Chapter Forty-Eight: An Added Memory

“Get in the car, quick!”
“Get in the car, quick!”
...
Amid the chaos, Major Wu shouted at the top of his lungs.
Gu Sha did not hesitate, grabbing Academician Wang and rushing into an armored vehicle.
The soldiers, meanwhile, retreated while covering the researchers, fighting as they fell back. Soon, several armored vehicles roared to life and began their escape, with swarms of corpse beasts and buzzing zombie bees crashing against them, the sound like the pounding of waves as the horde surrounded them from all sides.

The armored vehicles soon proved useless.
The group was forced to abandon their cars and flee on foot.
Though the soldiers wielded formidable firepower, the dense tide of zombies and corpse beast bees was overwhelming. In the end, after losing nearly half their number, the survivors managed to take refuge in a basement.

Major Wu and the others quickly cleared the basement of zombies.
Gu Sha, using brute strength, dragged stones and cars to barricade the entrance tightly.
Only then did everyone finally catch their breath.

They all sat on the ground, battered and exhausted.
Even Gu Sha looked somewhat disheveled.
The zombies posed little danger to him, but the swarm of corpse beast bees was far more troublesome—they could fly, their speed was astonishing, and they posed a significant threat to even extraordinary warriors.

After a long while, as the commotion outside gradually faded, the group began to relax their guard.
Gu Sha approached the surviving researchers.
For these scientists, their terror of Gu Sha—known for his ruthless, unpredictable violence—was no less than their fear of the zombies.

Seeing him approach, they tensed up, every muscle rigid.
But Gu Sha did not harm them; he simply sheathed his Tang sword and asked, “Does anyone know about that person—the one who controls the zombies and corpse beast bees? Does anyone know how he got his ability?”

The group exchanged bewildered glances, still shaken, none able to answer his question.

It was Academician Wang, his hair white as snow, who spoke calmly. “His ability appeared suddenly. More precisely, it has something to do with the arrival of the Crimson.”

Gu Sha asked, puzzled, “What do you mean?”

Academician Wang explained, “I’ve always been curious about Liu Ping’s ability. I tried to reason it out, but couldn’t understand it. In the end, I used the simplest process of elimination and realized it might be because he was infected by the Crimson before.”

Gu Sha asked, “You were always together? He never encountered anything like accidentally killing a special corpse beast and coming in contact with something that mutated him, granting him powers?”

“No,” Academician Wang replied. “Liu Ping is my student. On the day the apocalypse began, he was with me in the lab, doing experiments. He only left briefly to fetch lunch, and happened to run into the Crimson’s arrival.

However, unlike others, he wasn’t immediately turned into a zombie by the Crimson infection. He developed a high fever, his body oozed black blood, and it seemed he was about to become a zombie. But out of personal attachment, seeing he still had consciousness, I couldn’t bear for him to be killed as a zombie, so I hid him away.

Unexpectedly, after a night, he recovered. He told me he felt he could communicate with zombies, though it wasn’t very clear at first.

You should know what happened next. His feeling was right—he really could communicate with zombies. He kept it secret until, after hearing the official broadcast about extraordinary beings and source pearls, his ambition grew.”

After listening to Academician Wang,
Gu Sha began to form a hypothesis.
Perhaps the official information from his previous life wasn’t false;
it was simply that the authorities never disclosed the method by which the first batch of extraordinary beings gained their powers.

The first generation of extraordinary beings
did not achieve their abilities by absorbing mutant bones, but rather by surviving the Crimson infection without becoming zombies—they awakened powers.

If that’s the case...

A scene flashed across Gu Sha’s mind.
When the apocalypse began, he was not in the classroom at the first moment, but in the corridor, throwing away trash. He witnessed the arrival of the Crimson.
In that instant,
he had a strong sense of foreboding,
and quickly retreated to the classroom.

Since then, in both his past and present lives, he hadn’t paid much attention to this detail, because everyone knew that Crimson infection meant becoming a zombie, and he hadn’t become one.

He always believed he hadn’t been infected by the Crimson,
or rather, his subconscious kept telling him he hadn’t been infected, coupled with the universally accepted idea that Crimson infection inevitably turned one into a zombie, he managed to convince himself thoroughly.

But now,
he was being told that people infected by the Crimson
might not necessarily turn into zombies—in fact, they could awaken extraordinary abilities.

“But I never awakened any abilities,”
Gu Sha thought, deeply puzzled.

Now, he wasn’t sure if he had ever been infected by the Crimson.
Subconsciously, he didn’t believe he had ever been exposed to it, and since he hadn’t awakened any powers before using mutant bones, he assumed he hadn’t been infected. Yet, his rational memory told him he had been exposed to the Crimson!

“Forget it, no need to dwell on it!”
Gu Sha shook his head. After all, judging from twenty years of past experience, whether he was infected when the Crimson arrived was irrelevant—he had neither become a zombie nor awakened any abilities. The powers he had in this life were developed through mutant bones.

Thinking of mutant bones,
Gu Sha felt for the backpack on his back—
he had obtained another mutant bone today, which could raise his ability level.

Immediately,
Gu Sha greeted Major Wu, saying he was tired and needed rest, then found a small room, entered it, and instructed Major Wu not to let anyone disturb him unless he came out on his own.

Inside the pitch-black room,
Gu Sha used his Tang sword to brace the door, then took out the mutant bone and began refining it.

As Gu Sha activated the Qi-guiding technique,
the mutant bone gradually turned blood-red,
then released streams of liquid-like scarlet energy, flowing toward and enveloping Gu Sha’s body.

Gu Sha drove the Qi-guiding technique madly, channeling the mutant bone’s energy throughout his body.

At that moment,
red marks appeared on his skin, surging and writhing. Gradually, the mutant bone’s energy covered the second gene lock.

Time passed—how long, he did not know—
Gu Sha opened his eyes.

“Second-tier extraordinary!”

Just as he expected, the energy needed to advance in the early stages was not great, much like the progress of extraordinary warriors.

Now that he had become a second-tier extraordinary,
Gu Sha could clearly sense the range in which he could alter the flow of time had expanded considerably.

On his wrist, a faint white mark appeared, closely connected to the gene lock.

But what exactly that connection was,
Gu Sha could not say.

He calmed his mind, focusing on the bond between the gene lock and the white line.

In a blur,
the white line vanished,
and in that instant,
a new memory abruptly appeared in Gu Sha’s mind.

(End of chapter)