Compared to primary mutants, infected mutants were on an entirely different level.
They had greater strength, faster speed, and more agile limbs.
The first person to be tackled was brought down by an infected mutant.
The one who was tackled let out a loud scream, which quickly turned into a howl of agony. His companions immediately rushed to help, hammering and wrenching the back of the infected mutant’s head.
The mutant was beaten to death on the spot.
But when they pulled the mutant off the fallen man, they saw that his face had been gnawed raw—bloody and mangled. The pain had him convulsing.
No wonder he’d screamed so horribly.
Someone pulled him up. “Get up!”
Lying there was impossible. With so many mutants around, was he just going to wait to die?
The injured man understood that himself. Gritting through the pain, he scrambled to his feet, made a couple of muffled sounds, and ran toward the building entrance. Everyone realized he was heading back inside.
Someone blurted out, “Don’t let him go back! He’ll turn too!”
Everyone who heard that paused for a moment, unable to stop themselves from looking over. The injured man had clearly heard it as well, because he immediately sprinted faster, terrified that someone might stop him.
A few people called out, “Hey—” but there was nothing they could do. They couldn’t abandon the mutants right in front of them to chase after someone who hadn’t even turned yet.
More mutants kept charging. Everyone had to focus on the immediate threat.
A primary mutant could be handled by one person alone—it was just the sheer number that made it exhausting. An infected mutant was harder for a single person to deal with, but much easier when several people ganged up on it.
The commotion in the garden was enormous. Nearly every household had someone standing by their floor-to-ceiling windows, watching.
Jiang Cheng saw more and more people trickling out of the buildings, carrying all kinds of weapons—people who hadn’t joined the forum-organized effort at first.
The pressure in the garden began to ease.
Jiang Cheng thought for a moment, then stood up, stroked Mo Li’s head, grabbed her baseball bat, and headed out.
Just as she pulled her door shut, she heard another “bang” from further down the hall. She turned her head and saw the big man Li Jiangbing stepping out, his tactical batons tucked under his arm.
“Oh?” Li Jiangbing was happy to see her. He called out from a distance, “You’re going downstairs too?”
The elevator hall had entrances at both ends. Li Jiangbing was closer to his side. Jiang Cheng walked over. “Everyone should do their part. I can’t just stand by and watch.”
Li Jiangbing said, “Exactly. That’s what I was thinking. I slept too late last night and woke up late. I just saw the posts—otherwise I would’ve gone down already.”
When people feel guilty, they tend to over-explain.
Jiang Cheng didn’t call him out on it. After all, she herself hadn’t joined the first wave either. She had let others go first, observed the situation, and only then decided to participate.
It was an easy mindset to understand—just human nature.
The two of them went downstairs together.
This was Li Jiangbing’s first time going down since waking up on Saturday. On the steps at the building entrance lay the security guard’s body. At the bottom of the steps lay another body—probably kicked down by someone exiting, because leaving it sprawled across the steps would’ve been too much in the way.
Li Jiangbing recognized the body after a couple of glances and sighed. “That’s Xiao Bai’s dad.”
Xiao Bai’s dad had died a gruesome death.
Li Jiangbing couldn’t help but look at Jiang Cheng a little strangely.
Jiang Cheng stated simply, “His wrist—he broke it himself chasing me down the hallway. His leg—he smashed through a third-floor window and jumped, then broke it on landing.”
Li Jiangbing’s eyes widened in understanding. “So that’s what happened.”
Jiang Cheng concluded, “It seems like they keep chasing anything that makes sound or is alive.”
“Be careful out there,” she added. “I was watching from upstairs earlier. The infected mutants seem to see better during the day than at night. Almost like they can actually see now. Probably sensitive to light.”
Li Jiangbing gripped a tactical baton in each hand and said boldly, “Got it.”
Ever since he had personally killed Li Ziqing, it was as if he had crossed a threshold. His psychological fear had been overcome.
The first wave of “suicide squad” members from each building had been making noise all along. By now, most of the mutants had been drawn toward them.
Clusters had formed not far from each building entrance.
Jiang Cheng and Li Jiangbing tightened their grips on their weapons and headed straight for the nearest cluster. The people surrounded by that group were their neighbors from the same building.
A baseball bat is designed for swinging—it transfers force well and feels great in hand.
Jiang Cheng stepped forward and, with one swing from behind, sent a mutant crashing to the ground. She brought the bat down several more times, striking hard, and the mutant stopped moving.
Li Jiangbing was impressed. “Hah!”
He didn’t just stand around either. He swung his T-batons into action.
Despite being into fitness, he had only practiced combat sports—never really trained with weapons. His T-batons, nunchucks, and the like were mostly for show, just for fun.
Using T-batons like makeshift clubs was less effective than a baseball bat for generating power. Still, brute force could work miracles. At the very least, Li Jiangbing’s muscles weren’t for nothing—he had strength.
When he swung his batons, he could take down a mutant in a few strikes.
Jiang Cheng kept an eye on everyone else’s movements, then turned to look at Li Jiangbing between swings.
“I feel like my strength increased after I woke up yesterday,” she said. Coming downstairs, this was mainly what she wanted to verify. “What about you? Do you feel anything like that?”
“Huh? Is that a thing?” Li Jiangbing swung his batons as he spoke. “I don’t. Feels the same as before to me.”
A strength-training guy like Li Jiangbing wasn’t a reliable point of reference.
Jiang Cheng took down another mutant. She observed that the few male neighbors from her building seemed to have about the same strength as her—maybe even less.
They struggled more than she and Li Jiangbing did to smash a mutant’s skull.
So “enhanced strength” wasn’t a benefit everyone received. It seemed like only she and the mutants had it.
Jiang Cheng nodded to herself and didn’t say more. She just reminded him, “Let’s not split up. Be careful not to let them bite you.”
There were too many mutants. Even if they weren’t very agile, their numbers were overwhelming. One moment of carelessness—a strike from the side or behind—and you could get injured and infected.
Jiang Cheng had no intention of turning.
With two strength-enhanced fighters like Jiang Cheng and Li Jiangbing joining the battle, the pressure on their building’s group eased considerably.
Initially, only six people had come out from their building. Now, including Jiang Cheng and Li Jiangbing, their group had grown to twelve. The twelve of them cleared out the mutants gathered near their building, then teamed up to help other buildings.
More and more residents streamed out of the buildings.
By around 10:30 a.m., the mutants in the garden had been cleared. Everyone who had come out from all six buildings gathered in the central plaza. A rough headcount put the crowd at nearly three hundred people.
A low buzz of chatter filled the air.
“Going to work,” and “Does this count as us killing people?” were the two phrases Jiang Cheng heard most.
Even in this bizarre situation, everyone was still a law-abiding citizen, and those were their biggest concerns.
Jiang Cheng didn’t know why she found it so ridiculous—after all, she was just another weary office worker herself. She should be worrying about work too.
Someone asked, “What do we do now? We can’t just leave the bodies lying around, can we?”
Many agreed. With so many bodies in the summer heat, leaving them unattended could cause a plague.
Li Jiangbing agreed too. Just as he was about to voice his support, Jiang Cheng stepped forward and raised her voice. “That’s not the most urgent issue. The most urgent thing right now is to immediately secure the injured people so they don’t turn into infected mutants.”
The crowd fell silent. Everyone looked at her.
The girl had fair skin and looked quite gentle. She was holding a baseball bat covered in blood and some sticky substance.
“When a normal person gets bitten by a mutant, they turn into an infected mutant—even stronger than the ones that turned yesterday. Everyone should have seen that,” she said. “I came downstairs late. When I was still upstairs, I saw injured people run back into the building. There must be others who got hurt too. Let’s assume it spreads through blood, like rabies—anyone who’s bleeding could potentially turn. So I need to ask: does anyone know the injured people who ran back? Does anyone know which units they live in?”
The crowd buzzed with discussion.
Someone from Building 2 said, “That guy from our building—I only know he lives on the 11th floor. I see him in the elevator all the time. But I don’t know which unit.”
Jiang Cheng nodded and asked, “Are there any injured people here right now? Don’t hide it.”
Everyone looked at each other.
Li Jiangbing yelled out, “If anyone’s hurt, speak up!”
His muscular arms were braced at his sides, and his tall, large frame stood behind Jiang Cheng, backing her up. He was quite intimidating.
Someone asked, “So what do we do with the injured? We can’t just… you know.”
The psychological burden of killing mutants was lighter mainly because the physical changes in mutants gave people a strong sense that they were no longer human. You knew clearly that this person couldn’t be considered a person anymore—they were a monster.
But injured people, as long as they hadn’t turned yet, still looked completely human.
Would they have to kill them? That was much harder to stomach.
Jiang Cheng said, “Actually, we can’t be sure that an injury will definitely lead to infection. But we have to take precautions. The best approach is to confine them first. If they actually turn, then we deal with it.”
Everyone agreed with that. “That’s right.”
“Makes sense.”
“If they don’t turn, they’re still human. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Keeping them contained is the right thing to do.”
Having gained everyone’s support, Jiang Cheng scanned the crowd and said, “So now, let’s check each other—everyone look at the people next to you and see if anyone is bleeding or injured.”
With that, she put her baseball bat on the ground, pulled open her collar, and let the people around her look at her neck.
Her pale neck was completely clean.
Then she lifted her pant legs. Her ankles were also clean.
She lifted the hem of her shirt a bit—her stomach and lower back were clean too. No injuries anywhere.
With her taking the lead, the two to three hundred people in the plaza began checking each other. In no time, they found over a dozen injured people.
One person tried to sneak away but was caught and held down.
He shouted, “It’s just a scraped—just a bit of skin!”
There was a scratch on his ankle, bleeding. It had been caused by the fingernails of a mutant that had been knocked down but wasn’t dead yet.
The injured had been found. Now what?
Everyone naturally looked to Jiang Cheng.
The girl wasn’t particularly tall or strong-looking, but her clear, sharp eyes somehow made people feel that there was someone steady to rely on.
Leave a Reply