The worst-case scenario Zhou Rong had envisioned finally happened. He stood on the factory roof, lowered his military-grade binoculars, and gazed thoughtfully at the horizon.

The autumn sky was long and clear, stretching for miles as if washed clean.

In the distance, T City was a scene of devastation, like a giant tomb between heaven and earth.

“National shortwave radio is down, communication with the base is cut off, and no one is responding to our positioning signals. A whole week has passed. The B Military Region must have fallen, yet no nukes have come to cleanse it…”

Zhou Rong muttered, “What’s going on?”

The sound of someone climbing the iron ladder came from behind him. A nonchalant voice said, “Perhaps all the military regions capable of launching nuclear missiles have fallen. Even the most solid fortress can’t withstand collapse from within—you know that, don't you.”

“Yan Hao,” Zhou Rong said seriously, “If you keep imitating Si Nan’s tone, I’ll punch you. For real.”

Yan Hao chuckled and handed him a cigarette.

“Yo,” Zhou Rong was a bit surprised, “You still have some left?”

“A gift from the masses.”

“The People's Liberation Army can’t take so much as a single needle or thread from the masses…”

“The People's Liberation Army stands guard and moves gas canisters for the masses. Taking a cigarette won't get you punished. Just smoke it.”

The autumn wind was bleak, the sky vast and the land distant. Zhou Rong and Yan Hao stood facing each other, smoking for a while. In the factory's front yard below, the men were gathered together installing barbed wire, working with great gusto. The women were feeding chickens and planting vegetables, chatting from time to time.

Zhou Rong flicked his ash and said, “In a couple of days, once the defensive construction is done, I’ll go to the B Military Region alone to check things out. You all wait for my news.”

Yan Hao immediately frowned. “Are you crazy? Do you know how big B City is? Where are you going to get a helicopter?”

“…”

“If the B Military Region has fallen, that means hundreds of thousands of Zombies are crammed into the shelter. Do you have a death wish or something?”

With the cigarette between his fingers, Zhou Rong stroked his chin. After a long moment, he finally said, “I think something is strange. How did this virus start, how will it develop, and why could even the heavily defended B Military Region fall? I wouldn't believe you if you told me the shelter didn't have a strict quarantine entry system. But if every survivor who entered the shelter was quarantined, then why did the virus still break out from the inside?”

“Unless,” Zhou Rong said in a low voice, “the virus has mutated and can evade all known quarantine methods, just like those nurses in T City who got infected without being bitten.”

A sudden chill rose in Yan Hao's heart.

Zhou Rong said, “From a greater perspective, we are the most elite, most formidable, and most classified special forces squad in the entire North China Region. We’re also the team closest to B City right now. If even we hesitate to move forward, then no one will ever know what truly happened in the B Military Region.”

“On a smaller scale, if we don’t figure out the direction of the virus's mutation, our little shelter won’t be able to hold out for long either—how can any egg remain unbroken when the nest is overturned? We’re so close to B City, how could we possibly just hide away in a corner?”

“…” Yan Hao was silent for a long time before finally conceding, “You have a point.”

Zhou Rong gave a gentlemanly shrug and stubbed out his cigarette.

Yan Hao thought for another moment, then shook his head. “But you can’t go alone, it’s too dangerous. We need an action plan…”

“We?” Zhou Rong let out a laugh. “What, all of us go together? Then what about these thirty-odd people, young and old, plus a pregnant woman? Who will protect them?”

Yan Hao was about to say something when suddenly, not far away, a person carrying a box crossed the backyard and happened to look up at the factory roof.

—It was Si Nan.

Si Nan had found a researcher's white lab coat from the Fertilizer Plant's laboratory. He wore goggles and gloves, with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing long, strong arms.

He carried a reagent case on his shoulder, standing in the open area and looking at Zhou Rong and Yan Hao from a distance. After a few seconds, he gave a slight smile.

Then, without a word, he turned and left.

“…” Zhou Rong poked Yan Hao, saying in astonishment, “Have you noticed he’s been avoiding us these past few days?”

There was no answer from his side.

Zhou Rong turned his head to see Yan Hao leap off the roof in a few bounds, landing nimbly, and chasing straight after Si Nan.

Zhou Rong stuck the cigarette butt in his mouth, chewed on it slowly for a moment, and gave a self-deprecating smile.

He squatted by the edge of the roof, dazed for a bit, then scratched his hair and suddenly yelled at the top of his lungs, “Cao'er—!”

Chuncao’s voice rang out from the chicken coop, “What—!”

“What are you doing—!”

“Feeding the chickens—!”

“Dad will help you feed them!” Zhou Rong perked up, hopped off the roof with a whoosh, clapped his hands, and went over.

·

“What is this, nitrocellulose?” Yan Hao asked, standing in the open area with a frown.

In the small open space in front of the rear factory building, Si Nan spread out a cloth. Using tweezers, he took out damp cotton from the reagent case, carefully spread it flat on the cloth, and casually replied with an English word, “Dispersoid.”

“…” Yan Hao asked, “Did you mean to say ‘dispersed phase’?”

Si Nan: “?”

The two looked at each other for a few seconds, and Si Nan asked back, “Isn’t that what I just said?”

“You said ‘Dispersoid’.”

A momentary blankness appeared in Si Nan’s eyes, then he recovered and said perfunctorily, “You heard wrong.”

He got up and moved to the other corner of the plastic sheet to continue spreading the cotton.

Dispersoid wasn’t a common English word. To be able to say it so casually meant that this person either had good English or a considerable level of expertise in chemistry—Yan Hao’s gaze unconsciously held a hint of inquiry, but he didn’t show it. He smiled and asked, “Are you trying to make a nitroglycerin bomb?”

“Yeah,” Si Nan said without looking up. “I’ll give it a try. The purity of the nitric acid I found isn’t high, so I’m afraid the nitrogen content in the nitrocellulose won’t be enough for it to detonate, but making incendiary bombs is feasible.”

Yan Hao’s mouth hung open silently. He nodded, and finally couldn’t resist asking, “What exactly did you do before?”

“What do you think?” Si Nan asked back.

Yan Hao pondered for a long time before admitting, “I can’t guess. With your skills, you must have been professionally trained, right? A high-level bodyguard or someone from the public security system? If it’s the latter, it’s possible you’d have contact with chemical explosives, but that would have to be a mid-to-high-level professional in a related field. At your age…”

Yan Hao sized up Si Nan. He looked quite young; he could pass for twenty-five or twenty-six, but also didn’t look out of place in his early twenties.

Someone this young who could shoot, drive well, and also make explosives—it brought one type of person to mind and no other—

A terrorist.

Yan Hao’s eyelids instantly started twitching violently. He asked tentatively, “…You’re not religious, are you?”

Si Nan was baffled. “What religion?”

Si Nan carefully laid out the last bit of nitrocellulose, ensuring the entire plastic sheet was kept out of direct sunlight to air-dry naturally. Then he got up and went back into the rear factory building, which he had personally converted into a sealed laboratory.

Yan Hao wanted to follow him in, but he had just taken a step when Si Nan, as if he had eyes in the back of his head, ordered, “Stay.”

Yan Hao had no choice but to stop.

A few minutes later, Si Nan pushed the door open and came out, setting down a cardboard box he was holding. Inside was a dropper, a sheet of white paper, a hammer, and the leather motorcycle jacket and helmet he had brought from T City. Before Yan Hao could ask what he was doing, Si Nan waved his hand, signaling him to stay back.

Si Nan took off his white coat, removed his goggles, and put on the motorcycle jacket and helmet, zipping it up to his chin. After he was completely covered, he used the dropper to draw up the solution from the test tube and carefully dripped one drop onto the white paper.

Then he set the paper down, picked up the hammer, and took a deep breath.

Just then, at the entrance of the distant chicken coop, a rooster, for some unknown reason, shot out with a frantic squawk and came flapping towards the open space—

Zhou Rong lunged after it, shouting angrily, “Don’t run!”

Bang!

Si Nan smashed the hammer down on the white paper. The nitroglycerin reacted violently, causing a stunning explosion in an instant!

The high detonation velocity of 7500 m/s produced a blinding flash of light. Yan Hao had no time to react, only feeling a force rush towards him, and he was thrown back several steps!

Thud! The rooster splattered blood and fell from the sky.

“Si Nan!”

Si Nan had fallen to the ground. Yan Hao rushed forward and helped him up. The white paper had already turned to ash, and a bowl-sized crater had appeared at their feet, with fine dust and sand scattered everywhere.

Yan Hao had never in his life met someone so willing to risk their life for science. He pointed at the crater, speechless for a long moment. Si Nan lifted his cracked motorcycle helmet and let out a long breath. “You were asking me what religion I believe in?”

“…” Yan Hao said, “N-nothing.”

“Comrades,” Zhou Rong said ominously from behind them.

Both of them turned around. The yard was a mess of chicken feathers. Zhou Rong stood there, his hands covered in blood, holding a big rooster with a twisted neck and bulging eyes, clearly dead.

“I have no problem with your scientific experiments, but considering this was the only male in the chicken coop…” He dangled the rooster’s head in front of Si Nan and Yan Hao, and said coldly, “Congratulations, the chicken flock's reproduction plan has officially been aborted.”

Si Nan covered his nose and asked, “Can we have fried chicken tonight?”

·

There was no fried chicken that night, but there was stir-fried shredded chicken with pickled vegetables. Everyone in the shelter got a small spoonful.

“There’s not enough fried chicken to go around,” Zhou Rong explained to Si Nan, adding a solemn warning, “I hope you won’t resort to testing nitroglycerin at the chicken coop entrance every day for your own selfish desires. We still need the eggs.”

He scooped the shredded chicken from his own bowl into Si Nan’s. From the other side of the round table, Guo Weixiang, picking at the chicken bones in his bowl, suddenly let out a long sigh. “Sigh—it would be so great to be a rooster in my next life.”

Chuncao said curiously, “Did you take the wrong medicine, Xiangzi?”

“What do you know? If I were born a rooster, I could have at least twenty hens and sit around every day enjoying them fighting over me. But what if I was unlucky enough to be born an Alpha?”

Guo Weixiang picked up a chicken rib and gazed at it with an otherworldly expression. “According to the current ABO sex ratio, you’d have to fight twenty other Alphas until you’re black and blue just for one Omega. If you’re a Beta, you have even less of a chance. It’s hard enough to find a Beta girl to marry and have kids with, and you can forget about an Omega. At this rate, being gay is a more realistic option…”

Chuncao said, “That line of thinking is a bit dangerous, comrade. Don’t give up on life so easily, okay?”

“Being gay isn’t some terrifying monster. If this virus continues, the future of humanity will be gay. But speaking of which, if I were to go for it, I definitely wouldn’t choose the captain…”

Zhou Rong: “?”

“Yan Hao is a good choice.” Guo Weixiang thought for a moment, then rejected his own idea. “Too bad Yan Hao is too sturdy. If he keeps developing like this, sooner or later he’ll turn into a King Kong Barbie, what if…”

Yan Hao heard his name and turned his head from another table. “What are you talking about?”

Chuncao laughed. “Xiangzi is discussing the possibility of getting with you.”

Yan Hao looked like he’d heard a joke. He pointed at himself, then at Guo Weixiang. “—Who does who? Wanna give it a try tonight, buddy?”

Guo Weixiang frantically raised his hands in surrender, then suddenly spotted Si Nan at the other side of the table and quickly said, “Right, we can go for Si Nan!”

Si Nan lifted one eye over the rim of his rice bowl and stared coldly at Guo Weixiang.

Comrade Xiangzi laughed heartily and slung an arm around Si Nan’s shoulder, but unfortunately, not many people at the table played along. Only Zhou Rong chimed in with interest, “Xiangzi, stop messing around. Our Comrade Xiao Si looks down on you.”

Guo Weixiang let out a surprised “Eh?” and asked, “Really?”

Si Nan’s response was to remove his hand from his shoulder, inch by inch. The movement was unhurried but the force was undeniable. He said, “Being a Beta is great, better than being an Alpha. Don’t sell yourself short.”

Guo Weixiang smiled and was about to say something, but then he heard Si Nan add casually:

“If you guys weren’t Betas, I might have regretted taking such a big risk to save you back in T City.”

Guo Weixiang’s words, "But we're not Betas," got stuck in his throat, making him feel like he’d swallowed an egg whole.

The special forces soldiers around the table stared at each other, wide-eyed. Si Nan picked up a shred of potato with his chopsticks and suddenly realized the atmosphere was too quiet. “What’s wrong?”

“…” Zhou Rong slowly said, “Comrade Xiao Si, did you just say something? I always thought you were a gender egalitarian…”

Si Nan laughed. “Who’s a gender egalitarian? I’ve never been one. I’ve always looked down on Alphas.”

After a heart-stopping silence, Yan Hao finally voiced a solemn question, “Why?”

“They’re too much trouble, I guess,” Si Nan said after a moment’s thought, his tone flat. “A lot of Alphas these days are very weak; you have to spend energy protecting them when there’s danger. And there's that deep-rooted chauvinism in Alphas… Although they’re said to be the most genetically superior humans, in reality, it’s just that their animalistic nature hasn’t fully evolved.”

He finished the last bite of rice in his bowl, put down his chopsticks, and said with surprise, “I’m full. Aren’t you guys eating?”

Under his suspicious gaze, everyone at the table remained silent for a long time, neither speaking nor moving.

After a long while, Zhou Rong finally coughed and explained, “We… don’t have much of an appetite today.”

Dinner ended in an indescribable, dead silence. Even Chuncao couldn’t finish her third bowl of rice.

Since setting up camp at the Fertilizer Plant, two special forces soldiers and ten men would patrol and stand guard every night. The others would exercise, train, learn combat skills in the courtyard, and check the barbed wire and warning systems around the factory.

However, for some reason, Captain Zhou and Vice-Captain Yan, who were teaching everyone combat skills, seemed listless tonight. They wrapped things up early at nine-thirty and told everyone to go wash up and rest. The men, women, and children in the courtyard headed in small groups towards the dorms behind the factory. A few of the younger men still wanted to pester Zhou Rong with questions when suddenly the sharp screech of tires grinding violently against the road surface sounded in the distance.

Zhou Rong whipped his head around.

Outside the factory grounds, in the dark of night, an inconspicuous danger was drawing closer, bringing with it an air of agitation and unease.

Clang!

The rear factory door was pushed open. Si Nan hurriedly took off his goggles, the hem of his white lab coat flying as he walked. He said in a grave voice, “North side, entrance to the Industrial Zone, one o’clock direction, eight hundred meters away.”

Zhou Rong focused his mind, his senses spreading out in all directions. Suddenly, his pupils constricted slightly—

“Rong-ge!” Chuncao slid down from a tree with a swoosh and came sprinting over like an arrow. “A container truck has overturned on the north road! There are more than ten survivors, attracting a huge number of Zombies!”

“Rough estimate, there are over a hundred Zombies nearby, and they’re following them this way!”