Chapter 21: Volume One and Two: Chapter 21: ko↑ko↓

“When we were heading to Nanjing City to seek shelter, we were ambushed by a mutant on the way. After the convoy was scattered, we got lost in the suburbs.”

Fuling leaned back in her seat, chatting in fits and starts.

The car drove along the overpass. The mutant had probably returned to its territory after finishing off the zombies. Now only a sparse scattering of them remained on the bridge, standing around in a daze.

They drove south along a road the military had cleared four years ago. The passing car was so fast that the zombies turned their heads sluggishly to watch it go.

Once its distant silhouette vanished, they went back to standing in the road like sunflowers.

“Everyone died one by one. After Uncle Bai died, I planned to go back to the base.” Fuling’s voice trailed off.

Linglan glanced at her with concern. Then Fuling’s voice suddenly brightened.

“Then I met Ling! Thank goodness your legs hadn’t been eaten. Thank goodness I took you with me. Thank goodness we’re both still alive. It’s just like something out of a novel!”

Fuling smiled, her clear eyes shining. “It’s so nice. It really is.”

Slowly, she closed her eyes.

With the faint vibration of the car, Fuling’s consciousness sank little by little, back to where it had all begun.

A child whose parents had died, crying uncontrollably as the police escorted her to a shelter in a military residential compound.

There were many children like her. Their noise got on the adults’ nerves, and one of them finally lost his temper and shouted at them. After that, Fuling didn’t dare cry anymore.

“Linglan. Two abilities? In that case, you’ll be in Building A. There’s one spot left there. By the way, would you be willing to take an extra child?”

“These children don’t have…”

The armed police officer’s voice lowered. His next words faded into indistinct murmurs.

Then came a cool, distant reply.

“Bring her.”

The handsome voice was so close that Fuling looked up without thinking. Linglan was pointing at her with one finger.

Their eyes met. Linglan’s pointing finger opened into a graceful, outstretched hand.

Linglan bent down toward Fuling.

Her mature, handsome face was expressionless. Her short hair brushed along her ears and fell beside her face.

“Come live with me?”

Her dry lips, parched from long-term dehydration, parted.

The Mitsubishi’s shadow stretched longer and longer across the bridge. It passed the ruins of bombed-out buildings, skirted a section of collapsed road along the sidewalk, and drove past a crashed airliner.

The farther they went from the city, the worse the damage to the road became. By the end, not a single intact building remained.

Cratered roads and the scars left by incendiary bombs—the horrors of the war that had taken place here were still faintly visible, even three years later.

Xuzhou City had been a strategic prize fought over by armies for generations. Despite being only a second-tier city, it was a major transport hub with an airport, subway, and high-speed rail.

Whoever held Xuzhou held the strategic initiative.

The fighting there had been large enough to call a battle.

Linglan had fought from the beginning to the very end, killing her way from C-Rank to the threshold of A-Rank. Unfortunately, she hadn’t managed to break through before the final moments.

Every Awakened who reached A-Rank awakened a new ability.

If she’d managed to break through, maybe she wouldn’t have died.

As the outline of Red Sun Base rose over the horizon, Linglan focused and kept watch on their surroundings.

The mutants had headed south to hunt down the convoy after taking the base. Any powerful mutants that remained would likely choose a city like Shanghai, where Spore Concentration was high.

There shouldn’t be anything above D-Rank inside Red Sun Base… right?

When the base was about to fall, two intercontinental ballistic missiles would have wiped out the mutants if one of them hadn’t stopped them.

If the missiles had actually struck, there would have been fewer A-Rank Mutants rampaging across the land in the future.

Well, if they’d really hit, this novel would’ve had nothing left to tell~

The car stopped in front of Red Sun Base’s main gate.

Most of the road beside it had sunk into the ground. The watchtowers, blast barriers, and walls had collapsed into a pit about ten feet deep.

Vegetation and mushrooms now covered the crater. The wreckage of cold, armored vehicles lay buried in the dirt. A skeleton in a tank crew uniform was halfway out from beneath one of them, crawling toward the exit.

It had frozen in that pose, its right hand stretched ahead and clutching a handful of soil.

A tiny flower stood in the skeleton’s palm, swaying in the breeze.

Beyond the crater, they could see the huge shelter, converted from the airport terminal.

Red Sun had risen and set, swallowed by the green tide in a darkened world. It had never risen again.

“Vines everywhere.” That meant there were no mutants here.

Fuling loaded a magazine and worked the charging handle with a loud clack, checking their surroundings warily.

Linglan didn’t turn off the engine. If anything happened, they needed to be able to run.

This was the base’s outer defense line. The hangars were at its heart, and Linglan’s target was the operations command center there.

They carefully crossed the broken ground into the airport parking lot. Every body lying there wore a military uniform.

Some had missing limbs, others had twisted bones. Each had met a different kind of gruesome end. Some had already fused with the earth.

Fuling crouched solemnly beside a body and murmured something under her breath. She pulled a vest from the skeleton’s remains.

Even after three years of weathering, it still seemed sturdy enough.

Just as she started to change into it, Linglan stopped her.

Linglan pulled the armor plate from the vest and threw it on the ground. One hard stomp left a dent in it.

Whether made of PE or Kevlar, body armor was vulnerable to water and heat. After years of exposure to the elements, the composite materials had started to break down, too.

Most armor plates had a shelf life of about five years. Given the harsh environment here, the plates left behind were probably all ruined after three.

They were heavy, anyway. Better to keep the vest and ditch the plates.

The guns left behind were all useless for the same reason.

Linglan climbed onto the roof of a burned-out truck and surveyed the airport. The scavenger in her was already roaring to life, but she didn’t forget their current priority.

“Whoo↑ whoo↓”

Linglan pointed toward the hangars.

But just before they set out, Linglan pressed her palms together.

“Ling?” Fuling was tensely scanning the area. When she noticed Linglan hadn’t followed, she turned around and saw her standing in a strange pose.

“Huh?”

Linglan stepped toward her.

Time to absorb some good luck!

“Eek! Aah~!”

Linglan rubbed Fuling’s cheeks for a while. Only when they were red enough to steam did she finally pull her hands away, satisfied.

Fuling bashfully folded her arms around herself.

Fuling’s way too tense. Relax a little~

Linglan stepped forward in a good mood.

The target!

The satellite intelligence center!

Beside the charred tire tracks on the road, a blackened hand pressed against the ground.

It lifted, flexed, and settled again.

The figure moved gracefully along the tire tracks.

“I can smell it.”