The blood moon's light was inherently more oppressive than the darkness.
Inside the classroom, the last crumbs of a compressed biscuit were carefully licked into Wu Tao's mouth, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed them with the last few sips of water.
The meager water remaining at the bottom of the bottle reflected several pairs of eyes still burning with the embers of hunger.
"Only this much..."
Silence, like a cold spiderweb, enveloped everyone.
Li Mingyu flattened the empty water bottle, the plastic emitting a grating sound.
For over forty people, five packs of compressed biscuits, and six bottles of water were utterly insufficient.
The hunger in their stomachs did not cease; instead, it demanded more intensely due to this minuscule appeasement.
"Be content."
Sun Qiang's metallic arm reflected a faint glow in the dim light, his voice heavy with suppressed emotion.
"What kind of hellhole is outside? Ling Chen came back alive, and even brought these..." He looked towards the corner.
Ling Chen leaned against the cold concrete wall, his hooded sweatshirt pulled tight. Three dark purple bats, like solidified sculptures, perched motionlessly on his shoulder and deep within his hood.
His face was deathly pale, his eyes closed, and his breathing shallow, as if a gust of wind could scatter him. In his subtle tremors, a trace of suppressed pain could be glimpsed.
Lin Wei's gaze, like an invisible scalpel, briefly swept over Ling Chen's tightly closed eyelids, his bloodless lips, and the overly quiet, seemingly deeply unconscious bats, finally resting on the biscuit wrapper in Wu Tao's hand that had been repeatedly licked, emitting an almost imperceptible hum.
"Sleep."
Chen Xue's voice broke the silence, tinged with exhaustion and an undeniable authority. Leaning against the wall, she surveyed everyone. Hunger and fear had drained their last bit of spirit.
"Rest quickly, everyone. Sleep until dawn. We need energy to find more food."
She paused, her gaze falling on the "weak" figure in the corner.
"Ling Chen needs to recover," her voice softened slightly.
The responsibility of night watch was silently and tacitly distributed: Li Mingyu, Sun Qiang, Zhou Yunguang, and the "seriously injured and weak" Ling Chen. This combination carried a peculiar sense of balance—strength, defense, burst, and containment. However, the one designated for containment currently seemed more like a burden needing protection.
Ling Chen's head moved slightly, his eyelids parting to a slit. In his bottomless black pupils, the vigilant figures of Sun Qiang and Li Mingyu were reflected, along with the ominous outline of the blood moon outside the window, before slowly closing again.
Deep within his hood, a bat's delicate eyelashes seemed to tremble ever so slightly, and the extremely faint ozone smell in the surrounding air dissipated completely.
A heavy drowsiness spread through the classroom.
In the corner, Wang Lei's completely stiff corpse had been dragged to a corner as far away as possible, hastily covered with two broken desk boards.
A dense aura of death lingered, but exhaustion ultimately overcame fear. Low snores, suppressed coughs, and the occasional unwilling rumble of stomachs interwove into a not-so-pleasant lullaby.
Lin Wei leaned against the cold windowsill, her eyes not entirely closed.
Her eyelashes cast faint shadows in the dim light, and her gaze subtly enveloped the four night watchmen, especially the figure curled in the shadows, where the bats remained motionless as if dead.
Moonlight filtered through the broken glass, outlining once more, at the edge of his fully pulled-up hood, that fleeting, dark purple, forked-lightning-like pattern.
Her fingertips silently ground a small piece of plaster debris in her pocket, scraped from the corner of the windowsill, bearing dark red, almost black, stains.
The night was as dark as ink.
...
The first pale ray of light struggled to pierce the heavy leaden clouds, shining upon the ruins, bringing not the hope of dawn, but a clearer desolation and shocking devastation.
When the light streamed through the broken window frame into the classroom, what awakened them was not the warmth of the rising sun, but a bone-chilling cold. Everyone was huddled on the cold floor, like corpses that had not yet lost their warmth.
Ling Chen "awoke" amidst a series of deliberately suppressed coughs, his face still ashen. His left arm "accidentally" twitched, pulling at the "wound" beneath the bandage, causing his brows to furrow in pain.
The three bats on his shoulder also "woke up" with a few blurry "squeaks" as if just roused from sleep, turning their small heads vigilantly, their crimson little eyes flickering in the dim light.
After a brief, silent exchange, a cruel choice was laid on the table: wait for a slim chance of rescue, or gamble their lives for a way out.
"I, Chen Xue, and Liu Wen will stay here to look after the others."
Class Monitor Wu Tao's face was haggard, but his tone was unusually calm. He pointed to a few boys who could still stand, "You, cooperate with Li Mingyu, Sun Qiang, Ling Chen... go out and find food and water. Too many people make too much noise, it's dangerous. Twenty people will stay behind, the search party... at most fifteen."
His gaze swept over the girls and thin boys whose eyes were numb, barely able to stand steadily.
"This is our stronghold, we must defend it! Zhou Yunguang stays. Where there's light, it deters monsters."
No one objected. Those who stayed had a trace of relief mixed with fear on their faces, while the boys selected for the search party forced a hint of determination into their pale complexions.
To survive, that was the only thought.
"Use your phones to communicate!" Li Mingyu quickly pulled out his phone, which had two bars of battery left and a spiderweb crack on its screen.
"Form a group chat! Report any situation immediately!"
He shook his phone vigorously. The faint but still present 4G signal icon on the screen became the only illusory straw of hope in this desperate place.
The once tidy corridor was now stained and grimy.
The search party, in a loose arrowhead formation, moved with difficulty among broken concrete slabs, overturned desks and chairs, and congealed dark bloodstains.
Li Mingyu walked at the front, gripping a makeshift iron pipe spear. His Buli (Brute Force) ability made his muscles tense, like a leopard poised to strike, yet his steps were trained and cautious.
Sun Qiang brought up the rear; his metallized skin gave him powerful defense, ensuring he wouldn't be instantly killed even if he encountered a group of ghouls head-on.
Ling Chen was placed slightly towards the middle, which seemed to be special treatment for a "wounded person," but it also put him in an excellent vantage point for observation.
Currently, these classmates still held compassion for ordinary people and did not have the self-awareness of being superior as ability users, or rather, they hadn't even thought of that point.
Ling Chen wasn't going out hunting with them just for a bit of bread. He never forgot his goal—to turn this place into a bloody hunting ground.
His movements were very "slow," each step a little unsteady, his left arm always hanging down. Only his uninjured right hand occasionally, unconsciously, rested on a broken pillar nearby.
With each tiny contact, his fingertips seemed to leave a faint, dust-like dark purple "afterglow" in the coldness of the stone and the gaps in the dust—a manifestation of the highly suppressed, mutated, dark purple blood within him, which, when killing, dispersed and subtly integrated into this land in the form of "afterglow."
Just as the team turned a corner, preparing to enter the playground...
"Hoo-hoo... uh..."
A muffled growl, sounding like a tearing windpipe, came from beneath a pile of collapsed landscape plants and withered vines!
Everyone's hearts instantly constricted!
Li Mingyu immediately made a stop gesture, his movements extremely swift.
Everyone froze, even their breath caught in their throats.
Sun Qiang's metallic fist clenched, his knuckles emitting a low metallic grinding sound.
Ling Chen's left hand fingers subtly flexed and extended. On his shoulder, the crimson pupils of the three bats suddenly focused, locking onto the source of the sound like aiming scopes.
The withered vines were laboriously, little by little, pushed aside. A figure, stiffly, from the dead branches and fallen leaves... "stood" up.
Skin as pale as wall plaster, covered with bulging, deep purple, earthworm-like blood vessels.
In the sunken eye sockets, once clear eyes were replaced by two wildly spinning crimson vortices. On the chest of the school uniform, on a large area of already blackened and hardened bloodstains, at the edge of the "Hui" character of the school badge, a faint, blurred mark of "Senior Class 3 (7)" still remained.
Its movements were stiff and distorted. It stumbled over a vine, clumsily using its hands to support itself and stand up, the twisted and bent angles clearly exceeding the limits of normal joints.
"It's... it's Xu..." A bespectacled boy in the team suddenly gasped, his lips trembling violently.
"Xu Hong from Class 1... He... he was on the basketball team... He trained yesterday afternoon..."
He remembered the figure running and shooting under the sun, remembered this person borrowing half a bottle of mineral water from him before training yesterday.
Xu Hong? That senior who played basketball so well and always smiled, showing a mouthful of white teeth?
A terrible image flashed into another boy's mind: during the chaos yesterday evening, Xu Hong seemed to have pushed away a younger girl who was about to be hit by a flying rock, and that's when the fierce wind slammed him hard against the wall... He seemed to have heard the clear sound of bones breaking...
Now, that once sunny and cheerful senior who had protected others, let out a bestial growl from his throat, dragging a lower leg twisted at a grotesque angle, with white bone exposed where vines had torn it, stumbling towards them. The arm that once shot perfect three-pointers now only held the most primitive, most frantic craving for flesh and blood!
The bespectacled boy clutched a retrieved wooden stick, his hands shaking like a sieve, instinctively retreating step by step, almost backing into the crowd behind him.
"Don't... don't come over..." His voice was tearful and on the verge of breaking, "Xu Hong... Is that you...? Don't..."
A strong sense of nausea and tearing pain exploded in his heart!
He recognized those deformed, twisted sneakers! The limited-edition sneakers that Xu Hong had once so proudly shown off! They had chipped in to buy them for Xu Hong's birthday last week!
The cartoon signature on the side of the shoe, soaked in blood but barely discernible, burned onto his retina like a red-hot branding iron!
"He's not him anymore!"
Li Mingyu's roar was like thunder! "Xu Hong," who stumbled forward, had already revealed his blood-stained, sharp teeth and pale bony claws.
The last trace of hesitation in his eyes was burned to ashes by thoroughly ignited rage and the instinct for survival! His speed exploded in a blur!
There were no superfluous techniques, driven purely by the will to survive! He turned his body, twisted his waist, and the self-made sharp iron pipe lashed up fiercely from bottom to top like a venomous snake!
Pfft!
The rusty iron pipe precisely pierced the pale neck!
Thick, crimson blood, mixed with tissue fragments, splattered out!
A few drops of thick, black blood splattered onto Li Mingyu's face and eyes! He instinctively closed his eyes, his body being pulled forward a step by the force of the falling corpse, and only opened them after a violent shake of his head!
The stinging pain of his eyeballs being covered with sticky, filthy blood and the intense nausea of his stomach churning instantly surged into his heart!
The ghoul, once named "Xu Hong," crashed to the ground, a hissing sound of air escaping from its ruptured throat, its scarlet eyes still staring fixedly upwards.
Li Mingyu gasped, gripping the blood-stained iron pipe tightly, looking down at the twitching body in the familiar school uniform at his feet, and suddenly felt the warmth on his face begin to burn and sting.
It wasn't fear, but something deeper—the last colorful fragment of the "world of yesterday" completely shattered the moment this familiar form, this familiar school uniform, was pierced by his own hand!
So... this was the apocalypse.
The muscles on his face twitched, and he vigorously wiped his face, but the stains mixed with black blood only spread further.
"Don't... don't look..."
Sun Qiang's metallic palm pressed heavily on Li Mingyu's violently heaving shoulder, emitting a dull clang. His voice was hoarse, with a dry, metallic rasp.
"...It's over."
He looked at the fallen figure, at the familiar sneakers, and a flicker of pain passed through the depths of his pupils.
Yesterday, after training, Xu Hong had slapped his shoulder broadly and laughed, saying, 'I'll treat you to soda tomorrow!' Sun Qiang abruptly turned his head, his metallic neck making a faint creaking sound, forcefully suppressing the churning in his chest.
Ling Chen's gaze calmly swept over the fallen ghoul, as if it were just a stone blocking the path. He did not look at the faces twisted by a mix of pain, nausea, and confusion.
The moment the ghoul fell, his left foot seemed to inadvertently touch the exposed muscle at the edge of Xu Hong's twisted, broken lower leg bone.
An extremely brief, extremely light touch allowed a trace of blood energy to subtly seep into the depths of the torn wound, like scattering a spore waiting to be nourished by darkness.
A faint energy fluctuation, perceptible only to him, subtly rippled from the corpse. No one noticed.
"Go!"
Sun Qiang's hoarse metallic voice was like the beating of a muffled war drum.
The smells of blood, vomit, sweat, and despair mixed together, irritating everyone's nostrils.
The team moved silently and more quickly, each person's steps heavier, yet seemingly also gaining a cold, hard edge honed by life and death.
The metal roller shutter door at the entrance of the abandoned small supermarket was twisted and collapsed, covered with huge impact dents, dried and blackened bloody handprints, and several horrifying claw mark tears.
A strong stench of decay assailed them, even more nauseating than the previous smell of blood.
Mixed within it, there was also a faint... sweet scent of bread and biscuits? This strange smell stirred the last bit of stomach acid in their guts.
Li Mingyu made a shushing gesture and gave a few concise tactical signals: three people to scout ahead, spread out to the left and right for vigilance, and the rear to guard the entrance.
The team advanced silently, Ling Chen was naturally left in the shadows near the entrance, leaning against a wall covered with supermarket special offer posters, now stained with blood and claw marks.
His gaze swept over the messy shelves, finally landing on a overturned large refrigerated display cabinet in the corner. The cabinet door was twisted and deformed, forcibly pried open by something from the inside, leaving a gap.
A faint, unique smell of sealed packaged food was subtly seeping out of the gap.
"Something's there!" A sharp-eyed boy whispered, pointing to the gap in the refrigerated cabinet.
Sun Qiang and Li Mingyu exchanged glances, the latter exploding with speed, darting to the cabinet door like a blur.
He listened carefully; inside, it was dead silent.
He gestured "ready" to Sun Qiang. Sun Qiang nodded, his heavy metallic body positioned at the front, his thick metallic fingers gripping the deformed metal cabinet door gap.
Roar—!!!
Just as Sun Qiang exerted force to pull!
A black shadow, carrying a fishy wind , shot out of the cracked gap like a cannonball! Accompanied by a shrill roar! Its speed was more than twice that of the previous "Xu Hong"!
It was a female ghoul wearing a supermarket employee uniform!
Her lower body seemed to be pressed under the deformed metal cabinet and was highly rotten and sticky, but her arms were abnormally thick, and her fingernails curved like razors!
A blood-red pattern was clearly visible at the corner of her eye!
Her neck was twisted at an unnatural 90-degree angle, and half of her jaw was shattered, which made her rotten, blackened face hang askew on her neck, emitting an even more ear-piercing howl!
Her target was not Sun Qiang, who was pulling the door, but Li Mingyu, who was the strongest and closest! Her twisted, rotten body actually burst forth with astonishing leaping power, like a giant black flea, bringing ten razor-like hand claws directly at Li Mingyu's face and neck!
Too fast! Too close! Li Mingyu's pupils constricted!
Body enhancement allowed him to clearly see the ten bony claws grabbing with a foul wind, but they were too fast, impossible to dodge!
Just as he was awaiting death, he suddenly heard the harsh friction sound of metal colliding.
Sun Qiang's right arm blocked in front of him, and several straight claws had pierced into his metallic body surface.
"Bang!" Sun Qiang endured the intense pain, his left arm's metallic giant palm, with fierce power, slammed hard into the female ghoul's waist!
The immense force sent it flying sideways, crashing heavily into a row of overturned shelves opposite! The metal shelves let out a terrifying groan, deforming and collapsing!
Dust filled the air! Foul-smelling blood splattered!
Li Mingyu, still in shock, gasped rapidly. In that instant, death's cold breath had almost brushed his throat!
Ling Chen's gaze remained calmly fixed on the ghoul that had been knocked away.
The female ghoul crashed into the shelves, twisting and struggling, a rusted, broken metal shelf bar piercing into its rotten waist and abdomen like a spear! It seemed to want to pull out the foreign object hindering its movement.
"Don't let it pull it out!" Ling Chen suddenly spoke, his voice carrying the urgency of "weakness."
As if expending immense effort, the bat on his shoulder suddenly became "agitated," emitting sharp squeaks, and actually flapped its wings fiercely towards the struggling ghoul! Like three purple poisoned arrows released from a bowstring!
This sudden action startled everyone!
But the bats did not attack, they merely swooped and darted back and forth near the female ghoul's wound, where the metal rod had pierced, as if provoking it, emitting piercing sound waves that caused the ghoul to struggle even more furiously, tearing its wound wider and deeper, with fragments of rotten organs spilling out! Black blood spurted wildly! It became even harder for it to get rid of the fatal metal rod!
Taking advantage of this chaotic distraction!
"Kill!" Li Mingyu roared, his iron spear transforming into a cold light!
Sun Qiang, even more so, was like a tank charging at full speed, his metallic heavy fist whistling down with the roar of splitting stone!
Bang, bang, bang! Crack!
Bone-shattering and flesh-smashing sounds, jarring to the teeth, exploded in the confined space! The previously ferocious female ghoul, under the interference of the bats and the combined attack of two powerful ability users, had its head and half of its shoulder completely smashed, and scarlet blood and broken flesh splattered half of the supermarket wall!
Ling Chen coughed a few times, tiredly, and made a beckoning gesture.
The three bats then flew back to his shoulder as silently as falcons completing their mission, retracting their sharp claws, as if the fierce interference just now had been an illusion.
His movements were extremely natural; he did not look at the mangled corpse, his gaze sweeping over the overturned refrigerated cabinet in the corner of the shelves—inside lay dozens of flattened vacuum-packed braised chicken legs, a few bags of still well-sealed compressed biscuits, and a dozen bottles of mineral water! Enough to sustain many people for a period of time!
"Food!" Sun Qiang was the first to rush over, his metallic hand grabbing a bottle of water, his Adam's apple bobbing violently as he looked at the clear liquid inside.
His phone vibrated, and Zhou Yunguang's message popped up: "How are things?! The signal cut out for a moment!"
Li Mingyu looked at the screen, then at the blood all over the floor, wiped the grime mixed with sweat and ghoul blood from his face, and quickly typed:
"Supermarket, safe. Plenty of food and water! Took down two (ghouls), Ling Chen's bats... helped."
He paused, then looked up at Ling Chen, who was leaning against the wall in the corner, his face growing paler, and added: "He used a lot of energy, looks pretty bad. Getting ready to head back."
The euphoria of the harvest briefly diluted the shock brought by the bloodshed.
The boys, with trembling excitement, began scrambling to stuff food and water into the tattered canvas bags they found; no one noticed Ling Chen's index fingernail lengthen and sharpen, as he dug out a faintly blue-glowing Heterocrystal from the chest of the female ghoul's remains, which had been almost smashed to pulp and pierced by the metal rod.
At the same time, in a rapidly expanding pool of crimson blood, several extremely faint threads of dark purple energy silently dissolved, like greedy roots slowly seeping deep into the cold concrete ground.