But Youth Apartments definitely couldn’t go do the heavy lifting alone—why should they? That street was shared by both communities. And besides, everyone already had a low opinion of Jixiang Jiayuan.
“Either we all suffer the stench together.”
“Or both communities come out and work together.”
“Absolutely!”
Everyone held this opinion, remarkably unanimous.
The meeting had a lively atmosphere and lasted until past one in the afternoon, finally breaking up only when everyone’s stomachs started growling.
It was practically a pleasant gathering.
Many people received assignments—though they were all trivial little tasks, having something to do gave them a sense of fulfillment.
Some didn’t want to crowd into the elevators, so they rushed down the stairwells, eager to round up people and get to work.
Li Jiangbing took on the task of coordinating with Jixiang Jiayuan. He named a few people, and none of them hesitated—they agreed at once and went with him to handle it.
Jiang Cheng took note of all this.
As they say, wherever there are people, there are factions. In just five or six days, several small groups had already begun to form among the dozens of people.
The Provisional Committee swung into full gear.
For matters that needed manpower or ideas, they’d start threads on the forum to recruit volunteers or brainstorm.
After lunch, when many people went downstairs for a stroll, they saw a bunch of folks gathered at the east gate, pondering how to reinforce the security measures, deep in animated discussion.
Li Jiangbing replied that afternoon about the communication with Jixiang Jiayuan: “It’s settled. We’ll do it together tomorrow morning.”
He added: “Old Zhou is shockingly thin.”
On Friday morning, the Provisional Committee organized people to clean up Jixiang West Street and met up with the Jixiang Jiayuan crowd again. When Jiang Cheng and Song Jingshuo saw Zhou Wang—even though Li Jiangbing had already warned them—they were still startled.
They hadn’t seen him in just a few days, and he’d gotten frighteningly thin.
He looked more than ten years older.
When he spoke, his demeanor had changed a lot too.
The last time they’d dealt with him, he’d come across as a worldly, slick middle-aged man—unlike the passionate, responsible young guys from Youth Apartments. He’d always seemed like someone who wanted to grab power while also dodging responsibility, speaking vaguely and brushing things off with a laugh.
Now, when he opened his mouth, he was much tougher. The Jixiang Jiayuan people actually seemed more organized and obedient than they had a few days ago.
When he spoke, it carried weight.
Jiang Cheng and Song Jingshuo exchanged a glance.
Zhou Wang had dark circles under his eyes. Even though no one had to go to work now and everyone could sleep in, he’d developed bags under his eyes.
Song Jingshuo said: “Brother Zhou, you need to take care of yourself.”
Zhou Wang nodded, then looked them over.
The girl was young and pretty, the guy tall and handsome. Li Jiangbing, who’d come to talk to him about this yesterday afternoon, was also under thirty—a bit rough around the edges, with that street-smart, worldly air, but still a capable man.
These young people had completely taken charge of a community of several thousand people, keeping everything in good order.
His eyes were bloodshot, looking somewhat cloudy, fixed on them.
“Xiao Jiang,” he said. “You guys are impressive.”
Unlike him—insomniac, unable to sleep.
Jiang Cheng asked: “What else happened?”
Zhou Wang knew from her tone that they’d already heard about the beating death. Blame those people for posting all about it on the forum.
He wasn’t very tech-savvy and had been slow to react.
He’d actually wanted to keep all these things under wraps, not let too many people know.
But Jiang Cheng and her group were different. These young people had been extending goodwill from the very start and had provided real, tangible help to Jixiang Jiayuan.
If they hadn’t brought people over to help on Monday, who knows how many more would have died.
Moreover, Zhou Wang hadn’t been able to sleep for days now. He was in agony and desperately wished someone could understand him.
Ordinary people wouldn’t do—they’d have to be in the same position as him. Otherwise, they couldn’t possibly comprehend the weight of pressure he was under.
The ones who could best empathize with him were probably the few people standing before him right now.
The middle-aged man gazed into the distance at the street corner, seeming lost for a moment, then turned back and said: “So many things.”
“Damned if this isn’t the time when you finally see who’s human and who’s a monster.”
“Scumbags are everywhere.”
Yesterday—just yesterday—a young mother had jumped off a building with her baby in her arms.
She’d come from a family of four. Her mother-in-law and husband had turned one after another, and she’d holed up in the bedroom with her child, surviving on baby formula. It wasn’t until Jixiang Jiayuan organized a building-by-building sweep that they’d found her, broke down the door, and killed the two zombies in her home.
But she’d missed the group supermarket run, and her home was completely out of food.
She could only turn to her neighbors for help.
But everyone had witnessed the disorder and chaos at Buy Duoduo, and they all understood that order had collapsed to a certain extent. No one knew what would happen next. Everyone clung tightly to their own supplies, and no one was willing to lend a hand.
Finally, a male neighbor expressed willingness to help her—but took the opportunity to make indecent demands of the young mother.
Shocked, furious, and terrified, she hastily refused and, of course, received no help.
That was Tuesday.
She’d ransacked her home looking for food, scraping by on a few snacks, and her baby had only half a can of formula left.
That afternoon, the TV broadcast said the government had begun rescue efforts, and she’d been filled with hope.
Wednesday night, the news broadcasted an update on the rescue progress.
She’d thought it over all night, wrote a suicide note, and at dawn on Thursday, jumped with her child in her arms.
Jiang Cheng and Song Jingshuo both fell silent.
Jiang Cheng said: “I didn’t see this on the forum.”
Zhou Wang: “I couldn’t let them talk nonsense. I had Xiao Huang—oh, Old Huang’s son, remember?”
He looked around, then pointed them out: “Over there.”
Jiang Cheng and Song Jingshuo both turned to look and indeed saw the boy who’d previously held back tears while helping the adults with registration.
“I have him with me now. Old Huang’s gone, so it’s just him and his mother at home.” Zhou Wang said, “The kid knows how to use the internet. I had him take over managing the forum. He’s the ‘moderator’ now.”
Though they’d only dealt with Old Huang briefly, the impression remained. Old Huang had been older, with stronger organizational skills and more presence than Zhou Wang. If he hadn’t died, he’d definitely have been the one leading Jixiang Jiayuan.
Even Zhou Wang said: “If Old Huang were still here…”
Maybe he wouldn’t have to lie awake at night—at least someone would share the burden.
The young mother’s suicide was just one of many miserable things that had happened over the past few days. He’d dealt with far more than just that one incident.
He was mentally exhausted, losing hair, unable to sleep—but he’d also grown cold and hard.
Because right now, slickness and worldly wisdom couldn’t solve a damn thing.
What had happened at Jixiang Jiayuan was exactly the situation Jiang Cheng had wanted to prevent at Youth Apartments—so much so that she’d coordinated with Song Jingshuo in advance.
It was disorder.
When the government said they needed to rebuild “survival order,” those people in power saw more clearly than anyone—they knew exactly what was happening and what was about to happen.
Song Jingshuo thought she would ask about that male neighbor.
He assumed that as a girl, she would naturally empathize with other women—like how she’d pulled Su Yu from Building 2 into the Provisional Committee. A girl like her, decisive and commanding, might want to avenge that young mother, or at least teach that male neighbor a lesson.
But Jiang Cheng just nodded, said “Don’t overthink it—we’ve done what we could,” and ended the topic.
Song Jingshuo wondered if he was overthinking things.
Jixiang West Street had been cleaned up.
The rotting, stinking corpses—round heads, eyeballs rolling on the ground—were all piled together and set ablaze.
Jiang Cheng took this opportunity to do something she’d been wanting to do for a while: block off the road.
She wanted to use the cars parked along Jixiang West Street to seal off both ends of the street. That way, a buffer safety zone would be created between Jixiang Jiayuan’s west gate and Youth Apartments’ east gate.
Residents from both communities could walk out of their own gates onto the street alone and still be relatively safe.
In the past, Zhou Wang would have said things like “That’s not really appropriate” or “What if the car owners come after us?”—shifting responsibility left and right. But now, the moment Jiang Cheng proposed it, he nodded in agreement.
Accountability only matters for the living.
First, you have to stay alive.
The two communities worked together on this, which not only made it easy but also smoothed over the resentment on the Youth Apartments side.
No one likes being taken advantage of by neighbors all the time. The neighbors needed to pull their weight too.
They picked boxy vans or taller SUVs to use as barricades.
The able-bodied men chanted in unison as they lifted the front ends of the cars, wrenching them out from the curb. At first they tried not to damage other people’s vehicles, but later, when it proved too difficult, they just smashed the windows, released the handbrakes, and steered the wheels—pushing them became much easier.
Private property didn’t matter that much anymore.
With many hands, the work was light. The street closure Jiang Cheng wanted was completed quickly.
From a certain perspective, this effectively linked Youth Apartments and Jixiang Jiayuan together.
What Jiang Cheng really wanted was to expand the safety zone.
The most basic safety zone was, of course, Youth Apartments itself. In case of trouble, they’d lock the community gates tight and defend them fiercely.
Neither people nor zombies would get in.
But on that foundation, the bigger the safety zone, the better.
Sure enough, once both ends of Jixiang West Street were sealed off, everyone felt a sense of expanded space.
The suffocating, oppressive feeling of being cooped up inside the community suddenly eased a great deal.
Zhou Wang also sought Jiang Cheng’s advice on other matters.
His task for Xiao Huang was to check the resident forums of nearby communities every day—Youth Apartments in particular. He was to report anything important back to him in time.
Ever since Youth Apartments set up their broadcast system, communication on many matters had become much more convenient. Most specific arrangements were handled through various group chats.
There was less discussion on the forum.
But Su Yu’s post about centralized recyclable waste disposal had been published before Gao Yuxuan got the broadcast system up and running.
Xiao Huang had seen it and reported it to Zhou Wang.
That was Tuesday. Now it was Friday, and Jixiang Jiayuan’s garbage problem had already become severe.
Jiang Cheng asked: “What about your property management staff?”
It was bad. They hadn’t been as lucky as Youth Apartments—no one in the property dormitory had turned.
At Jixiang Jiayuan, someone in the property dormitory had turned, followed by second-generation zombies from people who got bitten and later turned. Nearly all the property staff in the community had been wiped out. The few still alive were practically useless.
Zhou Wang asked in detail about Youth Apartments’ garbage disposal method.
But Jixiang Jiayuan didn’t have a clubhouse or a swimming pool. In the past, their residents used to come to Youth Apartments’ clubhouse to swim.
Zhou Wang: “Could our community’s garbage also be…”
Jiang Cheng flatly refused: “No.”
According to Zhao Yi’s calculations, the swimming pool had enough storage space for their garbage to last until rescue arrived, with some room to spare.
But it certainly couldn’t support two communities.
Jiang Cheng couldn’t agree to that request.
One good thing about Zhou Wang was that he knew how to take no for an answer and didn’t push. He changed tack: “Could you send that environmental engineering guy you’ve got over to help us? Help our community figure things out too.”
That wasn’t out of the question.
Jiang Cheng had been keeping a close eye on Jixiang Jiayuan precisely because it was right next door to Youth Apartments. Anything that happened there would inevitably affect them.
If the garbage wasn’t dealt with, flies and mosquitoes would inevitably breed and spread.
Jiang Cheng turned to Song Jingshuo: “If we send Zhao Yi and the others over to help, how much compensation should we ask for?”
The corner of Song Jingshuo’s mouth twitched.
Now she remembered him?
Jiang Cheng smiled.
Go ahead, finance guy! Time to haggle down to the last penny!
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