"Young Master?" The mustachioed butler froze.
"You have to give me two cream puffs when we get back!"
Xie Ning rolled her eyes. She kicked at the men in black vests and said, "Move."
Zheng Heng’s group had already broken their arms, leaving them powerless to resist. They could only lower their heads, hiding the hatred in their eyes.
Xie Ning rummaged through her backpack, pulled out several colorful, patterned masks, and handed them to the group.
The men put them on with a mix of disgust and resignation, then glanced at each other.
Li Dawei’s mask had a flamboyant blooming rose right over the mouth.
Cres’s laughter was muffled by his mask.
Li Dawei and Zha Peng tied the burly men in black vests together and dragged them forward like dead dogs. "Where’s your base?"
"Is it in that shopping plaza up ahead?"
Up by the traffic light intersection was the Hengyue Shopping Plaza, famous before the apocalypse.
"Where do you get the raw materials for that spray of yours? Talk."
The burly man in the black vest initially clamped his jaw shut, refusing to say a word, but after three punches from Li Dawei, he started squealing and confessed everything.
"Our leader, Lu, found the stuff in a shop that sells plants."
Seeing Li Dawei raise his fist again, the man’s pupils contracted and he yelled frantically, "It-It’s a mutated plant, a single pot of it! It looks really weird. We just happened to discover that the plant is really effective against Superpower Users, so Lu suggested we chop up its leaves and mix them with water to test it out."
"W-We used sunscreen spray bottles to make a few bottles of the inhibitor. We’ve used it to attack several passing squads before, and it always worked!" It was just their bad luck to have hit a brick wall this time.
"How much of it is there?" Xie Ning asked with a frown.
"Just one pot. Lu has it now. No one else is even allowed to look at it."
Zha Peng grinned at him. "This shopping plaza is huge. How many of you are there? Where are you staying?"
"There are over three hundred of us right now. We’re all crammed onto the first floor of Hengyue Building for the time being. Lu organized a few teams to try and clear out the second floor, but they failed. We lost a lot of people."
"The whole shopping plaza is full of zombies, especially around Tianrun Supermarket in the back."
The man in the black vest glanced at Li Dawei’s group with lingering fear. "This Hengyue Shopping Plaza had just opened. A lot of the shops inside were fully stocked. It opened on September 8th, and then... well, you know. That was the day the zombies appeared."
"The shopping plaza was packed. Everyone was there for the grand opening prize drawings and events."
"After the outbreak, ninety-nine percent of the people inside didn’t make it out alive."
"Lu and Cao led us to create the Oasis Base here, and we’ve saved a lot of ordinary survivors." The man in the black vest gritted his teeth. "Oasis is humanity’s only spark of hope, our Starfire. Relying on Superpower Users like you who bully the weak? You’ll only fill the world with chaos."
Xie Ning shot Li Dawei a look. He threw two punches, knocking out the babbling men in black vests.
Yu Tianfeng deftly poured half a mouthful of a sleeping potion into each of their mouths, ensuring they would sleep soundly until nightfall.
"Let’s get this straight. Once we’re inside, it’s every man for himself when it comes to gathering supplies." Xie Ning pulled a few tattered pieces of clothing from her bag and tossed them to Yu Tianfeng and the others.
She threw on a terribly worn-out trench coat and a battered baseball cap. Instantly, she transformed from a pretty young girl into a filthy beggar.
Without a word, the others took the tattered clothes from her and put them on, their faces filled with disgust.
"Where did you get these? They stink to high heaven," Li Dawei said, rolling his eyes.
"Stripped them off zombies." Xie Ning’s words made Li Dawei, Zha Peng, and the others flinch, their hands trembling.
"You...!" Li Dawei was speechless for a moment, then let out a breath and nodded emphatically. "You’re really something else!"
’If a young girl like her didn’t mind the stench, a grown man like him couldn’t really complain.’
Xie Ning waved them over. "A group of six is too big a target. Let’s split into two teams. I think that Tianrun Supermarket they mentioned sounds interesting. If no one’s really been there since the grand opening, it should have plenty of supplies."
Li Dawei’s eyes darted around. He pointed to Zha Peng and Zheng Heng and volunteered, "The three of us will go scout out Tianrun Supermarket first."
"Just so we’re clear, if there’s a huge haul of supplies, we’ll still have to split it between the three teams. Don’t you dare try and cheat us," Li Dawei muttered under his breath.
Xie Ning nodded, her expression earnest. "Don’t worry, I’m a good person."
Cres rolled his dark brown eyes and urged, "Let’s hurry. I’m sensing a strange superpower fluctuation up ahead. It’s very clean and pure, but faint... almost not there. This Superpower User must be on the verge of death!"
Yu Tianfeng raised an eyebrow. "I didn’t take you for someone who worries about others."
Cres shot him a look. "This person’s superpower is definitely valuable for research! I can sense something special about it."
"Then let’s hurry, Ningning! We need to go rescue our specimen as soon as possible."
Xie Ning was speechless. ’They haven’t even seen the person yet, and he’s already a specimen in Dr. Yu’s hands...’
The three of them snuck toward Hengyue Building.
Before they got close, they heard a loud crash from across the way, immediately followed by the roar of zombies.
A small team of several dozen people in tattered clothes came scrambling out of the hot pot restaurant opposite them, with the fastest runners already falling back to the glass doors of Hengyue Building.
The slower ones were caught by a few pursuing zombies, who bit into their necks, tearing and devouring them.
"Go, go! Don’t let them follow us!" Cao Fa’s pupils shrank as he kicked at the teammates around him. "Go, get up! If anyone dares to run, I’ll be the first to cut them down."
Gritting their teeth, the men moved forward. Their fire axes trembled as they hacked at the zombies without any semblance of a plan.
It took twenty to thirty chaotic strikes to kill a single zombie.
Cres raised an eyebrow. "I can’t believe they’re still this stupid a month into the apocalypse."
Xie Ning tugged him along, using the opportunity to follow the chaotic, fleeing crowd and rush through the glass doors of Hengyue Building.
Two burly men guarding the building’s entrance shouted in frustration, "Don’t rush in! Is anyone injured? No one with injuries gets in!"
"Bro, I’m not hurt! This is someone else’s blood, not mine! It’s not!"
Xie Ning had no patience to wait for them to finish. She simply pushed, sending the crowd surging inside.
The three of them seized the chance to leap inside.
The two ordinary, burly men were no match for her strength. Jostled and pushed by the surging crowd, one of them was knocked to the ground, howling as someone stepped on his left arm.
Xie Ning walked into Hengyue Building, which was filled with a strange, foul odor, and her gaze swept across the scene.
She saw numerous survivors sitting in the central rest area of the lobby, huddled around a set of genuine leather sofas with vacant eyes.
The once polished, reflective floor tiles of the commercial building were now a mess, covered in bloody footprints.
"Over there," Cres said in a low voice, moving close to Xie Ning.