“For example, if you are a special ability user, there are many benefits and privileges around in the base.” He took a few red badges out of the drawer before asking: “This is the badge for special abilities users. So how many users do you have in your team? Could the member of your team with abilities please come over here and fill out this form.”
The man saw a group of them walking over, he felt a little dazed, even his speech was stumbling: “You guys ….. Are all special abilities users?”
It had only been a few days since the discovery of crystal cores that could make humans develop psychic powers and the vast majority of people didn’t even know what they look like. Even for their base, which had more than 150,000 survivors and they had recently encouraged people to go out of the base to hunt zombies.
The entire base only had a total of more than fifty special abilities users. Although there were intermittent entries of special abilities users entering the base these days, this specific team of thirty people or so actually had ten of them as abilities users?!
Brother San and the others still had some difficulty understanding the shocked expression on this man. They knew that special abilities users were rare but ever since they had developed psychic powers, the number of abilities users that had appeared from the colony alone, including Bai Lang and his party, had already exceeded ten digits.
There was also the team of seven that they had met at the Eleventh Square, they had all developed special abilities too. Moreover, coupled with the probability of developing special abilities in their group, it had led them to overestimate the average people’s probability of developing special abilities by a large margin.
If they had known, they would have been able to understand the shocked expression on that man’s face at that moment.
After Gu Ning had filled in her name, age and place of birth, her pen reached the box for special abilities and she wrote down the word space without giving it a second thought.
Water, Gold, Fire, Earth, Power and Speed element were all common abilities, but Lightning?! Wind?! Ice?! Spiritual?! He had only heard of these mutated abilities, but there were so many of them appearing at once?!
The expression on the man’s face had gone completely out of control.
Finally, his gaze landed on the last form with Space written on the special abilities box. He froze for a moment and then stared at Gu Ning: “Miss Gu, you are a Space ability user?”
Seeing that his expression changed, Gu Ning asked: “Is there something wrong?”
He hesitated for a moment, looking at Gu Ning and the others who didn’t know what the problem was. If it were anyone else, he wouldn’t have spoken that much but this group was so strong, if he made friends with them now, then he might be able to ask them for some help in the future.
After deciding on that, he closed the gap with Gu Ning and whispered: “You’d better not reveal your identity as a Space ability user after you had entered the base. You guys probably didn’t hear the latest news that was spreading recently. It is said that if you kill a Space ability user, everything that was kept in the space will burst out of it……”
He didn’t continue any further but the reason that he was explaining was clear enough for them to understand.
This was a very important piece of information and Gu Ning’s expression changed slightly. Although she thought that her space should be different from those developed by the crystal cores, the others didn’t know about the differences. If the news of her being a Space ability user spread out, it was inevitable that some people would target her.
She smoothly pulled the form out of the man’s hand and then very smoothly tore it into pieces while thanking the staff member before filling in her details on the other piece of paper that were given to the general public for registration.
The man’s mouth gaped open but didn’t say anything and then just handed out the badges to the other ten people.
All the adults filled out the form truthfully.
Whereas the children just filled out their names under the Third Company team.
The staff member also expressed his surprise that the Third Company team had brought so many children on the journey.
Then he gestured: “Please follow her to the checkpoint for inspection before you can officially enter the base.”
A young female staff member came out of the small house and led them in.
As soon as they left, the staff member at the registration window immediately picked up the walkie-talkie next to him and shouted excitedly into it: “Report headquarters, report headquarters, there is a team entering the base with fifty-three people. There are special abilities users.”
The checkpoints were two rather modest sheds that had been improvised.
On the female side, there were four middle-aged women in white coats, seated inside while chatting away as they entered.
After seeing someone come in, one of them said with some discontent: “Why is this getting earlier as the day goes by… seriously…” Shoving another impatient glance at them, she continued: “Take off all your clothes. You have to take off your underwear too. We are all women here so a few glances and checks won’t take away a few pounds of meat from you.”
There was no compartment or anything and it was just an empty room. The little girls were a bit scared but when they saw Gu Ning take off her clothes first, the rest followed suit.
Seeing that Gu Ning and the girls didn’t dawdle like the others, even the most impatient middle-aged woman’s expression softened slightly. They were very experienced in examination and after making them turn around, they were being let off the hook without finding any wounds on their bodies. They stamped a red seal of approval on the forms Gu Ning and the girls had brought along.
After they were out, they waited for a little while for the men in the group.
Zhang XiaoBai cursed as soon as he came out: “F*ck, the one who examined me must be a faggot! He kept staring at me! He’s giving me creeps!” Zhang XiaoBai rubbed the goosebumps on both sides of his arms as he said: “Look, guys, I’ve got goosebumps.”
The others all roared with laughter while making fun of Zhang XiaoBai.
After the two sides had met up, the female staff member took away their stamped forms and led them to another building.
Yesterday, it rained heavily for most of the day in Jinyong, and in the evening, it rained again until the morning. However, the ground was not even wet in Zhongnan city and the sun was lazily hanging in the sky.
This building was the management office according to the female staff who works here. New survivors had to report here upon checking in.
When they arrived, a middle-aged man in his 30s or 40s, wearing glasses was waiting for them. As soon as he spotted them, he immediately greeted them and warmly extended his hand to Brother San, who looked like their leader and said: “You all are the Third Company team right? I’m Director Zhong from the management office. Come, come, please do come in.”
Brother San shook his hand and replied: “Hello, Director Zhong. You can just call me Lao San.”
They exchanged a few more courtesies after that.
The others were curiously surveying the surrounding before sighting a wall covered with various missing person notices. The post slapped on another post all over the wall and most of them were without photos.
Director Zhong finally got to the point: “Our base has a privilege policy for the special abilities users but I would like to ask if your team is planning to stay here for a long term or is just passing through?”
Brother San smiled faintly: “That depends on whether this base is suitable for us to stay for a long term or not.”
Director Zhong cursed in his mind that this Brother San was an old greaser but he replied with a smile on his face: “Brother San, I won’t hide it from you, I came from the capital. Indeed, it’s better than this base of ours in every way but there are more people there. Since there are more people with different abilities gathering there, if your team were to go over to the capital, your team strength would only be considered as average. However, if you decided to settle down here, our base has just started growing recently and is very much valued by the central government as a key support base……”
Brother San didn’t interrupt him and just listened with a smile before stating: “Director Zhong, we are new here and we don’t know anything. Thus, we aren’t sure if what you’ve told us is true or not, but don’t worry, if this base is really good, we naturally won’t want to leave. You see, we have so many elderly and youngsters plus we look so miserable. Shouldn’t you arrange a good place for us to stay first, right?”
“Yes, yes, yes.” Director Zhong nodded with a smile then instructed the pretty young girl at the window: “Xiao Yan, pass me the key to the dormitory building.”
The girl who was called Xiao Yan, gave a surprising look at Brother San and the others before she got out a set of keys from the drawer.
After receiving the keys, Director Zhong showed the way: “Let’s go. I’ll show you the way. You all will definitely be satisfied by the place to stay.”
Along the way, several survivors had come out of the tent. Although most of them looked so bad like they were being beaten up, their expression was not as frightened as those other survivors which they had seen on the outside. It was clear that they were very confident about the safety of this base.
There was only one dormitory building on this end, a high-class student flat, which rents for 30,000 per year. Around 500 metres away from here were large blocks of ordinary student dormitory yet because the distance was a bit far and the base’s defences were not that strong enough to cover properly. Many people prefer to pitch their tents at the base rather than to live in the student dormitory at the other end.
Moreover, the number of survivors arriving at the base was still growing by hundreds daily.
Therefore, many open spaces had been covered by colourful tents.
Director Zhong introduced with a smile as he walked: “If you want to live in the building, then you have to surrender a pound of supplies to the base every month. Of course, it’s all free if you’re a special ability user.”
As the survivors watched the dozen of people in their party all head to the dormitory, they revealed envious looks and were surprised that the group had so many young children with them.
The dormitory building had nine floors.
The flat that Director Zhong had arranged for them was on the second floor.
It consisted of two bedrooms, one living room, a bathroom, a kitchen and an open balcony.
Thanks to Brother San’s “negotiation” this whole floor was occupied by them.
In fact, because of the scarcity of special abilities users and very few ordinary survivors could afford to exchange their supplies to live in the dormitory, there were plenty of empty floors. Since Director Zhong had the intention of making them stay, he was naturally happy to extend this favour.
Director Zhong informed them to find him in the management office if they had any problem and then left after bidding goodbye.
Brother San, Gu Ning and the rest looked at each other with a relieved smile and a feeling that they had finally settled down.
The flats were distributed among themselves again.
Although they had occupied the whole floor, they had gathered themselves and lived in just three households together.
Gu Ning, Father Gu and Mother Gu, Dr Gao, Hong Jie, Huang MengYao, Xiang Xu, Wu Sen, Zuo You and Wo Wo all lived in the same household.
The twenty or so men crammed into the second household.
The remaining children stayed in the third household.
The dining was served in a different household.
After the distribution and a quick breakfast, a few soldiers went out of the base to bring back in their vehicles.
It actually only took them two days to get from Jinyong to Zhongnan.
Thus, they had officially begun their life at the Zhongnan base.