Earth.

Nearly six months have passed since Su Hao left.

Gao Liquan became the new commander of the 505 Group Army, with the rank of lieutenant general. The number of armies and weapons in this group remained unchanged, and the garrison area remained in the same position.

The clean-up of abandoned cities in the surrounding area has been fully rolled out. From east to west, Maoming, Chenzhou, Changsha, Yueyang, Wanzhou, Ruoergai, Lhasa, ...... These cities are connected in a zigzag line on the map. Each abandoned city had an infantry division or armored division attached to the 505th Army fighting. Their usual practice was to set up defenses outside the city and then keep a sufficient distance from the local garrison. It's not so much a wait-and-see as a standoff.

Within six months, the line of defense began in the southwestern interior and expanded in all directions. Every change in the line of defense caused opposition from the garrison near the city. This usually changes within two weeks. The local garrison either received an order to transfer from above, or simply joined the 505 Army directly.

Gao Liquan's control and operation of the entire army basically inherited the established policy left by Su Hao. With the help of Xu Renjie, the 505 Group Army established a huge General Intelligence Bureau. In response to the leaders of the garrisons in various abandoned cities, the General Intelligence Bureau will carry out a series of actions according to the actual needs of the other party.

Many "worker bees" have dispersed to infiltrate military units in the vicinity of various abandoned cities. This subtle is mainly aimed at officers and junior soldiers, and when more and more people become "worker bees" or "quasi-worker bees", the supreme commander naturally loses the ability to control. If the other party recognizes the status quo clearly and leaves honestly, it is naturally the best. If you want to stubbornly resist, there is always an evolutionary "worker bee" who acts with the team to make a secret move, kill it directly, and replace it with a new "worker bee".

One becomes two, two becomes four, four becomes sixteen...... It's a snowballing law of geometric change. Since the first "worker bee" was obtained in Kunming City, the transformation of outsiders has become extremely rapid. This is all thanks to the large colony of "worker bees".

In just half a year, there have been 5 million new "worker bees", and as many as 20 million "quasi-worker bees".

Everyone wants to be strong, and the need for silver bones and hedrons is unusually strong. Now the combat mission is no longer fully completed by the subordinate units of the 505 Group Army. Among the civilians who have been transformed into "worker bees", more and more hunter squads have appeared. Take Tang Zi's "Black Scythe" mercenary group as an example, their establishment belongs to the reserve of the 505 Group Army, but they do not need to undertake daily combat tasks. In addition to obeying the conscription at critical times, mercenary groups can operate with other troops, hunting mutated creatures in abandoned cities, and harvesting silver bones and hedrons.

Every time the defense line expands, it means that all the abandoned cities inside the defense line are cleaned up. This is actually not a secret within the 505 Army and the "swarm". But the outside world doesn't know anything about it. They don't know what to do, and millions of "worker bees" behind the line are encroaching on abandoned cities and rebuilding their homes on the dirty ruins.

As the first abandoned city to be cleared out, the number of residents in Kunming has exceeded 120,000.

The start of power from the power plant means that the city has entered the normal operation phase. Running water and gas supplies are confined to fixed areas, and people returning to their homes are toiling every day. Some of them are in charge of cultivating the fields, and some of them are clearing the city of plants and ruins. Heavy machinery rumbling can be seen everywhere on the streets, towing abandoned vehicles blocking the road and restoring the road to a clear place. The streets littered with garbage are also cleaned by dedicated personnel. It is certainly impossible to restore the entire city to its original appearance in a short period of time, but the changes are obvious.

As a landmark building of Kunming City, a large number of people gather under the "Golden Horse Biji Fang" every day. Most of them are local refugees, and they have mixed feelings and love for the city under their feet that cannot be compared with outsiders. No one knew that this square was once the specific location where Su Hao got the prototype potion. The aborigines just have a strong feeling about this place. The legendary magical scene of "golden and green" may never appear. After all, the original ancient torii arch has long been destroyed, and the later existence is only reconstruction. Despite their short existence, their surfaces are mottled with blood. It is a trace from the outbreak of the virus, which means death, war and chaos, but also a new life and tomorrow.

Funeral parlors on the outskirts of the city were one of the first facilities to be utilized. When the crematorium barely stopped, more than a dozen huge pits were dug out of the original Happy Valley Cemetery, and a large number of bones were burned and buried by trucks from the city every day.

The remains of the deceased can be seen everywhere on the streets. It is no longer possible to distinguish a specific gender from appearance or clothing. The corpses had long since decomposed, leaving only dry bones. Rats and ants are the two most abundant animals in the city. The eradication of mutated organisms will continue for a long time. Although most of them were annihilated, and no signs of swarms were found in the city, there were always scattered individuals in some rooms, corners, and sewers.

The city is just too big. Even in peacetime, it is difficult to clean and inspect every room. Not to mention the fact that now, only a few thousand armed "worker bees" are responsible for the security of the inner city of the city. People have to cordon off every area they have cleared, and the most important and uncomfortable work of each day is still the removal and burning of corpses.

In the swarm of "worker bees", the first madman appeared.

It was an old man over sixty years old. He joined Cao Rui's team a year ago and is a humble and elegant scholar. After returning to Kunming, he rushed to his former home as soon as possible. The old man clearly remembered the afternoon when his only daughter was eaten by zombies. He refused to be helped, went into the house alone, picked up the blackened and smelly bones scattered on the ground, and gathered them away. Then clean the room as in peacetime, scrub every piece of furniture with a rag, open the window, and release the air that has accumulated for a long time, so that the whole room is fresh and dry...... After doing all this, the old man slowly put together his daughter's bones on the bed, put on the surface of the bones the beautiful dress he had collected from the store outside, looked at it for a long time, and wept silently.

A "swarm" is a cohesive whole. In the meantime, there are constantly people to comfort the elderly, and people continue to come to explain them. The old man always smiled and refused with tears in his eyes, and he confessed that he needed to be alone. There is nothing more tragic than witnessing the bones of a loved one. However, when the others made breakfast the next morning and invited the old man to breakfast, they found the old man lying on the bed clinging to the bones, and his mind had become confused, and he could no longer regain consciousness.

Death and living are insurmountable obstacles for anyone. Although the "worker bee" has the most powerful power and thinking ability in the world, it is ultimately limited by reason and emotion. From the point of view of biological evolution, this is undoubtedly a flaw. However, we would rather carry this flaw all the way to the end of evolution. Because in the human dictionary, the name of this defective emotion is "love".

People began to spontaneously clean the Jinma Biji Square Square. There are always some dried blood stains that cannot be erased, and the dry and hard bones are transported away and burned. It doesn't matter whether they once belonged to humans or zombies.

Different flowers are piled up under the torii every day. It was all weeds and bouquets picked by the children. There are white daisies, reddish syrup, and yellow dandelions...... At first, the children did not know that they used flowers to express their grief, but a little boy saw an adult put a bouquet of wild chrysanthemums there, and sat there alone and cried for a long time. The ignorant child was very curious, so he went home and asked his father. The father was silent for a long time, and then slowly told him: "In heaven, there are many souls watching us and blessing us. ”

The act of placing flowers quickly became a kind of play among the children. After all, adults don't have much time for similar actions. They have to work hard for food, for a better life. But no matter what, the story between a group of children and flowers is passed down like this. Not only in this square, but also in the communities where people once lived, in the high-rise buildings that deserve to be remembered, and in the rooms where they lived, there are different thoughts and wishes that continue.

After the first phase of the clean-up work, Lao Song returned to Kunming.

The building where he once lived still stands, and the camphor trees in the yard of the community grow luxuriantly. It took Lao Song nearly two hours to cut the wild grass that grew wildly out of the green belt with a sickle and clear a way to the door of the corridor unit.

The room that belonged to him was covered in garbage and dust, the corners were covered with cobwebs, and several geckos were lying on the walls and staring at the strangers who suddenly broke in. In the living room, Lao Song saw the corpse whose head had been cut off by himself. All she was left with was a pile of loose bones, the shadowed part of her full chest, which became a favorite nest for cockroaches...... All this made Lao Song feel emotional, and he was also faintly sad. The kind old teacher who liked himself in his memory could no longer come back to life. Although he is now the supreme leader of the "swarm" of the earth, there are countless women vying to be his partner if he wants to. However, Lao Song never had a similar thought. He kept remembering the corpse, every detail that had happened that day.

Each survivor has their own pain and a sad story that is kept in the back of their mind.

The reoccupation of abandoned cities is undoubtedly something to celebrate. However, every refugee who returns to the city will involuntarily find the house where he used to live, look at the old and messy objects, rummage through the dust and garbage for photos, and try to find a knick-knack that he and his lover have liked. There used to be their parents, wives and children, relatives, friends......

They're all dead, and I'm still alive.

This is of course to be celebrated, but it is also the most tragic thing in the world.

When fleeing, people pushed each other, scolded, and scrambled. For the sake of a little food, it is common to draw a knife to kill people and bully the weak. Raping women, even snatching each other's children to kill and eat meat, a group of people killing a person to share food and survive...... Filthy and vile atrocities, at that time no one would consider them evil. There are all sorts of reasons to think that it is the most primitive instinct beneath the state of despair.

Residents who returned to the city of Kunming continued to commit suicide.

The first incident was a middle-aged man in his forties. He jumped from the top of the 16th floor holding a photo of him with his family. A suicide note was found in the pocket of his clothes. The man expressed repentance for his forgotten behavior in the most painful terms, and he confessed that death was a relief for him, a kind of atonement.

A woman who returned from the base city of Xinliuzhou hanged herself with a rope. She'd worked in a base city bar, and even she couldn't tell how many men she had sex with. She just didn't want to be starved to death, but when she returned, she felt a strong sense of guilt for her long-dead husband. Even she herself couldn't tell what she was for, and in the worst and most desperate time, she never had the idea of "death", but tried her best to live regardless of everything. But when I saw hope, returned home, and saw my husband's clothes in a dusty closet, the whole person completely collapsed.

There was also an officer who accompanied the troops into the city, who had already been promoted to the rank of second lieutenant. He was in charge of order around the seventeenth incinerator on the outskirts of the city. When the second lieutenant jumped into the incinerator with the skeleton of a dead man, all the soldiers and staff around him were stunned. The flames and heat engulfed the lieutenant in an instant, and he didn't let out a scream the whole time. While cleaning up the ensign's belongings, a diary was found. It records the ensign's journey as a refugee, killing two of his companions on the way to survive the most difficult of those days. The diary was recorded until the day before the second lieutenant committed suicide. Reading between the lines of pain and self-reproach, he felt that he was an ogre with no morals to speak of, and that there were unjust spirits around him who were asking for his life at any time. Even though he had become an officer and a "worker bee" with a fifth-order strengthened physique, the second lieutenant was still filled with a strong sense of guilt. He couldn't do anything but commit suicide.

A large number of psychological counseling groups have been established, and people are trying to get rid of the painful memories of the past in various ways, both in the military and in the civilian population. But some things are unavoidable after all, even Lao Song himself feels worried and uncomfortable from time to time. Especially when I wake up in the morning, I often find that my pillow and quilt are soaked with tears.

"Build a monument to those who die!"

This suggestion was well received by all. The new monument soon became the most important part of all the work. It took just over two weeks to erect a 30-meter-high reinforced concrete stake in the square, which was originally covered with corpses. There is nothing fancy about the design, just a pyramid-shaped cylinder with a square base. There was no text, no patterns, no fences and no administrators around it, but everyone who saw it knew that it was a new dwelling for all the dead since the outbreak of the virus, a tomb dedicated to the souls.

Zhang Xichen is forty-one years old this year, and he is a middle-aged man with a thin physique and a silent personality.

He likes to be quiet and likes to sit alone in the corner and smoke. Even after becoming a "worker bee", he still maintains this habit.

Zhang Xichen had been looking forward to returning to the city. But when he actually walked into the familiar street, into the room full of countless memories, he felt that he couldn't help but tremble, and he couldn't help but want to jump off the roof.

The thought had been swirling in his head for months, gnawing at his heart like an ant.

Glancing at the alarm clock on the table, it was 2:39 a.m.

Zhang Xichen kept looking at the photo with his wife in the frame. He wanted to smoke a cigarette to relieve his nervousness, but he couldn't light the lighter several times in a row, so he could only crush the cigarette and throw it away.

The original family was happy until the virus broke out, and the zombies rushed in and dug a big hole in the belly of the wife who was about to give birth. That day, Zhang Xichen saw with his own eyes the child who appeared in front of him in such a cruel way. It was a baby girl, who couldn't even call "Daddy" and "Mommy", so she was torn in half by two zombies, stuffed into her mouth and chewed frantically like a hungry ghost who had never eaten enough in her eight lifetimes.

Outside the base city of the new Chengdu, Zhang Xichen met a very beautiful woman. She had been giving birth for less than two weeks, and she was extremely weak, her husband had died, and she had eaten all the food. The woman begged Zhang Xichen to save herself and her baby. In return, the woman promised to stay by Zhang Xichen's side forever. That night, the woman served Zhang Xichen with her mouth.

At that time, Zhang Xichen didn't have much food of his own, and there were only two freshly caught mice in his backpack, a small bag of fresh grass roots, and two sour and unripe green pears.

The woman may have been so hungry that she drank a pot of rat broth so clean that there were no bones left.

Zhang Xichen was completely furious. He also felt hungry, because the physical satisfaction given by women before could not replace the feeling of fullness. The woman also felt that she had obviously gone too far, and knelt on the ground and begged again and again, saying that she was so hungry that she lost her mind, and that she would never do this again. However, the angry Zhang Xichen couldn't listen to it at all, he had seen too many things on the way to escape and die of physical exhaustion due to hunger, but he never thought that this kind of thing would happen to him one day. Two sour and unripe green pears.

The woman may have been so hungry that she drank a pot of rat broth so clean that there were no bones left.

Zhang Xichen was completely furious. He also felt hungry, because the physical satisfaction given by women before could not replace the feeling of fullness. The woman also felt that she had obviously gone too far, and knelt on the ground and begged again and again, saying that she was so hungry that she lost her mind, and that she would never do this again. However, the angry Zhang Xichen couldn't listen to it at all, he had seen too many things on the way to escape and die of physical exhaustion due to hunger, but he never thought that this kind of thing would happen to him one day.