Anti-gravity levitation

And just like that, Ren Anhua had temporarily solved the problem of her ability protecting her enemies.

Although it was by borrowing another’s hand, at least she wouldn’t be caught in an awkward situation with small fry like Wobu Zai again.

After the numerous tests from yesterday, if the monk Shi Mu were to say “let this humble monk handle it…” again, Ren Anhua would not interrupt him as she had before.

The autumn morning was a bit crisp and cool, but it was far better than the high-altitude journey from the day before.

As a Level Four Awakened, and with the bio-suit she was wearing, Ren Anhua didn’t feel any discomfort.

Although the monk was wearing a kasaya that didn’t look very thick, he didn’t complain about the cold either.

He must have had his own special qualities.

Under Ren Anhua’s lead, the two began the food-gathering expedition they couldn’t continue yesterday.

The process was quite arduous.

As one could imagine, easily preserved foods like canned goods, chips, and crackers on the shelves of various supermarkets and stores had been mostly looted.

After all, two months had passed; the Awakened teams venturing out and the military’s resource collection teams hadn’t been idle.

Fortunately, manpower was limited, so no matter how much they collected, they were bound to leave some things behind.

Ren Anhua found some unopened canned goods, crackers, and drinking water in a stockroom—these were treasures in the apocalypse.

They finally managed to fill up the large hiking backpack they found in the supermarket.

The task of carrying the backpack fell to the monk Shi Mu.

It wasn’t that Ren Anhua wanted to slack off, but she was simply too short.

If she carried the bag, it would likely drag on the ground.

Shi Mu was likely a high-level Awakened, so this bit of weight was practically nothing to him, and he didn’t complain.

Ren Anhua found a strap and tied the extra-long watermelon knife to her waist.

She had wanted to find something like a scabbard, but unfortunately, she couldn’t find a suitable one.

Initially, the blade of this watermelon knife had been simply covered with cardboard, but that cardboard had long since been lost, so Ren Anhua had to be careful herself.

But for her, accidentally cutting herself wasn’t a big deal.

With a healing ability of that magnitude, as long as she didn’t die on the spot, she could basically ignore all injuries.

For a lone wanderer in the apocalypse, there was a limit to resource collection.

After all, a single person couldn’t carry much.

Although there were two of them, Ren Anhua and the monk, she had no load-bearing capacity.

While she did find a small bag that fit her frame and packed a few things, it was negligible compared to the resources Shi Mu shouldered.

Logically, they should have set off after packing up, but Ren Anhua, unwilling to give up, ducked into a women’s shoe store and rummaged around.

She did this almost every time she saw a shoe store, but the result this time was no different.

She walked out, dejected once again.

All the shoes were too big for her.

The ones that did fit her didn’t have such high heels and were all children’s shoes.

Out of her worthless sense of pride, she would not wear such childish shoes.

“Forget it, let’s go.”

Her search fruitless, Ren Anhua had no choice but to leave the edge of the urban area as she was.

The thought that she would likely have to live the rest of her life wearing only these white stockings made Ren Anhua feel extremely distressed.

Although Shi Mu wouldn’t look at her with any sort of judgment, she couldn’t possibly interact only with him.

And she could only walk on her tiptoes.

While it was pretty, no doubt, it would definitely make people feel it was strange.

But what was gone was gone.

Ren Anhua couldn’t just create a pair of shoes herself like Bai Rui.

She could only hope to find a suitable pair later on.

Looking at Shi Mu walking ahead of her, an idea suddenly popped into Ren Anhua’s head.

She took a few small hops, activated her anti-gravity energy flow, and stepped onto Shi Mu’s bald head.

In the low-gravity environment, Ren Anhua could stand very steadily with simple balance control.

This was a strange skill she had been forced to practice due to her permanently fixed ankles.

Shi Mu, however, had no reaction.

Perhaps he just felt the weight was negligible and didn’t say anything.

As expected of a monk, his mindset was far broader than that of an ordinary person.

Ren Anhua was very satisfied with this.

Standing on Shi Mu’s head, Ren Anhua wasn’t just doing nothing.

She was meticulously training her control over her anti-gravity energy flow, which also lightened Shi Mu’s burden.

Although using her energy flow like this seemed a bit extravagant, every return required an investment.

Ren Anhua had already resolved to train the anti-gravity technique she’d gained after reaching Level Four into a skill that could be continuously applied to her body.

After all, she had no shoes to wear, and her ankles were fixed and couldn’t bend.

Floating in the air was comparatively less conspicuous, and it even looked quite cool.

And… when she couldn’t walk, she wouldn’t have to just lie limply on the ground.

One person and one monk thus walked out of the shopping street in this strange posture.

Fortunately, the surrounding zombies wouldn’t find it odd.

Otherwise, if Ren Anhua had struck this pose before the apocalypse, she might have died from the focused stares of passersby.

Come to think of it, from Ren Anhua’s position, the object clipped to her thigh-high stocking was in plain sight.

But naturally, she was unaware of such a thing.

Besides training her anti-gravity control, she was also currently training her own ability.

Advancing while standing on Shi Mu’s head gave Ren Anhua plenty of time to calm down and study her ability.

Although she had found a fighter, in her heart, she certainly didn’t want to just be a healer who could only buff others from now on.

Due to old habits, if she didn’t hold some decisive power in her own hands, Ren Anhua would feel extremely insecure.

The first step to gaining offensive capability was very clear: turn her attack power from negative to positive.

Simply put, she needed to stop healing her enemies.

No matter what, if she wanted to attack, this problem had to be solved.

Encountering small fry like Wobu Zai was one thing, but Ren Anhua didn’t believe that when facing enemies on the level of Cui Jian, Song Zhiyang, or Lu Shanshui, they would give her the chance to drive a nail into their hearts.

Her enemies weren’t idiots.

A method that was tantamount to asking the enemy to wait for death would surely be useless against an opponent of the same level.

And if she healed her opponent even once—for instance, during the battle with Song Zhiyang, if the blow that pierced his chest had healed him instead—Ren Anhua had no doubt she would have been sliced in two by his blade.

In short, suppressing her healing ability was a technique she absolutely had to master.

Although Ke Xiaoshan couldn’t do it, that didn’t mean she, Ren Anhua, couldn’t.

When it came to controlling energy flow, Ren Anhua didn’t think anyone could surpass her.

The monk Shi Mu provided her with an excellent environment to train this technique.

Through the healing feedback, Ren Anhua could clearly perceive whether her ability was producing a healing effect.

The healing feedback was really a wonderful thing.

Perhaps Ke Xiaoshan could only use it in the past to sense the extent of her teammates’ injuries and provide corresponding treatment.

But in reality, even if the target was completely unharmed, the healing feedback would still transmit a sense of perception.

This quality was perfect for scouting enemy forces.

If she could suppress the healing effect to be extremely weak, she could gain the detailed location of her enemies at the cost of providing them with a minuscule amount of healing.

If the enemy was uninjured, that would be even better; she wouldn’t even need to provide any healing.

But of course, what Ren Anhua was doing now was not reconnaissance, but rather using this healing feedback to determine the degree to which her healing ability’s field was contracting.

If she received no healing feedback from Shi Mu, whom she was practically in direct contact with, then her suppression of the healing field would be considered a success.

Stepping on his bald head, Ren Anhua carefully mobilized her energy flow, compressing her healing field, but success always seemed so distant.

She had actually been trying to compress the healing field yesterday when she killed Wobu Zai.

As expected, it wasn’t that easy.

Although the healing field did shrink significantly at times, it was like holding one’s breath for a long time.

Just when Ren Anhua was about to lose her hold, it would quickly spring back to its original state.

And Ren Anhua’s current condition was like a lung disease patient with short breath; no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t completely retract her ability.

The time spent standing on the monk’s head was almost entirely dedicated to this one task.

Possessing such a strong healing ability, she had to spend a great deal of arduous training just to turn her attack power into a positive number.

However, this training was also proving effective.

Ren Anhua felt her control over the ability’s range of effect was gradually strengthening.

Fortunately, with Shi Mu around, Ren Anhua’s current situation was very safe, providing ample time to master her new ability.

It had to be said, Shi Mu was really a great help.

Just like that, with Ren Anhua on his head, Shi Mu left the relatively bustling edge of the urban district.

But they were not the only two leaving the urban edge.

The man in the suit followed far behind them, also leaving that shopping street.

The man in the suit had woken up even earlier than Ren Anhua.

He didn’t actually need much sleep.

For him, sleep was more of a way to pass the time when he was bored.

Although not needing sleep was a huge advantage in the apocalypse, the man in the suit didn’t like this ability of his, because zombies didn’t need sleep either.

He hated everything about himself that was similar to a zombie.

So he would sleep every day.

It made him feel more like a human.

But if he had to stay awake for a long time, he wouldn’t let this strange obsession get in the way of important matters.

For him, following this pink-haired girl probably counted as an important matter.

It was one of the few goals he had found in this post-apocalyptic world.

He was following this pink-haired girl, but he didn’t intend to let her know.

He was just watching from a distance.

Perhaps for a being of his level, this behavior was more like a human who had found a particularly interesting ant and was just watching it to see what amusing things it would do.

The pink-haired girl’s actions could be considered quite amusing.

She had actually jumped onto the monk’s bald head to stand there and slack off instead of walking.

And the monk wasn’t even angry.

This made the man in the suit feel it was rather funny.

However, this harmonious scene didn’t last long.

The pink-haired girl, who had been standing very steadily, suddenly fell for no apparent reason.

But she didn’t hit the ground.

Instead, she promptly activated her anti-gravity and floated in the air.

She was covering her face, as if she really didn’t want anyone to see her expression, not even the monk who didn’t mind her standing on his head.

Anti-gravity levitation.

This surprised the man in the suit a little, because he also had this ability.

Although he didn’t use it very often, he would sometimes use it to assist with his jumps.

Discovering that this girl could also use anti-gravity levitation made the man in the suit a little happy, because this girl was clearly a human.

He had never seen a zombie use anti-gravity levitation.

It seemed this was a skill unique to humans.

The man in the suit was very happy.

He had found another piece of evidence of his humanity.

And he decided to find more humans in the future to confirm this ability.

If they didn’t admit that this was a human-only ability, he would just kill them.

People who didn’t tell the truth like that were definitely not good people.