Bang!
The bullet tore out of the barrel, trailing flame and gunsmoke, and curved through the air in a strange arc before it disappeared into the grass.
The black shadow dropped flat, and the restless bushes went still at once.
His divine power could not kill directly, but put a gun in his hand and it became a lethal power. He only had to apply a slight force to the bullet in flight, and it would bend to his will as easily as his own arm.
Lu Zhao could hit anything within eight hundred meters, and inside five hundred he could send bullets flying in circles.
“Dead?”
“Not sure yet.”
Lu Zhao raised the rifle, aimed, and fired again. Then he walked over and parted the grass. Inside lay a demon beast the size of a wild boar, shaped like a black cat, with horns growing from its head and golden-yellow pupils.
It was still breathing.
Raise the rifle. Pull the trigger.
Bang!
The bullet went through its skull, and the cat beast was gone for good.
Only then did Lu Zhao dare move closer. He bent down to examine it.
Liu Qiang hung back and asked, “Lu, is this what a demon beast looks like? It seems so weak. One shot and it went down.”
He had been here less than half a year, and this was the first time he had watched Lu Zhao kill a demon beast up close. It felt far too easy.
“Could you take a bullet?”
At Lu Zhao’s counter-question, Liu Qiang gave a sheepish grin and shook his head, denying it.
“There are demon beasts in the world that can shrug off bullets. If one of those turned up here, it wouldn’t be a small fry like me, a mere border police officer, guarding Ant Ridge. It would take a whole army corps.”
“You graduated from Dijing University, Lu. Why stay here guarding the mountain?”
Liu Qiang finally could not hold back the question that had been troubling him for so long.
At the border station, Lu Zhao was something of a legend. It was said there were only a few thousand psychic superhumans in the whole country.
Even if he were the weakest among those few thousand, Lu Zhao was still a powerhouse, one in ten thousand.
Liu Qiang’s uncle thought the world of him. He always said, ‘Anyone out of Dijing is at least a field-grade officer one day, and Lu Zhao was even one of the outstanding graduates—only thirty are picked each year.’
Yet here Lu Zhao was, a mere platoon leader, his rank not even as high as Liu Qiang’s uncle’s.
“Before I came, at least ten people a year died to demon beasts in the three counties and eight townships. Since I came, there hasn’t been a single death in the last three years. I grew up eating my hometown’s rice, so guarding the mountains for the old hometown isn’t such a bad job.”
Lu Zhao did not answer directly. He set the rifle’s safety again and took out a small knife to bleed the cat beast.
“Hold this for me.”
He handed the carcass to Liu Qiang, and the two set off down the mountain, one in front and one behind. They had just left the mountains when the sky opened up again and rain poured down.
They had no choice but to duck into the earth-god shrine at the foot of the mountain. Outside, the rain fell harder and harder, and a dull ache began to throb at Lu Zhao’s temples.
His insomnia was not an illness. It came with his divine power.
Psychic superhumans could explore the spirit world, and because Lu Zhao had lived two lives, his spiritual power was far stronger than most people’s. Once he fell asleep, his spirit would roam the spirit world beyond his control.
It was a world of total darkness, full of noise and delirious murmuring.
Over time, Lu Zhao had become “allergic” to sounds that were too dense.
Liu Qiang kept asking questions about everything, and to take his mind off things, Lu Zhao let a few details slip.
Nothing serious.
“The year I got into Dijing, even the mayor came to see me off, and the whole village beat gongs and drums for me. From the village to the town to the city, people everywhere were talking about me.”
Liu Qiang’s face was full of longing. “That’s so impressive. Too bad I don’t have your ability, Lu. I only got into a junior college, and had to use connections to get into the border station.”
“I caught a good time. I got special bonus points.”
Lu Zhao pulled off his rain boots. Walking the mountain paths had left his feet covered in calluses, and the thick, hardened skin had been soaked soft by the rain.
A surge of admiration rose in Liu Qiang’s chest.
The villagers all called him Tiger Lu, but deep down they were grateful to him. Without Lu Zhao’s tireless patrols, the village would have had a few more funeral feasts to sit through.
“In 3230, the Catastrophe hit. A hundred countries around the world went dark on the same day, and Nanhai West Circuit faced the largest demon beast tide in its history.”
“I was fourteen then. My father and three of my uncles answered the call-up, went to the Armed Forces Department, and never came back. Then my elder brother and five cousins who had already come of age—they didn’t come back either.”
“In the end, my mother and my aunts went too. They didn’t have to go to the front, so they came back alive. Do you know how many points ten lives are worth?”
Liu Qiang shook his head. He had been very young back then and had no real memory of it.
“A hundred points. Ten points a life.”
Liu Qiang had no answer, and he was afraid of saying the wrong thing.
“Back then, the whole of Nanhai West Circuit was smashed to pieces. There was no hoping the schools would reopen anytime soon. As a martyr’s family member, I was picked as a commissioned-training student and sent to Cangwu City in Nanhai East Circuit to study. That’s where I witnessed the largest human migration since the great disaster.”
“At the time, the Federation was the suzerain state, and it chose to take everyone in. From the Luzon Islands to Fusang, from the Siam Plains to Baiyue, hundreds of millions of people moved. Siamese, South Asians, the people of Fusang, Kunlun slaves, Westerners.”
“Yellow, black, white—every color you could think of.”
Lu Zhao’s craving for a cigarette hit him all of a sudden. He pulled out a pack of Jia Tianxia, and the lighter’s flame caught the tobacco despite the cold wind and heavy rain.
He drew in a deep breath, just like the last cigarette his father had smoked at the doorway before setting out.
The village committee broadcast station played the broadcast over and over, static mixed with the sound of rain. The men smoked, drank, and ate; the women stood aside wiping away tears; the children had no idea what to do.
[Federal Radio One brings you an emergency broadcast for Nanhai West Circuit: Nanhai West Circuit is under attack by the largest beast tide in its history. The Nanhai Corps can no longer hold. All people of the cities, counties, towns, and villages of Nanhai, after hearing this broadcast, please report to the Armed Forces Department in an orderly fashion...]
That year, Nanhai West Circuit, as a permanent combat-readiness zone, conscripted a million men in all.
By the end, only a single man was left in the Lu family. His father, his uncles on both sides, his elder brother, his cousins... none of them ever came back. The old home went cold and empty all at once.
A cigarette burned down to nothing, and Lu Zhao came back to himself.
He crushed the butt out under his boot, and suddenly felt a strong urge to answer Liu Qiang’s earlier question after all.
It was true he felt stifled, kicked out here to this poor backwater after offending someone, but he would never believe that what he did here was meaningless.
It’s not as though there’s only one place to shine and give off heat. Think of yourself as a brick—move it wherever it’s needed.
Because this land had been held with the lives of his fathers’ generation.
Chapter 2