Chapter 4: The Core Region
Chi Xiaoxian went downstairs to use the restroom. By the time he got back, he found it hard to fall back asleep, so he stayed on the first floor watching Old Chen and the male student print materials.
As Old Chen operated the printer, he turned to Chi Xiaoxian and asked, “Do you two know each other? You’re both sophomores, right?”
Chi Xiaoxian blinked. “We just met today, actually. Quite a stroke of fate.”
“If you had known there were regular assignments,” the male student paused slightly, “you wouldn’t have just met me today either.”
“…”
This guy sure has a sharp tongue.
Chi Xiaoxian noticed a lab report taken from the guy’s backpack resting on the table. Written on it were his name and department.
School of Life Sciences, Fang Yue.
Beside them, the printer hummed away, churning out paper without pause.
Chi Xiaoxian stole a glance. It was a foreign research paper, packed with dense tables and endless rows of numbers.
With so many pages to print, the machine beeped twice, signaling that the toner cartridge needed replacing.
Old Chen grumbled as he swapped out the cartridge. “Got into the habit of knocking on my door in the middle of the night, haven’t you? Making an old guy with fragile bones get up to work for you…”
Fang Yue lifted his eyes from his laptop screen. “I can print it myself.”
“Forget it. This machine makes so much noise I’d get woken up by you anyway.” Old Chen let out a yawn. “All done. Tap your card.”
Fang Yue handed over his campus card with one hand while his other hand remained busy tapping away at the keyboard. The words Course Final Paper were clearly displayed on the screen, making Chi Xiaoxian’s heart skip a beat. “This paper… can the professor even grade it?”
Fang Yue replied indifferently, “TAs can grade it too.”
Chi Xiaoxian processed his words for a moment. Turning around, he picked up the stack of freshly printed pages, found a stapler, and carefully punched three neatly aligned staples into the side.
He presented the paper to Fang Yue respectfully with both hands, adopting an obedient tone: “Here you go, respected TA.”
Fang Yue took the paper without a word.
Sensing there might be some room for negotiation, Chi Xiaoxian tested the waters. “Do you think you could give me a slightly higher grade?”
Closing his laptop, Fang Yue asked a question Chi Xiaoxian completely hadn’t expected.
“What is the full name of this course?”
Chi Xiaoxian froze.
“Uh… Post-Disaster Ecology and… and what was it again?”
“Are you asking me back?”
“No, no, no.” Chi Xiaoxian quickly denied it. Scratching his hair, his eyes suddenly lit up. “I remember! Post-Disaster Ecology and Geographic Reconstruction!”
Fang Yue stared at him for a moment before articulating every single word clearly: “Post-Disaster Ecology and Environmental Reconstruction.”
Chi Xiaoxian: “…”
I’ve wanted to complain about this for a long time—why give it such a mouth-twisting, overly complicated name?
However, Chi Xiaoxian was currently the fish on the chopping block. He had no choice but to nod feverishly, adopting the posture of a model student. “Got it remembered.”
Fang Yue pulled up Chi Xiaoxian’s paper. Final papers were usually submitted in two formats—one hard copy and one digital version. The digital version was currently saved on his laptop.
Seeing the cover of his paper appear on the laptop screen, Chi Xiaoxian instantly felt the atmosphere grow tense.
Unconsciously biting his lip, he stole a glance at Fang Yue, trying to read any feedback on his paper from his expression.
Yet Fang Yue’s face was like an artificial AI model—perfect, but cold, completely void of emotion.
“Chi Xiaoxian, aren’t you going to sleep?” A voice suddenly called down from upstairs.
Chi Xiaoxian looked up to see Zheng Yikai. “In a bit. You go ahead and sleep first.”
He inexplicably lowered his voice as he spoke, terrified that making too much noise might disturb the respected TA and prevent him from giving him a passing grade.
Two minutes later, Fang Yue’s cursor moved back to the cover page.
“Is the paper alright?” Chi Xiaoxian asked gingerly.
“First, the fonts are inconsistent. Two out of the five secondary headings have formatting issues. English and Chinese punctuation are mixed together—mainly colons and double quotation marks. There are also three ungrammatical sentences, including a phrase where you typed ‘severe the the,’ doubling the word ‘the.’ It shows your attitude wasn’t very serious…”
Without even looking back at the document, Fang Yue recited every flaw from memory at a measured pace.
Chi Xiaoxian’s heart sank halfway through.
“Lastly—” Fang Yue’s brows furrowed again. “Who are you trying to fool with line spacing this large?”
“…” Who could have guessed you’d be the one grading the paper in the end?!
A printed hard copy didn’t show a digital word count. Using larger line spacing made the paper look thicker when printed out!
Chi Xiaoxian said with a face full of worry, “So… am I going to fail? Forget it, just give it to me straight so I can get it over with. What’s my grade?”
Fang Yue said, “The paper is worth seventy points. I’ll give you sixty.”
Chi Xiaoxian’s eyes widened in disbelief.
“Although the word count is low, the formatting is messy, the punctuation is flawed, and there are several ungrammatical sentences, the core ideas are almost entirely your own. Even though the argumentation comes across as crude and awkward, you didn’t plagiarize or pad the text to inflate the word count.”
Chi Xiaoxian felt a bit bewildered.
Is he praising me or scolding me?
Fang Yue continued his critique: “You chose the topic of post-disaster ecological reconstruction under different economic policy considerations. It’s much more innovative than simply discussing ecological and geographical changes alone. As an interdisciplinary study, it holds a certain degree of value. Its flaws are prominent, but its merits are equally prominent.”
“?” At the time, I just didn’t want to slog through those ecology papers outside my major, so I threw together a mess combining my economics background. It was completely DIY with hardly any citations.
Just as he breathed a sigh of relief, Fang Yue added, “However, this leads to another problem: the writing is far too subjective, the evidence is insufficient, and its accuracy is questionable.”
Chi Xiaoxian was left thoroughly confused by his breakdown. “…So?”
“There is no ‘so,'” Fang Yue said concisely. “You get a passing grade.”
Chi Xiaoxian finally felt at ease. After all, taking a retake exam cost a thousand dollars in fees—enough to buy three hot pot meals.
“Then I’m heading up to sleep?” Chi Xiaoxian let out a sigh of relief. “Get some rest soon, too.”
“Mm.” Fang Yue seemed to have no intention of wrapping up work just yet.
Chi Xiaoxian had just taken a step onto the stairs when he turned back around. “Where are you sleeping tonight? You can’t get back into the dorm building now—it’s been locked from the inside.”
“I know. I can just sleep down here.”
The light from the white electronic display reflected in Fang Yue’s eyes, conveying a sense of cool quietude despite the sweltering midsummer heat. It was as if the collapse of the world had nothing to do with him; he would simply carry on with whatever he was supposed to do. He possessed a world of his own, where all things functioned strictly according to the order he established.
Chi Xiaoxian quite admired people like him.
However, people like this were usually hard to truly get close to. They typically disliked others stepping into their world and disrupting the rhythm of their lives.
After Chi Xiaoxian went upstairs, tranquility returned to the room, broken only by the low hum of the air conditioner.
Another hour passed before Fang Yue finished his work. Opening a memo on his desktop, he checked off today’s tasks line by line. Once all the text turned pale grey, he let out a soft sigh and reached back to massage the nape of his neck.
Looking around, he found no suitable spot to lie down on the first floor. He gathered three chairs, pushing them together to make a simple bed, and folded his jacket into a pillow before going to sleep.
—
Early the next morning, Chi Xiaoxian woke up with his whole body aching.
The folding bed was too narrow for him to turn over easily, forcing him to sleep curled up for the entire night.
Zheng Yikai, on the other hand, was full of energy. The moment he woke up, he began hunting for food out of hunger.
By the time Chi Xiaoxian made his way downstairs, he saw that Fang Yue was already back at work, filling out some data on his laptop.
“Morning, Mr. TA,” Chi Xiaoxian greeted him.
At the sound of this title, Fang Yue’s brow twitched slightly before he offered a somewhat cold “Morning” in response.
Chi Xiaoxian was thoroughly amused by his reaction.
Old Chen was cooking porridge, sprinkling in dried red dates and a few chunks of rock sugar. Before long, the tiny room was filled with the sweet aroma of porridge and rich red dates. Zheng Yikai sniffed the air repeatedly. “This smells way better than the cafeteria.”
Chi Xiaoxian, Old Chen, and Fang Yue only ate one bowl each, whereas Zheng Yikai downed two bowls in a row and polished off half a packet of pickled mustard tubers. Old Chen teased, “Your bowl is so clean you don’t even need to wash it.”
After finishing the meal, Old Chen pulled out his phone and played the news on speaker. Chi Xiaoxian listened while scrolling through his phone at first, but eventually even Fang Yue couldn’t help but raise his head to look at the screen displaying the news.
Everyone realized the gravity of the situation.
Almost overnight, the news had completely changed. When Chi Xiaoxian checked last night, the most clicked news story was still the fire at the psychiatric hospital. Looking at it today, the screen was dominated by eye-catching, bold red words: Attacks, Infections, Casualties, and Armed Forces. Similar reports had surfaced across almost the entirety of the Core Region, where Districts One, Two, and Three were located.
The Southern United Highlands had thirteen districts in total.
Districts One, Two, and Three comprised the Core Region. The central government, its core subordinate departments, several research centers, and universities were all located here.
However, the so-called “Core” referred strictly to functional importance. Geographically, Districts One, Two, and Three were situated in the southwestern corner of the United Highlands. The remaining ten districts extended northward, eastward, and southward from there. Districts Twelve and Thirteen were peripheral areas with minor environmental pollution and virtually no residents, reserved by the government for research and land reclamation.
To suddenly be informed that the Core Region had suffered severe attacks and infections induced panic, while inevitably raising suspicions.
Chi Xiaoxian scrolled through the comment section below the news, discovering that many people shared his sentiments. Conspiracy theories were running rampant for a time.
Rome was broadcasting the Southern Highlands’ morning news live. Old Chen tapped on it and turned up the volume.
“Regarding the attacks occurring in the Central Three Districts over the past two days, the Department of Health and Medical Services conducted an overnight investigation and tentatively identified the cause as a virus inducing zombie-like symptoms. The transmission route is through bodily fluids, particularly blood. Military Spokesperson Lu Jun stated that although medical research findings have yet to be finalized, should infected individuals attack healthy humans, the military will immediately deploy thermal weaponry for extermination to ensure the infection does not spread outward. Residents are urged not to panic, return home as soon as possible, stock up on supplies, and lock their doors and windows tightly…”
“We now switch live to our reporter on the scene—”
The screen shifted from a photograph of a military officer giving a speech to the Twin Towers of the Administrative Center, an iconic landmark of the Southern United Highlands.
The Twin Towers pierced the clouds. Before the building, military vehicles were parked in dense, orderly rows, while armed soldiers sealed off the streets completely.
A young man with a round face and large eyes appeared on screen: “As everyone can see, the infected inside the Twin Towers have been completely cleared out. Medical personnel are currently disinfecting the building, and the military will dispatch a squad to provide protection. It is expected that the Administrative Center will resume normal operations tomorrow.”
His complexion was a sickly grayish-blue, his eye sockets sunken, and his demeanor exhausted, yet the joy and relief on his face were nearly overflowing, giving viewers a sense of reassurance.
BANG!
A loud explosion suddenly erupted on screen, startling everyone.
A look of brief confusion flashed across the reporter’s face. He turned his head, trying to see what had happened behind him.
However, he realized his body seemed to have lost all control.
He looked down to see a massive, bloody gaping hole in his chest—a sudden, gruesome void, as though he were a piece of foam that could easily be pierced through rather than a living human being.
In the final instant before his consciousness drifted away completely, he recognized it as a penetrating wound caused by a miniature artillery cannon—an extremely powerful suppression weapon. Just ten minutes ago, a commander from the Security Department had even bragged to him about its sheer power.
His body swayed, and he collapsed to the ground.
A scream pierced the air before the camera, after which the screen plunged into pitch-black darkness.
