LCFM Chapter 52

When the sunlight slightly dimmed, Zhu Gaofei directed everyone to start reinforcing the iron fence around the villa.

“Add another layer on top,” Zhu Gaofei said, carrying a box of water as he walked, handing bottles to the men working. “Hurry up. Tonight’s dinner will have extra portions.”

Kang Cheng had left at six in the morning with his three men, heading for the signal tower.

Now, at half past five in the afternoon, no news had arrived.

No successful signal gun, no distress signal gun.

Although there was no news, perhaps that was the best news.

Yet Zhu Gaofei still felt uneasy.

Maybe it was because the place where they fired shells yesterday to rescue Jiang Xinghuai wasn’t far from here.

He feared the monsters might come at the sound.

“Brother Zhu!” A shout broke Zhu Gaofei’s thoughts.

“What’s wrong?” Zhu Gaofei turned to look.

“That side is too high. It can’t bear our weight. None of us can get up,” Da Chun wiped the sweat from his forehead and jumped down from the car roof.

“Huai’er!” Zhu Gaofei shouted in the direction of the house.

A few seconds passed.

The second-floor window was pushed open.

“Hey!” Jiang Xinghuai bit into a chicken leg and responded.

“Come help me!” Zhu Gaofei pointed at the iron fence, half-suspended at a height.

“On my way.” Jiang Xinghuai finished off the chicken leg in two or three bites, then climbed out of the window, maneuvering as he jumped down.

“Tools.” Zhu Gaofei handed him a tool bag and said, “Just tie it tight.”

“Got it.” Jiang Xinghuai took the tool bag, placed the chicken bone in Zhu Gaofei’s hand, and casually wiped the grease from his hands on Zhu Gaofei’s stomach.

“Hey! Hey!” Zhu Gaofei, feeling distressed, quickly patted the only unscathed designer T-shirt he had, jumped up in frustration, and shouted angrily, “It’s not mealtime! Who gave you that chicken leg! Who gave it to him!”

“Fu Yan gave it! What’s the matter!” Jiang Xinghuai, holding onto the fence with one hand and tugging open the bag with his teeth in the other, laughed boldly down below.

As dusk approached, the wind picked up, blowing the boy’s hair back to reveal a smooth forehead.

Zhu Gaofei froze. He hadn’t seen this smile in a long time.

Suddenly, he felt that Jiang Xinghuai had changed quite a lot. He had returned to the Jiang Xinghuai he had known since childhood.

The lost, reckless Jiang Xinghuai, who had been rebellious and self-destructive, was gone.

It was as if a crooked young bamboo had been straightened again. Somewhere out of sight, by someone unknown, it had been corrected, standing upright with chest out and head held high.

“Handsome idiot!” Jiang Xinghuai jumped down after finishing his work, laughing as he playfully slapped Zhu Gaofei’s stomach, who was frozen in place.

“You little bastard.” Zhu Gaofei laughed and scolded, charmed by his small white teeth flashing in the sunlight. “Come on, let’s go eat. Where’s your Dad Fu? Tell him to come down for dinner.”

“He’s checking on Old Geng’s health with Zheng Yi. He said he’ll eat later,” Jiang Xinghuai said, wrapping his arm around Zhu Gaofei as they hopped toward the dining area. “What’s for dinner today? Is there steak?”

“Oh, my little darling, steak, huh?” Zhu Gaofei patted his back. “Get real. Today we’re eating potatoes.”

“Then I’m not eating—” Jiang Xinghuai said, turning to walk away, but failed. “Hey! What are you doing! Put me down! Do you hear me! Hey, hey, hey! Don’t throw me, don’t throw me! I’ll eat, I’ll eat!”

Jiang Xinghuai struggled wildly in midair as Zhu Gaofei held him up.

By the time everyone finished dinner, it was past six o’clock.

The sun had mostly set, painting the distant sky with beautiful pale pink clouds stretching across the horizon.

Fu Yan took off his mask and removed the instruments from Teacher Geng.

“Should be fine now.” Zheng Yi helped Teacher Geng up. “Thank you for your hard work.”

“No, no, it’s not hard work. You guys are the ones who worked hard,” Teacher Geng said with a smile, patting the hand resting on his arm, then turning to Fu Yan. “Just now, didn’t Xing Xing call for you outside the door?”

Fu Yan nodded. “Tattletale. He said his godfather hit him. I ignored it, and then he left on his own.”

As he spoke, he went over and pushed the door open. Outside were three insulated lunch boxes, two small ones and one large.

A note was stuck on top.

The handwriting was ugly, crooked, and messy.

“The large one is for Old Geng.”

“Oh—” Teacher Geng got out of bed and walked over, eyes crinkling with a smile. “Xing Xing’s handwriting has improved!”

“Yes.” Fu Yan smiled and nodded, stepping out. “You guys eat first.”

Fu Yan walked around and found Jiang Xinghuai on the lookout tower, face tense, holding a telescope seriously and staring into the distance.

Fu Yan sighed, climbed up, and took the telescope from him. “You won’t see anything. Kang Cheng and the others went pretty far.”

“The city university isn’t that far from us either,” Jiang Xinghuai exhaled and looked back at Fu Yan, pausing in surprise. “You shaved.”

Fu Yan nodded.

Jiang Xinghuai reached out to touch his chin and suddenly said, “I want to shave, too.”

Fu Yan looked down, pinched his chin to examine it, and laughed. “You don’t have any beard yet.”

There was only a faint circle of tiny fuzz around Jiang Xinghuai’s mouth, very light in color, almost invisible.

“I’m developing just fine,” Jiang Xinghuai said, feeling embarrassed as he lowered his head and touched his mouth. “Hair is genetic, I guess. My dad didn’t have much of a beard either. I asked him before. He didn’t grow one until he was twenty. I’m close, though, I’ll be able to shave soon.”

“You kid.” Fu Yan laughed at that and bent down to kiss him.

Jiang Xinghuai looked up at him sideways. “That’s it?”

“What?” Fu Yan asked.

“Just one kiss,” Jiang Xinghuai frowned. “Why aren’t your hands on my butt?”

Fu Yan: “…………”

Jiang Xinghuai: “I’m already an adult. Isn’t it time to do what adults are supposed to do?”

Fu Yan: “…………”

Fu Yan cleared his throat. “You—”

“What is that!” Jiang Xinghuai suddenly pointed toward the distance and grabbed the telescope to look that way.

Fu Yan turned his head and saw a small van driving along the distant road toward them.

“Hurry!” Jiang Xinghuai shouted to the men on duty below. “Call Fei Ge over! Someone’s coming this way!”

In less than half a minute, Zhu Gaofei rushed over in a panic, holding toilet paper in one hand and the pants he had just taken off in the restroom in the other. “What’s going on?”

“A small van is driving this way,” Jiang Xinghuai said.

“The car is stable, turning correctly. The people inside seem normal,” Fu Yan added.

“Any infected following them?” Zhu Gaofei asked.

“No.” Jiang Xinghuai looked again at the area behind the van to confirm, then shook his head. “No one’s following.”

“Da Chun, take your team out and set up a roadblock 100 meters away to stop them,” Zhu Gaofei quickly issued instructions. “Everyone else, grab your weapons and stay inside. Watch my signal.”

Five minutes later, the small van came into view. Da Chun made a stop gesture, but the van didn’t slow down.

“Stop!” Zhu Gaofei shouted a warning.

The van still didn’t slow.

Bang!

Zhu Gaofei directly raised his gun, aimed at the car’s side mirror, and fired a shot, giving a final warning: “Stop the car!”

The van swerved, and the screeching of brakes pierced the air. The whole vehicle came to a sideways stop about ten meters from the roadblock.

The dust stirred by the van settled, and the air grew quiet.

One second…

Two seconds…

Three seconds…

The vehicle didn’t move at all.

Zhu Gaofei raised his hand, signaling everyone to stay alert. Then he stepped forward slowly toward the van.

Click—

At that moment, the driver’s side door suddenly opened.

The next second, a weary-looking young man wearing black-rimmed glasses stepped out, carrying an uneasy expression.

“Anyone infected?” Zhu Gaofei quickly scanned him, then lowered his gun.

The young man shook his head, looking at the armed group in front of him, and let out a sigh. “We’re all students from Nanda. None of us is infected. The classmates who were bitten… they walked away on their own.”

“We need to check,” Zhu Gaofei said.

“Everyone, get out.” The black-rimmed glasses called into the van.

The rear doors opened, and a few young men and women with exhausted and anxious expressions slowly stepped out of the vehicle.

Several of the girls got out of the van and sat directly on the ground, bursting into tears.

“We escaped from school, losing all the infected, except for one… a creature that looked like a skeleton, we just couldn’t shake it off. It ran fast and had incredible jumping ability,” the young man with black-rimmed glasses said, still visibly shaken, turning to point at a dent on the front of the van. “But fortunately, that monster was too fast and, by a stroke of luck, we accidentally ran it over and killed it.”

“Mutant,” Jiang Xinghuai frowned. He had encountered this type of infected before and knew how terrifying it was.

“Mutant?” the black-rimmed glasses boy asked in confusion. “Did you name this kind of creature, or did you get the information from some official government release?”

“Mutants are Level-2 infected, very rare, appearing where infected gather in large numbers. Their physical strength is astonishing, and the virus spreads in less than a second. Even a well-trained army, if caught off guard by one of these creatures, could be wiped out in an instant,” Fu Yan explained to Zhu Gaofei, then frowned. “We should send someone to check that mutant’s body.”

Zhu Gaofei nodded, quickly picking two people to drive in the direction indicated by the black-rimmed glasses boy.

The eight college students were all thoroughly checked and then led into a safe area secured by iron fencing.

Twenty minutes later, the two people who went to search for the mutant’s corpse returned.

“The body is gone,” the patrolling man said.

“That’s impossible. We ran that creature into a wall,” the black-rimmed glasses boy exclaimed, standing in shock. “I was worried it wasn’t fully dead, so I ran it over a couple more times. What does it mean that the body is gone now?”

It meant that the mutant, a creature with incredibly strong infectious abilities, was now somewhere less than a twenty-minute distance from them.

“Raise the alert immediately. Get everyone who is outside to go inside. Ordinary iron fences won’t stop a mutant,” Fu Yan said without hesitation.

Zhu Gaofei stood up with a grim expression and quickly headed outside, giving orders as he went: “Initiate Level-1 alert immediately. Women, children, and the elderly, all get inside the villa. The rest start 24-hour continuous patrols until—”

“…until Kang Cheng and the others return,” Zhu Gaofei paused in his steps. “Of course, that would be the best outcome.”

Everyone without patrol duties retreated into the villa under the remaining rays of the sun.

Doors were shut tight, windows locked.

As time slowly passed, the sun sank, and night fell like a massive black cloth draping over everything.

This small safe zone, surrounded by thin iron fencing, breathed quietly in the darkness, trying its best to stay hidden.

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