To Qiu Shi, the nomads were far fiercer than the refugees — equipped, with vehicles, combat-ready, and a bit crazy.
But the symbionts were strong because once they entered a controlled state, their teamwork multiplied exponentially. No matter how crazy these nomads were, just surviving was already a challenge, let alone robbing others.
“Do they often raid?” Qiu Shi asked Song Heng.
“You could say robbing is their only way of life,” Song Heng said, “though they rarely raid symbiont camps.”
“Do they ever succeed?” Qiu Shi asked.
“When some camps have fewer people and not enough infected, they can still steal some things,” Song Heng said. “Grab what they can and run.”
“Damn,” Qiu Shi said, “so this time they brought quite a few people. What can we even scavenge then?”
“Some symbionts,” Xing Bi said, “and maybe an old-fashioned phone.”
Qiu Shi glanced at him. “symbionts?”
“Yeah,” Xing Bi looked back at him, “if anyone’s willing to leave.”
“If they’re all controlled…” Song Heng said, “it won’t be easy.”
“I can,” Xing Bi said.
Song Heng looked at him with some doubt. “You?”
“We are symbionts,” Ji Sui said.
“How do I…” Song Heng went from doubt to more confusion.
“There’s suppression,” Xing Bi said, “so you don’t feel it.”
“Why?” Song Heng didn’t quite understand.
“Just one of countless possibilities,” Xing Bi didn’t answer directly.
According to Song Heng’s knowledge, a group of nomads usually numbered no more than fifteen. More than that and they’d split, fewer than that and their combat power wasn’t enough. Most nomad groups were related by blood, and sometimes even children took part in the killings.
“I haven’t seen kids in a long time. The youngest I’ve seen recently is Li Dadiao,” Qiu Shi recalled the nomads they’d met on Donglin Road — a kid full of hatred and anger.
The refugees and nomads in the Donglin area had mostly either settled or left. No one knew how he was doing now.
This raid involved about fifty nomads on the map — at least four groups cooperating.
After determining the nomads’ final gathering spot, the convoy hid their vehicles about a kilometer away. Xing Bi and Qiu Shi led several bioroids to scavenge.
“I want to go too.” Li Rui jumped off the car holding a knife.
“Me too.” Big Bear followed.
“Stop making a fuss.” Li Rui glanced at him.
“You too…” Qiu Shi was about to say the same, but Xing Bi interrupted.
“Third Master,” Xing Bi tilted his head, “a word.”
Li Rui nodded and walked aside with him.
The squad comms were on, and Qiu Shi overheard Xing Bi whispering to Li Rui: “Third Master, we need to bring a few hidden guards there, because we have to deal with the camp too, not just the nomads. So only two hidden guards and those soldiers will stay behind.”
Li Rui glanced at the car, silent.
“You’ve got the experience. You know urban combat better than them,” Xing Bi said. “No one guarding here will make me more at ease than you.”
Li Rui frowned and scoffed, “Don’t think I don’t know you’re just trying to flatter me to stay.”
“So, are you staying?” Xing Bi asked.
“Yeah,” Li Rui lifted his chin and scanned the faces of those who got off the car, “if someone attacks, someone has to defend.”
“I’m counting on you.” Xing Bi patted his shoulder.
“Fair enough.” Li Rui shrugged and stepped out with the same imposing aura he had when he blocked the road that night, helmet on.
Xing Bi and the others took light weapons and headed over.
They parked beside a school. Since it looked very different from the refugee schools, Qiu Shi hadn’t even realized it until Xing Bi mentioned it.
“School?” Qiu Shi looked around. The buildings weren’t very tall. “Pretty big.”
“Probably a middle school,” Xing Bi said. “That open area should be a playground or something, but it’s hard to tell now.”
“If the refugee schools were this good, I wouldn’t even be struggling to write my own name,” Qiu Shi sighed.
“There’s no such complete school even in the inner city,” Xing Bi said. “But there will be in the future.”
“Li Feng promised me he’d improve the education quality in refugee schools,” Qiu Shi said. “Do you think he cares about this?”
“That should be the first thing on his list,” Xing Bi said.
“Zhao Lu and those guys should be sent back to school for a few more years,” Qiu Shi said.
They passed through the school, then two malls, and ahead was a large area of low buildings, mostly two- or three-story. They stopped following the main street, already near the camp. Xing Bi and the others could hear the nomads.
Except for Song Heng and Qiu Shi, the hidden guards all moved up to the rooftops and spread out.
Buildings appeared and disappeared, intersecting roads continuously blocking the view. Qiu Shi found it harder to move here than in a jungle.
Past the low buildings were several tall ones, and the noise of nomads’ motorcycles was already audible.
On Qiu Shi’s map, dense clusters of small bright dots appeared at the top — humans and infected mixed together.
“Go upstairs,” Xing Bi’s voice came through the earpiece.
They entered the next building, climbing up a nearly collapsed stairwell.
The building had originally been glass-wrapped; all the glass had fallen off. Only a few shards lay on the floor. The wind blowing through the large holes in the windows grew stronger the higher they climbed.
“That used to be a community garden,” Xing Bi squatted by a window hole, putting on his goggles to look outside.
When Qiu Shi looked over, his heart jumped. The whole area was black — trees, plants in flowerbeds, even the grass underfoot was black.
He put on his goggles, pulled out binoculars to see more clearly.
“This camp has been here a few months,” Song Heng hid behind a broken wall by the window, “and there are quite a few infected.”
“You’re a symbiont and you’re still hiding from the wind?” Qiu Shi glanced at him. “That’s meticulous.”
“I’d only not hide if I had a couple’s set of goggles,” Song Heng said.
Qiu Shi chuckled.
“This isn’t a new camp. It won’t be easy to fight,” he said, looking through the binoculars. “Why do these nomads want to attack here?”
“New camps don’t have much stuff,” Song Heng said, “and they’re not exciting enough.”
“Exciting?” Qiu Shi frowned.
“Yes,” Song Heng said, “they like excitement.”
A sharp whistle sounded from a distance, wavering with the wind, sounding less like a whistle and more like some kind of laugh — eerie and insane.
“They’re attacking,” Song Heng said.
As soon as his voice fell, more whistles sounded all around, drawn out in tone, faintly accompanied by sharp human howls.
Then, without warning, several three-wheeled and four-wheeled motorcycles suddenly rushed into Qiu Shi’s field of vision.
Following closely were some oddly shaped two-wheeled motorcycles, each ridden by a single rider, all draped in black coverings on both the bikes and the riders.
These nomads used fungi to hide themselves from being detected by the symbionts.
When several vehicles reached the edge of the camp, infected suddenly appeared around them as if burrowing up from underground.
Then they lunged at the riders.
Each rider had a whistle clenched in their mouth, blowing nonstop, seemingly communicating or marking their position. They didn’t engage in close combat with the infected, only swinging their knives to slash through those blocking the front of their vehicles, then repeatedly charging through the infected clusters with their vehicles.
“They’re driving the infected out,” Qiu Shi said, holding up his binoculars. “Damn, they actually have a plan.”
Indeed, those riders were gradually gathering the infected and slowly leading them outward.
Such a risk was huge — the infected far outnumbered them, and once the infected clinging to the vehicles increased, the vehicles would quickly lose power.
Qiu Shi had experienced scenes like this before, and his prediction was correct: after the vehicles led the infected to the camp’s outskirts, they were soon buried by swarms of infected.
The whistles gradually stopped.
“Should we blow it up?” Qiu Shi whispered.
“No, the vehicles are more important than their lives,” Song Heng said. “They’re a suicide squad.”
“Damn,” Qiu Shi was shocked. According to Song Heng, these people were all relatives. They were literally sending family members to their deaths?
A second wave of nomads appeared on the scene, yelling and shouting as they charged into the infected masses, looking chaotic and disorganized, wildly hacking with their knives.
But Qiu Shi soon noticed several thin, reflective objects among the crowd.
“What the hell is that?” Qiu Shi squinted through the binoculars.
“Fishing line steel wire,” Xing Bi said. “There are four.”
Four fishing line-thin steel wires, pulled by people at both ends, moved forward along with the fighting crowd. All the nomads, who seemed to be wildly slashing, stood between the four wires and moved in sync with them.
The wires were roughly at neck height. During movement, if an infected’s neck got caught on the wire, the people controlling the ends could pull it taut, slicing through the infected’s neck.
As more infected fell, the nomads’ forward speed increased.
At this time, the camp’s main group controlled the infected, who began to attack the nomads in organized groups.
But the nomads were like some numb creatures, screaming wildly. Even as people around them fell, it didn’t affect them. More would rush forward to hack frantically at the piles of infected without distinction.
Under this almost reckless disregard for life or death, dozens of nomads charged into the camp. The first to enter were several fast, small-statured ones carrying guns, who began firing ahead.
Their bullets were limited and reserved for the most critical targets.
Several main infected surged forward; the nearest nomad was stabbed through the body by one, and as he suddenly fell back, a wire tied to his wrist was pulled, detonating a bomb hidden under his clothes.
The infected wasn’t a hidden symbiont and couldn’t dodge this suicide attack, instantly blown far away.
“I see a kid,” Qiu Shi spotted in the chaos a small figure wielding a knife, barely reaching an adult’s waist height, gender indistinguishable, hacking repeatedly at infected legs.
“Go pick up some stuff,” Xing Bi threw his bag to the ground and pulled out a grappling gun. “Their destructive power is too much; let’s get this under control.”
Ji Sui also took out a grappling gun from his bag.
They each took position by a window, aimed, and prepared to fire the zip line.
“Song Heng, stay here,” Xing Bi fired a shot, sending a hook flying with the rope, avoiding the nomads and symbionts’ main battlefield, wrapping around a tree on the left. “Ji Sui will cover group one; Sang Fan, Qiu Shi, and I will be in group two.”
“Qiu Shi’s coming too?” Song Heng asked.
“He’s stronger than you,” Xing Bi replied, fixing the gun’s end to the steel frame exposed by the window.
Ji Sui did the same on the right side.
Qiu Shi put on his gloves, which had soft metal wires inside. He’d never understood their use until now.
Xing Bi leapt out the window, grabbing the zip line and sliding down quickly.
Qiu Shi followed, hanging onto the rope with one hand, sliding down in the wind.
He felt the speed was quite fast, but then got kicked in the butt by Sang Fan behind him: “Hurry up.”
“Damn,” Qiu Shi swung on the zip line and sped up. “Fan, I’m human, you know.”
“Hurry up,” Sang Fan kicked him again.
“Damn it!” Qiu Shi let go when the height was nearly right, aiming at an infected below.
He slammed directly onto the infected, knocking it down and killing it.
Sang Fan jumped down right after.
“Go straight in,” Xing Bi charged forward into the camp.
Qiu Shi knew why Xing Bi wanted to “pick up the scraps” first. The nomads’ looting style was as wild as their behavior; no one valued their own life. Under such circumstances, whether it was the symbionts opposite or the humans here, casualties would be heavy.
Especially after discovering children barely waist-high among the humans.
Xing Bi wanted to save those symbionts who wanted to escape but couldn’t, and those human kids who might die meaninglessly.
The nomads nearby spotted them and charged toward Qiu Shi.
Qiu Shi immediately swung his knife, killing an infected and saving a nomad tangled by infected, using this direct method to show the nomads, “We’re here to help.”
But the nomads’ reaction was not what he expected.
“Someone’s stealing our business!” one nomad yelled.
“Damn your ancestors!” Qiu Shi cursed, dodged a few nomads rushing at him, jumped up, knocking one down with his knee, hitting another in the face with an elbow, then turned and ran toward Xing Bi’s direction.
More precisely, he was escaping.
Fortunately, as an enhanced human, his speed and strength were superior to the nomads’.
Sang Fan caught up, swinging an axe, using the blunt side to smash the chests of the two closest nomads and knock them down.
Qiu Shi wouldn’t have shown mercy in the past—in such a chase, he’d fight back—but now they represented Yun City, a human and bioweapon cooperative team. Sang Fan even controlled herself not to use the blade edge of the axe.
Besides the bombed infected in the camp, five main infected were left. Once they detected people other than nomads intruding, they quickly located them through the infected.
Then both infected and nomads charged at them simultaneously.
Ji Sui and Feng Zhi arrived just in time, closing in with Sang Fan and Qiu Shi. As they hacked down infected, they also knocked down a number of nomads.
Just as the battle was about to spiral out of control, all the infected suddenly stopped moving, standing quietly in place.
The nomads shouted as they rushed forward to chop those motionless infected like wooden stakes, but soon realized something was wrong and gradually stopped.
Taking advantage of this pause in chaos, the four of them retreated toward the camp’s center.
After this brief halt, everyone saw five symbionts standing in the camp’s middle, and Xing Bi’s half face was already covered by black patterns.
“Where’s the super symbiont?” Ji Sui quietly asked over the radio.
“Behind, in the fountain pool, silent mode,” Xing Bi also answered in a low voice.
“Who’s there!” someone among the nomads shouted.
“Bioroids!” someone responded.
“Bullshit!” another yelled, pushing through the crowd a few steps toward them. “Not ordinary Bioroids!”
“Hidden guard,” Qiu Shi spoke up.
The nomads trying to approach stopped in their tracks.
“You take what you want,” Qiu Shi said, “we take what we want, no interference.”
“What do you want?” someone asked.
“These few symbionts,” Xing Bi said.
“We want them too!” someone shouted.
Then a chorus of responses followed: “We want them too—”
Before Qiu Shi could think of how to negotiate, some nomads charged forward.
These people were impossible to reason with.
“Kill a few,” Qiu Shi gritted his teeth and whispered.
Ji Sui and Feng Zhi rushed toward the nomads, with a wave of their hands a few nomads collapsed, and Sang Fan swung her axe, striking one charging nomad in the face with the back of the blade.
Qiu Shi raised his gun and fired a burst at the feet of the front row of nomads.
The instant deaths and the gunfire — so out of place in this chaotic world — finally calmed the nomads down.
“Feeling good?” Qiu Shi shouted. “None of you want to reason, huh! Keep pushing and I’ll show you what the King of Hell means!”
“Stop!” a voice raised a hand, stopping the advancing nomads.
To Qiu Shi’s surprise, it was a woman’s voice.
He lowered his gun and looked as the person emerged from the crowd — indeed a woman, very fit and strong, scars on her face and body.
And the small child who had been hacking at legs earlier was right by her side.
A little girl, her face splattered with dark blood.
Qiu Shi couldn’t describe the feeling in that instant.
“We’ll search first,” the woman said, stepping in front of Qiu Shi, glancing at Xing Bi behind him. “Make that black freak keep those symbionts under control. I want to make sure they’re truly restrained.”
Qiu Shi wondered how she dared to make such demands in this overwhelmingly disadvantageous situation.
He could only say the nomads really weren’t afraid to die.
Qiu Shi stayed silent, glancing back at “that black freak.”
Xing Bi said nothing, but behind him, several symbionts suddenly dropped to the ground simultaneously.
Surprise flashed across the scarred woman’s face but quickly vanished. She turned to the nomads and tilted her head: “Have some people guard them, search!”
Several nomads raised guns and surrounded Qiu Shi and the others in the center, while the rest excitedly shouted and rushed into the camp to loot supplies.
Watching the nomads carrying bag after bag on their shoulders — food, ammunition, and some clothes — Qiu Shi understood why they risked their lives to loot so recklessly. These supplies were probably worth more than their usual plunder from ordinary refugees or other nomad gangs a hundred times over.
The nomads moved quickly; everything usable in the camp was stripped clean and loaded onto the vehicles previously used by the suicide squad.
Once the nomads had all withdrawn to a safe distance, they slowly retreated with a few guards still surrounding them. The little girl at the woman’s side held her knife, eyes fixed on Qiu Shi with the same fierce and resolute look as the woman.
Qiu Shi locked eyes with her until she turned and climbed onto a three-wheeled motorcycle.
With the piercing whistle sounding again, the nomads quickly disappeared behind the tall buildings.
“Take these few,” Xing Bi said. “They’ll wake up soon. I’ll go check on that super-symbiont.”
Sang Fan quickly tied up the symbionts.
Qiu Shi followed Xing Bi toward the fountain pool at the back. The fountain pool was separated from this green garden by a man-made creek; the nomads hadn’t ventured deeper this way. For them, grabbing enough in the shortest time was enough.
The artificial creek still had flowing water. Aside from the overly regular flow direction, the whole stream looked completely natural.
“I’ll check if there’s a phone,” Sang Fan said.
“Mm,” Xing Bi responded.
At that moment, the ringing came from the fountain pool ahead.
That old-fashioned ringing — one ring after another — clear, crisp, and monotonous.
“Is it 249?” Qiu Shi asked. “Song Heng? Have you heard of it?”
“No,” Song Heng’s voice came through the earpiece. “Usually it’s through the Black Pile; they speak directly. Maybe the Black Pile is controlled by Xing Bi now…”
“I’ll answer,” Xing Bi leapt across the creek.
“Xing Bi!” Qiu Shi hurriedly jumped after him. “Wait!”
“Will answering cause any problems?” Feng Zhi asked Song Heng. “Could contacting the Black Pile affect them?”
“My observation is no,” Song Heng said, “but not sure. Xing Bi, be careful. If possible, communicating through the Black Pile is the safest way.”
“No,” Xing Bi answered simply, “I want 249 to know that as long as I disagree, he can’t regain control.”
The fountain pool was just ahead. There was no fountain or water anymore. The dried-up pool was full of black fungi, and a super-symbiont sat quietly at the bottom.
In front of him was an old-fashioned red telephone, very worn, but in the midst of the black fungi, the faded phone still stood out strikingly.
Xing Bi glanced back at Qiu Shi and then jumped into the pool.
Qiu Shi understood his intent, clenched his left hand into a fist, and stared at his back.
Xing Bi approached the phone, slowly crouched, and picked up the receiver.
The ringing stopped abruptly, and silence instantly enveloped the surroundings.
Xing Bi held the receiver to his ear.
Through the earpiece, Qiu Shi could hear a faint static sound.
Then a voice spoke.
“Xing Bi, is that you?”
Qiu Shi was stunned; at that moment, he felt all the hairs on his body stand on end.
This was a voice he had heard before — in the General’s memories.
Xing Bi’s teacher.
