Chapter 22

Food and water are the fundamental means to control the absolute obedience of the women.

The two men were not at all worried about the weak and timid female prisoners. Their physical strength and size were far beyond what the women could match. A life of semi-starvation had gradually drained the little energy the women had left. There was nothing in the room that could be used as a weapon. They were whipped with belts, punched, branded with cigarettes, and repeatedly tortured with the most despicable and vile methods... The two guards had grown accustomed to seeing the women cower in fear.

They were certain: they were wolves, and the women were just a flock of timid sheep that would never resist.

Lewd moans echoed through the room. The women who were not involved in the "service" huddled in the corner, hugging each other, their eyes filled with tension and fear as they watched.

Their position was very close to the chairs, but from this angle, it was a blind spot for the guards. They could hear the women crying but could not see their movements.

Cao Rui felt a thick, sticky liquid flowing from her lower body. It was not her period, but a condition caused by too much intercourse—there was not even enough water to drink, let alone for cleaning. It was itchy and painful, but what dominated her mind was an intense and疯狂的杀意.

Yes, I want to kill, to kill them—

There would never be a better opportunity than now.

Since Hu He left with his men, Cao Rui had been secretly lobbying the remaining women. The threat of death and the reality of their abuse had tightly bound them together. They appeared even more timid and obedient, serving the men more diligently, and even began to vie for their favor.

"Yes! That's it, I'm very satisfied... continue... you can have an extra can of food for dinner today."

A muscular man muttered contentedly, lost in his lustful desires. He did not notice—Cao Rui and another woman quickly exchanged glances. They subtly raised their arms, signaling to the others scattered around the room. Then, their jaw muscles tensed, and their teeth clamped down hard, biting through the men's hardened appendages.

"Ahhhh—"

Their eyes widened in shock, and they let out blood-curdling screams. Blood gushed from their groins, and their entire bodies went numb. Their hearts almost stopped, and blood spurted uncontrollably. Their brains went blank, and the sounds that erupted from their throats were like cries. They rolled off the chairs, hands clutching their wounds, writhing in despair and fear.

The women huddled in the corner rushed forward, flipping the chairs and pressing the thick legs against the men's necks. Together, they applied force, and the men's necks rapidly compressed to half their thickness. Their eyes bulged, tongues extended, and hands flailed in the air. The pain, suffocation, anger, and rage drove them to want to kill the women in the most brutal way possible. But the gap between their thoughts and reality was too great. A few minutes later, they lay stiff on the ground, motionless.

The women continued to press down on the chairs, not letting up. Blood flowed from under the men's bodies, seeping into the floor.

"Thud—"

Cao Rui, her eyes filled with a fierce light, spat out a piece of bloody flesh from her mouth—obviously the men's severed genitals. She quickly left the room, ran down the stairs, and found a rusty lead ball in the hall. She struggled to carry it back upstairs and smashed it into the head of the man who was already dead.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Blood and flesh splattered everywhere, and no one stopped her from her brutal and疯狂的行为. Every pair of eyes showed a mix of relief and tension—fearing the men might still be alive, but relieved to finally be free from their torment.

Crushing a human head into a bloody pulp sounds terrifying. The women took turns, passing the bloodied lead ball from hand to hand until two unrecognizable piles of flesh and bone lay on the floor. They sighed with relief, supporting each other as they staggered toward the cabinets storing food and water.

...

When Su Hao and his group broke the lock on the gym's first-floor door with an axe, Cao Rui was chewing on a soda cracker she had just stuffed into her mouth.

The loud noise from downstairs caused the women upstairs to panic. They quickly grabbed whatever they could use as weapons and rushed down the stairs.

"Clang—"

The door burst open, sending a cloud of dust into the air. Du Tianhao kicked aside a cabinet blocking the doorway and entered the hall with Su Hao and Xin Yan. Seeing the scene before them, they were stunned, and Du Tianhao almost dropped the axe in his hand.

Seven filthy, naked women stood opposite them, gripping javelins, lead balls, and chairs like injured wolves.

They did not feel ashamed. Clothes had been forgotten along with the nightmare of their past humiliation. Food crumbs clung to their mouths—crackers and dry, hard instant noodles. Their eyes burned with fierce flames, and they continued to chew on the food they had not yet swallowed. The women in the back trembled slightly, their legs and hands covered in blood. It was not their blood, but that of the two dead men upstairs.

"You... how can you be like this?"

Du Tianhao cried out, shaking his head in disbelief.

No one answered. The seven pairs of eyes showed a cold and fierce determination to resist. The flames in their eyes burned even brighter, making them seem more like vicious, ferocious beasts than humans.

"Wait, we, we mean no harm—"

Just as Cao Rui was about to throw her javelin at Du Tianhao, Xin Yan took two steps forward. She looked at the women in shock, raising her hands instinctively, and said nervously, angrily, and cautiously, "Please believe me, I'm telling the truth."

Cao Rui's fierce expression softened slightly—Xin Yan's gender surprised her. She gripped the javelin tightly, taking a cautious step back, and scrutinized the three strangers with a wary gaze.

Their attitude was friendly, and they did not seem like bad people.

This thought flashed through her mind but was quickly suppressed.

Hmph! There are plenty of people who don't look like bad guys. Take Hu He, for example. He had been attentive to her many times, even washing her car, but...

The memories that surfaced made Cao Rui's eyes turn blood red. She ground her teeth, her eyes darting between the three men, assessing their numbers, weapons, and strength... She was not good at this, but to survive and to no longer endure the abuse, she had forced herself to learn to calculate and observe while being raped by countless men.

"Get out... get out!"

These people were strong, and they had guns.

However, this was not the real reason Cao Rui did not attack.

She saw the police bulletproof vest Xin Yan was wearing. This slightly eased her tense nerves. The word "police" made her subconsciously trust them, even though this feeling was very faint.

There was another factor—Xin Yan was also a woman, which reduced some of the hostility.

However, this did not mean they could be trusted.

Cao Rui had trusted Hu He, and he and his men had almost killed her.

Thinking of this, she felt her face burning, blood rushing to her head, and her eyes filled with bloodshot veins. She screamed uncontrollably, "Get out! All of you, get out! This is our place, and if you don't want to die, stay away—"

Su Hao stood quietly, meeting Cao Rui's intense gaze without flinching. He saw the unhidden ferocity and anger in the women's eyes, as well as the hidden panic and fear. Although he did not know what had happened in this stench-filled gym, he understood the tragic fate of women, especially young and beautiful ones, in a world where social order had collapsed.

After a moment of silence, memories from another time flashed through his mind. Su Hao sighed and said softly, "We'll leave."

He took the fire axe from Du Tianhao and the hunting knife from Xin Yan, placed the weapons on the ground, and stepped back.

These women had suffered greatly. Without their trust, they would not leave this place, nor would they go with him.

They had no weapons, and zombies roamed outside... Of course, Su Hao was not entirely heartless. He could leave them the knives and axe, but he would never give them a gun or a bullet.

Du Tianhao brought in a box of bottled water from the car, and Xin Yan took out some rice balls wrapped in plastic from her backpack. These were originally meant to be their lunch.

"Follow the main road outside the gym to the east, turn left at the second intersection, then right at the fork, and left again. After the overpass, you'll find us halfway down the road."

After saying this, Su Hao gave Cao Rui a deep look and turned to leave.

No sentimental words or phrases would work in this situation. Only when their anger and hatred cooled would they think rationally.

...

The rainy season had arrived.

Rain fell from the sky without any pattern, sometimes for an entire day, making the ground wet and slippery, with garbage and leaves scattered everywhere. Abandoned corpses on the streets swelled and rotted, their flesh turning to mush like watered-down paste. Ants and cockroaches became more active, and behind the misty rain, zombies could often be seen moving. They might be bathing or using this unique method to replenish water. Even in the morning, when the air was freshest, the city was still filled with a faint stench of decay.

The living conditions in the city were deteriorating. There were no accurate figures on how many people had died from the virus. Su Hao could only estimate based on historical records and the approximate ratio from the future world. According to this calculation, the number of dead was at least in the millions.

This was just one city. If you expanded your thinking to the entire country, Asia, Europe, and the world...

The hall and corridors of the bank building were filled with dozens of large buckets and basins of water—groundwater might be contaminated, so to avoid infection, the survivors installed filters on the pipes and boiled the water they used every day. Research in the future world showed that parasitic viruses could not survive in temperatures above 80 degrees Celsius.

Du Tianhao brought a whole truckload of disinfectant from a chemical store, along with the sulfur they had previously obtained, and spread it inside and outside the building, as well as on all the streets within a hundred meters.

These tasks required a lot of time and effort, but no one complained. Since they had survived the terror of the zombies, no one wanted to die pointlessly.

Cell phones still had no signal, TV screens were filled with static, and the radio only emitted a "hiss" of static.

When gathered together, the survivors occasionally complained, but the pessimistic atmosphere was quickly replaced by hope for the future and various jokes. They were busy, encouraging each other, as Su Hao had said, "We are not alone, we have a home, and we have friends."

In addition to producing the fungus hormone and silver bones, the trap yard also served as a training ground for hunting and combat. Liao Qiu made several pairs of protective gear from thin metal sheets, and people practiced close-quarters combat with zombies while their arms and shoulders were protected. The heads and necks of these monsters were still the vital points, and the splattered rotten flesh and dirty blood, though disgusting, fueled the survivors' killing intent. The training was very effective, and even Li Xiaomei, the weakest woman in the group, could now kill zombies from three directions on her own, using timing and terrain to her advantage.

The trap yard produced dozens of zombie corpses every day, which the survivors transported in trucks and dumped in a square a few kilometers away. As a result, the underground vault stored thousands of milliliters of fungus hormone.

Su Hao was not sure if his blood could produce immunity in other users. Without absolute certainty, he did not dare to try, nor did he want to risk a companion's life. However, one thing was certain—the virus had no effect on Old Song, and infection from zombies posed no threat to him.

Naturally, Old Song became the second person in the building to take the silver bones, with a dose of only ten milligrams.

"I feel full of strength. If someone tries to attack me like that woman did last time, I could rip off their head with one hand—"

These words were said with great confidence, but Su Hao needed more evidence.

At the shooting range in the suburbs, Old Song used an assault rifle to shoot down a sparrow flying hundreds of meters away. This indicated that his vision and reaction speed had significantly improved. In the past, even with a high-powered Barrett rifle, the old man could not have hit such a small, fast-moving target.

As for strength... Su Hao watched as Old Song stood on the rooftop terrace, swung an empty beer bottle labeled "Tsingtao Beer," and threw it at a building hundreds of meters away, shattering it.

All the evidence indicated—this was no longer the old man in his seventies. He had evolved into a first-stage enhanced human.

Su Hao felt his mind was a mess, filled with complex thoughts and emotions. Shock, joy, confusion, and bewilderment...

He had read the historical archives of the future world—about a year after the virus outbreak, the first-stage enhanced humans began to appear among the surviving human population. This was not the result of drug stimulation but a natural evolution of survivors who had fled to the wilderness and fought and killed in countless battles.

Their nerves were always on edge, and they rarely had a full meal. Their bodies were in constant high-intensity motion, and they were always alert to threats nearby... No research could explain why ordinary people could suddenly become enhanced humans without taking genetic drugs. Perhaps it was due to hormones secreted by the pineal gland, or a mutation caused by the subconscious. But regardless, these people survived and became stronger.

Old Song's transformation was clearly not a result of natural evolution. The only possible cause was Su Hao's blood.

Any speculation was meaningless. Su Hao did not want to use others as test subjects; he needed to study his own blood.

This required the right equipment.

At least, a precision microscope.

In addition, there was another problem to solve.

Weapons.

...

It had just rained, and the gutters on both sides of the road were filled with water. Besides the neatly lined street trees and buildings, the most prominent objects in the view were the various abandoned vehicles scattered throughout the city.

The door of a "Buick Regal" was open, and the woman in the driver's seat had only a third of her head left. She leaned back, and a centipede crawled out of her wide-open mouth, moving between her yellowed teeth. Perhaps because the zombies sought fresher meat, she had not been completely devoured. The muscles on her chest and left side of her abdomen were still intact. Her bra straps, soaked in corpse water, were black and sagging between her collarbone and ribs. She was almost completely rotten, her internal organs in her abdomen having decayed into pus, with thousands of maggots and ants crawling on her body. They each took what they needed, searching for their favorite food in the mucus and rotten flesh.

Su Hao, wearing a mask from a medical store, smashed the window of a nearby "Lifan" car with a punch. He reached in, pulled the lever, opened the door, and climbed into the driver's seat, skillfully searching for the wires to start the engine.

The moment the window shattered, an ear-piercing alarm sounded inside the car. A few slow-moving zombies, attracted by the noise, stumbled out from the roadside shops and street corners. More gray figures could be seen moving in the distance.