“Hello, Brother Big Head?”
“Damn, who’s this? Not a sound out of you.”
“It’s me, Zhao Haobin. Little Zhao.”
“Oh, my god! Little Zhao? You’re still damn well alive?”
“I’m still alive, Brother Big Head.”
“Impressive. You’re one tough bastard to still be kicking.”
“What do you want with your Brother Big Head?”
“Brother Big Head, do you know? They’ve built a safety zone along the coastal area!”
“Is that for real!?”
“It is!”
“Let me ask around.”
The other end of the phone went silent for a while.
Zhao Haobin held the phone, swallowing nervously.
“Screw that! You’re full of shit! The coast is full of those damn zombies!” Brother Big Head’s voice came through again, clearly filled with anger.
“It’s not like that, Brother Big Head! There’s a little lady here who’s real damn spicy!”
“Aha, let me ask around some more.”
Silence followed on the other end once again.
Zhao Haobin’s subordinates began to clamor among themselves.
“Go, go, go! Quit blowing smoke out of your ass!”
Another outburst of furious cursing erupted from the phone.
Zhao Haobin’s expression darkened.
He simply opened the green messaging app, peeked out from the corner to check his surroundings, and after confirming no one was watching, he snapped a few photos of the people building the wall and sent them over.
On the other end, Brother Big Head coughed a few times.
“Come, come, look at this.”
Brother Big Head’s side became noisy again, as if he were talking to someone.
“That shouldn’t be possible,” a man’s voice said from the background.
“Come, look, you—$#%&…”
Zhao Haobin couldn’t hear clearly what was being said after that.
They seemed to be discussing things for a while.
“Fine. After we get our hands on the ‘big treasure,’ we’ll head over and take a look!”
Brother Big Head’s gravelly voice dropped those words before the phone disconnected with a “beep”.
As the monotonous busy tone hummed, Zhao Haobin slowly lowered the phone, which was so filthy its original color was unrecognizable.
Several ragged-looking men with fierce glints in their eyes surrounded him.
“How’d it go, Brother Bin? Did Big Head and the others believe it?” a Skinny Monkey with a missing front tooth asked eagerly.
“Believe it my ass!” a burly man with a scar on his face spat.
“That old fox Big Head is as sharp as a ghost. Would he move without a profit?”
“He’ll probably send someone to scout it out.”
“What treasure could be more important than a safe place?” Skinny Monkey asked, puzzled.
Scarface snorted coldly, “What else could it be? Food and water? These days, what else counts as a big treasure besides things that keep you alive? Unless…”
A flash of greed and suspicion crossed his eyes, “Guns.”
This word made everyone fall silent for a moment.
The Post-Apocalypse had arrived so suddenly that many facilities hadn’t been completely destroyed.
Occasionally, one really could find things that would make anyone green with envy.
However, such finds were usually accompanied by extreme danger.
“Big Head and his crew are entrenched in that West City Factory Area,” Zhao Haobin analyzed slowly, his eyes flickering, “That place is sinister.”
“So what do we do? Just wait for them to come?” another short man who hadn’t spoken yet asked.
“If they come and see there really is a safety zone, will there be anything left for us? A man like Big Head eats the meat and spits out the bones.”
A ruthless look flashed across Zhao Haobin’s face as he said, “Of course we can’t just wait. Don’t they have a big treasure? We need to show some sincerity too.”
He walked back to the table and dipped his finger into a smudge of unknown origin, drawing a few rough lines on the dust-covered surface.
“Find that Lu Dongnuan girl and let them fight like a fish and a leopard, then the fish-men will get the prize!”
“Brother Bin, it’s ‘when the snipe and the clam fight, the fisherman gets the prize.'”
Zhao Haobin immediately smacked the man beside him.
“I knew that!”
He turned around, took a bite of the bread in his hand, and chewed fiercely.
The people inside the walls wanted to establish order, while the wolves outside the walls were catching the scent of meat.
As for Zhao Haobin, he didn’t want to be the labor building the wall, nor did he want to scrounge for food in the ruins forever.
He wanted to be the person standing on top of the wall watching the scenery, occasionally throwing a stone downward.
Outside the window, the thick fog toward the coast seemed even heavier.
Low, non-human roars seemed to be drawing closer.
He glanced in that direction and muttered a low curse.
***
After the call ended, Brother Big Head lit a cigarette.
A man covered in tattoos stood before him.
“Wang Ye, can we trust what this little brat Zhao Haobin says?”
Wang Ye fell into deep thought upon hearing this.
“There is a safety zone, but that should be something from much later. Some Black Shield Company came here and built one.”
“Aha, Black Shield Company?” Brother Big Head looked like he had just realized something, then slapped his thigh.
“Haha, never heard of it.” Wang Ye’s lips twitched.
Looking at the thick-set, muscular man in front of him, he also started laughing.
Once the two had laughed their fill, Wang Ye bid farewell to Brother Big Head’s smoke-filled “office,” which smelled like a mix of machine oil and sour sweat.
He walked back down the dark, cluttered hallway.
Most of the doors to the rooms on either side of the corridor were open.
Inside were his brothers, some bragging in low voices and others gulping down alcohol.
In the darkness, the only light came from the red embers of glowing cigarettes.
The last life… the last life.
The memories were like sediment at the bottom of a turbid river, stirred up by Zhao Haobin’s phone call.
Those images were not pleasant.
They were filled with hunger, cold, the omnipresent scent of death, and that final moment when Brother Big Head had pushed him through a relatively intact door to safety, turning around to face the things chasing them.
“Go! Don’t look back!” Brother Big Head’s last words had been completely different from his usual crude shouting—hoarse, yet exceptionally clear.
The iron door had slammed shut before Wang Ye’s eyes.
The sound of the lock clicking and the muffled noises of chewing and tearing outside the door had become the end of his previous life’s memories.
It was the heaviest and most burning brand in his dreams since his rebirth.
He owed Brother Big Head a life.
No… more than just one.
Therefore, in this life, when he encountered Da Zhuang in the chaos—before he had even become “Brother Big Head”—while he was just leading a few coworkers through the factory area, Wang Ye had joined him without hesitation.
He helped Da Zhuang become everyone’s “Brother Big Head” ahead of time, while Wang Ye became “Ye,” the most trusted yet most inscrutable person by Big Head’s side.
Relying on a few more years of survival experience in the Post-Apocalypse and some fuzzy memories of key supply caches, he helped Da Zhuang dodge the initial waves of zombies and the frantic looting for supplies.
Bit by bit, they gathered people and established a foothold in this factory area.
In his last life, Brother Big Head gave the chance of survival to Wang Ye.
In this life, Wang Ye would definitely pay him back.
He knew his advantage as a regressor was limited.
The world was too big, and there were too many variables.
He couldn’t remember every detail, nor could he predict every accident.
But he remembered certain key turning points.
He remembered which places were rumored to have massive amounts of supplies—even though those places were usually incredibly dangerous.
He remembered which types of Mutants required special caution.
And he remembered… the place that would later be known as the “Black Shield Barrier” by the coast.
According to his memories of his previous life, the appearance of Black Shield shouldn’t have happened until at least ten months after the cataclysm.
By then, the initial chaos would have passed.
Survivors would have either banded together to form settlements of various sizes or become withered bones—or something else—wandering the wilderness.
The Black Shield Company had intervened with a forceful and professional attitude, quickly clearing and sealing off that coastal area and building high walls.
They recruited people from the outside with harsh conditions, but the safety and relatively stable supplies they provided were an irresistible temptation for many struggling to survive.
However, few people who went inside ever sent detailed news back.
There were only scattered, unsettling rumors.
Now, it had only been a few months since the cataclysm, yet Zhao Haobin said the walls were already being built?
The timeline didn’t match.
Wang Ye took a deep drag of his cigarette.
The harsh smoke rolled through his lungs, bringing a slight, grounded sting of reality.
‘Is Zhao Haobin lying?’
Those few hurried photos showed that many people were indeed busy.
That level of organization didn’t look like something an ordinary survivor squad could possess.
Or perhaps… something is different in this life, causing Black Shield or some other power to move early.
He thought of the “little lady” Zhao Haobin mentioned, and that name: Lu Dongnuan.
He had absolutely never heard that name in his previous life.
At least, not in the rumors related to the Black Shield Company.
A woman who could make Zhao Haobin specifically mention her to catch Brother Big Head’s attention…
In this era, she either possessed extraordinary beauty, extraordinary skill, or…
‘There’s another regressor.’