Chapter 107

A moment later, everyone had entered the basketball hall and moved to the elevated walkways.

The height here was about six stories, and there were narrow windows opening to the outside, offering a view of the situation. Liu Shuang was leaning against an open window, using binoculars to survey the direction of the square across.

Shu Fu had re-adjusted her backpack to the front and, at this moment, took out a collapsible set of binoculars, handing a monocular to Yao Ruoyun. The two of them each held a monocular and looked out the window.

To the south of the gym, the window directly faced the hotel on the other side of the Wei Central Square.

This was the tallest building in Wei, a twelve-story hotel. Unlike the fully-glassed hotels of big cities, the lower floors of this building had mostly solid walls. While it wasn’t as visually modern, it felt more secure in the current weather conditions.

At least, it should have been a tall and sturdy building.

But now, the hotel’s eighth floor was missing a large section of its wall. That floor’s ceiling was much higher than the others below, and the windows were also larger than those on other floors. Inside, there might have been a restaurant or pool—public spaces of some kind.

The gap stretched horizontally across that floor, as if someone had violently torn a piece of the wall off. From their position, they could even see a window frame hanging precariously from the outer wall, barely clinging on.

Several people were standing at the edge of the gap, looking down at the ground outside the hotel.

The ground?

Shu Fu moved her binoculars downward and saw what they were looking at. She immediately understood how the final, loud crash that caused the ice wall to collapse had happened.

It was a—raft!

In the open area in front of the hotel, a psychic’s wooden raft lay overturned. The raft, which had been unharmed even during hailstones the size of eggs, was now shattered, and the small wooden houses on it were broken apart. The furniture and various items that the raft’s owner had painstakingly arranged inside were now scattered on the ground.

Shu Fu had once estimated the raft’s durability, thinking it might be destroyed in a massive wave, but now, it didn’t take a tsunami—just one fall from a great height, and the raft was thoroughly wrecked.

Yao Ruoyun turned to look at Shu Fu in surprise and tugged at her sleeve. Shu Fu knew what she wanted to ask and silently nodded in acknowledgment.

—Yes, that was the raft, the psychic’s special raft.

Several people were approaching the shattered raft, pushing through the snow. Occasionally, they were blocked by pieces of the broken raft, and they seemed to be cursing under their breath, but they quickly made their way toward the scattered furniture and belongings. Then, they roughly pulled something off the ground.

It was a woman, probably in her thirties or forties, wearing heavy clothes, with an average appearance. Since the gym and the hotel were separated by an entire square, and there was a thick layer of snow blocking the view, Shu Fu hadn’t noticed the woman before.

She had been dragged up, and red liquid spilled onto the surrounding ice and snow. She seemed still alive but gravely injured. One of her arms was twisted at an odd angle, her chest rising and falling as she coughed, and fresh blood continuously dripped from her lips and nose.

Shu Fu adjusted the magnification of her binoculars and saw the white light strip above the woman’s head. The value seemed to be in single digits, and now, the light strip was flickering, gradually fading as the frequency of the flickering decreased—perhaps due to the woman’s severe injuries.

Shu Fu heard those grabbing her laughing—wild, reckless laughter, like beasts pushed to their limits, no longer resembling humans.

Some were eagerly tearing off the woman’s warm clothes to wear themselves, while others, seemingly venting their anger, yanked her hair and slapped her hard. But more of them were diving toward the scattered belongings, desperately stuffing them into their clothes.

This was a dying psychic. Although Shu Fu hadn’t witnessed the entire event, she could deduce from the current situation that this psychic’s raft had likely been pushed off the building’s large gap.

These people had been staying in the same hotel as the psychic. They must have known about her special raft for a long time. The raft needed to be intact to function properly. After so many days of peaceful coexistence, why did they suddenly erupt now, destroying the hotel’s walls just to push the raft off the building?

They had even cleared the ground in front of the hotel to ensure the raft and the woman wouldn’t survive the fall. The snow had been cleared to a depth of over three meters, which was an immense effort, especially at this temperature. It was clear they had been working desperately to prepare the area.

Yao Ruoyun trembled as she watched the scene. It reminded her of the chaos they encountered during their evacuation—everyone seemed insane, attacking strangers they didn’t even know. Some were left bleeding from head wounds, others trampled by countless feet, crying out in pain…

Yao Ruoyun couldn’t hold it in anymore and finally looked over at Han Lan, who was holding a sniper rifle, peering through the scope to assess the situation on the other side. She knew that the sniper rifle could easily reach the people over there, so she asked, “Can’t we save that woman?”

“Want to save someone?” Liu Shuang’s voice came from the other side. “You want to save that woman? So, are you suggesting we use the sniper rifle to kill the others over there?”

Yao Ruoyun froze. Indeed, with a whole square of over three meters of snow between them, they couldn’t get over there. If they wanted to save the woman, their only option would be to shoot and kill everyone else present.

Yao Ruoyun couldn’t bring herself to say something like “shoot everyone,” but the situation felt so wrong to her. After all, the people in the gym were all military personnel, and they all appeared to be elites. Even if they had retired, as they’d mentioned earlier, could they really do nothing while witnessing the tragedy unfolding on the other side?

She knew something was off with her current mindset. This wasn’t the early days of the apocalypse. She had seen all sorts of human nature, and her sympathy had long been drained by her experiences.

But right now, through the eyes of the dying woman, she saw herself.

She, too, had the raft, the golden hand of a psychic. Like that woman, she had no self-defense ability. If something happened outside and she was surrounded, she would probably just hide in her little house and not go out.

Likewise, if it were her being carried with the raft and thrown down from a dozen-story building, when faced with the choice between keeping the raft and hoping it would protect her, or being surrounded by men and risking her life with the raft, she would likely choose the latter.

The first option was a dead end, the second had a slim chance of survival.

But, clearly, the result wasn’t good.

The psychic had lost the gamble and was about to die.

As she watched the woman being tormented and insulted by them, it felt like seeing her own future…

“That woman is called Brother Qi. You should’ve heard of her,” Han Lan suddenly spoke up, causing Liu Shuang to frown and look at him.

Han Lan gestured for the others to relax with one hand, but his eyes briefly flicked to Cheng Yu. Seeing that he didn’t intend to stop him, he continued, “Don’t hide it anymore. Does anyone in Huagou not know about this? If you’ve been online, you’ve probably heard of her—the rumored psychic.”

“Huh?” Yao Ruoyun jumped in shock, thinking her identity had been exposed, but thankfully she steadied herself and quickly realized Han Lan wasn’t talking about her. He had simply mentioned the title “psychic.”

“Brother Qi?” Shu Fu muttered the name, then looked down at the two people still tied up in the corner of the basketball gym. They had become frail after these four days, but they were still alive.

She remembered that when they had previously schemed against Cheng Yu, they had mentioned this name, saying that “Brother Qi” had a plan. So, she knew that “Brother Qi” was likely their small leader, someone who coveted military off-road vehicles and armored cars, and had sent people to test things out, even planning to seize vehicles and kill.

Clearly, Han Lan was implying that the ruthless “Brother Qi” from that time and the dying woman in the snow were the same person.

“How is that possible!” Yao Ruoyun exclaimed in disbelief.

“We’ve been monitoring and listening to the other side for four days now, and we’re still connected. Want to listen?” Liu Shuang took off one of the headphones and signaled to Yao Ruoyun. “But the wall where we installed the listener is damaged, so there’s a lot of wind and noise.”

Yao Ruoyun didn’t take it. She had already believed him. “Sorry, it’s not that I don’t believe you, I’m just so surprised.”

Liu Shuang nodded and put the headphones back on.

Han Lan patted Yao Ruoyun on the shoulder. “You know about psychics, so you must know about the raft too, right? These two things are the reason we’re on this mission.”

Shu Fu quietly watched him, feeling that she had nearly figured it out.

A team of elites, well-equipped, driving armored vehicles and military off-road cars—how could it really be just their “private trip” after retirement?

She suspected that their real mission was to search for psychics who possessed the golden hand of the raft.

As for what would happen once they found one, that would depend on whether they were willing to tell her.

After speaking, Han Lan closed the window. The cold outside was unbearable even for those who were used to the outdoors. He signaled for Yao Ruoyun and Shu Fu to follow him downstairs to the basement, where there was a fire and it was warmer, and then he would explain things further.

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A short while later, except for Liu Shuang and Wen Rou, who remained above to continue monitoring the situation at the hotel, and Awen, who was guarding the two tied-up individuals, everyone else had moved to the basement.

The basement had two rooms, originally used for sports equipment. Now, aside from the useful tables, mats, and shelves, everything else had been moved out to the main gym.

There was a hallway connecting the two rooms, and some folding tables and chairs that had been in the gym were now placed in the hallway. There were also some cooking utensils, military rations, and personal water bottles. The smaller room was for the female team members, while the larger one was for the male members.

At the moment, they were all in the larger room. A fire quickly started in a metal barrel, and the bedding was neatly stacked on the shelves. Everything was cleaned up, and despite being a basement, there wasn’t any musty smell. It seemed the team members were quite tidy.

Other members brought in the supplies that had been buried under the snow, trying to dry out the damp boxes and bags in the space with the fire. There were even capable team members who had pulled out rescue ropes from the armored cars and off-road vehicles, hung two thick blankets between them, and lit a coal stove to slowly dry out the supplies.

“Thank you,” Shu Fu and Yao Ruoyun sincerely expressed their gratitude, also mentioning that all the food they brought was meant for everyone to share, especially the box of cured meat and rice. The two of them couldn’t possibly finish it, and even if they had to move, they wouldn’t be able to carry it. They urged everyone to cook and eat it quickly.

The team had plenty of supplies for this trip, but as always, it was mostly portable, ready-to-eat food—compressed biscuits, energy bars, and canned food. Most of it was military rations like curry chicken with rice, minced meat and mushroom noodles, claypot rice, and stir-fried noodles with braised pork. The flavors were diverse, but after eating it for so many years, the taste had become repetitive. Anyone would get tired of it.

The rice in the military rations couldn’t compare to freshly cooked rice, especially with so much cured meat. When they cooked the rice, they sliced some cured meat to layer on top, and the aroma was mouthwatering…

Everyone was tempted, but since the team leader hadn’t given the order, they didn’t dare to move.

Shu Fu looked at Cheng Yu and smiled. “Now that everyone is stuck here, you wouldn’t still want to be polite, would you? Or should we return the water and supplies you gave us earlier?”

Cheng Yu glanced at Shu Fu, nodded at the team members who were looking at him, and then reminded them to open just one bag of cured meat, and they could eat the rice with the canned food.

The team members: …

Shu Fu sighed. “But I want to eat the cured meat, sausages, salted chicken, and duck…”

“…” Cheng Yu stopped the teammates who were about to go out. “…Open one bag each.”

The team members: …

As the two teammates left with the items, Shu Fu, hiding at the back, grabbed a smaller teammate and silently mouthed to him to open one more bag of cured meat and sausages, the good stuff.

The teammate winked at her, signaling that he understood.

Shu Fu’s little gesture was blatant, but since the items were brought by them, as long as Yao Ruoyun had no objections, how could anyone else say anything?

Their small team had a total of ten people. Apart from Liu Shuang and the others who were on monitoring and listening duties, two people were outside helping Shu Fu and Yao Ruoyun dry the blankets, and two were in the corridor washing rice and cutting the cured meat for cooking. Inside, apart from Cheng Yu and Han Lan, only one other teammate remained.

He thought for a moment and said, “I’ll go relieve Liu Shuang,” then went out.

A short while later, Liu Shuang came in, having taken off her headphones. She sat beside Shu Fu on an exercise mat and reached toward the iron barrel with the fire to warm her hands.

Shu Fu took out the candy, shook it gently in front of Liu Shuang.

Liu Shuang turned to her and smiled. “You should keep it and eat it slowly.”

Shu Fu directly poured one candy and held it to her lips. Liu Shuang had no choice but to eat it and gave her head a rub.

After Shu Fu had fed everyone in the room, Han Lan spoke up, bringing up “Brother Qi.”

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The information about Brother Qi was something Wen Rou had extracted from the two captives. Brother Qi was a psychic who had been in Wei for over half a month. She hadn’t come alone; she had brought a team with her.

The team had both men and women, young and old. The two captives had joined later and heard others call her “Brother Qi,” so they followed suit.

At first, they didn’t understand why everyone treated a seemingly ordinary woman with such respect, but later, they realized that she was the psychic that had been rumored.

She was the leader of this group, calling herself the “chosen one” and claiming to have transcended the ordinary human realm. Anyone who joined her group was expected to treat her as an authority figure.

All the supplies they found had to be handed over to her for safekeeping, and she would redistribute them. Her word was absolute. Anyone who refused to obey would be immediately expelled from the group.

But she had the raft, which could carry people through flood zones. In addition to the small house originally on the raft, she had somehow acquired a shipping container that was placed on the larger deck. It could serve as shelter when it rained heavily or when there was hail, and it also allowed her to safely navigate through flooded areas.

Moreover, she could provide purified water and, while on the water, she could continuously catch fish.

Just these few things were enough to make some people follow her unwaveringly.

However, whether it was the purified water, food, or supplies, she gave them out extremely begrudgingly.

Before the snowstorm, there had already been issues in the group. Some members wanted to claim more supplies, especially since those supplies had been found by them. But she was unwilling, believing that those who asked for more were being unrealistic. In the philosophy she instilled in them, ordinary people were not allowed to make demands of the “chosen one.”

She followed the “hunger rule,” believing that to show kindness in small things could lead to larger conflicts.

She had the people who spoke out tied up and beaten by others, making it clear that those willing to act would get a larger share of the water and supplies originally allocated to those who had been punished.

Some, in order to get more supplies, resorted to violence. Once the first person did, others followed.

Later, she ordered that the beaten people be locked in a room without food or water.

The others, who now had more supplies, dared not complain, as they had handed over all their supplies to her—everything, including the rations they had received from previous rescue stations. She kept it all in the wood house where no one else could enter. If she didn’t give it to them, they had no way of taking it.

Actually, they regretted it now, but they had already given up too much on this journey. Leaving the group would mean starting over from scratch, with nothing.

Later, when Cheng Yu’s team arrived in Wei, she set her sights on the two vehicles. These two vehicles could make up for her shortcomings on land, and she planned to seize them. She intended to use her identity as a psychic to lure the other party over and then set a trap to kill and steal the vehicles.

At that time, some members of the team opposed the plan. Despite sometimes privately seizing supplies from weaker individuals along the way, they had never seen bloodshed. Now, asking them to target members of the military, how could they possibly dare?

Even if they did dare, they didn’t believe they could do it.

However, the two new members, eager to prove themselves, volunteered to scout the situation. They pretended to want a ride, mainly to observe how many people were in the group, what weapons and equipment they had, and how long they would stay in Wei.

As it turned out, the two were captured by Shu Fu and Yao Ruoyun, who came through a side door. The plan to seize the vehicles was completely thwarted by the blizzard that night.

However, these two people led Cheng Yu’s team to learn about the existence of the other group. After some investigation, they discovered that the psychic had been staying in the pool activity room on the eighth floor. Since finding psychics was their task, they used a new type of shooting device as night fell and placed several listening devices on the exterior walls of the designated floor.

Although the pool on the eighth floor was now empty, the space was large, and the single-story height was suitable for her to set up and use the raft.

After all, in today’s world, there was no place safer or more comfortable than her mobile cabin. When the blizzard hit and the entire Wei was buried in snow, she became even more reluctant to leave her cabin.

But the others staying at the hotel weren’t as comfortable. First, the backup generator ran out of fuel, and the power went out, leaving everything pitch black and the air conditioning unusable. They didn’t have enough warm clothes, and even wrapped in blankets at night, they were still freezing to the bone. They wanted to burn firewood for warmth, but they discovered they didn’t even have an axe to chop up the tables and chairs.

The people locked in their rooms were secretly let out, but first, they were beaten and then deprived of food for several days. After the temperature dropped again, they caught a cold, and some were either unconscious or running fevers.

They begged Brother Qi for medicine, but she refused, believing that medicine should not be wasted on those with ulterior motives.

Later, one of the children fell seriously ill due to the cold, with a high fever that wouldn’t subside. They begged for medicine again, but she still refused, thinking they were pretending the child was sick to use the medicine to help the other few people.

The child, unlike the adults, had already suffered for days, freezing and starving, and now with a high fever, the condition became critical and they didn’t survive the night.

That night, the child’s mother, father, grandmother, and uncle knelt outside the raft cabin, pleading for her to give them fever-reducing medicine, as they knew she had it. They had seen it in the supply packs they had received earlier.

But every time they went to collect supplies, she watched over them or sent a few loyal followers to make sure no one secretly took anything. Everything had to be handed over to her.

So, now, they didn’t have a single pill on them. They regretted not leaving the group before the blizzard hit. There were rescue stations in Wei, and even though they couldn’t collect a second round of supplies, they could still take a free ride to West Zhou Province.

But they couldn’t let go. They had already invested so much, and the sunk cost was too high. They hesitated to leave. Now, they were stuck in this desolate hotel, completely hopeless.

The most frustrating part was that the raft cabin had windows. Even though she had installed curtains, they could still see shadows through the fabric and watch her comfortably stay inside, eating.

Meanwhile, their child had suffered and died that night.

Later, they spent the entire day quietly and secretly uniting with all those dissatisfied with her, planning their next move.

They used the excuse of clearing snow to go downstairs and clear a space, then swiftly eliminated a few of her most loyal followers. They then stood outside her cabin and made their demands: either she come out and return all their supplies inside the cabin, or she would stay inside forever, and they would send her off.

They no longer cared about the psychic powers, her so-called destined status, or the raft cabin. They just wanted their supplies back.

And the result was already clear.

Brother Qi refused, not believing that those who had been oppressed for so long would actually take action.

But they really did. First, they moved the furniture used to reinforce the floor-to-ceiling windows on the corner of the eighth floor pool activity room. Then, they started smashing the windows with anything heavy they could find. Although the glass was double-paned, it wasn’t tempered, and with so many of them taking turns to smash it, the glass quickly shattered.

They created a hole large enough for the raft, then pushed all the scattered tables and chairs down to the ground. Together, they lifted the raft and aimed it at the hole in the eighth floor wall.

From smashing the glass to dropping the raft, it only took about five minutes. By the time Wen Rou noticed something was wrong and informed Liu Shuang, the raft had already been pushed out into the air.

At that point, everything was broken.