The Apocalypse Solution Provider

Chapter 35: The Terrified Elders

“Coming!”

Su Jin straightened his collar and pulled the door open.

Standing before him was Sun Ya, his face looking somewhat swollen and bruised.

A slight smile touched Su Jin’s lips. “Old Sun, it looks like I really am immune to the infection. That Fleshy Orb is crucial to us. I tested my abilities last night—my strength and speed have both spiked. Surviving a Zombie attack will be a lot easier now.”

“Thank god. It looks like the tides are finally turning. Surviving this might not be as impossible as we thought, but we still need to be careful,” Sun Ya said, forcing a tight smile. “We’ll keep a close eye on your condition for now.”

Catching the older man’s hesitation, Su Jin furrowed his brow. “Old Sun, did something happen yesterday?”

Sun Ya winced. He hesitated for a moment before letting out a helpless sigh. “We ran into a problem. Made a rookie mistake, actually… We lost the lab mice. Two of them. We haven’t found them yet, but I’ve already evacuated everyone to the sixth floor just in case.”

“How bad is it? Were they infected?” Su Jin’s tone immediately turned strictly business.

“No,” Sun Ya shook his head, but his tone remained grave. “We ran some tests. Organisms don’t have a hundred percent infection rate; it depends entirely on the volume of rainwater they absorb. The more they take in, the higher the risk. Mice get infected fast. We screened a few, confirmed they were clean, and separated them into a different cage.”

“Those are the mice that went missing. But no matter how we look at the cage… it’s physically impossible for them to have escaped. We tore the room apart and still found nothing.”

“The most bizarre part is what happened after the first one vanished. We doubled the security. While we were actively watching, the second mouse showed absolutely no signs of distress or trying to escape. But the moment we stepped out for an hour? Poof. Gone.”

“Where are the remaining mice now?”

“Still in the fifth-floor lab. Old Wei bundled up in a few extra layers of clothes and is standing guard. He’s too terrified to even blink.”

“Take me there.”

Su Jin didn’t waste another second. He strode out of the room, leading Sun Ya back down to the fifth floor.

Inside the makeshift laboratory, Wei De sat stiffly in a chair, arms crossed tightly as he glared unblinkingly at the mice.

The cage was heavily fortified—woven from thick iron wire, jammed inside a heavy glass tank, and sealed at the top with thick wooden planks weighed down by heavy stones.

It was a crude setup, but absolutely escape-proof. A mouse couldn’t chew through that if it tried.

“Old Wei, find anything?” Su Jin asked, cutting straight to the chase.

Wei De shook his head, looking utterly defeated. “If someone’s in the room, everything is fine. The second we leave, they vanish. I just don’t get it. If only we had some electricity and a damn video camera.”

“I have one. Where’s my gear?” Su Jin asked.

Sun Ya’s face lit up with relief. “No one touched your stuff. We moved it all up to the sixth floor for you.”

“Good. Wait here.”

Ten minutes later, Su Jin returned.

He casually deleted the porn off his smartphone to free up storage, plugged it into a high-capacity power bank, booted up the camera app, and propped it up right in front of the cage to frame the shot.

Standing out in the hallway, Wei De and Sun Ya stared at the device, their eyes wide with absolute shock as they began to whisper.

“Do you see that equipment? The screen is so sharp. Was that a fingerprint scanner? What kind of technology is that?”

“It’s unbelievable… Capacitive touch? Ultrasonic? No, that’s impossible, the form factor is way too thin. But it has to be running on a lithium battery. The power draw must be massive, which is why he hooked it up to an external brick.”

“I saw the user interface and the chassis design. It’s built like a civilian commercial product. But there isn’t a single nation on Earth capable of manufacturing something like that! Is this kid an alien? Or did he stumble into some extraterrestrial tech? Do you think the rain has something to do with him?”

Sun Ya sucked in a sharp breath. “Now that you mention it… sometimes his vocabulary is weirdly formal, and he uses metaphors that make zero sense. He definitely doesn’t feel normal.”

“Quiet, he’s looking this way.”

“What are you two whispering about?” Su Jin asked, stepping out of the lab after adjusting the phone.

“Ah, nothing!” Sun Ya stammered, visibly sweating. “Say… Xiao Li, what exact model is that camera of yours?”

“Foreign import. Newest model,” Su Jin replied smoothly, brushing off the question. “Let’s step out and give it some time. We can check the footage later.” He then glanced at the two old men, his mind instantly shifting back to logistics. “Look, we’re severely understaffed right now, and we’ve been sitting around long enough. I’m going downstairs to dissect the rest of the corpses and recruit some fresh blood. We’ll review the tape together when I’m back. You two go upstairs and rest. Lock the door. Even if those mice learned how to burrow, they aren’t getting out of this room.”

“Right, right, go do your thing.” The two elders practically plastered themselves against the wall to let Su Jin pass.

Su Jin paused, looking back and forth between them. “What’s wrong with you two?”

Sun Ya’s face twisted into an expression of profound guilt. “Uh… I’m just so sorry, Xiao Li. I completely botched the job.”

“Ah…” Su Jin let out a dry chuckle, shaking his head like a manager dealing with a stressed intern. “Old Sun, you two are the experts here. We’re in the apocalypse; sharing the burden is part of the job. Minor hiccups are inevitable. As long as nobody’s dead, it’s not a real problem. I’m heading out.”

Su Jin turned and walked away. The two old men stared at the empty doorway, gulping loudly in unison.

“Do you think he’s actually a damn alien?” Wei De blurted out the second he was gone.

“I literally can’t think of any other rational explanation. But at the same time, we actually understand the concepts behind his tech—it doesn’t seem advanced enough for interstellar space travel, right?”

“Should we just confront him? Holding this in is going to give me a heart attack!”

“No!” Sun Ya hissed, slapping a hand against Wei De’s chest. “There’s no need for that. We’ve spent enough time with Xiao Li to know exactly what kind of person he is. Everything he does is for our survival. That radioactive rain likely has absolutely nothing to do with him; he’s just as clueless as we are.”

“He saved our lives. This entire building is breathing right now because of him. To be completely honest with you… when he was missing these past two days, I felt worse than when my wife passed away.”

“What if we back him into a corner, and he unzips his human skin to reveal some horrifying monster underneath… How the hell am I supposed to live with that?!”

“I doubt that’s the case,” Wei De analyzed, rubbing his chin. “Based on the ergonomics of his equipment, it’s clearly designed for a humanoid body. Plus, the interface text looks like some form of pictographic language… he’s probably the same species as us.”

“I don’t care if it’s just a slight difference! Unless he stays looking exactly like he does right now, I refuse to accept it!”

Sun Ya took a deep, exhausted breath. “Old Wei… let’s just pretend we are blind. We put our heads down, we work hard, and we help him survive. Nobody here can handle any more psychological trauma.”

“Yeah… Xiao Li is a good kid. I’ve got no complaints,” Wei De sighed. Then, without missing a beat, his tone shifted. “Say… since that girl Qingdai is so unique… do you think maybe Fu Hu got cuckolded by an alien years ago, and that kid isn’t actually his?”

“For fuck’s sake…!” Sun Ya practically jumped, glaring at the other man. “You’re a fossil! You usually don’t even squeak, where the hell did that filthy thought come from?! We don’t even know if he’s an alien yet!”

“I’m just brainstorming here!”

“Stop brainstorming! We can’t hypothesize about every damn thing! What if you dig up something that gets us all killed? Move!”

…..

(Self-discipline Day 1)