RIACMET chapter 108

 

After resolving the major issue that had weighed on his mind since the beginning of the apocalypse, Jiang Nian felt as if a heavy burden had been lifted, allowing him to turn a new page.

Even if a salted fish flips over, it’s still a salted fish.

At least he could relax for a while before revealing that purification worked against the zombie virus.

“…”

After reviewing everything that had happened, the two leaned against each other and chatted for a long time. Cheng Jing sighed.

“Minister Wang’s attitude toward us is really a calculation of pros and cons. Zhou Li, Yang Kai, and Li Sheng all contributed to that.”

Jiang Nian nodded.

“Right, I know. I should thank them properly later and set aside some good things for them.”

He was someone who remembered favors. If others showed him even a little respect, he would return it in kind.

After thinking about it, he turned to look at his boyfriend with a serious expression, then started teasing him.

“I think Zhou Li and Yang Kai must have praised you to the sky, especially Yang Kai. I heard from Sister Qian that he likes you. I thought he was just a fake love rival, but it turns out he’s the real deal. Hahaha…”

The black knight that Yang Kai had given him was already in his spatial ring. Not many people could be so friendly with their love rivals, treating them like brothers.

He had even asked Yang Kai about it himself. One afternoon, while Brother Jing’s team was out on a mission, Yang Kai came to his shop to buy something. They got to chatting.

Yang Kai had admitted very frankly; his exact words were:

“I heard that Brother Cheng already had a lover and that breaking up with them was like losing a life partner. I thought maybe we could warm each other up. But the day he came back from the hotel, he said his lost partner had been resurrected. He doesn’t like men. No one but you could do it.”

“Pretending to be a couple was a strategy that the authorities and the corporate headquarters agreed on, but even so, the furthest Brother Cheng would go was holding hands and occasionally leaning on me to light a cigarette as a signal.”

“It was only thanks to my professionalism that I could help him add a little drama.”

“…”

At first, Jiang Nian hadn’t minded the pretend relationship—after all, it was just a job. But after hearing what Yang Kai had said, his feelings became a bit complicated.

He might have seemed more active on the surface when they were together, but Brother Jing was never ambiguous when it came to matters of principle and never made him feel insecure.

Now, he truly thought of Yang Kai as a brother.

More importantly, Yang Kai had his own white moonlight, but that person was gone forever, unlike Jiang Nian.

“…”

Cheng Jing could already picture Huang Qian enthusiastically gossiping about him and Yang Kai to Jiang Nian, and he wanted to strangle her from afar.

She must still be holding a grudge because he laughed at her.

After taking a few deep breaths, Cheng Jing denied it three times in a row:

“No! Don’t listen to that nonsense! Yang Kai and I are just partners!”

His innocence was clear for everyone to see!

Jiang Nian became even more excited and teased him mischievously:

“Are you anxious? Feeling guilty? No way, Brother Jing.”

Jealousy without reason didn’t exist. It was perfectly fine to tease your boyfriend, especially when he looked as handsome as Brother Jing did when he was serious and flustered.

“… ”

Exasperated, Cheng Jing lowered his head and bit her neck.

“Stop talking nonsense.”

Why was he so nervous? Why was he in such a hurry to explain?

“Hiss… I’m sweaty. Don’t bite, and don’t leave a mark on my neck. I have to go out tomorrow…”

Jiang Nian took a sharp breath and pushed him away, saying there was no need to rush. Still, he was getting bitten.

Cheng Jing took the opportunity to lean in again and bite his neck.

“What does it matter? Everyone knows we’re together.”

Even if he wasn’t allowed to, he insisted on leaving a mark!

“…”

Jiang Nian gave up resisting and patted him on the head after he finally had enough of the biting.

“All right, let’s get back to the main topic. So, you agreed to Minister Wang? What suggestions did you give him?”

Cheng Jing looked at the bright red mark on his neck, feeling completely satisfied and calm.

“I asked him to give me some time. They want to hear my advice, but I want to hear yours first. After all, you’re the real strategist here.”

He wouldn’t have accepted any of that credit if it weren’t for the need to protect someone.

“Hehe!”

Jiang Nian accepted the praise, thought seriously for a moment, and then said,

“All right, then. Let’s offer them some suggestions. This is our apocalypse headquarters, after all. If we have a chance to take the initiative, we should use it. It benefits everyone.”

Cheng Jing agreed.

“Yeah, I was thinking the same.”

“…”

Jiang Nian recalled the situation he’d learned about from Chen Yue and the others in his previous life. He continued,

“In the future, every base will compete for resources. Any base that’s not strong enough will have less of a voice. Even though South City Base is pretty strong, still…”

“In the previous life, after Base S discovered the antidote serum, they became the top base and attracted a lot of talent. The other bases had to trade many resources for research intel, and they sent as many infected people as possible to Base S.”

He didn’t know the details, only that it had been something like that.

He hadn’t thought much about it before, but looking back now, he felt that Base S’s actions were full of ulterior motives.

First, Xia Weiwei’s father’s expertise in superpowers was so abnormal that it made people uneasy.

Second, they claimed to have achieved a “breakthrough” in their research on the antidote serum, but they never revealed exactly what that meant.

In that situation, wasn’t it basically the same as gathering all the infected people to be test subjects?

Looking at the situation now, even though Base S was at the same stage as the other bases, it was already showing its dominance by reaching into everything and using disgraceful tactics to interfere with South City Base.

It’s easy to imagine how easily they’d control the smaller bases.

In his previous life, he followed Chen Yue’s family to the central district of Base Z and thought Xia Weiwei and Chen Yue were close and that the rich girl was in love. But now, he realized that wasn’t the case at all.

“…”

Seeing him deep in thought, Cheng Jing took over the conversation.

“In the last life, Base S got those brain-powered evolvers. Because of that, they made breakthroughs in all kinds of critical experiments faster than everyone else. This time is different.”

Jiang Nian nodded.

“Brother Jing, what do you think we should do? The brain-powered evolvers haven’t arrived at the base yet.”

The butterfly effect was causing situations to drift farther and farther away, and the value of his memories was decreasing by the day.

To prevent things from getting worse, he had to slowly start letting go of his reliance on those memories.

“… ”

Cheng Jing thought very seriously for a moment before asking,

“In the last life, didn’t you say that Base S first researched the method for converting zombie cores into usable energy?”

Jiang Nian nodded. “Yeah.”

“Then let’s remind the researchers in our base about this first so we can take the lead. It can also be something the non-brain evolvers can work on.”

Cheng Jing spoke with a grave expression.

“As long as we can harness the energy of zombie cores, everything will become much easier, and our research in this field will be like finding a master key.”

Once experiments to convert ordinary zombie core energy were successful, researchers would certainly start studying the cores of superpowered zombies to figure out how to access their superpowers.

The outcome would naturally be that people would learn early on that superpowered cores could be transplanted.

Superpowered cores could be transplanted, giving ordinary people artificial superpowers and massively improving humanity’s fighting capacity.

If this was done early enough, the antidote serum would surely be developed sooner, and, in the end, there would be a good chance that the apocalypse could end much earlier.