The survivors were already too weak from hunger to have any strength left to flee or resist.
When the people from the Science and Technology New District charged in, many simply closed their eyes and waited for death.
After waiting a moment and sensing something was off, they opened their eyes. What they saw wasn’t that monster, but a group of young people wearing armor and wielding strange weapons. There were even children among them.
Everyone’s minds were sluggish. After a dazed moment, someone finally asked in a hoarse voice: “You… you…”
Armor—that had been the critical turning point in the last zombie outbreak when humanity turned the tide.
When humans put on armor, it meant they were going to kill zombies!
Someone blurted out: “What about Director Guo? Have you seen Director Guo?”
There was no logic to the question—who knew who this “Director Guo” was?
Jiang Cheng asked: “Who is Director Guo?”
“It’s…” someone said, “a monster.”
“A giant.”
“A really huge zombie.”
Oh. Everyone understood now. So Director Guo was the giant zombie after all.
“That giant zombie? We’ve already eliminated it.”
Mo Li was Jiang Cheng’s cat.
Jiang Cheng was our leader.
By rounding up, that counts as being eliminated by us.
They puffed out their chests with pride—we’re really something.
“He’s dead?”
“Director Guo is dead?”
“Dead—Director Guo is dead!”
It was only then that light returned to the survivors’ eyes. Only then did they confirm they had been rescued!
“Do you have food?”
“Do you have anything to eat?”
“I need water! Please, give me some water to drink!”
Their eyes were gleaming with desperation. Sometimes starving people are scarier than zombies.
Jiang Cheng took out several buckets of drinking water.
The buckets were the kind used for water dispensers, collected from empty houses. The water inside was purified by Li Jiangbing from tap water, safe to drink directly.
Li Jiangbing traced circles in the air with his fingers.
The water from several buckets floated out, forming multiple circular rings in the air that spun slowly and continuously. The height was level with people’s necks and chins.
Li Jiangbing: “Drink up.”
The starving survivors, eyes shining, stumbled and lunged forward. Some swiped at the water rings and fell flat on the ground.
Li Jiangbing: “Oof, just stand and drink, don’t go diving!”
The rest stood outside the water rings, opening their mouths to “bite” the rings—glug, glug, glug!
Several water rings were drained in no time. Many still hadn’t had a drink. Li Jiangbing continued forming more rings.
Noticing that some who had already drunk were still trying to push in, he cleverly formed the rings right in the middle of those who hadn’t drunk yet, shouting: “No pushing! Let others have some too!”
People kept asking, “Do you have food?”
Everyone looked at Jiang Cheng.
Some of the starving ones noticed that everyone’s eyes were on Jiang Cheng and rushed toward her: “Please give me something to eat!”
Jiang Cheng: “Stop them.”
The team members formed a line in front of Jiang Cheng, reaching out to hold back the crowd.
They couldn’t push—these people would topple over at the slightest touch, too weak in the legs. All they could do was hold them back with their arms.
Jiang Cheng did have food.
But she couldn’t just hand it out directly.
Because what she kept in her space for emergencies were compressed biscuits.
The supplies from the last disaster at the Youth Apartments—Jiang Cheng had retrieved them from the basement. The rice, flour, grains, and oil had all been put to use.
No one wanted to eat the compressed biscuits, so Jiang Cheng had stored them in her own room.
Her room, now connected to units 0304 and 0302—three rooms knocked through into one—had accumulated a lot of stuff.
Compressed biscuits were her emergency backup. Whenever she went out, she’d store some in her space, just in case.
And sure enough, now was that time.
She couldn’t give them out directly because she was afraid these people, too ravenous, would eat too much.
She took them out and handed them to her own people: “Break them into small pieces. Give each person only one small piece. Don’t give too much.”
How powerful are compressed biscuits? A person with a normal appetite can eat half a piece, drink a glass of water, and feel stuffed.
They might taste terrible, but they’re incredibly effective.
If these starving people ate too many, they might actually die from overeating.
Everyone received one small piece of compressed biscuit.
Some ate the biscuit first and then drank water; others drank first and then ate the biscuit. It didn’t matter—everything mixed together in the stomach and quickly expanded.
Some people’s clothes were wrinkled and stained, but it was still obvious they were expensive designer brands. Clearly, they were well-off.
But now, this wealthy person sat on the ground with legs spread, sighing that there was no greater happiness in the world than getting to eat a crumb of compressed biscuit.
Gold and silver meant nothing compared to food and drink.
If Song Jingshuo were here to hear that, he might just have attained enlightenment.
The hall was absolutely reeking. It was a space with no windows at all.
With the main door wide open, Zhou Wang directed fresh air to flow in through the broken outer wall and all the way into the studio hall, pushing the stench out.
Finally, the hall became breathable again.
Jiang Cheng and Zhao Yi were communicating with these people.
There were over 500 survivors.
Those wearing name tags were TV station staff; the rest were audience members who had come to participate in a live recording.
“Director Guo—Guo Liwei—haven’t you heard of him?” The staff member was gradually regaining enough strength to speak.
Jiang Cheng naturally hadn’t heard of him, and neither had Zhao Yi. But someone actually had: “Oh, that guy.”
Why had they heard of him? Because the tabloids said Director Guo had slept with many actresses.
“Is that true?”
The staff member nodded numbly: “Mostly true.”
Team member: “The tabloids also said he had connections?”
That was true too. Director Guo had backing, so he’d exploited many people—actresses, female hosts, female journalists, and female staff members alike.
He was notorious for never letting anyone slip through his fingers.
But his patron had died in the first zombie outbreak—his entire family wiped out.
Director Guo had fallen from power.
Everyone knew the station director was going to take him down.
Guo wasn’t just a lecher—he was also hugely corrupt. He kept everything for himself and overstepped his authority.
The station director had wanted to get rid of him for a long time. Now that his patron was gone, the director was ready to make his move. Rumors were flying around the station that the great corrupt Guo would soon be ousted and thrown in prison.
Who knew that before Guo could be ousted, the zombie virus broke out again.
With so many people in the building, of course a lot of zombies appeared—original, second-generation, and third-generation alike.
And then…
“Director Guo ate them.”
“Then he got bigger than the other zombies, so he ate even more zombies—and people too,” they said.
They spoke in a numb, detached way.
Because there had originally been more people in that studio hall.
The great corrupt Guo had rounded up all the living people in the building and locked them in here. But he had to eat every day. After all these days of feeding, this was all that remained—just over 500 people.
Zhao Yi’s guess had been right—he’d turned this studio hall into his personal larder.
Zhao Yi asked: “So, he kept eating zombies and people and grew this big?”
“No.” The survivor shook his head. “He was already pretty big. He was bigger than the other zombies right from the start—like giant cadaveric bloating, you know what that is?”
Zhao Yi: “I know, I know.”
Survivor: “Then he ate a lot of other zombies and people, and got a bit bigger. But the reason he turned this huge was because he ate Shen Yuehong.”
Several pained cries went up from the team members: “What—he ate Shen Yuehong?!”
“Shen Yuehong was eaten by him?”
“NOOOO—SHEN YUEHONG!!!”
Shen Yuehong was a young female host who had risen to fame in the past couple of years—beautiful, sweet, and approachable.
Her fans spanned every age group.
There were fans of hers in the Youth Apartments too. Hearing of her death, they were absolutely devastated.
Zhao Yi said: “How are you so sure he became like this because he ate Shen Yuehong?”
“Because we watched it happen with our own eyes,” the survivor said. “He ate Shen Yuehong right in front of everyone. He’d been eating zombies and people and slowly getting bigger—just a little each time. But when he ate Shen Yuehong, he must have been especially satisfied, because we saw him inflate like he was being pumped full of air. It only took a few minutes—he turned into a giant right before our eyes.”
Zhao Yi: “Was Shen Yuehong a zombie too?”
“No. She never turned. She was alive—Director Guo ate her alive.”
Zhao Yi needed to figure out the logic and causality behind all this. He asked: “Why did eating her make him turn into a giant? Do you know the reason? Was there something special between the two of them?”
The survivor naturally had no idea.
They had been trapped here since the afternoon of August 29.
The studio had been set to record a live show that day. Shows like this never lacked for an audience—always packed to capacity. Everyone wanted to see celebrities, actors, and hosts up close.
But in reality, these recordings took much longer than the edited programs viewers saw on TV.
It was routine for some star or host to throw a diva tantrum and show up two or three hours late.
Twelve hundred audience members had no choice but to sit there on hard chairs and wait.
But the TV station had experience with this sort of thing. They handed each audience member a plastic bag containing a loaf of bread, a bottle of water, a vacuum-packed braised egg, a braised chicken leg, a pack of pickled vegetables, and a chocolate pie.
Many audience members hadn’t eaten theirs at the time.
Later, those items became the lifeline supplies for everyone trapped here.
Now, the floor was littered with torn packaging. The braised egg and chicken leg wrappers had been licked clean—even the oil and juice were gone.
Later, when there was no more water to drink, even the well-dressed wealthy audience members were willing to drink their own urine.
Everyone stank to high heaven.
The surviving staff didn’t know the reason for the mutation, but they actually did know about the grudge between Director Guo and Shen Yuehong.
Director Guo had always wanted to exploit Shen Yuehong.
Shen Yuehong appeared sweet and approachable, but in reality she had backbone and pride—she never gave in.
She was also a rising star that the station wanted to groom as their flagship host, and the station director protected her.
But Shen Yuehong had definitely suffered at Guo’s hands—been taken advantage of, or something along those lines. In any case, she loathed Director Guo with a passion.
When Director Guo lost his power and was clearly about to fall, Shen Yuehong one day publicly humiliated him in front of many people.
Guo no longer had the clout to fight back, so he had to take it—but he certainly harbored a deep grudge.
So when he was randomly picking his food from the crowd, he spotted Shen Yuehong hiding among the people.
“He made this kind of sound—a really terrifying one,” the surviving staff member recalled, his eyes hollow as he described it. “I only realized later—he was laughing. Zombies can laugh too.”
“He ate Shen Yuehong alive, right in front of us. He started with her feet, then her limbs, then her stomach…”
“Shen Yuehong just wouldn’t die.”
“He did it on purpose. Most people he killed with one bite to the head. But he did it on purpose.”
“He was getting revenge. How could he still want revenge after becoming a zombie?”
Zhao Yi sighed: “Zombies have evolved. Third-generation zombies have gained intelligence.”
“Third generation?”
Zhao Yi: “He doesn’t count as third-generation, of course—he’s completely mutated, a full-blown monster.”
“Right, that’s what we say too—a monster. Zombies aren’t really that scary; everyone’s killed them before. But he is a monster…”
The survivors murmured: “A monster.”
Zhao Yi and Jiang Cheng exchanged a glance.
Many of the survivors seemed half-crazy. Who wouldn’t be? Going crazy was the normal response.
Did you think Zhao Yi was normal?
Was Gao Yuxuan normal?
Brother Dong had come to join them yesterday—his body was alive, but his soul was gone.
The survivors gradually revived after eating and drinking.
But they stank terribly.
Li Jiangbing brought water from the restroom in the hallway. The TV station was high-end—the restroom had both hot and cold water, so he directly channeled hot water over.
Several large water spheres, as tall as a person, spun and swirled.
Li Jiangbing hollered: “Wash up, wash up—you all reek! No need to take your clothes off—just hold your nose and step in. Wash for at least a minute. If you can’t hold your breath, stick your head out for some air.”
These water spheres were big enough to envelop a person’s entire head. Because their heads stank too! Enough to make you retch!
They didn’t have soap or shampoo, but at least rinsing with clean water would cut down the stench.
As they came out, Li Jiangbing flicked his hand and dried them completely.
That staff member asked Zhao Yi: “Are a lot of people having superpowers now?”
Zhao Yi said: “You don’t know anything yet. This wave… both humans and zombies have evolved. Now when we kill zombies, the superpowered ones lead the charge—they’re incredibly useful.”
“I see.” The staff member licked his cracked, dry lips. “Actually…”
He rubbed his fingers together, and a tiny electric current appeared at his fingertips, flickering with a faint glow: “I have one too.”
Zhao Yi: “…”
“I didn’t dare say anything.”
“At first, anyone who revealed they had superpowers got eaten first.”
“After that, whoever had one kept their mouth shut.”
“It’s just this little bit of current—what zombie could I possibly fight with this, let alone Director Guo?”
Only some exceptionally gifted people had strong superpowers right from the start.
The vast majority of ordinary superpowered individuals had very weak abilities when they first awakened. For instance, Li Jiangbing could only control a tiny ball of water the size of a ping-pong ball in the beginning.
Later on, everyone improved through relentless practice or by breaking through in actual combat.
But these survivors couldn’t even dare to reveal their powers—they’d be picked out by Director Guo and eaten first. Everyone kept it hidden.
They were also afraid of being reported, because there were informers.
Otherwise, how did Director Guo spot Shen Yuehong among all those people? It was because a TV station colleague, after being caught, shouted: “Don’t eat me! Don’t eat me! Eat Shen Yuehong—Shen Yuehong is right over there!”
The superpowered survivors all kept their abilities hidden. They never even had a chance to practice.
The Science and Technology New District already had a group of powerful superhumans, but these people were still at the level of initial awakening.
“Oh, and after Director Guo turned into a giant, the other zombies started obeying him.”
Zhao Yi and Jiang Cheng looked at each other. Jiang Cheng: “What do you mean?”
The staff member said: “Those zombies—Director Guo would crook his finger, and they’d come right over. When he grabbed them to eat, they wouldn’t even run away. Like puppets.”
“Director Guo ate them all.”
Zhao Yi muttered: “Fuck. It evolved again. There’s no end to this.”
Many questions had been answered—but they might as well not have known. It would’ve been better not to come to the TV station at all.
Without comparison, they wouldn’t have realized just how much of a paradise the Science and Technology New District was.
But the TV station had to be dealt with—sooner or later.
Because yesterday’s general assembly had passed a resolution—
If it was confirmed tomorrow that no one was left in the city government, then we would be the only remaining government in S City.
And since we were the government, we had to take on the government’s responsibilities.
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