Chapter 65: Little Yu
The foul, rancid stench of blood mingled with the freezing wind, drilling straight into his nostrils. Little Yu bit down hard on his lower lip, fighting back the wave of nausea rising in his throat.
Using the tip of his small, chipped knife, he pried with all his might against the hard skull of a mutant rat. His wrist trembled violently under the strain, and it took an enormous amount of effort just to force a narrow crack through the bone.
Inside, the grayish brain tissue was already half-congealed, laced with dark, clotted blood—a gruesome sight that made his skin crawl.
Squeezing his eyes shut, Little Yu reached inside with trembling fingers, groping through the cold mush.
Suddenly, his fingertips brushed against a small, solid object, distinctly different from the soft matter surrounding it.
His heart gave a sudden leap, and he quickly pulled his hand back.
Lying in his palm was a tiny pebble no larger than a soybean, radiating a faint, grayish-white luminescence.
Little Yu’s eyes brightened, and a fragile spark of life returned to his dull, exhausted face.
It seemed… he had finally found something useful he could do for the team.
One, two, three…
From his clumsy initial attempts to the steady, practiced rhythm he developed later, Little Yu slowly got the hang of the task. He quickly realized that not every mutant rat held a crystal inside its head; on average, he could only harvest one from every three or four carcasses.
More than eighty oversized rat corpses lay scattered across the courtyard. The light snow falling over them was quickly soaked through with dark blood, freezing into jagged, crimson shards of ice.
Crouched in the biting snow, Little Yu’s fingers grew red and numb from the frost, yet he never dared to stop. He simply gritted his teeth, repeating the exhausting cycle over and over: prying open bone, groping through gore, and pulling out the stone.
He lost all sense of time. By the time he had cleared the final rat skull, Little Yu collapsed backward into the snow, gazing at the small handful of glittering gems in his palm. Only then did he let out a long, shuddering sigh of relief.
He counted them with painstaking care. There were exactly twenty—no more, no less.
Most of the tiny cores were about the size of a soybean, their surfaces still smeared with dark grime. Gathering a handful of clean snow, Little Yu polished them one by one until they gleamed with a soft, warm luster, before carefully tucking them into the innermost pocket of his jacket.
He told himself that when he presented these to Brother Chu Yang later, he was bound to earn a word of praise.
Worn down to the point of utter collapse, Little Yu dragged his frozen, aching body around the house, shuffling step by step toward the fresh earthen mound in the vegetable garden.
The damp, newly turned soil still carried a sharp, earthy scent—the grave he had dug with his own bare hands for his grandfather.
Curling up against the frozen earth, he pressed his face right against the cold soil.
Parting his dry, cracked lips, he whispered in a voice so faint it dissolved into the morning air: “Grandpa, look… I can find useful things now.”
“I’m going to make myself useful… so nobody leaves me behind…”
Before the final syllable had fully faded, a heavy wave of exhaustion crashed over him. Unable to fight it any longer, his head tilted sideways against the mound, and he drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Chu Yang was roused by the rich, savory aroma of cooking food.
Opening his eyes, he rubbed his heavy temples; the mental exhaustion from overexerting his spatial power the previous night had not entirely faded.
The spot beside him on the mattress was already cold and empty. Jiang Jue had gotten up some time ago, leaving only a faint trace of residual warmth on the heavy quilt.
Chu Yang sat up slowly, pulled on his winter coat, and pushed open the door to the outer room.
The light was much brighter out here. An iron pan rested atop a portable burner, and Su Mubai was crouched beside the flame with a spatula in hand, his head lowered as he stir-fried the ingredients. The hot oil sizzled steadily, sending mouthwatering fragrances wafting through the room.
Nearby, Lin Xiao sat on a wooden log, quietly wiping down the edge of his broad blade with a rag.
“You’re up?” Hearing footsteps, Su Mubai looked up with a warm smile, his hand never pausing over the pan. “Hungry? Breakfast will be ready in a minute.”
“Yeah,” Chu Yang replied. His gaze swept across the room, but failing to spot the small, scrawny silhouette, his brows knit in concern. “Where’s Little Yu?”
Su Mubai paused, the spatula hovering over the pan as his eyes drifted toward the corner of the room.
Following his gaze, Chu Yang finally noticed a small, bundled shape curled up under a thick quilt against the far wall, with only a tuft of messy black hair poking out.
“Still asleep,” Su Mubai said in a hushed tone, an imperceptible sigh lacing his voice. “That boy… is remarkably well-behaved.”
“Yeah,” Lin Xiao chimed in, setting his blade and rag aside. The usual easygoing grin had vanished from his face. “Third Brother, you have no idea where we found him this morning.”
“Where?” Chu Yang asked, slightly puzzled. “Didn’t I tell you guys to bring him inside to sleep last night?”
“We tried,” Lin Xiao said with a bitter smile. “But the kid dug his heels in, insisting he wanted to stay by his grandfather’s side for one last night. We couldn’t talk him out of it, so we had to let him be. We made sure he bolted the door and told him to shout if anything happened.”
“When the sun came up, we went over to check on him…” Lin Xiao’s voice trailed off, his Adam’s apple bobbing with a hard swallow as the memory choked him up. “He was out back in the garden all by himself, digging a grave for the old man.”
“He dug through the frozen dirt all night long. His hands were covered in broken blisters, rubbed completely raw and bloody…”
“When we found him, he was curled up sound asleep right against the mound, his little face frozen blue and purple from the cold. The Boss was the one who carried him back,” Lin Xiao murmured softly. “Little Bai already treated the wounds on his hands.”
Chu Yang froze in place. Stepping quickly over to the corner, he crouched down by the quilt. His eyes fell upon the small hand resting outside the fabric.
They were tiny hands with thin, delicate fingers. Although Su Mubai had already channeled his healing energy over the skin, several angry red marks and faint scars remained visible across his raw palms.
Chu Yang reached out and gently pressed the back of his hand against Little Yu’s forehead. Feeling a steady, normal warmth, he breathed a quiet sigh of relief—thankfully, the child hadn’t developed a fever.
Just then, the dark eyelashes beneath the blanket fluttered, and the boy slowly opened his eyes.
His gaze was groggy and unfocused at first, but the moment he recognized Chu Yang, his small frame relaxed. He called out in a sleepy, raspy mumble: “Brother… Brother Chu.”
“Did I wake you?” Chu Yang softened his voice to a gentle murmur.
“No, I woke up on my own,” Little Yu whispered, shaking his head as he pushed himself up into a sitting position.
He instinctively reached down to pat the inner pocket of his coat. His eyes lit up at once, as if remembering a matter of utmost importance. Slipping his small hand deep inside, he rummaged around before carefully cupping a handful of glittering objects and holding them out toward Chu Yang.
“Brother Chu, these are for you,” Little Yu said, his voice trembling with eager anticipation as his bright eyes searched Chu Yang’s face. “These are called crystal cores, right?”
“I saw you guys… harvesting them from the zombies’ heads before.”
“Can you check if these are useful?”
“I found all of them… inside the heads of those giant rats.”
As he spoke, he patted his pocket one more time to ensure not a single one was left behind. Only after confirming it was completely empty did he carefully transfer the stones, one by one, into Chu Yang’s open palm.
Chu Yang’s breath caught in his throat. He stared down at the small heap of polished crystal cores resting in his hand, each one still carrying the faint, lingering warmth of the child’s body.
At a single glance, there were at least twenty of them.
