Engineer Jiang was assisting the doctor. Ai Xia was holding up a lamp so bright it was dazzling.
The doctor reached out, pinching their thumb and index finger together in a gesture indicating tweezers. Engineer Jiang immediately went to the medical kit to retrieve them but couldn’t find any.
Ai Xia knew exactly where they were, but with both hands occupied holding the lamp and her mouth sealed, she couldn’t speak. She waved vigorously at her grandmother, but the old woman was busy rummaging through supplies and didn’t notice.
Suddenly, a hand reached over and took the lamp from Ai Xia’s hands.
Ai Xia looked up and saw a familiar face.
It was Pei Ran—smiling warmly at her.
After more than ten days apart, Pei Ran looked healthy, normal, and completely intact—no missing limbs. Only her hair was shorter now, just a thin layer of stubble like a buzz cut, which made her features stand out more sharply. Her eyes looked even brighter.
Unable to speak, Ai Xia could only grab Pei Ran’s free arm and shake it hard.
The doctor was still focused on the wound and again gestured the tweezers motion. Ai Xia had no choice but to let go of Pei Ran and help her grandmother find the tweezers, which she then handed to the doctor.
Engineer Jiang also looked up and saw Pei Ran, her eyes filled with a smile. She reached out to touch Pei Ran’s head and gestured to her own, as if to say she found it troublesome too and wished she could shave it all off.
The doctor used the tweezers to extract the necrotic tissue, then gestured again, miming pouring water.
Ai Xia immediately brought over the saline solution and washed the wound thoroughly. After cleaning it, she didn’t stitch it up right away but instead wrapped it layer by layer with gauze.
Once it was finally wrapped, the doctor set down the gauze and immediately rushed over to the next patient—whose face had been slashed—to begin changing the dressing.
Just like that, one after another, without even a moment to catch a breath.
W said, “You stay busy. I’ll go deeper in and keep looking for Kuchi.”
Pei Ran replied, “Okay.”
Taking advantage of the moment when no one was watching, the spider crawled out of her pocket, slipped down her clothes, scurried to the corner of the wall, and quickly climbed up.
It moved swiftly from high to higher, surveying from above, scanning faces one by one, searching for its target.
Pei Ran and Ai Xia could at least take turns holding the lamp, but the doctor never stopped for a second.
Pei Ran said to W in her mind, “If this goes on, the doctor’s going to collapse from exhaustion.”
W replied, “There’s no other way. Black Well simply doesn’t have enough medical personnel to send here.”
Only when the doctor finally finished treating a patient and managed to steal a brief moment to drink some water did Pei Ran open her backpack and hand over the medicine she had brought.
Delivery complete.
From somewhere far off, the sound of a whistle drifted over.
Ai Xia tapped her knuckles: 【Lunchtime distribution.】
She pulled Pei Ran along.
Outside the mine shaft entrance, a truck was parked, and people were unloading boxes of bread. The bread was dark in color and rough in texture, somewhat similar to the homemade black bread from the bunker.
Pei Ran said inwardly to W, “This bread isn’t great.”
W explained, “The relief budget allocated to the mining zone by the Interim Committee is extremely limited. I’ve already done my best to ensure sufficient quantity while trying to improve the quality as much as possible.”
The volunteers serving in the mining zone began to come out, each pushing a small cart loaded with several boxes of bread.
Ai Xia and Engineer Jiang also each received a small cart of bread and a large barrel of clean water.
Ai Xia tapped her fingers:【Each of us volunteers is responsible for a designated area. We distribute food and water to the refugees.】
Pei Ran wondered:【Three meals a day—do you have to hand them out one by one every single time?】
Bread could be stored at room temperature. If they had to do this for every meal, the volunteers would be exhausted.
Ai Xia stopped her cart and tapped out a longer message with her knuckles:【You don’t know—if we distribute more and just leave it out, people take advantage of inattention and steal it. Some even snatch it openly. The result is that during the next meal, the elderly, the weak, the sick, and the disabled go hungry and get nothing to eat. So it’s better to distribute just one meal at a time, and stand there watching them eat it down to the last bite.】
Pei Ran figured as much.
She asked:【For those who dare to snatch food—why not just throw them out of the mining zone?】
Ai Xia glanced at the soldiers stationed at the entrance:【The soldiers are only guarding against fused entities. They don’t interfere with what happens inside the mine shaft. Even if you call them, they won’t come. Only volunteers will occasionally try to maintain some semblance of order on their own initiative.】
She looked deeply troubled and tapped quickly:
【This is a place where the strong prey on the weak. It’s outside Black Well—people die here every day. Some die from injuries they can’t survive, some from fights, some by accidentally making a sound. There are so many deaths, no one even bothers to care anymore.】
【Did you notice that group wearing the shearling jackets?】 Ai Xia tapped,
【They’re the cancer of the mining zone.】
【Last time, I saw with my own eyes—they beat up someone who tried to stop them until that person couldn’t help but cry out. Then he exploded and died.】
【Volunteers aren’t here at night. You can imagine—things in the mining zone at night are even worse than during the day.】
【Compared to that, snatching food is a minor problem.】
Ai Xia furrowed her brow tightly, her fingers tapping rapidly.
【The worst part is, that group is in the best physical condition. If Black Well ever relaxes the admission criteria, they could be the first to get in. That’s why many volunteers turn a blind eye and don’t want to make enemies of them—for fear they’ll cause trouble later if they do get into Black Well.】
【Whenever our backs are turned, they steal things. My grandma and I tried stopping them a few times. I tried to return the stolen stuff, but no one dared to take it back. Grandma was furious.】
Ai Xia and Engineer Jiang were both refined, scholarly types. They probably had never encountered this kind of thug in their own social circles, and were deeply upset by it.
Pei Ran helped Engineer Jiang push the small cart back into the mine shaft, then walked a bit further with Ai Xia, returning to the area from earlier.
When Hazi and his group saw Ai Xia approaching, they all avoided eye contact—clearly, they had suffered at her hands before.
But the moment Ai Xia turned her back, Pei Ran saw one of them flip her the middle finger behind her back.
Each person was allotted one bag of bread. Pei Ran joined in to help with distribution.
Ai Xia pointed at Pei Ran, then at the ground near her feet, then pointed at herself and gestured ahead before walking off with a box of bread in her arms.
The two of them split the work, one on each side, and the distribution went fairly quickly.
Pei Ran quickly understood what Ai Xia meant by “survival of the fittest.”
The injured girl, Ayimu, was still lying on her blanket, utterly exhausted, showing no interest in eating. Pei Ran placed a bag of bread on her bedding and moved on to hand out bread to the nearby wounded. When she turned back, she caught sight of a man with a small mustache sneaking over.
He was one of Hazi’s crew.
He wandered around nonchalantly, glancing here and there, then suddenly bent down and casually picked up the bag of bread from Ayimu’s bedding as if it were nothing.
Ayimu seemed used to being robbed—she simply stared in silence, unmoving.
The mustached man picked up the bread and turned to leave.
But he didn’t get far.
His wrist was suddenly caught, twisted in a reverse joint lock.
Pei Ran gripped his wrist with one hand, eyes narrowed as she stared at him.
In the silent mine shaft, the cracking of joints could almost be heard.
A sharp pain shot through his wrist, as if it were about to break. The mustached man was truly frightened now. He clenched his teeth and held back any sound. The bag of bread slipped from his hand and dropped to the ground.
Pei Ran released him and jerked her chin at the bread on the floor.
The man glanced back helplessly toward Hazi and his group.
Hazi stared in their direction, lips pressed into a thin line, offering no reaction. The mustached man had no choice but to pick up the bread and place it back on Ayimu’s blanket.
Pei Ran continued distributing bread, occasionally watching Hazi’s group out of the corner of her eye.
She walked ahead, eventually turning the corner.
The mechanical spider crept high along the wall, then, when no one was looking, dropped down and landed precisely on her shoulder.
Pei Ran asked it, “Still no sign?”
W replied, “I’ve searched everywhere. The identification is based on skeletal structure, pupil distance, and other features that are hard to alter, but I still haven’t found Kuchi.”
Kuchi had entered the mining zone’s settlement and never left, but now she was missing. That left only two possibilities—
Either she had wandered into the deeper, unfrequented parts of the labyrinthine mine, or she was dead.
If she had accidentally made a sound and exploded, there’d be no remains to find. But if she’d died from severe injuries, there should at least be a body.
Pei Ran asked W, “How are bodies removed from the mining zone? Where are they sent?”
W answered, “They’re put into body bags and sent to the nearby cremation site. Once enough have accumulated, they’re incinerated in a batch. There’s a burn scheduled for this afternoon.”
Pei Ran said, “We need to visit the cremation site.”
But before that, there was something else to take care of.
Pei Ran asked, “What happens if I fight someone here?”
W was silent for a moment, then answered truthfully, “Actually… nothing. There’s no surveillance in the settlement, and no one in charge. It’s completely left to fend for itself now.”
That made things simple.
Pei Ran turned the corner and walked back to the same section of the mine shaft.
Sure enough, she immediately saw Hazi gesture toward Ayimu’s spot. The mustached man headed straight for her bedding.
Pei Ran had just intervened and taken the bread back, humiliating them. Now they had to reassert their dominance to maintain their status in the settlement.
They didn’t dare touch Pei Ran, but taking it out on a severely injured Ayimu was no issue at all.
This time, the mustached man not only took the bread, but also delivered a vicious kick to Ayimu’s injured head. Ayimu curled up in pain, trembling as she desperately held back any sound.
Pei Ran set down the box of bread in her hands.
She strode over in two steps and grabbed the man’s wrist—the one holding the bread.
This time, she didn’t hold back. The moment she struck, it was with full force. Crack—his wrist bone snapped audibly.
A pained scream burst from the man’s mouth before he could stop it. Everyone nearby panicked and stumbled backward.
Pei Ran followed up with a brutal kick—far more vicious than the one he had just delivered to Ayimu. The man’s entire body flew through the air and slammed hard into an empty corner of the wall.
Boom—
He exploded.
Pei Ran had killed someone in an instant. The expressions on Hazi and the others shifted dramatically.
They had never seen a volunteer this ruthless.
But Pei Ran was wearing a Black Well uniform. The group, still harboring hopes of entering Black Well someday, didn’t dare provoke someone from there too directly—no matter how aggressive they were.
They all lowered their eyes and avoided Pei Ran’s gaze.
Pei Ran, having killed one, walked straight toward them.
In a place ruled by survival of the fittest, no one understood the rules better than she did. She came from such a world—experienced enough to run a tutoring class on it for people like them.
Being meek and submissive doesn’t mean you won’t be devoured by the stronger. There’s no such thing.
If you want to prey on others, you must also be prepared to be preyed upon by someone even stronger.