Jiang Yanxin shifted Chen Wan into her arms, letting her rest against her while she thought it through. "So we're both mental-type?"
"Yes, both of you. And — this is a classroom office, isn't it? Look around quickly for anything with illustrations. If you and Chen Wan take turns using your abilities, you should be able to get us to the sixth floor. You just need something you can actually materialize from." Yi Yi said it briskly, already moving.
Jiang Yanxin nodded. The Greek mythology paintings were back on the third floor — there was no going back for those.
Yi Yi and Qin Ke went through every book stacked on the barricaded desks. They found landscape prints, art theory textbooks, several volumes on painting techniques — none of it useful to Jiang Yanxin. Qin Ke moved to the drawers next, not finding anything immediately helpful, but turning up several sealed packets of biscuits and a tin of mixed nuts.
She distributed some to Jiang Yanxin and set some aside for Chen Wan, then tore open a packet for herself and kept searching while she ate.
Jiang Yanxin nibbled at a biscuit too. The mental energy drain had left her genuinely hungry. Between bites, she reached out and touched Chen Wan's cheek gently, a small furrow forming between her brows. She had been the one who lost consciousness later, and she'd already been awake for a while — why was Chen Wan still under?
Yi Yi caught the look. "She'll be fine. Her mental energy reserves simply aren't as large as yours yet, so she needs more recovery time. She'll wake up soon."
Jiang Yanxin accepted this with a small nod, though her eyes kept drifting back to Chen Wan's face.
"There's something here." Qin Ke pulled a thick stack of art books from the middle drawer, flipping through them one by one, and actually found something. "This one."
Yi Yi leaned in. Her expression brightened immediately. "A collected works of the ancient Greek gods. Yanxin — take this."
Qin Ke passed the book over. Jiang Yanxin opened it and leafed through the pages. It was roughly A4-sized, filled with full illustrations of the twelve Olympian gods of Greek mythology. Something in her chest loosened with relief. With this in hand, she could materialize the figures inside and use them to clear the path ahead.
She was still studying the pages — assessing the primary abilities of each deity — when the person in her arms stirred. Chen Wan nuzzled against her shoulder and opened her eyes.
Jiang Yanxin asked immediately: "How do you feel? Still dizzy?"
Chen Wan shook her head, still slightly weak. "Not dizzy. Is everyone all right?"
"We're fine. Rest until you're ready — it's not even nine yet, we have time." Jiang Yanxin smiled at her.
Yi Yi picked up where she left off: "Yanxin's ability is active too now. You two can take turns clearing the way — between the two of you, we should be able to reach the sixth floor."
Chen Wan turned to look at Jiang Yanxin, voice still a little soft from sleep. "What's your ability? I didn't see."
Jiang Yanxin reached over and smoothed Chen Wan's hair back from her forehead, then smiled. "I can materialize things I've seen in books, illustrated collections, card art — that sort of thing. Just now I materialized Ares and had him clear the way for us."
Chen Wan stared at her. "That's — that's incredible. That's going to save us so much time."
"I think so too. We'll get to the sixth floor." Jiang Yanxin smiled back at her with quiet confidence.
Chen Wan rested a little longer, and then they began moving the furniture away from the door.
Yi Yi looked between the two of them. "Who's going first?"
"I will," Chen Wan said, drawing a slow breath. "When I reach my limit, Yanxin can take over."
She pushed the door open, and with a single thought, the fifty zombies nearest to her fell under her command, turning on their own kind. She had now lost consciousness twice, and the difference was already apparent — this time she could maintain control while simultaneously firing with precision, taking headshots at zombies the controlled ones hadn't reached.
Yi Yi moved with her characteristic tirelessness, fighting alongside the controlled zombies as they drove a corridor through the horde. Protected on three sides by the fifty zombies under Chen Wan's command, the group fought and clawed their way upward, floor by floor. Three minutes in, Chen Wan's expression began to tighten, and her footing grew unsteady — but she kept her teeth clenched and kept moving.
Jiang Yanxin kept one hand on Chen Wan while firing with the other. By the time they reached the landing between the fifth and sixth floors, Chen Wan finally gave out — she went limp into Jiang Yanxin's arms. This time, she had lasted five full minutes. Under her control, the fifty zombies had torn through a considerable portion of the horde, leaving the stairwell strewn with dismembered limbs.
Jiang Yanxin didn't hesitate. The moment Chen Wan went down, she flipped open the illustrated collection and triggered her ability. It happened quickly — she turned to a page at random, no time to be selective, and called forth whatever was on it.
A tall, golden-haired Western man appeared at her side. His features were striking, a carefully groomed beard falling in neat lines along his jaw. In one hand, he carried a spear of lightning. In the other, a shield.
Jiang Yanxin kept one arm around the unconscious Chen Wan and issued her command.
The tall man swept his spear in a single arc. Every zombie it touched began to convulse — their skin darkening, blackening, hardening — until they crumbled into charred pieces at the slightest contact.
The attacks coming toward Jiang Yanxin's group were deflected by the shield, and something came with the deflection — a wave of absolute dread that struck the zombies with a force their partial intelligence couldn't withstand. The creatures, who had fought without pause or fear, began stepping backward.
The figure was Zeus, king of the Greek gods, master of thunder and lightning. And this was barely the beginning of what he could do.
Jiang Yanxin had no intention of letting the remaining zombies retreat in peace. She commanded Zeus to clear the fifth and sixth floors entirely. It sounded like an enormous task. For Zeus, it was not. He swept his spear again — and arcs of electricity crackled outward, jumping from zombie to zombie through the dense clusters, burning through them in cascading chains. What started with one or two became dozens, then entire sections of the horde were reduced to blackened husks. On the sixth floor, those who remained turned and fled.
Jiang Yanxin transferred the unconscious Chen Wan into Yi Yi's arms, then directed Zeus upward to finish the sixth floor.
He swept his spear once more — lightly, almost casually — and the electricity came for the remaining zombies with quiet finality. They seized, they burned, they fell. When the ash settled, the only things left intact were the crystal cores inside their skulls. Everything else had become black powder.
Zeus lowered his spear and shield, pushed open the laboratory door for Jiang Yanxin, then turned and gave her a measured nod — and dissolved into the air.
From the moment Jiang Yanxin had summoned him to his departure, five minutes had passed. There was barely a sheen of sweat on her forehead. She had retained enough control to dismiss him properly rather than simply running out of energy and having him vanish mid-task. It was only the second time she had ever materialized anyone — and she had already pushed her threshold past five minutes with room to spare.
Yi Yi found herself quietly astonished. Jiang Yanxin's mental energy was stronger than she had calculated. It made sense, in retrospect — she was the original novel's female lead, and even after everything that had happened to her in that story, she had found a way to rise again. The difference was that in the original novel, her ability had been fire-type. Here, she had awakened something far rarer.
The group entered the android bioengineering laboratory. Yi Yi set Chen Wan down gently on the floor to continue resting while Qin Ke, out of habit and caution, piled every desk and chair she could find against the laboratory door.
Jiang Yanxin had recovered considerably by now. She looked around the lab and turned to Yi Yi. "What exactly do we need to take?"
Yi Yi swept the room with a practiced eye and started directing immediately. "Start with all the memory alloy over there — pack all of it. Those actuator motors, steering motors, controllers, sensory units, effectors, and chips — take everything. And the synthetic skin — every piece of it, bring it all. It still might not be enough. Qin Ke — strip the synthetic skin and motors from every completed android frame you can find. Then collect every cable and wire you can see. We'll start here and figure out the rest as we go — one trip probably won't cover everything."
"Got it." Qin Ke and Jiang Yanxin both knew what to look for now. They got to work.
Everyone was confident Chen Wan would be fine — she just needed time — so none of them spared her a second glance. Jiang Yanxin moved through the lab bundling synthetic skin into tight rolls with rope, stacking them in a clear area, then going back for more. Qin Ke worked methodically through the android frames — they were rough, unfinished things, more robotic than human, nothing like Yi Yi's seamless appearance — and stripped the skin and motor components from each one. Yi Yi, knowing Jiang Yanxin and Qin Ke wouldn't recognize the more complex components, filled her own large pack with actuators, steering motors, controllers, sensory units, and effectors — grabbing them in handfuls, clearing every shelf she could reach.
Chen Wan woke after the three of them had been at it for roughly half an hour. She opened her eyes to find the synthetic skin rolled and bundled, the memory alloy stacked, and multiple large coils of cable already packed and tied.
She pushed herself up slowly and, once she had her bearings, got to her feet. "Let me help."
Jiang Yanxin looked over and smiled. "Come help me move these steel components."
"On it." Chen Wan went to her side and started shifting materials. Two more hours passed before everything that could be gathered had been gathered.
Chen Wan surveyed the packed laboratory with a quiet smile and looked over at Qin Ke. "Yan Yan is almost ready to come back. Let's give it one last push."
"Yes." Qin Ke's expression softened into something close to warmth. The person she had been carrying in her heart for all this time — they were nearly there.
Yi Yi's brow had creased slightly. Chen Wan caught it. "What's wrong? Is something missing?"
"This haul is quite complete — I've done a second check. But there are still two things we're short on: a large quantity of steel and various other metal alloys. We'll need to source those somewhere else. And the RV needs to be upgraded as soon as possible — with everything we've packed today, there's no space left to load steel or metal alloys on top of it." Yi Yi thought it through as she spoke.