They quickly agreed and sped up gathering firewood.
The zucchini had followed Fu Erdie all this way, using every moment to absorb nutrients and break down corpses. By now, it had also reached the fifth rank.
Every day, it could produce many zucchini fruits, adjusting their size according to everyone’s appetite and current food needs.
Before Tan Haoge came over, Fu Erdie had already been holding a zucchini and preparing to eat a late-night snack. Now that a fire-type ability user had delivered himself to “atone,” Fu Erdie naturally accepted and seized the chance to have hotpot.
The hotpot seasoning had been picked up from a random supermarket on the road. The ingredients were unexpired canned goods they had collected along the way, plus the zucchini fruit placed nearby.
Sang Wenhao took out two clean steel plates and reshaped them, using one as a cutting board and one as a knife. He sliced the zucchini fruit into pieces and prepared the ingredients.
When Tan Haoge came in with the firewood, he saw that the big shots inside had already prepared the pot, bowls, utensils, and even drinks. They were only waiting for him to light the fire.
For some reason, although Tan Haoge was the one being ordered around, he felt greatly relieved.
The more down-to-earth the big shots were, the more they seemed like ordinary people from before the apocalypse.
That was the confidence of the strong, and it also represented a rare and precious humanity.
The firelight illuminated the centre of the factory workshop. Part of the firewood was lit for warmth, while another flame was personally controlled by Tan Haoge to cook hotpot for Fu Erdie’s group.
He carefully read the room. Knowing that Fu Erdie was probably the leader of the group, he took the initiative to say to her, “There’s a purifier ability user in our team. She can purify water and food. She feels sorry about the misunderstanding earlier. My other two teammates also want to apologise in person. May I bring them over too?”
Fu Erdie nodded.
The more people there were, the more information they could obtain. They could also observe their expressions when certain topics came up and judge whether they were telling the truth.
So Xin Nuo and the others came in somewhat stiffly.
Fu Erdie told them to find somewhere to sit and listened as they explained their situation.
It turned out that Qing City Base had developed its own “base culture” very early on.
They did not care about humanity, only about levelling up. After discovering that eating crystal cores could raise ability levels, and that eating a crystal core of the same attribute increased the speed tenfold, the hunting of their own kind began.
Ability users formed groups of all sizes. Every group contained people with different attributes. They hunted people with the same attributes as themselves or their teammates, then absorbed their crystal cores.
At first, not everyone was so unreasonable. But as time passed, the people who took the initiative and held the strongest power in Qing City Base were all the ones who followed the law of the jungle.
And Qing City’s boss, Ying Da, was one of the best among them.
Gradually, the strong grew stronger and the weak were either swallowed up, barely survived, or tried every possible way to escape.
But very few ability users successfully escaped, because inside the base were jackals devouring each other, while outside the base, at that time, there were countless zombies and even zombie kings.
Unless they had a car and could find a chance to break through, there was no way to cross so many zombies and reach a safer place.
Of course, in word-of-mouth among ability users, the safer places became C City and D City. But C City and D City were truly far, far away from Qing City.
Qing City Base firmly controlled all kinds of resources. All collected petrol and diesel had been seized by them, and most usable cars had been moved to the base’s guarded car park.
Even if people found stranded cars outside that could still be used, they would end up stranded halfway because they could not refuel in time.
In short, the ability users around Qing City lived in deep suffering. Only by joining the group led by Ying Da and avoiding sharing an attribute with Ying Da or his core members could they survive in Qing City Base.
But that way of living was extremely suffocating and dark.
Some people were already fourth-rank ability users, yet in front of sixth-rank ability users like Ying Da, they were still slaves who could be beaten or scolded at any time.
Fu Erdie’s ears twitched. She swallowed the piece of luncheon meat in her mouth. “Qing City’s leader, Ying Da, is a sixth-rank ability user?”
“Yes.”
“What type?”
As she asked, Fu Erdie vaguely guessed that Ying Da might also be an attribute-less ability user.
After all, if he had an attribute, raising him to the sixth rank would require ten or twenty thousand crystal cores. That was not a small amount. Especially since competition here was fierce. Everyone fought ability zombies and their own kind. Even with a large population base, there should not be so many crystal core resources to pile entirely onto him.
Tan Haoge’s answer surprised her.
“Ying Da is a lightning-type ability user. And actually, we suspect he’s not just sixth rank. He should be very close to seventh rank now.”
Fu Erdie lowered her eyes and continued adding food to her bowl.
Seventh rank?
Based on existing experience, an ability user needed more than ten thousand first-rank crystal cores to reach the sixth rank. To reach the seventh rank, they would need over a hundred thousand first-rank crystal cores.
However, excluding the fact that one same-attribute crystal core was equal to ten different-attribute crystal cores, and that second-, third-, and higher-rank crystal cores contained energy equivalent to different quantities of first-rank crystal cores, the exact number of crystal cores needed to level up was somewhat vague.
For example, to one person, a third-rank crystal core might be equal to seventy or eighty first-rank crystal cores’ worth of energy. But for that same person, another different-attribute third-rank crystal core might, by coincidence, be worth one hundred and twenty or one hundred and thirty first-rank crystal cores.
So every crystal core had a different value to the same person.
Fu Erdie could only use first-rank crystal cores to make a rough estimate. The conclusion was that a seventh-rank ability user needed over one hundred thousand first-rank crystal cores.
But now came the problem. If the initial ratio of ability users or ability zombies to ordinary humans or ordinary zombies was 1 in 10,000, then one hundred thousand crystal cores… meant they had been selected from a population of one billion!
Now, that 1 in 10,000 ratio had increased somewhat, gradually becoming 2 in 10,000, 3 in 10,000, even 5 in 10,000. Even so, the population base was still enormous. It was absolutely not something a small Qing City could support!
Fu Erdie had reached the seventh rank because she was attribute-less and levelled ten times faster.
Ying Da, a lightning-type ability user—how could he…
Seeing Fu Erdie frowning in thought, Tan Haoge was secretly shocked.
If he had not spent every day following Ying Da and acting like a lackey in front of him, Tan Haoge would never have realised the fundamental issue behind levelling to the seventh rank.
Only those who understood could immediately catch the key problem. Otherwise, they would just be shocked and confused.
He formed an even bolder guess about Fu Erdie’s strength and did not dare keep anything hidden. His tone became increasingly respectful. “Ying Da used a special method.”
Humans levelled up entirely through crystal cores.
But zombies were not exactly the same.
So far, they knew of zombies that levelled up by eating their own kind, and attribute-less zombie kings, who levelled ten times faster by eating crystal cores.
Sang Wenhao’s eyes narrowed. “Ying Da raises zombie kings?”
It was phrased as a question, but his tone was certain.
Outside, the wild wind howled.
Inside the tightly shut workshop, it was so quiet that only the crackling of burning firewood could be heard.
A long-sealed question in their minds had finally been blasted open, allowing them to see the truth through the gap.
So that was it.
So it was actually like this!
Tan Haoge respectfully added, “Exactly. One day early last year, after Ying Da discovered this pattern, he gave the order to capture all the ordinary people who were still alive and have zombies scratch them.”
“Most of the people turned into zombies. Those zombies were dragged off to feed the zombie kings that could level up by eating their own kind.”
“Some people became ability users, and they were sent to Qing City ability users with the same attributes.”
“And some people became ability zombies. Ying Da would check whether they had the potential to become zombie kings. If they did, he fed them. If they didn’t, he killed them for their crystal cores, then distributed those cores to his own people with matching attributes.”
Early last year… in other words, half a year after the apocalypse began.
At that time, she had understood her ability, brought back her family, and spent that winter planting melons and vegetables, expanding the ranks of her plant babies and enjoying a brief happiness with family and friends gathered together.
And at that same time, Qing City Base had already been carrying out this inhuman zombie king farming?
Not only Fu Erdie, everyone sucked in a breath.
Especially Cen Xiyang and Han Zhi, who, strictly speaking, had not gone through truly devastating suffering. Their pupils trembled in shock.
They had thought that fighting over supplies, then slowly developing into killing each other for crystal cores, was already the limit—and that such a thing would take a long time to happen.
But now they were being told that early last year, there were already beasts here who had begun… farming zombie kings?!
Cen Xiyang’s already narrow eyes widened. “Do you people in Qing City Base have no humanity at all?”
Tan Haoge fell silent.
He could not say that he had only watched from the side, that he had been powerless, or anything like that.
Because in order to survive and act as Ying Da’s lackey, he had also become an executioner.
Although it had only happened once… he had captured a relatively easy-to-control little zombie for the base and put it into a room with an ordinary person who had been tied up and could not resist.
Even if he had only acted against ordinary people that one time, he was still an executioner.
Later, he barely became Ying Da’s assistant, even a “trusted subordinate,” and ate many crystal cores from fire-type ability users and fire-type zombies.
All of these were things he had obtained as a beneficiary.
Not only him. Xin Nuo and the others were the same.
Condemnation of conscience? Inner torment?
Yes, and plenty of it.
But they were still villains.
Their hands were already covered in blood.
Even now, their escape was not because they had reformed, but because they truly could not endure Ying Da’s day-after-day torment and finally made up their minds to leave…
Tan Haoge knelt on the ground, his lowered, ashamed face carrying a hoarse voice.
“I’m sorry.”
Leave a Reply