
