After gunning down the two suspects, Su Jin hurried back up to the sixth floor.
He glanced toward the isolation room where Cheng Du and Auntie Liu were staying, and only crossed over to the apartment opposite once he saw that both were already inside.
With things having escalated to this point, no one had any appetite left for food.
The others had long since taken their seats, gathered in a circle as they waited for Su Jin to return.
Seeing Su Jin appear, Sun Ya immediately leaned forward. "How did it go? Who was the killer in the end?"
"Both were killers. I shot them both." With a cold expression, Su Jin took out his phone and held it up for them to see.
On the screen, Cao Chengping and Li Kai were convulsing on the floor while clutching their necks, as if undergoing zombification.
After a few violent spasms, gunshots rang out, and both were dead.
Zhang Wan patted her chest, looking like she had yet to recover from the fright.
Fu Qingdai pursed her lips, shooting Su Jin an odd glance.
Putting his phone away, Su Jin said, "I need to speak with Elder Sun and Elder Wei in private. You three go ahead and get busy for now; I'll need your help later."
Fu Hu tactfully excused himself, leading his wife and daughter away.
Only the three of them remained in the living room.
Sun Ya opened his mouth to ask, but Su Jin spoke first. "The man on the left earlier was the real killer. The other wasn't. Furthermore, the murderer's infection and mutation didn't originate in his heart, but in his brain. Judging by the rats, aside from altering their original disposition, this type of infection should cause certain bodily changes—perhaps even grant special abilities.
"However, when it comes to taking damage, they are entirely different from zombies. They are much closer to ordinary living creatures. Decapitation, blood loss, poison... any of those will kill them."
The two old men's faces instantly turned ashen.
Sun Ya said dejectedly, "Which means... you used poison because you had no way to distinguish who was infected. But how do you know the infection was in his head?"
Su Jin lowered his head, then looked back up. "An autopsy. I dismantled him from head to toe to see."
Lighting a cigarette, he fished a bottle of baijiu from his bag.
Su Jin picked up a teacup, splashed it clean, poured it full of liquor, and drained it in a single gulp.
He immediately filled another cup to the brim.
Stranded in an unfamiliar world, he had demanded of himself that he stay clear-headed at all times... Yet today, for the first time, he chose to drink.
Sun Ya and Wei De remained silent, their eyes tinged with anguish as they quietly watched Su Jin broodingly drink and smoke.
They were both intelligent men. From the moment they saw that the mutated rat could disguise itself perfectly among its pack, nothing more needed to be said.
This was a force nearly impossible to contend with.
It was not about how infectious the threat was, nor how formidable the mutated abilities were.
It was that this kind of existence... directly severed the very foundation upon which humanity relied to survive and develop.
Sun Ya's eyelids drooped, his face rife with bitterness.
Everything was clear now.
Aside from the possibility that the military had been wiped out, the state had likely discovered this special mutation type early on, and it had even spread into the decision-making echelons.
The torrential downpour had affected too vast an area. Combined with sinister human machinations and layers of cover-ups, there was simply neither the time, the resources, nor the ability to screen and identify them.
Organizations collapsed entirely from top to bottom, and the chain of trust snapped in an instant.
Perhaps someone had still made a dying, desperate effort, firing Hanqiong into the city.
Yet against this overwhelming tide, all weapons were utterly futile.
The radio broadcast had said not to trust... It turned out it meant not to trust anyone at all.
Amid the swirling smoke and a growing buzz, a faint glint of moisture appeared in Su Jin's eyes.
A single downpour had shattered the entire world into an atomized society, cutting off every path for organizations to rise and civilization to rebuild.
A strategy devised one moment would be utterly wiped out the next, reduced to hollow talk.
This despair was just like the shock he had felt when he first witnessed Hanqiong detonate and the state apparatus fail.
It turned out that what truly plunged humanity into the apocalypse was not the loss of weapons or resources, but one another.
And yet, he had only just seen hope...
Every time he found a sliver of hope, it was immediately crushed—like a dull blade carving flesh, leaving him to await death in agonizing misery.
Most ridiculous of all... he was toiling for a Company that was nearly omniscient, omnipotent, and far beyond common sense.
Yet after providing him with a paltry bit of aid, the Company had vanished without a trace, leaving him behind like an abandoned pawn.
Time ticked by. Su Jin was left alone in the living room, empty liquor bottles piling around his feet and cigarette butts littering the floor.
Outside, the sky had turned pitch-black.
Sun Ya carried a candle over and sat down across from Su Jin once more.
Seeing him slumped back, Sun Ya asked softly, "Giving up?"
"Give up?" Su Jin sat up straight and chuckled through bleary, drunken eyes, though inside, rage and smoldering resentment still scorched his chest.
A rotting, putrid world.
A Company that toyed with him at will.
He had already survived the hardest beginning; how could he possibly choose to give up now?
He needed revenge! He had to survive in this world, survive along with Fu Qingdai, and then slaughter the bitch who had sent him here.
"I will never give up again... no matter how hard it gets." Candlelight danced in Su Jin's eyes. "...This time, I'm not only fighting people, but fighting the heavens themselves!"
"I hope that's not just drunken talk." Sun Ya looked at Su Jin, his eyes filled with admiration.
"Of course it isn't. But what about you two?" Su Jin countered. "Can you still hold on?"
Sun Ya smiled faintly. "You are our leader, our core. If you don't want to give up, we have no right to give up.
"From the looks of things now, the difficulty and risk of building and expanding our team have reached extreme heights. Even if we obtain heavy firepower, we won't dare entrust it to others. But that doesn't mean there is no solution. We saw an infected human today, and the specimen of Rat No. 3 is still here. Old Wei and I will examine them again tomorrow."
"Go ahead and study them. Whether it's characteristics or mechanisms, we must devise a solution. No matter what, we can't fight alone; we have to rely on the majority," Su Jin sighed wistfully. "One possible solution might lie in those flesh bulbs. You saw the rats; mutations can bring many kinds of abilities. Perhaps the heavens will grant us a pair of eyes that can see right through traitors."
"That's right. We should still place our faith in nature." Sun Ya smiled, picked up the half-empty bottle on the table, and poured himself a cup.
"Actually, there's one thing about you I truly admire.
"Your adaptability is simply unmatched. You could already see clues of it from how you went from dissecting a corpse initially to proactively conducting autopsies in bulk. Today, when you couldn't be certain who the killer was, you killed both living men outright, then flayed them open... Tsk!" Sun Ya took a sip of the pungent liquor, hissing at the burn.
"An ordinary person could never go that far. If I didn't know you were doing it for everyone's sake, to lead us to survive, I'd stay as far away from someone like you as possible."
"Are you praising me or cursing me?" Su Jin tilted his head, smiling with squinted eyes.
"Consider it praise. Troubled times breed heroes, and you are a ruthless hegemon. You will achieve great things, of that I am certain." Sun Ya nodded firmly, then shifted his tone. "However... once someone like you succeeds, you might very well become a tyrant."
"A tyrant..." Su Jin scoffed, raising his cup to clink it against Sun Ya's.
Draining the strong liquor, his gaze grew tranquil as still water.
"You're right. This world truly needs a tyrant... but it won't be me."
Chapter 40