It all happened too fast. No one had time to react.
Even when Chu Yebai’s head drooped, not everyone nearby immediately realized that he had passed out.
Only the appraiser reacted in time. But because of the peculiar nature of his role, he did not keep a gun in hand at all times. By the time he had just drawn his weapon, a gun was already pressed to their boss’s temple.
And that gun looked remarkably familiar.
It was their boss’s own.
Pei Ning, kneeling nearby directly in front of Chu Yebai, was utterly dumbfounded.
Whether by logic or by the facts before her, she simply could not make sense of what was happening.
Wasn’t this woman targeting Chu Yebai as well? Otherwise, why would she deliberately keep pestering him? Wasn’t it all just to get his attention?
So what was she doing now? What had she just done?
Chu Yebai was still sitting in his chair, maintaining the posture he had held moments ago, his head lowered.
He looked completely defenseless. With his eyes closed and consciousness gone, he seemed startlingly quiet and beautiful—yet at the same time, incomparably fragile.
Fragile?
Anyone who had survived the apocalypse would never associate that word with Chu Yebai.
And so Pei Ning found the scene before her utterly absurd, far beyond anything she could comprehend.
The surrounding robbers abruptly came to their senses and were about to aim their guns at Pei Liang.
Then a needle-sharp warning rang in their heads.
“Don’t move!”
“Unless you want a hole blown through his brain.”
The burly robber who had shouted at Pei Liang earlier knew exactly what that voice could do. When that woman had suddenly bellowed at him before, her voice like the roar of a shrew, it had startled him so badly that his heart lurched and his head throbbed.
At the time, he had assumed it was simply because her voice was shrill and he had been caught off guard. But what he felt now was far worse.
The sound drilled into his ears like needles, stirring and twisting inside his skull. Two of them even went black before the eyes and staggered.
With their boss in her hands, they did not dare act rashly. In that brief opening, several precious seconds slipped away.
During that time, several gunshots rang out. When they forced themselves to regain their composure and their vision cleared, the first thing they saw was several of their men at the high ground being taken down.
Their chests were still rising and falling, so they were alive—but they had already collapsed and lost the ability to move.
The robbers were alarmed, realizing they had been fooled. She was not merely using their boss to restrain them.
She had told them not to move, yet she had taken the lead in disabling several of them.
Several guns swung toward her, only for a huge tablecloth to sweep over them, instantly blocking their view.
“Don’t fire blindly! You might hit the boss!” someone shouted urgently.
But more gunshots followed. The sound startled the hostages in the room, and many screamed, though they only curled up tighter and did not dare move.
The arms of several men nearby were hit. The hands holding their guns slowly dropped.
The appraiser steadied his breathing. His gun remained aimed in Pei Liang’s direction, but he did not fire immediately. He watched the tablecloth’s drifting descent and waited for the precise moment, intending to shoot her the instant the obstruction fell away.
But just as the tablecloth was about to drop, the appraiser’s concentration reached its peak—and then the situation changed without warning.
The tablecloth, which had been drifting limply downward in a soft, fluttering fall, suddenly shot toward him like a living snake. In an instant, it wrapped around him. The moment it struck, the force behind it felt as though he had crashed into a steel plate.
It didn’t look like a piece of cloth at all. It was more like an iron chain disguised beneath a layer of soft fabric.
Then the appraiser suddenly felt his feet leave the ground. His entire body was practically dragged through the air before landing on something soft.
When he came to his senses, the gun in his hand had already been snatched away, and Pei Liang’s face appeared right in front of him.
The situation now was this: their boss was sitting in a chair, the woman was sitting on top of him, and he was pinned against the woman.
Pei Liang’s voice rang out again. “I told you not to move. Didn’t you notice that I’ve got another hostage now? Be careful not to hit the wrong person.”
The whole process had been dangerous, but less than a minute had passed since their boss had lost consciousness and been taken hostage.
In the span of that single minute, two of their people had fallen into the woman’s hands. Several men who had been positioned at higher vantage points to control the situation were either unconscious or dead, and several others had suffered gunshot wounds to their weapon hands, losing half their combat strength.
The entire hall fell deathly silent. The robbers, who had been working in orderly fashion moments before, all stopped and reached for their weapons.
The woman sneered. “Don’t be rash. Think carefully about whether you really want to point those guns at me.”
“Unlike you expendable grunts, the two people in my hands are irreplaceable. One is the boss who planned and directs everything, and the other is the team’s indispensable technical specialist.”
The appraiser was more than just exceptionally skilled at identifying valuables. Of course, in their line of work, that keen eye and lightning-fast judgment alone were already enough to make someone irreplaceable.
These people lived by the edge of a knife and raced against time. They had to identify the most valuable objects in an extremely short period and maximize the profits of every operation.
And this handsome young appraiser was not merely talented at appraising things. He was also highly capable when it came to analyzing and processing intelligence. Though he looked young, Pei Liang was certain that he was one of the team’s core members.
Sure enough, the wariness on the robbers’ faces deepened. Several of them even exchanged glances.
Their operations were meticulously planned, and they would naturally take every possible contingency into account—including the possibility that their leader might lose contact, be taken hostage, or even die. The appraiser had been designated as the first alternate commander in case their leader was unable to issue orders during this operation.
That sudden turn of events had caught the robbers off guard. Fortunately, they still had more than a thousand hostages aboard the ship.
For the moment, the two sides were evenly matched. But the robbers still had to retreat; they couldn’t afford to remain here locked in a standoff for too long.
Clearly, Pei Liang had no intention of playing a game of freeze tag with them either.
She continued, “At first, I thought these two were irreplaceable members of your team. But it seems I misjudged the situation.”
“Not everyone on your team cares whether your boss lives or dies.”
As she spoke, she shifted slightly to the side, revealing a corner of the chair’s back. A small bullet hole was clearly visible there.
Someone had fired at them while the tablecloth blocked their view, disregarding the safety of their own boss.
The few robbers closest to Pei Liang immediately flew into a rage. The hot-tempered one shouted a string of curses. “Who was it?”
“Who the hell fired that shot? Xu the Third, was it you?”
His gaze landed on a grim-faced, bearded man.
Pei Ning followed his line of sight and recognized him.
The man Chu Yebai had personally executed in her previous life—the one whose betrayal of the base had nearly caused catastrophic losses. She had never expected that he had already harbored treacherous intentions at this point.
Originally, after getting close to Chu Yebai, she had planned to find a way to guard against this man. Chu Yebai trusted his brothers far too much, and that trust had cost him dearly once before.
In the apocalypse, commanding a faction meant wielding supreme power. Within your own territory, you could do whatever you pleased. The chaos of the times, the lure of power, and the scheming among rival forces...
Chu Yebai had been badly burned by the betrayal of one of his own brothers.
Pei Ning had originally intended to use her foreknowledge to help him avoid that calamity. But now, it seemed—
She cast a trembling glance at Pei Liang. Could events still return to their original course? Even if they could, these traitors had revealed themselves early, leaving her with one less opportunity to prove her worth.
Yet Xu the Third made no attempt to deny it. Instead, he openly admitted, “Yeah, I fired the shot. So what?”
“Look at you useless bastards, getting held hostage by some broad. She’s only got two people with her, while we’ve got over a thousand hostages here. And this chick isn’t like us—she’s a famous dance artist. She cares about humanitarian principles, about her reputation.”
“If she won’t let them go, kill ten. If she still won’t, kill more. Every one of those deaths will be on her head. I just don’t get why the hell you’re all so scared of her.”
“Sure, she’s got a gun pointed at the boss’s head. But does she dare pull the trigger? The moment she does, she loses her only bargaining chip. All of us point our guns at her, and we can turn her into a sieve in an instant.”
“Before she gets turned into a sieve, the boss will have several dozen holes in him first,” the burly man snarled.
Xu the Third sneered. “If the boss were awake right now, seeing you all acting like such timid chickens, the first thing he’d do is put a bullet in you.”
“When have we ever carried out an operation without considering the worst-case scenario? What’s the iron rule of any operation? Preserve our advantage as much as possible under any circumstances. When necessary, sacrifices must be made—even if that sacrifice is himself.”
“But what were you doing? You were that close. The moment that bitch put a gun to the boss’s head, you shouldn’t have hesitated. You should’ve shot her together. Maybe her brains would’ve been blown out before she could even pull the trigger. Then we wouldn’t have lost so many brothers at once.”
“This mess only got this bad because the idiots on your side screwed up. And now you want to keep surrendering the initiative, letting this bitch push us around? What, are you going to wait until she marches all of us into prison with a gun to the boss’s head before you finally breathe easy?”
What he said was certainly inflammatory—but strictly speaking, it was also quite reasonable.
If they had truly been nothing more than a gang of ruthless criminals held together by mutual interests, Pei Liang might not have been able to catch them so completely off guard and gain such a huge advantage.
But Chu Yebai had been right there at the time, and the people around him were the faction most fiercely loyal to him. How could they possibly make the decision to disregard their leader’s life in an instant?
The team’s rules might indeed have stated as much, but the reason these people had gathered together—and grown into a force of their current scale and cohesion—was, plainly put, largely because of their leader.
When the moment came to make that choice, it was bound to be agonizingly difficult.
The two sides immediately began turning on each other. The burly man’s group accused Xu the Third of harboring ulterior motives, suspecting that he wanted to use this opportunity to get rid of the boss and take his place.
They pointed out that lately, Xu the Third and several of the brothers close to him had indeed shown signs of defiance. They behaved themselves in front of the boss, but when dealing with people appointed by him, they tended to throw their seniority around.
The appraiser, for instance, was often mocked over his age.
Xu the Third and his men, meanwhile, cursed the burly man’s side for being incompetent and allowing the operation to reach a stalemate—then having the nerve to shift the blame and level counteraccusations.
Had they not been in the middle of a mission, the two sides would probably have come to blows.
Pei Liang watched with delight. Smiling at the appraiser standing in front of her, she said, “Looks like the relationships within your team aren’t quite as unbreakable as they seem.”
The appraiser was furious. But he had been wrapped up like a bundle, the cloth covering even the lower half of his face, leaving him unable to speak. Pei Liang had done this specifically to prevent him from issuing orders.
All he could do now was glare at the idiots before him. In the end, they were simply too confident that they held the advantage. They believed that having more than a thousand hostages guaranteed them victory. What had happened earlier was merely that they had failed to react in time and let this woman exploit an opening.
As the argument dragged on, Xu the Third began to worry that the boss might survive after all, and that too much of his own intent would be exposed.
So he raised his gun at the nearest guests and flashed Pei Liang a savage grin. “Don’t act like you’re the only one with hostages.”
“That’s right—these people have nothing to do with you. Under normal circumstances, even if they all died, it wouldn’t be your problem. But this time, you’d better think it through, big star.”
“If you cling to the bandit leader just to save your own life, causing dozens—maybe even hundreds—of people to be executed by vicious criminals, do you think you’ll be able to survive once you get off this ship? Will their families and friends let you live?”
Given Pei Liang’s status, if she stood by and allowed so many people to “die because of her,” then no matter how understandable her reasons might be, public outrage would drown her after she got out.
What was more, most of these people were either wealthy or powerful. Even the resentment and retaliation of their families would be more than she could bear.
At least, that was how things would normally be expected to unfold.
Pei Liang nodded at his words. “That really is troublesome. What might have been solved with money has now cost so many lives. Who could possibly handle the consequences of that?”
Seeing that Pei Liang seemed to be wavering, everyone let out a breath of relief.
Xu the Third in particular wore a smug smile. He shot a glance at the burly man who had been confronting him earlier.
Just as he was about to say something to mock him—thinking that even if the boss were rescued, he would be the one rewarded, not that blindly loyal fool—
a bullet pierced his head, bursting out in a small spray of blood.
Xu the Third remained standing even after he was shot. The smile on his face continued to widen, as though his facial muscles had not yet realized that he was dead and were still following the commands his brain had issued in response to his mood.
Then he crashed to the floor, toppling into the cluster of guests crouched together in front of him. They shrieked and scrambled to shove him away.
When Xu the Third’s body hit the ground, that smile was still fixed on his face—the smile of someone who believed he had just earned the greatest merit. It was absurd, and horrifying, all at once.
But Xu the Third wasn’t the only one who went down. Several men from his faction—those who had immediately obeyed his order, raised their guns at the hostages, and prepared to fire—fell at the same time.
Five men in total. In less than a second, with two shots, Pei Liang shot through all five of their heads, calculating their positions perfectly.
Pei Liang’s voice rang out. “So, if you can’t talk things out, you might as well go to hell.”
She then glanced at the burly man and the others before shouting, “You still don’t seem to understand the situation.”
“When I told you not to move, it wasn’t because moving might get your boss killed. It was because if you moved, your boss would wake up and find every one of you dead.”
“That guy just now had a good idea. There are nearly thirty of you here. If you’d ignored your boss’s life and all opened fire on me at once, I really might have been turned into a pincushion. You’d have lost your boss, but you wouldn’t have been completely leaderless. At least on this ship, you could have taken control of the situation again.”
“But that opportunity only existed during the first ten seconds. Once those ten seconds passed, even if you tried it now, your boss would end up as the pincushion, while everyone in this hall would be shot dead by me within twenty seconds. I’d still be the one in control of this ship.”
If Pei Liang had said this at the beginning, they might not have believed her. But now, no one had the slightest doubt.
Her entire strategy had been exposed—but it was already too late.
The first thing she had done after taking the boss hostage was eliminate the men positioned at the high vantage points. She and the boss had been sitting down, putting them lower than the men who were standing, and the many ornate decorations in the lavishly furnished banquet hall provided her with ample cover.
Aside from the few men nearby, no one else in the hall could kill her at the first opportunity.
Then she had instantly taken the appraiser hostage as well, giving herself human shields in both directions. Between the boss’s gun and the appraiser’s gun, there were more than enough bullets for her to kill every one of them before she was hit.
They had realized from the beginning that she was a good shot, but they had attributed that to luck. Yet after she had followed the planned trajectories and eliminated five men on Xu the Third’s side with just two shots, no one doubted her speed or accuracy anymore.
Her claim of twenty seconds might even have been modest. She likely had to take the guests into consideration and prioritize killing anyone who intended to use them as leverage.
The robbers had been caught off guard by the sudden turn of events, but they had still believed they held the advantage. Now, their hearts sank.
Sure enough, Pei Liang’s voice rang out again. “So let me repeat the exact situation for you.”
“You’ve been surrounded by me alone. Put down your guns. Don’t put up any pointless resistance.”
“Anyone who refuses to surrender within five seconds, anyone who dares continue resisting—I’ll have every guest sing ‘Actually, I Don’t Want to Leave’ in front of your memorial halls.”
Cold sweat poured down the robbers’ faces. For a moment, they felt as though they had been placed over a blazing fire.
At that moment, the people left in the captain’s cabin spoke through the broadcasting system.
The voice warned, “Drop your weapons immediately. We still have hostages here.”
That was right. There were still the ship’s crew members in the captain’s cabin.
The instant Pei Liang heard this, she raised her hand and fired at several locations. The hall’s surveillance cameras immediately lost the most important feeds.
One feed showed the area where Pei Liang was stationed. The others covered each entrance and the routes leading to them.
Pei Liang said, “All right. You’re isolated islands now too. Keep the ship running, and stay out of what’s happening in the main hall.”
The people in the control room were so furious they punched the walls.
“How about we send a couple of people over and see if we can snipe that bitch?”
“How?” said the person in charge of the captain’s quarters. “If she draws the curtains and locks the door, we can only reinforce them through the entrances.”
“Didn’t you see that woman’s shooting? Send one person, and one person dies.”
“Then what if we kill a couple of people to scare them into submission?”
“You think we’re the only ones who can kill?” the person in charge roared. “Did you see how cleanly Xu the Third and his men were taken out? Do they look like the type to hesitate?”
“Believe me, if we dare kill someone, she’ll dare slaughter the boss and the brothers in the main hall, lock the place up, and play hide-and-seek with us at her leisure. Do you think you can beat her at that game?”
The man hurriedly shook his head.
Nearly everyone on the ship was gathered in the main hall now. Only a handful of people remained at the few locations needed to keep the cruise ship operational. They would be easy enough to find.
Even if they scattered and hid, there were plenty of weapons in the main hall. Their enemies could simply wear them down until they were dead.
For the moment, they had no solution—and they did not dare be the first to break the deadlock.
Pei Liang then asked one of the waiters, “Does the bar have any rope or nylon zip ties?”
“We have zip ties.” The waiter immediately ran over and returned with a large bundle.
Pei Liang tossed them down in front of the burly man. “Bind both hands and feet. No fewer than six per person.”
These nylon zip ties were quite thick. An ordinary adult would be unable to break free even from one, but considering that these people possessed strength and physiques far beyond normal, at least three restraints were needed for each pair of limbs.
The hijackers had no choice but to bow their heads under the circumstances. Grimly, they tied one another up.
Once the hijackers had been restrained, the surrounding guests finally relaxed. They rose to their feet. Though none dared leave the room, expressions of relief at having survived the disaster appeared on their faces.
Pei Ning was utterly bewildered. Less than twenty minutes—that was all it had taken. What had just happened? Chu Yebai had passed out; Xu the Third, who had been a formidable figure in her previous life, had died; and a whole group of hijackers had been tied up and tossed into a pile.
Chu Yebai’s post-apocalyptic beginning—before even half an hour had passed, had his path to supreme power already been cut short?
For a moment, Pei Ning could not believe what she was seeing. She even found herself dazedly questioning whether the events she had experienced in her previous life had truly been real.
Then her gaze settled on Pei Liang, and she looked at this “sister” of hers with complicated emotions.
Just who was she?
There had been no shortage of famous female ability users in the apocalypse, but none of the most renowned ones fought like this.
And how had she become so powerful? Could it be that her abilities had returned with her as well? Judging by her marksmanship, there was no way it could have been achieved by a shooting enthusiast in peacetime.
Only someone who had fought through life-and-death struggles could develop such masterful shooting skills. She had to be a reborn survivor from the apocalypse.
But how fortunate was she, to have gained a physical-enhancement ability in advance?
Pei Ning knew her sister well. As a dancer, Pei Liang had a slender, graceful figure, yet her strength, stamina, and endurance were indeed above average.
But they had never been anywhere near this level.
How fortunate she was.
Pei Ning’s feelings were complicated, but the guests around them had already gathered to thank her sister. Some wealthy strangers, usually so conceited they looked down on everyone, even took the initiative to hand her their business cards, saying they hoped to invite her to dinner after disembarking so they could thank her for everything she had done that day.
Pei Ning felt irritated. It was always like this—her sister had been the center of attention since childhood, adored wherever she went.
However, a different voice soon emerged.
One socialite said, “The people in the captain’s cabin shouldn’t have responded so forcefully just now. What if those robbers go completely berserk and actually kill someone? You wouldn’t be able to get there in time from here.”
“Exactly. We don’t even know what’s happening to the people in the captain’s cabin now. We can’t just ignore their lives because we’ve been rescued.”
Pei Ning secretly laughed. She knew exactly what those women were thinking.
She glanced over and, sure enough, saw several impeccably dressed socialites.
These women came from some of the most powerful families on the entire ship. They had undoubtedly been the center of attention at the banquet, and even her sister’s world-renowned achievements had never been enough to earn their regard.
Perhaps they had truly felt grateful in the moment they were rescued. But to these heiresses, who treated the limelight as their very lives, seeing her sister shine so brightly now was clearly an eyesore.
Fortunately, there weren’t many idiots like them. The police hadn’t even arrived, and the robbers weren’t dead yet, but they were already trying to tear down the bridge after crossing the river?
Someone quickly retorted, “If you’re so worried, then go there yourself. Why didn’t you say anything when the robbers were holding guns just now?”
“I was only saying,” the other woman muttered, not daring to argue any further.
She got to her feet, shoved the appraiser to the floor, and with a swift tug of the tablecloth, pulled him out from underneath it.
She jerked her chin toward the pile of robbers. The appraiser might have been unwilling to accept defeat, but he understood that the tide had turned. Today, they had fallen victim to their own scheme and kicked an iron plate.
At that moment, Zhong An came over. He had already wiped away the blood from his nose and the tears on his face, but one side of his face was still swollen and shiny, making him look as ridiculous as ever.
He glared viciously at Chu Yebai, who was still unconscious in the chair, then raised his foot and kicked him to the floor.
“What are you doing? Believe me, I’ll chop your leg off!” The robbers could not stand by and watch their boss be humiliated by such a spineless weakling.
Zhong An flinched at the vicious threat, but seeing that the robbers were now bound tightly, he found his courage again.
He sneered at them. “What? He’s just a robber. So I can’t hit him?”
As he spoke, he lifted his foot and moved to stomp on Chu Yebai’s face, but Pei Liang stopped him.
“That’s enough. Wrap yourself in a blanket and go eat your lollipop.”
There were still hostages in the captain’s cabin. Although the robbers had no chance of turning things around now, humiliating their boss could still push them into doing something reckless.
Zhong An, however, refused to let it go. “Why should I? Didn’t you see how he beat me just now? Even my dad has never hit me like that!”
“Move aside. I’m going to cripple him today.”
Pei Liang sighed and fired a shot at him.
Bang!
The bullet tore through Zhong An’s thigh. He collapsed onto the floor, staring at the bloody hole as he wailed desperately.
Pei Liang fired another shot into the table beside his head.
“Is this enough?”
It was one thing to fire at the robbers, but firing at a guest—and her fiancé, no less—left everyone around them stunned.
The young heiress who had just opened her mouth let out a scream. Pei Liang said impatiently, “Shut up!”
Raising her voice, she said, “I think some of you have gotten the wrong idea, so let me make this clear again.”
“I did not rescue you, so there’s no need to rush to thank me. From beginning to end, what I said was that this ship is now under my control.”
She swept her □□ over the crowd. “So what are you all getting up for? You’re no different from that bunch lying on the floor.”
“Get back down and squat.”
This madwoman had fired without hesitation even at her own fiancé. No one believed she was joking.
And so, everyone miserably returned to their original positions and squatted down.
The scene instantly fell silent again. Only then did Pei Liang nod in satisfaction.
She sat down in the chair Chu Yebai had occupied moments earlier and called to Pei Ning, who was doing her utmost to make herself inconspicuous in the distance, “Come here!”
Pei Ning was terrified. If Pei Liang could shoot Zhong An, she could certainly shoot her too.
Pei Liang had tricked so many words out of her earlier. She had probably already guessed that Pei Ning was a reborn person as well. Would she kill her to preserve her only advantage?
After all, Pei Ning had seriously underestimated her ambition. This woman wasn’t trying to seduce Chu Yebai and cling to him for protection at all. She intended to kill Chu Yebai and take his place herself.
Pei Liang smiled. “Don’t be afraid! Let me put it this way: if I had to choose only one person to survive on this ship, I’d choose you without a second thought.”
“In my eyes, your value is the highest here—higher even than his.” Pei Liang glanced at Chu Yebai.
Pei Ning’s heart pounded, but she didn’t believe her.
Before her rebirth, she had merely been someone who depended on others to survive. She had possessed neither ability nor a particularly powerful supernatural gift. She had no advantage from being reborn in Pei Liang’s eyes either, so how could she possibly be important to her?
Then Pei Liang asked, “There should be infected people aboard the ship, right? Do you remember who they were?”
Pei Ning was startled and looked up at Pei Liang, but after thinking it over, she found the question reasonable.
A powerful apocalypse survivor like her would surely have remembered the incident if she had left this ship herself.
If she had been an outsider, then even after being reborn, it was possible she wouldn’t know the exact details of what had happened.
Pei Ning didn’t dare to be evasive. She could only answer quietly, “I can’t remember exactly. At the time, they should have almost finished taking turns making their phone calls. Then Ms. Zhu suddenly mutated and bit the people around her.”
“She was shot dead on the spot. Not long afterward, the people she had bitten also lost control and went berserk. There were more than ten of them in total, I think? Counting those who were infected, as well as those infected through scratches and bites, there were around thirty people altogether.”
“After Ms. Zhu mutated, the people on Chu Yebai’s side who were monitoring the outside world also noticed the abnormalities online. Based on news reports, they learned that everyone had shown a sudden spike in body temperature before erupting. So they used temperature checks to separate people into groups.”
They had guns, and they were robbers. Under ordinary circumstances, controlling a thousand or more people during a riot would have been extremely difficult. But here, everyone did exactly as they were told.
Thanks to the prompt handling and isolation measures, the cruise ship’s losses were practically negligible. For Chu Yebai, this truly had been a stroke of luck.
Pei Liang nodded, then asked, “When did the supernatural abilities first begin to appear?”
Pei Ning muttered to herself. Was this some kind of test to see whether she was lying? Still, using such clumsy questions seemed unnecessary.
Even so, she answered, “Seven days later, a mysterious burst of radiation swept across the world, triggering genetic mutations in all living things. That’s when people with supernatural abilities began to appear.”
“Oh, so it wasn’t just humans who gained powers—animals and plants did too?”
Of course, that made sense. And this world’s approach to inevitable catastrophe truly was simple and brutal.
Under normal circumstances, how could the entire world possibly fall overnight? Even governments and armies had collapsed within a short time, plunging the world into chaos.
Modern technology and military forces should not have been so easily overwhelmed by a few shambling corpses. Even if soldiers themselves mutated, those who still had weapons should have been able to bring the situation under control almost immediately.
Pei Liang asked a few more questions, all fairly common-sense ones, and Pei Ning answered every one without hesitation.
Satisfied with her answers, Pei Liang glanced at the clock, then said to the ship’s doctor and nurses—whom she had picked out from among the guests and who were tending to the gunshot wounds of the robbers, “Sorry to trouble you.”
“A quick dressing will do for now. What I need you to do first is take everyone’s temperature and separate anyone whose reading is above normal.”
As for Ms. Zhu—
Pei Liang looked over at her. By now, Ms. Zhu’s complexion was already beginning to look wrong.
Ms. Zhu was no longer young, but she usually wore loud, heavy makeup, with a thick layer of foundation.
Yet even that could not conceal the bluish-black, centipede-like veins spreading beneath her skin.
Her eyes had begun to redden. She was coughing constantly, her throat dry and itchy, and she kept scratching at it in discomfort.
The pretty boy beside her naturally had to show concern for his wealthy patron. He patted her back to help her catch her breath, but Ms. Zhu seized his hand, her sharp nails scratching through the skin of his arm.
Ms. Zhu had always been rough by nature, so the pretty boy did not find it unusual—and certainly did not dare say anything.
Pei Liang walked over, casually tore down a tablecloth, twisted it into a long strip, and flicked it toward Ms. Zhu. In an instant, it bound Ms. Zhu tightly and yanked her up into the air.
Seeing this, the appraiser was finally able to view objectively just how he had been bested earlier, and his teeth began to ache with resentment.
The people around them, however, were baffled. Although Pei Liang had fired at the guests and looked every bit as vicious as the robbers, forcing them to cooperate—
She was, after all, a prominent figure in high society, not some unknown criminal. The crowd was mostly afraid that she might suddenly lose her mind and start causing trouble; they did not fear her in the same way they feared the robbers.
Someone asked blankly, “What—why are you grabbing Ms. Zhu?”
The words had barely left their mouth when Ms. Zhu, already on the verge of an episode, seemed to be startled. She suddenly began thrashing wildly, her body twisting into all manner of grotesque positions. But with the tablecloth binding her tightly, her movements were limited, and she looked like a live eel being roasted over a fire.
Her expression contorted. Yellow, foul-smelling drool streamed from the corners of her mouth, and the stench alone drove everyone nearby several steps back.
Her pretty boy still wanted to prove himself, suppressing the disgust on his face as he stepped forward to support her—only for Ms. Zhu to turn around and sink her teeth into his arm.
She had literally torn off a chunk of flesh. The pretty boy howled in agony. He was finally hauled back, but Pei Liang had already noticed that the scratch marks Ms. Zhu had left on his hand were beginning to darken as well.
Pei Liang raised her gun and shot Ms. Zhu and the pretty boy once each.
Everyone around them was terrified. This was the first time Pei Liang had killed anyone other than the robbers. In other words, their lives were no longer guaranteed safe either.
That was exactly the sort of intimidation Pei Liang needed right now. She turned to the doctors and said, “Begin. Move quickly.”
Checking temperatures alone was fast enough. With several infrared thermometers working at once, it did not take long to separate out the dozen or so people showing signs of fever.
Pei Liang used her gun to herd them into the private rooms surrounding the banquet hall. There were fortunately enough rooms, and Pei Liang had the hotel staff lock them from the outside. Each room contained cakes, drinks, snacks, and the like. When the doors were opened tomorrow, whether they had managed to hold on would be up to them.
Pei Liang was making arrangements in an orderly fashion when Chu Yebai woke up.
The first thing he felt upon regaining consciousness was that his hands and feet were bound, and that he was inexplicably lying on the floor.
Then he remembered what had happened before he lost consciousness. Others might not have seen it clearly, but his dynamic vision was excellent.
The last thing he had seen had been a smooth, slender leg.
He had been kicked unconscious.
But his passing out should not have affected the overall situation. There were so many of them, and they had guns. The situation should already have been under control. No matter how useless his subordinates were, they surely wouldn’t—
Then he looked up and saw his men tied into a heap and dumped in the middle of the hall.
Several of them were injured, though their wounds had been bandaged. Beyond them, he could see several bloodied corpses.
Chu Yebai was startled. Someone had died! It was Xu the Third.
Had the police already arrived? Had he really been unconscious for that long?
Seeing that he was awake, the robbers not far away looked as though they had found their backbone again, their eyes lighting up.
“Boss! Boss—”
Before they could finish shouting, their boss was grabbed by the hair and yanked upright.
The crowd looked over furiously. Who else could it be but Pei Liang?
She had a gun in her hand, while their boss, his hands and feet bound, was being held by his hair in utter humiliation. Fury blazed in his eyes, his expression one of unbearable indignity.
Naturally, the bandits were united in outrage.
Then Pei Liang said, “You’re awake? Perfect. Come into a room with me.”
“What are you trying to do?” roared the big, loudmouthed brute.
Pei Liang glanced back at them and gave a derisive laugh. “After a robbery, a bandit drags a young, beautiful person off to a room.”
“What do you think I’m going to do?”
“...”
The entire group of bandits was dumbfounded.
