Everyone first went their separate ways to put away their supplies.
Back in her own apartment, Yin Shi set her backpack down on the floor and lifted her shirt to check on Mo Li.
Mo Li had been curled up like a baby, pressed tightly against her body. He didn’t feel as cold as before—in fact, he was gradually warming up. Jiang Cheng’s body was continuously providing him with heat.
But if she set him down now, at this temperature, he would probably cool off again.
Jiang Cheng decided to keep carrying Mo Li with her.
The members of the interim homeowners’ association quickly dropped off their things at home, then hurried back downstairs and gathered to head to the property management office together.
Master Luo and his people were already there. When they saw the group arrive, they stepped aside from in front of the computer. “You should take a look.”
Everyone watched the surveillance playback.
After they had left at noon, the people in the conference room were in bad shape. Some were banging on the door and shouting. Some were crying inside. Some were throwing things.
One person didn’t look well. After pacing around a couple of times, he curled up in a corner, hugging his knees. Everyone else was caught up in their own emotions, so no one paid him any attention.
His face was buried in his knees, as if he were resting. He stayed like that until just before Jiang Cheng and the rear guard were about to return to the compound. Then, suddenly, the person lifted his head. His eyes were pitch black.
He had turned.
It was clear to see that the infected’s physical abilities were enhanced. This infected didn’t even stand up first. He launched himself directly from a seated, knee-hugging position at the person nearest to him.
That person was caught completely off guard and was knocked to the ground.
Those watching the surveillance footage instinctively flinched back—a common human reaction to a jump scare in a horror movie. But then everyone remembered that the people in that room were already potential carriers with exposed wounds.
The man from Building 6 reacted the fastest. He grabbed a hammer and swung it hard at the back of the infected’s head. Others snapped out of it too and joined in with their own weapons.
Working together, they killed the infected in just a few blows.
But when they pulled the infected off, Jiang Cheng and the others could see that the person who had been bitten on the ground had half his face and neck torn to shreds. He lay there convulsing.
The surveillance image seemed to freeze for a moment.
But it hadn’t actually frozen. The injured person’s body was clearly twitching. It was the people standing around him who had frozen.
Even through the screen, you could feel the helplessness.
Everyone knew they would turn too, or end up like this—bitten by someone who had turned first, with no hope of survival.
The basement room had no windows. The door was not only locked but barricaded. There was nowhere to run.
Despair hung heavy in the air.
The surveillance camera was mounted in one corner of the ceiling. From the footage, Jiang Cheng and the others could only see the backs of these people.
But then the man from Building 6 suddenly turned his head. Even through the screen, he glared at them with pure hatred.
Even Jiang Cheng felt her hair stand on end for a moment.
The man from Building 6 grabbed a chair, climbed onto it, and faced the surveillance camera. Then he swung his hammer at the lens.
The image vanished, replaced by static and chaotic snow.
Everyone looked at each other.
Song Jingshuo said, “This is bad.”
Li Jiangbing: “Huh?”
Jiang Cheng explained, “If any exposure of a wound leads to 100% mutation, then in the end, there will be at least one infected left in that conference room. If several people turn at the same time, and the others don’t manage to eliminate them in time and get killed instead—since the infected can recognize each other and won’t attack one another—there might end up being multiple infected in that room.”
Song Jingshuo continued, “That bastard smashed the camera. Now we have no way of knowing how many infected are actually in there. If we open that door unprepared…”
Everyone understood.
Someone sighed. “What was he even trying to accomplish?”
Hurting others for no benefit to himself.
It wasn’t hard to figure out, really. The man had just completely lost it. He wanted to take revenge on society.
The other residents of this compound without any exposed wounds—meaning Jiang Cheng, Song Jingshuo, and the rest of them—were “society” as far as he was concerned.
Jiang Cheng sighed softly. “We’re not opening that door.”
That was a complete rejection of the possibility that there might be survivors. A definitive death sentence.
No one said a word. The atmosphere in the property management office was heavy.
Suddenly someone said, “The news!”
Everyone turned to look.
A television was mounted on the wall. It had been on this whole time. Someone had muted it earlier while they were watching the surveillance footage.
Now, an emergency news bulletin was playing again.
Someone quickly turned the volume back on.
[…extremely dangerous. We urge all citizens to arm themselves in self-defense. If you encounter an infected, kill them immediately.]
Everyone in the property management office watched in silence as the government’s second news broadcast played.
It was different from the morning. That morning, the suggestion had been to “stay home as much as possible” and only “use force to fight back” if necessary.
By the afternoon, the guiding principle had changed.
What had happened between morning and afternoon?
“Everyone should be prepared,” Jiang Cheng said softly. “There’s no rescue coming. The military is probably finished.”
Everyone looked at her in shock.
Master Luo said nervously, “Miss Jiang, you shouldn’t say things like that.”
Jiang Cheng’s gaze swept across them. Her eyes were dark.
“I said it before. Not every place is as lucky as our compound—where most people live alone, physically isolated from each other.”
“Those places with high-density, close-quarters living—they’re absolutely the worst-hit zones. College dorms, prisons… and the military.”
“In a military barracks, a single room might hold over a dozen or even dozens of soldiers. That’s ultra-high-density living. Their activity areas—like the mess hall and the training ground—are also highly concentrated.”
“Even in our own compound, open spaces like the garden became the worst-hit areas. But our population density can’t even begin to compare to a military base’s.”
So many people concentrated in one place, all collapsing at the same time, creating the first wave of original infected. And during that first encounter between ordinary people and the infected, how many would be injured, sustaining open wounds, before they even knew what was happening?
Even if they managed to contain the first wave, the next step would be the injured beginning to turn.
The agility of a transformed infected was incomparable to that of an original infected.
“A soldier’s physical condition is nothing like an ordinary person’s. If the degree of enhancement is proportional to the baseline physical fitness, then the transformed infected in a military base would be on a completely different level from those turned from civilians.”
“Soldiers have the physiques to scale walls, swim rivers, and go into battle.”
Everyone imagined it—those already formidable physiques, mutated and further enhanced. Their faces began to pale.
Fear came from an overwhelming sense of losing control.
Yes. Loss of control.
The open spaces of a military base were too vast, the personnel too densely packed. By the time the upper ranks of the military realized that the wounded would become even more terrifying transformed infected, the situation would already have spiraled beyond control.
The sense of security they had felt upon returning to the compound came from the iron gate keeping external infected out. The infected inside the compound had been cleared. The supplies they had gathered were enough to last through the first few days of chaos.
Then, they would wait for the government to solve everything.
But now, being told that “no rescue is coming”—that fragile sense of security evaporated in an instant.
The property management office fell into a terrifying silence.
Fortunately, everyone gathered here was a member of the interim homeowners’ association—people who had responded to the call and come down to fight in the first wave, or at least very early on.
Compared to the other residents, these people were clearly braver, more proactive, and relatively calmer in the face of crisis.
The property management staff, on the other hand, showed obvious signs of panic.
“No way…” Master Luo murmured. “No way…”
One very young property management employee asked blankly, “Th-then what do we do?”
Song Jingshuo’s mind was also in turmoil. The situation had developed beyond his expectations. He, too, was trying to figure out “what to do next.”
That was when Jiang Cheng spoke.
“First,” she said, “Master Luo, until the property manager can return to work, you need to take charge of our property management staff.”
“We’ve bought enough food for them to last half a month. For now, at least, everyone is secure. No need to panic. What’s urgent now is making sure we guard the compound gates properly. We all worked hard together to clear the infected from inside the compound. We can’t let infected from the streets get back in.”
“Master Luo, can you take on the management of the property team?”
Jiang Cheng’s gaze held a quiet expectation as she looked directly into Master Luo’s eyes.
People who work regular jobs have a peculiar trait: when they’re running around like headless chickens, completely lost, if someone gives them a clear task, they actually calm down. They feel like they’re grasping onto something.
Master Luo’s panic subsided under Jiang Cheng’s steady gaze. He visibly calmed down.
He didn’t agree immediately. He thought for a moment, then nodded firmly. “Yes. I’ll handle the property management side. I’ve already told the guards to lock the gates.”
Jiang Cheng praised him. “That’s very thoughtful.”
Then she added, “But I don’t think one person is enough for the gate. There should be at least two people on duty at all times. If something happens and one person goes down, the other can raise the alarm. Can you arrange that?”
This time, Master Luo agreed right away. “Okay. You’re right.”
Jiang Cheng turned to the others. “Next, what we talked about at noon: door-to-door sweeping of the buildings.”
“There are definitely still infected trapped inside their own apartments. We need to clear them out.”
“There are also some bodies in the buildings that we didn’t have time to deal with this morning. We can handle them during the sweep.”
“Um, what’s your name?” Jiang Cheng asked a young female property management employee.
The girl quickly said, “Yang Xinyan.”
A young woman working in property management was usually either in finance or customer service. Since they already knew the finance staff didn’t live in the dorms and hadn’t been able to come to work today, Yang Xinyan was most likely in customer service—a desk worker.
Jiang Cheng gave her a task. “There’s a contact thread for our interim homeowners’ association on the resident forum. Everyone’s name, apartment number, and phone number are registered there. Make a spreadsheet, put together a contact list. Does the property management office have a printer? Print it out—one copy for everyone here, and post one here at the office too.”
As it happened, Yang Xinyan’s daily work was exactly this kind of administrative task. It was what she was good at and used to. Being given a task gave her a sense of purpose.
Yang Xinyan acknowledged the assignment and immediately sat down at a workstation and began clicking away with her mouse.
Jiang Cheng turned back.
Song Jingshuo knew she was about to assign the next round of tasks.
She had taken control again. How did this keep happening?
Song Jingshuo began reflecting on where he had gone wrong. How did this girl always manage to be one step ahead?
He had been disoriented for just a brief moment. Who wouldn’t need half a minute or a minute to digest a development of this magnitude?
Everyone needs a moment to collect themselves.
Yes. That was the difference between them. That moment to collect herself.
When faced with an emergency, everyone goes through shock, acceptance, processing, emotional stabilization—and then they start thinking about solutions.
But Jiang Cheng didn’t. She jumped straight to the last step.
She skipped all the normal reactions that anyone else would have.
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