The voice was rather dry and hoarse, so it did not sound familiar. But the way he addressed her, and his tone, were very familiar.
Fu Erdie turned her head and looked carefully. In the dim light, her cousin’s thin face looked especially dear.
There was a small lamp beside the food cart. Her cousin excitedly pulled Fu Erdie over, barely made out her face under the dim light, and flushed with excitement. “It really is you!”
He quickly turned and shouted, “Mum! Grandma! Cousin is at our base!”
The two people supporting each other behind him hurried over. Fu Erdie pushed her cousin aside and went to support them.
When they reached her, and she saw their two thin, almost unrecognisable faces, Fu Erdie’s voice choked. “Grandma, Auntie, I came to find you.”
The two of them smelled terrible, and she could see swollen, peeling, ulcerated patches all over their bodies from skin disease. But Fu Erdie did not care. She pulled both of them into her arms, tears silently flowing down her face.
Her aunt hugged her back and sobbed. Her grandmother, however, was stunned for a long while and did not react.
Fu Erdie realised something was wrong. Her grandmother had high blood pressure!
She suddenly turned to face her grandmother. Sure enough, there was still surprise on her grandmother’s face, but in that instant, she had already lost consciousness.
Without thinking, Fu Erdie immediately called Sang Wenhao and headed back to the temporary single room.
The three of them flew into the air, leaving behind an urgent sentence. “Auntie, Yuanbai, wait for me here. I’ll settle Grandma first, then come back for you.”
Cao Yuanbai stood on the ground, dumbfounded as he watched the figures quickly disappear into the night. Then he turned to his mother in surprise. “They’re ability users!”
But Cao Rui’s focus was not on that. She was very happy about the information Fu Erdie had revealed.
“Xiaodie can help treat your grandma! She just said she’d settle Grandma first, so she must have a way to treat her!”
Cao Rui was delighted. The more she thought about it, the happier she became, almost wanting to spin in circles on the spot.
After quite a while, she forced herself to calm down and called Cao Yuanbai to go get food with her.
Cao Yuanbai followed reluctantly. “Cousin is obviously here to find us. She’s an ability user, so she’ll have ability-user food. She’ll take us to eat something good in a while. Why are we still eating this pig slop?”
The words “pig slop” immediately made the already curious and jealous people nearby glare angrily at him.
“Don’t talk nonsense, and don’t assume things you don’t know yet.” Cao Rui hurriedly pulled him back. “We only get two meals a day. If we don’t eat now, we’ll be hungry all night. No matter what happens with your grandma, we have to get dinner first.”
The people around them had already been drawn in by this sudden scene.
Everyone in the queue, both in front and behind, started asking questions. Even those who had already received their food turned back and surrounded the mother and son, wanting to see if there was any news.
Needless to say, Cao Rui had to deal with the people around her. Meanwhile, Fu Erdie hurriedly brought her grandmother back to the temporary residence, entered the iron box inside the room, and began emergency treatment.
White light poured into her grandmother’s body. Soon, her grandmother’s pale face began to improve.
The temporary residence only had one rechargeable desk lamp and no other sockets. Presumably, there was not enough electricity, so the room had not been powered.
Fu Erdie did not care. She switched on her own rechargeable desk lamp, lighting the entire iron box brightly, then began unbuttoning her grandmother’s clothes to examine her body.
Sang Wenhao left the iron box, hung a piece of cloth over the entrance to block the view, then walked to the balcony and turned his back to the room, leaving the grandmother and granddaughter some privacy.
The iron box adjusted the temperature, keeping the inside of the box van at a comfortable twenty-four degrees. Even with her clothes removed, it was not cold.
Fu Erdie directly threw away the clothes she had taken off her grandmother, then filled a basin with warm water. While wiping her grandmother’s body, she checked her condition.
Her spine was slightly tilted to one side. Clearly, after all the labour, the old woman’s bones had not been able to bear it and had become deformed.
The parts of her thighs and arms that had been used with force were somewhat swollen. There were many rubbed and injured areas too, layer upon layer of abrasions, pus, skin disease, and repeatedly formed scabs.
Her legs and feet had also become deformed from long periods of standing and walking. Her feet were especially bad; because they could not be cleaned, they had developed severe rot.
Fu Erdie cried as she looked.
Her grandmother, who loved cleanliness so much, would surely never have imagined that one day she would become this wretched from being unable to bathe or clean herself.
The wounds and diseases on the skin were secondary. The main concern was the internal illnesses: high blood pressure, heart disease, blood clots, respiratory and lung function problems.
The house needed to use a large amount of white light to first stabilise these more urgent, fundamental diseases.
Fu Erdie left the box van and walked around the temporary residence. She found a bathtub filled with water.
She carried the tub into the box van and let the room heat and sterilise the water. When the temperature was right, Fu Erdie slowly and repeatedly cleaned the dirty, scabbed, constantly infected areas on her grandmother’s skin.
Ten minutes later, her grandmother woke up. Looking at the unfamiliar place and the familiar person, tears instantly spilled from her eyes. “My girl… my girl…”
Fu Erdie hurriedly held her grandmother’s hand. “It’s me, Grandma. Don’t get too emotional yet. I’m treating your illness. Come on, take deep breaths. Calm your emotions.”
Fu Erdie could cry. Her aunt could cry. When she reunited with her parents, her parents could cry. But her grandmother, already in her seventies and having suffered so much, could not cry!
Whether it was great sorrow or great joy, either could very likely shock the old woman’s body.
Although her grandmother was old and sometimes acted like a child, most of the time, especially on serious matters, she was very sensible.
Once Fu Erdie said this, her grandmother immediately listened.
Although she was still crying and gripping Fu Erdie’s hand very tightly, her heartbeat was not so intense, and her emotions were not fluctuating so violently. She was simply slowly easing herself through her tears.
When Fu Erdie saw a glowing [✓] appear on the wall of the box van, she finally wiped away her grandmother’s tears and smiled. “You should be fine now. How do you feel? Do you still feel dizzy, have palpitations, or anything like that?”
Her grandmother was still lying on the floor, looking at her granddaughter and calming herself. She had not dared to say much. Hearing this, she felt herself carefully and suddenly realised that her head was no longer dizzy. The places that often hurt, like her windpipe and stomach, were no longer uncomfortable either.
She looked at the granddaughter she had not seen for half a year. Her old, hoarse voice sounded somewhat cautious. “Can I speak now?”
Fu Erdie smiled and nodded. “Yes, yes, you can!”
Sang Wenhao stood on the balcony, quietly listening to the huge burst of crying from inside.
If the hardship her parents had endured was the suffering of travelling and possibly dying at any moment, then the hardship her grandmother had endured was the suffering of being boiled slowly like a frog in warm water.
When they had driven out of the city centre, in order to avoid car crashes and zombies, they had taken countless twists and turns. After leaving the city centre, they had drifted along following road signs for a long time, barely managing to find the correct road to Xiangde Village.
After that, for petrol, they had searched the map for a long time, looking for out-of-the-way petrol stations off the main roads. Finally, when the car was about to run out of fuel, they reached a petrol station on a very remote township road and refuelled the car.
In late June, when communications briefly recovered, they made several phone calls with Fu Erdie and the others, downloaded a map, and continued on their way.
Then, because of a traffic jam, they were forced to change routes. In the end, they even left the province and made a huge detour before finally returning to Xiangde Village.
Even now, her grandmother felt lingering fear when thinking about it. “If we hadn’t happened to run into villagers who had come out to look for petrol and diesel, we almost wouldn’t have reached the village.”
Fu Erdie held her grandmother’s hand tightly and listened as she spoke little by little.
Actually, if there had been no attachment, they could have temporarily stayed in any village. But if they had agreed to go to Xiangde Village and then ended up changing to another village without any way to inform their family, that would mean the family might never reunite.
So even though it was difficult, her grandmother had still chosen to insist on going to Xiangde Village.
“When the base convoy passed through the county, I didn’t want to go. After all, wherever we were, it would be the same, and going to the base would probably be no different. Besides, I’m already so old. Going to the base would only add another mouth to feed and cause trouble for the country. Better not to go.” Her grandmother’s views were very simple and sincere. “In the countryside, we could plant a few more mu of land. If we really couldn’t grow grain, then so be it. We’d finish eating this year, and next year we’d just wait to—”
“Don’t talk about dying.” Fu Erdie frowned. For a moment, she was even more taboo about the word “death” than the old woman before her.
Her grandmother “pei pei pei’d” several times, patted Fu Erdie’s arm to comfort her, and continued, “Anyway, I didn’t want to cause trouble for the country. I told your aunt and cousin that if they wanted to go to the base, they could go by themselves. But your aunt and cousin couldn’t leave me behind, so they brought me along.”
Fu Erdie nodded, but could not help sighing. “They probably didn’t expect the base to be this hard either.”
Hearing this, her grandmother shook her head. “At first, it actually wasn’t this hard, because the base had quite a lot of healing ability users and water-type ability users. Later, there were several zombie sieges. For some reason, one side wasn’t defended properly, and a few very powerful zombies got in and rampaged around, ruining a batch of grain that was about to be planted. One zombie could even spray fire. Once it burned, it burned a huge area. So now we can only continue eating mouldy stored grain and wait to see whether we can grow new grain.”
“But now, it’s already winter…” Her grandmother became deeply worried as she spoke.
Fu Erdie did not feel especially immersed in this. She handed her grandmother mashed potatoes that had already been crushed, mixed with warm water and seasoning, then handed over a large jug of water. “You must be hungry. Eat first. After you finish, your spine, leg bones, and the rest should have recovered quite a bit too. Then you can take a bath in the tub, and I’ll go pick up Auntie and Cao Yuanbai.”
Fu Erdie was afraid there were too many eyes and ears in the base. While showing the box van’s healing ability, she also told her grandmother to keep it secret.
Her grandmother hurriedly nodded. After eating a large basin of mashed potatoes and drinking a large jug of water, she quickly went to wash in the tub. “You go pick them up first, in case they get anxious. I’ll finish washing soon.”
Fu Erdie thought that made sense. She left the box van and went with Sang Wenhao, who was already prepared, to pick up the other two.
“Grandma, wait for me for two minutes. I’ll be back soon.”
Her grandmother said, “I know, I know. Go and come back quickly.”
Normally, at this time, there would definitely be many people under the residential building for ordinary people who had finished eating and begun slowly going upstairs one after another. But this time, because Cao Rui and Cao Yuanbai were waiting for relatives to come pick them up, the others also wanted to watch what happened.
The food cart had already left after collecting all the food basins. Downstairs, in the dim light, there were only some dry branches and leaves that no one knew who had gathered, burning as torches while everyone waited with the mother and son.
Cao Rui remained calm the whole time. She only said she did not know anything, that she had only just seen her niece and did not understand the situation.
But Cao Yuanbai was still a hot-blooded seventeen-year-old minor. Seeing that the people asking questions around him were all people who had worked hard labour with him over the past two months, and thinking that he would definitely live together with ability users in the future, in one of the base’s large, proper houses, he felt relaxed. After that, toward the co-workers around him, he developed an indescribable faint sense of superiority.
Seeing that his mother replied “I don’t know” no matter what others asked, Cao Yuanbai could not help saying, “It must be a flying ability. Otherwise, how could they just fly away like that?”
The others had actually guessed the same thing. Now that Cao Yuanbai also said so, they felt it was most likely true.
So when Fu Erdie and Sang Wenhao arrived, they saw Cao Yuanbai ignoring his mother’s attempts to stop him and seemingly guessing, but really showing off, how amazing his cousin’s ability was.
Fu Erdie’s brows furrowed so tightly they could almost pinch a mosquito.
When she entered the city, she had registered as having no ability.
“Cao Yuanbai, the one with an ability is my boyfriend, not me.” She held Sang Wenhao’s hand and descended from the air, stopping Cao Yuanbai’s nonsense.
Cao Yuanbai was interrupted and turned to look at Fu Erdie. He gave a short “Ah,” then scratched his head awkwardly. “It isn’t you who can fly? It’s… this big brother who can fly? Then what’s your ability?”
Fu Erdie said expressionlessly, “I don’t have an ability.”
Cao Yuanbai opened his mouth, but all his words stuck in his throat. He muttered, “No ability? Ah, hehe…”
He rubbed his head, feeling a little humiliated.
Fu Erdie was too lazy to deal with him. She pulled her aunt over and said, “Grandma is already fine. Tonight, I’ll take you to where we’re staying, and we’ll squeeze in together.”
Her aunt nodded repeatedly, then glared hard at her son, signalling that he was not allowed to speak anymore.
Fu Erdie and Sang Wenhao each pulled one person and turned to leave. Behind them, the crowd stirred.
Someone asked, “Cao Rui, will the three of you never come back again?”
Before her aunt could answer, Fu Erdie said, “Probably. Thank you all for taking care of them during this time. It’s very late. We’ll go back first.”
A young male voice shouted, “I’m Cao Yuanbai’s brother! I can wipe rooms, sweep floors, do anything. Take me with you!”
Seeing them fly into the sky, and seeing that apart from Cao Yuanbai turning back to look at him, the others had no intention of paying attention, the boy continued shouting, “Cao Yuanbai already promised me just now! Sister, Brother-in-law, please take me too!”
Sang Wenhao stopped and looked at Fu Erdie. Fu Erdie’s expression was very dark, but she still turned around and said, “Sorry, my ability is limited. I can’t take so many people.”
After saying that, she and Sang Wenhao quickly left with her aunt and cousin.
Fu Erdie’s expression was ugly, and Cao Yuanbai also felt uneasy.
However, the feeling of flying into the sky was truly a little thrilling. He could not care about his unease for long; his heart was filled with novelty.
After entering through the balcony, the four of them landed steadily.
The balcony was connected to the living room. Inside was a small one-bedroom apartment. On one side of the living room was an iron box that occupied almost half the room. The other side was still empty.
As soon as Cao Rui landed, she asked which room her mother was in and said she wanted to go see her.
Cao Yuanbai, on the other hand, acted completely at home. He walked around the whole room, then said somewhat incredulously, “Ability users only get such a small room?”
Fu Erdie had originally wanted to take advantage of everyone being together and at home to quietly explain her box van ability and tell them to keep it secret from outsiders. But looking at her cousin’s personality, which had hardly changed compared with before the apocalypse, she suddenly did not want to say anything.
“Grandma is bathing inside that box van,” Sang Wenhao explained. “We only have one ability user, so this temporary residence only has one bedroom and one living room. If there are multiple ability users, the room should be bigger.”
Hearing the movement outside, Cao Xiufen, whom Fu Erdie had already almost finished cleaning, began coming out of the tub. She dried the water from her body and hair and started changing into the clothes Fu Erdie had prepared for her.
She could clearly feel that not only was the dizziness gone, but the problems with her waist, legs, and bones had also improved greatly. Although she had not fully recovered yet, it could be said that her entire body had been renewed from the inside out.
As she put on thermal underwear and a sweater, she said, “I’m fine now. Wait for me a moment.”
By the time Grandma came out wearing layer after layer of clothes, the people outside had already found stools and sat down, looking at one another in silence.
Grandma was just about to talk about her granddaughter’s matter when she saw this and asked, “Did something happen?”
Fu Erdie helped Grandma sit at the table. “Nothing much. Cao Yuanbai just took it upon himself to say he would bring some brother of his over to live with us. I didn’t agree.”
Grandma immediately said, “What trouble are you causing? How can such a small room fit so many people?”
Cao Yuanbai was also unhappy. After all, he had lost face in front of so many people just now. He curled his lips. “How was I supposed to know my cousin didn’t have an ability and only my brother-in-law did? And that the room would be this small?”
Grandma looked at Fu Erdie and instantly knew that Fu Erdie had not told them about her ability.
Fu Erdie gave Grandma a barely noticeable shake of the head. She planned not to tell her cousin about her ability situation at least while they were still in the base. She said, “Auntie, do you have any injuries or illnesses that need to be treated immediately? If you do, I’ll go find a healing ability user at the base now.”
“Me, me, me!” Cao Yuanbai interrupted before his mother could speak.
He took off his shoes and lifted his stinking foot. “I’ve had athlete’s foot for ages. Can we get a healing ability user to treat it now?”
“Put your foot down.” Fu Erdie said expressionlessly. “I have water here. You can fetch water and wash yourself. If there are no other major problems, then shut up for now.”
Seeing that Fu Erdie was a little angry, Cao Yuanbai realised he had indeed gotten a bit carried away and obediently sat back down.
Fu Erdie asked her aunt again. After confirming that she also had no particularly serious problems, she explained that her residential complex had now also become a “base,” and that she had come to take them back. She had previously heard that taking one person away required more than seven hundred jin of grain, and asked whether they knew about this.
Her aunt was curious about Fu Erdie’s base, but still nodded and first explained the situation at the D City base. “In the past, ordinary people who wanted to leave had to pay a resettlement fee for this period of time. But recently, there’s a grain shortage. Many internal small leaders have hinted to us that if we want to leave, we can leave directly, but we can’t take any grain or water from the base. But seeing so many refugees outside, none of us dared to leave.”
Fu Erdie understood.
This was actually the base giving different strategies based on food problems and different people’s needs.
If outsiders came to pick people up, then the outsiders needed to pay for this demand themselves. The base could ask for the full resettlement fee and make the outsiders pay.
But if someone heard that another base was better, or had relatives or friends in another base and wanted to defect there, then the base would be eager for them to leave. The more people left, the better.
However, the latter only applied to ordinary people. If ability users wanted to leave, they had to leave behind a large amount of resources for the base to count.
Actually, stripping a layer of skin from them was secondary. The main purpose was to keep ability users in the base and ensure the base could be as strong as possible.
Even so, more and more ability users were still leaving, feeling that they would be better off outside.
“And I heard that the relationship between the base and ability users is mainly based on crystal-core trade. The reason the base has so many crystal cores is because after gathering a large number of zombies, they used relatively large-scale weapons and obtained quite a few crystal cores all at once. But zombies don’t just gather around the base every ten days or half a month. Sometimes there isn’t a zombie tide for a whole month. So although the base is safe, there aren’t many more crystal cores available for trade.”
“If the base’s people take the initiative to go out, bypass the ability users, fight zombies, and search for crystal cores themselves, then the weapons they consume can’t be replenished either. It isn’t worth it. So the relationship between the base and ability users has become somewhat awkward.”
Her aunt was not an ability user. She only sometimes overheard people chatting and knew a little about the situation. She did not know the details.
But if even ordinary people knew these things, then it meant the base’s actual situation was even more severe.
This guess became even clearer later that night when He Xuan contacted Fu Erdie through the walkie-talkie.
Through her conversation with Xu Qi, He Xuan had learned about D City’s demand for large amounts of grain, as well as the core point of conflict.
“The faction that used to belong to the government still mainly wants to protect at least the thirty thousand people already in the base as much as possible. At the same time, they want to pile up infrastructure through manpower, keep steel and cement supply going, and after clearing zombies in a larger surrounding area, establish a new outer wall, create a bigger safe zone, gain more farmland, and feed more people.”
“But clearing zombies and searching for all kinds of resources requires ability users. And the reason ability users are willing to do more tasks is only because the base can give them crystal cores.”
“But the safer the outer area becomes, the fewer zombies can approach, and the fewer chances there are to use heavy weapons. So the base doesn’t have many crystal cores left now and can no longer command people. The base itself also doesn’t want to waste weapons.”
“Most ability users don’t care about ordinary people, nor do they care about infrastructure. They believe that as long as they rely on the existing circle of walls, they can survive in the apocalypse. The existing plant-type ability users in the base can actually let most ability users eat well. Ordinary people are purely wasting grain and consuming the supplies they pull back from outside.”
“Ordinary people feel that they’re doing exhausting hard labour for the ability users and often mock and complain openly and secretly. The ability users also feel that everything ordinary people do is just useless labour assigned by the base’s people, unrelated to them, and that every single ordinary person is a useless good-for-nothing wasting grain.”
“The conflict between ordinary people and ability users in the D City base is already very serious.”
Fu Erdie listened to the words coming from the walkie-talkie, then thought about her own situation.
Actually, perhaps it was not that the D City base’s conflict was especially severe. Rather, every base that accepted ordinary people probably had this kind of conflict. Over time, ability users either left on their own to establish small independent bases, or joined bases that did not support ordinary people.
Her residential complex was not quite a base yet, but wasn’t she also unwilling to accept ordinary people, and even unwilling to accept ordinary ability users?
These complicated thoughts drifted through her mind. Fu Erdie quickly pushed them aside and asked the question she cared about most.
“Did you pick up that child?”
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