Chapter 84 — Effects and the Girl
Work on building the wall resumed. Four people were responsible for protecting the four ability users, while the rest, after confirming there was nothing else they needed to do, each picked up their weapons and began firing down from the wall. After a night and an afternoon of gathering, a large group of zombies had once again amassed below the wall—at a glance, at least two or three hundred of them.
Amid everyone else’s gunfire, Luo Xun quietly took out the specially prepared crossbow bolt he’d made the night before, loaded it, and seized the chance to loose a shot mixed in with the others’ attacks.
He narrowed his eyes and stared downward for quite some time. It wasn’t until Yan Fei gently nudged him that he came back to himself. “Well?”
“Uh… the wound got pressed underneath. I’ll try again…”
The distance from the top of the wall to the ground below was indeed quite far. Especially after zombies were shot down, their wounds were often pressed or blocked by their own bodies or those of their companions. Even when they weren’t covered, it was hard to see clearly what the inside of the wound looked like.
What frustrated Luo Xun the most was this—zombies were already rotting here and torn there. Even if the poisonous mushroom juice corroded their bodies, mixed in among all those large and small wounds, it was impossible to tell at all!
Seeing that Luo Xun was about to keep shooting at zombies, Yan Fei quickly reminded him, “Don’t aim for the head. Try somewhere else.” Luo Xun’s aim was too accurate—so accurate that every shot went straight for the crystal core. Even if the mushroom juice couldn’t corrode a zombie’s body, he could still drop one instantly. But right now they weren’t killing zombies; they were testing the mushroom juice!
Luo Xun suddenly realized this and quickly adjusted his aim, shooting a zombie in the shoulder. At first, nothing seemed to happen. Even after being hit in the shoulder, the zombie stubbornly raised its arm and continued waving its claws, as if Luo Xun hadn’t hit it at all. However, after about twenty to thirty seconds, the arm that had been waving upward suddenly went crack… and snapped off.
Luo Xun blinked and pointed uncertainly at the zombie below, now missing an arm. “That arm… did it break because of the mushrooms? Or was it already not very sturdy?”
How could Yan Fei tell? He had no idea whether that zombie’s arm had been intact to begin with. So he could only suggest, “Try another part.”
Thus, that zombie truly suffered the worst luck of its afterlives. After Luo Xun broke off one arm, the other didn’t survive either. Then its legs, its waist, and finally even its head fell off. Only then did Luo Xun finish using up the few bolts he had prepared the night before.
“It seems like it really works—just a bit slow to take effect,” Luo Xun said, rubbing his chin and nodding emphatically. After all, if it was going to corrode a zombie’s body, it would need some time to work, right? It was just that having to wait so long for results each time made it feel somewhat underwhelming.
Yan Fei chuckled and shook his head, lowering his voice. “Let me try.” As he spoke, he took advantage of the fact that no one nearby was paying attention and pulled out from his pocket a hollow round he’d prepared the night before, filled with mushroom juice and tightly sealed in metal. He fired it toward the head of a zombie below the wall.
The metal round easily pierced the top of the zombie’s skull, and then, under Yan Fei’s control, exploded inside its head! In an instant, the “slow effect” Luo Xun had complained about vanished completely under this bullet’s attack. Within the range of their naked eyes, the wound on that zombie’s head gradually spread and grew larger. Before long, the zombie was missing half its head!
However, because the bullet’s position was still some distance from the crystal core, the zombie’s body—still under the core’s control—could continue moving. From above, the sight of a zombie still shambling around with half its skull gone was indescribably eerie.
Yan Fei was very satisfied with this. Although the zombie was missing half its head, the liquid flowing out of the exposed wound was the same color as the pus oozing from other parts of its body. There was no trace of the bright red liquid extracted from the mushrooms, so it wouldn’t attract anyone else’s attention.
Even the people nearby who were shooting downward failed to notice anything unusual about that zombie—though it would have been even better if there hadn’t been even that faint mist.
Today’s experiment was a complete success. It proved that their earlier predictions had been correct and also meant that Yan Fei could carry out further trials after returning home. Just then, the unit responsible for clearing zombies patrolled in from another direction and began cleaning up the zombies clogging the area below the wall.
The few zombies Luo Xun had killed during the experiment, and the ones whose skulls Yan Fei had blown open, were all mixed in with the other corpses and taken away together. Even during incineration, they didn’t draw anyone’s attention. Just as Luo Xun had complained earlier and Yan Fei had already observed, the wounds and corrosion caused by the mushroom juice were indistinguishable from the zombies’ own rotting injuries. Even if dissection or burning later revealed crossbow bolts or bits of metal inside them, that was nothing unusual—bullets lodging near decayed wounds after being fired into a body was perfectly normal. No one would be brilliant enough to guess that the zombies’ rotting wounds had been caused by these things.
Having reached the conclusions they wanted, Luo Xun and Yan Fei were in exceptionally good spirits. After finishing a full day’s work and returning home, their fondness for the mushroom logs in the nursery room naturally rose another notch.
“Next time we go out, we can bring this kind of ammunition with us… Is it easy to put the mushroom juice into crossbow bolts?” Luo Xun checked the mushroom logs in the nursery room—and sure enough! After moving them back and giving them other plants to keep them company, the poisonous mushrooms were growing much faster. The newly hatched quails at home were also all perfectly fine!
“It’s not difficult, but I need to figure out how to make the bolt explode automatically once it enters a zombie’s body. Otherwise, you’ll only be able to use the soaking method you used before, which wastes too much time and isn’t very effective,” Yan Fei said. He’d been thinking about this problem all day.
“Why not take inspiration from real bullets? Don’t they all explode on their own once they enter the target?” Luo Xun suggested eagerly.
“They explode because they contain gunpowder,” Yan Fei explained with a smile. “What I want is something that explodes on impact—even without gunpowder, just relying on kinetic force. Anyway, we still have time. I’ll think of a way to experiment with it over the next few days.”
After pondering for a moment, Luo Xun suddenly said, “Actually, you could just make the crossbow bolts less sturdy—or have one part that’s weaker, so it cracks once it meets enough resistance. We don’t need them to explode like real bullets inside the target. As long as they crack open and let the mushroom juice flow out, the effect should be similar.”
Yan Fei’s eyes lit up. “That’s true—but we still need to calculate under what level of force, and at what shooting distance, this effect will occur. It can’t be so fragile that it breaks at the slightest touch; that would be dangerous to carry…”
Once again, the two of them threw themselves into discussing the design of a new type of crossbow bolt. Previously, Yan Fei had made all the bolts solid to increase their power. Now, researching hollow ammunition required him to refer to the structure of the bullets loaded in their handgun.
Fortunately, they didn’t have too many other pressing matters at the moment. As long as they came up with results before the end of the month and prepared a batch of ammunition in advance, it would be enough.
While Yan Fei began trying to make suitable ammunition, Luo Xun used the leftover mushroom juice from yesterday’s experiment to conduct other tests—seeing exactly what this substance could corrode.
After a night of tinkering, Yan Fei determined the appropriate thickness for the ammunition and planned to carry out loading experiments once the mushrooms could be mass-produced. Luo Xun, meanwhile, roughly determined the range of materials the mushroom juice could corrode.
In general, metals, glass, and rubber didn’t react to it. But wood, fabric, and all kinds of food at home—including bones—could not come into contact with the stuff. Although Luo Xun was deeply puzzled by why wood couldn’t touch it when the mushrooms themselves grew out of wood, for now it was enough to simply avoid letting the juice come into direct contact with such materials.
In addition, he confirmed another extremely important piece of information: “Crystal cores don’t react to it, and large amounts of water can completely wash it away.” So if they ever accidentally touched the mushroom juice, as long as they immediately rinsed the area with plenty of clean water, it would be washed away without any further effects.
Yan Fei nodded and took one of the crystal cores Luo Xun had used for testing. It was spotless, showing no sign at all that mushroom juice had ever been applied to it. This meant they could safely use this ammunition against zombies without worrying that killing them would also dissolve the crystal cores.
“The new crossbow bolts have been figured out. Once the mushrooms are ready, we can make that type of bolt,” Yan Fei said to Luo Xun with a smile. “Also, I’ve decided to try using those two Level-2 metal crystal cores tomorrow.”
“You’re almost there already?!” Luo Xun looked at him excitedly.
Yan Fei nodded. “Including the crystal cores I’ll get to use when we go to the wall tomorrow, if I use up all the crystal cores we’ve stored at home tomorrow night, I should be able to use those two Level-2 cores.” He wasn’t sure what would happen after using them, which was why he’d held off until he was certain he had enough crystal cores—and some to spare afterward—before deciding to try.
He was worried that if using the Level-2 cores really caused an “upgrade,” and that upgrade required even more crystal cores to replenish mental energy afterward, they’d be in serious trouble if they had none left.
While the two were talking, Li Tie and the others also returned. Luo Xun and Yan Fei quickly went out to meet them. As soon as they saw Luo Xun, Li Tie complained, “Our boss told us today that there is a soil-type ability user willing to leave the base—but the pay he wants is half of all the crystal cores the team gets. Half of everything we earn, including the cores we’re required to hand in for the mission! And after that, he wouldn’t even be responsible for the mission quota. We turned him down on the spot.”
Han Li said angrily, “What kind of person is that? If a team goes out and only gets two hundred crystal cores, he takes a hundred, and everyone still has to hand in a hundred to the base. Wouldn’t that mean going out for nothing just to help him farm cores? He’s dreaming!”
Wang Duo sneered disdainfully beside him. “Even in your dreams you don’t get deals that good. He should just stay in the base building walls. I heard earth-type users only get a dozen or so crystal cores a day as subsidies. A hundred cores would keep him busy for days.”
Hearing this demand, Luo Xun and Yan Fei couldn’t help laughing. All they could do was shake their heads—there was no way they could cooperate with someone who demanded such an outrageous share.
Just as everyone was chatting and joking, hurried footsteps suddenly sounded in the stairwell. Someone panted as they ran up to the floor below, didn’t stop, and continued climbing upward.
From the sound of the steps, it was clearly a woman—apparently Xu Mei and Song Lingling from the fifteenth floor. It sounded as though the two of them had run into some kind of trouble.
Everyone exchanged glances. Instead of returning to their own rooms, they all waited by the stairwell door.
Sure enough, in the darkness two figures hurried up. When they saw that the sixteenth-floor corridor was lit and that Luo Xun and the others were there, relief appeared on Xu Mei’s face as the two women ran over.
“What happened?! You’re covered in blood!” He QianKun, who was closest to the stairs, sucked in a sharp breath and quickly opened the door for them.
“Li Tie, can you lend us some bandages? And medicine—wound medicine and fever reducers. We’ll trade crystal cores for them!” As Xu Mei spoke, everyone finally saw that she was holding a child in her arms—a child covered in blood, who by her size looked to be under ten years old, and likely a girl.
“Y-yes!” Li Tie didn’t waste time asking questions. He immediately opened his door and let the two women in.
Yan Fei, bringing up the rear, sealed the door with his ability. Seeing the bloodstains on the stairs, he thought for a moment, then opened it again and said quietly to Han Li beside him, “Get some water and wash the blood off the stairs.”
Han Li snapped out of it, grabbed Wang Duo, and went to fetch water.
Everyone followed them into the room. Zhang Su frowned at the wounds on Xu Mei and the little girl—whose face had already been cleaned of blood—and said coldly, “With a cut this long, if you just wrap it up casually, how many lifetimes will it take to heal?”
The mocking tone made both Xu Mei and Song Lingling freeze, instinctively looking up at him.
Zhang Su, wearing an expression of utter disdain for blood, said to Wang Duo, who had just come back from cleaning, “Get my medical kit.”
A professional really was different. Zhang Su took out his personal tools, disinfected the wounds on Xu Mei and the girl, and directly stitched them up with medical needle and thread. There was no anesthetic—when the first needle went in, everyone present shuddered in unison, even more violently than the patients themselves.
After a few swift stitches, Zhang Su cut the thread and bandaged the wounds. Only then did he lift his brows slightly, the corners of his lips curling into a bewitching smile. “If you don’t move around, the stitches can come out in a few days. Kids heal well—she might not even have a scar.” Then he glanced at Xu Mei. “As for you… we’ll see how it heals.”
Xu Mei, having just been labeled an older woman with poor recovery ability, merely fell silent, not bothering to argue with this queenly, perverted doctor about her skin’s healing speed.
Only then did Yan Fei ask, “What happened?”
As Zhang Su packed away his medical kit, he raised his brows and laughed. “Don’t tell me she kidnapped someone’s kid?”
Song Lingling’s expression twitched—close enough to the truth.
Xu Mei took a deep breath before explaining, “Today I ran into my… ex-boyfriend. You’ve seen him.”
Everyone fell silent, knowing it was the man who’d abandoned her and run off on his own.
“When I ran into him, he was selling this girl. He was negotiating with a group of shifty people. I have a grudge against him, so I started fighting him on the spot. When the people buying the child saw us fighting, they grabbed the girl and ran. At first, we didn’t have time to deal with them. But on our way back after the fight, Song Lingling heard a child crying in an alley. When we went over, we saw those people bleeding the child… so we snatched her back.”
As she spoke, Xu Mei looked up at the group with lingering fear. “I don’t know what they were trying to do, but the scene back then… they were using the child’s blood to draw patterns on the ground, collecting it in bowls. It didn’t look normal at all…” If those people had merely been buying a child, they wouldn’t have dug deeper after missing their chance—after all, in times like these, if even the child’s parents didn’t want her, being bought and fed by someone else might be better than starving to death. But what they’d encountered today was far from normal.
Song Lingling added, “I also heard them saying they were going to drink the child’s blood!”
For two women with abilities, dealing with Xu Mei’s scumbag ex-boyfriend wasn’t difficult—those people, like Zhang Su’s own scumbag ex-teammates, were all ordinary humans. For two women long accustomed to fighting, ambushing and killing them in the dark was even easier than chopping down zombies.
But the problem was what came afterward.
“How did you get all this blood on you?” Luo Xun asked in confusion. It shouldn’t have been from fighting her ex—Xu Mei was fire-type, Song Lingling water-type. How could they have been injured this badly?
“It was the people buying the child!” Song Lingling said excitedly, standing up. “Two of them were very skilled. Sister Xu was injured the moment we rushed in. If they hadn’t wanted to capture us alive—and if we hadn’t reacted quickly—then by now we probably would’ve…” She didn’t finish the sentence. In that narrow alley, the bizarre scene of blood everywhere made everything feel deeply wrong.
To be honest, if what they had run into were just thugs, that would have been one thing. That sort of situation was unbearable, yes, but they’d been through similar experiences before. After the initial shock, they could usually calm down quickly—and might even seize the chance to fight back and kill their attackers. But what they’d seen then—the bizarre patterns drawn on the ground in fresh blood, the bowls filled with a child’s blood—left no room for doubt. If the two of them had been caught, they would probably have been treated the same way.
“What were those people letting blood for?” Wu Xin’s question made Li Tie and the others exchange uneasy looks.
Zhang Su raised an eyebrow in confusion as well. He knew that both inside and outside the base, when people truly had no food left, there were cases of cannibalism. He could understand draining blood before eating someone—but drawing pictures with the victim’s blood first? What kind of cannibal tribe’s bizarre custom was that?
It was Luo Xun who suddenly spoke up. “They don’t actually think that by drinking an ability user’s blood or eating an ability user’s flesh, they can gain abilities themselves, do they?” Like the demons in Journey to the West who were always trying to eat Tang Monk’s flesh.
His words plunged the entire room into silence. One by one, everyone stared at him with wide eyes, so intently that Luo Xun involuntarily took half a step back. He gave a stiff smile and spread his hands. “Otherwise, why would they go to the trouble of carefully draining blood? And even drawing a diagram? Of course, it could also be that someone’s deliberately spreading some kind of cult nonsense, preaching that drinking an ability user’s blood—especially a young girl’s ‘virgin blood’—can grant abilities or something like that.” The moment he heard about it, he’d vaguely felt that something about it was strange, stirring a hazy memory.
In his previous life, after he reached the Southwest Base, Luo Xun had noticed that it was almost impossible to see families letting children or women go out alone. When chatting with people at a place where he’d once worked, he’d heard about this as well. One reason given was that after the apocalypse, the numbers of women and children had plummeted; another was that single women or children going out alone in the base might be abducted—or even captured and eaten. There were also rumors that strange beliefs had once circulated in the base, such as drinking the blood of ability users—especially the fresh blood of virgins or children—granting one abilities. Because of this, it was said that quite a few children had gone missing during the early days of the apocalypse.
On top of that, meat had been extremely scarce at the beginning, and women and children were the easiest targets. As time went on, families with wives and children would rather die than let them go out, keeping them shut indoors for protection.
Even so, in the later stages of the apocalypse, some factions with considerable power—able to throw their weight around inside the base and utterly lacking in moral limits—would still force their way into others’ homes and seize their women.
All of this, however, had always seemed like mere rumor to Luo Xun, much like the stories that nearly every school before the apocalypse had—tales of certain spots being haunted, or of the school being built on a former graveyard, with ghosts appearing at midnight.
Many things were like that. Even if he had experienced them before, when Luo Xun had just been reborn, he couldn’t recall them all at once. Many memories only resurfaced when events unfolded again or when familiar signs appeared, tugging at recollections that had long been buried in the corners of his mind. No one was a genius with perfect recall—no one could be reborn and immediately remember, in meticulous detail, every day they’d lived, every event they’d encountered, and every piece of information they’d ever heard.
Anyone who could do that wouldn’t be human—they’d be a computer. And even a computer, if no one ever asked or queried it, how would you know what data it contained?
“So then—” It seemed that Zhang Su was the only one in the room not shocked by Luo Xun’s “guess.” Instead, he looked at the little girl who had been frightened out of her wits, pale from blood loss, and now lay unconscious in Xu Mei’s arms. “Does that mean this little girl is an ability user?”
Luo Xun froze for a moment. He’d only spoken out of instinct, drawing on memories from his previous life. He hadn’t considered that the child might simply be an ordinary person—or that those people might have deluded themselves into thinking they were vampires who could coexist peacefully with zombies. So he shook his head and looked at Xu Mei. “I don’t know.”
Xu Mei… “I don’t know either.” After saying that, she looked back at Luo Xun—you’re the one who came up with that possibility, why are you looking at me?
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