Chapter 50

Not long after Yao Wei and the others left, word spread that Ye Xiao had announced the disbanding of the Yang City convoy and would no longer be leader of the 150,000.
Zhou Li was one of the first to hear the news. He was eating at the time, to be precise, he'd cleared several tables, treating some of his most capable subordinates and introducing them to his brother Zhou Yan's people to build rapport. He wore a surprised expression: "Are you sure I heard that right? Disband everyone? That's 150,000 people."
Zhou Yan, sitting next to him, laughed: "What are 150,000 people in this huge base? They're just a bunch of freeloaders who only eat." He didn't look much like Zhou Li, younger, more energetic, without guile, but the sharp gleam that flashed in his eyes now and then revealed he wasn't as simple as he seemed.
Zhou Li shook his head. "People are capital, and they've been managed pretty well, there are still several thousand who can be put to use."
Zhou Yan's eyes flickered. "Brother, what kind of person is this Ye Xiao really?"
"A very reliable man," Zhou Li said with high praise. "Whether as a comrade or as a leader." He did want to be friends with Ye Xiao, but unfortunately they had been placed in a subordinate relationship from the start, and when they entered the base yesterday, neither he nor his men made any move. Could Ye Xiao really hold no grudge against him?
They could never just be friends.
Zhou Li thought this, and convinced himself that disbanding might be for the best, Ye Xiao probably didn't plan to stay and build a future at the Ning City base.
Zhou Yan said, "He doesn't want those people, we do. Brother, you've been with that convoy; you know who can do what. Let's bring all of them over."
Zhou Li paused with his chopsticks. "That could work, except we can't get the most formidable one."
Zhou Yan, intrigued, asked, "Which one? I heard Ye Xiao's team originally had seven or eight people, each with their own skills."
"Not those eight, a girl named Lin Tantan."
"Bang!" Xu Tianjin at the same table failed to catch his bowl and it clattered onto the table.
Seeing everyone staring at the bowl, Xu Tianjin hurriedly picked it up, scratched his head and laughed, "It's nothing, I slipped." Then, feigning curiosity, he asked Zhou Li, "Brother Zhou, the person you said was so formidable is a woman? What makes her so impressive?"
Zhou Yan glared at him for a moment, but Xu Tianjin didn't notice. Actually, his question wasn't out of place, anyone who hadn't heard of Lin Tantan would be curious and waiting for Zhou Li to explain. Still, Zhou Yan had already grown suspicious of Xu Tianjin's odd behavior; once you start watching someone with doubt, you begin to see things, and Xu Tianjin was practically riddled with giveaways.
Because of him, Zhou Yan had begun to take a special interest in the name Ye Xiao, and now he filed away the name Lin Tantan as well.
Especially after Zhou Li described certain things about Lin Tantan and concluded that even if they recruited all those people, none of them would match a single Lin Tantan.
Zhou Yan laughed, "She's only a dual-type ability user, right? There are two of those in the base, is she really that strong?"
"What if both of her abilities are exceptionally strong, and one is healing, and she can lead other ability-users, and she's fiercely loyal to a leader?" Zhou Li said. "Did you see yesterday? The only person who fought from start to finish without relying on weapons, and she completely held her own."
Regret tinged Zhou Li's tone, regret at having shown Lin Tantan goodwill several times without getting anywhere.
Zhou Yan fell silent. He hadn't seen much of it from inside the base yesterday, but people on the walls had said that one woman had been especially dazzling, her metal-type ability was slick as anything.
At the same time, a storm raged in Xu Tianjin's mind, the name matched. A wood-type ability that stood out, and dual-type besides.
Could it be the one he was thinking of?
Then again, if he could traverse, why couldn't Dr. Lin? He was instantly thrilled, itching to go find her right away.
Meanwhile, many people were talking about the matter, about Ye Xiao and about Lin Tantan. At a leadership meeting of the base's provisional government, the Minister of Health slammed his fist on the table: "This person must be brought into our medical department."
Someone from the base academy said, "I've heard that among those 150,000 people there were basically no cases of zombification following fever, is that this person's doing? What's the rate of fever-induced zombification in our base?"
Someone beside him answered, "About ten people get high fevers, and three of those turn into zombies."
The academy representative also slammed the table. "We want this person for the academy. With that ability, and being a dual-type user, she has tremendous research value!"
The Minister of Health said, "She's the best doctor. Do you know how many people fall ill every day? Do you expect us to let a talent like this sit idle in your department? Can you imagine! That's a waste of resources!"
The academy man said excitedly, "You blocked the first two dual-type users from us, at least this one should be handed over, right? You want us to develop a vaccine, and yet you won't give us the subjects. Do you think that slapping the name 'Academy' on the door makes you the national academy?"
"It's not me who's blocking you; take it up with the military."
"Chief, you decide who to give her to!"
Everyone looked toward the square-jawed, middle-aged man in uniform seated at the head. He said coldly, "Don't ask me. Figure it out yourselves. Whoever can secure her will have her."
The Minister of Health frowned. "Most ability-users are proud. If you let them choose for themselves, I doubt any of them would choose."
"Then there's nothing I can do," the middle-aged man said. "They're not under my command."
The academy man frowned. "You can at least control Captain Ye."
"Oh, him I can't control either, he accepts no one's orders."
The Minister of Health protested, "But he's an active-duty officer!"
The square-jawed chief's face grew colder. "There are plenty of active-duty officers out there who'd like to replace me."
Everyone fell silent.
The chief took a breath. "This is the second day of the zombie siege, do any of you have a plan?"
"What plan is there? The rain's so heavy some abilities don't work, ammo is much less effective, and worst of all those old-timers send troops out but they don't fight with them," said another man in uniform.
Military and political power had been unified now; those seated here were the victors of earlier struggles, the ruling class of Ning City base. But power tasted sour, chaos lay everywhere.
The chief fell silent.
Suddenly a guard rushed in. "Chief, Ye Xiao is calling."
The base had set up its own signal tower; the signal was weak, but internal calls still worked.
The chief picked up. "Ye Xiao, it's me." After a few words his brow lifted. "Hire guards to defend the base for me?"
...
Time rewound to a while earlier. Everyone peered at the greens Yang Xinyu had brought, commonly called chicken-feather greens, small, fast-growing leaves that Yang Xinyu could coax a whole patch of at once.
A whole bag of the greens went into the pot. The fire came from a fire-type ability user, the water from a water-type, and they added just a pinch of salt. They cooked up a pot of vegetable soup, and everyone watched it as if on duty. They each tasted some, it actually tasted pretty good, not much different from ordinary greens.
After finishing the greens, they naturally sat down to chat. These power-users hadn't come just to deliver vegetables; they mainly wanted to ask for advice about what to do from now on.
Bai Cheng was very cordial with them, took paper and pen and analyzed: "Based on what you’ve said, those who came to recruit you last night and this morning basically fall into five categories. One is various gangs, anybody with combat ability will regularly organize group activities, like going out of the city to kill zombies and gather supplies, taking on searches for missing relatives or delivery jobs, and they may even get involved in inter-gang fights;
"One is organizations of 'the chosen' made up of power-users, any power-user can join, but their nature and purpose are unclear;
"Another is the base's official personnel department, they sent a stack of forms outlining the various positions within the base;
"Another is the military recruiting, they demand a very high level of obedience, and even within the military there are different factions;
"The last category is private employers, for example, fire-types hired as bodyguards, water-types providing them with water, wood-types treating them or growing fruits and vegetables."
"My advice is: when you don't yet understand the situation, don't join any faction lightly, even if they promise very generous terms, including the military and the base's provisional government. Find a job you think you can handle that pays reasonably, and at the same time sell your abilities as a commodity.
For example, the agricultural department of the base's academy is hiring, you could consider that, or sell the vegetables you grow with your ability as products. I don't recommend you be directly employed by a private individual.
As for combat roles: with abilities like yours, doing ordinary work would be a waste and won't help you improve. Short of joining any faction, I can introduce you to one option, it's up to you whether you want it."
"What option?" many asked in unison.
Bai Cheng smiled: "Form an employment relationship with the base."
The crowd looked puzzled, how was that different from taking a job?
"I mean strike a direct employment agreement with the base's military. For example, with zombies besieging the city and defenders in short supply, you could go up on the walls to fight zombies, first to train yourselves, second to relieve the base's burden, and third to get paid by the military in this way.
That way you don't have to enlist; your freedom is preserved. You can pick and choose which military operations to take part in. If you can't judge how dangerous a task is or whether it's worth it and worry about being shortchanged, I can act as your adviser; and on pay, I can negotiate with the military for you."
He paused. "Oh, by the way, for this job of helping the base kill zombies, our Captain Ye will participate too."
Hearing that, the combat-oriented power-users' eyes lit up. Acting under Ye Xiao's lead gave them a sense of security; even if they weren't really a team anymore, old bonds remained, if something went wrong, Ye Xiao wouldn't just ignore them, would he?
They looked at Ye Xiao; his face darkened a little. He glanced at Bai Cheng and nodded.
Lin Tantan watched from the side for a long time and finally understood what Bai Cheng had been hinting at. She and Mei Baisheng whispered: "No wonder Bai Cheng suddenly got so enthusiastic. So basically he set himself up as a kind of unpaid intermediary and pushed Ye Xiao out as advertising, right?"
Mei Baisheng murmured back: "The boss has actually been worried about the zombies outside the base; he said this morning he wanted to go see the walls, but Old Bai stopped him. Old Bai said that since we're not handling internal affairs, don't handle anything else either, otherwise people will take it for granted and suspect us of coveting power. It's thankless. So he prefers to help in the form of paid employment, clear and straightforward. Come to think of it, the idea came from you."
"Me?"
"Yeah. You treated people for free with your medical ability, but not everyone appreciated it. After you started charging, people actually respected you more."
Awe? That serious?
Lin Tantan thought for a moment and finally said, "I really can't work for nothing."
"Exactly."
"Are you going too?"
"Of course. I need to practice my abilities, and besides, it's to kill a few more zombies."
Then Ye Xiao called the top military official, hammered out the cooperation details, and led those power-users, along with Mei Baisheng and a few others, out to work. Of course they also went to where other power-users lived to recruit more people.
Just as Ye Xiao was about to get into the car, he spotted something and walked over to the neighboring vehicle. "Lin Tantan, don't come."
Lin Tantan sat in the car, already trying hard to hide herself but was found anyway. She was rather cheerful, though; she rolled down the window and said, "Why? If you're going out to work, I'm coming too."
Work and all that... Ye Xiao's expression twisted. He said, "You treated so many people this morning."
"Then I'll just hang around and watch." Lin Tantan looked like someone who didn't want to stay home alone and wanted to come along for the fun.
"Cheng Qinan and Xu Qin are in the villa." Ye Xiao tried to persuade her to stay, it's pouring; is it really so fun outside?
Cheng Qinan was sick and sleeping; Lin Tantan guessed he was about to awaken his ability. Xu Qin was basically a couch potato, either fiddling with his gadgets or sprawled on the sofa snacking and watching shows. They got along, but the two of them alone, chatting all the time, would be terribly boring.
Anyway, Lin Tantan simply refused to stay.
Ye Xiao was completely at a loss with her.
The car drove into the residential area and parked under a shabby carport. Lin Tantan didn't get out; she lowered the window and looked at the rows of buildings, rural-style five- or six-story apartment blocks. This base, expanded outward from the garrison, covered a fair amount of ground but had relatively few multi-story buildings. Most structures had been hastily built after the end of the world, since manpower and resources were concentrated on the walls. Housing had been done sloppily: many were brick shacks and makeshift shelters, looking painfully shabby, by comparison, this place was actually not so bad.
In no time, a crowd came down from the upper floors, each person carrying a motley assortment of raincoats, umbrellas, and rain caps; some had simply wrapped themselves in a sheet of oilcloth. Laughing and joking, they climbed into the vehicles, which drove off one by one.
Mud splashed all the way to the base gate. The man on guard was the same half-blood youth from yesterday, he'd already been informed. He looked at them with a twitch in the corner of his mouth and asked, "You're all ability-users?"
"Yes." Bai Cheng stepped forward to negotiate with a smile. "Except for a few who won't take part in killing zombies, there are fifty-seven of us. Put us in the same sector. Oh, and the pay I agreed with your commander is this: each person will be provided lunch and dinner, and ten jin of grain a day."
When he mentioned ten jin, he couldn't help feeling it was paltry, too little. But the base was broke. An ordinary able-bodied worker might earn three to five jin a day at most; any more would be the price for someone with powers. Ten jin was the best Bai Cheng could bargain for.
The commander had originally offered crystal cores, but Bai Cheng refused. Crystal cores weren't worth much now, the area outside the base was infested with zombies, which meant cores were everywhere; if you wanted them, you had to scavenge for them yourself. Food was what was really tight.
The half-blood youth ground his teeth. "I hope you'll be worth that price. Follow me."
Bai Cheng's smile was gentle, but he had the face of a debt collector. "We also hope the employer's attitude will satisfy us. We're only working half a day today, have dinner and five jin of grain ready. Don't short us, or whether we come back tomorrow will be a question."
The half-blood youth nearly missed a step.
The other ability users in their various rainwear looked bewildered, Deputy Bai had this side to him?
Lin Tantan stared, equally dumbfounded.
Mei Baisheng whispered to her, "Do you know what Old Bai's greatest hobby is?"
"Scamming people?"
"No, haggling. I think he's wanted to be this kind of middleman for a long time."
Lin Tantan: "I think he looks more like a contractor now."
"What's a 'contractor' then?"
Lin Tantan thought for a moment. "A foreman? The leader of a labor crew?"
Mei Baisheng burst out laughing, and others nearby who'd heard the exchange laughed too.
Before long, Ye Xiao's new title, the labor crew leader, had spread, and all the workers looked at him and snickered. They found it impossible to take the title "Captain Ye" seriously.
Ye Xiao glanced at them, feeling like he'd been duped.
They climbed the seven- or eight-meter wall. With wind and rain battering them, it was hard to keep their eyes open. A few clever ones had motorcycle helmets on and were instantly admired.
This was right by the main gate, where a squad of soldiers stood. Seeing the half-blood youth approach, one of them shouted, "Boss! Zombies keep climbing, requesting backup!"
Lin Tantan leaned over to look. Good grief, a whole pile of zombies were stacking up under the wall like a human pyramid. Unfortunately the wall was too smooth; their stacking skills weren't great, and a poke with a pole from above toppled them.
The mixed-blood youth said, "Backup's arrived; you can go rest." Then he turned to Ye Xiao: "This sector is yours. If even one zombie breaks through your line, the millions in the base will face annihilation."
He wore a grave expression, placing an invisible but heavy burden on Ye Xiao. Expressionless, Ye Xiao said, "We're getting paid, we'll do the job properly."
The youth: "..." What is wrong with these people?
Bai Cheng opened a large package. "Everyone, come collect a safety rope."
The youth: "What safety ropes?"
"It's slippery here and the parapet is low, what if someone falls? Working at height requires safety measures."
The youth's face twitched. These people, are they for real?
Yet everyone obediently went to get a rope. Following the soldiers' instructions, they tied two loops around their bodies and another to the rear battlement; the knots were both tight and professional, guaranteeing there would be no farce of someone tumbling off the wall and getting chewed by zombies.
Then everyone took their positions and began raining down their abilities.
Xu Qin, Xu Li and Zhong Xiong had come too. None of the three had powers; in a situation like this, bullets would never be enough, so they didn't plan to draw their guns. A big reason they came was that Jiang Zhongyi and Cheng Qinan had egged them on, one had gotten rained on and awakened powers, and the other had been rained on and was in the process of awakening.
So after a discussion, the three gave in to superstition and decided to get rained on themselves, after all, with Lin Tantan around they weren't worried about falling ill. They had no choice; not having powers was too inconvenient.
But given their constitutions, making themselves sick enough to change wasn't that easy, so for now they'd only put on hats and hadn't bothered with raincoats.
Xu Qin watched the zombie corpses piling up below the wall for a long time, then said, "I've got an idea. To be safe, let's build a cage." They went down and started tinkering in the vehicle.
The mixed-blood youth wanted to know what they were doing, but he wasn't idle himself and had to leave.
An hour later when he returned, he found they'd welded together a large iron cage. They lowered it beside the wall, and a woman sent out several green tendrils, wood-type powers, apparently, yanked a zombie corpse up by the limbs and tossed it into the cage. They did it three times, closed the cage, and hauled it up.
"What are you doing? Bringing zombie bodies inside?" the mixed-blood youth blurted, alarmed.
He was answered by the three of them, who grabbed a knife, split open the zombies' skulls, and dug out the crystal cores.
Then they lowered the cage again, emptied the corpses out, and discussed, "Ordinary people can do this."
"Hauling whole corpses up is too tiring. It's better to chop the heads off and pull them up."
"Or install a hoist along the wall."
The mixed-blood youth stared for a long moment and couldn't help asking, "You can just pull zombie bodies up directly, why put them in cages?"
Xu Qin shot him a look that plainly said "Are you an idiot?" and replied, "What if the zombie isn't completely dead?"
Lin Tantan added, "Throwing zombies into a cage isn't easy either. If you try to pull them up seven or eight meters with your power, you'll burn through your ability fast." She was talking about the level of an ordinary ability user; in fact, they were doing this work for ordinary folks. It would be a shame not to pick up the crystal cores scattered on the ground, and besides, the zombies might evolve a new feeding method, eating the brains and crystal cores of their own kind.
The storm came early, and that cannibalistic evolution might show up sooner too. If they left the corpses lying around, the next morning they'd find the brains eaten clean and a batch of far deadlier zombies spawned, wouldn't that be a nightmare?
When they finished talking they went off to make some improvements.
The mixed-blood youth wandered off, a little dazed.
When he came back at dusk, the area they were responsible for had almost all the zombies dead; the ground was piled layer upon layer with corpses, thousands upon thousands. A simple pulley had been rigged on the parapet, hauling an iron cage up and down. A wood-type ability user sent out vines (they'd switched, no more straps, it was vines now), dragging zombies to a guillotine at the base of the wall. That thing was electric: someone up top pressed a button, the blade dropped, and a rotting head was sliced off. Then another wood-type sent out a long stemlike tendril, wrapped the head and dropped it into the cage.
When a cage was full, several people hauled it up with the pulley, tipped the heads with a clatter into a big wooden box, and two people in protective suits, goggles included, used huge tongs to place skulls into a machine. A buzz saw roared and the heads were cut open. A third similarly dressed person rummaged through the rotten flesh for crystal cores.
The mixed-blood youth's lips twitched; he felt a little queasy. He'd thought himself bold, but hacking off zombie heads for processing, like someone extracting pearls from shells, made him feel embarrassingly outclassed.
Scanning the scene, he saw the four guys who'd originally come up with the idea lounging nearby and chatting. He overheard them talking about some ability-based weapon and felt numb. What kind of people were in Ye Xiao's crew?
Ye Xiao felt a little numb too. Hearing people call him "Captain Ye" felt odd, especially when he handed out dinner and five kilos of rice; everyone took their share, smiled, and bade him goodbye, promising to be back tomorrow. It all felt strangely like workers saying farewell to a foreman.
Bai Cheng picked up the last portion. "Do you want it?"
Ye Xiao shook his head.
Bai Cheng called to Lin Tantan, "Tantan, here, this one's for you. Captain Ye's first day's wages."
"For me?" Lin Tantan looked at Bai Cheng, then at Ye Xiao. Since Bai Cheng had offered it, she accepted without any hesitation, feeling oddly delighted.
Seeing her amused wonder, Ye Xiao couldn't help but smile.