Chapter 70 Superpowers
"Xiao Ling, can't these be cheaper?"
The shark touched his intact face, feeling a little confused, but more of joy and relief.
"That's great! I was worried about the scars on my face, what if my girlfriend wouldn't like it? I didn't expect there wouldn't be anything left! Hehe, that's great!"
A teammate who was also injured and was about to put the Band-Aid back on shouted angrily, "Find your girlfriend first!"
Zhang Chongguang glanced at the shark's face and indeed saw no wound, but the wound healed so miraculously that it could not but attract attention.
"Is there anyone else who has wounds like sharks but heals quickly?"
The team members looked at each other and shook their heads.
They have always had good physical fitness and their wounds healed faster than ordinary people, but they were not like today's sharks, where the wounds disappeared completely within a few hours after being injured.
Besides, they were constantly on duty, getting wounds of varying sizes, so they were used to it. Major injuries or visible wounds on the face might leave a lasting impression, but minor injuries were sometimes barely noticeable, and sometimes, when they saw tiny scars on their bodies, they couldn't even recall how they got there.
The shark also realized that something seemed to be wrong with his body. Since the captain wanted to know, should he make another cut and make a small wound to verify it?
Just as he was thinking this, someone suddenly patted his shoulder hard.
Zhang Chongguang looked at him and said seriously, "Put away all the garbage in your head!"
The discovered shark smiled foolishly and gave up the idea that had just come to his mind.
Zhang Chongguang was afraid that his group of fools would get too excited and actually do something, so he emphasized, "The situation is different now, so if you feel anything different from before, you must report it. Don't ignore it, understand?"
"I know," someone interjected, "Captain, do you think we might have special abilities?"
The others' eyes lit up. "What kind of superpower is Shark? A healing power?"
"What kind of healing system? Right now, it's just a self-healing system at best!"
"Don't tell me, it would be great if we had superpowers! Zombies already have them, so why can't we normal people mutate?"
…
A group of people were playing and making noise, not noticing that two little ears were quietly pricked up in the kitchen.
So much time had passed since the rainstorm that most of the vegetables in the refrigerator of the Chen family villa had wilted, leaving only some frozen meat and long-lasting root vegetables.
But even though most of it was inedible, the team members in charge of cooking made several large pots with the remaining ingredients.
The aroma of freshly cooked food wafted from the kitchen, attracting everyone's attention.
Zhang Chongguang and his teammates were fine; although they'd been exhausted, they'd never lacked food. Chen Chen and Chen Ling, who hadn't had a proper meal in over ten days, were so reluctant to throw away their bowls.
If Zhang Chongguang hadn't been afraid that the two children would be so hungry that their stomachs would burst, and hadn't given them more rice, they might have eaten another bowl.
After dinner, except for the team members who stayed on guard as usual, the other team members stayed in the living room to rest.
Even though the two children tried hard to invite them to their room, saying that there were empty beds in the room, they refused to go. Instead, they sat cross-legged on the floor in the living room, leaning against the wall and the sofa, and fell asleep.
When Zhang Chongguang came out of the bathroom, he saw the child waiting outside the door.
He raised his eyebrows and went out into the yard.
The boy followed closely behind him.
After making sure that the talking would not disturb the people resting in the living room, Zhang Chongguang stopped and looked at the person behind him.
"Tell me! What do you want to tell me?"
Chen Chen bit his lip and said, "Uncle, please let my sister and I follow you!"
Without waiting for Zhang Chongguang to answer, the boy continued, "My sister and I don't eat much, and my sister is very well behaved. We won't hold you back. Really, I'm very strong. Maybe I have those superpowers you talked about at noon. I can move bookcases, and I can help you with things, really!"
Zhang Chongguang didn't expect to hear the word "superpower" from this child, and he didn't expect that this child had already realized his own differences and even wanted to use these differences to fight to go with them.
"When did you notice your strength increased?"
The boy thought for a moment and said, "Just a few days ago, when Grandma Gui wanted to go upstairs, I was just thinking of finding something to block the stairs, but I didn't expect to actually move the bookcase."
"So, have you had any other feelings these days?"
The boy shook his head. "No."
After saying that, he looked at Zhang Chongguang who was silent, and couldn't help but continue, "Uncle, take us with you! I'm really useful!"
Zhang Chongguang was curious, "Why do you want to go with us?"
"We have a mission this time, and it's going to be very dangerous. We may not be able to take good care of you. If we can find your relatives in the village, wouldn't it be nice to live with them? If we can contact your parents, you can live with them too!"
The boy lowered his head and said, "No one would want me and my sister."
"Dad doesn't want us, Mom doesn't want us, and now that we have new brothers and sisters, grandpa and grandma don't want us anymore. Only Grandma Gui is taking care of us."
Chen Chen raised his head, his eyes were red.
"Grandpa and grandma said that our family moved out a long time ago. Dad had no place to raise us, and grandpa wanted to go back to his hometown, so he built this house in the countryside. Now the other people in the village are several generations away from us. They don't interact with us at all, and their relationship is not close, let alone want us."
"Uncle, if it's inconvenient for you to take us with you, can you send us to a safe place? An orphanage or welfare home will do. I heard that children without parents go there. My sister and I can work and help take care of other children."
The boy asked tentatively, "But my sister and I have a father and a mother. Will they take us in?"
Although he had some guesses about the family situation of the two children, Zhang Chongguang still felt a lump in his throat when he actually heard it from the boys' mouths.
"Yes, definitely."
He suppressed his emotions and discussed with the child.
"Then you can come with us first, but we have a mission and can't always take you with us. We may entrust you to other people in the meantime. But you can rest assured, they will definitely be trustworthy people. I will ask them to find your parents or send you to an orphanage. Is that okay?"
The boy's eyes sparkled and he nodded, "Sure, thank you, uncle!"
"It's okay!"
Zhang Chongguang patted the child's head and said, "Okay, let's leave after the other uncles wake up. You can go pack some things you want to take with you, or go get some sleep."
After Zhang Chongguang finished speaking, he added, "Don't worry, I'll call you when I'm leaving!"
The worry in the boy's eyes finally disappeared and he nodded vigorously.
"Um!"
…
It was noon, and the train carriage at City B Railway Station was also bustling with activity. The reason was that not long ago, Jiang Qian had spent two hundred magic crystals to exchange for a vending machine that was installed in the passenger carriage.
Even before the train arrived in City B, people were already waiting on the platform. After the train arrived, it would take another three hours before it could depart. During this waiting time, more than one person had clearly gotten hungry.
Knowing they would have to stay for at least a day before returning, most people prepared food in advance, but there were also many people who were really out of food at home and were prepared to look for some supplies on the road.
But obviously, not everyone is lucky enough to find food, and many people can only watch others feasting on the food while drooling.
Jiang Qian couldn't bear to eat the rice her mother had just steamed. She thought of the vending machine she had seen on the mall interface before and opened the system page to take a look.
Seeing the price marked below and the train's revenue in the past few days, Jiang Qian couldn't help but feel the pain in her heart, even though she could afford it.
"Xiao Ling, can't these be cheaper?"
The artificial intelligence "Xiao Ling", who was used to being treated as the system's customer service, flickered a few times.
[No, the items in the mall are all directly purchased from me and StarCraft. The deductions are all from the special funds for the mission. The number of magic crystals required is not the price of the item, but the energy I need to open the space-time channel to transport the item. There's really no way to reduce it any further.]
Hearing the grievance in "Xiao Ling's" words, Jiang Qian didn't want to embarrass it, "But opening this space channel once is really expensive!"
Up to now, she has only earned about 500 magic crystals. If she spends so much just to buy a vending machine, and then buys some other goods, she probably won't have any magic crystals left.
It’s true that you always spend faster than you earn!
Jiang Qian sighed, a little hesitant.
It was the system, seeing her worried look, hesitantly said.
[I really can't give you any less magic crystals. At most, I can put the items in the vending machine in advance and ship them back together. I don't need to pay for the shipping!]
"really?"
Jiang Qian looked up instantly.
[The energy required to open the space channel is basically calculated according to the volume of the object being transported. Loading it in advance without requiring additional space should save some energy!]
The system explained, "However, the vending machine can only hold a limited amount of items. If you want a lot of things and can't fit them all in, you'll have to spend extra energy!"
"I see!"
Although Jiang Qian was a little disappointed, she could understand it.
It’s already good enough to be able to pull out a little wool, how can you expect to take all the sheep home?
"If I add more carriages in the future, can I also put the things I want inside the carriages and bring them back?"
In theory, it is possible.
Jiang Qian clapped her hands, "That's fine!"
After that, she chose the items she wanted to sell in the vending machine.
Drinking water is of course indispensable, and another thing is naturally various instant noodles and mixed noodles.
But Jiang Qian was not sure how many people would be willing to buy, so she did not buy more. After confirming the quantity that could fill the vending machine, she submitted the application to the system.
Star's application was approved very quickly. Within a few minutes, the system reminded her that the goods had arrived and allowed her to set the selling price.
Jiang Qian thought about it and added two crystal cores to the price of the magic crystals required for transportation, and asked the system to install the vending machine in the car.
And everyone in the passenger car watched helplessly as a machine appeared at the rear of the car.
The first to notice were passengers sitting in the aisle who had no seats.
"What is that?"
When someone heard it, they looked in the direction he was looking and found that there was something extra in the car. People who were nearby came closer to take a look.
"Like a vending machine?"
A hungry person perked up and asked, "What are you selling?"
"Let me see. Water, instant noodles, and dry noodles. That's all."
【Author’s words】
My inspiration has been dry in the past two days, but I made the list again today, so I will still update more than 15,000 words this week. The next chapter will be updated on the 19th. Thank you all for your support!
I saw some people said in the comment section that they are looking forward to super powers, so let me explain to you here that the super powers I am going to write about may be different from what you think.
Regarding this article, I added the label of "superpower" because in this article, human beings have indeed evolved and alienated!
However, these superpowers are at most things like increased strength and faster wound healing. They are not like the wind-related superpowers, gold, wood, water, fire, earth, mental lightning, and teleportation superpowers that we may have seen before.
It's embarrassing to say that I, a writer of unreliable apocalyptic stories, actually considered things like authenticity and rationality when writing this article. [face covering]
Maybe it has something to do with my personality. I like to read exciting stories, but maybe life is too heavy. I am not very good at writing exciting stories, and what I write is generally not exciting.
I have always hoped that there would be no obvious logical loopholes even in this article.
When I was setting the outline and deciding that humans would have superpowers, I pondered more than once: What superpowers should I set? Where do superpowers come from? Why do humans have superpowers?
I want to do my best to find a reasonable reason or origin for them through what I have learned and the knowledge I have, so that all the events can be rationalized.
But I later discovered that there are some things that I really can’t think of or make up reasons for. Maybe it’s because my imagination and knowledge are limited!
So don't expect too much from the superpowers I write. I probably won't write some really awesome and imaginative superpowers, because with my current level of knowledge, I can't justify them.
I've always felt that if I can't even convince myself with what I write, how can I convince you? How can I convince you? So I don't really want to write about things that I can't even convince myself of, even though I do enjoy reading stories about all sorts of supernatural powers.
Sometimes I even think that what I want to write is not apocalyptic fiction, but science fiction [covering my face], which means that although it is fantasy, it must have basic scientific logic [covering my face]
How does the story unfold and develop? What will the people involved think, say, and do?
As an author, I dare not say that I have worked so hard to create a story without any bugs, but I do hope that all the behaviors, language, and thought changes of the characters in this story are logical.
So I write very slowly, and the more words a novel has, the slower I write. Because when writing about each person and each event, I have to consider recalling what I have written before, and then think about the corresponding content later so as not to stray too far from the outline. So the word count of this article is always exceeding my expectations.
At first I thought I could write 200,000 words, then I thought 250,000 to 350,000, and now I think I can write more than 400,000 words. Maybe it will change again after a while...
I also feel that it’s a bit twisted for me to think so much when I’m writing a post-apocalyptic novel, but since I like it, I have to persist in life, right?
I think I can still hold on, and the current plot can still be resolved, so I don’t plan to change it at the moment.
If one day I have more experience and a stronger imagination, perhaps everyone will have the opportunity to see the different superpowers I write about.
When I write this article now, I want to write more about people, write about the stories of different people, and write about the lives of ordinary people like me.
I wanted to express something, explain something, and praise something, so I wrote this article.
As for the content and emotions, let the readers feel it for themselves!
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