Pathfinder

"I... I..."

An Ning stammered for a long time without managing to get a single word out.

Shen Ye watched her for a moment, realized she was not pretending, and reassured her. "Just tell us whatever you know."

"We won't do anything to you. We just want to understand exactly what happened."

Only then did An Ning's expression ease a little, but she still hesitated for quite some time before speaking:

"I have an ability that lets me sense danger... what you call Sequence Power.

"I wanted to go in with everyone at first, but my ability warned me that Changchun Village was extremely dangerous, so I..."

Upon learning that An Ning was also a Sequence Awakened, both Shen Ye's and Song Shiya's pupils contracted slightly.

But after Song Shiya's initial shock, anger surged through her.

She strode forward, grabbed An Ning by the collar, and shook her back and forth:

"If you had that ability, why didn't you say anything sooner? Why!"

"My brother didn't have to die... neither did those people..."

Her hysterical behavior terrified An Ning.

"Calm down."

Shen Ye stepped forward, pulled them apart, and stood between them.

"I... I didn't dare say anything..." An Ning began crying too. With so many people dead, she was wracked with guilt and falling apart herself.

She continued explaining through her tears. "My ability only awakened a few days ago. Even I wasn't sure whether it was accurate."

"And Captain Song said it was safe at the time. He was leading everyone inside..."

At this point, she seemed to gain a little confidence. "If I'd stood up and said it was dangerous, who would have believed me?"

Shen Ye agreed with that.

The Life Disk was a Weird Object, while a Pathfinder's perception was a subjective judgment.

When the two contradicted each other, Song Lei and the others would clearly choose to trust the Weird Object.

Besides, An Ning had almost no presence in the group. Her words carried no weight.

Seeing that both of them had fallen silent, she added, "Actually, I did hint at it once..."

"Before we entered the village, I mentioned it to Steward Huang, but he thought I was only saying that because I was scared. He completely dismissed what I said."

"After that, I never dared speak up again."

Hearing this, Song Shiya's clenched fists loosened slightly.

Deep down, she understood that An Ning had already done enough.

Had she been in the same position, she might not have had the courage to insist in the face of everyone's doubts either.

Simply put, she had only been looking for an outlet for the anguish she had kept bottled up since her brother's death.

When she rushed another two steps forward, Shen Ye grabbed her shoulder and snapped in a low voice, "Enough. Calm down. You can't bring the dead back to life. Besides..."

"This wasn't An Ning's fault."

That sharp reprimand finally brought Song Shiya back to her senses somewhat.

Once both women had calmed down, Shen Ye began asking An Ning about her circumstances.

Before the apocalypse, An Ning had worked for a major corporation. That day, she had finally finished working overtime and was about to go home when the apocalypse struck.

Like most Sequence Awakened, she had awakened supernatural power the moment the Eldritch crawled out of the spatial rifts-a ninth-tier sequence: Pathfinder.

Aside from a basic increase in her physical capabilities, she also possessed two skills.

Skill one: Path of Survival. Once activated, it allowed her to sense a relatively safe route within a range of ten kilometers.

Skill two: Eye of Perception. It allowed her to identify basic information about the Eldritch within her field of view, along with their numbers. It could not identify Eldritch of a higher tier than her own.

After learning about An Ning's skills, Shen Ye immediately understood why someone had previously said that every convoy needed at least one Pathfinder.

To others, neither of a Pathfinder's two skills offered much combat power, and their support capabilities did not seem particularly strong either.

But Shen Ye had been a scout in his previous life. He knew all too well the value of information.

Especially when traveling during the apocalypse, Path of Survival was absolutely essential to keeping a convoy alive.

Yet An Ning herself did not know that.

She had witnessed Song Lei's formidable strength in battle. Precisely because of that, she had even thought that revealing a sequence with no combat capabilities would only lead to her being treated like a "slave."

After hearing An Ning's account, Song Shiya stopped holding back as well.

"I have a ninth-tier Healer Sequence. I told you that before."

"I have two skills too. The first is called Light of Holy Healing. It can heal injuries and dispel low-tier toxins."

"The second is called Inspiration. I designate a target and make them immune to some of the pain caused by injuries."

Seeing Shen Ye nod slightly, Song Shiya turned her gaze on him. "Then what is your sequence? What abilities do you have?"

An Ning's lips also parted slightly in surprise.

Shen Ye was a Sequence Awakened too?

For a moment, she could not tell whether her luck was good or bad.

On the bright side, the convoy, which had originally numbered over thirty people, had actually contained four Sequence Awakened.

She might have been timid, but she was no fool.

From the information she had found while phones still worked during the first two days of the apocalypse, as well as Song Lei's conversations with everyone during the convoy's breaks, she knew Sequence Awakened were hardly a dime a dozen. There might not be even one among ten thousand people.

But on the downside, a convoy with four Sequence Awakened had been reduced to just six survivors in only a few days.

She was not the only one struck by that thought. Song Shiya felt the same way.

Shen Ye smiled at the two women and spread his hands.

"Honestly, you're not the only ones. Even I want to know what's going on with my sequence."

After listening to the information the two women had shared, he had formed a clearer assessment of his own Asura Sequence.

His sequence had not awakened naturally like everyone else's. It had only appeared after that red light entered his body.

Moreover, it had no tier, which might mean it could not advance.

And neither of its two skills, Blood Refinement and the Asura Treasury, could be used at will. They required him to spend so-called "Killing Points."

Calling it useless did not seem right, since both skills had extremely high potential.

To Shen Ye, it felt less like a sequence and more like the systems in the novels he had read in his previous life.

Song Shiya did not buy his answer.

She felt that she had laid all her cards on the table, so what right did he have to keep his hidden?

But Shen Ye did not really care what she thought.

Their relationship had never been an equal one to begin with.