Chapter 62: In the Apocalypse, Death Is Too Common
A bolt of blue-white lightning crackled through the air, shooting from the flank and striking Zhao Yong squarely in the center of his back.
Zhao Yong’s entire frame stiffened violently, his eyes bulging in sheer shock.
Before he could even let out a scream, his knees gave way and he collapsed face-first into the dirt. His limbs spasmed once, twice, and then went completely still as a thin wisp of acrid black smoke drifted from his charred jacket.
Jiang Lin turned her head, trembling from the narrow escape. She saw Jiang Jue standing a short distance away, tiny arcs of electricity still dancing across his right palm. His dark eyes were cold, completely devoid of emotion.
He didn’t spare her a single glance, turning immediately to scan the surrounding courtyard as if assessing the remaining threats.
“Brother Jiang!” Chu Yang shouted. At the same time, he thrust both hands forward, making a violent tearing motion in mid-air.
A bizarre distortion rippled through the space before him. Over a dozen hairline fissures—pitch-black and razor-thin—split open without a sound, radiating a suffocating, lethal pressure.
In the very next second, the bodies of over a dozen mutant rats lunging from different angles twisted and warped simultaneously, as if gripped by an invisible, crushing vice.
There were no shrieks—only dull, wet tearing sounds as flesh and bone were ripped apart.
Dark blood and pulverized viscera burst outward like gruesome fireworks, showering the snowdrifts.
The entire courtyard fell into stunned silence.
The survivors stood frozen, awed and terrified by the sheer precision of the carnage. Even their breathing grew shallow.
Lin Xiao’s grip on his heavy blade tightened, a stray drop of dark blood dripping from the steel tip. Watching three mutant rats that had been lunging at him turn into mangled chunks of meat barely a meter away, he swallowed hard, his voice shaking with a mix of awe and dread: “Third Brother… this move of yours is downright terrifying!”
Chu Yang didn’t answer. He offered a faint, stiff nod, his face pale and drained of color.
Executing that wide-area spatial rift had cost him an immense amount of energy. His reserves were completely tapped out, leaving his limbs heavy and trembling.
Jiang Jue stepped forward, his strong arm reaching out to catch Chu Yang’s swaying frame. His calloused fingers lightly brushed Chu Yang’s palm as he supported him, his deep voice laced with genuine concern: “Are you alright?”
Chu Yang shook his head, his throat dry as he rasped out two words: “I’m fine.”
Jiang Jue studied his exhausted face for a second, asking no further questions. He caught Su Mubai’s eye across the courtyard and gave a subtle nod.
Su Mubai understood instantly. Sheathing his short blade, he stepped over quickly, taking Chu Yang’s weight onto his shoulder. “Lean on me,” he whispered gently. “Get some rest.”
Only then did Jiang Jue turn back toward the fight. Gripping his straight blade in his right hand while blue-white lightning danced across his left fingertips, he advanced toward the remaining swarm of scurrying rodents.
His combat style lacked the flashy spectacle of Chu Yang’s spatial tears; instead, every strike was clean, efficient, and lethal.
Wherever his blade flashed, a severed rat’s head rolled across the snow; wherever his lightning arced, a beast convulsed and collapsed, charred into a smoking husk that released a sharp, burnt odor. There was not a single wasted motion—every blow was decisive, fast, and merciless.
The skirmish was over in less than ten minutes.
When the last frantic rat was boxed in by Wang Qiang’s earthen wall, Lin Xiao vaulted forward, severing its head with a single downward cleave.
Finally, the courtyard fell into complete, eerie silence.
Heavy, ragged panting echoed through the night, mingled with quiet, suppressed sobs coming from the shadowy corners of the ruins. The air hung thick with the suffocating stench of fresh blood, ozone, and charred fur, making everyone’s chest feel tight.
At least seventy or eighty rat carcasses littered the snow, dark blood pooling across the frozen earth.
Alongside the beasts lay three human corpses—two men and one woman. Aside from Zhao Yong, who had been struck down by lightning, the other two had gruesome, mangled bite wounds tearing through their throats. Their clothes were soaked in crimson, their chests completely still.
“Is… is it over?” someone asked in a shaking whisper, voice laced with disbelief.
“They’re dead… all the rats are dead!” another cried out, the raw ecstasy of survival spilling into their voice.
With the immediate danger gone, the survivors’ strained nerves finally snapped.
They collapsed to the frozen ground one by one. Some buried their faces in their hands, some wiped away silent tears of lingering dread, and others turned aside, violently retching at the sight of the bloody slaughterhouse around them.
Leaning against Su Mubai, Chu Yang pulled a few crystal cores from his spatial pocket, gripping them tightly in his palm. The cool stones sent a faint trickle of restorative energy through his veins, steadily replenishing his depleted reserves and returning a touch of color to his face.
Lifting his head, Chu Yang scanned the gathered survivors, his brow suddenly furrowing. “Where is Little Yu? And his grandfather?”
He remembered the young boy clearly—timid, yet remarkably sensible, always trailing quietly behind the old man.
Neither of them had appeared during the chaotic fighting. Could they have… already been overwhelmed inside?
Before the dark thought could take root, the wooden door of the western bungalow creaked open.
A small, scrawny silhouette stepped out from the doorway.
It was Little Yu.
The boy was drenched in dark blood, his thin coat shredded in multiple places. Patches of fresh crimson and dried, blackened gore stained his face and small hands. In his right fist, he gripped a chipped fruit knife, blood steadily dripping from the blade.
His eyes were hollow and vacant, his footing unsteady on the snow.
Drifting into the center of the courtyard, his empty gaze slowly focused, finally locking onto Chu Yang.
“Brother… Brother Chu Yang…” Little Yu rasped, his voice raw as sandpaper.
“Little Yu!” Chu Yang’s chest tightened.
Pushing off Su Mubai, he rushed over and dropped to one knee, frantically checking the boy over. “Are you alright? Are you hurt anywhere?”
He gently pulled back Little Yu’s torn sleeve. Seeing that the skin beneath was mostly intact, Chu Yang let out a ragged breath of relief—the blood covering the boy didn’t seem to be his own.
Looking into Chu Yang’s warm, worried eyes, the tight string holding Little Yu together finally broke.
“Waaaah—!”
The child broke down into a heart-wrenching wail, throwing his small frame straight into Chu Yang’s chest, his shoulders heaving with violent tremors.
“Grandpa… Grandpa was bitten by the rats… there was so much blood…” He clutched Chu Yang’s collar with white knuckles, sobbing brokenly. “I tried to hold the wounds closed, but the blood wouldn’t stop… They bit his legs, they tore open his neck…”
Chu Yang’s heart sank like lead.
Wrapping his arms tightly around the trembling boy, he gently patted his back, a heavy lump forming in his throat. He wanted to offer words of comfort, but found that any attempt at solace was completely hollow in the face of such loss.
In the apocalypse, death was far too common.
The elderly, children, women… countless lives were extinguished every single day, claimed by the jaws of zombies, shredded by mutated beasts, or snuffed out by bitter cold and starvation.
Yet witnessing it firsthand never failed to carve a heavy ache into his soul.
“I killed those rats…” Little Yu’s weeping gradually subdued into ragged, muffled whimpers against Chu Yang’s shoulder. “I used the knife to stab them… They couldn’t see me… I don’t know how… but I killed every single one of them…”
An Invisibility Ability.
Chu Yang’s heart skipped a beat as the realization clicked into place.
The boy had awakened an exceedingly rare stealth power.
Even more striking was the child’s resolve—in the face of watching his only family member die a gruesome death, he hadn’t paralyzed in panic. Instead, he had stayed composed enough to strike back and slaughter the beasts. That kind of mental fortitude was something even many grown adults failed to muster in this broken world.
