Chapter 75: Shi Yuebai, Weighing 703 Jin, Is Paralyzed

Ahong was growing more and more distracted. At night, when she worked by lamplight, her pace was agonizingly slow.

Shi Yuebai frowned at her for a long while, tapping a long stick in her palm over and over.

Time ticked by, growing later and later.

Even Pang Ziyuan sensed something was wrong. He looked anxiously at his mother, wanting to say something, but not knowing what to say at a time like this.

Shi Yaoyao glanced at Ahong, then at Pang Ziyuan, and finally whispered to Shi Yuebai,

“Auntie…”

“Go to bed.”

Shi Yuebai cut her off before she could finish, urging, “This isn’t something kids should worry about. Don’t stick your nose in.”

Obediently, Shi Yaoyao returned to the inflatable tent.

Shi Yuebai continued tapping her palm with the stick.

Ahong had stopped working, standing by the gate, craning her neck to look into the distance.

The whole team had already settled in for the night. Out in the wasteland, some survivors would light lamps in front of their tents at night—

Otherwise, scavengers returning late would get lost.

But by now, Pang Zhenggong should have been back long ago.

“He’s spent the night out before,”

Ahong muttered, as if trying to reassure herself.

“When he went scavenging before, sometimes he’d be gone for days and not come back.”

Their team had decent relations with the others.

If they couldn’t make it back, they’d stay with another group for the night, and offer some food as payment.

Thinking this way, Ahong seemed to calm herself a little.

She turned to Pang Ziyuan and said, “A’Yuan, go to sleep. I’ll wait for your dad.”

But how could Pang Ziyuan sleep?

He was only a bit over twelve, but already very mature.

He stood up, steadying himself against the wall. “Mom, I’ll wait with you for Dad.”

At that moment, Ahong’s unease peaked. She simply walked out of the Shi family’s yard.

“I’m going to look for your father.”

All those things she’d said before were just self-deception.

Pang Zhenggong had gone to discuss splitting up the family. If things had gone smoothly, he’d have been back long ago.

Before sunset, for safety’s sake, scavengers never lingered outside their camps.

Pang Zhenggong wasn’t the type to dawdle. If he was negotiating the split, he wouldn’t have gone out scavenging with his old team.

Pang Ziyuan tried to follow Ahong.

But a long stick blocked his way.

“Go get Captain Qiao. Have him bring some people to go with your mom.”

How could a woman search for someone alone?

In this pitch darkness, she might not find Pang Zhenggong, and could lose her own life.

Pang Ziyuan looked at Shi Yuebai. She tossed two cans of pet food into his arms.

“Take these. Captain Qiao will agree.”

Pang Ziyuan’s lips moved. He bowed to Shi Yuebai.

“Auntie, I’ll pay you back for the cans.”

He hurried off to find Captain Qiao.

Before long, a bit of commotion rippled through the camp, but not much.

A few curses rang out—who would want to risk their necks searching for someone in the dead of night?

No one was crazy.

In the end, Captain Qiao brought two or three men.

One of them, walking with Pang Ziyuan, joked,

“Pang Ziyuan, we’re risking our lives for your family, and you only give us two cans of pet food? That’s not much.”

Pang Ziyuan, anxious to find his parents, could only jog along, panting,

“If we find them, I’ll give you more food.”

His family still had a stash of supplies. As long as his parents were found, Pang Ziyuan would give it all up.

With that promise, a few more men joined in, making seven or eight in total.

They grabbed their solar flashlights and headed toward the neighboring camp to search.

Shi Yuebai sat in her wheelchair, expressionless, watching the beams of light disappear beyond the wall.

Turning away, she spotted a pile of white scratch paper in the corner.

They’d found those sheets while scavenging last time, and used them for Shi Yaoyao’s math exercises.

Shi Yaoyao had gotten pretty good—she could do addition and subtraction within twenty now.

Though it took her a long time to solve a problem, and her error rate was high,

Her calculation steps were always right.

With more practice, she’d get the hang of it.

Shi Yuebai picked up the paper, folding it into a few delicate paper airplanes as she pondered.

She paused, looking at the paper planes on her lap, and sighed,

“It’s not like I care about the Pang family. I just need my labor force.”

“That tourist center needs Pang Zhenggong to dig it up—who knows what treasures we might find.”

“What’s the rarest thing in the wasteland? Talent.”

She spoke as she counted on her fingers, twisting them into a special mudra.

“Sight cannot see, ears cannot hear, hands cannot grasp—the beginning of heaven and earth, heed my command: Rise!”

A breeze swept through. A faint golden light glimmered at Shi Yuebai’s brow.

The paper airplanes on her lap caught the wind and soared, one after another, over the Shi family’s wall.

Higher and higher.

Riding the wind.

In that instant, the world began to take shape in Shi Yuebai’s mind.

It was as if a patch of darkness was being explored by her paper planes.

Wherever they flew, the map lit up.

A trickle of blood slid from the corner of Shi Yuebai’s mouth.

She pressed her fingers together, pain wracking her entire body.

Her fat trembled with the agony, and she had to use one hand to form a healing spell.

She needed to draw on more of her fat reserves to sustain two spells at once.

Her meridians, still not fully healed, began to rupture at a terrifying pace.

Shi Yuebai felt like she was about to explode.

Her head throbbed, her eardrums felt like they would burst.

She opened her mouth and spat out a mouthful of blood.

Luckily, only about half her meridians had been severed before.

So a small portion remained intact.

Another small section had been forced open by the wild surge of energy in her body.

So, with most of her meridians ruptured, Shi Yuebai’s massive body became half-paralyzed.

Only her left arm and right hand could still move.

Gritting her teeth, she maintained her spell, feeling her weight drain away.

703 jin.

Shi Yuebai rolled her eyes. Amidst the searing pain, her eardrums burst, blood trickling from her ears.

At that moment, Shi Yuebai “saw” Ahong and Captain Qiao’s group.

They had reached the neighboring camp.

Ahong, in tears, was caught up by Captain Qiao.

He told her to keep her head down, while he led the men to find the other camp’s leader.

Unlike Captain Qiao, the neighboring leader was a hulking brute—he looked like he could take on ten Captain Qiaos by himself.

His physique was unnatural, muscles bulging like a comic book character mutated by radiation.

And unlike Qiao’s group, the neighboring camp’s nightlife was just getting started.

Around a bonfire, chaos reigned—men and women carousing, doing what only primitive people would do.

A faint stench lingered in my home.

I worry a mouse might have died in some corner."

"**Chapter 76: Not Far From Death**

A-Hong and Pang Ziyuan stood anxiously behind Commander Qiao.

The neighboring commander spoke gruffly,

“Who are you looking for? What do you think this is, a shelter? Every time someone loses a cat or a dog, they come running to me?”

His gaze lingered on Commander Qiao’s face before landing on A-Hong.

Even though A-Hong had smeared mud on her face and messed up her hair before coming here,

her figure, nourished by good water and soil, was still far fuller than those shriveled women.

The neighboring commander narrowed his eyes. “So this is the wife that Pang Zhenggong brought into your team?”

He was talking to Commander Qiao, but his hand reached out toward A-Hong.

Pang Ziyuan hurriedly stepped in front of A-Hong.

At the same time, Commander Qiao shielded both A-Hong and Pang Ziyuan behind him.

He smiled and said to the neighboring commander,

“She’s just worried about her husband. Do us a favor—if you hear anything about Pang Zhenggong, let her know.”

Pang Zhenggong’s entire search and rescue team had joined this neighboring group.

The men from the Chen and Qu families were here too.

Compared to the team under the bridge, this group did have more able-bodied men.

But by the same token, life was much harder for the women and children.

A-Hong’s eyes were red, tears streaming down her face in anxiety.

Even now, she didn’t forget to cover Pang Ziyuan’s eyes.

Not far away, by the campfire, the anguished cries of women could be heard.

This place was nothing short of a hellhole.

The neighboring commander sneered, “You want to know? Well, it’s not impossible.”

As soon as he finished speaking, he grinned, stepped onto a nearby rock, pulled down his pants, and looked at A-Hong with a shameless smile.

“Come over here and make me feel good, and I’ll tell you where your husband went.”

Commander Qiao’s jaw tightened. He swallowed his anger and said,

“Don’t go too far. We’re all registered teams from the city.”

“Show a little respect.”

He shouldn’t have said that. As soon as he did, the neighboring team burst out laughing.

Especially that muscle-bound commander, who laughed exaggeratedly.

“Registering a team is just to make it easier to buy water, isn’t it?”

“I’m not forcing her, am I? Get it straight, Commander Qiao. You’re the ones begging me, not the other way around.”

A-Hong’s eyes reddened with humiliation.

She told Pang Ziyuan, whose eyes she was covering, “Don’t look. Go back first.”

Pang Ziyuan clenched his fists, hatred burning in his eyes.

No wonder Dad didn’t take him and Mom away. Compared to the team under the bridge, these outside teams were all scum.

They deserved to die!

Just then, A-Hong suddenly saw a man walking by.

“Ah Cheng!”

She cried out, forgetting to cover Pang Ziyuan’s eyes, and rushed forward to grab Song Yucheng’s hand.

“Where’s my husband? Where did he go?”

Song Yucheng was the friend who’d tried to persuade Pang Zhenggong to leave last time.

He froze for a second, then quickly shook off A-Hong’s hand.

“I don’t know. Don’t ask me.”

“How could you not know? My husband came to discuss splitting up with you today. Where did he go?”

Song Yucheng avoided her gaze and turned to leave.

“I don’t have time for this.”

“Don’t go!” A-Hong sobbed, grabbing his hand.

“Tell me—did you do something to my husband?”

Song Yucheng turned his head, clearly unwilling to answer or even look at her.

It was obvious something was wrong.

Pang Ziyuan rushed over too, shouting, “Uncle Cheng, please, tell me what happened to my dad!”

The neighboring commander, ignored by everyone, watched the scene coldly from the side.

Song Yucheng gritted his teeth, turned around, his eyes bloodshot.

“Go. Go back now. Don’t come here looking for death.”

It was as if A-Hong had been struck on the head. She watched as Song Yucheng ran off without looking back.

At that moment, she seemed to realize something had happened to Pang Zhenggong—

something life-threatening.

She lifted her foot to chase after him.

She had to see him alive or dead.

A paper airplane drifted down onto A-Hong’s shoulder.

“Come with me. I found him.”

A-Hong froze mid-step.

She looked around in confusion. “Yuebai? Where are you?”

“Cut the crap. Move!”

Shi Yuebai’s irritated voice came from the paper airplane, as harsh and impatient as ever.

She was half-paralyzed now—no wonder her tone was so bad.

The white paper airplane flew silently into the darkness, like a streak of light.

A-Hong saw that the airplane was heading in the opposite direction from where Song Yucheng had run.

Without hesitation, trusting Shi Yuebai instinctively, she ran after the paper airplane.

Pang Ziyuan followed close behind his mother.

Commander Qiao was still arguing with the muscle-bound neighboring commander,

dropping names of people he knew in the city and mercenary circles, hoping to intimidate him.

“Commander Qiao, A-Hong and her son have run off,” someone behind him reminded.

He quickly patted the neighboring commander on the shoulder.

“Let’s leave some room for each other. We might meet again. I’ll talk to you later.”

Commander Qiao turned and hurried after A-Hong and Pang Ziyuan.

With him gone, the seven or eight scrawny, sickly men from the under-bridge team naturally didn’t stay behind.

They hadn’t left Commander Qiao because they didn’t want to,

but because they were so weak and thin that a gust of wind could blow them away like paper.

No other team wanted them.

And the teams that did, only wanted them as meat for roasting.

The muscle-bound neighboring commander, who’d been about to throw his weight around, was left standing there, pants down, dumbfounded.

Ever since he’d grown his team, he’d poached plenty of people from Qiao’s group.

Women, he never lacked.

What he enjoyed was making people kneel and break down before him.

But before the fun even started, the group had run off.

Why did they leave so quickly?

He gritted his teeth, laughing coldly. “Qiao, are you playing games with me?”

A-Hong followed Shi Yuebai’s paper airplane, scrambling over jagged rocks.

“Ah!”

A-Hong lost her footing and fell, instinctively catching herself with her hand—only to have an exposed steel bar pierce right through her palm.

Pang Ziyuan tried to climb up behind her, but A-Hong shouted,

“Stop! It’s dangerous, don’t come up!”

High above in the darkness, the paper airplane made a turn and floated back.

Shi Yuebai’s impatient voice came from it. “Can you move or not?”

“If you can’t, I’m done playing with you.”

She was risking her life to help A-Hong save someone.

Every second they delayed, she had to endure another second of agony.

And Pang Zhenggong’s chances of survival slipped away with every moment.

“If you want to give up, then give up. Your husband doesn’t have long left anyway.”

Shi Yuebai’s cruel words were as light as the wind in the endless darkness.

A-Hong gritted her teeth and pulled her pierced hand off the steel bar.

“Let’s go!”

“We have to save him!”

I searched everywhere, but I couldn’t find where the smell was coming from."