Boss’s Death Guide

Chapter 50 - Xiaomao

During the end of the world, there were four main types of ability users: fire, water, earth, and wind, as well as four minor types: lightning, metal, plant, and space. Almost 90% of ability users made up the first four, while the latter four were the minority, with each type having fewer numbers in that particular order.

There were usually a lot of lightning and metal ability users in large bases. Even the ten ability users who were originally part of the military and were now following Nie Yi included one lightning ability user and one metal ability user. As for the other eight, they were fire, water, earth, and wind, two of each type. Plant ability users and space ability users consisted of small numbers. The former had many, but those who had awakened generally lived in remote areas, and would only appear before the public a few days after the apocalypse began. The latter…

The number of space ability users Nie Yi had heard of in his last life was less than ten when added together, and quite a lot had died early on.

Of course, in his last life, there was also the rarest one, with only one person possessing this ability in the entire world, the darkness ability.

Those with rarer abilities would have greater development prospects. For example, people possessing either lightning and metal abilities would always be a target of every secure base to rope in, while plant and space ability users didn’t even need to be said… However, the ability Nie Yi disliked the most was precisely the space ability.

Hearing Qi Jingchen says that the girl was a space ability user, Nie Yi couldn’t help furrowing his brows but still walked forward and said to Fei Xuelei, “Give that child to me. She doesn’t look too well, so I’ll bring her to visit Dr Fang.”

The child Qi Jingchen said was a space ability user was in the worst state among that group of children. Even though the other children were thin and weak, they still had their energy, and some were even crying hard enough to shake the sky. However, this girl was skeletal; not only did she look as if she didn’t even have two liang of flesh on her body, she also had multiple wounds.

She was already looking a little faint, and at this moment, it was visible that she was exerting herself to prop herself up and sit on the floor.

“Okay,” Fei Xuelei promptly said, and immediately delivered the child over to Nie Yi. After the little girl took a look at Nie Yi, she immediately closed her eyes and seemed to have lost consciousness.

Right at this time, the team nearby suddenly rang out with a cry. “Baby!” Just as this cry sounded, a woman ran over and embraced a child about two-years-old.

“Mom!” The child immediately began to cry.

“How did this happen? You actually threw your child inside?” Fei Xuelei immediately berated.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” The woman started crying, “I thought my mother-in-law was bringing the child along… Commander Fei, could someone look after this child for a while? I’m part of the patrol and can’t sit in the car later.”

When the woman finished speaking, she had already wiped off her tears, but her eyes flashed with hatred.

This woman could be considered quite lucky in the apocalypse; her husband and child were fine, and even her parents-in-law were perfectly healthy. Their entire family had fled to the secure base without a single person left behind.

It was just that her husband was cowardly and had only wanted to work inside the secure base, and he didn’t have much strength either. Her husband’s parents were already old, so she could only join the patrol to feed her son.

The patrol often had to make their rounds outside the base to kill zombies, and it was a dangerous job. However, they were compensated for this with a lot of food. Not only could she fill her child’s stomach, but the leftovers could also be given to her parents-in-law.

She was aware that she had earned enough, but as a result, her parents-in-law robbed her child of food! If it weren’t for her child crying that he was hungry to her, she wouldn’t even have known that they didn’t feed her son when she wasn’t around.

A few days ago, when Nie Yi had taken his team out to look for food from house to house, she had turned the maternity store that no one paid attention to inside out, and brought back a lot of things suitable for children to eat. She had exchanged them for some teething rusks for her child, but ended up scolded for being unconscientious by her parents-in-law, who claimed that she didn’t know how to care for the elderly.

Because of these numerous matters, she had argued with them many times. Even so, she never would have thought they would throw the child aside.

The secure base had many elderlies, and despite their old age, many of them had wanted to work for their own children or grandchildren. Their patrol team had a sixty-year-old man, who ate the worst sort of food to exchange for a packet of powdered milk for his granddaughter. Whereas her parents-in-law actually threw the child away…

Even if such a young child didn’t know much and was undoubtedly hard to care for, this was their child ah!

“We’ll look after the children. When the time comes, you can take him back.” After hearing the woman explain in a few sentences, Fei Xuelei also understood.

This woman had come to claim her child, but no one did for the others. Fei Xuelei sent these children to a container truck filled with elderlies, and those elderlies took the initiative to amuse the children.

These people didn’t have much food, but some had still taken out biscuits and what not to feed the children.

Those children had all been settled down, but the girl carried to Qi Jingchen’s side wasn’t in a good state.

“This child seems to have been starving for a very long time, and her injuries are very severe. I don’t know if she can survive.” Ping Shengchao’s parents were in the truck Qi Jingchen was riding in. Mother Ping had scrambled over to take a look at this girl and immediately sighed. “This child was abused so severely… Those people are simply animals!”

“There’s even a saying, ‘eating their children during barren years’ ne,” Ping Shengchao muttered under his breath.

Mother Ping thought of the various sights she had seen in the past few days and promptly sighed.

Seeing that Mother Ping had set her heart on this child, Nie Yi immediately revealed a happy expression. He filled a basin with warm water and said to Mother Ping, “I’ll have to ask you to take care of this child, please. Clean her up, then feed her a bit.”

“I have some clothes for girls.” Xu Nan’s wife, Zhao Yue, found some of her daughter’s clothes and passed it over to Mother Ping.

The car slowly set off, and the few non-combatants in the carriage were busy with the child. Seeing this, Nie Yi picked Qi Jingchen up and jumped off the truck.

He would definitely not give Qi Jingchen a single chance to take care of that child! Having a Qi An who might also be reborn was enough, and there must not be another!

That’s right; Qi An was also a space ability user. If it weren’t because that fellow could teleport, that child wouldn’t have been able to survive and be picked up by Qi Jingchen.

Even though Qi Jingchen wasn’t actually that close to Qi An, and didn’t even allow Qi An to see his real appearance, but besides him, the person Qi Jingchen paid the most attention to was Qi An… There’s no doubt about that!

Besides that, other space ability users had a separate space and could conserve food in there, but Qi An could only teleport and use a spatial blade, completely useless!

In those final days, he was just a freeloader, and Qi Jingchen wasn’t even willing to starve him to death!

Qi Jingchen was already used to being carried around by Nie Yi and didn’t resist at all, so Nie Yi’s mood immediately became much better. “Jingchen, I’m really happy that you told me about this child being an ability user.”

Qi Jingchen was now willing to take the initiative to tell him some things. When he thought about it, he felt happy.

“Too tight,” Qi Jingchen protested. Nie Yi’s strength was too great; his pair of hands could simply squeeze him to death!

Nie Yi smiled and carried him to a motorised trike, then placed Qi Jingchen in the seat at the side. “Let’s go!”

The team had already started to move gradually. Driving the trike, Nie Yi passed the trucks and cars that were driving very slowly, and made his way to the very front of the team, overtaking the people he had trained.

“Eradicate the zombies!” “Eradicate the zombies!”

The small units with five or six people each gathered together with four or five teams with different abilities, forming a large team…

These people were the most elite group in this secure base. With them cooperating, they were invincible now.

Not all of them were fighting at the same time; rather, they were divided into two groups. When one group was tired, then they would go up to the truck at the side to rest and switch with the other team. This method was precise and methodical, and wasn’t any worse than B City secure base’s military.

Compared to the military, they were more unified and obedient.

There were too many people in this small base, and their advancement was much slower than when they had arrived. They also had to set up camp early at night, but this wasn’t a bad thing to Nie Yi— He had even more time to lecture these people, turning his subordinates even more devoted to him…

That’s right; these people were already regarded as his subordinates now; even Fei Xuelei was wholly won over by him.

Humanity had always worshipped the strong.

Fei Xuelei’s hometown was in the southwest region, while Nie Yi himself planned to take a trip there to look for his maternal uncle. After both of them had a chat, Fei Xuelei had agreed without much hesitation to follow him after sending the people to B City secure base, and it need not be mentioned for the others.

Compared to living a peaceful life in the secure base, these people now preferred killing zombies outside.

With too many people, it was a great hassle to find a place to settle down every night. Fortunately, the current zombies were very easy to handle. At the same time, they had found more and more vehicles during this journey. Not only did this quicken their pace, but it had also given everyone more resting places.

All of this was developing in a good direction.

Of course, this didn’t mean that there weren’t any twists and turns or casualties during the entire journey. In reality, they had losses almost every day.

Accidentally being scratched by a zombie who slipped in, dying of illness, disobedient people who left the team or ate unclean things and turned into a zombie… However, at least it was much better than what Nie Yi knew of in his last life.

On this day, the entire team stopped by a village, and the first thing they did upon arrival was to eradicate the zombies wandering around the whole place before looking for supplies.

During the day, Nie Yi was almost always at the forefront, killing countless zombies. Now, he didn’t want to continue interacting with the zombies and thus didn’t look for supplies. Instead, he recovered his abilities, then began cooking for Qi Jingchen.

Qi Jingchen’s meals were bland, but at the side, Ping Shengchao’s mother had used rare ingredients to prepare a table of dishes that smelled, looked, and tasted great. Then, she immediately served a bowl of rice to the girl Qi Jingchen had previously asked Nie Yi to save, and also gave her a chicken drumstick for her to eat slowly.

In the beginning, this girl’s appearance was very wretched, and Mother Ping had assumed she wouldn’t survive, but Qi Jingchen wasn’t worried about this.

After becoming an ability user, even though there might not be much of an enhancement to their natural physical condition, their vitality was a little better than regular people. While this girl would have died if no one had saved her, since they had rescued her, she would definitely be able to survive.

“Hurry up and eat ba.” Mother Ping stroked the girl’s head.

Yet this girl didn’t move, until Ping Shengchao, Zhang Zihai, and the others all took their rice bowls, sat down at the side and began to eat, only then did she move her chopsticks.

Such a young child usually didn’t know how to eat with their chopsticks. If some families were more doting, they might even want to feed them themselves. However, this girl was very adept at using chopsticks. Holding the chopsticks, the more she ate, the quicker they moved, and she finally finished the entire bowl of rice, till her little stomach was bulging.

It was only now that she took the chicken drumstick and nibbled it, her face filled with satisfaction.

“Auntie, ever since Xiaomao came here, you don’t love me anymore; I don’t even have any drumsticks to eat,” Qi Yaoyao said to Mother Ping coquettishly.

Qi Yaoyao was just joking around, but the girl, who had called herself Xiaomao after waking up, immediately stopped eating the drumstick, then gave the drumstick with more than half of it uneaten to Qi Yaoyao. With an accent, she said in Mandarin, “Jiejie, eat.”

Qi Yaoyao wasn’t genuinely envious that this child could eat a chicken drumstick, and hastily said, “Xiaomao can eat this herself. Jiejie was just joking, jiejie herself has a lot of good food to eat!”

Xiaomao still looked at Qi Yaoyao with uncertainty. Qi Yaoyao had to repeatedly assure her before she finally relaxed and continued to eat her chicken drumstick while simultaneously observing the people by her side.

This child was only four years old. Usually, when a child of this age suddenly couldn’t find their family and woke up in the middle of a bunch of strangers, they would wail and cause havoc, but she didn’t.

They would hear Xiaomao’s sobbing at night, but that was all. Most of the time, she was so obedient it was as if she wasn’t a child…

“I don’t know how this child’s life was like before.” The more Mother Ping looked at this child, the more distressed she was. She felt extremely frustrated, and Qi Yaoyao hurriedly nodded in agreement— Her mom said that she was naughty when she was young. When she woke up from her afternoon nap and didn’t see her family, she would sob and wail for a long time…

She didn’t think much of this before, but now she knew that she could act like that because she had people spoiling her.

Qi Jingchen previously had never spoken to this child, but suddenly said, “Come here.”

The girl was stunned, then after ascertaining that Qi Jingchen was calling her, she hurried to his side, and looked at him with a pair of wide, watery eyes.

“Why did they hit you?” Qi Jingchen asked.

“I stole things…” Xiaomao had never spoken much, but after Qi Jingchen asked this, she replied.

“What did you steal?” Qi Jingchen asked again.

“A cookie,” Xiaomao said. She defended herself with a bit of a lisp, “I didn’t steal. The cookie disappeared.”

Qi Jingchen hadn’t spoken yet, but Nie Yi’s eyes flashed when he heard this. The cookie disappeared… Was it put away by this child ba? A space ability that could store things? This was quite a good thing! Since Qi Jingchen didn’t pay much attention to this child, he could treat this child better in the future!

However, this child probably had not figured out her ability yet.

“I believe you.” Qi Jingchen smiled at the girl, suddenly recalling his childhood. The days before his foster parents adopted him were also very bad.

Qi Jingchen… actually smiled at someone else!

In total, how many times had he smiled since his rebirth? He even smiled at someone else!

Nie Yi abruptly stood up, picked up Qi Jingchen and left.