RHWHEG – Chapter 60 Humanity

Yu Qunqing had been away from the team for an hour already. The sun now hung high in the sky, the temperature rising rapidly, baking the air until it visibly warped. She Lulang and the others tied up the captives from the Mind Library and led them into the ruins, but did not go too deep, wary that the Eight-Legged Frostfall might suddenly move.

She Lulang had chased down and recaptured all the fleeing members of the Mind Library, stringing them together with chains and packing them up neatly. He waited patiently for Yu Qunqing. But after waiting and waiting with no sign of him, he couldn’t help feeling uneasy.

Lin Luyi said in confusion, “You’re going to look for Yu Qunqing? He probably has his own work to do. You can’t even wait one hour?”

She Lulang replied, “I can’t.”

The movements of the people around them slowed slightly. Only the thick-nerved Lin Luyi noticed nothing at all, replying smoothly, “Then just go. Don’t worry, I’ll watch these guys who keep muttering nonsense.” He extended his vines, repeatedly testing the mental strength of the Mind Library captives, using the chance to train his own ability.

She Lulang disappeared at the edge of their vision.

After a while, Li Yuebei, who was bandaging someone’s wounds, cautiously asked, “Are those two a couple?”

060 practically screamed, “Impossible! Absolutely impossible!”

Sun Min was helping Dong Changxin recover ammunition. Hearing this, he paused to think for a moment and said, “I did arrive at the residential area earlier than most, but those two do seem closer. Probably just get along well.” In his view, harmony within the team was what mattered most.

Dong Changxin, still fearful of both their combat power, said, “If those two got together, they’d destroy the world!”

Lin Luyi said casually, “Yu Qunqing and She Lulang dating? What kind of cold joke is that? Those two would be more likely to fight over command authority. Better help me search these guys and see what good stuff they’ve got…”

Shadows spread over the Mind Library captives, who huddled together upon hearing this.

…

She Lulang moved through the ruins and finally found Yu Qunqing sitting in the shade. Yu Qunqing happened to look up, their gazes meeting from afar, and he smiled—light, almost weightless. The unspoken thoughts in She Lulang’s heart grew wildly like weeds, carrying him across the jagged obstacles to Yu Qunqing’s side.

A blue screen floated up beside Yu Qunqing, white text displayed on it: “Detected approach of a verified real-name friend.”
She Lulang stopped and asked calmly, “Is this the true form of your ability?”

Yu Qunqing stuffed the disobedient rebellious son back in, thinking that now the system had materialized, he’d need to find a place with no one around if he wanted to play games. He looked up and said, “I ran into my brother and Han Shuzhu.”

She Lulang was startled, almost wanting to immediately check Yu Qunqing’s physical condition.

Yu Qunqing continued, “You know my ability is ‘Blue Rules.’ And you’ve been pretty good to Lin Luyi and the others—because we were teammates to begin with.”

He looked straight at She Lulang. “Before I died…”

Having his original suspicions confirmed by Yu Qunqing himself, She Lulang felt as if he’d been struck by a heavy hammer, a loud ringing filling his ears. He wasn’t the only one who had returned to the past—the person he cherished most had come back as well. Fate had actually favored them, sparing them from being separated by death.

“I remember I even gave you my house keys,” Yu Qunqing suddenly recalled. “No wonder I couldn’t find them no matter how hard I looked.”

Every detail had been verified. She Lulang murmured, “You’re still alive…”

Yu Qunqing said, “Yes. And I’ve checked the radiation levels in my body—”

Before he could finish, She Lulang pulled him into a hug. Embraces between them weren’t rare—supporting each other through crises, enduring nights of ability loss of control, they had inevitably had physical contact. But never had there been a hug driven purely by emotion. In a perilous apocalypse, they would never allow themselves to be ruled by their feelings.

Yu Qunqing stopped mid-sentence, suddenly aware of the warmth of the embrace, unsure where to put his hands. Then he heard She Lulang say hoarsely:

“I missed you so much…”

It felt as though fireworks exploded by Yu Qunqing’s ears. What he had been about to say almost vanished from his mind. He accidentally touched She Lulang’s waist, then quickly recoiled, placing his hands properly over She Lulang’s, intending to separate a little before continuing. But She Lulang held him tightly, hair brushing against his neck, bringing a faint ticklish sensation.

Fine—if he wants to hug, then hug. It’s not a big deal anyway. Yu Qunqing quickly abandoned the idea of pulling away. He picked the conversation back up, though his mood had taken on a subtle new nuance.

“My radiation level has already exceeded 55%,” he said. “You know what that means.”

“I know,” She Lulang replied calmly. “If you want to destroy humanity, I’ll do it with you.”

Yu Qunqing said, “I don’t really have that kind of ambition…”

She Lulang said, “Want to take control of all the shelters and replace the research center? I’ll make Dr. Chen kneel and beg forgiveness, make him revise the 55% threshold.”

Yu Qunqing said, “He’s just an old man—no need, right?”

She Lulang paused, then quickly came up with a concrete, feasible new plan. “We can go through the Ecological Ethics Foundation, bring the Mind Library under our banner, infiltrate the Polar Bear Corporation’s headquarters, then head to the ruins of the Supreme Academy of Sciences…”

Yu Qunqing: ? Why does it sound like the deputy captain is more dangerous?

Yu Qunqing gently tried to separate them again—this time successfully. He said, “I stand on a different side from humanity…”

In his previous life, he had exhausted every effort to save whoever he could—one life at a time. And what did he get in return?

Humanity divided races by appearance, enemies and allies by genes. Since its birth, it had committed countless evils beyond record; after the apocalypse, it tore away even the last shred of moral bottom line. Such humanity did not need a calamity to save it.

“Ding-dong!” The system’s shimmering blue control panel appeared once more.
“The game Mediterranean Butler: Match & Clear has encountered a hacker attack. Players, please eliminate the threat promptly.”

Now that it had materialized, She Lulang could see it too, and couldn’t help asking, “Does your ability cause damage to your body? If it does, we won’t care about it.” He paused, then added, “At the ruins of the Supreme Academy of Sciences, we can decompose abilities…”

The system quietly lowered its transparency and edged closer to Yu Qunqing. Why does the player’s verified real-name friend look like he wants to dismantle it?! Player, say something already!

Yu Qunqing raised the panel’s transparency again, told She Lulang that nothing was wrong, and then checked the messages transmitted from the residential compound.

Jiang Qiwen’s team had set out at four in the morning. There were fifty-four of them in total—each well trained and armed. They moved swiftly through barriers that ordinary people could scarcely cross. Not only did they capture residents from the compound who had gone out to mine, they also discovered the compound’s location.

They had already reached the outside of the roadblocks spontaneously set up by the residents. At the sight of the penguin farm loaded with fruit, they burst into astonished chatter.

“So many unusual fruits—are their fields even bigger than our shelter’s?”

“Their outer walls are huge, and there are so many plants? Aren’t their plants afraid of drought and extreme heat?”

Meticulous to the smallest detail, Jiang Qiwen noticed the excavation projects set up by the residents outside the compound and immediately judged that, despite its grand and splendid exterior, the compound’s technological strength was very weak—so weak that it lacked even independent production capability. He instructed the accompanying recorder to document audiovisual materials:

“The city-center residential compound possesses abundant resources for unknown reasons, possibly related to the disasters. It can likely accommodate over ten thousand people. The number of surrounding disasters is relatively low. The shelter could send part of its population here…”

He already regarded the compound as something in his pocket. He tried to use his ability, Wind’s Whisper, to probe for information inside, but discovered that the wind vanished like a stone sinking into the sea—no response at all. This added another layer of caution. He ordered the thermal weapons team forward, told them to ready the machines, and planned to bombard the place first.

“Don’t lay a hand on our compound!”

The captured residents shouted.

“Oh, I almost forgot about you,” Jiang Qiwen said with a snap of his fingers. He had the residents dragged forward and said, “Megaphone operator—tell the people inside that anyone related to these folks should come out on their own. Otherwise, we kill them.”

“Aren’t you from the shelter?” one of the captured residents asked. He had once been a vagrant and had entered the compound only because it was nearby. He had still harbored neutral fantasies about the shelter—but those fantasies were now being shattered bit by bit.

“A proper shelter protects its survivors,” Jiang Qiwen replied. “But not you.”

When the message reached the compound, chaos quickly erupted.

“Fight. We have to fight,” said Yao Linlin, a student leader who had escaped from the university town. “We have over a thousand people—are we really no match for their fifty-some? We have ability users too. We all escaped death—are we supposed to just watch them destroy our home?”

“They’re trained, and they have weapons…”

“We have Crocodile Immortal. Crocodile Immortal will protect us. As long as we lure them inside, they’re done for.”

“We don’t have that kind of time. They have hostages—one of them is even my neighbor…”

In the compound garden, the giant crocodile lay motionless in the sun, ignoring all the turmoil. It was just a crocodile. In its understanding, rolling in the mud to bathe was more important than helping humans.

Above the ruins of Shajia Ancient Town, Yu Qunqing could only observe what was happening inside the compound, but he could more or less guess what had occurred. Aside from fabricating a false god—“Crocodile Immortal”—for the residents, he had never interfered with the compound’s management. The compound was bound together with “trade” as its core. Residents traded with the compound to obtain residency rights, and traded among themselves to improve their quality of life. Forming teams to go out was for earning the currency of trade; striving to develop technology was to improve the quality of trade. Anyone who disrupted trade would be expelled by the compound and its residents. Everyone’s relationships were equal. In the past, this equality worked well—but at the most critical moment, it left them leaderless.

Yu Qunqing was like a player, watching a story unfold on a screen. He checked the in-game functions and found that Parrot’s Gift was currently available. The blue parrot he had once adopted was bound with 128 bomb buffs, with an attack range of 99×99 tiles—a perfect mass-clearing tool. But it could only be used inside the compound, and if activated, it might not distinguish friend from foe, harming innocents.

Yu Qunqing had encountered countless moral dilemmas; moral condemnation no longer hurt. He couldn’t guarantee that every choice he made would be the best one—only that someone had to bear the consequences of choosing. So he wouldn’t stand by and watch people die, nor would he let others’ life and death sway him.

“You’re more important…” She Lulang suddenly said something out of the blue. “If you don’t want to make a choice, you don’t have to. You’re the most important.”

Yu Qunqing felt a little better—like a god being regarded as a mortal.

Together, they watched the story unfolding inside the compound.

Inside, the horn to retake the hostages sounded. Few residents had received professional training; most had accumulated experience little by little through wilderness survival. Facing a well-trained shelter team was like striking a stone with eggs.

Jiang Qiwen acted cautiously and wouldn’t rashly enter the compound. He circled around it, destroying various roadblocks along the way, and even attracted several disasters to help clear the path. Through gaps in the compound, he glimpsed a colossal presence inside and took it for the compound’s trump card, deciding to find a place to infiltrate quietly.

Many residents were injured and were quickly carried to the small clinic and therapy rooms for treatment. The two sides fell into a tug-of-war. The residents were shocked by the shelter’s high technology—just fifty people were enough to rout them. The shelter, meanwhile, was stunned by the residents’ abundant reserves and was itching to charge in and seize the resources. As the residents were beaten back, anger flared, and their blows grew more furious.

By noon, with the blazing sun overhead, Jiang Qiwen had no choice but to lead his team into nearby cover to rest.

Inside the compound, morale was low. Though they had retrieved the hostages, there were far too many injured. Could they really withstand the shelter’s encirclement and suppression?

Someone prayed to the giant crocodile: “Protect us, Crocodile Immortal. We didn’t do anything wrong.”

The false god did not respond to their prayers.

The true god was powerless—able only to look on.

It had been a long time since the compound had heard cries of despair. In the past, tears had been shed from overwhelming joy; now many people cried openly, unable to understand why the future was still so bleak.

Outside the screen, Yu Qunqing sighed softly, preparing to call the little parrot out to work—blast the edge of the compound as a show of deterrence. But then he noticed that the pixel dots representing the residents were gradually converging. He kept zooming in, wanting to know what they were saying.

On the screen, a tiny pixel figure popped up a dialogue box: “We can’t just sit here and wait for death! No one can save us, but apart from this compound we have nothing. We must defend it with our lives!”

More pixel figures bounced up and down, popping up identical dialogue boxes.

“First thing: we take stock of the resident roster and divide people among departments. Those who can fight go out and fight; those who can’t go to logistics. Everyone has to move—there’s nowhere left to run.”

“Second matter: classify those who have already gone out as personnel pending rescue. They are very likely to have met with misfortune. Whether out of humanitarian considerations or past bonds, we should dispatch rescue teams. The shelter will not shelter us—only we will protect our own compatriots…

All of us may encounter misfortune in the future, so this rule not only protects them, but also protects us…”

A new system of rules was born amid desperation. Such regulations were extremely fragile, but the step from nothing to something was already a precious glimmer of light for human society.

Humanity saves itself, and then goes on to save its own kind. That is how human society manages to endure.

“Attendance check complete.”

“Yu Qunqing’s team isn’t here. If only they were—so strong. Do we still list them as a rescue group?”

“Of course. They’re human too.”

Thus, on the small blackboard filled with the pending-rescue list, the names of Yu Qunqing and the others were written down. There was no crocodile mission now, no hefty rewards, and the outside world was more dangerous than ever. They made this choice purely on moral grounds.

Yu Qunqing zoomed in on the blackboard and looked at it for a while, muttering, “Then let’s treat it as an exchange…”

He spotted a shelter operative infiltrating the residential compound, heading in the direction near the apartment buildings. He immediately locked onto that pixelated little figure and dragged him over to the fountain. Inside the compound, he was the only player—and the player was the god of the game.

The infiltrator felt a chill run down his spine as his feet suddenly left the ground. Terrified, he lashed out with his abilities in panic, drawing the attention of many residents. They poured out at once, weapons shimmering with different lights in their hands, staring warily at the intruder.

The infiltrator was carried all the way to the fountain. Beside it, a gigantic crocodile was taking a bath; annoyed, it shoved the man aside. Its hard scales tore open the infiltrator’s clothes, spilling out a large amount of explosives. His plan had been to plant the explosives and blow up these thousand or so people. Had he succeeded, the compound would have suffered massive casualties. He had been confident—he’d carried out many such ambushes before—but now he was scared out of his wits. Regret flooded him. Somewhere, he must have slipped up and been caught by an ability user in the compound.

He frantically tried to find that ability user, but all he saw were angry faces—the lives he had planned to kill.

The infiltrator raised both hands in surrender and shouted, “I surrender! We can negotiate—”

“You have locked onto the data of Hacker—Zhang **. Delete him from the game?”

“Yes.”

“Deleting game data requires 10 hexagram stars. Proceed?”

“Yes.”

“Deleting. Please wait.”

Near the compound’s fountain, the infiltrator was still shouting.

Outside the compound wall, Jiang Qiwen carefully observed the interior through binoculars, searching intently for signs of a powerful individual.

The residents whispered among themselves, weapons in hand.

The giant crocodile finished bathing and flicked its long tail, splashing mud everywhere. When its tail brushed the infiltrator, an electronic voice suddenly rang out in its mind:

“Deletion complete. The hacker within the compound has been cleared. You may now continue playing the game.”

In that moment, heaven and earth fell silent. The infiltrator’s expression was frozen in shock as his body abruptly stopped moving. Then he flattened into a thin sheet, becoming a literal “paper man.” His appearance pixelated, then broke apart into blue binary code, finally dissipating into the air like data, leaving not a trace behind.

He was deleted.

Those who witnessed the miracle fell into silence. The residents who had fled from the subway station felt a familiar presence—this irresistible, godlike bearing… just like the feeling they had that day when they faced Yu Qunqing.

“Done,” Yu Qunqing said to She Lulang. “Let’s get back to the team. It’s time to let our big kid have a proper meal. Pity we didn’t find Jiang Qiwen.”

She Lulang replied, “We will.” When the time came, they would repay that blood debt in full.

Though they were talking about revenge, as they strolled through the ruins, the atmosphere was inexplicably light.

The story inside the compound was not over yet.

Seeing the situation turn bad, Jiang Qiwen decided to lead his team to continue resting—but they ran into wounded survivors and a villagers’ team coming from the ruins.

At present, there were three groups from the shelter. The first was the ability users Yu Qunqing had brought back from the subway station, already fully integrated residents of the compound; the second was Jiang Qiwen’s team; the third was a wounded team that had split from the main force, bringing along more than twenty villagers who had escaped from the ancestral hall.

The compound residents followed suit, using infiltration tactics and psychological warfare. They persuaded the wounded team to side with them and caused many in Jiang Qiwen’s group to waver. The three sides clashed back and forth. In the end, Jiang Qiwen escaped swiftly with only a few trusted aides, leaving more than forty shelter members behind as captives. The first battle between the compound and the shelter finally ended in a narrow victory for the residents.

“Thanks to Crocodile Immortal for exposing that infiltrator!” the residents felt even more grateful and unanimously decided to strictly uphold the compound’s rules. Any internal disputes would be discussed and coordinated properly—if things descended into chaos, they might just vanish into thin air at the crocodile’s whim.

“And thanks to ourselves… for saving ourselves…”

The compound did not need devout believers—only humans who would save themselves. The story of this lifetime might just head toward a different ending.

…

Hot wind brushed past Yu Qunqing and She Lulang.

As Yu Qunqing mulled over the construction of the new server, he glanced at She Lulang beside him and remembered that he, too, retained memories from the previous life. The train of thought interrupted by the compound resumed, and he noticed more things that felt off:

Why was She Lulang so much gentler in this life? It’s not like he changed his face.

“Captain She,” Yu Qunqing couldn’t help saying, “you’re being way too nice to me now. It feels kind of unreal.”

She Lulang froze, immediately replaying his behavior around Yu Qunqing. The contrast between the last life and this one was laid bare before Yu Qunqing’s eyes, and a sudden urge to escape reality welled up. Was his oddness that obvious to Yu Qunqing? He’d thought he’d been steadily building goodwill this whole life! Oh no—what had he done?

“Want to experience what ‘real’ feels like that badly?” She Lulang said aloud, though inwardly he was tense. Yu Qunqing also had his past memories, yet still treated him differently. Did that mean… their relationship was already quite good?

She Lulang wasn’t sure—but Yu Qunqing soon gave him an answer.

“Reality is… it’s really great having you by my side,” Yu Qunqing said softly. He thought of that day in the inferno, burying the agony of brushing against death deep in his heart and showing only the positive feelings. “I was very happy the day I saw you.”

She Lulang’s heart thundered as he replied slowly, “Me too.”

Encouraged, Yu Qunqing continued, speaking honestly:

“Even though we used to argue all the time, actually I—I’ve always…”

He thought it was time to speak his true feelings. Life was unpredictable; he had to seize every chance. His nervousness infected She Lulang as well. She Lulang met his gaze. Whether because of the scorching heat outside or something else entirely, his cheeks began to burn, his soul warming.

Yu Qunqing couldn’t quite pin down his feelings. Was he embarrassed? Maybe—after all, admitting true emotions to someone you’ve been with for so long is embarrassing. But he still had to say it.

He took She Lulang’s hand. He guessed She Lulang already knew what he wanted to say—this much was self-evident. He could tell She Lulang was just as nervous. For a second—perhaps a rather long one—he even found She Lulang kind of cute.

He took a deep breath and said firmly:

“Actually, I’ve always thought of you as my good brother!”

She Lulang: “…Huh?”