Chapter 65

The heavy, small safe falling from the air inevitably made a huge noise. The empty building amplified the echo, spreading it far across the silent city.

Yang Lulu wiped away her tears, cut a piece of cake, and placed it on the table. She controlled her emotions, put away the photos, smiled at the cake that carried boundless hope and deep sorrow, slowly left the table, and walked out of the fast-food restaurant.

The moment she stepped down from the dilapidated shop door, Yang Lulu heard the loud noise of the safe hitting Li Li and then falling uncontrollably onto the room's floor.

The room where the woman and the boy lived was not far from the fast-food restaurant. Although the sound waves entering her ears were very vague, they were enough for Yang Lulu to determine the general direction of the source.

She listened for a moment, then jogged across the empty road and walked onto the opposite sidewalk. Frowning, she held her breath and stood still.

The room was no more than sixty meters away from the fast-food restaurant in a straight line. The curtains blocked the view, but they could not stop her expanded consciousness from touching the edges of danger.

Yang Lulu was a third-stage enhanced person. At this distance, her mental tentacles could already "see" the woman and the boy in the third-floor room, as well as the soldier Li Li lying on the floor.

Yang Lulu had not injected the prototype drug, so her perception was not as accurate as Su Hao's, but she could judge certain things that did not need verbal explanation through the environment and actions.

A man was lying on the ground, and a woman was taking various things from him. There was also a boy about her age standing beside him, holding an axe-like weapon.

Yang Lulu instinctively felt that the unconscious Li Li was the bad guy. The woman and the boy might have knocked him out in self-defense.

Li Li was not dead; he was still breathing.

From the perspective of a woman and a weak person, Yang Lulu instinctively categorized the tall Li Li as a "bad guy."

Her consciousness continued to search.

Yang Lulu "found" the small safe that had fallen from the cabinet, the assault rifle the woman placed on the table, the private's insignia on Li Li's shoulder, and the camouflage uniform, steel helmet, and backpack that identified him as a soldier.

She was somewhat surprised—the soldiers in the garrison command post had a good relationship with Su Hao's team. They distributed immune drugs to survivors and occasionally some food. Although their attitude was cold, they were definitely not bad people.

A child's logic is simple. The moral identity of the woman and the boy in the room instantly changed. In addition to this, Yang Lulu also found some strange things under the kitchen stove.

It seemed... to be a person. Folded into a very peculiar shape and stuffed into the corner of the stove.

Yang Lulu was not quite sure what it was. She remained silent for a few seconds until her consciousness firmly locked onto a certain position under the stove. Only then did she widen her eyes in shock, pull out the PPK pistol from the side of her thigh, and rush into the residential building's stairwell at the side of the street as quickly as possible.

It was a human head, tightly clamped between the abdomen and thighs.

A normal person could not assume such a strange posture.

Unless, it was a decapitated corpse.

...

Third floor, room 302.

The expanded search consciousness closely followed the woman and the boy. Standing outside the bronze-black security door, Yang Lulu's mental tentacles became increasingly clear.

She no longer doubted her previous judgment, so she took two steps back, muttered the combat techniques Su Hao had taught her, spun 180 degrees on the spot, and kicked the door with a less-than-standard side kick. The huge force made the security door immediately dent inward, dragging the lock and door frame, collapsing inward like a roughly overturned foam product.

A third-stage enhanced person's maximum burst value could reach two thousand kilograms. With speed and inertia, the entire door frame was stripped from the cement wall like a withered tree. Bolts, hinges, and shattered plastic layers... all kinds of messy debris mixed with cement fragments scattered into the room.

A piece of hard plastic about half a foot long pierced the woman's throat, the sharp end protruding from the back of her neck, the entire piece soaked in blood, the jagged edges dragging out muscle and nerve tissue. The woman's pupils constricted, her hands tightly covering her throat, her mouth wide open, emitting a terrifying "gurgling" sound like a drowning person on the brink of death.

She tried to take large breaths of air, but the punctured trachea made a hollow sound like a leaky horn. Fresh, thick blood gushed from the wound, flowing down her chest, soaking her clothes and dress, making them heavier and heavier, pulling her body down, and she collapsed weakly on the ground.

The boy stood beside her, holding an axe. The sudden change made him unable to accept what was happening in front of him. He stared with wide eyes as the woman was severely injured, on the brink of death, and lying down, feeling the warm, thick blood splatter on his face. After about three or four seconds, the boy came to his senses from the chaotic fantasy. He suddenly turned his head, staring at Yang Lulu like a wild animal, screaming almost piercingly, and struggled to grab the disproportionately large axe, trying to chop down heavily.

"Bang——"

A crisp gunshot cut through the air. The boy saw the girl, about his age, with flames spouting from her hand, followed by a heavy blow to his head. Something like a needle drilled in, dragging his entire body backward, his vision turning red, his consciousness fading.

The room was drenched in blood.

Yang Lulu's face was pale. She suddenly felt an inexplicable heartache, as if all the blood in her body had instantly frozen. This indescribable discomfort made her feel like she might suffocate at any moment. Yang Lulu quickly closed her eyes, took a few deep breaths of the thick, blood-soaked air, turned around, and slowly walked down the stairs, holding the railing, and moved to the side of the SUV with great difficulty. She tried to calm herself, picked up the car radio, and sobbed with a clearly tearful voice, "Please come quickly. I... I killed two people."

...

Half an hour later, Han Jing's team received the communication and rushed over as quickly as possible, erasing all traces in the room that might raise suspicion.

They used a small impact drill to cover up the fact that Yang Lulu had kicked the door open.

Han Jing and others had agreed on their story: they claimed that Yang Lulu had discovered the abnormality in the room, and the team members in the bank building had rushed over to save Li Li and kill the cruel and vicious mother and son.

Enhanced people and blood were the team's biggest secrets, and they could not be leaked under any circumstances.

When Su Hao and Wu Guoguang received the news and arrived at the scene, Yang Lulu was standing in the kitchen, dazedly staring at a corpse she had found at the bottom of the cabinet.

It was a man. His head and limbs had been cut off, folded into the smallest possible volume to take up less space, and stuffed into the corner of the cabinet.

Forty or fifty years old. It was hard to tell. It wasn't that Yang Lulu lacked the knowledge; the body had been cleaned and salted, and the moisture had almost dried up, making it impossible to identify the original appearance.

If she was not mistaken, this was one of the woman and the boy's winter foods.

"Don't look at that——"

Su Hao roared, walking quickly to Yang Lulu's back, covering her eyes with his hand. At the same time, he supported her shoulders, forcibly turning the terrified little girl around, and hugged her tightly.

"Don't be afraid! I will protect you, and many people will protect you. No one can hurt you, no one——"

He felt Yang Lulu's whole body shaking, her back and chest soaked with sweat, her exposed white skin on her hands, forehead, and neck icy cold. Su Hao felt a twitch in his eyes. He picked up Yang Lulu and carried her, kicking the half-dried salted corpse to the corner. As he turned his body, he saw Yang Lulu's eyes staring straight like a dead person's, her teeth clenched so tightly they almost shattered.

Crazy people often do crazy things.

Eating people was common in the future world, indicating that civilization, order, and morality were moving further away from human society.

Su Hao glanced at Wu Guoguang standing in the living room, said nothing, and turned to leave.

Yang Lulu had been greatly shocked and traumatized.

Although her life experience was much richer than that of her peers, she was still essentially a child. If she did not leave this hellish room soon and receive counseling and psychological treatment, she might lose her mind.

Killing people was different from killing zombies.

Witnessing the sin of salted human flesh was an extremely strong moral shock.

"Please, please wait——"

Sitting in the corridor, Li Li, whose head wound was wrapped in bandages by a medic, stumbled over. He held the candy he had prepared and pushed it into Yang Lulu's arms with an extremely sincere and earnest tone, "Thank you!"

Through the aluminum foil, the distinctive smell of chocolate could be detected. Yang Lulu's dull eyes flickered slightly. She subconsciously turned her head, looking at the soldier she had saved, slowly opened her mouth, and showed a very difficult smile.

Without further conversation, Su Hao took Yang Lulu and the other team members and hurriedly left the room.

Wu Guoguang, still angry, kicked the woman's corpse on the ground. Then he approached the pale-faced Li Li, patted his shoulder, and said with a sigh, "Kid! You're really lucky. If it had been a few minutes later, that crazy woman might have cut off your head and boiled it into meat soup."

Li Li felt dizzy. He smiled weakly, "I didn't expect things to turn out this way."

The medic, who was busy nearby, angrily interjected, "Many people in this city are crazy. They shouldn't have been given the immune drug at all."

Wu Guoguang was silent for a moment, then shook his head, "You can't blame them. If I were in the same position, I might have done the same as that woman."

Li Li did not comment on Wu Guoguang's and the medic's opinions.

He looked down at the floor, said calmly and seriously, "I have a new sister, and I must protect her."

...

The number of guards at the bank building's sentry posts doubled.

Li Li and Yang Lulu's experience made everyone realize that the danger was not limited to zombies. Living people, especially those survivors who had lost everything, were even more threatening than any monster.

With the building as the core, the daily alert radius was expanded to two hundred meters.

The school bus parked in the basement of the building was always kept full of fuel. Two 12.7 mm heavy machine guns were installed inside, and the entire vehicle was reinforced to ensure it could be started at any time to quickly evacuate the survivors.

Su Hao urged Dong Guoping's construction team to speed up the construction. In addition to the essential walls and guard towers at each outpost, the underground warehouse and garage also needed to be reinforced. Large amounts of gasoline were stored in barrels, and old tires from the city outskirts' vehicle recycling station were cut into small pieces. To help new team members quickly familiarize themselves with weapons, the daily shooting training time at the outdoor camp was increased to three hours, and the ammunition consumption rate was doubled.

As the most important core outpost of the entire team, the defense radius of the outdoor camp was continuously expanded, and all trees within two hundred meters were cut down. There were no obstacles, and the heavy machine guns on the guard towers could attack in all directions. If it were in peacetime, such large-scale deforestation would certainly have drawn public criticism. Now, only the squirrels standing on the bare tree stumps and the gray road connecting the distant future remained.

...

Chengdu Base, Officer Dormitory Building 6, Unit B.

Lu Zhengxiong lay naked on the soft, large bed, gazing indifferently at the ceiling.

He was muscular, his over 1.9-meter-tall, robust body exuding a strong masculine aura. The knotted muscles extended from his thighs to his neck, like twisted and entangled ropes. Even lying down without any effort, his abs and chest muscles still showed a proud shape.

Casually brushing the thick chest hair, Lu Zhengxiong turned his gaze to Xiao Lin, who was sitting in front of the dressing mirror applying makeup.

It was winter, but she was still wearing the military summer dress. Her full chest pushed the light green shirt high, revealing a small patch of smooth, white skin through the button gap. Her legs, encased in stockings, were slender and long, and her calves showed the delicate curves characteristic of a woman. The black high heels made her tall figure even more upright, and the simple act of combing her hair made her back and neck lines smooth and inviting. The full, pointed breasts seen from the side were always tempting the gaze of the opposite sex.

Despite having just finished the most direct exchange of body and fluids a few minutes ago, Lu Zhengxiong still felt a surge of desire and energy. The recently emptied seminal vesicles seemed to be refilled, prompting his penis to instantly become erect, maintaining a fierce and violent hardness, ready to penetrate the target area like a mechanical drill at any moment.

"Why are you in such a hurry? It's early, you can sleep for a few more hours."

Looking at the angelic face in the mirror, Lu Zhengxiong felt an indescribable heat stirring his heart. He got out of bed, walked to Xiao Lin without hesitation, bent down, and reached his hands around her back, touching the bra strap and slowly caressing forward. His rough fingers soon felt the softness trapped by the bra.

"Don't do that——"

Xiao Lin pulled away unhappily. She quickly straightened her disheveled shirt, picked up the coat with the major's shoulder insignia from the chair, and her seductive eyes faintly revealed a trace of barely noticeable disgust.

She had never liked Lu Zhengxiong.

If it weren't for the need to transfer her identity to a formal military member, she would never have gone to bed with this man, who was even more brutal than a wild bear.

This abrupt rejection made Lu Zhengxiong feel that something he had already controlled was slipping away. He remained silent, pulled out a cigarette and a lighter from the pants scattered by the bed, lit one, took a few deep puffs, and watched Xiao Lin, who was about to leave, through the thick smoke. Suddenly, he laughed with disdain.

"There's something I need to tell you."

He played with the lighter in his hand, completely ignoring the naked, erect penis between his legs: "The Academy has sealed all your files and transferred them to the Xi'an Base last week."

This statement tore through Xiao Lin's mind like a bomb, flooding it with a flood of crazy, shocked, fearful, and unbelievable negative thoughts in a few microseconds.

She retracted her already extended foot, quickly turned around, and stared at Lu Zhengxiong with trembling eyes, her voice cold, "That's impossible."

The Academy and the military were two interdependent, or rather, complementary systems. Their cooperation was very close, and due to the technical advantages, the former's actual status and power were even slightly higher than the latter. However, this situation was largely due to the Dean, Wang Qinan. This overweight, fiery-tempered man not only inspired fear but also held secrets that even the military high command feared.

After the researcher rank system was implemented, the military, unwilling to see most of the elites absorbed by the Academy, proposed that certain talents with special contributions could simultaneously enjoy military ranks and researcher titles.

Wang Qinan did not object to this personnel system. Thus, under mutual agreement, some serving officers could obtain corresponding researcher identities. Conversely, military personnel who were valued by the military could have different scales of military units under their command after obtaining military ranks.

In short, as long as one was capable and valued by both the military and the Academy, they could simultaneously enjoy dual power and dual benefits.

However, to obtain such highly beneficial treatment, one needed strong strength and luck. Since the dual identity system was implemented, only a dozen people could simultaneously obtain researcher titles and military ranks. This was mainly because Dean Wang Qinan refused to sign dual-position appointment orders.

The old fat man had high standards and rarely favored in-service military personnel.

Even those major officers who had already obtained researcher titles were mostly "D" level in the Academy, with the highest not exceeding "C3" level.

...