"All right. Once we've moved all of this, we upgrade the RV first — then we go find the steel and alloys." Chen Wan nodded.
"Agreed. But there's a problem." Qin Ke looked at the sheer volume of what they'd packed and frowned. "The four of us can't carry all of this in one trip. And getting up here was hard enough — making multiple trips might be more than we can manage safely."
Yi Yi looked over the materials spread across the floor and made her assessment. "The steel, synthetic skin, and cables can handle the drop — throw them straight out the window. The memory alloy, motors, controllers, sensory units, effectors, and chips need to be carried — we can split those between us in backpacks."
Chen Wan nodded and began pulling large bags from around the lab, packing the delicate components inside for the climb down. Everything else would go out the window. There were no living people below to worry about.
Chen Wan shoved a window open on the far side of the lab and began hurling steel components out — the crash of metal on the ground below rang out across the empty campus, sharp and thunderous.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
The sound echoed through the abandoned school like cannon fire — and it kept coming, one piece after another, an unrelenting series of heavy impacts. Then came the cables, dropped in massive coils — another volley of crashes. Then the synthetic skin, bundled and thrown.
In a building across the way, on the sixth floor, a small group of people had been watching in silence.
"Professor — what are they actually doing over there? They really made it to the sixth floor?" A tall, thin young man kept his voice low as he spoke to the others around him.
"They don't look like military. But making it up there without incident, and now making all this noise without a care — they must have some real ability." A young female omega with blunt-cut bangs spoke quietly. She and the others were students at Funan University — stranded on the sixth floor when the world ended. They had sealed the heavy iron door between the fifth and sixth floors and managed to hold out, but their food and water were running dangerously low. Only a storage room on the sixth floor had kept them going this long.
"At this point, we don't have many options. Find something — a bedsheet, strips of cloth — hang it out the window and signal them. Let them know there are survivors over here." The professor with the dark-framed glasses gave quiet instructions.
Several students went to search. The tall young man beside the professor couldn't help adding: "That RV over there — even if they wanted to help, could it really fit all of us?"
"There are only fifteen of us. In theory, perhaps. But the question isn't capacity." The professor exhaled slowly. "The question is why they would. The military couldn't spare the manpower to search for survivors. Why would strangers take on fifteen extra people?" He had no good answer for that.
The young man fell quiet too. It had been a matter of days. Almost the entire population of Funan University — a densely packed campus — had turned. One infection had become ten, then twenty, then something beyond any possibility of control.
Back in the lab, the last of the steel clattered to the ground below — the fifteenth or sixteenth impact. Then the cables went, in great bundled coils, another cascade of echoing crashes. Then the final bundles of synthetic skin.
The Level 2 zombies, having intelligence enough to reason about self-preservation, had given the drop zone a wide berth. Being crushed by falling debris held no appeal, and they had no interest in inanimate objects. It was the moving, living things above that held their attention.
In the midst of throwing down the last of the synthetic skin, Chen Wan glanced up and caught something across the campus. "There are people over there."
The others followed her line of sight. On the sixth floor of a building not far away, figures were visible at the windows, waving something pale — a bedsheet, by the look of it. A distress signal.
Chen Wan dropped another bundle, looked out at the horde below, and let out a quiet breath. "There are tens of thousands of zombies on this campus. Rescuing them isn't something we can just do in passing. And even if we fought our way to them, then what? They can't get on the RV. They'd still have nowhere to go. Staying where they are might actually keep them alive a little longer."
Jiang Yanxin nodded. It wasn't the first time they'd faced something like this. When they could help in passing, they would — but this was beyond what they were capable of, and they both knew it. They couldn't travel with a group of people who had no ability to protect themselves.
After the last bundle of synthetic skin went over the edge, Chen Wan straightened up. "Let's move. Get everything loaded and get out. We can't save them — but we can draw some of the zombies away from the area when we leave. After that, whether they make it out is up to them."
"Agreed. Move fast — straight down the stairs once we're clear. No stopping." Yi Yi swung two large packs onto her back.
Chen Wan nodded. They moved the furniture from the laboratory door, and she triggered her ability immediately — fifty zombies fell under her command, forming a shield around the group as they drove downward. Yi Yi swept up every crystal core within her scan radius as they moved — the RV was at Level 3 now, extending her detection range to a sixty-meter radius in every direction, and she collected a significant haul of cores they'd had no time to gather on the way up.
Going down was considerably faster than going up. Zombies that got in the way were simply knocked down the stairwell along with everything else. The four of them cleared the first-floor lobby in four minutes. Chen Wan was still holding up, a faint dampness at her temples, but nothing more.
Outside was a different matter. The noise from all the thrown materials had pulled a massive surge of zombies toward Qinfen Building — the area around the entrance was packed. There was no clean way through.
Jiang Yanxin opened the Greek mythology collection and summoned Zeus again.
The moment Zeus appeared, every zombie in the vicinity fell eerily silent — and then, as though sensing something far beyond their capacity to face, they began stepping backward.
Jiang Yanxin gave the command in her mind: clear the area around the RV entirely.
Zeus raised his lightning spear and swung it once, lightly. Sheets of electricity crackled outward through the horde, spreading fast across the open square. Every zombie the current reached — or that stood in close enough contact with one that had — began to convulse, skin darkening, hardening, until each body slowly became a pillar of charcoal. The effect rippled outward until the square was clear.
The moment Jiang Yanxin's ability took over, Chen Wan released her own and joined Yi Yi and the others in loading everything from the ground into the compressed storage. By the time they finished, the square was nothing but drifting ash.
In under five minutes, working without pause, the four of them transferred every piece of material from the laboratory into the storage space. They climbed back into the RV, and Zeus dissolved quietly as Jiang Yanxin released him.
Across the way, the small group watching from the sixth floor of the opposite building could barely speak.
The tall young man's voice came out unsteady. "Professor — what was that just now? How did all the zombies just... disappear?"
The professor with the dark-framed glasses shook her head, just as shaken. That figure with the spear had barely moved — one sweep, and hundreds of zombies had simply ceased to exist. And those women had walked away without a scratch. "Those are not ordinary people," she said quietly.
The tall young man nodded slowly. "Do we still try to signal them for help?"
The professor thought for a moment. "For now, let's hold still. We don't know anything about them. Signaling them earlier was out of desperation, but the zombies out there are already largely gone. Once those people leave, we can try to lure the ones still in the building outside — and then make our way to the dormitory or the cafeteria to find food."
Every one of them was still processing what they had just seen.
Ye Lan took one look at the group returning covered in blood and nearly burst into tears on the spot. Jiang Yanxin quickly reassured her: "Mom, please don't worry — none of it is ours. It's all zombie blood. Nobody's hurt. We got everything we needed, and everything went smoothly."
"You're sure? All of you? You terrified me — go wash, all of you, right now." Ye Lan's eyes were red as she shooed them toward the bathroom.
Jiang Wanning had also gone pale at the sight of her sister drenched in blood, but hearing that she was unhurt, she managed to breathe again. She saw Yi Yi was equally covered and hurried over. "Are you all right? Any injuries?"
Yi Yi gave her a warm smile. "Not a scratch. Just a bit dirty. That's all."
"Then go upstairs and shower, change your clothes — go on." Jiang Wanning was already steering her toward the stairs.
"All right. Let me grab something to wear." Yi Yi, as the RV's system, could pull clothing from the compressed storage at will. She grabbed a change of clothes and headed upstairs with Jiang Wanning.
Qin Ke took her clothes and showered on the lower level.
Chen Wan, now that things had quieted, became acutely aware of the smell on herself and wasted no time pulling Jiang Yanxin back toward their room.
Jiang Yanxin blinked. "You go ahead — I'll be in after."
"Honey, together — we need to leave this area as soon as possible. It's not safe to linger." Chen Wan was already guiding her by the waist toward the bathroom.
"Together? In the middle of the afternoon?" Jiang Yanxin's ears went faintly pink.
Chen Wan smiled and hooked her fingers through Jiang Yanxin's. "We're just saving time."
"Hmm..." Before Jiang Yanxin could finish the thought, she was already being gently pulled inside. She had a feeling she'd just walked into something.
Yi Yi was the first to finish — she gave herself a quick but thorough wash, changed, and came out with her hair still damp. Jiang Wanning took one look at her and pushed her right back into the bathroom, picking up the hair dryer.
The bathroom was small. With both of them standing in it, Jiang Wanning was essentially enclosed in Yi Yi's space.
Yi Yi's face had started going warm again. Jiang Wanning looked up at her with bright eyes. "Tilt your head down a little — I can't reach properly like this."
"Oh." Yi Yi obediently lowered her head until her eyes were level with Jiang Wanning's. She didn't know what was happening to her, but something about being near Jiang Wanning consistently made things go wrong inside her.
Jiang Wanning noticed how cooperative Yi Yi was being, reached up, and ruffled the damp hair at the top of her head before turning on the dryer and getting to work.
Her fingers were slender and moved easily through Yi Yi's hair. The hum of the dryer filled the small space. The only other sound was something that might have been two heartbeats.
Yi Yi genuinely did not understand what was wrong with her. Could an electronic heart really beat this hard? And then her optical brain chimed in:
"WARNING. WARNING. CPU temperature critical. Initiating automatic cooling protocol."
Yi Yi had no explanation for why her CPU kept overheating lately. But Jiang Wanning's hands felt nice, and Yi Yi found she didn't want it to stop. Let the fans run. As long as the whole thing didn't melt, it would be fine.
Jiang Wanning noticed Yi Yi staring at her and let out a soft laugh, continuing to work the dryer through Yi Yi's hair. "Why do you keep looking at me?"
"You're pretty," Yi Yi said, the words bypassing whatever filter she should have had and coming straight out.
Jiang Wanning's face went red. She cleared her throat. "Don't say strange things."
"I wasn't saying strange things," Yi Yi muttered, quieter than she'd intended.
Jiang Wanning bit the inside of her cheek to hide her smile, gently smoothed Yi Yi's half-dried hair, and said nothing.