After making the armor, they moved on to making the crescent-moon spades.
The benefit of assembly-line work was that everyone rapidly built up proficiency in their assigned task.
The superpower users realized that using their abilities to work wasn’t just about contributing labor—it was also training their superpowers in the process.
Xiao Wang even started offering a blade-sharpening service.
Those who used bladed weapons all came to him with their tools.
Most of their weapons weren’t large—many were just kitchen knives.
His sharpening speed grew faster and faster. Eventually, with just two fingers pinching the blade, he’d run them along it with a shwip—and the edge would gain a gleaming, razor-sharp line of silver.
Jiang Cheng was eating at home by herself. She was finding cooking more and more of a hassle these days.
She left the dishes in the sink, planning to wash them when she got back in the afternoon.
She stood up from the dining table, and the bowls and plates on the table vanished—followed by the dining table and chairs, and then the sideboard.
She walked over to the sink, and the used dishes appeared in it.
She walked back to the dining area, and the vanished table, chairs, and sideboard reappeared.
Then she moved past the sofa and coffee table. The sofa and coffee table disappeared for an instant, then reappeared. The bed and computer desk did the same.
Jiang Cheng wandered freely around her home—wherever she went, furniture and objects would vanish for a second and then reappear.
If anyone had been watching, they’d have felt like their eyes were playing tricks on them, as if the furniture and items in the room kept flickering.
In reality, Jiang Cheng was constantly practicing her superpower.
Through repeated practice, not only was her storage and retrieval speed getting faster, but she no longer needed to make direct physical contact with objects.
This meant there could be a distance between her and the items she wanted to store.
The significance of this was enormous.
Though the distance was still tiny at present, Jiang Cheng believed that as her superpower improved, that distance would eventually reach a scale that was both convenient and safe for her.
Jiang Cheng walked to the bed—it disappeared.
The floor wasn’t dirty, because she’d mopped it the first time she’d put the bed into storage.
From that perspective, having a spatial superpower really did make mopping the floor a lot more convenient.
Anyway—Jiang Cheng walked through where the bed had been to the lounge chair, and the bed reappeared behind her.
She stored and released the lounge chair. Looking up, she spotted a small bird on a branch outside.
Jiang Cheng narrowed her eyes.
[Mo Li.] She called out through telepathy. [Mo Li.]
In an instant, Mo Li appeared at the window.
Jiang Cheng told Mo Li through their mental link: [Bird. I want it alive.]
Mo Li turned and vanished.
Before long, the elusive little black cat appeared at the window again, holding the bird Jiang Cheng wanted in his mouth. He placed it in her hand.
Then he lay down on the lounge chair to watch what she would do.
Jiang Cheng held the little bird in her palm.
Her mental link connected to the storage space—it was empty now, in a state of void.
Jiang Cheng wanted to test whether living beings could enter this space.
She fixed her gaze on the bird and focused her will.
But the bird just stared back at her with its beady little eyes, utterly unresponsive. Nothing happened.
She tried several times, all failures.
So living beings couldn’t be stored in the space.
[Safety protocol.]
Jiang Cheng’s pupils dilated slightly as she caught a fragment of information drifting through her mind.
There seemed to be something else too.
She strained to grasp at it.
Mo Li lay on the lounge chair soaking up the sun, curiously looking up at Jiang Cheng.
In his eyes, she was still holding the bird in her hand, standing motionless.
He didn’t know that inside Jiang Cheng’s mind, a fierce clash was taking place. She could sense that whatever was locked away in her brain did indeed have a crack—all the information was leaking out through that fissure.
She desperately tried to pry the crack wide open, but encountered an impenetrable obstacle.
Something deep in her mind coiled around her, as if trying to devour her.
The sudden ringing of her phone interrupted this battle in the spiritual realm.
Jiang Cheng’s shoulders suddenly relaxed as she wrenched herself free from the mental world. Her forehead was covered in sweat, and she was breathing rapidly.
After steadying her breath, she freed one hand to answer the call: “Jiangbing?”
Li Jiangbing’s booming voice came through: “Jiang Cheng, are we leaving?”
Jiang Cheng composed herself, looked at the bird in her hand, and said: “Come over here first.”
“Huh? Okay.”
Li Jiangbing came right over—already wearing his oversized armor in preparation for battle.
In his hand was the newly acquired crescent-moon spade.
Its design had a very anime-esque flair.
As soon as he walked in, he asked: “What do you need me for?”
Jiang Cheng closed the door and handed him the bird: “Here, take this.”
“What the—whoa!” Li Jiangbing quickly set down the crescent spade and cupped the little bird in his two bear-like paws. “Where’d this bird come from? You want to keep it as a pet?”
Jiang Cheng said instead: “Try to see if you can extract the moisture from this bird’s body.”
Li Jiangbing, who had been lowering his head to play with the bird, paused and looked up.
Jiang Cheng said: “I was thinking this morning—since you can extract moisture from the air, what about from living beings?”
Li Jiangbing hesitated: “You want me to test it on this?”
Jiang Cheng: “No, that’s for you to keep as a pet. You can just test it on me—drain all my blood.”
Li Jiangbing: “…You’re starting to sound like Jingshuo. He’s been acting like he’s got some kind of illness these past two days—don’t let him rub off on you.”
Song Jingshuo had completely lost his composure over the plainly obvious prospect of his wood-type superpower heading straight for vegetable farming.
He had abandoned his former leader-like, spring-breeze persona and started throwing tantrums and speaking with all kinds of sarcasm.
Surprisingly, this didn’t make people dislike him. Instead, people who’d had only ordinary relations with him before began to get closer to him.
For instance, Zhao Yi and Gao Yuxuan started calling him “Jingshuo” directly.
Li Jiangbing parted his hands slightly, and the little bird lifted its round head with its beady little eyes.
Li Jiangbing felt a twinge of reluctance and sighed: “Sorry about this.”
He closed his hands together, shut his eyes, and focused.
A second later, he opened his eyes, let out a huge sigh of relief, and even looked a bit pleased: “No go.”
The little bird was perfectly fine.
Jiang Cheng pressed further: “Why not?”
Li Jiangbing explained: “If extracting water from air is like a 120kg barbell, then extracting it from this little guy is like a 500—no, a 1000kg super barbell.”
At 120kg, he could still be excited about finding a shortcut to training—pushing himself to exhaustion every time for rapid progress.
At 1000kg—maybe, eventually, after months or years of developing his superpower to some advanced stage, he could actually do it. But for now, he could declare it impossible without a shred of guilt.
Jiang Cheng asked: “Is the intermolecular attraction stronger than with water vapor in the air?”
“It’s a bit different.” Li Jiangbing explained in detail: “With the air, it’s like I’m wrestling against force. Right now I’m not that strong, but if I give it my all, I can still extract that tiny bit, right?”
“But with this—it’s not just that the molecular attraction is stronger. It also feels like there’s some kind of membrane—invisible, intangible, but I can sense it. It holds all these fluids—blood, whatever—tightly together like one whole unit. It’s really hard to separate.”
Safety protocol?
What kind of existence was this?
Protecting living beings?
Jiang Cheng nodded. She walked over and turned on the faucet—water gushed out.
Jiang Cheng raised her hand and waved it a few times: “Can you make the water follow my hand?”
This was relatively simple.
Li Jiangbing’s superpower had advanced rapidly. He focused and controlled a water ball, pressing it against Jiang Cheng’s palm: “Hey—I can make you a hydrating face mask, hahaha.”
Jiang Cheng moved her hand to the side, and Li Jiangbing quickly followed.
She waved her hand a few more times, and Li Jiangbing stopped joking, focusing on controlling the water ball. Basically, he could catch up in the next instant.
But that “next instant” delay was perceptible.
Jiang Cheng began waving her hand continuously, never pausing in any position: “Keep up.”
“Oh man, I wouldn’t dare,” Li Jiangbing cracked, continuing to chase Jiang Cheng’s hand with the water ball.
Under continuous motion, the water ball’s lag became very obvious—it kept chasing but never caught up.
Jiang Cheng withdrew her hand: “Alright. Still a long way off.”
Li Jiangbing had already gotten used to Jiang Cheng giving instructions without asking why—just doing it first. Then, after it was done, he’d ask: “What was that for?”
Jiang Cheng said: “I need you to be able to—completely engulf the head in water. If not the head, at least the face. No matter how the target struggles, they can’t break free.”
Li Jiangbing sat down on the sofa and ran his finger along the little bird’s head feathers: “That’s useless.”
He said: “I tried it. I flooded water into zombies’ brains—they don’t care, they won’t drown.”
Jiang Cheng walked over, braced one hand against the wall, leaned down close to Li Jiangbing, and said softly: “But humans will.”
Li Jiangbing’s head snapped up.
The room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
The two locked eyes.
“You—you—you!” Li Jiangbing jabbed a finger angrily in the air. “Stop scaring me like that!”
“Crazy!”
Li Jiangbing had long realized—everyone was crazy now.
He didn’t know whether everyone had already been crazy before the zombies came, or whether the zombies had driven them crazy.
Either way, they were all nuts.
Song Jingshuo was crazy—insisting on maintaining his elite image when so many people didn’t even have enough to eat.
Jiang Cheng was too. She looked like such a refined, clean, pretty girl—and then she’d calmly say something that made your liver tremble.
He himself was crazy too. He felt genuinely happy killing zombies in the militia—happier than during peacetime—and if that wasn’t crazy, what was?
Plenty of people were crazy.
Don’t be fooled by everyone laughing and joking in the square during the day.
A lot of people would suddenly bolt upright in bed in the middle of the night and start wailing—screaming their hearts out.
Many had lost contact with their parents and families—they were practically orphans now.
How could they not be crazy? Everyone had actually lost their minds.
Only by sticking together could they maintain the appearance of being normal people.
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