Chapter 101: Ingratitude
The members of Zhan Yun’s team had been to Lincity Base once before, so they were fairly familiar with the roads and drove toward it following their memories.
However, when they saw what Lincity looked like, they were all stunned. The city walls—which hadn’t been very sturdy to begin with—had collapsed. Broken walls, rubble, and debris were scattered everywhere.
Because of the heavy snowfall, the pure white snow covered most of the traces left after the city fell. But portions of the wall that were still exposed were caked with large amounts of dried blood, bearing witness to the ferocity of the battle when the city was breached.
The once sizable Lincity Base had nearly turned into a dead city. Deathly silence permeated every corner. Compared to the scene just days earlier, everyone felt a heavy weight in their hearts.
“They… couldn’t have all… died, could they?” Zhao Bing’s voice trembled. In just a few short days, had everyone in an entire base been wiped out?
That was several thousand lives…
“Not necessarily,” Zhan Yun said gravely. “Let’s go in and take a look first…”
He believed that although Lincity Base wasn’t large, it still had several thousand survivors. People like the Eight Vajras would definitely abandon the city and flee if the situation turned bad, or have other escape plans. It shouldn’t have been so easily wiped out by zombies.
Su Ruizhe agreed. Although because of his rebirth, Lincity Base had lost its solar power advantage and hadn’t grown rapidly at the start of the apocalypse, in his memories, Lincity’s leader was a calculating man with foresight. He wouldn’t simply allow the base he had built with his own hands to be destroyed.
The snowfield patrol vehicle slowly entered the now-ruined Lincity Base. Several zombie dogs that were rummaging through the snow for food noticed them and immediately charged toward the vehicle.
Cheng Qi, sitting in the front passenger seat, directly released lightning, effortlessly turning those zombie dogs into charred corpses.
They drove around the city for a short while. Aside from a few scattered zombies wandering about, they found no living survivors.
However, Zhan Yun believed that the people had fled. Along the way, many intact houses were in disarray, but all the food and clothing had been taken. Even tables and chairs were gone. He guessed that the Eight Vajras had taken the supplies and led the remaining people away.
After hearing Zhan Yun’s reasoning, everyone felt it made sense. However, they didn’t have time to search for those people’s whereabouts. Since all the food had been taken, they should be able to survive for a while. Once they returned from the north, they could search slowly.
Thus, they drove out of Lincity Base and headed north. Lincity was an agriculture-focused small city, and beyond the main urban area lay vast farmlands and villages.
Due to the harsh weather after the apocalypse, the fields were no longer suitable for cultivation and had gradually turned into wasteland. The farmers who had lived off the land in nearby villages had mostly taken their stored grain and sought refuge in Lincity Base. These villages should have been completely deserted.
However, after driving north for more than ten kilometers, they discovered that zombie roars were coming from a small village. Judging by the sounds, there were quite a few of them.
“There are survivors in that village!” Zhao Bing shouted excitedly. “Let’s go take a look!”
Zombies wouldn’t wander aimlessly in an empty village. They must have smelled flesh and blood to gather there. The people in that village were very likely survivors who had fled from Lincity Base.
“All right, let’s go check it out,” Zhan Yun said.
Since they had seen it, they couldn’t just stand by and let people die.
Zhang Shuoliang, who was driving, steered the vehicle directly into the fields, planning to cut straight across. The ground was covered in thick snow, and the snowfield patrol vehicle moved smoothly over it.
As soon as the vehicle approached the village, the zombies reacted to the scent and rushed toward them. Cheng Qi alone easily dealt with all of them.
Although there were many zombies, they were just ordinary ones. For Cheng Qi, whose lightning ability had reached mid–Level Two, it was child’s play.
The village wasn’t large, and the snowfield patrol vehicle couldn’t enter, so Zhan Yun had Han Lei and Yu Dongdong stay in the vehicle while the others went into the village to check things out. Han Lei was a technical specialist, not an ability user, and staying in the vehicle with Yu Dongdong would be safer.
Before getting out, however, Zhan Yun asked Yu Dongdong to use his mental power to search the village and see where the survivors were hiding, so they wouldn’t have to search house by house.
Yu Dongdong tilted his little head and said, “There are people under all of these houses.”
“Under all of them?” Zhao Bing’s face instantly lit up with joy.
In rural areas, almost every household had cellars or underground spaces. This small village only had a dozen or so houses, but if there were people hiding under each one, that was a considerable number!
Zhao Bing had been worried about the thousands of lives at Lincity Base. Knowing now that there were still survivors naturally made him very happy.
The child nodded vigorously and emphasized, “There are a lot of people.”
“Alright. Be good and watch the vehicle. We’ll be back soon,” Su Ruizhe said, patting the child’s head before getting out of the vehicle with Zhan Yun.
Just as they entered the village, twenty to thirty men armed with weapons suddenly rushed out from the houses on both sides, surrounding Zhan Yun’s group completely.
Their clothes were extremely tattered. They wore nearly every piece of clothing they could find. Some even wore women’s coats, looking utterly mismatched.
“Hand over all your food and the clothes you’re wearing!” Seven or eight of them were holding pistols, the dark muzzles aimed squarely at Zhan Yun and the others.
“Boss, don’t forget to leave those two women behind!” one skinny, shifty-eyed man said with a lewd grin.
Zhan Yun carefully observed these people. Although they were shivering from the cold, their complexions actually looked fairly healthy.
“You’re sure you want to rob us? We were the ones who killed the zombies outside. Fine if you don’t feel grateful, but how can you repay kindness with hostility?” Cheng Qi said, lightning flickering in his hand.
When the leader saw the electric light in Cheng Qi’s hand, his eyes flickered slightly. Instead of fear, a hint of viciousness appeared. Since these people had managed to kill the zombies outside without using guns, there had to be one or two ability users among them. But he wasn’t afraid. No matter how powerful ability users were, they were still flesh and blood. With so many men and so many guns, killing one or two ability users wouldn’t be hard.
He had been hesitating over whom to make an example of first, but this stupid ability user had exposed himself.
“So what if you’re an ability user?! What’s so great about that?! I specialize in killing ability users!” As he spoke, his expression grew more ferocious, and he aimed his gun directly at Cheng Qi.
Zhan Yun frowned. He sensed something off about the man’s emotions. Seeing his finger twitch, about to pull the trigger, Zhan Yun immediately activated his ability.
A powerful tenfold gravity slammed down like a mountain, instantly pressing the man to the ground.
The ground was covered in snow. Pinned there, the man not only suffered the agony of being unable to breathe but also the bone-chilling cold. Tears and snot streamed down his face, but he couldn’t even open his mouth to beg for mercy.
“Damn it!!!” The others immediately opened fire.
Zhang Shuoliang’s earth wall and Su Ruizhe’s riot shield appeared at the same time, easily blocking bullets coming from all directions. As soon as the gunfire stopped, they launched a counterattack.
These people never imagined that all nine of them were ability users. Even with their numerical advantage, they couldn’t last more than three minutes.
Fireballs, wind blades, ice spikes, electric shocks, iron rods—these attacks easily knocked them all to the ground. Zhan Yun’s group deliberately held back, merely teaching them a lesson, but it was still enough to leave them in agony.
Zhan Yun withdrew his ability, hauled the leader up from the snow, pressed a dagger to his neck, and asked, “Who are you? How did you end up here?”
“W-we’re from Lincity… Z-zombies broke the city… w-we e-escaped… some brothers… are from this village…” The man was frozen stiff and stammered as he spoke, but he answered honestly.
“I—I’m sorry, we were wrong!”
“Please, have mercy! We were starving for days. We were momentarily possessed! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Some of them even began kowtowing as they spoke.
“Heh.” Cheng Jiao let out a cold laugh. She didn’t believe a single word of their nonsense. Not only had these people repaid kindness with hostility, they’d even intended to kill them—and some had made disgusting remarks about her and Wu Jing.
Author’s Note:
Today’s chapter was rewritten three times from scratch. Sorry for the late update.
[A Little Side Skit on the Road]
Little Zhan Yun: “It’s Chapter 100—quick, wish us a hundred years of happiness together! Also, I propose a one-sentence summary of this novel: In the apocalypse, my wife carries me to victory!”
Little Su Zhe: “Shameless. Apocalypse Rebirth: The Rise of the Golden Thigh.”
Zheng Jiahe: “The love story of the Hulk and a goddess!”
Doctor Song: “Such is the coldness of the world—this dignified doctor reduced to doing odd jobs!”
Brother Liang: “On the use of background-board couples in the apocalypse.”
Cheng Qi: “Do I still have any presence?”
Cheng Jiao: “One hundred ways to reject the Hulk’s advances.”
Dongdong: “Daily cat-petting!”
Regiment Commander Jiang: “Apocalypse: The days of constantly being force-fed dog food.”
Thank you for reading 🙂 I hope you all liked my translations. If you enjoyed my work, please consider buying me a Ko-Fi 😉
