Chapter 27

In the late afternoon, the small building began to get very lively.

The hall was crowded with survivors rescued from the bathhouse. They had already changed into clean clothes and were queuing up to receive food in an orderly manner.

Tao Yuan stood behind a few makeshift tables, using an iron spoon to ladle steaming hot porridge into each person's bowl. Two large porridge buckets were filled to the brim, with chopped canned meat and oil droplets floating on the surface, emitting an enticing aroma.

Xin Yan and Liao Qiu stood at the periphery of the hall. They held automatic rifles loaded with bullets, keeping a close watch on the crowd more than ten meters away. They would not hesitate to open fire if anything unusual happened.

According to normal thinking, the rescued people would feel grateful. However, nothing is absolute. Su Hao could not guarantee that every rescued person would obey orders. He only hoped that these people would follow the arrangements and quickly integrate into his team.

Su Hao did not provide weapons to the rescued people, and even confiscated all items that could potentially harm others. These people were housed in the inner guest rooms of the building, with fully armed team members guarding key positions at the stairwell corners and corridors. There were also corresponding security personnel arranged on each floor. These measures were not excessive. Without sufficient evidence to trust these people, Su Hao would not take any risks.

The location for the field base had already been chosen. He needed enough manpower to complete the construction of the houses and the outer protective walls before winter arrived.

The people in the hall were very orderly. There was no chaos or loud noise. They sat at the dining tables, holding their bowls of porridge, drinking and whispering to each other. Some were helping out, tidying up.

They all knew what had happened and were aware that the outside world was full of terrifying zombies. Their conversations revolved around their terrifying experiences, their views on the current situation, and their concerns about the future.

A middle-aged man with a slightly hunched back took out his phone from his pocket, brought it close to his eyes, and frowned as he dialed several numbers. Finally, he said with a sad face, "There's still no government broadcast, and I can't receive any information."

A lean man rolled up his shirt sleeves, wiped his nose with his thumb, and muttered to himself, or perhaps to everyone, "Where did those monsters come from?"

No one answered, only the sound of slurping porridge could be heard.

"Could it be the Japanese doing this?"

A short and plump middle-aged woman adjusted her glasses, which had slipped down her nose, and said uncertainly, "After the Fukushima nuclear power plant leak, the rats there became particularly large and aggressive. Also, the SARS virus was supposedly created by the Japanese."

"Why hasn't anyone come to rescue us?"

The tall, thin man sneered at this suggestion. He raised his voice in rebuttal, "Where are the army and the police? Even the phones don't work, and we've suddenly lost contact with the outside world. Do you think this explanation is reasonable? Possible?"

"Regardless, I have to go back and check. I'll rest here for a few days, then go back to find my family."

The aimless discussion was bound to yield no results.

The chaotic and baseless speculations made the already oppressive atmosphere even more suffocating. Soon, people left the messy dining tables and returned to their rooms to rest.

...

The living conditions in the small building were excellent, with water and electricity. For the rescued people who had been living in dirty and dry environments for a long time, this was an extremely luxurious experience.

Standing under the showerhead in the bathroom, Cao Rui closed her eyes, letting the water wash over her body. The water splashed on her smooth skin, flowing down the curves of her body, gathering at her rounded ankles, and disappearing into the shallow drain.

She picked up a dry towel from the handrail, pushed open the door covered with water droplets, and took a deep breath. The slightly cool air that hit her skin, which had been stimulated by hot water, was indescribably refreshing, making Cao Rui almost moan.

"Almost everyone in the city has fled, yet there's still hot water here. You... are really fortunate."

The person she was speaking to was Xin Yan, who was sitting on the edge of the bed. Reflecting on her recent experiences, Cao Rui felt deeply moved and believed that only the word "fortunate" could express her current feelings.

Xin Yan smiled faintly, pulled the military backpack at the foot of the bed, and took out two empty 5.8mm pistol magazines, loading them with bullets one by one.

She wore a loose T-shirt and shorts, exposing most of her firm breasts, with her long legs crossed, her buttocks tight, and no excess fat on her waist, exuding the vibrant energy of a young girl.

"Clearing this building was very dangerous. There were many zombies. If it weren't for him, I might have already died."

Xin Yan's voice was not loud, but it was clear enough to be heard.

Cao Rui picked up a glass of cool boiled water, took a sip, and curiously observed Xin Yan.

As a mature woman with marriage experience, she could certainly see Xin Yan's youthful charm and understood who "he" referred to. It was undeniable that as the team leader, Su Hao had left a deep impression on her: handsome, strong, ruthless, and resolute. On the other hand, Xin Yan was very young, with an outstanding figure and appearance. This pair of young men and women had spent a considerable amount of time alone in the comfortable small building, yet they seemed to have nothing happen between them... This was indeed curious and puzzling.

Cao Rui did not think that Su Hao was impotent or that Xin Yan had a preference for the same sex in such matters.

They both adhered to the most basic etiquette and rules.

But I, on the other hand, encountered a group of men who were worse than beasts.

Unconsciously, tears welled up in Cao Rui's eyes.

She finally understood a sentence she had read in a collection of lyrical essays many years ago.

"Only through comparison can one truly feel happiness."

...

On the opposite side of the road adjacent to the trap courtyard were several newly built, modern high-rise residential buildings with a strong contemporary design. This housing complex was well-located, and the prices had been steadily rising. Newspapers and TV advertisements always claimed that the units were sold out, but whenever someone inquired at the sales office, the saleswoman would pretend to be cautious and mysterious, saying, "There are still two units available in Building XX. If you want to buy, do it now, immediately, right away."

From the outside, these buildings were unusually quiet. The empty elevator lobbies were darker than graves. Without light, the corridors exuded a chilling cold.

Su Hao ran up to the third floor along the rough cement stairs. He used a key to unlock the soft lock of one of the rooms, slipped inside, closed the door behind him, and locked it. Then he quickly approached the window, peering through the gaps in the curtains to carefully observe the outside. After confirming that no one was following and there were no unusual situations, he turned around and turned on the emergency light in the corner of the wall.

This was an unfinished, bare apartment. There was no furniture in the room, and the curtains were a few pieces of black cloth that Su Hao had obtained from a nearby store. Three men, with their wrists and ankles tightly bound, were huddled in the corner, silent and motionless.

They were the captives Su Hao had taken from the bathhouse. The rescued people and Cao Rui had carefully identified them, and they were the same as the deceased Liu Jiantao, who had participated in the violent acts that led to the deaths of several women.

The three men lay on the cold floor, unconscious. They had been knocked out and had thick cloth strips tied around their mouths, rendering them immobile.

Su Hao silently watched them, taking out a medical glass bottle from his backpack. Under the pale blue emergency light, the bottle contained a thick, grayish-brown liquid. He inserted the needle of the syringe into the rubber stopper of the bottle, drew about fifteen milliliters, and without disinfecting or cleaning, directly injected it into the wrist vein of one of the captives.

He then did the same for the second and third captives.

All the captives had been injected with Su Hao's blood. As for the medical glass bottle... the gray liquid inside came from the bodies of zombies. This substance had a very significant infection effect, highly contagious, and the human reaction was even more intense than a zombie bite.

Using live humans for experiments was indeed immoral.

However, thinking about the women who had died tragically, this was not an overreaction.

The curtain hanging in front of the window was blown open by the wind, revealing a night sky as dark as ink and a crescent moon.

Su Hao put away the medicine bottle and syringe, took out a cigarette from his pocket, lit it, took a deep puff, and exhaled a light cloud of smoke, silently gazing at the natural satellite closest to Earth.

Today was his birthday.

If in the future, he would be forty-six years old. But the body he was in now was no more than twenty years old in actual physiological age.

Leaving that time meant permanently bidding farewell to hatred, sin, the past, and the friends and familiar people there.

Many things seemed to have happened just yesterday, vivid and clear. This feeling was somewhat absurd; they had actually "happened," but in terms of time, they were decades in the future.

I can never go back.

Those people can never catch up.

Smoking, Su Hao felt a vague sense of melancholy. He wanted to talk to someone, but there was no one to confide in. After all, some things could never be spoken aloud and could only be buried as secrets in his heart.

What's the difference between the future and the past? The future doesn't belong to me. The present is the most important.

Lowering his head, the watch on his wrist showed that thirty-seven minutes had passed.

In the future, research on zombies had formed a systematic discipline: based on factors such as genes, physique, and physical condition, a normal bite or scratch would take effect in about three to six hours. In other words, the time it took for a person bitten by a zombie to mutate due to infection was not precisely defined. However, the highly viral zombie body fluids were different. This substance would cause infection in a short time, and the mutation would not exceed fifteen minutes. Even if an immune agent was taken after infection, the effective time would not be less than seven and a half minutes.

The breathing of the three captives was light and slow, their body temperature stable, and there were no signs of it rising. Their fingers and facial skin were not dehydrated. When their eyelids were lifted, their pupils were not dilated, and there was no surrounding congestion.

The night was cooler than the day, and the air in the room seemed to become stagnant due to the cold. Su Hao squatted by the wall, silently watching the unconscious captives, his right hand loosely gripping, ready to attack at any moment.

Considering the low night temperature, which could make the virus less active, he waited an additional ten minutes.

Moreover, the injection dose was more than three times the normal amount.

No one turned into a zombie, and there were no signs of adverse side effects in the injected individuals. This indicated that the previous hypothesis was correct: he indeed had a powerful immune base in his body. Even without the gene agents from the future, this antibody could be transmitted to others through the blood.

Looking at his hand, Su Hao smiled bitterly and shook his head. He began to understand the Tang Monk in "Journey to the West," who was caught by demons and placed in a steamer to be cooked and eaten.

Of course, this experiment still had some bias and lacked data analysis. But Su Hao did not plan to conduct similar experiments again. With Lao Song, there were already four cases, and no further proof was needed.

He drew out a combat knife from his waist, aimed at the side of the neck of one of the still unconscious captives, and stabbed it fiercely. The blade pierced through from the other end, cutting the throat and severing the entire cervical vertebra.

Su Hao's knife strike was very precise. The blade passed through the gaps between the bones without any obstruction. This was not a cruel act of torture but a habit of a hunter from the future—many humanoid creatures could not be killed by simply cutting their blood vessels; only by severing the central nervous system could they be completely incapacitated.

A few minutes later, he left the room, leaving behind three bodies that were gradually cooling and stiffening.

The blood's immunity to the virus meant that other team members could take silver bones and become enhanced individuals like himself and Lao Song.

This was very good news.

It meant that a team of enhanced individuals could be established now.

Of course, the prerequisite was that these people were sufficiently loyal to him.

For the future, this was an unimaginable huge advantage. Because it was the early stage of the virus outbreak, the strength of "—1" level zombies was weak, making it easy to obtain a large amount of silver bones and quickly enhance the level of enhanced individuals.

Even in the time he originally came from, fifth-stage enhanced individuals were very rare. The environment, food, water sources, and increasingly powerful monsters... all these factors constrained the production and sources of silver bones. Although people at that time were generally enhanced, most were only at the first or second stage. Even the most experienced hunters rarely evolved to the third stage.

The experiment only confirmed the hypothesis about immunity. There was still another question that Su Hao had not found an answer to.

Immunity and enhancement were two gene agents with completely different effects. Even the military research institute in the future had not developed such a substance. So why did his blood have both effects?

Su Hao was very puzzled. He felt that his mind was filled with countless question marks, and he had only just figured out a small part, but discovered even more mysteries that he could not see through.

But no matter what, this was beneficial to him.

Possessing this power meant that he could now collect a large amount of strategic resources. Under the condition of immunity to the virus, "—1" level zombies posed almost no threat to enhanced individuals. Of course, this was not absolute. Factors such as terrain, physical exhaustion, and willpower must also be considered. However, overall, a team of fully enhanced individuals could indeed sweep through small-scale zombie groups.

Silver bones would increase over time in the bodies of zombies and other monsters. Even in the future, the highest amount of silver bones obtained from a single monster was only 22.8 milligrams.

The physiological functions of zombies in the early stages of the virus outbreak were very low. Based on the battle records from the previous period, the amount of silver bones in their bodies was approximately 1.8 to 2.3 milligrams, with an average of no more than 2.1 milligrams.

If the zombies of this period were considered rats, then the high-level monsters that would appear in one or one and a half years would be like tigers, lions, and even dinosaurs.

Risking heavy losses and expending a large amount of manpower and resources to hunt a tyrannosaurus, one could obtain about 20 milligrams of silver bones.

Hunting ten rats would yield equivalent or even slightly more benefits.

Both answers to this multiple-choice question were correct.

But no matter who it was, they would only choose the latter.

...

The sun and rain were always vying for control of the city. Clear and cloudy skies alternated, with the former bringing scorching sunlight that melted the asphalt roads, and the latter making the world cold, damp, and muddy. It felt like a war between a ruffian and a shrew—each kicking and spitting, with neither gaining the upper hand.

Su Hao stood on the top floor of a building dozens of meters high, looked at the city filled with countless concrete structures, which resembled a dead prison, and sighed lightly, slowly turning around.

Xin Yan, Lao Song, the twin sisters, Tao Yuan and his wife, Du Tianhao, Liao Qiu, and the newly joined Cao Rui and Zhang Jingjing, all the core members of the team, were standing in the room.

This place was not far from the small building, and the small building's rooftop could be seen from the window at the end of the corridor. Su Hao could not tell the secret to the unfamiliar rescued people. Even if they caused any trouble in the small building, he could quickly eliminate it.

Looking at these people, a smile that was hard to describe appeared on Su Hao's face. He said faintly, "How do you feel now?"

This was not a random question—just yesterday, each core team member had taken 10 milligrams of silver bones. It had been twenty-four hours since then.