The Apocalypse Solution Provider

Chapter 45: Fu Hu’s Ability

Two more days vanished in a blur of blood and logistics.

The daily grind remained identical to the last.

Exterminating Zombies, running census counts on the survivors, and allocating Supplies.

In their spare time, the two elders, Sun Ya and Wei De, ran a crash course for the others on hotwiring vehicles and tactical driving.

The primary burden of Zombie hunting had officially been outsourced from Su Jin to Cheng Du.

With their launch window rapidly closing, throwing Cheng Du into the meat grinder for live-fire combat experience was the most pragmatic choice.

His pyromancy Ability was undeniably devastating.

Zombies could technically only be terminated by catastrophic trauma to the heart.

While Cheng Du’s flames couldn’t deliver instant executions, they severely crippled the monsters’ mobility.

Standard combustion barely registered on a Zombie’s nervous system in the short term.

But flames manifested via an Ability seemed to carry an innate, agonizing multiplier, forcibly triggering the Zombies’ dormant pain receptors.

This left them wide open for a swift, fatal coup de grâce.

Cheng Du had developed two primary combat applications. The first was localized ignition—wreathing his own limbs or extending the fire down the length of a weapon for brutal close-quarters butchery.

The second was a direct, long-range bombardment by spewing napalm-like bursts from his mouth.

Both yielded terrifying destructive yields, but Cheng Du’s stamina pool, when compared to Su Jin’s, was pathetically shallow.

Curiously, the fire-breathing trick wasn’t biologically restricted to his mouth; it seemed he could vent flames from literally any bodily orifice.

Cheng Du repeatedly lobbied Su Jin to act as a sparring partner for a live demonstration.

Su Jin politely declined every single request… terrified the idiot would miscalculate his thrust and spray flaming feces all over him.

…

Another Zombie slumped to the tiles.

Cheng Du stepped back, clearing the operational space.

Su Jin squatted over the corpse to handle the harvest.

He was the undisputed master of this gruesome chore. It was stomach-churning work, but outsourcing it would ruin their efficiency metrics.

Prying the ribs apart, Su Jin suppressed a spike of anxiety as he dug his fingers behind the stagnant heart.

His fingers brushed against a firm, gelatinous mass nestled in the tissue. His pupils dilated, and he pumped a blood-soaked fist!

“Jackpot!”

The quota was met!

With this, their three-man vanguard was fully armed. They launched the day after tomorrow, which gave Fu Hu a strict twenty-four-hour window to Awaken and calibrate his new Ability.

Bagging the Fleshy Orb, Su Jin rose to his feet and glanced at his crew. “Alright, break’s over. We only have a few units left. We clear the board today.”

…..

Evening fell.

The eight survivors gathered around the dining table for another twisted ‘cult ritual’.

This time, they skipped the preamble. Fu Hu swallowed hard and reached out to cradle the Fleshy Orb.

Su Jin punctured the membrane with his combat knife, rupturing the sac.

Fu Hu’s eyes instantly rolled into the back of his head. He collapsed backward into Cheng Du’s waiting arms, who hauled his dead weight onto the sofa to sleep off the mutation.

Su Jin dismissed the rest of the peanut gallery with a wave, retaining only the two elders, Sun Ya and Wei De, for an executive briefing.

Leaning against the table, Su Jin asked, “We launch the day after tomorrow. Any outstanding logistical gaps?”

Sun Ya slid a folded schematic and an empty medicine box across the wood. “Your operational playbook and Old Wei’s prescription reference. Review them on your own time. While your strike team was deployed today, Old Wei and I ran diagnostics on the vehicle and topped off the fuel reserves.”

“We engineered two crude time bombs. They’re staged on the fourth floor. You’ll have to haul them down yourselves; our joints aren’t rated for high-explosive transport.”

“Also, strap the propane tank to the rear trunk. We’ve already smashed out the back windshield to give you a clear firing arc. When things go sideways, have whoever’s riding shotgun in the back lob the bombs out the gap.”

Sun Ya paused, his expression turning grave. “By the way, Xiao Li… how exactly did you frame this op to the others? They’re acting entirely too calm for a suicide run.”

Su Jin offered a thin, corporate smile. “I compartmentalized the risk to the women. Told them we were doing a localized sweep for Supplies and basic medical contraband. Nothing far.”

“As for Old Fu and Cheng Du, I pitched it as a high-risk, high-reward salvage run at the medical university. Old Fu didn’t complain; his wife and kid are here, so he has to put his neck on the line. And Cheng Du is so drunk on his new superpower he’s practically begging to test it.”

“Cheng Du is erratic. Keep him leashed, or he’ll get you all killed,” Sun Ya sighed heavily. “I’ve been analyzing the situation. Running a black op and keeping everyone in the dark is unsustainable. No one in this room is a fragile child. They need to understand the stakes. Once you extract the payload tomorrow, we need to schedule a full disclosure. We’re going to be running bio-tracking experiments on multiple households; the team needs to be briefed and paranoid.”

“Worst-case scenario, if the intelligence leaks after we scale up our organization, fielding three Awakened combatants should provide enough hard power to suppress any mutiny.”

Su Jin nodded in agreement. “My thoughts exactly. The more assets we Awaken, the stronger our corporate foundation. Regardless, we’ll table this until I return from the extraction.”

“Memorize the intel we provided. Be ruthless, be paranoid… everyone in this building is gambling their lives on you.”

“Understood. Get some sleep.”

…

Dawn barely bled through the windows when Fu Hu groggily peeled himself off the sofa.

Waking up to seven people staring intensely at him didn’t trigger any panic; he’d been a spectator to this exact creepy phenomenon twice already.

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he grunted, “How long was I out… what’s the ETA?”

“Forget the clock. Run a diagnostic on your new Ability,” Cheng Du urged.

Hearing that, Fu Hu’s military discipline kicked in. He snapped upright.

He blinked rapidly, mentally scanning his own physiology for anomalies.

A dozen tense seconds passed before Fu Hu’s face split into a grin. “Yeah… yeah, yeah, I definitely feel it! It’s like a pressurized current of air inside me, and I have manual override.”

“Try routing that pressure into a specific extremity,” Cheng Du coached from the sidelines.

Su Jin remained silent. His own mutation was fundamentally different from theirs; his upgrades were entirely passive, a permanent buff to his ‘base stats.’

Fu Hu rolled up his sleeves and extended both arms.

The crowd leaned in to inspect the goods.

“Visually, it’s a zero,” Cheng Du noted, bewildered.

“Negative. Tap the hull,” Fu Hu instructed.

Cheng Du poked Fu Hu’s forearm with a finger and violently yanked it back with a yelp. “Holy shit, he’s solid iron!”

Intrigued, Su Jin grabbed a heavy ceramic mug off the table and rapped it against Fu Hu’s bicep. It produced a sharp, metallic clink.

“Dermal armor?” Su Jin deduced.

Testing his new specs, Fu Hu plucked the mug from Su Jin’s hand.

With a casual flex of his fingers, the thick ceramic exploded into jagged shards.

Not satisfied with crushing dishware, he lumbered over to the corner of the room and snatched up the neglected ninety-pound compound bow.

Treating the lethal weapon like a cheap children’s slingshot, he fully drew the string a dozen consecutive times without breaking a sweat, before tossing it aside and ambling back to the sofa.

A shark-like gleam of satisfaction appeared in Su Jin’s eyes.

That bow couldn’t even register his maximum output. To manhandle it so effortlessly meant his kinetic strength had multiplied exponentially.

“It’s not just the armor plating; my torque is off the charts,” Fu Hu said, rolling his shoulders. “But other than the strength and the hardening, I’m not detecting any other anomalous features.”

“Is the hardening localized entirely to your arms?” Su Jin interrogated.

Fu Hu shook his head. “I can route it anywhere on my body, but full-body coverage is a no-go. The total surface area I can armor at one time is capped at roughly the equivalent of both my arms.”

“Oh ho, that is more than enough coverage to get creative!” Cheng Du smirked, licking his lips.

The instant those words left his mouth, the collective gaze of Su Jin and every other man in the room snapped downward to a very specific target zone on Fu Hu’s body!

“You’ve struck gold… Wan,” Aunt Liu whispered scandalously into Zhang Wan’s ear.

“Shut your mouth!”

Zhang Wan shoved her daughter behind her, desperately trying to wrestle her lips into a frown as the corners of her mouth twitched into a frantic, uncontrollable grin.