Chapter 54 Little River Village is almost home
Tian Qiao hurriedly dodged the female superhuman's attack, turned his head to look, and saw that the place where he had stood had been corroded into a large pit.
Tian Qiao was still shaken: "Damn, did you have to be so ruthless?"
Seeing that her first attack had failed, the female superhuman attacked again. Cheng Zhiyu and the others did not want to hurt her, so they could only dodge in a sorry state.
Cheng Zhiyu seized the opportunity and used the small scroll to bind the female ability user. When she tried to use her ability again, he warned her, "The spikes on the small scroll can knock down an ability user instantly. Why don't you try to see if you can corrode faster or if it can pierce faster?"
The female superhuman's face turned ugly, and she spat out a mouthful of filth: "Kill me or torture me as you please, but those who collude with Zhao Ming will not have a good end!"
Cheng Zhiyu touched his nose: "Although you may not believe it, we have nothing to do with the Zhao Ming you mentioned."
The female superhuman, of course, wouldn't believe it. If there were no connection, would these people protect Zhao Ming? Did they think she was a fool?
Cheng Zhiyu didn't explain much, and told Cheng Mo, "Go and wake Zhao Ming up."
Cheng Mo didn't move. Not far away, Zhao Ming was suddenly splashed with water and choked awake. When he came to his senses, his face was pale.
Knocking him unconscious is one thing, but then splashing water on him late at night—are these people protecting him or torturing him?
"What exactly do you want..." Zhao Ming was halfway through his sentence when he saw a familiar person on the ground. Wasn't this Sun Yu, who had been chasing him all along?
The other person was tied up and sitting on the ground, looking rather disheveled, completely unlike the fierce figure he had been when chasing him.
Zhao Ming was stunned for a moment, then suddenly burst into laughter: "Hahaha, Sun Yu, weren't you very smug? You even wanted to kill me? Let me tell you, I, Zhao Ming, will never be trampled under your feet!"
"Hahaha, that's hilarious! You probably never thought you'd fall into my hands again, did you?" Zhao Ming laughed exaggeratedly, as if afraid Sun Yu wouldn't see his smugness. His face became increasingly distorted, as if the words 'treacherous villain' were written all over his face.
Sun Yu's face was pale, and she seemed to be thinking of something. She looked at Zhao Ming with deep hatred in her eyes and gritted her teeth, saying, "Zhao Ming, I will kill you sooner or later!"
Zhao Ming was startled, but then realized, what was so scary? Sun Yu clearly couldn't beat Cheng Zhiyu and the others.
So, he mustered his courage again: "You think you can kill me? Dream on. But... tsk tsk, I must say, I'm actually growing to like your face more and more. You miss the feeling from before, don't you? Otherwise, you wouldn't be chasing after me. How about I let you have another taste..."
Before he could finish speaking, the vines binding Sun Yu suddenly loosened, and Sun Yu grabbed Zhao Ming by the neck. Then, the other man's face was quickly corroded.
Zhao Ming screamed in agony, his face filled with terror: "Ahhh, save me! Please save me, cough cough..."
Cheng Zhiyu's expression was not good. He originally did not want to get involved in the feud between the two, after all, Zhao Ming did not seem like a good person, but what the other party said disgusted him.
If he hadn't remembered the granary, he would have strangled the other man for Sun Yu.
Seeing that Zhao Ming was about to die, Cheng Zhiyu slowly reminded him, "Save his life for now."
Sun Yu released her grip on Zhao Ming, looking at him with disgust as he gasped for breath. She then turned to Cheng Zhiyu and asked, "What exactly do you mean by this?"
“We really have nothing to do with him,” Zhou Min explained. “We’re with him because he owns a granary.”
Sun Yu was stunned for a moment, then suddenly realized why those superhumans had risked their lives to protect Zhao Ming. So that's why.
But thinking of the pain she had suffered, how could she be willing for Zhao Ming to live a good life?
“I’m going to kill him,” Sun Yu said.
Upon hearing this, Zhao Ming crawled up behind Cheng Zhiyu and the others like a dog, repeatedly saying, "The granary... the granary is yours, you promised to protect me..."
His corroded face was already terrifying, but his current expression made him even more horrifying.
Sun Yu: "If you really want to protect him, then I will fight to the death to achieve my goal."
Cheng Zhiyu was at a loss for what to do. To be honest, he also wanted to kill Zhao Ming, but the grain depot...
The situation reached a stalemate for a moment.
Just then, Zhou Min coughed lightly: "Well, actually there is a way to have the best of both worlds."
The men looked at him, and he said, "Our goal is the granary. Once we find it, you can do whatever you want with us."
Sun Yu frowned, wanting to say something, but Zhou Min said, "Wait until I finish speaking. Think about it. Don't you think killing him directly would be giving him a quick death? It would be better to torture him slowly."
He leaned closer to Sun Yu, as if to say something, but the latter immediately took a step back, looking at him warily.
Zhou Min touched his nose, didn't get any closer, and told him his idea.
Upon hearing this, Zhao Ming's eyes widened in horror: "No, no... If you do that, I'd rather die than tell you where the granary is!"
Cheng Mo scoffed: "Don't worry, as long as he's alive, I have plenty of ways to make him talk."
Zhao Ming was almost in despair. He didn't expect that not only would these people not help him, but they would also help Sun Yu come up with ideas!
He gritted his teeth: "Why...why are you helping this woman? We're all men, shouldn't we be helping each other?"
Cheng Zhiyu looked disgusted: "Don't say such disgusting things."
Even though they were both men, he didn't want to be the same species as Zhao Ming.
Cheng Mo kicked Zhao Ming: "Shut your stinking mouth, you're disgusting my Zhiyu."
Cheng Zhiyu: "..." When did I become yours?
Cheng Mo smiled ingratiatingly.
After hearing Zhou Min's words, Sun Yu felt a little tempted. Yes, she had suffered so much. If Zhao Ming died so easily, it would be too good for him.
Why not cut off his penis and let him experience what it's like to be worse than dead?
She was helpless against what Zhao Ming had done and could only seek legal help. However, her parents accepted money from the Zhao family in an attempt to settle the matter, but how could Sun Yu be willing to accept that?
She was always thinking about how to get revenge on him. When the apocalypse came, she discovered that she had awakened superpowers, and the first thing she did was to go find Zhao Ming.
Throughout their relentless pursuit, she had longed to kill him day and night, but at this moment, she realized that rather than wanting Zhao Ming dead, she would rather he suffer a fate worse than death.
Zhou Min said, "I have healing abilities. If you feel that one cut isn't enough, I can let you cut it a few more times, even every day."
Sun Yu's lips twitched.
Cheng Zhiyu pulled out a small knife and handed it to Sun Yu: "This knife is not bad, but it's not very sharp."
Sun Yu: "..."
She took the knife and walked towards Zhao Ming.
Seeing the other person's terrified expression as they struggled to back away, pleading for mercy, Sun Yu slowly smiled and said, "When I begged you, did you ever think about letting me go?"
Zhao Ming cried out "Ah!" and then fainted.
When he woke up, he found the room empty and couldn't accept it, so he burst into tears.
"Tsk, what's with all this crying and whining, a grown man?" Tian Qiao was annoyed and covered her ears.
Zhou Min said kindly, "Come on, it's okay, I'll let you grow it back."
Then, before Zhao Ming could even rejoice at turning back into a man, he heard Zhou Min ask Sun Yu, "Want to do it again?"
Sun Yu pulled out a knife and smiled, "Haha, here I come. Today I'll use anesthesia so he can watch himself being cut off."
Zhao Ming's desperate cries of "Ahhh!" echoed through the sky once again.
Zhao Ming was tortured continuously and prayed for death every day, but he couldn't die. In order to make himself die quickly, he was very enthusiastic when leading the way to the granary.
Cheng Zhiyu and his group finally arrived at the location of the granary.
Tian Qiao got out of the car and looked around: "It's not far from our village."
Cheng Zhiyu nodded. This place is about 100 kilometers away from their village. The warehouse is located in a relatively remote area, not far from farmland. It is probably for the convenience of purchasing rice directly after it ripens.
The warehouse looked like a shipping container. Cheng Zhiyu glanced at it and guessed that it was just a small warehouse with only about 200,000 jin of rice.
Given the current appetite of superhumans, this amount is probably enough to feed more than fifty people for a year.
Although the quantity is not large, it is still grain.
Cheng Zhiyu is now somewhat worried. His space can only hold half of the grain at most, so he has no choice but to fill the other half of his space with other things.
"Sigh, the storage space is still too small," Cheng Zhiyu poked the system, but the system pretended to be dead.
Tian Qiao suggested, "Why don't we go back to the village first? This place is hard to find, and I don't think anyone will come over anytime soon. We can get a truck to take it back later."
Zhou Min looked around the warehouse and said, "This warehouse is quite sturdy."
Tian Qiao: "Even the most powerful and sturdy superhumans can't stop us. But like I said, no one has discovered this place for so long. We can't be so unlucky as to have been discovered while we were away, can we?"
Cheng Mo stood next to Cheng Zhiyu and said, "Zhiyu, why don't you put some of the grain into your spatial storage first?"
Cheng Zhiyu nodded. He thought so too. Since they were already here, instead of worrying about what might happen to the warehouse while they were away, they might as well pack up half of it first.
Seeing that Cheng Zhiyu had agreed, Cheng Mo pulled out Zhao Ming, who was lying there like a dead dog, and raised his chin: "Open the warehouse."
Zhao Ming's eyes were sinister, and he spat out, "You're dreaming. I'd rather die than help you open the warehouse."
He had suffered countless humiliations in the past few days and now only wanted to die. He was no longer afraid of death, but he was afraid that even if he died, these people would still get the food and take advantage of him.
"Tsk." Cheng Mo looked at Cheng Zhiyu, asking for his opinion.
Cheng Zhiyu smiled and said, "It's up to you."
Cheng Mo pulled Zhao Ming away. A moment later, the other party looked terrified and dared not refuse to open the granary anymore. He stammered out the password.
Cheng Zhiyu didn't ask what Cheng Mo had done, and said indifferently, "It would be best if he was willing to cooperate, otherwise if we forcefully broke it open, the remaining quantity would be difficult to store here."
Zhao Ming trembled to the side. He was filled with regret, deep regret. He didn't think he was wrong, but he couldn't bear the consequences.
Opening the granary, one is greeted by its overflowing grain, a truly impressive sight.
Cheng Zhiyu reached out, and half of the grain in the full granary disappeared instantly.
After locking the warehouse again, Cheng Zhiyu looked at Sun Yu and asked, "What do you plan to do with him?"
Sun Yu's face brightened considerably, and he stroked his chin: "It's been quite a hassle to carry him around all this way."
Zhou Min: "Isn't he eager to die? Just give him a quick death."
Sun Yu nodded. She naturally didn't intend to let Zhao Ming go. If you let this kind of person live, he won't repent; he'll only continue to harm people.
Rather than letting him continue to harm people, it's better to...
Cheng Zhiyu asked Sun Yu, "We're planning to go back to the village. What are your plans after that?"
Sun Yu was somewhat bewildered. She didn't know that after the apocalypse, all she wanted was revenge, and she had been chasing Zhao Ming for more than half a year.
Now that the hatred is gone, she seems to have lost her purpose and doesn't know what to do.
Tian Qiao suggested, "You could go to some large bases. The Chaoyang Base we went to before was pretty good. With your abilities, you should be able to do quite well there."
Sun Yu snapped out of his daze and asked if the Chaoyang base was far away.
Tian Qiao touched his nose: "That is indeed quite far, it will take a month or two to get there, but we have only been to that one base, we don't know anything about the others."
Cheng Zhiyu said, "We need to go back to the village. There aren't any bases around here. Why don't you come with us to the village first, and then we can decide which base to go to later?"
Upon hearing this, Sun Yu thought for a moment. She disliked men and loathed them. However, she had come to understand Cheng Zhiyu and the others' character over the past few days. They knew she hated men and would deliberately keep their distance from her. Although Sun Yu was physically resistant, she knew psychologically that they were good people.
She finally nodded: "Thank you."
Zhou Min smiled and said, "No need to thank me."
Cheng Zhiyu said, "I'll drive."
He was almost home, and it was impossible for him not to be excited. His hands were trembling slightly as he gripped the steering wheel. He wondered how his parents and Zhiyan were doing.
——
In Xiahe Village, Cheng Zhiyan patrolled with the village's team of superhumans.
After the apocalypse, most of the villagers turned into zombies. Cheng Zhiyan and her parents were reminded by her brother to stay at home and didn't dare to go out, thus escaping the disaster.
She had food at home and vegetables in the yard, and hadn't left the house for several months.
One day, Cheng Zhiyan accidentally exhaled a ball of fire. She was startled and didn't know what was going on. She thought there was something wrong with her body and was uneasy for a long time. She didn't dare to let her parents know.
Later, there was a commotion outside the door. Someone came out and killed all the zombies outside.
Cheng Zhiyan and her parents bravely went out. They had no choice; the water they had stored at home was long gone. Even if they had food, they couldn't survive without water.
There is a river in Xiaohe Village, and they want to go to the river to fetch water to drink.
After they went outside, a small group called them to assemble. The leader of this group was a man wearing glasses. Cheng Zhiyan recognized him. He seemed to be from the second brigade of Xiahe Village, named Lin Kang. She heard that he had gone home to take the civil service exam, so he was also in the village when the apocalypse came.
Lin Kang was quite good at organizing people. He was the one who gathered people to deal with the zombies in the village, and because of this, he had some prestige among the group that dealt with the zombies.
Lin Kang called out everyone who was hiding at home, and the people of Xiahe Village gathered together to discuss what to do next.
Hiding isn't a solution. Aside from the question of whether they have enough supplies, if they gather into a zombie horde and encounter a powerful zombie, they'll all perish here. So they can't just sit and wait to die.
Lin Kang mentioned her superpower, and Cheng Zhiyan realized that she had awakened a fire-type superpower. She couldn't help but feel fortunate, because at least she could protect her parents and Uncle Tian and Aunt Tian.
Because Uncle Tian and Aunt Tian only had one son, Tian Qiao, they never had the chance to have a daughter. So when they met Cheng Zhiyan, they were incredibly affectionate, treating her like their own daughter.
The two families were separated only by a low courtyard wall. In the past, Cheng Zhiyan and Cheng Zhiyu liked to lean on the wall and talk to the Tian family next door.
After the apocalypse, although they hid in their homes, they could still reach their neighbors through the courtyard wall.
Coming to his senses, Lin Kang explained his plan: they needed to gather manpower to build a wall around the village to prevent zombies from sneaking in.
Secondly, we need to gather some people with special abilities to go out and find supplies; this matter is not urgent.
Because every household in the village has the habit of storing grain, even though they have no vegetables or meat, they at least won't starve to death.
Therefore, the most important thing is to build a wall.
However, there are not many people left in the village. Originally, their village was a large one with more than a thousand people, but in just two months, half of them have died.
Some were bitten to death by zombies, while others hid at home and starved to death; the latter were all elderly people.
Of the remaining six hundred or so people, only about three hundred could be mobilized to build a wall. Even if some of them were earth-type ability users, it would be unlikely that they could enclose the entire village.
In the end, they had no choice but to abandon half of the village and enclose the other half.
Cheng Zhiyan's family lives inside the walled compound, so they don't need to move or find a new place to live.
They worked day and night to build the wall, while also dodging zombie attacks, until they finally finished.
Although zombies still occasionally break through the walls and attack, at least we are prepared. After dealing with the zombies, we can just repair the wall.
There are about a hundred people with superpowers in the village. In addition to their daily patrols, they also need to go out to find supplies. After all, even if they have food stored at home, they can't just sit around and eat it all up.
Cheng Zhiyan herself was quite anxious. After becoming a superhuman, her appetite increased dramatically, and the hundreds of kilograms of food stored at home probably wouldn't last long.
So these superhumans would also go out with the team to find supplies. At first, supplies were easy to find, and they searched the surrounding area. Later, the area had been searched, and they couldn't find anything anymore.
They started hunting, and if they were lucky, they could find cattle and sheep that had escaped from other farmers' homes.
However, hunting soon became less effective, as some animals developed supernatural abilities, and some of them were even more difficult to deal with than zombies.
Thus, going out hunting became dangerous, with people frequently getting injured, either bitten by zombies or attacked by strange beasts.
Over time, some of the superpowered individuals began to slack off, unwilling to go out to find supplies, preferring to work in the village instead.
Later, Lin Kang realized that this couldn't continue, so he had to force each superhuman to go out once every now and then.
Some new superpowered individuals were dissatisfied, feeling that while they risked their lives to find supplies, ordinary people without superpowers were comfortably protected in the village.
Lin Kang was able to keep them in check at first, but later he had no choice. As supplies became increasingly scarce, the amount allocated to ordinary people was decreasing.
Cheng Zhiyan felt that this was wrong. Ordinary people didn't do anything dangerous, but they still did things. They were responsible for things like village sanitation, cooking, and clothing for the superhumans.
But her voice was too weak. Most people with superpowers were unwilling to "support" ordinary people, even if they had ordinary people in their own families. They were only willing to take care of their own family members.
There was nothing that could be done; resources were scarce in the village, and even those with superpowers were often hungry. Cheng Zhiyan was helpless in the face of this situation.
Actually, her family's situation was relatively good. Firstly, because they had a sense of crisis, when the apocalypse first came, they did not take advantage of the food they had stored at home and ate excessively; they were always very frugal.
Eat the things that can't be stored first, then slowly eat the things that can be stored.
Later, we were allowed to go out to find supplies. At first, it wasn't too dangerous because the zombies were just ordinary zombies that ordinary people could handle. Some people were too scared to go out, but Cheng's father and Tian's father went out to find supplies.
In the early stages, supplies were easy to find, and they hardly ate any of the food they had at home; they found it all.
Later, when superpowered zombies appeared, ordinary people were helpless against them, so Cheng Zhiyan stopped them from going out. She went out to look for them herself. At that time, she could also hunt. Once, she was lucky and even caught a sheep.
The sheep were still alive. Cheng Zhiyan originally wanted to keep them, but later found that there was no grass for them to eat, so she had to kill them.
In short, when things were easier in the early stages, they tried not to eat food from home, so now that there is a shortage of supplies, although they are still not full, they are not starving to death.
Moreover, there's Cheng Zhiyan, an ability user, and the other families in the village who are just ordinary people are having a very hard time.
Sometimes, when Cheng Zhiyan looked at people she used to know, whose eyes were now numb and whose faces were pale and thin, she felt a little sad.
She was only a young adult and easily softened her heart, but she also knew that she was not capable of helping these people.
And so the days went by. Today, Cheng Zhiyan finished her patrol with the team as usual and waited for the people on the night patrol to take over.
Afterwards, she took the supplies she had received that day and prepared to go home.
"Tsk, we're getting less and less stuff," someone nearby complained.
Cheng Zhiyan glanced at it; what she had been given today was a piece of pork, only the size of her palm, dried and hard, and she didn't know how long it had been sitting there.
Cheng Zhiyan didn't complain. She was already lucky to have meat to eat; ordinary people could only get a handful of rice even after working themselves to the bone.
"If you ask me, we might as well change our leader. Look at the kind of life Lin Kang has led us through," someone muttered.
"That's right, I think Yang Kai is more suitable than him." Yang Kai has dual water and lightning elemental abilities, making him the most powerful ability user in the village. Lin Kang only had the advantage of being the first to organize people. At the beginning, everyone trusted him because they desperately needed someone to take the lead. However, as time went on, the ability users began to complain more and more about him.
Yang Kai also felt that he was very capable and was always unconvinced by Lin Kang. Sometimes he would even talk back to Lin Kang to show how capable he was.
Cheng Zhiyan frowned as she listened. She didn't want the village to change its leader at all. Lin Kang was better than Yang Kai no matter what.
Lin Kang's attitude towards ordinary people is relatively good, which has aroused the dissatisfaction of many superhumans. The Yang Kai they recommended does not treat ordinary people as human beings at all. If he becomes the leader... the lives of ordinary people will probably be even more difficult.
Moreover, Yang Kang always inexplicably likes to pester her. If he really becomes a leader, Cheng Zhiyan probably won't stay here any longer.
Although it was dangerous outside, she was willing to take both families to find her brother and Brother Tian.
Thinking of this, Cheng Zhiyan felt a little sad, wondering how her two older brothers were doing.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com