Jiang Cheng finished her meal, then gave Mo Li water and cat food.
Mo Li’s swallowing was a bit stronger than at noon, and he ate a little more than he had then. But by human standards, the tiny amount a small cat eats still seemed like a bird’s appetite.
This made Jiang Cheng very worried.
How could the energy provided by that little bit of cat food possibly support Mo Li’s astonishing transformation?
According to the law of conservation of energy, in theory, he should need a massive amount of energy. If that energy came from food, then he should need to eat a lot.
It was about time. The walkie-talkie crackled with Li Jiangbing’s voice: “Jiang Cheng, come downstairs.”
Jiang Cheng replied, “Okay, coming.”
Jiang Cheng felt the hot water bottle and noticed its temperature had dropped significantly.
The heat had clearly been absorbed.
The hot water bottle had a fixed amount of heat. Unlike a human body, which continuously generates new heat through digestion, absorption, and breakdown to maintain a constant temperature.
Jiang Cheng refilled the hot water bottle with fresh hot water. Then she went to the closet, took out her winter down jacket, and replaced the cotton blanket with it.
“I’m going out to take care of something,” she said, gently smoothing the fur on Mo Li’s forehead. “I’ll be back soon. You get some good sleep.”
Mo Li opened his eyes and looked at her, letting out a soft “Meow.”
Great—he looked so much better than he had at noon.
Jiang Cheng was so happy that she couldn’t help but kiss Mo Li’s forehead. “Good boy~”
She stood up, picked up the axe from the sofa, grabbed her keys, clipped the walkie-talkie to her waist, and opened the door to leave.
Mo Li didn’t have the strength to move right now. He lay there with his eyes open, staring at Jiang Cheng’s back as she disappeared.
About twenty people had gathered in the lobby.
Everyone knew Jiang Cheng by now. When she arrived, Li Jiangbing was just telling them about how Jiang Cheng had single-handedly taken down four mutators the night before.
Seeing her, everyone called out, “Jiang Cheng’s here.”
Li Jiangbing said cheerfully, “Jiang Cheng, check out our gear!”
Everyone had come well-prepared, especially in terms of protection, each with their own creative solutions.
Li Jiangbing still had his arm shield and fire axe.
Someone had brought a pot lid, someone had brought a chair, and someone had dismantled a cabinet door.
Young minds were certainly resourceful.
Jiang Cheng’s eyes lit up. “Good. We’ll take the elevator to the top floor and sweep the building from the top down.”
Everyone roared in agreement and crowded into the elevators.
Sure enough, everyone had also picked up the term “zombies.” Now, all they talked about was “killing zombies.”
Li Jiangbing glanced at Jiang Cheng. “Where’s the cat?”
“He’s doing a bit better,” Jiang Cheng said. “I left him at home.”
Li Jiangbing thought Jiang Cheng was great in every way. She was pretty, quick-witted, strong, and brave. But the way she was about her cat… it was a bit much.
It reminded him of those idiots in foreign movies who risk their lives to save a cat or a dog during a crisis. That kind of thing was hard to take.
The elevator went “Ding,” and they reached the top floor.
Everyone gripped their weapons tightly and filed out, nervous but a little excited, all looking at Jiang Cheng and Li Jiangbing. “Shall we start?”
Jiang Cheng thought for a moment. “Make some noise first to alert the neighbors on this floor. Tell everyone we’re going door to door. If everything’s fine in their apartment, just call out.”
Li Jiangbing said, “I’ll do it.”
Li Jiangbing had the person with the pot lid make a clanging racket first, then he yelled out, “Neighbors, the temporary owners’ committee is here to sweep the building! We’re clearing the building! If we knock on your door, say something! If you don’t respond when we knock, we’re breaking the door down!”
His voice echoed through the hallway. Several doors opened, and people poked their heads out. “I’m fine here.”
“My place is fine too.”
“Me as well.”
The cleanup crew started at one end of the hallway, knocking on doors one by one. The neighbors had all heard Li Jiangbing’s voice. Some opened their doors and looked out, while others, unwilling to open up, just called out from inside.
One person cracked their door open slightly and waved eagerly. “Hey, hey—across the hall! Check my across-the-hall neighbor. I’ve been hearing weird noises.”
Everyone hurried over. Seeing so many people, the person grew a little bolder and opened the door a bit wider. “I didn’t see him come out when everyone went to Duo Duo this afternoon. He must be home. I rode the elevator up with him on Friday—we even said hello. Then we all passed out. I haven’t seen him since I woke up.”
Li Jiangbing gripped his axe tightly and carefully knocked on the door. “Is anyone there? Is anyone home?”
Sure enough, as the sound of unsteady, chaotic footsteps approached, the steel door let out a huge BANG.
Confirmed. They had a job to do.
Everyone formed a semicircle around the apartment door.
Those with the strongest protective gear stood at the front—cabinet doors, pot lids, chairs all held up, waiting for the mutator inside… no, waiting for the zombie inside to come out on its own.
Why was the term “zombie” so readily accepted? Because it carried a sense of “non-human.”
Zombie. The character “corpse” was right there in the name.
Listen to it—see? Not human anymore, right? I mean the ones we killed this morning.
Exactly, exactly. Not human anymore. So there’s no problem with us killing them.
Not human—they’re corpses. Even the government said “eliminate immediately.”
So don’t feel any psychological burden.
But whether a zombie would open the door was a matter of probability. Original zombies had extremely uncoordinated limbs and clearly no longer possessed the ability to think—they were driven entirely by instinct. They didn’t have the logical reasoning to “press the door handle and open the door.”
The door slammed BAM BAM BAM many times, but the stupid zombie still didn’t manage to open it.
Everyone waited patiently for a moment, then lost their patience. They looked at each other. “What now? Break the door down?”
How? The residential buildings built in recent years all had national standard Grade 4 steel doors.
Jiang Cheng tapped the shoulder of the person in front of her. The person moved aside, and Jiang Cheng slipped into the inner circle.
She stood beside the door, her back against the wall, holding her axe in one hand while pulling her own keys from her pants pocket with the other.
Several cartoon keychains dangled from her key ring. Pinching the key ring, she reached her hand out and jangled the bunch of trinkets against the door handle, making noise.
It worked.
The pounding stopped. Clearly, the zombie was attracted by the sound.
The zombie began fumbling with the door handle.
After a few tries, the door swung open. The scent of over twenty young, living, breathing people hit the zombie, and with a roar, it lunged forward.
Door panels, pot lids, and chairs all shot out together, bracing against it and holding it in place.
The moment the door opened, Jiang Cheng pulled her hand back, stuffed her keys into her pocket, and gripped the fire axe with both hands.
As the zombie was pinned, Jiang Cheng’s axe blade slashed out diagonally, striking the side of its neck. The head immediately tilted at a grotesque angle.
The owner holding the door panel was face-to-face with the zombie and nearly threw up.
Li Jiangbing followed up with another axe strike! The zombie’s head rolled to the ground.
No one else needed to act. Just Jiang Cheng and Li Jiangbing with their two axes had handled it swiftly and cleanly.
Everyone let out a chorus of “Whoa—”
Even the neighbor across the hall, who had been peeking through the crack in their door the whole time, exclaimed, “Wow!”
Though disgusting, the fear and tension quickly faded.
Zombies weren’t so tough. They had numbers, they had weapons, and they worked together.
Li Jiangbing was feeling very pleased with himself. He even extended his fist toward Jiang Cheng in a show of bravado.
Everyone was watching, so Jiang Cheng played along and bumped fists with him.
Li Jiangbing looked immensely proud.
As showy as it was, it really did boost morale. Everyone seemed more energized than before.
After sweeping the entire floor, that one apartment on the top floor was the only one with a zombie.
Li Jiangbing asked, “What do we do with the body?”
Jiang Cheng said, “Put it in the elevator for now.”
Two people dragged the zombie by its hands into the elevator, while someone else—fighting back nausea—carried the head in.
Everyone took the stairs down one floor.
Some defended, some attacked. They had even learned from Jiang Cheng how to make noise at the door handle to lure the zombie into opening the door themselves. The process went smoothly all the way down to the 5th floor.
It looked like they were going to finish without a hitch, but then something happened on the 5th floor.
Because there were so many people, not everyone could actively participate in the fighting.
Since Jiang Cheng was a woman, the young men were fired up and raring to go. She and the other two women stepped back, letting the excited, enthusiastic guys take the lead.
No one had expected there to be two zombies in that apartment.
The first one to come out was an original zombie. Everyone had already become proficient at coordinating—block first, then kill. But just as they managed to pin down the first one, the second one followed right behind, stepping onto the back of the first zombie and leaping straight into the air.
A dark shadow loomed overhead.
Jiang Cheng’s pupils contracted sharply.
It was a second-generation zombie—infected and mutated after being bitten by an original zombie!
Li Jiangbing, being large and sturdy, had been at the front the whole time. With his combat training, he reacted extremely quickly, swinging his axe upward in one motion.
As the zombie descended, Jiang Cheng struck with her axe as well. Others followed up with their hammers, clubs, and kitchen knives. With so many weapons attacking at once, even the agile second-generation zombie had no room to dodge—its skull was essentially smashed by the barrage of blows.
But even so, when the zombie fell, it still tackled one person and bit him.
Now the zombie was dead, but this man’s face was covered in blood. The zombie had torn off a chunk of his scalp, and blood streamed down his face.
The hallway fell deathly silent. The earlier rush of adrenaline and excited shouts had vanished.
Everyone seemed to snap back to reality, away from the surreal, game-like excitement of moments ago.
No one spoke.
“I…” The injured man sat on the ground, his face drenched in blood, stammering, “I bumped into something… I—really—I panicked and accidentally pressed my face against someone’s kitchen knife, I…”
But everyone was looking at him. Not a single pair of eyes believed him.
They stared at him, and wariness had already crept into their gazes.
Jiang Cheng turned her head and quietly said to the person beside her, “Get a towel.”
That person quickly went into an apartment’s bathroom and pulled out a towel.
Jiang Cheng took the towel, folded it, walked over, and crouched down to press it against his head to stop the bleeding. Her voice was gentle. “I know. But we still need to observe you—just in case…”
“How about this,” she said. “I live in 0306. The apartment next to mine, 0308, is empty right now. You go stay there for a while. We’ll observe you through the night and talk tomorrow. By tomorrow, you might be fine.”
Her voice was very soft, but everyone’s faces were taut.
Because most of them had been in the square that day. They all knew that this was exactly how she had gently sent those two people from their building to the property management center’s conference room.
And they all knew what had become of that conference room now.
“I—I wasn’t…” The injured man’s teeth chattered with fear. “I really…”
Tears streamed down his face.
Being locked up meant certain death.
Instinctively, he reached for his weapon, but his hand closed on empty air.
He looked down. His weapon was already in Jiang Cheng’s hand, and he had no idea when she had taken it.
He lifted his eyes.
Jiang Cheng’s gaze met his for a single second. Both of their expressions changed.
The next instant, the young man moved like lightning, trying to snatch his weapon back. But the moment he reached out, Jiang Cheng had already sprung backward, retreating.
She lost her balance and fell backward, but the people behind her reached out together to catch her.
Still, she succeeded in keeping the man from retrieving his weapon.
The young man lunged forward to pursue, but everyone pointed their various makeshift weapons at him. “Don’t move!!”
“What are you doing?!”
“Don’t come any closer! Stop right there!”
The two sides were deadlocked.
Li Jiangbing tightened his grip on his axe. “Brother, calm down. Let’s—”
“Don’t touch me!” The young man’s face was covered in blood, his expression ferocious. He didn’t want to listen to any of them anymore.
He had been one of them. But he knew—from the moment he got hurt, he had already become a zombie in their eyes.
Veins bulged on the back of his hand as he pointed at the people around him. “Don’t touch me!”
“Whoever dares to touch me—I’ll bite!”
“You hear me?! I’ll bite you all to death!”
“If I’m infected, none of you are getting out of this alive!”
His hysterical, despairing shouts echoed through the hallway.
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