18: Once Su Chen gets tired of me, I'll just be rotten meat on the roadside!

The tires rolled over the dry, cracked road, making a series of crunching sounds.

Su Chen rested one hand on the steering wheel, his gaze drifting over the cracks on the windshield. The blood-red setting sun painted the wilderness highway ahead in deep crimson.

"Stop the car! Look over there!"

Sitting in the passenger seat, Zhao Wanting suddenly screamed, her slender finger almost poking through the glass.

Su Chen pulled back his thoughts, his line of sight shifting accordingly.

Beside an abandoned median strip on the roadside, a soft, pale blue halo was spinning eerily, like a beating heart in this dead world.

That was a product of the survival bus system's arrival—a supply chest!

Before the bus had even come to a complete stop, Zhao Wanting pushed open the door and rushed out.

Her movements were so fast she didn't seem like a pampered young lady, but rather like a lone wolf that had been starving for three days.

Su Chen watched coldly through the rearview mirror as she scooped up the contents of the box, stuffed them into her bosom, and hurried back with crude movements.

"It's just a pack of compressed biscuits."

After Zhao Wanting got back on the bus, her face had an unnatural flush. She brandished the plastic-wrapped block in her hand, her voice trembling slightly.

"Don't touch it. There are green spots on the box; it might be some kind of acid corrosion or biochemical contamination. For safety, I'll keep this for now while I observe it."

After saying that, she didn't give the others a chance to react. She stuffed the biscuits deep into her backpack and zipped it up. The sound of the zipper was exceptionally jarring in the deathly silent cabin.

"The box was intact, and the nano-coating wasn't even worn. Where would contamination come from?"

Li Sisi pushed up the black-framed glasses on the bridge of her nose, staring at Zhao Wanting's bag with a deep frown.

"Wanting, logically speaking, supplies like this should be inspected by everyone together."

Zhao Wanting avoided her gaze, her voice becoming a few pitches sharper.

"I'm the class monitor! I'll take this risk. Do you want everyone on the bus to get poisoned together?"

Su Chen didn't speak, but he caught a faint scent of wheat and sugar in the air.

Those biscuits were sealed perfectly; there was no so-called leakage at all.

A faint, mocking smile played on the corners of his mouth. This woman's acting was full of holes in the face of hunger.

That night, the survival bus parked in the middle of the highway.

The light inside the cabin was dim, with only the dashboard flickering with a faint blue light.

Su Chen sat in the center of the cabin with a simple alcohol stove placed in front of him.

He unhurriedly pulled out half a flask of pure water from his bosom—a luxury he had manifested earlier using 'Yang Energy.'

"Click."

A flame flickered to life, and before long, the water in the flask began to bubble.

Steam quickly filled the enclosed space, bringing a sense of moisture and heat that could drive one mad.

Su Chen could even hear the sound of the girls around him swallowing their saliva, like a group of travelers guarding a dry well.

Zhao Wanting sat in the back row, clutching her backpack tightly.

Her throat bobbed violently as she stared at the steam, her eyes filled with greed and struggle.

Su Chen deliberately picked up a cup, blew on the steam, and took a small sip: "So sweet."

The next morning, before dawn.

"Wow—!"

A suppressed exclamation woke Su Chen.

He opened his eyes and saw Zhou Xiaomeng pointing at a corner as if she had seen a ghost.

Zhao Wanting was reaching into the inner side of her backpack, her trembling fingertips licking up a few crumbs left in the crevices.

They had fallen out when she had carelessly and violently opened the package the night before.

"Monitor... weren't those biscuits poisonous?"

Zhou Xiaomeng's voice wasn't loud, but it hit everyone's heart like a heavy hammer.

Zhao Wanting froze, her fingertips still pressed against her lips.

The atmosphere in the cabin instantly dropped to freezing point. The girls who had originally trusted her now had something else in their eyes.

At noon on the third day, the bus stopped at a rust-covered, abandoned gas station.

"I'll go patrol the area and see if there's a water source while I'm at it."

Zhao Wanting used the excuse to get off the bus and hurried behind a giant oil tank.

Su Chen followed her silently.

His breathing technique had reached a state of returning to nature; he didn't make a sound even as he stepped on the gravel.

"...Tomorrow night, we'll make the exchange at the tunnel entrance."

With her back to Su Chen, Zhao Wanting was whispering into a black, old-fashioned walkie-talkie, her voice kept extremely low and tinged with madness.

"Ten girls for ten packs of high-energy dry rations, including that campus belle... Yes, I have a way to make them lose the ability to resist. But you promised me a bulletproof vest and a spot in the shelter—not a single one can be missing."

"Chen Hao from Class Two—did he promise to give you a bulletproof vest, or did he promise to sleep with you first?"

Su Chen's cold voice rang out in the empty gas station.

He hadn't expected that in this apocalypse, there were other male survivors besides himself.

Last night, Lin Mengyao had analyzed that the Lin Clan Conglomerate's eradication plan might not have ultimately succeeded.

He had been skeptical then, but now it seemed the plan had indeed failed and many loopholes had appeared.

Zhao Wanting let out a startled cry, almost dropping her phone and walkie-talkie.

She whipped her head around to see Su Chen leaning in the shadow of the oil tank, holding a crumpled contact note that had accidentally fallen out of her pocket when she got off the bus.

"Su Chen! You were eavesdropping on me?"

Zhao Wanting's face was deathly pale, yet she still tried to bluff her way out.

"I was... I was contacting rescue!"

"Rescue?"

Su Chen strode forward, snatched her walkie-talkie, and jumped directly onto the channel that hadn't been closed yet. He turned to sneer at the classmates who had already gathered around.

"Come, listen to our class monitor's 'rescue plan'."

"Su Chen, don't you slander me!"

Zhao Wanting defended herself shrilly.

"Chen Hao from Class Two is my cousin. He just wants to help us..."

Su Chen ignored her and turned to look at the frost-faced Lin Mengyao beside him: "Mengyao, where was the last recorded location of that vehicle security system your father left you?"

Lin Mengyao stepped forward and tapped a red dot map on her tablet, her voice cold as ice: "East side of the water purification plant. The Class Two bus was lingering there last night. They've activated a military-grade signal jammer—the kind specifically used to block female distress frequencies and trackers."

Teacher Qin Ya's expression instantly became extremely ugly. She had originally thought this was just personal greed among students.

She hadn't realized that behind this was human trafficking!

"Wanting, you were planning to sell us to them as 'supply materials'?"

"You guys have a man protecting you! You have Su Chen!"

Zhao Wanting completely broke down, screaming with a distorted face as she pointed at Lin Mengyao and Qin Ya.

"If I don't find a way out for myself, once Su Chen gets tired of playing with me, I'll just be rotten meat by the roadside! I only have myself!"

She turned to flee deeper into the highway, but was tackled to the ground by Wang Li leading the way.

Several girls worked together to pin her firmly to the gravel ground.

Su Chen walked slowly to the backpack and, with a ripping sound, pulled the tightly hidden pack of compressed biscuits from a hidden compartment.

In front of Zhao Wanting, he unhurriedly tore open the packaging.

"Crunch."

Su Chen broke off a corner and tossed it into his mouth, chewing slowly. Then, under Zhao Wanting's despairing gaze, he spat out the residue: "It's not poisonous, it just tastes a bit sour—just like your rotten conscience."

Just then, a vibration from the earth traveled up through the soles of his feet.

Su Chen abruptly looked toward the end of the highway.

Dust in the distance blotted out the sun as a heavy bus, its front welded with sharp steel bars and painted with a hideous design, came roaring toward them at high speed.

The other party didn't seem to have any intention of slowing down. On the roof of that bus, several young men holding steel pipes and crossbows were letting out excited howls.

Su Chen brushed the biscuit crumbs off his hands, his gaze turning cold bit by bit.