Chapter 180 - 179: Sense of Security

Chapter 180: Chapter 179: Sense of Security

"Alright..."

Ye Qingzhou nodded silently, accepting his explanation.

"What did you see? Can you tell me about it?"

"I can."

Lin Fan then recounted everything in detail—what he had seen on the ground and his plan to collect the crystals...

"Those Mutated Zombies are definitely dead. No carbon-based life form could survive that kind of explosion and heat..."

Ye Qingzhou said after a moment of thought,

"But the ’Tree’—why do you keep insisting it’s not dead?"

"Call it a gut feeling," Lin Fan replied.

Hearing this, Ye Qingzhou wasn’t surprised. She just lowered her voice and asked,

"Is it a secret, or a gut feeling?"

"Both."

Lin Fan nodded in agreement.

Ye Qingzhou nodded as well after hearing his response.

"Cyan Bird has gut feelings sometimes, too.

A gut feeling is just compressed logic. The brains of Awakened Ones are more active and powerful than those of ordinary people, so your instincts are sometimes exceptionally accurate."

As she spoke, she walked to the edge of the roof again. She gazed at the gray fog in the distance, glanced at the zombies below, and continued,

"Although there’s no sign that it’s still alive... we can’t stay here. We have to leave as soon as possible."

"Here?" Lin Fan asked, pointing at his feet.

"No, *here*," Ye Qingzhou said, tilting her chin in the direction of the gas station. "I can tell you’re hesitating."

"And how could you tell that?"

Lin Fan watched her, curious. He was even more curious as to why all these people seemed to be able to read faces.

"From the moment I mentioned the quarantine zone might have twenty thousand people..." Ye Qingzhou glanced at him, then started walking back the way they came. "Let’s go. There’s a lot to prepare before we set off."

"Hey... I haven’t even said anything yet," Lin Fan grumbled, though he followed her back anyway. "What makes you so sure I’ll go with you?"

Just as she had said, Lin Fan was shaken when he heard how many people were in the quarantine zone. He wasn’t sure if now was a good time to go.

After all, they weren’t short on food. There was a small river just outside the city, and if they figured out how to purify the water, they’d be fine. Managing a group of over a hundred people was doable.

But with so many people, one could only imagine how chaotic the quarantine zone must have been in its early days.

For his group of over a hundred to blindly rush in would be like pouring a bottle of mineral water into a pond—they’d make no impact and might just put themselves in a bind.

"Your hesitation stems from confidence in your own power. But it’s pointless to hesitate. If you decide not to go, how many of your people do you think will stay with you?"

Ye Qingzhou walked to the edge of the building. Ahead was a small street, with another building about thirty meters away.

She stood naturally at the very edge as she spoke, raising her arms slightly and continuing in a placid tone,

"You, that woman, that girl, that boy... anyone else? Your powers give you a sense of security, but what about the others? They’re ordinary people. Ultimately, only a group can provide security for ordinary people."

’It’s so infuriating,’ Lin Fan thought, watching her interrogate him while waiting for him to carry her across. ’But I can’t even argue with her.’

He had no choice but to wrap an arm around her waist, take a two-step running start, and leap forward with all his might. Like a rocket, he shot across the dozens of meters and landed heavily on the opposite rooftop.

He wanted to say that Chu Zhaotian would probably stay too—after all, he had his sister—but the words felt powerless, so he kept them to himself.

Ye Qingzhou was right. To Lin Fan, a quarantine zone of twenty thousand people sounded like a quagmire. Perhaps that was precisely why she had given him the "Colonel Lin" identity—it was a foothold, a way for him to establish himself in that quagmire without wasting time on a monumental struggle against the system.

But for Liu Bin and the others, it was likely a completely different story.

No matter how chaotic it was, the fact that over twenty thousand people were still alive meant there was, at the very least, a wall keeping the zombies out.

High walls, barbed wire, the army, thousands upon thousands of fellow humans... these were the true sources of their security.

If the sky were to fall, more than twenty thousand people would be there to hold it up together, unlike now, where Lin Fan shouldered the burden alone.

Besides, there was no guarantee that Lin Fan could keep holding it up forever.

The more Awakened Ones there were around Lin Fan, the less secure the ordinary people felt. After all, if a zombie horde arrived one day and Lin Fan’s group escaped across the rooftops, what would happen to them?

So Lin Fan knew that for the majority of ordinary people like Liu Bin, the quarantine zone was a place they absolutely had to go.

A superman provides far less security than "order."

Lin Fan set Ye Qingzhou down. Seeing that her expression remained completely unruffled by the feeling of weightlessness, he couldn’t help but feel a flash of defeat. But he immediately seized on an opening and teased,

"If you put it that way, the people on your bus might want to stay here with me..."

"You really are something else..."

For once, the corners of Ye Qingzhou’s eyes crinkled. She stared through the lens of her mask into the eyes behind Lin Fan’s.

"You might be right. After all, they can’t even get a full meal. Seeing this place, which must look like a paradise to them, they might want to stay. But the longer you’re here, the more dangerous it becomes..."

She turned and continued walking, casually asking, "Are you going to kill all these thousands of zombies?"

"Maybe I can kill them all," Lin Fan replied noncommittally, half-joking.

’I’ve already decided to leave,’ he thought. ’I just feel like being a contrarian and don’t want to let her win the argument.’

With the "Colonel Lin" title and his own power, he could thrive in the quagmire of the quarantine zone while maintaining his dignity. There was no problem with that.

Holing up in the residential complex might seem safe for a while, but it was all down to luck. What if one day he woke up to a horde of hundreds of thousands of ordinary zombies, plus tens of thousands of Mutated Zombies, completely surrounding the building? Even escaping across the rooftops would be difficult then.

Ye Qingzhou seemed to sense his change of heart, and her tone relaxed as she continued to ask,

"And what if tens of thousands more show up? Or what if the ’Tree’ comes back for revenge? Don’t forget, in our assessment, it possesses intelligence..."

"What makes you so sure it’ll come after me for revenge? I’m the one who chased it off..."

Lin Fan avoided the question about tens of thousands of zombies. After all, with Linjiang City’s population of thirteen million, a horde that large could appear at any time. So, he made a tactical retreat and challenged her second point instead.

"In a head-to-head fight between you and it, who’s stronger?" Ye Qingzhou didn’t answer him, instead posing a new question.

"Didn’t I already tell you the whole story...? It’s stronger," Lin Fan replied, bewildered by her question.

"You see? A powerful person like you is already so petty and vengeful. It’s stronger than you, so isn’t it only natural that it would be even more petty and vengeful? Once it recovers, of course it’s going to come after you for revenge first..."

Ye Qingzhou delivered the line without turning her head, her tone as calm as if she were stating a simple fact.

"I..." Lin Fan stopped in his tracks, sighed deeply, then jogged to catch up with her. He turned his head and said, "Has anyone ever told you that you have a weird sense of humor?"

"Yes."

"They have? Who?"

"Hu Chen."

"The driver? The staff officer who kowtowed the second he saw me?"

"Yes."

"So about this whole face-reading thing..."

"He’s the professional. I learned from him."

"..."

Lin Fan silently made a resolution. He had to find that "little brother" who had just sworn allegiance to him as "Big Brother" and learn a trick or two. It never hurt to have another skill.