Base Falls

Her body plummeted rapidly through the air, and the weightlessness left Bai Xiaoling dizzy, her heart pounding wildly.

This time, she truly thought she was doomed. Inside, she frantically cursed the two bandits who had broken into her home.

As she was about to hit the ground face-first, Bai Xiaoling could already picture her mangled corpse, brains splattering everywhere.

She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping only that she would die instantly and not feel too much pain.

Then, she suddenly felt something wrap around her waist before yanking hard.

Bai Xiaoling instantly felt as though every bone in her body were about to come apart. Her stomach churned, and she retched.

But thanks to that cushioning pull, when she hit the ground, Bai Xiaoling merely skidded several meters across it in an undignified heap instead of shattering into pieces as she had imagined.

Then she saw Qi Xing holding Jiang Zhaosu. The two of them sat on a bizarre, thick vine as though on a swing, and the vine gently and steadily lowered them to the ground.

Bai Xiaoling: "..."

Fuck, so having abilities made you amazing?

From the conversation between those two monsters earlier, it seemed they had mistaken her for that man's younger sister and had specifically come to the seventeenth floor to find her.

Bai Xiaoling did have an older brother from the same father, but he was not the man standing before her.

Her brother was called Bai Xiaoqing, the son of her father's legal wife.

As for Bai Xiaoling's mother, she had been her father's mistress—what people commonly called the other woman.

That made Bai Xiaoling the other woman's child, an illegitimate child who could not be shown to the world.

However, her mother had died early, passing away from illness before Bai Xiaoling even started elementary school.

After losing her mother, Bai Xiaoling had been brought back to the main family by her father, who could not control his lower half and sowed his seed everywhere. There, she became siblings with Bai Xiaoqing.

She and Bai Xiaoqing had always been like fire and water. Bai Xiaoqing would never risk his life to come looking for her.

Before the apocalypse, having someone place her under house arrest in this well-stocked apartment had already been the greatest mercy that man could offer her.

At first, Bai Xiaoling thought Bai Xiaoqing had been angered by her skipping school and fooling around, and that he was punishing her this way.

Every day, she sent Bai Xiaoqing insulting messages on her phone, but he ignored every single one.

It was not until the Zombie Tide erupted, when Bai Xiaoling saw people biting one another in the streets and corpses strewn everywhere, that she truly realized something terrifying seemed to have happened.

Later, even her apartment building was no longer safe.

People often knocked on her door, pleading desperately for help or violently kicking it and demanding that she open up. Occasionally, zombie roars could be heard as well.

Whenever that happened, Bai Xiaoling hid fearfully inside the fully sealed panic room.

After some time passed, all sound outside vanished completely.

After the power and internet went out, her apartment became like a lone boat adrift at sea.

Bai Xiaoling often said she wanted to die, but when it came to actually dying, she did not want to.

But there was one thing she had not lied about. After living alone in this apartment for more than half a year, she truly had nearly been driven mad by loneliness.

Otherwise, she would not have given up her stable life before reaching true desperation, risking everything to break the window and hang an SOS distress banner outside.

In the end, no rescue team came. Instead, two bandits arrived, ransacked her home, and nearly took her life.

One side of her body ached fiercely from the fall, the pain making tears stream down her face.

Meanwhile, the male monster held the little monster as though afraid of frightening her and said gently, "Don't worry. She didn't die from the fall."

"You haven't had fresh human meat in a long time, have you? I deliberately left you a live one for Fortune."

Fuck your father! Since you still looked human, could you act like one?

Jiang Zhaosu's round black eyes watched Bai Xiaoling lying motionless on the ground. She stuck out her tongue and licked her lips before slowly saying, "If she dies, eat now."

She could already smell blood.

Bai Xiaoling, who had just been in so much pain that she felt half-paralyzed and never wanted to move again, immediately scrambled to her feet. "Haha, I'm alive. I'm alive..."

"If you're alive, move the supplies."

Qi Xing also had dark, ink-black eyes, though his were more like cunning fox eyes. He stared at her with a false smile and said coldly, "Move everything into the vehicle, and I'll let you live two more days."

After encountering Jiang Zhaosu and Qi Xing, Bai Xiaoling, who had always wanted for nothing, finally tasted the suffering of the apocalypse. Her whole body ached with exhaustion, her palms were rubbed raw, yet she still had to endure the pain and haul goods back and forth.

As she worked, she regretted why she had been so foolish as to hang that white cloth outside her window and draw these two living kings of hell to her door.

At this rate, even if she was not eaten alive, she would die from exhaustion.

Bai Xiaoling's mind raced, and she suddenly came up with a way to protect herself.

"Brother, are you looking for your younger sister?"

When they were nearly done moving the supplies, Bai Xiaoling tried striking up a conversation with Qi Xing. "I can help you."

"Oh?"

Qi Xing cast her a careless glance, clearly unconvinced by her words.

"Really!" Bai Xiaoling said with a serious expression, swearing earnestly, "My brother used to be the head of the Information Department. He knows everything. He can definitely find where your sister is."

The head of the Information Department?

Ordinary young people could not reach that position. He must have been from an influential family.

No wonder this little girl lived alone in such a high-end apartment and seemed almost prophetic, having stocked up on so many supplies in advance.

But that had only been before the apocalypse.

With the Zombie Virus running rampant and social order in chaos, whether this girl's brother had even survived was unknown. How could he still casually mobilize data and personnel to find someone as he had before?

The girl had stayed in the apartment too long and had yet to recognize reality.

Qi Xing and Jiang Zhaosu could both see that the girl before them was not very bright. One human and one zombie silently looked around at the bleak, ruined surroundings, then turned their gazes on Bai Xiaoling as though looking at an idiot.

The silence was deafening.

Although Bai Xiaoling was not very smart, she was not so stupid that she could not read the speechless expressions on their faces. She hurriedly said, "My brother is very capable. He received inside information before the apocalypse and sent me here. If I didn't die, how could anything have happened to him?"

"And after the apocalypse, he even sent me messages through crows."

"Hmm? Crows?"

Only then did Qi Xing show a trace of interest.

Weren't those the Surveillance Eyes that had once monitored him while he carried out missions?

After the apocalypse, the power and internet had gone down, and all kinds of communication devices had become useless.

However, some Ability Users had awakened Mental Abilities, allowing them to control small animals skilled at hiding and moving around to deliver messages.

These controlled animals were called Surveillance Eyes, while the Ability Users who performed this job were called monitors.

A monitor could control several Surveillance Eyes and rapidly learn information from multiple areas.

If Bai Xiaoling's brother was a monitor, then he indeed had a chance of finding his sister.

"Yes, crows! They were huge! Their eyes were red!"

Bai Xiaoling exaggeratedly gestured with her hands to show the crow's size.

"That crow was incredibly clever. It even used stones to smash my window. When I opened it, it flew inside with a rolled-up piece of paper tied to its claws. The writing on it was Bai Xiaoqing's. He told me to stay obediently in the apartment and said he would come pick me up once the base's order had stabilized."

"Which base?" Qi Xing pressed.

Bai Xiaoling scratched her head and thought for a moment. "I think it was called Hurricane Base?"

"..."

Qi Xing fell silent for a moment before saying, "Then never mind."

"Huh?"

Bai Xiaoling asked in confusion, "Why?"

Qi Xing answered expressionlessly, "Hurricane Base was overrun by a zombie horde a month ago. Fewer than ten Ability Users escaped, and all of them joined Chasing Moon Base. There was no monitor named Bai Xiaoqing among them."