Surviving the apocalypse with a wife and a system! [GL]

Chapter 229: Not so good.

In another corner of the building, an old man who had been watching from his window muttered to himself, "That young man was always going to end badly."

His wife glanced at him. "You knew him?"

"No, but I know that type."

She did not ask more.

That was how it went with a lot of the neighbors now. They did not know the details. They only knew enough to form a judgment. Hu Xuecheng had been loud. He had carried a gun. He had aimed it at somebody from a balcony like he thought the world was still his to bully. And now he was on the ground below, splattered in blood. It was hard not to connect those dots, even if the full truth was still hidden.

The people who had been scared of Bai Li before became even more cautious now. Not because they had proof of what she had done, but because the outcome itself was enough to make them uneasy. Some started thinking maybe they should never have pushed her in the chat earlier. Some started wondering if she had really been the one everyone should have feared. A few of the more shameless people changed their tone completely and began typing things like, "Maybe Bai Li is actually protecting us" or "I think she must have saved the building somehow." Those same people had been mocking her a few minutes ago. Now they sounded almost polite.

That was how fast people changed when death was involved.

Bai Li, meanwhile, stayed inside the supermarket for the moment, listening to the reactions without caring much about them. The zombies outside were still wandering. The smell of blood still hung in the air. The entire building was buzzing with panic and rumor, but none of that mattered to her nearly as much as the fact that someone had tried to attack her and had failed. She had already seen enough in her life to know that words and panic were cheap. The important part was whether she and Yan Cijin were still standing. That was the only real answer that counted.

Above, Yan Cijin kept staring toward the opposite balcony for several seconds after the man fell. Her hand remained lifted a little, the blue light still flickering faintly around her fingers. She did not rush to relax. Not yet. She wanted to be sure. She wanted to make sure the man was not getting back up. Her breath was even, but her eyes were cold enough to freeze the air around her. Then, slowly, the tension in her shoulders began to loosen as she accepted what had happened.

He was gone.

That realization did not soften her anger. It sharpened it in another way. Hu Xuecheng had been stupid enough to fire a gun in the middle of a building full of survivors and zombies. He had tried to kill Bai Li from a distance, like some coward hiding behind height and metal and luck. Now he was falling, or had fallen, and the building below would remember the sound. Maybe not the truth. Maybe not the reason. But they would remember the sound.

And then the blood.

His falling body hit the ground, splattering blood everywhere.

Hu Xuecheng’s body lay on the ground in a way that didn’t really look human anymore. Even from a distance, it was obvious the fall had completely destroyed him. The impact was too strong, too fast, like his body had been slammed down with no chance to recover. His limbs were twisted in strange directions, bent in ways that made it hard to tell how he had even landed.

When he hit the ground, it wasn’t just the outside that took damage. The force went through his whole body, breaking bones and crushing everything inside almost instantly. His chest had collapsed under the impact, and there was no way he could have taken another breath after that. It all ended the moment he hit.

Blood spread out around him, slowly pooling across the ground. It wasn’t just from cuts on the surface. It came from inside, forced out by the damage the fall had caused. The dark stain kept spreading, making the scene feel even more heavy and quiet.

His head had taken a bad hit too, making his face hard to recognize. Whatever expression he had before was gone, replaced by something that didn’t look like a living person anymore. His body had lost its shape, like everything holding it together had just given up at once.

There was no movement at all. No breathing, no sound, nothing. Just stillness. A moment ago, his screams had been loud and full of panic, echoing through the building. Now there was only silence left, thick and uncomfortable, like everything around him had gone quiet to take in what had just happened.

Only Fang Xiaofei knew what really happened, and even then, what she saw did not make sense in any normal way. Her eyes had been fixed on Hu Xuecheng just a second before the fall, and she had clearly seen the way his body seemed to jerk in the air like something had grabbed him by the neck. It had not looked like a normal stumble, not like a slip, not like losing balance on a narrow ledge. It had looked like an invisible hand had caught him hard, lifted him, and then hurled him out with brutal force. That was the part that kept replaying in her mind. A grown man, a heavy grown man, suddenly dangling in the air for no reason, his feet kicking, his whole body stiffening like a dead fish caught on a line, and then his body being thrown down so hard that it seemed like the ground itself had punched him back.

She had watched him fall from the twentieth floor, watched his arms flail, watched his scream get ripped apart by the wind, and then watched the impact turn him into something that no longer looked like a person.

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TO BE CONTINUED.