Delusion Director

Su Nian swept a cold glance over the woman's corpse. In a situation like this, leaving loose ends meant inviting trouble down the road.

Even if it was a woman.

Everyone around him looked at Su Nian with apprehension. Whenever he glanced their way, they hurriedly averted their eyes, afraid to meet his gaze and invite a misunderstanding along the lines of, "What are you looking at? Want me to kill you too?"

Having so many witnesses was a good thing for Su Nian. It served as a warning.

Su Nian put his bag on the tricycle, searched the man's corpse, then patted down the woman's. He found nothing.

He also took stock of the supplies on the tricycle: one pot, two and a half candles, three packets of instant noodles, two sets of women's clothing, and some firewood.

There was one pleasant surprise, though. Su Nian found a woman's gold necklace in a cloth pouch.

With the apocalypse upon them, money, luxury watches, and gold and silver jewelry should all have been worth less than a piece of bread.

But gold was an exception. Those awakened people seemed to like it quite a bit.

When he joined a week ago, the three awakened people had even asked whether anyone had gold they could trade for supplies.

Gold definitely had some special use.

Gold really did shine wherever it went.

Su Nian climbed onto the tricycle and pedaled after the convoy. As for the corpses, he left them on the road. He could hardly throw them into the gray fog to feed the horrors.

About twenty minutes later, the main group stopped.

The voice of their leader, Hao Ren, came over the loudspeaker.

"Rest where you are."

Su Nian stopped his tricycle. Throughout the past week, the convoy had followed a routine of resting during the day and traveling at night.

Su Nian set up the iron pot and started cooking instant noodles.

Wailing came from nearby. A child kept crying while a plump older woman with graying hair went from person to person, asking to borrow supplies.

"Please, lend me some supplies. Adults can go without food, but children are still growing."

The plump woman knelt and kowtowed, but failed to awaken anyone's "compassion."

In the end, she picked a female college student who seemed relatively easy to talk to and began guilt-tripping her.

"I've already kowtowed to you, and you won't even lend me a little food? Do you have any humanity at all? Even if you don't respect your elders, you should at least care about children!"

The college student's tan face flushed red with anger.

"You always do this! How many times has it been now? You haven't even paid back what you borrowed before!"

She had believed the older woman's nonsense at first. Seeing someone her age begging everywhere for a little food, she had lent her supplies twice, but the woman had never repaid her.

"Exactly. I've never seen anyone so shameless," a girl nearby chimed in. The young man beside her raised a hand to cover her mouth, signaling her to keep quiet.

With no food, the child cried louder and louder. The older woman began throwing tantrums and rolling around, but not a single person gave her anything to eat.

"Grandma, I want instant noodles." With tears and snot streaming down his face, the little boy pointed at Su Nian, who was peeling the wrapper off a sausage.

Su Nian dropped the ham sausage into the pot, drew his dagger, and toyed with it, staring straight at the pair.

"Be good, sweetheart. We're not having instant noodles. Instant noodles are junk food. Grandma will find you something tasty."

The plump woman gave Su Nian a wary glance, then made a show of rummaging through the bags hanging from her old roadster bicycle.

It wasn't as though she hadn't seen Su Nian kill those people earlier. They had only asked to borrow supplies, and he had killed them.

He was an absolute lunatic.

People gradually caught up from behind. As soon as they saw the main group, they collapsed onto the ground, their faces filled with lingering fear.

Some escaped only to discover that their family members were all dead, and began sobbing quietly.

"Dad, I told you not to be greedy, but you wouldn't listen!"

"Wang, my husband is dead. What am I supposed to do now?" A curly-haired woman sobbed, large tears rolling down her cheeks.

"It's all right!" A dark-skinned man came up to her, placed his large hands on her trembling shoulders, and pulled her into his arms.

"Your husband and I were good friends for years. From the very first day we came to this world, he told me to take good care of you if anything happened to him."

"Thank you, Wang!" As though she had found a sense of security, the curly-haired woman gradually stopped trembling.

"Wang, my husband died when he went to get his bag too." A plump, dark-skinned woman rushed toward him, sobbing.

Wang shoved her away, his face full of disgust. "Your husband and I weren't close. He still owed me money from before the apocalypse."

The woman fell to the ground, her face filled with disbelief. "Weren't you the one who borrowed money from my husband to go to a foot massage parlor? When did our family ever owe you money?"

"What nonsense!" Wang snorted and walked away with the sobbing, curly-haired woman in his arms.

Along the way, his large hands had already begun wandering up to her breasts.

A balding man in his sixties helped the fallen woman to her feet. With gentle words of comfort and a piece of bread as payment... he led her toward a makeshift tent made from a tarp stretched over bamboo poles.

The tent nearly collapsed several times, and indescribable sounds drifted out from inside.

A tall, thin young man with fair skin slumped on the ground, tears pouring down his face as hoarse gasps kept rolling from his throat.

While fleeing, he had actually pushed his grandmother toward the horrors without thinking.

"Grandma! You won't blame me, right? I didn't mean to... I just panicked."

Grandma won't turn into a horror and come to take my life, will she? I'm her own grandson.

Su Nian ate his instant noodles and watched these people. It felt like watching a live-action drama, which was a way to pass the time.

With the apocalypse here, all their entertainment had vanished overnight. He had asked about prices. Cigarettes and alcohol were scarce goods that ordinary people couldn't afford.

Sex was the cheapest form of recreation.

It didn't use up much of anything. As long as your body could keep up, you could keep going.

Another two hours passed before the door of the off-road vehicle at the head of the convoy opened. Hao Ren's driver, Zhang Ping, got out and began counting the remaining people.

Anyone who hadn't caught up by now was almost certainly dead.

A man with a bald crown and a ring of hair around it stepped out of the second off-road vehicle, wearing a white shirt, gray shorts, and flip-flops.

He was the convoy's second awakened person. His name was Gong Qing.

Su Nian, who had been studying the system, suddenly had an idea. He moved the illusory five-pointed star icon toward the spot between Gong Qing's eyebrows.

[Gong Qing]

[Constitution: 14 (A combined value representing health, damage resistance, stamina, natural healing, carrying capacity, and physical toughness. Reaching zero causes immediate unconsciousness/death. Can recover naturally through eating and resting. The limit for a normal human is 9 points.)]

[Spirit: 17 (Used to resist mental corruption, resist illusions, and process thoughts. If the value falls too low, the individual will fall into self-doubt. When it reaches 1, the individual will go completely insane. The limit for a normal human is 9 points.)]

[Talent: Delusion Director (Sequence Eight)]

"Caregiver (Sequence Nine): Perceive the mental states of others, identify mental disorders and mental corruption caused by horrors, soothe mild mania through words, and exert weak mental restraint that only works on those with weak minds."

"Ward Physician (Sequence Eight):"