Every country has its own national conditions.
From the very beginning, everyone knew they couldn’t possibly do what they did in foreign disaster movies—the whole family jumping in cars and fleeing the moment something happened.
In this country, there was no way every household had a private car, and there was nowhere they could flee to.
From the very start, everyone had unanimously and without objection confirmed the grand principle of holding their ground.
Defend their own homeland.
From the first time at the youth apartments, to the second time expanding to the entire Tech District, to the various districts responding one after another, opening up several major survivor settlements.
Now the mysterious man wanted to force them to leave.
Force them to abandon the base they’d held for so long.
[Difficulty increased.]
So how exactly was this trial supposed to determine victory or defeat?
Or did victory and defeat even exist?
Maybe the result didn’t matter at all?
Maybe it was just about watching the process?
Zhao Yi stepped forward and quickly asked: “What do you want? What do you want from us? What demands do you have of us?”
Unfortunately, the shortwave radio gave him no further answer. It began looping: [It’s not over yet. Escape this place.]
Zhao Yi was deeply disappointed.
He very, very much wanted to make contact with a higher-order life form.
He was extremely curious about another civilization or another world.
No one dared approach that shortwave radio.
Being able to make sound without a power source—in the understanding of Chinese people, this was a haunting.
Only Zhao Yi and Gao Yuxuan weren’t afraid. The two of them carried the thing to the newly built house on the road.
Zhao Yi specially built a stand for it, placing it right in the center.
In the empty house, the crackling static of electric current kept sounding. The mysterious man repeated over and over.
People nearby began gathering toward this side.
By noon, survivors from other communities came too.
The survivors, in their daze, didn’t know what to do or where to go, so they instinctively came looking for the youth apartments.
All along, the youth apartments had been an existence like a lighthouse.
When people didn’t know what to do, they naturally came looking.
A rough count: the Tech District’s total population had been twenty-four thousand. Survivors numbered over four thousand.
A reduction of twenty thousand.
Many familiar people were gone.
On the youth apartments’ side, core members Wu Jiancheng and Guo Jun were both missing.
Of the original property management staff, only Sister Pan remained. Manager Wang, Yang Xinyan, Xiao Fang were all gone.
Of the little kids, only four girls and two boys remained.
Zeng Qiang and Master Luo were both gone.
“Gone” here meant no body found alive or dead.
In Jixiang Jiayuan, Brother Dong hadn’t made it out in time.
As a wind-type, his survival probability should have been the highest. Zhou Wang had survived by directly jumping from a building.
But Brother Dong had cashed in for alcohol yesterday. He’d drunk a lot—hungover.
When the earthquake hit, he simply couldn’t wake up.
Xiao Huang was dead.
Xiao Huang was confirmed dead, because Zhou Wang and Xiao Huang had always lived together. One had lost his parents, the other had lost his wife and child.
The two were like father and son.
Zhou Wang had charged into Xiao Huang’s bedroom, scooped him up, and jumped from the building together.
He’d never let go.
It was only after the earthquake stopped that he discovered Xiao Huang had actually been dead for a while.
Wood-type Auntie Xue was missing. Auntie Qian had survived.
Auntie Qian was older—she slept lightly and little.
When the earthquake hit, she was awake.
She knew her legs weren’t nimble, that she couldn’t run even if she tried. She used the vines she kept in her room to weave a ball, wrapping herself inside, curled up in the corner.
The triangular zone formed by three walls was a mechanically stable area.
That shortwave radio was also in such a triangular zone.
Anyway, Auntie Qian had survived.
Of President Xu’s company of about twenty people, only he and Wu Yan had survived.
Metal-type superpower user Uncle Eighty had originally survived, but unfortunately died in the process of saving people.
Wang Yunya had been rescued, but her mother Xiao Dan was missing.
Many people, like Wang Yunya, were in a soulless state.
Jiang Cheng took food out of her space, and the youth apartments people distributed it to everyone.
Many people didn’t even know to come line up—wandering aimlessly like lost souls. Some muttered incomprehensibly under their breath.
The youth apartments people forced food into their hands, saying: “Eat!”
They lowered their heads and ate.
The houses had been built.
Very simple cube-shaped houses. Simple inside too—two rows of bare, hard, large communal bunks.
One room could hold thirty or forty people.
Long rows of matchbox-like houses lined the wide road.
After eating, Li Jiangbing called out twice, “Jiancheng,” “Jiancheng,” and got no response—then remembered Wu Jiancheng was missing.
Missing most likely meant dead.
Li Jiangbing was dazed for a long while.
Until another fire-type superpower user tactfully came over: “Need fire?”
Li Jiangbing finally grunted in acknowledgment and said: “Boil water so everyone can wash up.”
Everyone was filthy, barefoot, covered in mud and dirt.
Everyone had already found lots of clothes and shoes from the ruins. Some had even been stripped off corpses.
The temperature now was about seventeen or eighteen degrees—spring temperature. Normally you’d still need a lined jacket.
Many people were wearing pajamas or long johns.
Li Jiangbing had already rinsed and extracted the water from all those clothes and shoes.
But at this temperature, people couldn’t wash with cold water, so he called the fire-types to boil hot water—not too hot, just warm.
This task hadn’t been done in a long time. Doing it now, there was actually a bit of nostalgia.
Most of the refugees had washed this way back then and knew what to do. They lined up, one after another stepping into warm water spheres, rolling around for a bit before coming out, directly extracted dry, then collected clothes and found shoes that fit.
Many people had to be driven over for this process.
But after washing up and finding clean clothes and shoes, in the busyness, people gradually seemed to find their souls again.
At teens-degree temperatures, the houses were actually colder than outdoors.
Each house was equipped with an iron coal stove.
Jiang Cheng brought out coal.
In the past, the Tech District Provisional Government had its own large warehouse. But the core members all knew—Jiang Cheng’s spatial storage was the backup warehouse.
Her space contained almost all categories of basic survival supplies.
But people weren’t clear on exactly how much she had.
Probably only Song Jingshuo had some idea.
Temporary latrines were also built.
Open-air, with walls, no doors, with a screen wall.
Drinking water storage tanks were built.
Song Jingshuo found watermelon seedlings and directly grew dozens of large watermelons.
After the extreme cold’s heavy snow melted, mud was everywhere, and even the air was very humid. Convenient for Li Jiangbing to extract water from thin air, and convenient for Song Jingshuo to grow this kind of high-water-content fruit.
Quenches thirst, supplements sugar.
After eating sugar, people easily relaxed.
Under the youth apartments’ organization, the basic conditions for human survival—the water, food, shelter, and warmth Jiang Cheng had required—were all achieved with high efficiency in an extremely short time.
Once people were full, warmly dressed, and sitting in clean houses with roofs and stoves, they had the feeling of coming back to life.
Their eyes gradually focused and regained spirit.
As long as they were alive, it was fine.
Many people were mostly just frightened. But actually, when they’d arrived here months ago, they were already refugees.
People like Wang Yunya who’d lost close family were actually the minority. Because months ago, they’d already lost their loved ones.
Of course, some temporary couples, later-made friends, and couples formed through time together would also grieve.
But it wasn’t their first time experiencing it.
After everyone found their souls again, they naturally entered a standby state.
Waiting for the youth apartments’ Jiang Cheng to give the next instruction.
It had always been this way.
There had to be someone to tell everyone what to do and how to do it.
All along, that person had been the youth apartments’ Jiang Cheng.
—
Jiang Cheng and all the surviving core members were in the room with the ghost radio.
No one tuned it, but the radio switched on its own to Uncle Jiang and Sister Mao.
[You can’t go north—the north has cracked into a massive canyon, become a natural chasm.]
[You can’t go south either—the southern continental shelf has subsided, the coastline has advanced hundreds of li, inland rivers have backflowed.]
[Go west, toward the plateau. You can survive there.]
[Survive my ass! The cold air mass has moved over there. Going there means going through ice and snow again, living like hibernating humans!]
[Still better than the east. Don’t you know a Zombie Emperor has appeared over there? Hordes of zombies are all under his control.]
[I’d rather fight zombies than freeze. I can’t stand being shut in a house.]
[Then go ahead.]
[Do we have to leave?]
[We have to. He said it—it’s not over yet. The quakes will keep coming.]
[Is he going to shake people to death?]
[If you don’t leave, you die. He wants you to go. If you don’t go, he’ll kill you.]
Jiang Cheng asked: “So who is he?”
Everyone suddenly looked at her.
She looked indifferently at the haunted radio.
Stop pretending.
You’re all in it together.
[Hehe.] Uncle Jiang said. [You’ll know when you meet him.]
Sister Mao’s voice was sharp: [Don’t go see him! Don’t go!]
So they really could hear.
Not through the shortwave radio microphone wireless communication, but through some kind of metaphysical ability?
Everyone’s hair stood on end, goosebumps rising.
Li Jiangbing swallowed and couldn’t help looking left and right.
These temporary houses were for giving everyone temporary shelter from wind and rain.
No glass windows—horizontal windows were opened at higher positions on the walls. Or maybe they couldn’t be called windows—just ventilation openings.
The rooms where everyone rested were very dark.
This room had several fireballs burning overhead to light the space.
People’s shadows cast on the walls, swaying large and small.
Li Jiangbing was afraid of this kind of thing.
He pressed close to Song Jingshuo.
[You can’t see him! If you see him… you’ll never be able to come back!] Sister Mao seemed to be suppressing fear.
Her acting was quite good.
Jiang Cheng was unmoved: “Why? Will he kill me?”
[Hehe.] Uncle Jiang said. [You guess?]
The radio fell silent. The static crackled for a few seconds, then switched back to the mysterious man’s voice.
[It’s not over yet.]
[You must escape.]
Forcing people to abandon the base they’d held for so long.
Jiang Cheng said: “Turn it off.”
Gao Yuxuan: “Huh?”
This thing… actually had never been turned on.
It didn’t even have power.
It was just haunted—how do you turn it off?
Jiang Cheng said: “If you can’t turn it off, smash it. Don’t let it make sound.”
Threatened like that, the ghost radio behaved.
The mysterious man, the static—all gone.
As if it had turned itself off.
Waiting to turn itself back on when it was next needed.
Zhou Wang’s whole brain felt muddled—he couldn’t make sense of it.
President Xu, who considered himself a highly educated human elite, also began to doubt life.
Jiang Cheng asked: “Zhao Yi, what do you think?”
Zhao Yi was still mired in his own confusion: “They’re actually in it together.”
Thinking back now—wasn’t that exactly it?
The mysterious man played the prophet.
And lest you not believe him or not understand him,
Uncle Jiang and Sister Mao played off each other to annotate him.
This was completely different from the advanced, cold, mysterious higher civilization Zhao Yi had imagined.
This was more like the con artists you’d encounter in daily life.
So down-to-earth it was excessive—Zhao Yi was deeply disillusioned.
Zhang Lesi asked: “So the ultimate goal is just to force us to leave? What if we don’t leave?”
Gao Yuxuan said: “They already said it clearly enough.”
If you don’t leave, the quakes continue.
Zhou Wang interrupted these people talking to themselves: “Wait, wait, wait! Xiao Jiang! Have some consideration for the elderly! Can’t keep up, my brain! Explain first!”
He really was a bit in the clouds.
He wasn’t the only one who hadn’t understood what was going on.
Jiang Cheng named him: “Zhao Yi, you explain.”
Zhao Yi sighed and stood up to face everyone.
“This was originally my wild guess, my fantasy. I didn’t expect it to come true.”
“We all know the zombie virus might have been deployed by some external hostile force to destroy us.”
“But this ‘external’ hostile force is actually… not the ‘foreign’ force everyone thinks.”
Zhao Yi wanted to lay out his full theory—the two possible directions.
But he saw Zhang Lesi slightly shake her head at him.
Couples had their tacit understanding too.
Zhao Yi understood her meaning.
After she’d learned his theory, she’d said: “Aliens and stuff, I can accept. Anyone educated knows how vast the universe is—it’s impossible that only our planet has intelligent life. Even if aliens really appeared, it would fit with science.”
“Your higher-dimensional world, lower-dimensional world thing—forget it. Too much like anime.”
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