“Why did it stop again?” Zhang Qifeng paced anxiously behind Li Feng.
“Mm.” Li Feng folded his arms. Based on the real-time reports from the team members, something had come up again, and Xing Bi had once again controlled three symbiotes.
But it wasn’t a big problem. Qiu Shi’s physical data was stable, and in Li Feng’s opinion, Qiu Shi’s mental resilience was stronger than over 90% of the soldiers.
“Mm, what?” Zhang Qifeng stopped behind him.
“It stopped again,” Li Feng said.
“Are you sleepwalking?” Zhang Qifeng said. “Why is it that Team One and Team Three encounter nothing, but everything happens to Team Two?”
“Because only Team Two went to Xima Town, Director Zhang,” Li Feng said. “Xima Town is the closest to Yun City, the largest, and the least abandoned, making it the most suitable for a defense base. That’s why it’s also the most likely to run into trouble.”
“Do you think they can handle it?” Zhang Qifeng asked quietly. “If not, let Team Three go over…”
“No need to rush,” Li Feng said. “Team Three might still need to support Team One.”
Zhang Qifeng stayed silent for a moment, but eventually, unable to hold back, he muttered, “What’s Colonel Xu thinking? Sending Team One is practically a death sentence. At least they didn’t ask for people from my side.”
“Maybe he wants to prove that humans don’t need to overly rely on bioroids,” Li Feng said.
“I think the same,” Zhang Qifeng said, “but…”
“And also to prove that the City Defense Bureau is useless,” Li Feng added.
“Li, deputy leader?” Zhang Qifeng stared at him. “What do you mean by that?”
“I’m going to meet with Mr. Long shortly,” Li Feng glanced at the time and turned to leave. “Keep an eye on things here. Lao Wu’s batch of activated first-level symbiotes should be finished soon. Come by the exhibit hall tonight.”
“Li Feng,” Zhang Qifeng called out, “What about Zhang Sihai… Are you really not going to interrogate him?”
“He really doesn’t know anything,” Li Feng said. “Stop torturing him. The father-son relationship is already on thin ice, Director Zhang.”
Zhang Qifeng snorted coldly and said nothing.
Recently, Li Feng had been meeting with Mr. Long in Curator Wu’s office. Whether it was to avoid suspicion or not was unclear, but officially, it was always to check on the progress of the symbiote experiments.
Li Feng knocked on the office door.
“Come in,” Mr. Long responded from inside.
Li Feng opened the door and entered the office.
“How are things over there?” Although the screen in front of Mr. Long showed the command center, he still asked.
“Teams One and Three are en route without issue,” Li Feng said. “Team Two ran into something, but there hasn’t been feedback yet. Based on their physical data, there are no major problems.”
“Is Curator Wu almost finished on his end?” Mr. Long asked.
“Yes,” Li Feng nodded. “You can take a look in a bit.”
“Mm,” Mr. Long nodded.
“There are quite a few bioroids activated this time,” Li Feng said. “More than before. Should the General come take a look?”
Mr. Long glanced at him and said, “Just sync it to the General.”
Li Feng said nothing.
“What?” Mr. Long looked at him sharply.
“Nothing,” Li Feng replied. “We’ll sync it to the General.”
This time, Mr. Long fell silent, watching him thoughtfully.
“Mr. Long,” Li Feng met his gaze directly, “can the request I submitted yesterday be approved?”
“You want to review the Great Purge files, right?” Mr. Long said. “It can be approved.”
“Thank you, Mr. Long, and the General for your trust.” Li Feng was a bit surprised. He hadn’t expected Mr. Long to agree so readily.
“Didn’t expect that, did you?” Mr. Long asked.
“No,” Li Feng admitted.
“You’re talented, and Yun City needs young people like you,” Mr. Long said. “The trust you deserve, you’ll get, but you can’t be too self-indulgent.”
“I understand,” Li Feng replied.
Mr. Long’s message was clear: You have the ability to serve the company and Yun City, so you’ll be entrusted with some core secrets, like a token of acceptance—but it’s limited to that.
The General was not someone Li Feng could inquire about. Who the General was, or where, were questions beyond the scope of his current trust.
Besides, his doubts went beyond that. What he wanted to know had already exceeded the limits of the trust he could be granted.
Has anyone ever seen the General?
Does the General even exist?
“Mayor Luo from Donglin wants to set up a video conference,” Mr. Long changed the topic. “You and Curator Wu can handle it.”
“Alright,” Li Feng nodded, “I’ll think it over.”
Mayor Luo certainly wasn’t looking to speak with Li Feng or Curator Wu. But Mr. Long was not the kind of person who would simply appear on screen at someone’s request either.
These two had very different approaches.
Mayor Luo had a clear objective—he wanted to speak directly with someone who could make decisions. But Mr. Long wanted control. Donglin and Yun City could never be in an equal partnership.
“What are you thinking about?” Mr. Long asked.
“Thinking about how to make him understand the right way to cooperate and keep it going,” Li Feng said.
Mr. Long laughed. “Don’t say everything out loud.”
“Being direct saves time,” Li Feng said. “Time is tight now. Once Xima Town is secured, we’ll have to send people there immediately. The bigger the commotion, the more problems will arise. The other side isn’t playing turn-based with us.”
“Mm.” Mr. Long nodded. “Go on.”
“Team Two was ambushed in the valley. Whether it was an accident or planned, both explanations make sense,” Li Feng said. “But Teams One and Three are fine, while only Team Two went to Xima Town. I can only assume the worst: the people in Xima Town already know our plans, but how they found out remains unclear.”
“What do you plan to investigate?” Mr. Long asked.
“Not investigating for now,” Li Feng replied. “There’s no time or energy for that. The only thing we can do is streamline the process and execute every step as quickly as possible.”
Mr. Long smiled. “You have guts.”
“The main reason is that even if I wanted to investigate, I wouldn’t know where to start,” Li Feng answered honestly.
In front of everyone stood a wall that had been buried in the snow beforehand, crafted intricately from bundles of wood arranged in a grid. Each intersection was fitted with a long, movable metal spike. When the wall was horizontal on the ground, the spikes pointed vertically away from it, hidden in small holes in the ground.
But as soon as the wall was erected, these spikes would be flung out violently due to inertia. Even if someone triggered the mechanism and could see the wall’s position, they wouldn’t necessarily be able to avoid such long spikes.
This mechanism was significantly more sophisticated than the rock slabs that had fallen in the valley before.
On the other side of the wall lay three people, two of whom were dead from the explosion.
The half-dead one appeared to be in great pain, groaning softly.
Qiu Shi walked around the wooden wall and saw that the man was older, with white hair already showing.
As he thought about walking over to pull the man up for questioning, he noticed large patches of charred remains on the ground. He suddenly reached out to the team member behind him: “Don’t come over!”
Those blackened areas, which he had initially thought were debris burned by the explosion, turned out to be blood seeping from these people’s bodies.
In that moment, he felt as if his breath had nearly stopped.
“What happened?” Zhao Yi asked after stopping.
“Are they infected?” Qiu Shi looked at Xing Bi, who was coming around from the other side.
The white-haired man laughed painfully, struggling to do so.
“No,” Xing Bi said, squatting down beside the white-haired man and touching the black blood. “They’re immune humans.”
“What?” Qiu Shi, who was also an immune human, was extremely shocked.
He felt an impulse to cut himself immediately to see what color his blood was.
“Isn’t this a fungal infection?” he asked Xing Bi.
“It is,” Xing Bi said, “but it’s not an infection.”
“Accept… this… new world,” the white-haired man said with great effort.
“I accept your ancestors!” Qiu Shi cursed, not caring to question further. He turned to Zhao Yi and the others. “Administer the suppressant again.”
“Understood,” Zhao Yi replied.
The team members stepped back a few paces and took out the suppressants they carried, injecting them into their arms.
The white-haired man didn’t give them a chance to ask more questions. After uttering that cryptic statement, he breathed his last.
Now the only thing Qiu Shi could understand was why these people didn’t appear on the map.
They were just like the symbiotic host covered in fungi from Nest One, where the blood had been entirely replaced by fungus, creating a kind of interference shield.
“Should we go into the town?” Zhao Yi asked.
“We have no choice but to go in,” Qiu Shi said. “Otherwise, none of us will get through tonight.”
Xing Bi and Sang Fan lowered the wooden wall, and the team members returned to their vehicles. Guns extended from the firing ports one by one. Zhao Yi was still in the front passenger seat, but this time he pushed the passenger seat aside.
Qiu Shi understood the proper use of this half-finished product: it was meant for situations like this.
“Not getting in the vehicle?” Xing Bi asked Qiu Shi.
“Not getting in,” Qiu Shi said. His combat style was different from the team members in the vehicle; he wasn’t used to fighting from the cramped confines of a vehicle with just a few firing ports.
“Come over here.” Xing Bi lightly gestured for him to follow.
Qiu Shi moved to a position slightly behind him.
Sang Fan went to the back of the vehicle, forming a diagonal formation with Xing Bi, while Xiao and the others took positions ahead and behind.
“Turn left into the town and head directly to the turret,” Qiu Shi opened the squad channel. “We can’t detect these people’s signals, so stay vigilant.”
“Received,” Zhao Yi responded.
The town looked pretty much the same as it had when Qiu Shi visited before, but he could distinctly feel a different atmosphere. It was a hard-to-describe sensation; the small town lacked the extreme loneliness it had before, even though everything appeared largely unchanged.
In this town, the number of immune humans with black blood was definitely not small.
“The wind is too strong,” Qiu Shi said softly.
Although it wasn’t snowing, the wind was fierce, making it feel like each word was being carried away by the gusts; he couldn’t hear any unusual sounds.
“I can hear it,” Xing Bi said.
“It’s still thanks to your quality,” Qiu Shi replied.
“Just had maintenance done a couple of days ago,” Xing Bi said.
Qiu Shi didn’t want to laugh during such a serious and tense moment, but he couldn’t help it.
“There’s someone in the house on the left,” Xing Bi said over the squad channel.
Several guns aimed simultaneously at the left house, which was a pet store that Qiu Shi had been to before; it had many cute pictures of kittens and puppies inside.
“Don’t shoot yet,” Xing Bi said. “The people inside are hiding from us and have gone to the back of the house.”
“Keep moving forward,” Qiu Shi said. “Try to avoid conflict; there are too many of them.”
The team continued moving forward, while Sang Fan remained at the entrance of the pet store.
Qiu Shi glanced at Xing Bi’s neck; the black mark was still there, slightly different in shape than before. On Xing Bi’s fair skin, the black mark appeared almost alive, exuding a strange beauty.
When they were still half a street away from the turret, Xing Bi stopped.
It seemed the people inside the pet store had left, as Sang Fan returned to the back of the vehicle.
“Why did we stop?” Zhao Yi asked.
“There are people in the turret,” Qiu Shi said. “Let’s wait for them to make the first move.”
“What if they fire a shot at us?” Cao Shu asked.
“If they had artillery, they would’ve fired already,” Qiu Shi replied. “They wouldn’t wait for us to enter the town or set up such a trap.”
As Qiu Shi expected, about half a minute after they stopped, shadows appeared in the lookout windows of the turret, but he couldn’t see if they had guns aimed at them.
“Is someone coming out?” Qiu Shi whispered.
“Yeah,” Xing Bi replied.
“Should I shout something?” Qiu Shi asked.
“Shout what?” Xing Bi said. “Have you been surrounded?”
“…Well, not really,” Qiu Shi said.
“That’s the thirty-sixth stratagem: creating something out of nothing,” Xing Bi remarked.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Qiu Shi frowned.
“No need to shout,” Xing Bi said. “They’re coming out.”
“Your ancestors,” Qiu Shi muttered.
More than one person came out through the small door at the bottom of the turret, with at least a dozen people emerging, all armed. Even from this distance, Qiu Shi could tell that the guns they carried weren’t very good, only slightly better than the ones used by the early corpse collectors.
After coming out, they paused for a moment. One person stepped forward from the group and approached them, with others following behind.
“There are people in the houses on both sides,” Sang Fan said. “They’re on the second floor.”
Xing Bi began to step back, and Qiu Shi followed him, backing up a few steps until he stood in front of Zhao Yi on the right side of the vehicle. Xing Bi stopped.
Qiu Shi knew that if they suddenly opened fire, it was to shield against an attack from the left house.
When the person approaching them stopped about ten meters away, he took a breath and shouted at them, “Which one of you is the leader? Come with me!”
Just as Qiu Shi was about to step forward, Zhao Yi pulled him back from behind. “Not yet.”
“There are our people in the town,” the man shouted. “If you want to talk, come with me! Our boss wants to see your leader!”
“I’ll go,” Zhao Yi whispered, “but you shouldn’t.”
“It’s fine,” Qiu Shi tilted his head, thinking he definitely needed to tell Zhao Lu later that Zhao Yi might actually be his brother. He glanced at Zhao Yi. “Xing Bi, come with me. You all stay here and wait. If anything seems off, get in the vehicle and run. Don’t think about saving anyone.”
“We’re not corpse collectors,” Zhao Yi said, a bit anxious.
“What’s wrong?” Qiu Shi said. “I didn’t ask you to collect corpses for me.”
“We’re soldiers! We don’t carry out missions like this!” Zhao Yi lowered his voice.
“Now, the corpse collector is your team leader,” Qiu Shi moved forward, “and this is the real mission.”
Xing Bi followed him closely, while Sang Fan stood at the front of the vehicle, with Xiao and the others guarding the back.
“You can’t bring weapons,” the man pointed his gun at the gun in Qiu Shi’s hand.
Qiu Shi tossed his gun to Sang Fan, and the man then looked at the gun strapped to Qiu Shi’s leg. Qiu Shi clicked his tongue, took that gun off as well, and threw it to Sang Fan.
The man turned around and led them toward the turret.
Qiu Shi had the map open, quickly gathering information about the town’s terrain and buildings, but he still couldn’t detect the people in front of him.
They appeared to be ordinary humans, although their expressions were fierce, the tension in their eyes was evident, especially when they looked at Xing Bi.
Qiu Shi felt a bit more at ease; at least it meant that none of these people were bioroids, and they weren’t affiliated with the symbiotic corps.
Once inside the turret, someone behind said, “Go up, third floor.”
Qiu Shi had been to the third floor before; it was the most spacious level in the turret, without any partitions.
The narrow staircase twisted twice before reaching the third floor, where a person holding a gun blocked their path and checked them again. Only after confirming they had no weapons did he turn back and say inside, “They’ve brought the people.”
“Let them in,” someone inside responded.
Upon hearing that voice, Qiu Shi froze for a moment.
It was an older voice, always carrying a touch of ease.
He quickly climbed the stairs and turned into the room.
He saw a wheelchair, and a person sitting in it.
“Damn…” he couldn’t hold back, “Old man?”
“Show some respect!” the person standing next to the old man glared at him.
“It’s fine,” the old man waved his hand, looking kindly at them. “You… came from Yun City, right?”
Qiu Shi immediately realized the old man was pretending not to recognize him.
“Yeah,” he replied.
“Please, have a seat,” the old man gestured for his subordinate to bring them chairs. “Let’s sit down and talk.”
Qiu Shi hesitated for a moment, glanced at Xing Bi, and then sat down in a chair.
Xing Bi did not sit, standing beside him.
“May I ask, are you just passing through, or…” the old man asked, taking his time.
“This is Yun City’s jurisdiction,” Qiu Shi said. “We are here for regular patrol and deployment.”
“We’ve been here for quite a while,” the old man said. “We’ve never seen anyone from Yun City come by.”
Quite a while? How long has it been since you went missing?
“You don’t wear your old clothes and leave them there, and you don’t take them out to look at every day, right?” Qiu Shi said.
The old man chuckled.
To Qiu Shi, the old man’s smile seemed very forced. Back on the second floor of the tavern, he never smiled like this… with such an ethereal demeanor.
Qiu Shi felt as if he was pretending to be a transcendent figure, and he honestly didn’t know how to continue the conversation.
The person standing next to the old man looked a bit displeased, frowning as he glared at Qiu Shi.
“You all go outside and wait on the second floor,” the old man told his subordinates. “I’ll have a private chat with them.”
“Boss,” a man said, “isn’t it unsafe? They…”
The old man shook his head with a smile and lightly snapped his fingers.
But it didn’t make a sound.
Qiu Shi thought about suggesting that Xing Bi show him how to do it.
However, even though the snap was silent, it had another impressive aspect; at the moment the old man’s fingers rubbed together, a small flame ignited at his fingertips.
“They can’t hurt me,” the old man said, looking at the flame in his hand. “Don’t worry.”
Several subordinates shot a few more glances at Qiu Shi and Xing Bi before retreating, their footsteps echoing up to the second floor.
Just as Qiu Shi was about to speak, the old man quickly flicked his hands a few times, then blew on his fingers and whispered, “That’s hot.”
This statement confirmed to Qiu Shi that the old man was still the same person he knew.
“Where have you been during this time?” Qiu Shi dragged the chair to sit in front of the old man, lowering his voice. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m fine,” the old man smiled.
“What kind of people are these?” Qiu Shi asked.
“Your kind,” the old man said softly. “There are about two hundred of them in this town.”
Qiu Shi stared at him for a long while before asking, “Who are you?”
“I’m the one who brought you out of the slaughter,” the old man said. “It’s a long story…”
“I have time,” Qiu Shi replied.
“Right now, there’s no time,” the old man said. “The ‘Jungle’ is coming, and there’s less than an hour left.”
“How do you know?” Qiu Shi asked.
“They made themselves like this for a reason,” the old man said quietly. “Let your people settle down first…”
“Why should I trust you?” Qiu Shi looked at him.
“Because you’ve trusted me for over twenty years,” the old man replied.
“I…” Qiu Shi felt there was something wrong with this logic, but he didn’t know what to say.
“We want the supermarket next door,” Xing Bi said. “We want both floors.”
Qiu Shi turned to look at him. “Huh?”
“Sure,” the old man nodded. “I’ll have them cleared out immediately.”
“We still need people to stay here,” Xing Bi said.
“No problem,” the old man said.
“Who should stay here?” Qiu Shi asked.
“Sang Fan,” Xing Bi said.
“As for how to handle things here, I still have to report back to Yun City,” Qiu Shi said, looking at the old man.
“Li Feng?” the old man asked.
“Yeah,” Qiu Shi confirmed.
“Report to him,” the old man said. “He knows what to do.”
Qiu Shi chose to trust the old man; after all, he hadn’t let him down all these years.
The second floor of the tavern had always been like a secret base for Qiu Shi—not just because it was hidden, but also because of the old man.
He and his team stood on the street, watching the old man’s people withdraw from the supermarket next to the turret. Indeed, there were quite a few; more than a dozen people emerged from this supermarket, mostly men, with only three women and no children.
“Is it a bit wasteful for Sang Fan to be watching the old man? He can’t run away, and for surveillance, Xiao and the others are enough,” Qiu Shi glanced at the third floor of the turret, where both the old man and Sang Fan were located.
“It’s also to protect him,” Xing Bi said.
“Hmm?” Qiu Shi was taken aback.
“Is the old man the type to have ambition?” Xing Bi asked.
“Doesn’t seem like it,” Qiu Shi frowned. “Shouldn’t be, but maybe he’s just hiding it well?”
“Those old tricks of deception,” Xing Bi said. “If he’s not ambitious and trying to control these people, he’s just trying to protect himself.”
