Chapter 61

Lin Tantan had no idea how much she'd affected Ye Xiao's thinking. She received another person on the verge of an ability awakening, an old man in his sixties, feverish and seeing things blurred. That he was still alive owed to his astonishing willpower and dutiful children.
This shantytown had many more people than yesterday's, so there were more severe cases. With so many patients and so few healers, they had to prioritize the younger, stronger patients with the best chances of survival, every treatment was precious.
By rights the old man shouldn't have made the list, but his children begged and offered to slave for Lin Tantan. She went to see him, and what she found revealed the problem.
Probing his ability, she found him on the brink of awakening, but his body was so weak he might die from the unrelenting fever before the awakening could occur.
To avoid breaking the rules and causing a riot, she calmly had his children take him home. After the day's treatments ended, she returned alone to tidy his energy and left some food, leaving the family deeply grateful.
Lin Tantan waved her hand and left. If she wasn't mistaken, the old man was likely to awaken a wood-type ability, whether for cultivation or healing, either would be extremely rare and in short supply, and she couldn't stand to see such talent wasted.
By then it was completely dark. Because there had been so many patients, they finished late; Lin Tantan even mentioned raising the bodyguards' wages a bit. Waiting for her now were the six people who shared a place with Jiang Zhongyi, and Xu Tianjin.
That morning Lin Tantan had already asked Jiang Zhongyi about him. Xu Tianjin had performed well; no matter how they pushed him about his relationship with her, Xu Tianjin shrugged it off with jokes.
"He's just terrible at lying, any clear-eyed person can see he's dodging the question," Jiang Zhongyi had said.
As long as he kept his mouth shut, that was fine. After a day and a night together, Xu Tianjin had gotten on well with Jiang Zhongyi and the others and was willing to keep staying with them, so Lin Tantan paid them a bucket of water a day as rent. Xu Tianjin's daily rations were also plentiful, after all, he was a fellow townsman; they had to look after each other in the city.
The car dropped Lin Tantan at the villa first, then went back to the residential compound. When they got out and climbed the stairs, Jiang Zhongyi sent out a fireball to light the way and keenly sensed someone watching from the darkness. He knew whoever it was had their sights on Xu Tianjin, they'd appeared that morning too, but they would never let Xu Tianjin be left alone, so the would-be attacker couldn't find an opening.
Jiang Zhongyi sneered and pretended not to notice. The group hauled water and carried food upstairs, ate a quick meal, washed up, and were soon ready to sleep. With Jiang Zhongyi's fire ability they had no worries about fuel, it was incredibly cheap.
Inside the villa, Lin Tantan found everyone present except Ye Xiao. The generator rattled away and the living room lights were blazing. The space was divided into several areas; everyone was busy, scouting locations, planning houses, screening people.
When Lin Tantan asked what they were up to, they told her excitedly that they were forming their own crew and asked if she had anyone to recommend.
Lin Tantan was surprised, then pleased, Ye Xiao had finally come to his senses, and that was a good thing.
She leaned toward Bai Cheng and whispered, "I haven't said anything to him." She blurted that out, then with a smug, "I knew it" expression added, "You must have persuaded him, right? I told you only you could get through to him."
Seeing her so certain and with that slightly flattering look, Bai Cheng felt worried for Ye Xiao and thought how lucky he was that he'd given up quickly back then.
She's a good girl, but that head of hers... is she just slow, or what?
Bai Cheng drawled, "He said he finally thought it through because he didn't want you to be mistreated, that it would be better to have his own power. Do you believe him?"
"I've been mistreated?" she asked, baffled. Then remembering the afternoon, Lin Tantan went pale. "You mean what happened this afternoon? No, no, no, it's not like that. If you'd been standing where I was, or Meimei, or anyone else, he'd have been angry too. It wasn't just for me, he said so himself!"
Lin Tantan wore a look that begged, You have to believe me, I'm really not special.
Bai Cheng gave up; he wouldn't get involved.
Lin Tantan asked about Ye Xiao. He'd gone to Lu Jianping's to check on that mutated plant. Seeing the pitch-black night outside, she worried out of habit, but she trusted Ye Xiao to take care of himself.
The conversation then swung back to choosing people.
They wanted to form a group, and at first they'd naturally pick those they already knew, people of good character and solid abilities. There were quite a few: spending most of a month in the west of Yang City, ten days on the road, and another long stretch at the base had given them plenty of opportunities to meet people and learn them well.
Lin Tantan didn't have many recommendations. Jiang Zhongyi was one, but he was already on Bai Cheng's list and someone who could be heavily cultivated. There were also ability-users like Yang Xinyu and Ming Ze, and people like Qian Feifei, all of whom were already on the list.
Lin Tantan thought for a moment. "Do we want patients too?"
"Yes. We don't recruit strangers lightly, but patients, especially those driven to the brink, are more likely to give their loyalty."
"That's perfect, we ran into one today." Lin Tantan described the old man's condition. "If things go smoothly he should awaken a wood-type ability."
Bai Cheng wrote the name down.
"We also ran into a few at the clinic before; I made brief notes in the electronic files, but they're all wealthy, so they won't be easy to recruit."
"No need for those." Bai Cheng tapped his notebook with the pen in hand and said, "Tantan, when you're facing a patient, how do you tell if he's just sick or about to awaken?"
"Some you can tell by the eyes; others you have to test hands-on with your ability," Lin Tantan smiled. "What, are you thinking of mass prospecting for talent?"
Bai Cheng said, "The base currently has over six million people; more than four million live in shantytowns. Even if only one in ten thousand becomes an ability-user, that's over four hundred of them, who wouldn't covet such a resource?"
At this stage the proportion of ability-users was still very small; you might not even find one in a hundred people. And once ability-users do appear, it's easy for various powers to divide them up. Bai Cheng had set up an intermediary and recruited many freelance ability-users, but if he really wanted to turn them into his people the cost would be huge, and other factions wouldn't sit idly by.
So if you can pick up leftovers, the investment is small and the resistance minimal, isn't that the best of both worlds?
They only had a hundred tons of grain now; the number of people they could support was limited, so they had to maximize benefit. Early development was the most important, they'd already missed the first chance to take a slice of the pie, so now they had to hustle to catch up.
Lin Tantan thought it over. "Given the current illness rate, you probably won't find a potential awakener in ten thousand people, but it's close. I'll keep an eye out. Starting tomorrow I won't go to the clinic; I'll spend all day in the shantytown."
At worst, she'll give every patient who comes seeking treatment a quick check.
Bai Cheng smiled. "Tantan, thank you."
"Hey, I'm part of the team too! Everyone should do what they're best at." Lin Tantan felt a little embarrassed; she realized she was fitting into the group more and more. This was a new beginning, so she had to pull her weight. If the team grew and things expanded, they wouldn't be able to live under one roof like this, seeing each other morning and night, what if they drifted apart?
In short, she wanted to show her value and presence, to become an indispensable member of the team.
No sooner had she thought of presence than several mutant rats outside began squeaking together, loudly and insistently.
"What's going on? These rats don't usually make noise," someone said. They'd grown used to the mutant rats of varying sizes and colors; the creatures were hardly a nuisance. They went out to forage, came back to sleep, and didn't run amok. Though they hadn't proved particularly useful yet, keeping the little pack was amusing. The team often shared scraps, peels and cores when they ate fruit, and the rats would happily nibble away.
The mutant rats seemed content with their surroundings and never bothered anyone. Their sudden chorus now was clearly unusual.
Everyone dropped what they were doing and gathered as best they could.
Lin Tantan said, "I'll go check."
"I'll go too," Mei Baisheng said. Zhong Xiong and Xu Li shouldered their guns and followed. Xu Qin hadn't fully recovered, so she and Bai Cheng stayed by the door. Jiang Xiaotian and Cheng Qinan still needed protection.
Cheng Qinan closed his eyes, his eyelids twitching. After a moment he said, "Probably mutant plant life."
"How could that be?" Bai Cheng frowned. They'd checked earlier that day, there wasn't a single blade of grass nearby. He looked down at the marble floor. Had it somehow burrowed underground?
He radioed the people outside the villa, telling them it might be mutant plant life.
Lin Tantan swept her flashlight along the villa's outer wall and scowled at the fresh soil, a patch where something had clearly just pushed its way out.
The hole was deep and circular, about the size of two fists in cross-section. Except for the broken area near the surface, the interior looked as if a column-like thing had rammed through it, curving as it went. A few mutant rats chattered at the entrance.
Faced with the evidence, she had only two guesses: a mutated animal like a giant snake or worm, or else a mutated plant.
She would have preferred the former, but Bai Cheng's radio message crushed that hope.
Xu Li gripped his sword and warned softly, "Be careful."
He and Lin Tantan formed one pair; Mei Baisheng and Zhong Xiong another, because they were worried some sudden situations could only be handled by ability users.
"Mm." Lin Tantan stepped back a little from the entrance but didn't take her eyes off it. She notified the others about the discovery. After a while, Mei Baisheng and Zhong Xiong, who'd found nothing elsewhere, arrived, followed by the other four.
They stared at the hole in silence, then, not quite convinced, someone asked Cheng Qinan, "Are you sure it's a mutant plant?"
"I can't be certain, but my instincts say yes."
"There aren't any plants around here, right?"
"Centered on the villa, nothing grows within a hundred meters. In fact, the whole estate has maybe a few scraggly bushes at most."
What kind of bush could have roots like that?
They all assumed it was a plant rhizome, tentatively probing up from the earth, then retracting when the mutant rats discovered it, and then not surfacing again.
Judging by its thickness, they strongly suspected it was the same kind of thing Lin Tantan and Bai Cheng had encountered that afternoon.
"This is insane," Zhong Xiong, oldest and usually the calmest, muttered, running a hand through his hair.