A week has passed since the power came back online.
It was another relaxing day for Xiaoyun, sitting on the bench press while the three girls did jumping jacks—until his phone suddenly rang.
Even though the power had run out in the city, his phone somehow still had a single bar of service.
"What up, Yezi?"
"Can you come to the front entrance of the Luoping community? There's a bus at the gate right now.
Some dude just walked out of the bus... Hey, hands up, this is private property! Stop right there before I open fire——"
Before the other side could finish talking, Xiaoyun heard only the sound of a phone being dropped before going radio silent.
"Shit, I am coming right now. Just hold on."
As Xiaoyun hung up the call, all three of the girls looked over to him with worries on full display.
"What's wrong?" Leyan asked.
"Yezi is in trouble. I'm going to go help him." Xiaoyun answered before rushing out of the gym.
"Be safe!"
---
"Who the hell are you guys?"
Yezi asked as he stood on top of the makeshift stairs, hiding himself behind the security room roof as he pointed his rifle towards the outside.
"We don't have any bad intentions. We just got out of the city," A man replied as he walked out of the bus, with both of his hands raised.
"How many of you are on the bus?" Yezi asked out loud again.
"There are twenty of us. We just want a place to stay. My name is Renqin," the man replied.
"Lingang, go check on him, search him, and check the bus while you're at it. Don't be scared. I got your back."
A man in his early twenties wearing a security guard outfit slowly walked up to the outsider, patted him down, and took away the axe that was attached to his back.
"You don't mind me checking inside the bus, right? Nothing dangerous inside?" Lingang questioned.
"Nope, you can go right in," Renqin replied.
Lingang took a short glance at the bus and saw several families grouped up inside, all of them looking a little scared.
"I'm here to verify if anyone here has any dangerous weapons. Can everyone hand over their weapons to the floor?"
Despite Lingang trying to start a conversation, none of them said anything back as the inside of the bus remained in awkward silence.
"Um, I am not a gang member or anything. I am a nice guy, yeah, a nice guy. You guys don't need to be so scared."
As Lingang said it out loud, the opposite happened. All of them got even more scared, especially when some of them noticed Lingang's pistol.
"Never mind... Mister Yezi, all clear! None of them looked armed." Lingang yelled as he walked back out of the bus.
Hearing the answer, Yezi finally came down from the roof, walking over to where Renqin and Lingang stood together.
"How did you guys make it out of the city? Isn't it too late to leave at this point?" Yezi curiously asked.
"It's a long story, but the short version is that we all lived in the same apartment building, and fortunately, one of us used to work as a bus driver.
After the power ran out yesterday, we decided to rush to a nearby bus station... The rest is what you see now." Renqin explained.
"I thought the road was blocked by all the cars jammed? And how did you guys get away without getting caught by the zombies?"
Yezi questioned, his face still looking a little doubtful about their story, especially when he noticed the number of people through the window.
"The military went inside the city yesterday. They removed all the roadblocks and apparently were looking for some scientists.
Even helicopters and explosives were used, and we were able to use that chaotic time to run out to the bus station's garage."
Hearing Renqin's explanation, Yezi couldn't help but feel the man in front of him just happened to be the luckiest man alive.
"Damn, that's certainly some timing you guys caught... Just curious, are you the leader of all those people inside?" Yezi questioned again.
"I guess you can call me that. None of them wanted to lead, and they voted for me to come out." Renqin awkwardly scratched his head.
"I see, so the scapegoat... Ahem, one last thing. Do you guys have your own food?" Yezi raised his concern.
"We have been running out of food for almost a day now... Can you guys spare any food? We'll be on our way with just a little."
"You know, food is hard to get. We can't just give it away for free," Yezi immediately answered with zero hesitation.
Before Renqin could make another plea, a car suddenly drove toward the entrance from the inside.
"What's the issue here?" Xiaoyun asked as he and Yueyue stepped out of the car, both armed with their pistol.
"Some people got out of the city with the bus when the military went on a rescue mission for a scientist.
Long story short, now they want to ask us for food and a place to stay... Oh, and his name is Renqin." Yezi explained.
"I see... Well, we do have several houses that you guys can stay in, and we do have some food."
Xiaoyun's offer surprised both Yezi and Renqin a little, but neither of them spoke up as they waited for him to continue.
"I'm sure we can work something out. How about this: You guys work for Yezi, and you all can move into Luoping."
The offer tempted Renqin instantly, but Yezi looked much more hesitant after hearing the full offer.
"Xiaoyun, there's no way we can feed this many people——"
Before Yezi could finish, Xiaoyun interrupted him.
"Don't worry, I can provide the food. All I need from you, Yezi, is to make sure they have work to do. I don't want my food to go to waste."
Seeing the confidence on his face, Yezi reluctantly nodded his head to take charge of managing this new group of people in the bus.
"I guess I don't mind some extra hands to help secure this place. I was just about to go to a nearby construction site to get some material for a small wall anyway."
"Great... Then is that a deal, Mister Renqin?"
After a short silence, Renqin nodded in agreement.
"Let me go inside and ask them first."
Watching Renqin walk back into the bus, Yezi immediately looked over to Xiaoyun with concern on his face.
"Xiaoyun, aren't you being too generous? That's a lot of food for this many people. Not all of them could even work."
"I know... But we can't always live in a small community like this. We are going to need to expand, and I think this can be a great start."
Xiaoyun answered. In his mind, Kids and the elderly may appear to be useless, but they could be the most important key in preventing complete moral collapse.
Not to mention, he himself couldn't refuse so many people driving away with no food. It just felt too immoral in his heart.
"Whatever, as long as you can maintain the food supply... Just curious, how do you even get so much food?
I never saw you drive out a single time, and I already drove into the outskirts five different times for food."
Seeing Yezi starting to question, Xiaoyun's brain keeps telling him to make up an excuse, but his gut feeling tells him to tell the truth.
"Yezi, can I trust you?" Xiaoyun suddenly asked.
"Wait, Xiaoyun, you can't say that to——"
Before Yueyue could say anything, Xiaoyun held her back. Signaling her to remain silent as he continued his conversation.
"Yueyue, just trust me, it's fine," Xiaoyun reassured.
Seeing Yueyue looking a little conflicted about some sort of secret, Yezi slowly walked up and patted Xiaoyun on the shoulder.
"You can trust me. If it weren't for you, I would have died a long time ago... Here, if you don't mind, can I call you Big Brother?"
Seeing Yezi lowering his seniority with full seriousness on his face, Xiaoyun's gut feeling was only getting stronger.
"No, no, you are much older than me. I should be calling you Big Brother. You can call me Young Brother."
"Well then, we are brothers! I haven't had a brother since back in the day... We probably shouldn't call each other that, though.
Sound like some sort of gang or something——"
"Yeah, yeah, let's do that... Anyway, here's what I was going to show you."
Xiaoyun quickly dragged Yezi back into the security room, preventing Lingang and the people from the bus from seeing them.
He first showed an empty hand, confusing Yezi a little, until a bright light suddenly appeared in Xiaoyun's hand.
Next thing they knew, a small pen appeared right in his hand. Straight out of thin air with zero movement.
"What the... Wait, where did that pen come from? What kind of magic is this!"
Yezi's face was in complete shock, unable to believe what he had just witnessed before his eyes.
"I guess you can consider it magic... Here, name something common, and I can make it as long as I have touched it before."
"How about a water bottle and a can of black bean dace?" Yezi asked, his face filled with excitement.
"Here."
After a short second, both of the items appeared right in his hands, shocking Yezi even more as he threw them into his hands.
"This is... INSANE! You know how much we can profit off of——I mean, imagine the people we can save from starvation. Wait, can it do weapons as well?"
"How do you think Yueyue and I both have guns?"
Yezi froze for a second, his mind thinking back to the abnormal number of pistols he had seen in Xiaoyun's family.
Anything higher than a one was absurd, let alone two. More importantly, he knew those guns weren't just some prop guns, but actual police guns.
"Also, please keep this a secret. I don't want others to know."
"Don't worry, I won't tell anyone, even if someone holds me at gunpoint, I'll keep this secret until the day I die.
I swear I'll never tell——"
Before Yezi could swear on his life, Xiaoyun quickly pulled his hand back down, preventing him from completing it.
"No need for that. I trust you, Brother Yezi."
As the two walked out of the security room together, Renqin was already back out of the bus, standing before Yueyue and Lingang.
"We accept your deal as long as we can see the food tonight. Many of us haven't eaten for days." Renqin stated.
"Don't worry, you will get it tonight," Xiaoyun reassured.
Yezi quickly opened the gate before instructing Lingang to lead the bus to 308 and 307, the two houses that were super close to each other.
"Thank you, Mr. Yezi. Thank you, Mr. Xiaoyun."
Renqin bowed down and headed back inside the bus with Lingang, leaving the three of them at the front entrance.
"I'm going back home now. You want to come over for lunch later?" Xiaoyun asked.
"I'm good. Huayi was already cooking lunch."
"Okay... But how about dinner? Come on, we're brothers now. You don't have to be so formal in front of me."
"Fine. Just this once."
"Great, I'll tell Le——Ahem, Mom to cook the best meal."
As Xiaoyun and Yueyue entered their car again, Yezi walked back up the staircase as he watched them drive off into the distance.
---
When the sun sets on the horizon, Xiaoyun has already created several crates of canned food inside his car.
From beef to tomato, almost half of the car was filled with food. He even created a few little snacks for the kids on the bus.
"Let's pass some food out."
A minute drive later...
As Xiaoyun and Yueyue arrived at their destination in 307, Renqin quickly brought several people to help him unload the food.
While the two of them were helping unload the food, he could hear some of the people inside the house whispering to each other.
"He's only one person. Why don't we just hold him hostage and take over the community? He looks like the leader, right?" the young man suggested.
"I mean, we have way more people than they do... but they have guns." The other young man whispered back.
"He gave us food and shelter, and how do you want to thank him? How can my own son have such bad morals?"
An elderly man suddenly yelled out and started knocking on the two young men with a cane.
"Okay, okay, Dad. I'm just joking." The two of them apologized as they held their head with their hand.
Xiaoyun didn't think much of them as he turned his attention back to Renqin, who was laser-focused on the food being carried over.
"Okay, is this enough?" Xiaoyun asked, his car now emptied of food as all of them had been transferred into the house.
"Yeah, it's definitely enough for at least a week. Thank you so much." Renqin bowed down in gratitude.
"No problem, just remember that tomorrow you guys are going to have a lot of work from Yezi.
Also, you might want to make sure that some people here don't have any wrong idea... people change when they get too comfortable."
Xiaoyun warned, feeling Renqin's position could be taken by someone ambitious within the group, which was the opposite of what he wanted.
"I know. Thanks for the warning." Renqin replied, his eyes looking towards the youngsters in the group.
"Here's my phone number. If something goes wrong, you can call me."
Xiaoyun handed him a piece of paper and then left the house as the families began unpacking the boxes full of food.
---
A few hours after handing out the food...
Xiaoyun and Yueyue were both back home, sitting at the dining table with Yezi and Huayi right across from them.
Even though they had been talking for a while in the living room, Xiaoyun could see a divide at the table as all of his wives sat on his side.
Only Lily sat on the other side as there weren't any seats left on his side, and Leyan, who was still carrying food from the countertop.
With the last dish gently placed onto the table, she sat down next to Huayi, the last seat that remained in the kitchen.
"Miss Leyan, how did you look so young? Your skin and wrinkles are all gone. How is this possible?" Huayi curiously asked.
"Oh, um, I just forgot to wash my face last time... Anyway, Xiaoyun, how was the trip to 307?"
Leyan changed the conversation as she couldn't make up an excuse for how drastically she looked compared to the last time.
"Most of them look like honest, good people... but some of them are a little unhappy with their situation," Xiaoyun responded before picking up a chicken wing.
"There are always going to be a few bad apples. But as long as they're mostly good, we should be fine."
"So accepting them was bad then?" Nami questioned after hearing Yuqi's uncertain answer.
"I mean, we might be expanding a little too fast. It's more than double our current size if we count the people we rescued from the gangs.
Even if we included ourselves in the calculation, it's still twenty people joining in all at once, based on Xiaoyun's figure.
That Renqin person also sounds more like a figurehead. If things go south, he's the first one out.
We should have only allowed some in and some out instead of letting everyone inside, since they might have formed groups that are going to be hard to separate."
Hearing Yuqi's point, most of the people at the dining table couldn't help but nod their heads slightly in agreement.
"But most of them are families. It would be ridiculous to separate them from each other. Besides, most of them would starve if we let them continue." Yueyue argued.
"I'm not saying separating family members from each other. I'm saying when they form a small clan that has its own interest over others as a whole.
That's going to be a problem... We should have just selected the right families to be accepted." Yuqi clarified.
"I guess..."
Yueyue backed down as she knew what Yuqi was talking about. But her heart just couldn't reject people who needed help.
"How about we separate them right now? They aren't even one family or anything. I doubt they would stick together." Nami suggested.
"Isn't that a little too early? They are going to push back against it. Maybe when we get to know each other first, then they will be friendlier."
Leyan argued, knowing how close-knit certain people could be, especially considering they had just survived out of the city together.
"Ahem, it's not our problem. That's for Yezi to deal with... I only promised them about the food." Xiaoyun joked as he pushed the conversation to Yezi.
"Hey, I'm sitting here, you know?"
Yezi wiped a little sweat from his forehead as he didn't even think of all the things that the girls had brought up.
"Oh, right. I almost completely forgot about that... Haha. Anyway, what do you think about them, Yezi?" Xiaoyun curiously asked.
"I am leaning more toward Miss Leyan's plan... There's no rush to break them up yet."
After a short pause to pick a small piece of fish meat, Yezi spoke up again.
"Also, Xiaoyun and Yueyue, do you two want to come to the construction site on the city's outskirts tomorrow?
It's going to be in the early morning, so I can put them to work in building the wall right after breakfast."
"Sure, I can go. More things I can create in the future, consider how much material a wall is going to take."
Xiaoyun answered, knowing what Yezi was trying to suggest with his power and everything.
"I'm coming with you," Yueyue stated, not giving him a choice.
"Can we go too?" Yuqi and Leyan both asked at the same time, their face clearly wanting to show off their strength for once.
"Sure, an extra pair of hands always helps." Yezi nodded.
"Are you two sure? It's going to be a lot of heavy work to carry those bricks and steel bars." Xiaoyun warned.
"Yeah, I am ready! My body has been training for a week now. Even Yueyue was impressed!"
Yuqi stretched her biceps, which were barely visible since her body was still extremely slim compared to even Leyan's.
"She sure impressed me. She went from being able to lift single-digit kg to almost being able to lift her weight in less than a week." Yueyue commented.
"How about Le——Mom?" Xiaoyun curiously asked, changing his answer at the last second as it almost slipped out again.
"Mom is even more impressive. She went from only lifting half her weight to her full weight... not to mention she is much heavier——hey, why did you hit me?"
Leyan suddenly knocked on Yueyue's head before she could finish, interrupting her from completing her sentence.
"Watch your mouth."
Seeing her blushing, Yueyue quickly realized she had accidentally insulted her Mom by indirectly calling her fat.
"Oh, I almost forgot to tell you something, Xiaoyun. I had been seen to be getting strong, even though I barely exercised at all.
Even Huayi got a little stronger as well despite literally doing no exercise at all——"
"Hey, I go do gardening work every day now, okay? Don't say it like I'm that lazy!"
Huayi angrily knocked on Yezi's head, making him retract the statement as he quickly apologized to her.
"Huh, everybody is getting strong despite not working out at all. Hey, Xiaoyun, do you think it's the virus thing?" Nami curiously asked.
Everyone at the table turned to Nami as if she had just brought up some sort of breaking news.
"Hm. Maybe you are right... It is kind of odd. It might just be it." Xiaoyun responded, his mind realizing it as well.
"What? But how's that possible?"
Yueyue questioned, still unable to believe that the virus was helping them to survive. Her mind was still thinking their strength was from their hard work.
"Well, let's just say this zombie outbreak is airborne and can travel through borders and survive in the air for super long.
Assuming it can survive in the wind as it moves across the land, everyone on earth is already infected——"
"What? Then how are we not zombies?" Yezi interrupted Xiaoyun this time as he couldn't believe his statement.
"Let me finish. Now, where was I... Right, just because you're infected with the airborne version, it doesn't mean you will turn into a zombie.
The issue is that when you do turn into a zombie and bite someone, they then have pretty much a 99.99% turn rate to a zombie."
Xiaoyun stated as he thought back to all the information he had read in the basement of the house.
"So what I am getting at is that if the airborne virus doesn't turn you into a zombie, you become stronger instead?" Huayi asked.
"Yep, it's exactly like that. At least that's my theory." Xiaoyun answered.
"So it's like steroids, but it's in the air for everyone..." Yezi dumbed it down for herself and everyone else in the room.
"You could think of it like that as well. But it's harmless considering no one here has turned solely from the airborne virus after the initial outbreak."
"Ahem, let's just eat the food and stop making ourselves worried." Leyan ended the conversation as the food was starting to get cold.