Chapter 22

At her words the group grew excited, Mei Baisheng could be saved, and her demand wasn’t hard. There were plenty of zombies outside; with so many of them it wouldn’t be a problem to bring back some cores.
If Lin Tantan had known what they were thinking she would have told them earnestly: young people, you’re thinking too simply. When she saved that patient years ago she’d poured hundreds of millions into crystal cores, there was a whole pile of high-grade stones.
Mei Baisheng’s condition was even more perilous; how much energy he’d need even Lin Tantan couldn’t be sure. A first-grade crystal core held very limited power.
She added, “I estimate it’ll take at least a few thousand. Be mentally prepared.”
Sure enough, the others felt the pressure. They’d all mined cores before and knew there were ten colors roughly equally likely; some zombies didn’t have cores at all, so you might only find one green in a dozen or so zombies.
A few thousand cores meant slaughtering tens of thousands of zombies.
But compared to saving Mei Baisheng’s life, that was nothing.
Ye Xiao said evenly, “No problem. What else do you need?”
He didn’t bother over why Lin Tantan seemed so experienced, right now saving Mei Baisheng was the priority. He could tell she carried secrets and oddities, but so what? None of that mattered.
Lin Tantan was already sitting beside Mei Baisheng, several wood-type cores in her right hand. She began absorbing them and channeling energy into his body, saying, “He’s not in good shape. I’m starting now; don’t interrupt me. This could take several days.”
Bai Cheng immediately asked, “Can you hold out?”
That was a key question. Lin Tantan was only a level-one ability user and had been in this body for just over twenty hours. The body had originally belonged to a delicate, fragile girl; even if powers improved her constitution, twenty hours wasn’t enough. If she went days without food or drink she’d collapse first. She said, “Give me some glucose saline or something.”
She was starving now.
Bai Cheng: “That’ll be easy.” Bai Cheng served as the team’s medic; beyond IVs, he could handle minor surgery.
He told his teammates, “I need to make a run to the hospital.”
Ye Xiao said, “Your body, ”
“It’s fine. I’m not running much of a fever anymore.” As for superpowers and such, nobody had noticed anything yet.
“I’ll go too. I went there when we fetched the helicopter, so I know the place,” Zhong Xiong said. “There are quite a few zombies at the hospital,” which will be good for harvesting.
The university had once swarmed with zombies, but they’d moved some, killed some, and blown up others, so there weren’t as many now and they were dispersed. The hospital, however, was still heavily concentrated, they’d noticed that when retrieving the helicopter.
Jiang Xiaotian said, "I'll go too. One of you looks for medicine, one kills the zombies, and someone has to dig that thing up, right?" He wasn't much of a fighter and didn't intend to show off, if something happened to him now he'd just be a liability, but he could still lend a hand.
Ye Xiao didn't object. He took off his gun and some bullets and handed them to the three. Their ammunition was thin, they'd burned through most of what they'd fetched from the station over the afternoon. Bai Cheng and Jiang Xiaotian only had a dozen or so rounds each for self-defense; Zhong Xiong had a few more, but not many.
He felt uneasy without enough bullets.
Ye Xiao gave the remaining rounds to Xu Qin and Xu Li. "We'll handle the university district."
Cheng Qinan said, "I can help too." He'd been watching Lin Tantan closely; the tide had begun to turn.
Ye Xiao glanced at him and handed him a gun.
Bai Cheng said, "You don't have a gun anymore."
Ye Xiao replied, "I have abilities."
At that moment Lin Tantan suddenly said, "I have a suggestion." Everyone looked at her; she met Ye Xiao's eyes. "Take some time now and start absorbing energy."
All day he hadn't had a chance to study the crystal cores, so Ye Xiao hadn't begun absorbing. His internal power reserves were limited, once used up, they'd take a long time to recover. No matter how gifted he was, his energy wasn't infinite.
Bai Cheng said, "A little prep won't hurt, Tantan's right."
Their bullets were limited; later they'd undoubtedly be forced into hand-to-hand fights with the zombies, and things would slow down. In the end they'd still have to rely on Ye Xiao's powers.
Ye Xiao had thought the same, but worried it would waste time. Thinking it through now, he decided it was worth a try.
So it was settled: Bai Cheng, Zhong Xiong, and Jiang Xiaotian would go to the hospital; Xu Li, Xu Qin, and Chen Qinan would clear the zombies outside the canteen and around the campus.
Xu Li's kung fu was excellent, and Xu Qin wasn't weak, his firearm skills equaled anyone's. In close-quarters fighting they couldn't match Ye Xiao, Zhong Xiong and the others; Cheng Qinan focused on digging out the crystal cores.
As it turned out, most of the dead zombies scattered across the campus were ones whose cores hadn't been removed. Crystal cores don't disappear on their own.
As she spoke, Lin Tantan's hand made a soft pop, the crystal core she was holding had cracked.
Its energy had been drained.
Only a few minutes and she'd absorbed one already? The others felt the urgency and sprang into action.
In no time the second-floor canteen was left with only Lin Tantan and Ye Xiao, plus one Mei Baisheng, who was already unconscious.
Lin Tantan sat cross-legged on the floor as simply as could be; Mei Baisheng lay collapsed nearby. Between them, beside the five bands from before, there was an extra one that seemed driven straight into Mei Baisheng's chest. All six straps pulsed with light, anyone could see the pale green energy flowing from Lin Tantan's hands into his body.
In her right hand Lin Tantan held a crystal core, its faint green glow blinking in and out, as if her hand was steadily devouring the energy inside it.
In fact, the speed at which she was absorbing and outputting energy far exceeded what her body could safely handle. Inside her, the wood-type power ran like a surging river, forcing it through a tube that was still thin and fragile, as if trying to push an overfast torrent through a narrow pipe.
The sensation was a scraping, knife-like pain. But when she first began training she had endured worse, so now her face was only a little pale and her expression remained perfectly still.
Ye Xiao didn't fully understand it, but he could see she was suffering. He pressed his lips together, looked at her long and hard, and picked up a cyan crystal core.
Lin Tantan had already explained the tips and key points of absorbing cores. Ye Xiao was quick to grasp things and had an instinctive feel for powers, so after holding that unfamiliar little object and thinking for less than half an hour, he managed to draw energy from it.
He still didn't know the optimal flow pattern for wind-type energy; he fumbled and experimented until he finally formed a cycle inside himself.
Once the cycle formed, things smoothed out. By the time he'd finished draining one core, an hour had passed.
Night had fully fallen. Ye Xiao opened his eyes; the canteen was dim, with only a little light from outside and Lin Tantan's steady green glow. Her posture had not changed.
Outside, the zombies grew more savage with the dark; even sounds from far off carried a crazed edge.
He released his grip and let the core in his hand crumble into translucent shards on the floor, then stood up.
A flashlight beam swept in from the stairwell. Ye Xiao found his vision sharpened and immediately recognized Cheng Qinan.
Cheng Qinan held two bags, one large and one small. He casually tossed the large one against the wall; it made a crisp noise, it was clearly full of cores. He brought the small bag over; when the light fell on Ye Xiao he froze. "You made it?"
"Yes."
Ye Xiao saw Cheng Qinan's pale face and ragged breathing, his health had never been good. "Rest here. Keep watch over Tantan," Ye Xiao said.
Having said that, he nimbly jumped out the second-floor window.
He landed without a sound. Cheng Qinan went to the window and, in that brief moment, Ye Xiao had vanished into the night; only a few street lamps lit the ground strewn with zombie bodies.
Cheng Qinan drew the curtains and turned on a small lamp to light only the immediate space, he didn't want a bright light to attract trouble. He emptied the bags onto the floor: all green crystal cores. He fetched a basin of water and washed each one carefully, dried them, and then placed them beside Lin Tantan.
He had already brought back a bag half an hour earlier, he’d sifted through several hundred crystal cores and only a few dozen were green. This time it was the same: only a few dozen. Even so, that only matched Lin Tantan’s rate of use; she was burning through almost one core every minute.
After a short while, the sound of a helicopter came from outside. Moments later three people came down from the building, Bai Cheng and his two companions. It had taken them more than an hour, but they had finally returned.
All three of them had their hands empty. Cheng Qinan trained a light on them. “Why are you coming back empty-handed?” But even though they hadn’t brought anything, their expressions weren’t heavy; if anything, they looked relieved. Jiang Xiaotian even had time to grin. “You wouldn’t believe it,” he said.
Cheng Qinan suddenly looked at Bai Cheng; a sharp instinct told him something was up. Sure enough, Bai Cheng waved his hand and a pile of things materialized on the ground. Cheng Qinan’s eyes widened, a superpower!
Bai Cheng immediately picked out what he needed from the pile. He washed his hands, put on gloves, mixed some vitamins into the glucose saline and prepared to hook Lin Tantan up to an IV.
“Tantan,” he called, “I’m going to start the IVs.”
Looking closely, there was a fine sweat on Lin Tantan’s forehead. She opened her eyes; they were rimmed with red. Bai Cheng flinched, but Lin Tantan nodded slightly to tell him to go ahead, and then closed her eyes again.
Bai Cheng felt a cold worry in his chest, her condition wasn’t good. It had only been an hour or so; if this went on for days…
But people are selfish. He wasn’t about to tell her to stop now.
He set an indwelling needle in a place that wouldn’t hinder movement, hooked up the fluids, and when he saw that the situation hadn’t worsened and Mei Baisheng’s breathing remained relatively steady, his gaze toward Lin Tantan softened considerably.