Chapter 434: The Reason
“If the Firestorm Squad didn’t teach them a lesson, then let blood and death extinguish those thoughts completely. Let fear and regret be carved into their bones!”
“What about the other bases?” Li Qing asked. “Some offered crystal cores in exchange for lives.”
“Heh, does it look like our base is short on crystal cores?” Zhuang Mingxu stood up and pushed open the window. The cold wind blew in—along with the sounds of weeping from Beidao.
He looked at the gray sky and after a long pause, murmured, “A life must be paid for with a life.”
*
The same day the ability users from downtown returned, a full-base assembly was held. All surviving ability users who had taken part in the rebellion were brought to the central plaza, and their families had been identified.
At the center of the newly repaired plaza were the bodies of all who had died in the incident—including those who had turned into zombies. Corpses were packed densely, and the cries and curses of grieving families echoed around the square.
The base military escorted the rebel ability users—grouped by their squads. As their family names were read aloud, their relatives passed by them.
Men, women, the elderly, and children—some had arrived full of hope, but now left with nothing. Some cursed their detained loved ones; some looked at them with utter disappointment; some simply wept silently.
In sub-zero temperatures, everyone knew what being expelled meant.
But in the face of thousands of corpses, and those wailing while hugging the dead, not a single person pleaded for mercy.
In the somber silence, a small child passed by his father and innocently asked, “Daddy, am I going to die?”
The man—his face half-burned by artillery fire—opened his mouth, but couldn’t say a word. The child’s mother took his hand and numbly walked away with the crowd. The boy looked back, confused and lost.
“I was wrong—!” the man suddenly dropped to his knees, crying, “I’m sorry, I was wrong. I shouldn’t have been misled. Please, please spare them. Jing’er is only four years old—he doesn’t understand anything.”
Once he knelt, many others followed suit, begging for mercy.
“Please, Base Commander, spare them—they’re just ordinary people. They won’t survive the weather outside.”
“There’s no food or clothing. Out there, it’s a death sentence.”
“Let me die—I’ll atone. Just give them a chance to live.”
“I acted alone. They had nothing to do with it. Kill me, but spare them.”
The sound of heads thudding against the ground echoed endlessly. They didn’t beg for themselves—only for their families to survive.
The expelled looked back with tears in their eyes, silently begging for a miracle.
“Base Commander, there are 15,000 of them… maybe…” Someone finally couldn’t bear the sight and spoke up.
“I didn’t lose anyone,” Zhuang Mingxu’s voice echoed through the loudspeaker. “So there’s no point in begging me. Standing before you are 7,294 family members of the deceased. If you want forgiveness—ask them.”
“If anyone forgives you, your family can stay.”
If the pain isn’t yours, you don’t understand it. When it’s not your family that died, it’s easy to play the good guy.
Not a single person forgave them.
This base was a rare haven in the apocalypse—a shelter after years of struggle. But now, because of human greed, they’d been torn apart by death. How could they ever forgive the butchers?
The group of over 10,000 stretched far. The base only kept half their supplies. Even so, with weather like this, survival was unlikely.
When the last person stepped out of the base gates, Half Moon Bay had permanently shut them out.
As the heavy gates closed, the plaza was filled with the roar of gunfire.
A collective funeral and the loss of over 20,000 people marked the start of Half Moon Bay’s fourth year in the apocalypse.
*
Just days after the funeral, Xu Yi and Dean were both assigned new tasks.
“Reshape the human body?” Xu Yi had gone through rebuilding skin, muscle, bones, and body parts. Even though he kept telling himself to get used to it, he still wanted to slap Lu Weiyi when he heard this request.
“Do you think I’m some kind of god? I’m just an ordinary ability user…”
Lu Weiyi silently stared at him. Xu Yi’s voice gradually faded to a whisper. He nudged Dean, hoping he’d say something.
Unexpectedly, Dean looked at them both and replied crisply, “Okay. I’ll do my best.”
Xu Yi swore he could hear the slap of reality hitting his own face.
Lu Weiyi nodded in satisfaction and led them into the laboratory beneath the villa. Li Wenliang was already waiting inside.
“This is your teacher. The third floor contains your test subjects. Your task is to reconstruct parts of the human body—like regenerating limbs or rebuilding eyeballs…”
Lu Weiyi spoke calmly, as if failure wasn’t even an option. Xu Yi whispered to Dean, “Why didn’t you say no?”
“If I say no, he’ll torment David,” Dean replied helplessly, holding his chest. “I’m a man with a weakness. Ugh, damn this love.”
Expression blank, Xu Yi followed him down to the third underground level—only to discover the floor was full of living people, clearly all ability users, wearing suspiciously familiar collars.
He grabbed Lu Weiyi in shock. “You… you’re doing human experiments?!”
“These are former rebels,” Lu Weiyi said flatly. “We kept them specifically for you to practice on. The faster you master this, the less pain they’ll have to endure.”
They kept walking until they reached a specimen room. Inside were jars of all sizes, filled with human tissues. Some had been sliced for detailed viewing—every blood vessel and nerve clearly visible.
The air reeked of formaldehyde. Dean looked around and asked, “This wasn’t here before, was it?”
“It was made just for you two,” Lu Weiyi said, pulling out a neatly organized project plan from his space. “Here’s the list of goals you must accomplish. You can’t go back until you finish one.”
“I have to live here?” Dean cried out in horror.
“Good luck!” Lu Weiyi patted his shoulder and turned to leave.
“Can I bring David?” Dean pouted, trying to act cute. Xu Yi also wanted to agree, but couldn’t bring himself to make that kind of face, so he just pressed his lips together and gave a soft “Mm” to express his opinion.
“Sure,” Lu Weiyi replied quite agreeably, turning back with a smile to add, “You can trade it for one completed project.”
“Oh, you devil who stands in the way of love!” Dean howled through the hallway, his voice echoing behind Lu Weiyi, who left without a care—he even waved backward at them as he went.
The moment he stepped out of the lab, the light spring in his step collapsed. It was as if the weight of the world suddenly fell on his back, and his expression turned blank and exhausted.
Zhuang Mingxu returned, holding the latest interrogation report, and saw Lu Weiyi sitting alone in the freezing wind at the pavilion.
“What’s wrong?”
Lu Weiyi looked up at him but didn’t answer. His frost-reddened fingers kept twisting nervously.
Zhuang Mingxu recalled the day’s schedule and reached out to hold his freezing hand. “You sent them down?”
Lu Weiyi nodded, then after a long pause said, “Xu Yi asked me if I was conducting human experimentation.”
Zhuang Mingxu quickly understood what was troubling him. “It was my order to keep the prisoners alive.”
“And I allowed it.” Otherwise, no one would’ve gone along with it. Even if he wasn’t the mastermind, he was still complicit.
“I remember when I found out Zhuang Mobai was using people for human experiments—I was furious. I thought he was inhumane, that he’d surely pay for it. I never imagined…” He trailed off, now realizing he had become the same.
It reminded him of a saying: “The boy who slays the dragon eventually becomes the dragon.”
He felt like he was growing further and further from the ideal he once hoped to be when he was reborn.
“They were invaders—or oppressors, at the very least. We’re just making use of what’s left…” Zhuang Mingxu tried to reason with him, but the clear, disillusioned look in Lu Weiyi’s eyes silenced him.
Excuses. All of it were just noble-sounding excuses. No one had the right to decide others’ fates. What they were doing now wasn’t so different from Zhuang Mobai.
Oh—there was a difference.
Zhuang Mobai was a madman, capturing people at random. They, on the other hand, stood on the moral high ground.
“Do you want to release them? Or kill them outright?” Zhuang Mingxu asked, staring at Lu Weiyi.
Lu Weiyi shook his head. “I know this step is necessary. If Xu Yi and Dean are going to unlock the full potential of their abilities, they have to practice on real people. Compared to our own, these guys are the best choice.”
Zhuang Mingxu sighed in relief. At least he hadn’t lost his sense of reason.
“In life, it’s impossible to be righteous in the eyes of everyone. As long as you can be at peace with the majority, that’s already quite an achievement.” Zhuang Mingxu leaned down to kiss his troubled partner, then shifted the topic. “I actually wanted to tell you—we should stop accepting new residents in the spring.”
“There were a few among the traitors I found suspicious, so I kept them for ongoing interrogation. We just got a new piece of info.” Zhuang Mingxu handed over the report that had just come in.
On the plain white cover page, a name was written: Li Feng.
“The guy from the Peace Squad?” Lu Weiyi remembered him—a normal person who somehow held the position of vice-captain in a top battle team, with enough power to decide everything whenever the captain was away.
“Yes. I always thought his betrayal was odd,” Zhuang Mingxu explained. “According to Du Ping, the two of them had been childhood friends. What’s more, Li Feng and Feng Chengjun never got along—they supposedly had irreconcilable differences. That’s why Du Ping never suspected they might be working together.”
“Du Ping said at the beginning of the year, they were clearly at odds. Li Feng was defending him fiercely. Then suddenly, it all changed.”
“I found that strange too. If it were something in our base that ability users might covet, that would make sense. But Li Feng’s just a regular person—he had no reason to do this. So I had him detained for detailed questioning.”
