Sequence Adepts

Outside the tent, two men were sneaking toward Chu Sheng's tent.

"Dad, does this kid really still have food?"

"He does! I noticed him before. He always keeps to himself. I watched him for two days, and his backpack is full of food! And his tent is much better than the tarp we're using. Kill him, and we can sleep in his tent."

"Great! We've just run out of food. He's probably cooking right now. I'll go straight in, Dad. You help me out."

"Yeah! Be careful. This guy's already killed a few people. He has a Butcher Knife. Don't get stabbed."

"Got it!" The young man grinned.

Then he kicked the tent, only to let out a howl of pain a moment later.

"Aaah!"

He fell to the ground, clutching his foot and rolling around.

A cut ran straight through his foot, from the sole to the top. Half his foot had been sliced off.

Blood poured onto the ground as though determined to drain him dry.

Seeing his son like that, the middle-aged man panicked. He instinctively moved to help him up, but Chu Sheng wasn't about to let that opportunity slip.

He had been crouching the whole time. If someone wanted to kill him, their first move would be to collapse the tent, then attack while it fell around him.

The people outside had stopped right beside the pole supporting his tent, exactly as he had expected.

After waiting another moment, Chu Sheng saw a human silhouette through the light filtering into the tent. When the man raised his foot to kick, he placed the tip of the Butcher Knife right in its path.

Sure enough, the man kicked straight into the Butcher Knife. With just a little pressure from Chu Sheng, half his foot was sliced off.

With his ambush a success, Chu Sheng immediately pressed his advantage. He drew the Butcher Knife across the tent, effortlessly opening a slit.

The instant he slipped through it, Chu Sheng charged toward where the man had fallen. When he saw that someone else was there, he immediately redirected the blade and thrust it at the middle-aged man.

The middle-aged man, who had been about to help his son up, apparently hadn't expected Chu Sheng to destroy his own tent and rush out. Caught off guard, he took the Butcher Knife in the stomach.

Chu Sheng looked at the middle-aged man and grinned, letting rainwater flow into his mouth. With a powerful pull of his arm, he dragged the Butcher Knife across the man's belly and gutted him.

He moved incredibly fast, retreating to a safe distance as soon as the strike landed.

Only four or five seconds had passed between the young man's kick and the middle-aged man being gutted.

The middle-aged man still hadn't processed what had happened. He stared blankly down at his spilling organs and his son, who lay howling on the ground.

"I... you... it hurts..."

He trembled as he spoke. Then the world rapidly darkened, and he collapsed to the ground, lifeless.

"Nice blade!" Chu Sheng smiled, utterly unconcerned that he had killed someone mere seconds ago. Instead, he marveled at the sharpness of the Butcher Knife.

It had been quite sharp before, but after the upgrade, it felt as though it could slice through iron like butter.

He had noticed it when he sliced off half the man's foot. Gutting someone now had confirmed his suspicion.

Chu Sheng turned his gaze back to the young man on the ground.

Seeing his father dead, the young man stopped howling and began crawling forward, trembling all over.

Naturally, Chu Sheng wasn't going to let him get away. He stepped forward and kicked him, sending him sprawling flat on the ground, then planted a foot on his back to pin him down.

"S-sorry! I... I... I didn't mean to..." The young man tried begging for mercy, but Chu Sheng wouldn't listen.

"If apologies worked, what would I need a knife for? You don't have to apologize. I'll collect your remorse myself." Chu Sheng's flat words sent a shudder through the young man.

Before he could say anything else, the Butcher Knife came down on his head.

One strike, one kill!

But Chu Sheng wasn't pleased. Instead, he frowned. He had felt some resistance just now.

It was like cutting cold pigskin with a dull knife.

It wasn't impossible, but it took effort.

The Butcher Knife had felt much the same just now.

Still, Chu Sheng quickly let it go. He had only upgraded it once, and the Butcher Knife had already made a qualitative leap. What more could he ask for?

He had targeted the head because he had heard it was the hardest part of the body. He had specifically wanted to test the blade.

Kicking the corpse aside, Chu Sheng sighed and returned to the tent to put his wet clothes back on. He hung the Butcher Knife at his waist, then dragged a corpse in each hand somewhere a little farther away.

The corpses themselves didn't matter, but leaving them beside his tent would be somewhat unpleasant.

After dumping the bodies, Chu Sheng patched the tent with adhesive tape and finally breathed a sigh of relief.

He also gave the onlookers around him a shy, harmless smile.

Human lives were the cheapest things in the apocalypse.

Some people had seen the father and son heading toward Chu Sheng's tent. The young man's scream had drawn everyone's attention.

Yet not a single person had stepped in to stop it.

Only half a year into the apocalypse, everyone had already grown this indifferent to human life.

Chu Sheng remembered the father and son. Like him, they were survivors who had fled Changjiang City.

Taking the Butcher Knife in hand again, Chu Sheng walked straight toward the tent the father and son had set up.

Their tent was easy to identify. Among the more than two hundred people in the convoy, they were the only ones using a tricolored tarp.

When Chu Sheng arrived and looked beneath the tarp, he shook his head.

Aside from the tarp, there were a few transparent plastic bags laid out on the ground. Everything else was gone.

One glance told him someone had taken their belongings.

He looked around. Everyone avoided his gaze, but Chu Sheng didn't mind. He had done plenty of that himself.

Besides, they had already been reduced to killing for supplies. They couldn't have had much left.

With that thought, he pulled down the tricolored tarp. He didn't leave the plastic bags on the ground behind either, folding everything up and taking it away.

Tricolored tarps were fairly common, mostly found at construction sites and general stores. Their texture looked much like that of urea sacks.

As he passed the tattoo-sleeved thug with the tarp in his arms, Chu Sheng gave him a friendly smile, startling him.

"Fuck, this kid looks so harmless. How's he so vicious...?"

Back in his tent, Chu Sheng picked up the self-heating hot pot he had prepared earlier and enjoyed his meal.

The convoy would be traveling again today, but at least he had gained something.

Meanwhile, at the very front of the convoy, a red-haired youth returned to the vehicle after watching the whole spectacle.

"I thought we'd get to see that guy go on a killing spree. All he did was bring back a tarp."

"Xiao Qing, don't say things that undermine unity!"

"Besides, that guy would've been an idiot if he really had gone on a killing spree." A mild-mannered man wearing glasses, his pale face making him look somewhat anemic, rebuked him.

"All right, enough of that. We'll be reaching the next supply point soon. Get ready, everyone."

"There's something strange about that place."

"Anomalies? Aren't there Anomalies everywhere now?"

"No, I mean something's not right." The mild-mannered man adjusted his glasses. "My divination sign tells me there isn't a single Anomalies there."

"Not a single Anomalies?! That really is strange." A somewhat sleazy-looking old man sighed.

There were four people in the vehicle.

The mild-mannered bespectacled man, the red-haired Xiao Qing, the sleazy old man, and a girl who hadn't said a word.

They were the convoy's Sequence Adepts.

Although no one knew where the Anomalies had come from, the apocalypse had been going on for a while, and people had figured out a few patterns.

The Anomalies liked crowded places. The more people there were, the stronger their living presence, and the more likely they were to draw the Anomalies's attention.

When the apocalypse first began, the authorities had organized shelters. But without exception, the Anomalies had targeted and destroyed them all.

During the final period when communications still worked, the highest authorities had issued a strategy of surviving through migration.

In other words, people were to form small groups centered around Sequence Adepts and survive by roaming through the apocalypse.

"Why think so much about it?! Just live another day while you can!" The red-haired Xiao Qing had lost his earlier amusement and spoke with indifference. "We can't skip it just because something seems a little off, can we? If we don't go, all those ordinary people will starve."

"Who knows when you'll divine another place where we can scavenge supplies if we miss this one?"

"Brother Hui, I say we go. Whatever's wrong with the place, we'll find out when we get there."

"It's the apocalypse. There are too many places where something's wrong. Avoiding all of them won't do us much good."

His words left everyone silent. The mild-mannered man called Brother Hui also sighed.

"You're right. Get ready, then. The day after tomorrow might be dangerous."

The next morning, dawn was just breaking.

Rustling sounds rose through the camp. Chu Sheng immediately woke and instinctively tightened his grip on the Butcher Knife. Only after several seconds did he realize it was morning.

The sounds had come from someone cooking.

Chu Sheng had a quick self-heating hot pot, then crawled out.

The rain had stopped. The faint morning light wasn't enough to tell what the weather would be like today, but the lack of rain still relieved him.

If it kept raining today, he would have to travel in the rain again. That was too risky. One careless mistake could leave him with a cold and fever.

But if he didn't keep up with the convoy, his chances of survival would be even worse.

Many people had fallen behind during this time, but not a single one had caught back up.

Everyone knew what had happened to those who never caught up.

How do I awaken a Sequence?

Chu Sheng found a quiet place to sit. Watching the people in camp cooking and eating, he began to think.

Ever since learning that Sequences existed, he had asked himself that question every morning when he woke.

By now, it had become a habit.

Besides that question, Chu Sheng asked himself two others.

How do I survive the apocalypse?

How do I live better?

Chu Sheng called these three questions his Three Daily Self-Examinations.

While he was contemplating life, he suddenly spotted a furtive figure heading toward his tent.

Chu Sheng immediately drew the Butcher Knife from his waist and pretended not to notice.

The man approaching his tent was the tattoo-sleeved thug who had stolen his bicycle earlier. He was setting a bicycle down beside it.

When Chu Sheng killed the father and son yesterday, the thug had been badly frightened. Especially when Chu Sheng later smiled at him with the tarp in his arms, he had felt as though disaster was about to strike.

So today, he planned to return the bicycle.

That was the rule he had followed as a thug: never provoke anyone stronger than himself.

After putting the bicycle in place, the tattoo-sleeved thug cautiously glanced at Chu Sheng, who seemed to still be contemplating life, then practically fled.

Chu Sheng watched it all.

Did he really think returning the bicycle would settle things?

The tattoo-sleeved thug was dead. Chu Sheng would make sure of it.

Originally, he had planned to kill him after they restocked and take his supplies for free. After all, Chu Sheng couldn't carry much away when gathering supplies by himself.

But now, with the upgrade system, he had a feeling he wouldn't be short of supplies in the future.

So he decided to kill him today.