Chapter 21: Conflict
“Three of you?”
Still half-supporting Jiang Jue, Chu Yang looked up with a cold, mocking sneer, his eyes blazing with murderous intent.
“Against spineless cowards who only know how to prey on their own, I wouldn’t care if there were thirty of you! Let me make one thing crystal clear today.”
Every word fell sharp and deliberate. His voice was not loud, but it carried an unshakeable resolve. “Whoever dares to lay a finger on him—don’t blame me for being ruthless!”
A vicious light flared in Wang Rui’s eyes. Realizing there was no chance for a peaceful resolution, he dropped the act and raised his right hand. A fist-sized fireball ignited above his palm!
“Go to hell!”
Wang Rui hurled the flame straight at Jiang Jue, who was leaning helplessly against Chu Yang, utterly defenseless!
Chu Yang had been on high alert the entire time. The moment the fire flared, his pupils shrank. Operating on pure instinct, he shoved Jiang Jue hard toward a safe corner while snapping his left wrist forward—an invisible blade of spatial energy sliced through the air, tearing faster than the fireball!
Boom!
The fiery projectile slammed into the hallway wall right where Jiang Jue had just been standing, leaving a scorch mark behind.
Almost simultaneously, a wet thwack echoed down the corridor. Chu Yang’s spatial blade struck Wang Rui’s right shoulder with surgical precision. The fabric tore away, flesh split open, and a spray of bright crimson erupted into the air!
“Aaargh—! My arm!!”
Wang Rui screamed in agony as the sheer force threw him backward, causing him to hit the concrete on both knees with a heavy thud.
Clutching his mangled, bleeding shoulder, he looked up at Chu Yang, his eyes wide with disbelief and raw terror. They were both Ability Users, so how was Chu Yang’s reaction speed so blistering… and so overwhelmingly powerful?
Chu Yang didn’t have a second to spare for Wang Rui’s shrieks. He scrambled over to Jiang Jue, who had tumbled to the ground from the shove.
“Brother Jiang! Brother Jiang!” Chu Yang dropped to his knees, carefully lifting the taller man’s torso so that his head rested against his chest.
“Brother Jiang!” Chu Yang’s voice trembled with panic. “How are you holding up? Can you hear me?”
Jiang Jue forced his eyelids open with great effort, but his dark eyes were glazed over, unable to focus. His lips parted faintly, yet he couldn’t form a single word, giving only a weak shake of his head.
Seeing the bloody ruin of Wang Rui’s shoulder and the crimson pooling between his fingers, Li Wen felt his legs turn to water.
He glanced back at Jiang Jue, who was clearly on the verge of fading completely. After a tense internal battle, Li Wen took a tentative step forward, his voice shaking as he pleaded, “Chu Yang… don’t be so stubborn… Brother Jiang is already gone! Why are you throwing your life away for…”
“Get lost!” Chu Yang whipped his head around and bellowed, his eyes bloodshot with rage. “Take one more step toward us and my next strike takes your head! If you don’t believe me, step up and try it!”
Drenched in cold sweat from the blinding pain, Wang Rui’s face went chalk-white. Gritting his teeth, he clamped his uninjured hand tightly over his bleeding wound, glaring venomously at Chu Yang. Through clenched teeth, he hissed, “Fine! Have it your way! Chu Yang, go ahead and die protecting a walking corpse… Let’s move! We’re done with this cursed place!”
Zhao Dayong and Li Wen traded terrified glances, their eyes darting to Chu Yang’s lethal stance. Trembling, they scrambled to Wang Rui’s sides, hooking their arms under his shoulders to haul him up.
“Ungrateful bastards! A pack of vicious wolves!” Watching them stumble up the stairwell in a frantic retreat, Chu Yang felt a suffocating knot of fury tighten in his chest. “Brother Jiang was blind to ever care whether you lived or died!”
Spitting out a curse, he quickly pulled his attention back. Right now, nothing mattered more than keeping Jiang Jue alive.
He struggled to hoist Jiang Jue up. The taller man had slipped entirely out of consciousness, his dead weight bearing down like lead.
Gritting his teeth, Chu Yang dragged him step by step back inside their apartment, carefully lowering him into a sturdy wooden chair in the living room.
Jiang Jue’s head lolled forward onto his chest, his breathing so shallow it was nearly imperceptible. The grayish, deathly pallor on his skin was darkening at visible speed.
Staring at him, Chu Yang’s hands shook uncontrollably.
Ever since he had arrived in this brutal world, it was Jiang Jue who had taken him in at his most vulnerable, giving him shelter and saving his life time and time again. In every way that mattered, he owed this second chance at life entirely to him.
He cannot die! He absolutely cannot die!
Bang!
A sudden violent spasm shattered Chu Yang’s racing thoughts.
Jiang Jue’s body convulsed violently, slipping from the chair and crashing hard onto the floorboards.
A low, animalistic hiss scraped from deep within his throat. His frame began to contort unnaturally, his limbs stiffening and locking at bizarre, rigid angles.
“Brother Jiang!”
Chu Yang rushed forward in a panic, using every ounce of his strength to haul him back into the chair.
Watching Jiang Jue thrash and snap his teeth blindly toward the empty air, Chu Yang felt an icy chill settle in his chest.
It’s starting… These symptoms… they’re the exact signs of turning!
Brother Jiang is really going to…
“Brother Jiang, wake up! Look at me! It’s Chu Yang!” He tapped Jiang Jue’s cheeks with frantic slaps, trying desperately to pull back a sliver of awareness. “You can’t turn into one of those things… Look at me, I’m barely enough meat to fill a tooth! After everything we’ve been through, could you really bring yourself to take a bite out of me?!”
He babbled incoherently, partly to ground Jiang Jue and partly to steady his own trembling nerves. “No… no, I have to tie him down. If he loses control and bites me, we’re both done for. When he comes back to his senses, he’d never forgive himself…”
Without wasting another second, he frantically searched his spatial storage. Rope… rope… where is it? Found it!
He pulled out a thick coil of heavy-duty nylon climbing cord.
Fighting back the burning ache in his chest, he set to work, wrapping the rope tightly around Jiang Jue’s chest, waist, and limbs, binding him securely to the wooden chair with tight, unbreakable knots. He made sure that no matter how hard Jiang Jue thrashed, he wouldn’t be able to tear himself free.
I’m sorry, Brother Jiang… I’m so sorry. Just hang in there… you have to fight this…
Seeing Jiang Jue tied down, still twitching and hissing with his skin turning darker by the minute, Chu Yang paced the cramped room like an animal in a cage, his thoughts spinning wildly out of control.
What do I do? What do I do?! It’s the zombie virus… is there an antidote? How could an antidote exist out here?!
Wait… Powers? My power can tear through concrete, but it can’t cure an infection… The crystal cores! Yes… maybe the cores can work!
He stopped dead in his tracks, a tiny flicker of hope igniting in his chest. He remembered reading in those web novels that the purified energy inside a crystal core could stimulate the human immune system, triggering antibodies to purge the infection.
It was even supposed to be the trigger that helped ordinary people awaken their abilities! While it sounded completely unscientific, he had no other choice—he had to gamble on anything he had left.
“Brother Jiang, stay with me! Try this!”
Chu Yang emptied every single crystal core from his storage space, piling all eleven milky-white stones into Jiang Jue’s rigid palms and clamping his own warm hands tightly around them.
Leaning down until his mouth was right beside Jiang Jue’s ear, he whispered urgently, repeating it like a desperate mantra: “Absorb it, Brother Jiang! Feel the energy! Focus on it! Please, just try! You’re going to make it through this—you’re the strongest person I know. You can beat this… you have to…”
