On the first night after the King Flower died, it rained in Hundred Flowers Town.
A dense drizzle washed over the greenhouse ruins. Black powder flowed into the mud through the cracks.
The exposed white bones were polished bright by the rain, piled in layers under the torn plastic sheeting.
Gu Jiao stood at the edge of the ruins, completely drenched.
Her patrol team had set out with thirty-three people, but only nineteen returned. She recited those fourteen names one by one.
However, when she reached the sixth name, her voice began to tremble. After finishing the fourteenth, she could no longer speak.
The fallen included fourteen patrol members and seven refugee volunteers. These volunteers had no weapons, but they all shared a determination not to wait for death.
The oldest among them was fifty-three years old, the youngest seventeen.
Twenty-one people died in the greenhouse.
Adding the over three hundred twenty people that Lao Xing had fed to the King Flower over the past three years, and the more than two hundred who never returned from Hundred Flower Valley.
Hundred Flowers Town originally had a population of eight hundred forty-seven.
Now only two hundred sixty-one were still alive.
Gu Jiao stood in the rain and recited this number once.
Five hundred eighty-six people had died on this land.
Some died in the battles for Hundred Flower Valley.
More died in the greenhouse, without even leaving their names.
The rain grew heavier.
Gu Jiao crouched down and picked up a gray-white piece of broken bone from the muddy ruins. She clenched the bone shard in her hand for a long time.
Then she stood up, turned, and walked toward the town center.
The next morning, the rain stopped.
Sunlight shone on the wet earthen walls.
The Trade Square was filled with the two hundred sixty-one survivors.
Among the crowd, some were on crutches, others wrapped in bandages. Though many were still trembling, everyone had come.
Fatty Zhou was escorted by the patrol team from the warehouse to the center of the square.
During last night’s battle, he had kept the door locked from inside, hiding in the warehouse full of hoarded supplies.
Most of the thugs he had brought fled overnight.
The remaining few were disarmed, tied up, and thrown into a corner.
Fatty Zhou stood in the center of the square. He wore a greasy leather jacket, a fawning smile plastered on his face.
“Gu… Sister Gu, you’ve worked hard.”
Fatty Zhou’s voice trembled.
“The flower is dead, the crisis is over—”
“Read.”
Gu Jiao said only one word. She threw the account book at Fatty Zhou’s feet.
The flesh on Fatty Zhou’s face twitched.
This was the account book Gu Jiao had found in the secret compartment of his warehouse. Every page recorded dates, numbers, names, and transaction prices.
“Read it out loud.”
Gu Jiao stood before him. Her voice was not loud, but it carried across the entire square.
“From the first page to the last, not a single word missing.”
Fatty Zhou’s legs went weak. When he bent down to pick up the account book, his hands shook violently. He opened it to the first page.
“…Three years ago, June 12th.”
He read word by word, his voice trembling.
“One Positive, Zhang Youfu, forty-two years old, transaction price: ten Ghost Crystals.”
A woman in the square suddenly went weak in the knees. She was Zhou Dazhuang’s sister, and Zhang Youfu was her husband.
She did not rush forward. Instead, she collapsed onto the muddy ground.
People nearby tried to help her up, but she pushed them away.
Fatty Zhou continued reading.
“June 15th, two Positives. Liu Shi and her daughter, transaction price: fifteen Ghost Crystals.”
A muffled groan came from the crowd. It was Liu Shi’s neighbor. She covered her mouth with both hands and shook violently.
“June 20th, one Yin Natured person, nameless refugee. Transaction price: five Ghost Crystals.”
Lao Wu stood at the back of the crowd, leaning on his crutch. He did not make a sound, but his body swayed slightly.
Fatty Zhou read name after name, his voice growing softer.
With each name, someone in the crowd broke down crying. Some crouched on the ground, holding their heads, biting their hands to suppress their grief.
The account book recorded various ages; some had no names at all.
Some names were crossed out and rewritten—those were people who had been judged unqualified and then sent in again.
Each transaction price differed: Positives cost ten to fifteen Ghost Crystals, Yin Natured people cost five, and the elderly and children cost only three. A single human life was worth only three Ghost Crystals.
By the middle of his reading, Fatty Zhou’s voice was so low only the front row could hear. His legs kept shaking, and the account book was soaked with sweat.
“Read louder.”
Gu Jiao looked at him coldly.
Fatty Zhou shuddered and quickly raised his voice. He stammered through the names.
When he reached the records from the last three months, the transaction frequency had clearly increased. In the busiest week, there were even seven names in one single week.
“Last month, the 13th, one Yin Natured person, a fourteen-year-old boy, transaction price: five Ghost Crystals.”
Lao Wu’s crutch struck the ground once. The sound was not loud but exceptionally clear.
“That was my grandson.”
Lao Wu’s voice was very dry.
Fatty Zhou faltered instantly. He looked at Lao Wu, the most inconspicuous person in the town, and his lips trembled—he couldn’t continue.
“Continue.”
Gu Jiao said.
Fatty Zhou had no choice but to steel himself and continue reading.
When he reached the last name, a small voice sounded from the crowd.
“That was my mother.”
The crowd automatically parted to make a path.
A seven- or eight-year-old girl stood there.
She wore an oversized gray cloth shirt, with sunken cheeks and withered yellow hair. Her voice was unusually calm, completely unlike what someone her age should sound like.
“My mother went to get relief supplies last month. She said she’d come back and cook for me, but she never came back.”
The account book in Fatty Zhou’s hand fell to the ground. The open page was soaked through by muddy water.
These three hundred twenty-seven names were finally finished being read. There was no sound in the square. A heavy atmosphere pressed on everyone’s chest, making it hard to breathe.
Gu Jiao broke the silence.
“Everyone on that account book was sold by Fatty Zhou to Lao Xing. Now Lao Xing is dead, but he is still alive.”
She turned to look at Fatty Zhou.
“I said I wouldn’t kill you, and I keep my word.”
Fatty Zhou’s legs gave out and he nearly fell to his knees. His lips moved as if to say thank you, but no sound came out.
“Me not killing you doesn’t mean others won’t.”
Gu Jiao faced everyone in the square.
“He caused the deaths of your loved ones. How you want to deal with him is up to you.”
She slowly stepped back.
“No matter the outcome, I will not hold anyone accountable.”
After speaking, she stepped back to her original spot and no longer looked at the center of the square.
Fatty Zhou looked around, his face full of terror. Countless eyes filled with hatred stared fixedly at him.
The first to rush up was Zhang Youfu’s wife.
She broke free from those holding her back, lunged at Fatty Zhou, and swung her fist.
The grief of losing her husband gave her the drive to vent. Punch after punch landed on his face.
Fatty Zhou fell to the ground, curling into a ball.
Then more and more people surged forward, swinging fists and kicks.
They didn’t use weapons; they wanted to return all the pain of losing their loved ones with their bare hands.
“Little White Night, if I die, would you be angry and sad?”
Little Frost couldn’t help asking White Night.
“Of course, but Aunt Xiang, don’t say such unlucky things.”
White Night couldn’t help reminding her.
“I knew you care about me the most, Little White Night.”
Little Frost couldn’t help pulling White Night close. For this moment, she could touch White Night again.
White Night buried herself in Little Frost’s arms, her pretty face turning as red as a bubble tea kettle.
Mu Yingying stood to the side, both hands resting on her Tang Dao. She looked up at the gray sky.
‘She thought about whether White Night would also be sad for her if she died.’
‘And how would that chess-playing old man she once saw in the sky react?’
After a long while, the angry crowd finally dispersed. Fatty Zhou lay on the ground, covered in wounds. His intestines had been pulled out.
However, the people here had lived for a long time in a place thick with Ghost Qi, giving them a special constitution and strong vitality—this was also why they could see White Night.
They made Fatty Zhou roll out of the town. This was not out of mercy, but because driving him into the wilderness was crueler than death.
Gu Jiao gave the order from behind.
“Throw him out along with the remaining supplies. Let him fend for himself.”
Two team members carried Fatty Zhou toward the town gate. His feet dragged two trails on the ground.
Due to his missing teeth, he couldn’t even speak a complete sentence.
As the town gate opened, he was thrown out like trash.
Fatty Zhou could only crawl on the muddy ground. He looked back at the closed town gate, but in the end, said nothing.
Dragging his broken leg, he crawled toward the wilderness. His intestines left a trail of blood on the ground. That figure eventually disappeared into the distance.
Later, passing travelers said they found a mutilated corpse in the wilderness thirty miles west of the town.
Beside it were scattered compressed biscuits and the torn account book, left to rot there.
After the judgment, Hundred Flowers Town began the long aftermath work.
People cleared an open space next to the Forbidden Area and dug rows of graves.
The fallen team members and volunteers were wrapped in cloth and placed into the graves. In the apocalypse, there was no such luxury as coffins.
Gu Jiao personally scattered flower seeds that A Jiu had found on each grave mound.
They were just ordinary flower seeds.
Lao Xing had no grave; his ashes had long been mixed into the ruins of the greenhouse.
A Jiu specifically collected some ashes and scattered them over all the grave mounds.
“Master, this isn’t your fault. That King Flower bewitches people, its power was too strong. You were no match for it. The debts you owed have been repaid.”
A Jiu knelt before the graves and kowtowed three times.
Though his forehead was covered in wet mud, he did not wipe it off. He knelt there for a long time before standing up and leaving.
Before leaving, he looked back at the grave mounds.
The flower seeds, softened by the rain, were buried in the soil. Perhaps by next spring, real flowers could bloom here.