Chapter 104

“Hmph, I told you before, there was no need to take this trip. Didn’t you hear the news from the hotel building? That guy with the scar on his face, unhappy with Ah Zhuang and the others’ attitude, took it out on them and kicked them off the vehicle at the county entrance, intentionally making them walk through the heavy snow!”

“I just couldn’t give up and wanted to try! You know Ah Zhuang, always mixing truths and lies, who knows what’s real! But this world is really going downhill; anyone can join the military now. Look at that scar on his face—ugly and scary, maybe he was a thug before, a regular at prison…”

“Exactly, who in their right mind would have such a deep and long scar on their forehead? It’s clearly from being slashed with a knife. A person like that, with a fierce and evil look, probably has blood on his hands!”

“Forget it, let’s just go back. Anyway, his brother has other plans. We’ll see what happens. Once we get the car, we’ll grab them and teach them a good lesson.”

The two men’s footsteps had already reached the safety exit door. Yao Ruoyun’s face showed urgency as she reached into her backpack, pulling out the stun baton.

Shu Fu moved faster than her. Without a change in expression, she took a nail gun from her bag, and without hesitation, lightly stepped out from behind the corner and shot at one of their legs.

The sharp nails shot out and, even through thick clothing, easily pierced through. The two men hadn’t even reacted before they fell to the ground, wailing in pain. One of them cursed under his breath and pulled out a knife from his waist. He dragged his injured leg and struggled to stab at Shu Fu. Before she could fire another round of nails, Yao Ruoyun already rushed over with her stun baton, zapping the man’s neck. The crackling electric sound filled the air, and he collapsed, twitching uncontrollably.

Shu Fu stepped forward, kicking the knife out of the man’s reach, and shot a few more nails at the other man’s restless hands. Yao Ruoyun followed with another zap of the stun baton.

This time, both men were completely subdued, twitching on the ground but still conscious, glaring at the two of them as if they wanted to devour them, probably wondering how they had fallen into this trap and how two young girls had bested them…

Yao Ruoyun expected Shu Fu to rush to the other side of the venue to find Cheng Yu and the others. However, Shu Fu grabbed the stun baton from her hand and squatted down in front of the two men on the floor.

“Did you look in the mirror before you left the house? Who could be uglier than you? While you’re busy plotting against others and gossiping, he and his team have been risking their lives for this country and its people.”

“He’s defended the border with his blood and protected this nation. He’s so handsome, how could he be ugly? Even with scars, he’s a hundred times better looking than you! You’ll never understand people like him because you two aren’t even human yourselves. Just look at yourselves—what a pair of stupid, evil, and ugly things!”

With each word, Shu Fu jabbed the stun baton into them, sending electric shocks. Not only were the two men on the ground receiving shocks, but even Yao Ruoyun instinctively wrapped her arms around herself, flinching at the continuous crackling of the electric current.

When Shu Fu finally stood up again, the two men had been knocked unconscious by the shocks.

She handed the stun baton back to Yao Ruoyun with a smile, saying, “Sorry, it’s out of power.”

“…” Yao Ruoyun was momentarily stunned before rushing forward and hugging her. “That felt so satisfying, Senior, you’re so cool!”

Shu Fu wasn’t prepared for this and, since Yao Ruoyun had recovered and had just finished eating a bag of self-heating rice, the impact caused Shu Fu to stumble back a few steps before she was steadied by a pair of large hands.

She turned around and met Cheng Yu’s dark gaze.

He was looking at her, his pupils deep black, but his gaze was surprisingly bright.

Yao Ruoyun immediately stood up straight when she saw Cheng Yu, greeting him politely as “Captain Cheng.” She actually wanted to call him “Uncle Cheng” since he was Xun Huiming’s uncle, but—looking at his face, she couldn’t quite bring herself to say it.

“How did you get out here?” Shu Fu asked instinctively, but quickly realized what she had said. “Ah, so you knew… you deliberately let them go, didn’t you? Did we act too fast?”

Yao Ruoyun also realized what had happened. “Were you fishing for them? Oh no, what now? They’re both unconscious…”

“It’s fine,” Cheng Yu replied, his hands still resting on Shu Fu’s shoulders. It seemed he waited for a moment before gently letting go.

His expression didn’t look angry, and there was an odd hint of pleasure.

“Don’t look like that, the captain said it’s fine, don’t worry. Ever heard the saying, ‘One move to defeat ten opponents’? Plus, we have plenty of ways to make them talk!” A teammate, grinning, stepped forward, holding a survival rope. With a swift motion, he tied up the two men’s hands and feet, effortlessly dragging them toward the other side of the venue.

“Strongman!” Yao Ruoyun was stunned, immediately following after him.

“You… how did you get here?” Cheng Yu turned to look at Shu Fu again.

Shu Fu had just finished scanning his head and noticed there was nothing there, which left her a bit disappointed.

Why had she come here? Naturally, she was here to check how many people in their group had glowing white lines above their heads—after all, this mission’s progress was at 20%.

But she just smiled at him. “I came to see how you all are settling in, and I was worried you might be cold, so I brought some heat packs for you.”

She said, pulling Cheng Yu’s backpack out of her bag. After opening it, she stuffed a large bag of heat packs inside and handed it to Cheng Yu. “The backpack can’t be empty. This is a return gift; you must accept it.”

She knew that most of their rations were self-heating, but they probably didn’t have heat packs like this, the kind you simply stick to your body for warmth.

She had plenty of these heat packs. Apart from the 1,000 packs she originally stockpiled, she had gathered many more while staying in Suicheng. The supplies were well-packaged in multiple layers of plastic bags and waterproofed, and since the area had just been flooded, the materials hadn’t been soaked for long and were still intact.

Cheng Yu didn’t refuse. He took it with a simple “Thank you.”

---

On the other side of the corridor, there was an indoor basketball and badminton court. It wasn’t very large, with spectator seats only on two sides, but the ceiling was high, about six or seven stories tall. There were also two rows of elevated walkways above the seats, and at the end of the walkway, there was a small electrical control room.

It was quite dark inside since there were no windows at ground level. The windows were located on the walkways, low and narrow. This kind of structure was pretty solid because it had sturdy exterior walls, and with fewer windows, it was also more insulated.

Apart from the northern exit that connected to the corridor, there was a large rolling door on the southern side.

Outside this rolling door was the sports arena’s outdoor area and the main entrance. Off-road vehicles and armored vehicles drove directly through this door, and at that moment, they were parked in an L-shape inside the venue. They had used the L-shaped parking spot to set up a simple tent. Folding tables and chairs were already arranged, and two gas stoves were set up, heating some food.

Besides Liu Shuang, the team had another short-haired female member. This tent had mainly been set up for the two of them.

The other female team member, Shu Fu, had been seen earlier as she came down the stairs with Liu Shuang. She had a buzz cut and a muscular build. When she was standing behind Han Dong with a hat on earlier, Shu Fu had mistakenly thought she was a man.

She was now taking the two people dragged in by the “strongman” team member A Wen, smiling as if she had found an interesting toy. Then she began using a unique method to tie the two of them up near the basketball hoop, all the while speaking to Liu Shuang. “Don’t worry, Captain Liu. I’ll make sure they talk before it gets dark.”

Yao Ruoyun watched in amazement, occasionally exclaiming as if she had learned a lot of new “knowledge.”

Liu Shuang had a hard time hiding her expression. “Isn’t there a basement over there? Do you want to tie them up there?” After all, there were two young girls here, and she was worried it might have a bad influence…

“It’s fine, they’re at an age where they can learn something!” The female team member, whose name was “Wen Rou” (gentle), was far from gentle at the moment. She delivered a punch to one of the tied-up men’s eyes, violently waking him up.

Yao Ruoyun gasped again. “Sister, you’re so cool!”

Wen Rou, receiving praise for the first time, seemed in a particularly good mood and started teaching: “Men are actually more fragile than women. As long as you find their weak points, you don’t need to know martial arts to make them beg for mercy, crying for help…”

“Mm-hmm, mm-hmm…” Yao Ruoyun sat down cross-legged, listening intently.

“…” Liu Shuang had no words to respond. She turned around but found that Shu Fu was also watching. Just as she was about to reposition herself to block Shu Fu’s view, Cheng Yu had already brought over a folding chair and gently pulled Shu Fu to sit down. He also handed her a can of hot eight-treasure porridge.

Once she sat down, her view of the basketball hoop was completely blocked.

Liu Shuang silently glanced at Cheng Yu before looking away.

Shu Fu had come over with no particular issue. While drinking her porridge, she was carefully observing every team member, paying close attention to their heads. So far, she hadn’t seen any flashing light strips on anyone’s head.

But that didn’t mean there weren’t any. Even if there were, they wouldn’t always remain visible unless the progress bar was full.

When they were in the Northern Plateau, the reason she could frequently observe and notice the unusual behavior of Chen Fa and Lu Zheng was because she spent so much time with them.

So now the question was, should she move into the gym and live with them to observe more closely?

Soon, it seemed like there was progress with Wen Rou. The “strongman” team member A Wen came over and called for Cheng Yu. Once Cheng Yu left, Yao Ruoyun couldn’t observe anymore.

She wasn’t exactly timid. She had interacted with various military personnel during the journey and wasn’t afraid of the cool and tough Liu Shuang, nor was she afraid of the always cryptic Han Lan. She wasn’t afraid of the fierce Wen Rou either. But, if she was being honest, she was a bit intimidated by Cheng Yu.

She hadn’t felt this strongly when she was in Suicheng before, but seeing him again now, he gave off the aura of a sharp blade, and she wasn’t sure if it was because of the scar on his forehead.

It wasn’t that she found the scar terrifying, like those two earlier. She respected and admired it—it was a mark from battle—but it also made him seem more distant.

Nearby, Han Lan dragged a chair over and sat down, just in time to hear Yao Ruoyun whispering to Shu Fu about Cheng Yu’s forehead scar. He spoke up: “It wasn’t from a knife. It was from a shrapnel injury. A Wen and the others said the attack happened so quickly… there was blood everywhere, and they were all stunned, thinking he was dead…”

Shu Fu looked at Han Lan. “Was it during the border mission?”

“You know about the border?” Han Lan raised his eyebrows, seeming interested. “He actually told you about it?”

Shu Fu shook her head. “I only knew he went to the border, nothing else.”

Han Lan nodded. “That time was quite dangerous. We all knew about it when we went, and we signed all the necessary documents. But the real danger was on my side, he was fine, nothing serious.”

He paused, as if recalling a more dangerous situation. “That injury… it happened in the north. I wasn’t there, I was still recovering from my own injury.” As he spoke, he touched his abdomen, clearly where the wound was.

“The north?” Yao Ruoyun lowered her voice, asking curiously.

Liu Shuang also sat down. Han Lan initially thought she didn’t want to talk about it, but she simply sat quietly and didn’t say much, so he continued. “This is public now, no need to keep it a secret. If you’ve been on the internet, you probably know about it. Do you know about fish scale peeling syndrome?”

Shu Fu’s eyes flickered slightly, while Yao Ruoyun nodded.

“In Youcheng, someone set up a large urban experimental incubator… that’s where he got injured. Although I wasn’t there, I heard from those who came back alive. That time was truly dangerous, even more so than the border mission. People there somehow got their hands on a lot of weapons… The real problem was that the enemy had no reservations, while we had to strictly follow pre-set attack points, fearing that we might accidentally blow up the patients… Eventually, we were forced into street fighting. A whole team, and only half of them made it back. Many of those who returned had to go through psychological treatment… He wasn’t much of a talker to begin with, and after that mission, he talked even less…” Han Lan said, his gaze involuntarily turning toward Shu Fu.

Actually, he mainly said all this for her. In his view, men can’t be too strong; sometimes, they need to show their vulnerable side to stir a woman’s protective instincts.

However, Shu Fu’s reaction was a bit strange and not what he expected. Her gaze seemed distant, as if she was remembering something else.

Shu Fu indeed was thinking of something else. She remembered the explosion scene she saw when leaving Youcheng.

So, at that time, Cheng Yu was in Youcheng?

Did he get injured during that mission, the one that nearly took his life, leaving him with that scar?

But she didn’t understand. She was there too, so why was the mission not to Youcheng, but instead to leave for Yuncheng directly?

In the previous missions, he had been involved several times. If he was also an awakened one, why wasn’t he taken into consideration during that mission?

Was it because… he wasn’t going to die in that mission?

---

In the middle of the night, Shu Fu woke up to the howling wind. They had all slept in the kitchen that night. The mattresses Liu Shuang had brought were big and small, just fitting into the kitchen.

They had started a fire in a stainless steel barrel in the corridor, and the heat from the flames warmed the entire corridor and kitchen. With the heat packs Shu Fu had brought and the thick blankets on the mattresses, the two of them slept much better than they had in the hospital.

When she heard the wind, Shu Fu thought it was someone blowing a sharp whistle outside. Her instincts made her wake up quickly. As soon as she sat up, she felt the change in the room temperature.

It was too cold. Despite the fire, despite feeling warmth before going to bed, the cold air now seemed to have overwhelmed the warmth.

She heard the sound of the intercom and quickly found the device in her backpack. Cheng Yu’s voice came through.

He was reminding her of the drop in temperature, afraid she might sleep too deeply and freeze. He had called her several times already, and if she didn’t respond, he’d be ready to call her satellite phone. Thankfully, she replied, and Cheng Yu clearly sighed in relief. He reminded her to stay awake for a while, keep one person on guard, and also to ensure proper ventilation with the stove to avoid carbon monoxide poisoning.

Shu Fu knew he meant well, and she agreed. She then asked about the situation on his end.

Cheng Yu told her they had a basement on their side, small but with ventilation, so they could start a fire there for warmth. They often ran outside and had plenty of equipment, so she didn’t need to worry. She should take care of herself, and if anything went wrong, she should call him. If the intercom ran out of battery, she could use the satellite phone, and he would come over directly.

Shu Fu agreed again.

Afterward, she woke up Yao Ruoyun, who was groggy from sleep and immediately shivering. As soon as she woke up, she sat up quickly. She threw off her blanket, grabbed her military coat from the side, and put it over her cotton jacket, wrapping herself back in the blanket.

Shu Fu also put on her insulated jacket with a down lining. She took an electronic thermometer from her backpack and quickly measured the temperature. After a moment, the result came up: -22°C.

“Damn! No wonder it’s so cold!” Yao Ruoyun put on the hood of her cotton jacket, buttoned her military coat, but still felt cold.

She got up, put on shoes, and went to the kitchen to bring the two honeycomb coal stoves she had prepared earlier to the stainless steel barrel in the corridor. She first added a few small burning pieces of wood to the bottom of each stove, then placed two honeycomb coals in each.

With the fire below, the honeycomb coal quickly started to burn. She placed one stove by the kitchen’s outer wall in the corridor, and the second one right at the kitchen door. The cold indoor air quickly warmed up considerably.

“Still, be careful.” Shu Fu said, taking out a small round electronic device from her backpack and placing it next to the beds of both women in the kitchen. It was a household rechargeable carbon monoxide detector with two alarm thresholds. The low alarm threshold was 25% of the range, and the high alarm threshold was 50% of the range.

The range was from 50 to 300 PPM, and if the high alarm threshold was set, it would alarm at 150 PPM.

Generally, if the PPM exceeds 100, one might feel mild headaches, and if it exceeds 400, it could cause headaches and nausea.

So as long as the PPM stayed within the threshold range of this alarm, they wouldn’t be in danger.

“Senior, how do you even have this?” Yao Ruoyun leaned over, watching Shu Fu turn on the device and set the alarm threshold and volume.

Shu Fu glanced back at the flashing white light strip above Yao Ruoyun’s head, reached out to touch her cold face, and then took out a thick, plush scarf from her backpack and handed it to her, signaling her to put it on. “You’ll have one of these soon too.”

“Ah?” Yao Ruoyun didn’t understand.

After putting on the scarf, her neck and face were immediately enveloped in the thick, warm fleece. With the temperature in the room rising a bit, she felt warmer than before, and finally, her attention was diverted to the situation outside the window.

She leaned toward the window, peering through the gap between the two wooden slats and exclaimed, “Oh my gosh! Senior, come quick and look!”

“What’s wrong?” Shu Fu also took out a thick scarf from her backpack, wrapped it over the hood of her jacket, and covered her neck and half of her face.

“The snow outside is piling up so fast, it’s almost covering the first floor!”

Upon hearing this, Shu Fu also moved closer to the window. Since the warm breath quickly fogged up the cold glass, she had to wipe it to see. Through the yellowish light of the few street lamps left in Wei Central Square, she saw the pure white world outside, blanketed in snow.

The nearby houses, as well as the distant hills, were all covered in thick white snow.

The snowfall had already accumulated deep, and there was no sign of it stopping. The howling wind swept snowflakes as large as goose feathers, swirling them into snowballs, which seemed to fall from the sky like a torrential downpour. In their lifetimes, neither of them had ever seen such a blizzard, as if the entire planet had been swept into a prehistoric ice age overnight.

Shu Fu had seen cities submerged in water, seen dams over a hundred meters tall, witnessed tsunamis rising hundreds of meters, and encountered swarms of mutated fish violently attacking humans or patients with fish scale peeling syndrome, their bodies covered in scabs…

No matter the disaster, it was always a noisy scene—screams, cries, desperate struggles, and a boiling chaos, all fighting for a chance to survive.

But she had never seen a world like this—pure white everywhere, both the sky and the earth, without color or sound. Only endless snowballs fell from the sky.

It was a desolate, cold, and silent world, where all life seemed to have been buried under the thick blanket of snow and ice.

In that moment, as they hid behind the window, it felt as though they were the last humans on Earth.

After a while, Shu Fu felt a vibration on her wrist.

The mission was complete.