Chapter 369: Human Crystal Cores
“Revenge doesn’t care if it’s late,” Cui Wen chimed in, borrowing the goggles for a look and then handing them to Zheng Jun.
“How are we fighting this?” Zheng Jun asked.
“Wait until they get close, then wipe them out in one go?” Li Zhuang looked to Lu Weiyi.
“Let’s see who they are and what they want first,” Lu Weiyi replied.
So the team quietly waited for the other group to approach, doing no preparation at all — which made Cui Wen anxious.
“You’re not worried about their abilities? They outnumber us two to one,” he said, thinking Li Zhuang’s confidence bordered on arrogance. Sure, their powers were strong, but they weren’t the only ability users.
Li Zhuang just laughed and had Lu Weiyi hand each of them a gun. “You guys just set up on higher ground.”
“Xu Sa, Gu Qingyue — handle the north. Liu Rui and Li Dongsheng — south. Xiong-ge and Zheng Jun — east. Wu Yue and I will cover the west,” Li Zhuang instructed while slapping a metal patch onto Zheng Jun’s neck. “Everyone else — two per direction. Once the command is given, kill any ability users who approach.”
“Got it,” said several members of the team, rising and heading to their assigned directions like clockwork.
Li Zhuang nudged Xu Yi toward Lu Weiyi, while Cui Wen handed out guns to his teammates. He turned back and saw Lu Weiyi pulling a device the size of a radio from his space storage and placing it on the windowsill.
Once the perimeter was fully surrounded, and the enemy group began signaling each other to prepare for action, several high-powered floodlights suddenly lit up the area, exposing everyone and leaving them nowhere to hide.
The ones in front shielded their eyes from the glare, exchanged looks, and Xu Sa suddenly recognized one of them.
“Qi Jun?” Xu Sa raised an eyebrow, unsure.
Hearing the name, Lu Weiyi instantly pictured the underpants-wearing vice-captain. From his vantage on the second floor, he spotted Qi Jun among the group.
“What are you planning to do?” Xu Sa asked, eyeing the people with him. He didn’t recognize them, but he’d heard of the Junlin Squad. They were small in number, so clearly not all these people were with them.
Qi Jun, seeing they were exposed, glanced at his companions and made an excuse. “We’re out scavenging for supplies. Heard the base commander was here, so we came to say hello.”
“Oh really?” Xu Sa replied meaningfully. “The base commander is upstairs — go on up and say hello, then.”
Qi Jun stayed put, looking toward the building, but saw no one besides the group waiting below.
“Go ahead,” Xu Sa stepped aside slightly to make a path.
“Cut the crap. You guys are annoying as hell,” barked a man with a monkey-like face standing in front of Xiong Jie. “Yapping like women.”
“You looking down on women? Then come spar with this woman!” came a fiery female voice.
“Get lost, you damn shrew. You don’t even qualify as a woman,” the monkey-faced man — named Zheng Laosan — retorted. Still seeing no one make a move, everyone cautiously observing one another, he added, “Bunch of cowards. I’ll get things started.”
As he spoke, thick earth spikes shot from the ground beneath Xiong Jie and Zheng Jun, thrusting sharply upward. They dodged just in time to avoid being skewered like kebabs.
With that first strike, abilities erupted all around. Qi Jun dropped the act and conjured a lightning whip in one hand — crackling with electricity — and flung it with a snap, making Xu Sa shout in admiration at the move.
As everyone focused on their own targets, Li Zhuang suddenly shouted, “Lu Weiyi!”
From the upper floor, Lu Weiyi quickly flipped the switch on his machine and signaled the others to act. “Leave one alive.”
“Yes!” Cui Wen responded, still a bit confused, and fired with his group at the enemy below.
High-level ability users could normally deflect bullets — something Cui Wen only learned after arriving. He assumed the bullets would be ineffective, but to his shock, they hit dead-on. One shot, one kill.
The abilities that had just been flying wildly moments ago vanished completely. Now, it was a one-sided slaughter.
“What did you do to us?! My powers—” someone screamed in panic before being struck down by another power-user.
But it was enough to clue the others in.
“My powers are gone…”
“I can’t use mine either…”
“I… AHH—”
“I surrender!”
“I surrender—!!”
Some shouted surrender, others fell to their knees. Cui Wen stopped firing and turned to look at Lu Weiyi.
In just a few minutes, the once-confident attackers were left bloodied and terrified, glancing at the corpses around them and the few people standing before them like grim reapers.
“I surrender. It was Qi Jun who told our captain that your base leader likes men and is also very good-looking. There are several young men in your team with different personalities…” The woman, who had just been holding her own among a group of men, was the first to cave. Without waiting to be questioned, she quickly began explaining why they had come.
“You bitch…ugh…” A man shouted, trying to stop her from continuing, but Wu Yue casually flicked a small clump of earth at his temple. It punched a hole like a bullet, blood spurting out as the man collapsed to the ground with eyes wide open.
The surroundings fell silent immediately. Less than ten people were still alive, each holding their breath as they stared at the deadly figures in front of them.
“He… he also said that since your base leader has recently been leading teams out, if they could capture those people, the deputy base leader—being someone overly emotional in love—would surely offer up supplies to ransom them,” the woman continued fluently, pinning all the blame on Qi Jun.
After she finished, Wu Yue suddenly asked, “If all the benefits were for you, then what was in it for him?” He couldn’t think of anyone in the team who had a grudge against Qi Jun, so there had to be another reason—Qi Jun wouldn’t go through all this for nothing.
A moment of confusion crossed the woman’s face. She shook her head and looked toward Qi Jun, who had remained silent since being subdued.
When they looked at him, Qi Jun lifted his head but said nothing.
Compared to the last time they met, this time he wasn’t wearing glasses. Without his facade of scholarly charm, he appeared sharp and sinister, exuding a cold, murderous aura—like he could strike at any moment.
Li Zhuang had seen his type before and paid him no mind. “Tie them all up. We’ll interrogate them.”
“I’ve already told you everything I know. Please let me go,” the woman begged, covering the worst of her wounds on her stomach. “It’s not easy for a woman to survive in this world. If I hadn’t come along, they would’ve used me anyway. I really didn’t want to live like that…”
Under the harsh lights, her attractive, blood-streaked face carried a tortured appeal.
There weren’t many women left after the apocalypse, and most who remained were clinging vines dependent on men. A woman capable of going on missions with men was rare, and some of the men couldn’t help but feel some sympathy. But they also knew this wasn’t the time. These people came to harm them—leaving any of them alive was leaving behind a threat.
The straight guys couldn’t do it and quickly dumped the problem on the clearly gay Xu Sa, using the excuse of helping Li Zhuang interrogate, and made a hasty retreat.
“Handsome, if you’re worried I’ll talk when I go back, I can stay with you guys. I just want to live—I’ll do anything, even be a slave,” the woman cried pitifully, trying to grab Xu Sa’s hand. He dodged to the side.
“Sis, I have no choice,” Xu Sa said in a deliberately soft, tearful voice. “I eat their food and follow orders. If I let you go today, I’ll be punished later. They… they aren’t human…”
“I’m only eighteen, I just want a chance to live. If you don’t die, I will. You’re so kind and beautiful, you wouldn’t make it hard for me, would you?”
The woman was momentarily stunned by his act, unable to respond.
Until Liu Rui, walking beside him, patted his waist and gestured ahead. Xu Sa looked up and saw the disgusted expressions of his teammates and quickly dropped the act.
But the woman had clearly seen their intimate exchange and finally understood why she’d been handed over. She stopped pretending to be weak, dropped the wounded act, and spat, “Filthy f*g,” before following the others into the resting building like she was going to her execution.
A few professional interrogators quickly got to work, and in no time Li Zhuang came out.
He glanced at Lu Weiyi, and the two went into a separate room.
Li Zhuang lit a cigarette, staring into the night sky, listening to the distant growls of zombies drawn by the scent of blood, saying nothing.
Lu Weiyi waited a long time, nearly until the cigarette was finished, before Li Zhuang finally spoke. “I interrogated Qi Jun.”
“Yeah.”
“He told me something…” He couldn’t find the right word to describe the revelation, as if it was both shocking and not surprising. “Something important.”
“He said the reason they ambushed us was to kill us and use our crystal cores to level up. Human crystal cores are more effective than zombie ones and don’t have the risk of exploding.” Li Zhuang looked at Lu Weiyi after saying this and saw his calm expression—he immediately knew Lu had already known.
Just as expected, the missing ability users from the base had been taken out by their squad.
“What about the rest of his squad? Are they all here?” Lu Weiyi asked.
“No. Two stayed behind at the base, one came with him, and a few more are elsewhere. If things didn’t go as planned here, they were to initiate Plan B,” Li Zhuang replied, then suddenly remembered something. “You’ve known for a while that human crystal cores can be used to level up?”
“Yeah,” Lu Weiyi admitted. “But I didn’t let anyone use them. I think the reason humans are still human is because we have a bottom line.”
