In the open space at the center of the warehouse, several LED lights powered by car batteries cast a pale, chilling glow, just barely piercing the darkness and throwing flickering, overlapping shadows onto the cold cement floor.
Lu Dongnuan followed Lin Mo, half a step behind him.
The first thing she felt when she stepped into the circle of light was how crowded it was.
But it wasn’t the bustling kind of crowd from the streets of the past—it was a silent kind of pressure.
About a hundred people—men, women, children, and elders—bundled up in whatever they could find: bulky cotton coats, tattered blankets, even plastic sheeting and cardboard strapped around their bodies.
Some stood, some crouched, all unconsciously hunching their shoulders against the cold, a trembling, gray mass shivering in the chill wind like a cluster of fungi.
Most faces were blurry under the dim light, but the eyes—pairs upon pairs of them—shone startlingly bright.
They stared in unison, with a focus that bordered on greed, toward the center of the space.
There, a few people dressed more neatly than the rest, each with a uniform strip of cloth tied around their arms, were gathered around several huge iron barrels set atop makeshift stoves.
Unidentifiable fuel burned beneath the barrels, snapping and crackling, sending up sharp smoke.
Thick clouds of steam rose from the rims of the barrels, twisting quickly into fog in the cold air before being swept away by the wind.
That enticing smell came from there.
The monotonous, clear sound of a ladle scraping the barrel walls cut through the crowd’s whispers and the howling wind.
With every stir, countless eyes followed the movement even more tightly, and the sound of swallowing echoed intermittently through the silence.
Hundreds of eyes clung to the rising steam above the iron barrels, shivering bodies wrapped in ragged clothes clustered into a trembling, gray shadow.
“Everyone, look over here first!” Her voice wasn’t loud, but it was crisp and clear.
Only the wind, whimpering over the warehouse’s high roof, responded.
“Same rules as always,” Tang Kezhi’s gaze slowly swept over the upturned faces below, her smile unchanged, “Line up, one portion per person. No grabbing, no taking someone else’s share. If you’re new, or made a special contribution—”
She paused, her eyes drifted perhaps intentionally toward where Lu Dongnuan and Lin Mo stood and she continued, “You can get a little extra. It’s cold, so warm up with a drink. Tomorrow we’ve still got work to do if we want another meal.”
Her tone was soothing and light, almost as if she were announcing an activity at school, but the rules and the firmness behind her words were unmistakable.
No one objected—just more sounds of swallowing.
“Oh, right.” As if remembering suddenly, Tang Kezhi clapped her hands and pointed toward Lu Dongnuan’s direction.
“We have two new friends today—Dr. Lu, and her… um, family.”
Her tongue seemed to subtly skirt around a word, and her smile deepened, “She’s really amazing. From now on, if anyone’s feeling stuffy, can’t figure something out, or feels unwell, you can talk to Dr. Lu. In a world like this, don’t let your body or mind get sick from holding it all in.”
Hundreds of gazes instantly focused on them—curious, numb, scrutinizing, and even with a trace of faint, hard-to-notice hostility.
Lu Dongnuan instantly felt goosebumps prickle across her skin.
It was an instinctive discomfort, as if countless hungry, desperate creatures were staring her down.
She reflexively put on a gentle, slightly awkward smile, giving a slight nod in greeting.
Lin Mo stood in front of her, his broad, sturdy body blocking some of the gazes.
Tang Kezhi seemed quite satisfied with the shift in attention, and nimbly hopped down from a wooden crate.
“Let’s begin.”
With a low shout from one of the order-keepers, the crowd began to move—slowly, almost stiffly—automatically forming a few crooked, winding lines.
Pushing and shoving was inevitable; low curses and suppressed coughs rang out in the lines, but were quickly silenced by the cold stares of the guards.
Everyone clutched whatever container they had managed to scrounge—battered lunchboxes, dented enamel mugs, cleaned-out cans—eyes fixed unwaveringly on the steaming iron barrel up ahead.
Lu Dongnuan and Lin Mo were also motioned into a relatively shorter line—probably the one for “newcomers” or “those who were a little different.”
The line crept forward slowly, the smell growing stronger.
The soup in the barrel was murky gray-brown, with a few suspicious glimmers of oil and some withered yellow, unrecognizable bits of plant matter floating on the surface.
Occasionally, a dark, thumb-sized chunk would tumble past the ladle but whatever it was, at least it was hot.
The long-handled ladle scraped the barrel again, pouring the murky broth into outstretched containers—a dented enamel mug, a cracked plastic bowl, a cleaned can.
In a corner, an old man bowed his head, holding the bowl to his cracked lips and sipping slowly, a faint sound of swallowing in his throat.
The young gulped down the soup in a hurry, letting it spill from the corners of their mouths, dripping onto their filthy fronts, quickly freezing into dark, crusty stains.
A child cradled in his mother’s arms held a small tin can in his tiny hands, cautiously licking the salty residue around the rim.
The new woman and her gloomy “son” stood at the edge.
Lu Dongnuan held her lunchbox, the steam blurring her chin.
She didn’t drink immediately, instead lowering her gaze to examine the wilted yellow scraps and two small, suspiciously dark lumps floating in her portion.
The liquid in her bowl was just a thin line higher than anyone else’s.
Not far off, a girl in a school uniform stood by a wooden crate, ignoring the soup lines.
She was biting a lollipop she had somehow fished out from somewhere, her profile sharply outlined by the lamp’s light.
Her gaze swept over the whole scene—those hunched over their soup, the guards with short sticks pacing the crowd’s edge—and finally settled on that “mother and son” for a moment, the candy clinking lightly against her teeth.
Cold wind poured through holes high in the warehouse, spinning scraps of paper and plastic film along the floor, brushing people’s calves before fluttering down limply.
Sounds of swallowing, coughing, the light clink of bowls and spoons—no one spoke, no one laughed, even breathing was careful.
Lu Dongnuan thought this was what the Apocalypse really looked like.
There were no protagonists here, no fortuitous encounters—only numb people living through numb days, one after another.
She raised her head, feeling a surge of emotion.
Then, quietly, a faint, dark red glimmer rose in her eyes.
Beneath her skin, slender glowing lines began to creep along her veins, exuding an inhuman aura.
Almost at that same moment, not far away, Tang Kezhi’s brow twitched sharply.
An inexplicable, icy warning—like an invisible touch—shot up her spine.
She whipped her head around, her gaze as sharp as lightning, stabbing straight into Lu Dongnuan’s eyes.
Their gazes met.
Lu Dongnuan’s control was initiated smoothly, as if an invisible command embedded itself in an instant—but she immediately sensed the difference.
The smarter the target, the weaker the control’s effect.
This difference wasn’t in strength, but in depth.
For instance, controlling pure Zombies posed no challenge to Lu Dongnuan.
For the Blind Monk or Crab Monster, it was a bit troublesome at her current level, but she could still suppress them, direct their actions.
But this time, her target was a living person.
She could only control the other’s body, not their soul.
In other words, right now, she was nothing more than a tagalong puppet.
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