RIACMET chapter 26

 

The lives of the two people living together day and night were very orderly. Any deviation, no matter how small, could be noticed without either of them saying anything.

Jiang Nian was cooking soup. After more than ten minutes, he noticed that the bathroom was quiet and that no one had come out. He turned down the heat and went to knock on the bathroom door.

“Brother Jing, are you done with your shower? Are you ready to eat?”

“Yes, in a moment.”

Cheng Jing’s voice was muffled. Jiang Nian wasn’t used to that, but he didn’t ask about it. The rescue team’s work wasn’t pleasant. They had to face life and death and human nature. They often encountered terrible things. It was normal for it to affect their mood.

Almost ten minutes later, Cheng Jing emerged from the bathroom wearing three-quarter-length shorts and with his upper body bare. He approached the person busy at the stove from behind and hugged them:

“Don’t rush to cook. Kiss me first.”

As he spoke, he turned the person around somewhat forcefully and lowered his head to bite him.

“Hmm~”

Jiang Nian was startled for a moment but soon calmed down and responded. His hands moved back and forth over his chest and abdominal muscles, and it felt amazing!

After the kiss, Cheng Jing took a deep breath and hugged him tightly.

“Niannian…”

“Brother Jing, what’s gotten into you all of a sudden?”

Jiang Nian panted with his chin resting on Cheng Jing’s shoulder like a thirsty fish. He wasn’t used to this sudden behavior.

Cheng Jing didn’t give a direct answer. Instead, he bent down and kissed the side of Jiang Nian’s face. In a low, hoarse voice, he said,

“I was afraid you’d disobey me and open the door to help someone else.”

Having seen the dark side of human nature after the apocalypse, he was anxious when he saw certain scenes, even though he knew Jiang Nian wouldn’t be overly kindhearted.

Jiang Nian smiled when he heard this and patted him on the back to comfort him.

“No, don’t worry. I’m a good boy. If you don’t let me out of the room, I won’t go to the living room.”

This guy must have encountered another situation of “being a good person and meeting a bad end” today—how pitiful.

Cheng Jing said nothing, his hot breath spraying Jiang Nian’s ear and neck and making him feel numb and itchy. Jiang Nian instinctively tilted his neck, and someone took advantage of that and bit him.

“Hmmm!”

Jiang Nian grimaced, hugged him for a while, then pushed the big dog away.

“You’ve been working all day. Let’s eat first.”

If this kept up, he wouldn’t need food; he’d just eat the person. Who could resist a macho man acting like a spoiled child?

“Okay.”

Cheng Jing let him go and walked out of the kitchen to set the table.

Jiang Nian blushed and turned to turn off the heat and plate the dishes. He felt a little annoyed.

He’s like this even before dinner. I wonder if he can resist temptation?

If he weren’t hungry, he’d teach his boyfriend a lesson right there in the kitchen. There were plenty of things and little space—the perfect place to hone his skills.

After dinner, Jiang Nian was about to clean up, but Cheng Jing took the dishes from him. He went straight to take a shower.

When he came out of the bathroom, Cheng Jing had already cleaned up and taken the trash out to the hallway. He stood by the sofa with a clean towel in his hand and pulled Jiang Nian over to wipe his hair.

Jiang Nian sat cross-legged on the sofa, his abs visible, showing fine, beautiful lines. He shook his head slightly and asked,

“We’ve kissed and eaten. Now, tell me why you were in such a bad mood.”

As he spoke, his hand naturally touched the flesh close to him. Damn, he’s all muscle! Why does Brother Jing feel so good to the touch?

Cheng Jing was used to being touched by him. After wiping his hair for a bit, he sat down and said,

“There’s a community near the Xincheng East Ring Road with three households on one floor. One family bought two units across from each other and colluded to trick the newlyweds next door into opening their door. They killed the couple to steal their supplies. The pregnant woman was killed, and two lives were lost… just because they knew she had a lot of eggs and meat at home.”

“In another community, there was a family of five. A few days ago, the husband killed his wife and three children, threw their bodies out of the building, and continued collecting supplies for five people. We only found out after neighbors reported it. The man wouldn’t admit it, saying his wife took the kids out and died.”

“…”

When he said that last part, Cheng Jing gritted his teeth in anger. They acted together with official personnel, but they were still powerless. Some people without a base even volunteered to be arrested so that they wouldn’t have to face zombies and could still get food. Ridiculous!

He wanted to throw those people into a pile of zombies, but the rescue teams couldn’t hurt civilians at will. Fighting evil with evil and letting murder go unpunished without due process would lead to an even bigger cycle of violence. Some people had already started doing this, resulting in greater chaos and harming more innocent people. Harsh punishments in difficult times would be counterproductive.

There weren’t enough official staff, and many strategies were still in the trial-and-error stage. There wasn’t even a proper punishment mechanism for those who took advantage of the chaos to commit crimes. They were only listed as key monitoring targets. This was the most frustrating thing.

Jiang Nian sighed helplessly and shook his head.

“With the rise of selfishness, human nature has no foundation, and more and more things like this will happen in the future.”

Having experienced it himself — having been tortured and killed by his relatives — there was no ripple in his heart.

Order had collapsed, and morality had decayed. The entire environment tested human nature, but human nature could never withstand the test.

All they could do was pray that the zombies would defeat such trash soon.

‘I know, but I just feel unhappy,'”

Cheng Jing said, rubbing his face in frustration. Although death was common during the apocalypse, most people could accept zombies killing and eating people. However, they couldn’t accept ordinary people killing each other. That was the reason.

To him, this should be an instinct engraved in human genes through evolution. If people became like this at the start of the apocalypse, how were they different from low-level animals?

“Normal people wouldn’t be happy facing these things, but this chaos can’t be stopped now. Normal order will gradually be restored once we enter the shelter base. For now, we can only rely on ourselves.”

Jiang Nian said this, thinking of the punishments the base had given to those who made mistakes in his previous life:

They were made to wear shackles while doing infrastructure construction on the outermost parts of the base. They received limited food and no rewards. Minor offenses were punished with prison terms, and major offenses like murder resulted in life imprisonment and hard labor. If they died, they were expelled from the base immediately, and no one would pity them.

“Ding dong—”

Cheng Jing received a message on his phone from the command center regarding how to deal with situations in which relatives harm each other and falsely claim supplies.

The command center issued a new rule: From now on, supplies must be handed directly to the intended recipient and cannot be collected by family members. If the person was not present, the supplies would be taken back.

This was a reasonable measure and the only way to prevent fraudulent supply claims.

After confirming the message, Cheng Jing put his phone away and tossed it aside. He picked up Jiang Nian, who was still thinking, and walked back to the bedroom.

“Forget all that and go to sleep.”

He would never bring such negative emotions home again.

Jiang Nian saw through his thoughts and tapped his chest with his finger.

“It’s still early. Are you going to sleep?”

“It’s time for me to finish cleaning you up.”

Cheng Jing said as he put him on the bed and pressed him beneath him.

“Brother Jing is handsome even when acting like a gangster.”

Jiang Nian smiled. He liked a man who took the initiative.

Cheng Jing grabbed his hand and kissed it.

“Of course, you have to trust your own judgment. After all, you worked so hard to chase me.”

This man was attracted to him for his looks. He was happy that he was handsome.

After Cheng Jing kissed him, Jiang Nian’s laughter turned into a long, low moan.