In fact, there was not only a problem with Jiang Huan, but a very serious one.
Due to the influence of radiation and magnetic field disorder, all the original human base stations and satellites collapsed, pushing long-distance communication technology back decades. After the team set off, communication with the headquarters could only rely on the lagging form of “short messages.”
However, just ten minutes ago, the Shanhai Communication Command received a distress call from Jiang Huan’s terminal. The sending time was at least two hours ago, and the location was about 900 kilometers southwest of the coastal base, in a straight line.
This distress message would not only be sent to the Shanhai Communication Command but also to any team with the corresponding frequency around them.
But the focus was on the content attached to the location. It described how they suddenly encountered a super-large zombie wave with a count of tens of thousands. They had been running away for over twelve hours, exhausted, and the reward for rescue was… unlimited.
As long as you have the courage to come and as long as you can save them, the Shanhai Unit can pay any price.
“Apply for a helicopter from the chairman,” Lu Jingzhi ordered. A team member immediately executed the order, while another frowned and said, “The mileage is not enough. Those helicopters at the base can’t even make a one-way trip there, let alone a round trip to pick up the team members.”
Without radio command and real-time electronic maps, helicopters with limited capacity appeared to be quite problematic. On long-distance flights, the pilots might lose their direction; even if the pilots were highly skilled and managed to reach the rendezvous point, they could still waste time and fuel due to not being able to locate the team members accurately in the air.
Moreover, the need for helicopter rescue usually occurs when the team is surrounded by zombies and unable to break through directly. However, the sound of helicopter propellers would easily attract zombies, making landing conditions extremely stringent and challenging to play their proper role.
How could Lu Jingzhi not know all this? He clenched his fists and said, “Prepare for it… Just be prepared.”
Soon, the captain of the Xincheng Unit, Chen Fengchun, rushed into the Shanhai Unit’s administrative building with several subordinates. He had a loud voice, and even before the command room door opened, they could hear him shouting, “Xiao Lu, any new updates?”
Lu Jingzhi hadn’t had a chance to respond yet, but Yao Wuque exploded immediately. He roared, “How dare you ask that?! We haven’t even asked you what it means to send Zhong Yun as the captain!”
“Yao Wuque,” Lu Jingzhi stopped him symbolically and then replied coldly to Chen Fengchun, “No news.”
“Zhong Yun is the vice captain of my Xincheng Unit, and her personal abilities are well known. What’s wrong with appointing her as the captain?” Surprisingly, Chen Fengchun was breathing heavily as if he came to support them, but it’s not clear if he’s here to shift the blame.
Yao Wuque had nothing to do now except worry. His hot temper, born with a silver spoon, made him fearless even in front of the Xincheng Unit’s captain. When he heard Chen Fengchun’s sophistry, Yao Wuque retorted angrily, “You’re still pretending. What are you pretending for? Everyone in the base knows about the captain and Zhong Yun. The captain isn’t afraid of others mentioning it. Don’t forget that Zhong Yun chose Shanhai as her first choice. Our captain personally sent her to your team. You’re deliberately messing with our captain this time, just to retaliate for the thing between the two kids at school!”
“Who the hell are you? How dare you insult me!” Chen Fengchun, with his arrogant attitude, has long been insulted by them in secret. He denied, “I didn’t do anything, and it’s not just today or yesterday that you’ve been bad-mouthing me. I don’t need to harm people for that! I’m not such a petty person!”
“Stop arguing!” Lu Jingzhi slammed the table, angrily shouting, “Yao Wuque, get out and calm down! ..Chen Fengchun, sorry, he’s just worried about Captain Jiang, so he’s blabbering. Don’t mind him.”
“Hmph.” Chen Fengchun blew his beard and stared at Yao Wuque, who also didn’t give him a good face.
However, just as Yao Wuque was about to slam the door and leave, the communication room received another red message. This represented a level-one emergency. Under the color, there were refreshed latitude and longitude coordinates, followed by a very brief English abbreviation, which translated to “Shanhai Unit led by Lu Jingzhi.”
In an instant, Lu Jingzhi’s face turned pale. He tore off the translation paper that a team member handed over with bloodshot eyes and jumped into a rage. But he was powerless. “I won’t do it! Whoever wants to do it, let them do it!”
“…” Shen Shanwu pursed his lips and left the command room without looking back. Yao Wuque hurriedly chased after him, shouting his name. However, Jiang Tong ran straight upstairs and shouted, “I’ll be in my room alone later; don’t come looking for me!”
“Jiang Tong!” Yao Wuque chased for a few steps but heard the sound of Shen Shanwu closing the door of his room on the third floor. The door was locked heavily. There were no big windows in the storage room he converted into his bedroom, so even Jiang Tong couldn’t get out of it. There should be no possibility of him jumping off the building. Yao Wuque hesitated for a few seconds, clenched his teeth, and hurriedly returned to the command room. If Lieutenant Lu decides to send a rescue team, he must be the first one to join.
Once the door was locked, Shen Shanwu didn’t care if Yao Wuque would follow. He directly summoned Wolf Dog, a mentally disabled person since he graduated from high school, to bring him to a room thousands of miles away. He carried Wolf Dog along, and they teleported to a small, two-story house.
Milk Tea, dressed in hot pants and a suspender shirt, was lazily lying in a reclining chair, reading comics. Without any warning, the sudden appearance of two people scared her so much that she spilled all the lemonade in her mouth onto the ground.
“Wolf Dog, can’t you say hi when you come?” Milk Tea scolded, shaking the lemonade off her hand. Wolf Dog didn’t reply but left his finger behind to disappear before Milk Tea.
“Top Student!!!” Milk Tea rushed over and enthusiastically started to ruffle Shen Shanwu’s hair, “You were so adorable when you were a child! Ah, my heart is melting; I want to dress you in a cute sailor outfit.”
“Don’t joke around. Jiang Huan is in trouble. I need to save him.” Shen Shanwu pushed Milk Tea away, “Do you have adult male clothes here?”
Seeing Shen Shanwu’s serious expression, Milk Tea immediately became serious too. “Yes, is Jiang Huan the pretty boy beside you? What happened?”
“He’s facing a super large-scale zombie tide during their mission,” Shen Shanwu replied.
Milk Tea’s eyebrows furrowed instantly as she scolded, “What kind of dog team sends a kid on a mission? What is the captain doing?”
“Jiang Huan is already twenty-one, and he is the captain of the team.”
“Ahem,” Milk Tea awkwardly chuckled twice, “Time really flies.”
Milk Tea led Shen Shanwu to the adjacent room. As a model, she had the entire room filled with fashion items she collected from various places. She picked out a well-coordinated set: a dark blue windbreaker with a pure white turtleneck sweater, along with a brooch, trousers, and leather shoes; she even included leather gloves.
“I set my eyes on this outfit in the cupboard for you. I liked it so much but unfortunately couldn’t get in touch with you. By the way, where have you been wandering lately? Why haven’t I heard from you?”
While Shen Shanwu changed into the outfit, Milk Tea also changed into a sleeveless black dress with a cinched waist. This formidable woman even applied eyeliner and lipstick before Shen Shanwu finished putting on his shoes. Her speed was astonishing.
“I went to the coastal base,” Shen Shanwu explained concisely, “The new mutants are also there.”
“Oh, I know; the Prophet told me.”
Soon, Wolf Dog brought the Executioner, who was in a bad mood as the game was interrupted. The Executioner scanned the number of people present, raising an eyebrow slightly, “Wolf Dog explained to me. Who wants to go?”
“Me.” “Me.” “Me.” The other three shouted in unison. Shen Shanwu and Wolf Dog looked at Milk Tea simultaneously, and he asked in surprise, “What are you going to do?”
“Just watching the excitement. You all know how boring it is for mutants.”
Wolf Dog waved his hand, dismissing her, “Go play with your sister.”
“She’s been stuck in the laboratory recently and can’t be found at all. Besides, you guys are going to rescue someone, and you might need my abilities.”
“…” Milk Tea convinced Shen Shanwu with her words, and he turned to look at the Executioner, “Can you carry three people?”
“I can, but how do I carry them?” The Executioner spread his hands. He was the shortest and smallest of the males present. Carrying them felt a bit challenging.
But as the saying goes, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” One minute later, the Executioner carried Wolf Dog on his back like a speeding arrow, soaring with the wind. He held Milk Tea in a princess carry, and in her arms was the baby-like Shen Shanwu, wrapped in a soft blanket with only his rosy face visible.
Wolf Dog held a bag of clothes for Shen Shanwu and couldn’t help but peek at him from behind the Executioner.
“This is amazing. It’s the first time I’ve seen a baby roll their eyes.”
Milk Tea was so enchanted by the chubby and cute Shen Shanwu that her heart trembled. “I can’t handle it anymore, I can’t look at Shanwu anymore. If I look a few more times, I might start lactating.”
“Uh… Can we have a more ladylike conversation, please?” Shen Shanwu couldn’t help but try to make them more serious with a stern face. However, his attempt backfired, as his sweet and babyish voice had the opposite effect, instantly making Milk Tea faint from being overwhelmed by the cuteness.
Throughout the interaction, the Executioner didn’t actively participate, but from his act of not simply dropping the three human-shaped ornaments to the ground, it was evident that he didn’t mind being around his noisy companions.
Milk Tea had offline maps downloaded on her phone software from years ago. With the latitude and longitude input, they could determine their direction, and the rest depended on the visual acuity of the mutants. If necessary, they could even fly up a highway to check the direction signs.
Fortunately, the Executioner had a good sense of direction, and the presence of tens of thousands of zombies made it easy to spot the scattered end of the zombie tide after thirty minutes.
The human flow formed by the zombies continued forward, merging into the bustling and dark sea like a locust, slowly and chaotically advancing, engulfing everything in its path.
This was not a desolate wilderness; it was a city with tall buildings and skyscrapers, most likely the downtown area of a prefecture-level city before the apocalypse. It was not a good place for humans to be. Jiang Huan was probably forcibly driven here by the zombie tide, fleeing in panic and being forced to come here.
The Executioner followed the zombie tide, flying discreetly between the high-rise buildings. The more Shen Shanwu looked at the ground, the more alarmed he became. Such a massive zombie tide, an endless sea of darkness, no end in sight. It could easily engulf a human squad of only twenty people, taking no more than a blink of an eye, and after that blink, not even bones would be left.
It had been over two hours since Jiang Huan sent the first distress signal, and before that, they had already been fighting for twelve hours. Their bodies must have reached their limits. Shen Shanwu was now even beyond the mood to talk, silently searching with his head down.
Milk Tea, who had been cheerful along the way, also became serious, her blood-colored pupils not missing any suspicious corners.
The Wolf Dog’s nose twitched, catching a faint smell of blood in the air. Suddenly, he pointed in a direction and said, “Over there.”
As soon as the words were spoken, the Executioner swooped down like a hawk hunting, descending directly from the high-rise building and standing on top of a traffic light pole at a crossroad.
The zombies gathered below immediately dispersed like a receding tide, leaving the four people in a small, quiet space.
Milk Tea jumped down from mid-air and placed the baby in her arms on the ground. In an instant, an adult male wrapped in a blanket appeared in the same spot. Wolf Dog threw the clothes to him, and he and Milk Tea jumped ahead towards the source of the smell of blood.
Shen Shanwu quickly put on the sweater and pants. He didn’t even have time to put on the gloves; he just stuffed them into the pockets of the windbreaker. When he looked up again, Wolf Dog and Milk Tea were already holding two bodies, mutilated and covered in blood, in front of them.
Shen Shanwu’s fingers trembled almost instinctively. It took him half a second to realize that these two individuals were not members of the Shanhai Unit; they belonged to the Xincheng Unit.
The nameplates were hanging loosely around their half-cut necks. Soon, they would open their eyes again, letting something other than reason control their bodies and limbs, wandering aimlessly among the zombie tide, together with the killers who took their lives.
The Executioner crudely revealed his nails and pierced through their skulls with a skillful motion, whether facing zombies or humans, he performed this action with utmost proficiency.
Shen Shanwu casually took off their nameplates and, because they were dirty, he placed them into the Wolf Dog’s coat pocket.
Wolf Dog: “…”
“I found something,” said the Executioner. “Follow me.”
They circumvented to the back of a building, surrounded by a throng of closely-packed zombies. As they got closer to the building, the zombies became more excited, trampling over each other in their eagerness to enter the building.
When the mutants approached slowly, the two massive and grotesque zombie mounds at the back of the building slowly shed their ‘shells,’ revealing their original appearance underneath.
There were three off-road vehicles, and Shen Shanwu was very familiar with two of them. He had spent over a week on one of them. The one from Xincheng and one of the Shanhai off-road vehicles had their doors wide open, the door frames deformed by the countless zombies squeezing in. Inside, everything was in chaos, and Shen Shanwu’s usual seat was covered with the unique rot and black blood of zombies.
The door of the other car was locked, but Shen Shanwu heard unpleasant noises inside. The Executioner forcibly opened the door before him, walked in, and then brought out a corpse wearing a Shanhai team uniform.
Shen Shanwu didn’t know his name, but he clearly remembered his face. He also recalled that this man liked to eat corn and was left-handed.
This time, the Executioner first took off the man’s nameplate from the collar and threw it to Shen Shanwu before using two fingers to end his life.
“The car is here, and the people won’t go far,” Shen Shanwu said, keeping the nameplate. He looked at the three vehicles parked haphazardly, with severed limbs and flesh crushed under the wheels, and the front and windows of the cars severely deformed from collisions.
He imagined how more than a dozen humans were chased to this place, and how they hurriedly got out of the car when they had no way out. Shen Shanwu mentally calculated the possible routes and slowly shifted his gaze to the large building behind them. “It should be up there.”
*
Xu Ye’s gun has been with him for many years, never leaving his side since he started walking the path of a mercenary. He has killed at least hundreds of zombies, and his marksmanship has become increasingly precise through real combat.
After firing the last bullet, without hesitation, Xu Ye smashed the gun into a zombie that was about to grab Zhang Xiaowen’s neck, and then he used the already blunt umbrella knife to stab through the zombie’s side of the brain.
Xu Ye had long believed that he couldn’t lift his hand anymore. His stamina had been depleted in the long battle with the zombies. However, at the critical moment when his teammate’s life was hanging by a thread, he didn’t know from where he borrowed the strength to pull Zhang Xiaowen back from the brink of life and death.
“Hahaha…” He couldn’t help but burst into laughter, his stubble stained with unknown blood. Previously, he would have carefully wiped it clean, but after so many times, he just let it be. “I’ve always thought I had pretty good luck. With a global population of 8 billion and over a billion in the country, only tens of millions survived the radiation, and I happen to be one of those millions.”
“But the luckiest thing was choosing the Shanhai Unit. It was just a small team at the beginning, with a captain barely twenty years old, still so green, and a deputy captain of almost the same age. It looked like a configuration that would fall apart tomorrow…”
“Who could have imagined that within a year, this small team would grow into one of the top ten strong teams at the Coastal Base and then, in the second year, leap to the first position?”
Xu Ye laughed, his eyes forming two arcs like a carefree swordsman fishing on a riverbank in a straw raincoat. “Captain Jiang, in the next life, don’t end up in this damn apocalypse again. If you’re unlucky enough to encounter it again, I’ll come back to be your lieutenant.”
Jiang Huan glanced back at him but didn’t reply immediately. His breath was heavy, his cloak was dirty and stained, and his eyes were bloodshot. Mechanically, he swung his knife to fend off the approaching zombies, preventing them from collapsing the barriers they had set up.
“I can’t die here,” Jiang Huan said, his voice low and hoarse, but his unwavering conviction remained unchanged from beginning to end. He would always stand in front of his teammates, using his seemingly indestructible body and will to withstand everything.
“I absolutely cannot die here!”
“Captain…” Zhang Xiaowen choked out, her thigh injured during the battle and escape, swollen to the size of a bucket, and her bones must have been broken. Even the slightest touch causes excruciating pain, covering her forehead in cold sweat. She had already prepared herself to sacrifice, but Jiang Huan carried her all the way to this final place.
“Captain… Captain…” Her consciousness was gradually becoming hazy from the loss of blood, and all she could repeat in a whisper was the word “captain.” Throughout the journey, she had pleaded countless times to be put down, to let her be the bait and lure away the zombies. She had prepared herself to face death.
But Zhang Xiaowen was also clear about her own heart. She understood that she was far from as fearless and selfless as she appeared to be. When Jiang Huan rushed back without hesitation to carry her, she felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude and joy. She was willing to delay the time for the team, but as long as there was even the tiniest bit of a chance, she didn’t want to die.
Zhang Xiaowen really, really didn’t want to die. Not even a little bit. She was still young, with countless regrets and wishes. Even in this terrible, chaotic world, even if she had to struggle to survive, she didn’t want to die.
She truly, truly wanted to live on…
The guns and firearms had turned into useless scrap half an hour ago. Smashing the zombies with them was too much effort. The locked iron door was forcibly knocked open by the relentless claws of the zombies, and the stacked tables, chairs, and various debris became the last line of defense.
However, this line of defense was also on the verge of collapsing. It would soon crumble.
Zhong Yun tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and smiled gently at her sister beside her. She walked slowly to Jiang Huan’s side, her eyes filled with nostalgia and reluctance. Her arms trembled from the prolonged swinging of the knife. “Captain Jiang… Jiang Huan, can I call you that? In this final moment…”
“This time, being able to go on a mission with you, I’m truly happy… I shouldn’t have confessed so early. If I could have hidden my feelings better, maybe I could have stayed by your side for a longer time.”
“Ah, I really envy Zhong Yin. I envy her so much. Every time she comes back and tells me what you said, what you did, I can’t help but envy her. Why do you have such a strange ailment of the heart? When will it be cured? I’ve been waiting… Maybe I’ll never get the chance?”
“Jiang Huan, this time, can I finally confess my unwavering feelings for you, even until death?”
The weighty and resolute words finally caught Jiang Huan’s attention, but his gaze only lingered on her for half a second.
“…I’m not willing.”
“Huh?” Zhong Yun raised her head, looking at the man who haunted her dreams.
“I’m not willing,” Jiang Huan repeated again, an endless hatred grinding between his teeth and filling his eyes, “I’m not willing!”
I’m not willing to die here. Just when I received news about Shen Shanwu, just when I found out that he might still be alive, why is fate so cruel to me?
Shen Shanwu, I’ve been waiting for you for so long, where are you?
With a loud bang, the piled-up tables and chairs were finally knocked open by the horde of zombies. The zombies, who had been lusting for their prey for a long time, rushed in with frenzied excitement. Their twisted bodies staggered yet moved swiftly, and their sharp nails reached out indiscriminately toward the helpless humans, who were now like lambs waiting to be slaughtered.
Xu Ye took a step forward, spreading his arms to try and fend off the zombies’ bites. He knew it was a futile gesture, merely delaying the inevitable fate of the people he wanted to protect behind him. But he couldn’t bear to watch other team members torn apart and bitten to death right before his eyes.
Zhang Xiaowen’s eyes welled up with tears as she struggled to stand with one leg against the wall, resolutely facing death. Zhong Yin held onto Zhong Yun’s hand, and the two sisters held each other tightly.
Jiang Han took a step forward, raising his knife with fierce determination. He didn’t want to appear weak; he had never shown any fear or retreat from the beginning to the end. Yet, in this final moment, Jiang Han couldn’t help but think of that person, recalling the carefree days when he had nestled under the other’s wings—
Shen Shanwu, if only you were here…
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