Chapter Thirty-Three: Shattered Spirit

"Do you know about P City? It's a county-level city, my hometown is there, and I want to go home." Ma Yi looked at her with hope.

Qian Ying was taken aback by Ma Yi’s question. She pondered for a long time but couldn't figure out which province P City belonged to. She had truly never heard of it.

The answer left Ma Yi disappointed. Qian Ying had no idea about P City, which meant he couldn’t return home.

Li Li, who had gone out, returned, somehow bringing back a set of children's clothes. Under her watchful eyes, Ma Yi shyly changed into them, prompting Li Li to click her tongue in admiration, though it was unclear whether she was praising her own taste or Ma Yi's looks.

Ma Yi also met another team member, Yu Chuan—a sturdy man who didn’t talk much but worked efficiently.

It was the first time since the apocalypse that Ma Yi encountered a human survival base. The sight stunned him: three sides of thirty-meter-high blue stone walls formed a circle, enclosing the area. Inside, makeshift stone huts dotted the space.

"It's a walled city," Ma Yi said with certainty, noting the tall gate under the highest wall, while the fourth wall stood even taller and more imposing.

"Why don’t you live inside?" Ma Yi glanced at the people moving about nearby. Their faces were waxy yellow, clearly signs of hunger or malnutrition. Only a few looked somewhat normal, and judging by their attire, most were probably evolvers.

"What would a kid know? Living here, we can avoid a ten percent tax on our earnings. If zombies attack, those who defend the city get lots of supplies. When the city guard is recruiting, they prioritize people from inside the walled city. Our goal is to join the city guard," the fat man, who was already annoyed with Ma Yi, seized the chance to mock him.

"Why bother joining the city guard?" Ma Yi was even more puzzled. Isn’t freedom better? Why subject yourself to someone else’s control?

"Because once you join the city guard, you don’t have to scavenge for food yourself. The base supplies everything, and you get to live inside the city with lots of benefits," Li Li replied with a smile.

"In the end, it's because our strength isn't enough. As first-level evolvers, we don’t qualify to live inside yet," Yu Chuan laughed, candidly accepting his own weakness.

"Who’s the strongest in the base?" Ma Yi was curious. He’d never considered what the strongest person in a human base would be like; now that he was here, he wanted to know.

"Let me tell you, it's the famous Little Tyrant, Xiang Tianxiao—the only fourth-level evolver in our base, captain of the strongest Thunderbolt Squad, and my fellow townsman," Li Li said excitedly to Ma Yi. Her eyes sparkled; she was clearly a fan.

Ma Yi could see from her gaze how much she idolized this so-called Xiang Tianxiao. Little Tyrant, Xiang Tianxiao? Why not call him Sky Laugher? Laughing for what? The name screamed adolescent bravado. Still, Ma Yi was very curious about these first- and fourth-level evolvers, having met so few humans since the apocalypse.

Li Li, generous as ever, took out a small black crystal from her pouch—the same kind Ma Yi saw when Qian Duoduo lost the bet.

Ma Yi stared at the black crystal in his hand, stunned. This was a Spirit Shard, the currency of the base and the key to evolvers’ strength. Spirit Shards were extracted from insect mutant beasts. Evolvers who consumed them daily could continuously enhance their abilities. Above Spirit Shards were Spirit Crystals—pure, intact crystals that, according to the city guard elders, grew inside powerful insect mutants. The stronger the mutant, the larger and purer the Spirit Crystal, and the more energy stored inside, making absorption easier.

Spirit Shards were highly valuable—a soybean-sized shard could be traded for ten pounds of rice. If one had no food, a Spirit Shard could be exchanged at the base for eight pounds of rice.

Insects? Ever since Ma Yi mutated, he hadn’t seen any insects. Had they all been drawn to places with more people?

It was truly bizarre. Since the apocalypse, Ma Yi hadn’t seen a single bug—not even a cricket or mosquito.

Today, Ma Yi realized how hard life was for evolvers in the base. The small-bodied Ma Yi followed the four-person squad for more than twenty miles, only managing to scavenge thirty pounds of rice from a hidden old house and catch two half-meter-tall ducks. To Ma Yi, this was pitifully little, yet the group was joyous all the way back, chatting and laughing.

Li Li hugged Ma Yi and kissed his forehead twice, exclaiming, "Definitely a lucky charm! Thanks to our virgin boy, we had such a great harvest today." Her words made Ma Yi blush.

"Is it usually hard to get this much?" Ma Yi pressed his small hands against Li Li’s chest, determined to take advantage of his child status, but his eyes were clear as he asked.

"When teams first went out, they hauled cartloads of food back to the base. Later, people brought sacks at a time. Life was good then, but food became scarcer. Now, even ten pounds at a time is rare. The worst was three days without a single pound of rice, a week without catching a small mutant beast," Qian Ying answered for Li Li.

Ma Yi hadn’t expected life for base dwellers, even evolvers, to be so hard. What about ordinary people? How did they survive?

"What about ordinary people?" Ma Yi wondered aloud. If evolvers struggled, wouldn’t ordinary people starve?

"They don’t dare go out. The base usually cooks thin cornmeal porridge and steams wheat bran flatbread for two meals a day. It’s never enough. The base walls were built by these people, and in crucial times they serve as labor. You can’t starve them to death," Yu Chuan said, carrying a duck with a broken neck. After taxes, tonight’s meal would be hearty, and they could trade for Spirit Shards. He was unusually talkative.

A pound of duck meat could be traded for about thirty pounds of rice. A duck, after removing the innards, yielded thirty pounds—subtracting twenty percent, over twenty pounds remained. That meant many Spirit Shards. Two ducks could fetch a hundred Spirit Shards, with a few pounds left for themselves.

Qian Duoduo was lost in his own world all the way back. He’d never liked Ma Yi, but now he didn’t bother arguing. The harvest was enough for him to become a second-level evolver.

Ma Yi was mostly eager to see what Spirit Shards could do, and how powerful a fourth-level evolver really was. Like J4? Or was it something else? He wanted to try them quickly. Li Li had promised him four Spirit Shards—one from each team member, as a reward for the luck he brought on his first outing. After all, Ma Yi depended on them for food and drink.

Back at the base, guards checked all returning evolver squads. For mutant beasts like ducks, their innards were deducted at a quarter of the total weight. The two ducks weighed 137 pounds; subtracting 35 pounds for innards, Qian Duoduo’s team had to submit 20 pounds of duck meat and 6 pounds of rice. Specialists handled the records. Anyone who failed to contribute was expelled from the base, and those with large discrepancies were arrested and imprisoned—or killed if they resisted.

"Wow, still eighty left," Qian Ying exclaimed, excited.

"Let’s hurry back and process them. Only after deboning will we know how much is left," Qian Duoduo said, rushing toward the stone house with the duck on his back, his heart ablaze—Second-level, so close now.

Seeing the mutant beast brought in, many ordinary people crowded around. Sometimes, for convenience, evolvers hired ordinary people to help process mutant beasts.

Ma Yi watched the eager crowd with silent bewilderment. From his perspective, two ducks weren’t enough for him alone to eat his fill. Yet these ordinary people fought and jostled for scraps, desperate for anything. Not having suffered extreme hunger, Ma Yi couldn’t truly understand their feelings.

"Hey, everyone, step aside, you're getting in my way," Yu Chuan said bluntly, shoving the crowd away from the fat man, then tossed the giant duck onto the ground with pride.

"Big brother, could you spare some? The children are young and still growing," a sallow, emaciated middle-aged man pleaded with Qian Duoduo.

"Get lost. If you want your kids to eat well, go find food yourselves. We risked our lives for this—there’s no free handout," Qian Duoduo replied. Even animal innards were precious here—cleaned up, they were far better than cornmeal porridge or plain rice. At the gathering place, no food was wasted.

Ma Yi stood quietly aside. For ordinary people to survive in today’s world was already a feat—they lacked fighting prowess, wisdom, or influence. The base kept them for labor in critical moments. After all their hard work, a bit of food was only enough to keep them alive. If beasts attacked the city, they’d be cannon fodder. Faced with the base's delicacies, they'd have no choice. The apocalypse was far crueler for ordinary people; some became playthings of evolvers just to eat, while those who couldn’t even do that survived by trading their bodies for a meal, living under the rubble.

"Brother, I’m hungry," a little girl’s voice sounded. Ma Yi turned to see a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old boy behind him, filthy from head to toe, his old clothes caked in mud and hanging off his thin frame. Behind him stood a six- or seven-year-old girl, equally dirty. She looked a bit better than her brother, but her head seemed disproportionately large from hunger.