Su Yu moved with the little kids.
The floor they’d been living on was too high—making the little kids climb so many flights every day was unbearable.
A new group dormitory was set up on a lower floor for the little kids.
The new public latrines had been rush-built. By the time Jiang Cheng returned from Renxin Hospital, they were already in use.
Everyone used them with great suffering.
“Whatever you do, don’t look down.”
“Sigh.”
But it was still better than using their own homes. With no water to flush, people living on the fifteenth or twentieth floor couldn’t exactly carry buckets upstairs just to flush a toilet.
Going in the public latrine disgusted everyone. Going at home disgusted yourself.
Sister Pan smiled and shook her head, then did an experiment.
When she was done, she told Song Jingshuo: “It worked.”
Song Jingshuo, who’d been an outdoor enthusiast for years, actually had a fairly high tolerance for dry latrines. But he still said sincerely: “Thank you for your hard work.”
Everyone soon learned—as long as Sister Pan walked once around the public latrines, the pits became much cleaner.
And if you saw Sister Pan strolling with her hands behind her back from the latrines toward the vegetable fields, you knew—Sister Pan was moving the waste.
Beneath everyone’s feet, underground, the soil churned on its own, carrying everyone’s waste like earthworms burrowing on their own to beneath the vegetable fields.
Becoming fertilizer.
Zeng Qiang, the agricultural researcher, was at turns amazed, at turns melancholy.
“These superpowers seem like they were designed to let us survive in this kind of environment,” he marveled.
The speaker meant nothing by it, but the listener took it to heart.
Zhao Yi, arm around Zhang Lesi, was taking a slow walk. He heard this remark and turned to glance at Zeng Qiang.
—
After the district provisional governments rescued themselves, they’d all mobilized metal-types and earth-types to go into the streets and sever the gas pipelines to deal with the underground manholes spewing fire.
But in the end, all they’d managed was to cut off the pipeline networks around their own bases.
Relative to the entire city, the surviving humans were too few—and among them, superpower users were even fewer.
The fires in other parts of the city had exceeded what humans could control.
Humans had done their best, but the entire city still burned for four days before finally being completely extinguished.
At this point, the key to whether an existing organization could keep going turned out to be whether it had a water-type superpower user.
Water-types had no combat ability. They’d always been considered a useless, chicken-rib ability with no real purpose.
It was only now that everyone suddenly realized—water-type superpower users were actually so rare.
At this point, a single water-type in a safe settlement could solve enormous problems.
Unfortunately, Chaoqing District, Fuyang District, and Guangxiu District didn’t have a single one.
Guangxiu District, backed by the Tech District, saw people from small safe points abandon their own nests and seek refuge in the Tech District.
The reason Fuyang District fell into chaos within a single day was mainly that their soul figure was gone, and then conflicts broke out over the water problem.
The so-called fight over supplies was a fight over bottled water.
The result was a brawl and fragmentation.
Chaoqing District was a bit better off than Fuyang District, partly because of its location.
S City had rivers in the north and south, and the central old city area was encircled by an ancient moat.
Chaoqing District was relatively close to the southern river. They organized manpower to fetch river water, let it settle, and boil it for use.
That solved the immediate water problem, more or less.
—
Over radio communications, the districts came online one after another. Everyone finally reconnected with each other—no longer isolated islands.
After holding on for a few days, Zheng Junwei of Shilong District was the first to take the lead: “We’re moving.”
Why did ancient civilizations always emerge by water? Because you couldn’t survive without it.
Several districts were too far from natural water sources. Even with the water plant’s supply trucks, the manpower and time cost of transporting water was too high.
And they had to consider future fuel problems. The city’s fuel reserves were still sufficient for now, but eventually they’d run out.
The districts moved in different directions.
Some migrated toward the moat in the central old city area.
Some moved south or north toward the two main rivers.
Thousands upon thousands of survivors migrated on a massive scale.
Rolling up bedding, dragging suitcases, carrying pots and pans.
Large buses came one after another to transport people.
The Tech District’s vehicles were also dispatched to help.
Though it had only been their base for a month, when it came time to give it up and leave, many people cried.
Someone sobbed: “When will this ever end?”
“Things were just starting to get better…”
Zheng Junwei felt dazed hearing it too.
Yeah—things really were just starting to get better.
The large area radiated by the base had no more zombies.
That girl Jiang Cheng had even been discussing with him the issue of residents moving back, and had even gotten to the matter of converting the city’s greenbelts into farmland.
He’d even proposed establishing a city government.
Ambitious—wanting to join hands with Jiang Cheng and truly manage this city.
How did it suddenly come to this?
He turned his head. Many buildings had burned through and become ruins.
People were fleeing.
Jiang Cheng had once said on TV, “We are not abandoning this city.”
Who knew heaven would force everyone to abandon it.
Zheng Junwei closed his eyes, feeling like everything was a dream.
Before heaven, your abilities, your ambitions—all as insignificant as ants.
At this point, S City as a city existed in name only. Only the central old city area still had a large number of survivors living along the moat.
Chaoqing District’s base remained unchanged.
All other districts abandoned their original bases and relocated entirely.
All the small safe points could no longer survive independently due to the water problem, and voluntarily merged with the larger groups, joining the relocation.
S City thus became a dying city barely clinging to life.
The Tech District, however, was still vibrant.
The transmission convergence system that Gao Yuxuan, Cui Haiyang, and the others had built succeeded.
Using car rear axles, differentials, and belt pulleys, they converged the power of many people onto a single main shaft to drive a high-power generator.
Efficiency was higher than a human-powered array, with far less loss.
After the industrial zone’s fire burned itself out, they went to the industrial zone and found several usable generators and battery banks.
In the end, through everyone’s efforts, every community in the Tech District had its own power generation and storage equipment.
For this, they scoured the entire Tech District clean of bicycles.
Unfortunately, because the Tech District was far from the city center, aside from students, not many people rode bicycles. Most people commuting into the city relied on private cars and public transit.
So they had to go into the city and haul bicycles back to the Tech District, one truckload after another.
A community the size of Jixiang Jiayuan used three hundred bicycles, keeping three hundred people pedaling from morning to night.
That way, they could open two hours of electricity at night for lighting.
No one could pedal a bicycle for eight hours straight—not even fitness fanatics.
So “three hundred people pedaling simultaneously” meant that over the course of a day, one to two thousand people had to participate in power generation.
This actually solved two very big problems for the entire Tech District—the potential public order hazard caused by too much idle labor, and the problem of insufficient jobs.
When zombies were still everywhere, the most numerous jobs were on the combat teams.
Later, as the city grew cleaner, fewer survivors needed rescuing, and the communities took in more residents—the problem of too many idle people and too few jobs began to emerge.
It was precisely because Jiang Cheng had a fierce personality and iron-fisted methods, daring to use harsh measures in chaotic times, that no major public order problems occurred.
In the later period, there were basically no more death penalties.
But floggings were unexpectedly numerous.
The moment the power-generation positions appeared, they immediately alleviated the problem significantly.
People simply couldn’t be too idle—they had to have something to do.
Too idle? Go pedal a bicycle. Consume yourself, generate heat and electricity—not only earn performance points, but also exercise.
Power-generation positions were extremely popular in every community.
Li Jiangbing had detached from all other work and focused solely on water supply.
In terms of drinking water alone, 20 tons a day was more than enough for the youth apartments, but a bit tight for other communities.
But the youth apartments, besides drinking water, also had large vegetable-growing needs.
Plus the park farm’s water needs were also significant.
And they had to consider water beyond drinking—mainly for bathing.
Actually, Li Jiangbing had stated that used bathwater could also be purified. It could be used for bathing—or even drinking.
He vowed it would be absolutely clean.
But he faced strong opposition and suppression from everyone.
With water supply trucks bringing water, purifying bathwater wouldn’t improve efficiency much—it was purely this guy wanting to show off.
Song Jingshuo spent a few days figuring out the real data and set water supply quotas for each community.
After trial runs, it happened to sit right on the line of “basically” meeting demand.
New demands emerged.
Each community opened its bathhouse free of charge two days a week, allowing free showers.
At other times, bathing cost money. You needed to use performance points to buy bath tickets.
Drinking water was also rationed.
A basic life-sustaining amount of drinking water was provided free per person.
Any amount beyond that had to be purchased.
Because there were no elevators, people even took on part-time work offering “water delivery upstairs” services. Business was quite brisk.
Gao Yuxuan even opened a gaming room in the youth apartments, with several TVs and game consoles.
This didn’t run on public electricity. He hired electric-type superpower users as living batteries.
The fees were expensive, and you had to queue for a number every day.
Each community established public cafeterias, but some people still didn’t like the big cafeteria.
Those people could collect their own ingredients and choose a small stove to cook for themselves.
Renting a small stove was charged by the hour, with fire-type superpower users providing the fire.
All kinds of private small businesses also sprang up.
Jiang Cheng and Song Jingshuo not only didn’t oppose them—they strongly supported them.
Just like that, creating new jobs, creating new demand, getting people to move on their own initiative, creating a virtuous cycle—a miniature society came alive.
People kept coming from the city to seek refuge. The Tech District’s population grew and grew.
But Zhang Lesi’s eyes never regained their sight. Zhao Yi lived with her, caring for her daily needs.
Now that Zhang Lesi couldn’t see, her other senses had become more sensitive. One day, Zhao Yi was just lying there without making any sound to disturb her, yet she still sensed something was off with him: “What’s wrong? Can’t sleep?”
Zhao Yi was silent for a moment.
Zhang Lesi: “What happened?”
Facing the person closest to him, Zhao Yi revealed what was on his mind: “I’m scared.”
Zhang Lesi was surprised: “Scared of what?”
They’d been through so much together. Zhang Lesi couldn’t think of anything that would make Zhao Yi afraid—he wasn’t a timid or cowardly person.
Zhao Yi stared at the ceiling: “You know our government… was systematically eliminated.”
Zhang Lesi: “Right, didn’t we know that already?”
This wasn’t a secret among management. Jiang Cheng had openly told everyone her “guess,” and it had been confirmed.
That was why the eight urban districts and various suburbs had subsequently established their own governments.
Zhao Yi was silent again for a long time. Only when Zhang Lesi pushed him did he speak: “But do you know how precise this ‘targeting’ was?”
Fear appeared in Zhao Yi’s eyes.
It had started from an accidental conversation. The other person’s family member was a civil servant.
[He was out on assignment that day. He even called me to say he’d be home in the afternoon, that he could pick up the kid, and I didn’t need to worry.]
That civil servant and the child hadn’t survived.
So far, nothing unusual—it was normal. So many people had died then. It was normal.
But then the person added: [We lived in welfare housing. Our neighbors were all within the system. The neighbor next door was home on sick leave that day. She turned and bit her father-in-law and mother-in-law to death. I didn’t expect to run into her husband here. Sigh—it’s lucky if even one person in a family survives.]
It sounded like a coincidence.
If it had been anyone else, they’d have let it go.
But the person who heard this wasn’t anyone else—it was Zhao Yi.
Zhao Yi’s way of thinking had always been different from others’.
“I used Jiang Cheng’s name and privately asked the logistics managers of each community to help me tally whether there were civil servants and civil servants’ family members among the refugees.”
“I also had them tally the causes of death for civil servants.”
“The results confirmed my hypothesis.”
Most civil servants died at their posts, in their workplaces.
You could explain this in various ways—for example, the buildings were large, there were many people, the spaces were connected, one person turned and bit a bunch, and in the end they all died together.
It wasn’t entirely unreasonable. But that was the explanation for ordinary people.
What made more sense was Jiang Cheng’s explanation: systematic elimination.
At the time, Zhao Yi was thinking—targeted. How was the targeting achieved?
People always want to give themselves an answer, a reasonable answer that can convince themselves, so they can suppress their unease.
“So I thought—you could increase the viral load in government buildings, raise the mutation probability, even artificially seal the buildings so no one could escape, and so on.”
“Logically speaking, it’s plausible.”
“But…”
But how do you explain that not a single civil servant who was out, on leave, or absent from their post for any reason survived?
How do you explain it?
As long as your identity carried the mark of “civil servant,” you were destined to die on August 29th.
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