Chapter 79

Ji Qing carried the black box and swiftly leapt across the cliff.

His footsteps left one faint imprint after another in the snow, so light they looked as though they had been brushed by the feet of white birds taking flight.

Ji Qing quickly climbed back onto the elevated railway.

The wind over the snowy wilderness was still fierce, and the weightless black box in his hand swayed in the direction the gusts were blowing. It should not have been this light, but then again, the one holding it was a genius capable of conquering gravity.

Ji Qing rapidly surveyed the surroundings.

His terminal had received the immediate replies that Xie Chang’an and Jiang Cuo had sent earlier, but neither of them had responded to the messages he sent after leaving the crashed train. Ji Qing thought anxiously, What exactly are those two doing?

For the moment, Ji Qing could only retrace the route he had taken to get here.

Since neither of his teammates possessed an ability that allowed them to move quickly the way he could, and since the open snowy wilderness offered no sign of either of them, Ji Qing immediately chose to jump down from the railway and run into the conifer forest.

As he moved swiftly, Ji Qing reviewed the details of the search in his mind.

Of the three-man team, only he could ignore difficult terrain and conduct a wide-ranging search. Because of that, Ji Qing had deliberately assigned the hardest search area to himself, which meant the other two should not have taken a route as extreme as his own.

But infected people would also consider routes... Could they already be fighting?

The more Ji Qing thought about it, the more unbelievable it felt.

He had only gone into the crashed train for such a short while, so how had things outside already turned completely upside down? No, no... Ji Qing suppressed the agitation in his heart and forcibly calmed himself down: Don’t overthink it. Find them first.

Crack—

The sound of a branch hidden beneath the snow snapping underfoot rang out.

Ji Qing immediately created an air foothold in front of himself, stepped on it, flipped backward, and landed steadily on a withered branch. He half-crouched, his right hand firmly holding the black box, while his eyes coolly swept the area around him.

A few soft conifer needles brushed against his down jacket, making a faint rustling sound.

These trees were not mutant species, so Ji Qing’s gaze did not shift in the slightest. He soon stood up and calmly stared toward the direction he should have been advancing. “So you’re not planning to let me pass through smoothly.”

On the snow ahead of him stood a mutant white bear.

Its teeth were sharp, its huge eyes glowed red, and faint traces of blood stained its paws. At that moment, it bared its teeth fiercely at Ji Qing, who was standing on the tree trunk, but Ji Qing suddenly turned his gaze toward another direction instead.

In the snow in that direction, there were still frantic footprints left behind.

One set was large, and one was small, and they came from the direction of the danger zone where Shao Huayu’s team was operating. Just as he had expected, Ji Qing murmured softly, “As expected.”

He had guessed those two would come into direct contact with infected people.

He just had not expected there to be two infected people, with one of them being a child... The situation really had almost every possible debuff stacked onto it.

But the appearance of the mutant white bear made it impossible for him to get there quickly. At this point, it seemed he would only arrive in time to see the aftermath once their fight was over. Ji Qing thought absentmindedly, Hopefully those two haven’t started fighting each other, though that’s probably impossible...

If the two of them had not started fighting each other, then at least one of them should have replied to his message by now.

And yet neither had.

Crash, crash, crash—

The tree trunk shook violently as the white bear slammed into it.

Ji Qing lightly leapt onto another conifer tree, and immediately afterward, the sound of the first tree collapsing and the roar of the white bear rang out behind him. Ji Qing cast it a glance and said coldly, “If you want to die, wait a moment. I need to figure out which pocket I put the bullets in first.”

As he spoke, he began searching through his pockets with his free left hand.

But the white bear had no intention of waiting. It charged furiously toward the tree where Ji Qing stood. Thus, the same scene as before repeated itself, except this time, Ji Qing’s face darkened.

He tossed the black box onto the snow and jumped straight down from the treetop.

Having already been toyed with twice, the white bear charged directly at Ji Qing. Its roar carried with it gusts of wind, shaking loose a great shower of snow from the conifer branches and even waking small animals still hibernating, sending them fleeing in terror.

Ji Qing, however, remained utterly calm.

His hair drifted irregularly in the wind, while invisible vector-like ripples had already begun to gather between his fingers. As the white bear drew closer and closer, Ji Qing’s gaze suddenly turned cold, and he slid forward toward it.

The leaping white bear and the sliding boy crossed past each other on the snow, and soon afterward, the enormous crash of the collapsing bear thundered out behind him.

Ji Qing did not look back.

Calmly, he bent down, picked up the black box from the snow, and once more ran in the direction of the footprints. To him, this fierce beast that had frightened the infected people into fleeing was merely a somewhat troublesome obstacle blocking the road.

He was stronger than he had imagined.

But after running for a while, Ji Qing belatedly realized something: this did not feel like a simple application of gravity alone. It seemed more like a combination of gravity and repulsion. Could it be that his ability... actually had an advanced version?

That thought flashed past and vanished in an instant.

Ji Qing finally caught sight of his two teammates, as well as the corpses of the two fleeing people.

Judging by how the blood was still flowing from the corpses, the conflict had happened only moments ago. As expected, his two teammates had indeed been fighting each other just beforehand. The ground was littered with traces of clashes between conjured daggers and the very real Tang Dao.

He had arrived a little late. Ji Qing let out a quiet sigh.

“Couldn’t you at least have checked first? What if they could still have been saved? If you had even a little empathy, things wouldn’t have ended up like this!!!” Xie Chang’an grabbed Jiang Cuo by the collar and shouted angrily. “What right did you have to shoot without even taking a look? If your own family had become like this, would you have shot them too?”

“I already told you, what I did was the correct thing!” Jiang Cuo flung Xie Chang’an’s hand away and roared in fury. “Don’t force your way of thinking onto me. And besides—my whole family is already dead, so stop making those bullshit assumptions!!!”

...

Ji Qing listened to the conversation between the two of them with a calm expression.

The scene had obviously already moved past the most intense stage of the conflict and turned into mutual accusations after the fact. He could not speak rashly yet. It was best to sort out the situation first. After all, feeling sympathy was one thing, while properly calming both sides down was another.

Ji Qing coolly assessed the condition of the two corpses: the adult’s body had already mostly undergone beastification, while the little girl’s body had still retained its original form.

The adult was infected. The child was not.

Ji Qing immediately overturned his previous assumption, then rebuilt a new one on the same foundation.

So it looked like Jiang Cuo had first shot the adult, who might have attacked them, then the little girl had cried out in fear, and afterward Jiang Cuo had killed her as well. And Xie Chang’an’s emotions had completely collapsed the moment he saw the little girl?

A nearly inaudible sigh echoed faintly between Ji Qing’s teeth.

So it was that kind of situation after all?

“That’s enough. Stop fighting among yourselves.” Ji Qing finally spoke, his voice icy. “I came here to complete the task assigned by the school, not to mediate your personal conflicts.”

His words were cold and heavy, like a stone suddenly thrown into a deep pool.

Both of them froze when they heard him, then turned stiffly toward Ji Qing. The two of them revealed almost the same level of panic in front of him, clearly having been completely caught off guard by his arrival.

Ji Qing found the sight both amusing and not amusing, though outwardly his face remained cold.

“Jiang Cuo’s actions were normal. In a danger zone, anything that threatens human safety must be dealt with immediately. None of us can expect mutant species to graciously leave us time to react.” Ji Qing swept the two of them with a cold glance.

That single sentence instantly made Jiang Cuo’s posture relax.

He had known it—he had done nothing wrong. This was the proper way to survive in a danger zone. While secretly pleased with himself, Jiang Cuo also cast a curious look at Xie Chang’an. If he had still harbored some doubt before, he could now basically confirm that Xie Chang’an knew an infected person.

What a lunatic, Jiang Cuo thought.

He had originally believed that he himself was already crazy enough and already had a sufficiently shocking secret, but who would have thought that this F-rank ability user beside him also carried such a shocking secret? Jiang Cuo thought, This world really does have plenty of surprises.

“But...” Xie Chang’an stepped forward unwillingly when he heard that.

Kindness and compassion had always been virtues of humanity, and as the manga’s protagonist, Xie Chang’an naturally possessed those virtues. His conscience told him that this matter should not be settled so simply, yet a trace of grievance rose uncontrollably in his heart.

“Infected people discriminate against those in the late stage of mutation too.” Ji Qing lightly tossed out the fact. “The reality is far crueler than you imagine. The infected person you met may never have told you this, but that is how it really is.”

“They also deliberately keep their distance from those in the late stage of mutation, and there are even infected organizations that dispose of such people at fixed times and places.”

Xie Chang’an’s heart sank straight to the bottom.

Ji Qing’s words mercilessly dragged him back to the night he had first met Li Yuan. Li Yuan had gone to the song-and-dance hall to rest precisely because he had just executed an escaped infected person, and that was how he had happened to run into Xie Chang’an, who had been searching for infected people.

So that was it... Xie Chang’an stood there blankly.

Jiang Cuo instantly pieced together the situation. With both hands behind his head, he curled his lips into a meaningful smile. “That’s why I said it before—brother, your way of thinking is way too naive. This world has never been a kind place where good people get rewarded.”

Xie Chang’an remembered that sentence.

When he had insisted on going back to help the shopkeeper in Ning City, Jiang Cuo had already said those exact words. At the time, Xie Chang’an had been resolute. Now, however, he was beginning to waver in his convictions. But more than wavering, what he thought about was—

It’s over. Li Yuan’s going to be exposed. No, no, Li Yuan can’t be exposed. But if that happens... damn it, I’m going to get expelled again.

That familiar sign of impending expulsion was so familiar that Xie Chang’an almost wanted to laugh.

He had spent an entire semester at school, and yet in the end, he was still bouncing back and forth between being expelled and not being expelled. Xie Chang’an mockingly laughed at himself inwardly: He really was immature in every possible way.