Chapter 16

The underground garage was vast, with many entrances and exits. After the two of them neatly planted the bombs, they blocked several access points with cars and debris, leaving only the southern entrance open.
When they were done, Ye Xiao circled the campus outside, drawing hordes of zombies behind him, then led the large group back.
He darted into the sloped entrance, luring the zombies into the garage and looping them around to get as many as possible to follow, then slipped out through a gap above an exit clogged with a pile of bicycles.
Lin Tantan and Mei Baisheng were already waiting in a safe spot. Once the three reunited, Ye Xiao checked the timing and pressed the detonator in his hand.
With several loud bangs, explosions erupted beneath the first floor of Building Six, plumes of dust billowing as load-bearing columns cracked one by one and the whole structure shuddered and began to sink.
The southern row of supporting columns and foundation were even more damaged; the five-story building gradually tilted southward and then crashed down. Many zombies standing outside the southern garage entrance were crushed beneath the rubble.
The ground trembled.
Dust and smoke lingered for a long time.
The students in the main auditorium were stunned; only when Ye Xiao came to lead them out did they obediently fall into four columns. Passing the ruins of Building Six they saw many zombies trapped and flailing in the debris, and many more missing limbs, terribly mangled.
What a badass!
Because of that move, the students were especially obedient and the lines stayed neat. Ye Xiao led the front, Lin Tantan covered the middle, and Mei Baisheng brought up the rear, and the column cut across most of the campus toward the gym.
They fought their way through zombies along the route, since Ye Xiao had funneled as many nearby as possible into the garage, the campus was relatively clear. Some classrooms still had survivors calling for help; they rescued whoever they could on the spot.
When they finally reached the gym nearly four hundred people had been gathered. After clearing zombies in and around the gym and settling the students, a young man suddenly rushed out: "Ye Xiao, you need to get me to safety first!"
Lin Tantan glanced at the fellow, who the hell was he, daring to shout like that here?
The youth said urgently, "I don't care who else you're going to save, you have to guarantee my safety first. Don't you have a helicopter? Let me take it now!"
Compared to his urgent, commanding tone, Ye Xiao's expression didn't change. "Cai Chengliang, I don't have time to deal with you right now. If you think staying here is too dangerous, there's the door, you can leave anytime."
Cai Chengliang opened his mouth to object, but Ye Xiao ignored him and asked which student would step forward as a representative.
When the students saw that he had even sent Cai Chengliang away, they realized he might be hard to reason with. After a quick conference, three students stepped forward.
One was a big, burly boy named Jiang Zhongyi, a member of the school's basketball team. He and some teammates had planned to play, but the end of the world arrived while they were still on the way, so they took refuge in the main auditorium. Now five or six teammates clustered around him, tall, broad-shouldered youths who stood out among the three hundred people by sheer build.
The second wore glasses: a senior named Li Qing, the outgoing student council president. Though he'd just stepped down, he still carried influence among the students and had good leadership skills.
The third was a short-haired girl, Feng Xuemei, a junior class monitor and an officer in the university volunteer club. When the outbreak hit she was in a large lecture hall beside the auditorium with her club members; of the three hundred people here, more than twenty were from her group. They'd originally planned a club event for New Year's Day.
When Ye Xiao heard their backgrounds and skills, he appointed Li Qing and Feng Xuemei as managers to temporarily restrain the students' actions. "More survivors will be coming," he said. "You must keep them under control. Can you do it?"
They felt the weight of his gaze, exchanged a glance, and braced themselves. "We'll do our best," they said.
Ye Xiao accepted that answer and told them to first compile the locations of survivors in the university district they'd just contacted, and to post on the university forum with the title: "Evacuate the University District! Evacuation Point: Yang University Gymnasium. Time: 3:30 PM today."
The post explained that rescue teams had arrived and would organize survivors from the gym's west gate. The destination was a new development in the city's west, the office buildings beside Yinlou Commercial City. Anyone wishing to evacuate should arrive at the gym before three o'clock; those in trouble should leave a comment under the post specifying their location, the number of people, and the number of nearby zombies so rescue could be arranged accordingly.
Once the post went up, replies came quickly. There weren't many survivors on campus so the thread filled slowly, but every responder was wildly excited.
Posting was definitely faster than calling people one by one.
Ye Xiao had them compile the distress messages from the replies and report back in real time.
"Report to whom?" Feng Xuemei asked.
Ye Xiao looked at Lin Tantan. She pursed her lips reluctantly. "Report to me," she said. "I'll stay here."
Although she had come because she worried about Mei Baisheng, once a post like that went up people would inevitably head to the gym on their own; the gym couldn't be left unattended.
So the person to stay behind became her, neither Ye Xiao nor Mei Baisheng would let a girl go out alone to rescue people. Staying inside the gym with the doors shut would at least hold for a while, no matter how dangerous it got.
Feng Xuemei was surprised; since Lin Tantan hadn't acted earlier, she assumed Lin Tantan was one of the students being rescued.
"So what am I supposed to do?" Jiang Zhongyi, who'd stepped forward but been ignored, demanded.
Ye Xiao was about to speak when Li Qing, who'd been staring at his phone, said: "There's an urgent reply under the post, from the Business School."
The three of them checked. The reply said that thirty to forty students had banded together to leave campus but had been pushed back by a horde coming from the nearby town. They were now trapped in the administrative building close to the campus gate and were barely holding on.
There were four universities in the northern university district: Yang University, the Business School, Yang Institute of Technology, and a vocational technical college.
From above the four campuses formed roughly a square divided into four blocks. Yang University occupied the northwest corner, the Business School the southeast, and just southeast of the Business School lay the only small town next to the university district.
The town had nearly one hundred thousand people. During the holidays, the students in the four universities were fewer, but the town's residents remained, so by the second day of the outbreak the town had descended into chaos.
When survivors in the town learned that rescue teams would be at Yang University's main auditorium, they headed there, first having to pass by the Business School.
Footage from the monitors under Jiang Xiaotian's control showed the Business School had the most zombies of the four campuses; it had borne the brunt of the town's attack.
Lin Tantan said, "You should go, now."
Ye Xiao began, "Here…"
"Leave this place to me. How hard can it be to keep a few students in line?" she said, giving off a look that these kids were nothing. If you ignored that she was a student too, and that her face looked younger than theirs, her confidence might even be believable.
Considering what she could do, Ye Xiao still felt reassured.
"Tell me immediately if anything happens."
"Mm-hm." Lin Tantan saw them to the door, glancing straight at Mei Baisheng. "Meimei, be careful. Don't get reckless, if a zombie tears your skin a bit, you're a goner." Then she turned to Ye Xiao: "Keep an extra eye on Meimei."
She looked extremely worried.
Mei Baisheng: ...It felt like the first day he enlisted, being fussed over by his grandmother again and again.
Ye Xiao: ...As if she were babysitting a giant infant?
Both were a little bewildered, and on top of his confusion Mei Baisheng found himself under the appraising stare of his squad leader.
On the way to the rescue site he was even asked, "You two seem really close?"
"Uh, maybe because she just shared a secret with me?"
Ye Xiao: "…Oh." Shared a secret, just now, while I wasn't around, installing a bomb and chatting away.
Mei Baisheng instinctively pulled his neck in; it didn't sit right with him. He glanced at his leader and added, "Well, maybe our personalities just click, and we're about the same age."
Ye Xiao, only twenty-six this year: "..." Am I old already, haha.
...
Lin Tantan saw the two of them off with worry. Thinking of Ye Xiao's expression, was he suspicious of something? No wonder; they'd known each other less than twelve hours. If she kept clinging to Mei Baisheng, it'd look odd.
She locked the gym doors and came back to a cluster of students staring at her. Worried about Mei Baisheng, she had no desire to chat, so she said to Jiang Zhongyi, "You're Jiang Zhongyi, right? You and your teammates, round up a few more strong guys and take charge of patrolling around the gym."
Jiang Zhongyi sneered, "Little junior, what school are you from? Big talk, ordering your seniors around. Don't think those two were just being nice to you earlier..."
Before he could finish, a whoosh, something brushed past his face so fast his skin stung and his heart nearly stopped.
He froze and slowly turned his head. The room was an indoor basketball court; right behind him stood a hoop.
One of the hoop's support posts trembled slightly. Someone nearby had just seen two streaks of golden light pass by; on impulse he gave it a tug, and a roughly one-meter section of steel pipe ripped free and fell into his hands.
He stared at the pipe's unnaturally smooth ends, dumbfounded, and foolishly asked his classmate, "I was leaning on this a minute ago, right? It was fine then, wasn't it?"
So what the hell were those two beams of light? Were they lasers? This was a genuine steel pipe, made of iron! Hollow, yes, but thick, heavy like an iron bar!
The students who saw it were stunned. They looked at Lin Tantan as she slowly withdrew her hand, pale, soft, a real human hand. No hidden high-tech weapon at all!
Jiang Zhongyi stammered, "Wh-what was that just now?"
"Superpowers," Lin Tantan said calmly. "Can I command you now?"
With a plop, Jiang grabbed her thigh. "Sis, you're my sister! If you tell me to go east I'll never go west; if you tell me to jump out the window right now, I wouldn't even flinch!"