Morality and Ideology in the Last Days

“Why are we going to Su City?” Chen Shu asked, his eyes on the road.

He didn’t actually care about his destination; anywhere was fine.

He had no definite direction, but Ren Anhua did, and that was what he cared about.

“To avoid the military and… to handle some other matters.”

“If you don’t mind, could you elaborate?”

Ren Anhua glanced at Chen Shu.

“I mind.”

“…”

“Alright, alright, it’s not really something I can’t talk about,” Ren Anhua reconsidered, deciding it was better to be clear.

She just found it hard to talk about being turned into a girl and didn’t want to bring it up, but she could probably skirt around that detail with some light phrasing.

“Didn’t I tell you that a group of perverts modified me into my current state? What they did to me wasn’t just physical modification. Hmm, there might have been some mental alterations as well. But that’s not the main point. The point is, they stole my ability.”

“And they did it through deception!”

Ren Anhua found this incredibly hard to get over.

She felt like a fool for choosing to let them go at the last moment.

Especially now, realizing she couldn’t distinguish how much of her feelings for the RV team was real and how much was fake, she felt the frustration in her heart multiply.

“I was almost completely under their control back then, with absolutely no advantage in terms of combat power. But now, I have to make them pay a price.”

Ren Anhua stuck her hand into her pocket, where a ring and a bracelet lay.

The ring was carved with a blooming rose, whose petals would soon become sharp blades on her hand.

The charm on the bracelet would also become a sharp steel nail for her to carry.

Even though her current fighting style would bring some pain, Ren Anhua would not hesitate for a second when using them.

“You said your ability was stolen by them, but you now…”

“This current ability isn’t mine; it belongs to one of them. I hate this ability. It can only heal. I mean, at first, it could only be used for healing, with no offensive power at all. It’s only now that I’ve developed a few other ways to use it…”

Ren Anhua fell silent for a moment as she said this.

It seemed that once she had overcome the ability’s greatest flaw, it had become quite outstanding.

Powerful healing and extreme unkillability were precious traits in the apocalypse, representing a complete disregard for the erosion of the zombie virus.

Not only that, but she could also let her companions enjoy the same effect.

In the apocalypse, even a minor illness could be fatal, and the more troublesome issue of dismemberment would drastically reduce a person’s survival rate.

But with this ridiculously powerful healing ability, all these dangers ceased to exist.

To put it simply, it was like turning on an infinite health cheat in a hell-difficulty game where you only have one life, a cheat that your companions could also use.

To understand just how great this advantage was, one only had to look at the RV team’s zero-fatality rate.

The only drawback, its inability to attack, seemed to be gone now, so…

“No, my original ability was far more magnificent than this! It was a more aggressive, more destructive ability. It was my calling card, my trademark, my identity, but they took it from me.”

Ren Anhua stopped her analysis of her current ability, afraid that these thoughts were once again a product of her affinity for the RV team.

“And they replaced it with this healing-only ability, saying they would protect me from now on, that we’d be family. How could I possibly believe them? They had just deceived me, so I ran away.”

“I was just an ordinary person the day before yesterday, so I can’t really understand your attachment to that kind of ability. From my perspective, compared to an ability that can only destroy, your current one is far more precious. If I had an ability like this back then, Chen Yi…”

“They give me an indescribable feeling of closeness. They did something to my head.”

Ren Anhua paid no mind to Chen Shu’s words.

It was wrong to judge an Awakened from the perspective of an ordinary person, just as a beggar cannot understand why a ten-millionaire would be heartbroken over becoming a millionaire.

There was a fundamental gap in their ways of thinking, so she stopped the topic of abilities.

“Now, it’s not just about the ability anymore. They gave me an illusion, made me feel like I had found a family with them. I once thought they were an oasis in the desert, but now, they might just be a mirage.”

“Might be? Why ‘might be’?” Chen Shu noted the uncertain wording.

“Because I’m not sure either. What if I genuinely like them? It’s all mixed up, all of it. That bastard who messed with my head without permission, she’s made things very difficult for me. I can barely even be sure of my own thoughts anymore.”

Ren Anhua spoke her true feelings, which was her biggest point of frustration at the moment.

“You said they once promised to become your family. Could that be true?”

“Bullshit! How could it be true? They probably just needed a healer!”

“You used ‘probably’ again.”

“That’s probab… That’s the effect of the mental modification,” Ren Anhua rubbed her temples. “Enough, let’s drop this topic. I know how to deal with those people myself.”

She couldn’t reveal everything the RV team had done to her, as some of it was too embarrassing for her to say.

She had no desire to share these secrets.

For instance, the fact that the mental modification might still be shifting her habits to be more feminine, or that unfortunate excretion solution.

These were all things she was dissatisfied with about the RV team, but she couldn’t just say them out loud, so stopping this line of questioning was the best choice.

Besides, the purpose of coming over was to give Chen Shu a lesson on apocalypse-era ideology and morality, not to discuss her own damn problems.

“Your biggest problem is that you assume everyone is good. All your thinking is based on this foundation, and that won’t work in the apocalypse.”

Ren Anhua hadn’t expected the topic to stray so far, and she now intended to forcibly pull it back.

“I came here to tell you how people should interact with each other in the apocalypse…”

As Ren Anhua spoke, she suddenly stopped herself.

‘How should people interact with each other in the apocalypse?’

‘Whether for the benefit of the group or the self, you need to do whatever it takes to survive. Survival is the most important thing.’

‘Survival… the RV team also acted for survival, for Ke Xiaoshan’s survival.’

‘If that’s the case, why didn’t they do a more thorough job? Why not just have Ke Xingmei turn me into a puppet?’

‘It’s not like she hasn’t made those things before. Why go through all this trouble, taking such a huge detour just to trick me?’

‘If I put myself in their shoes… if the old Ren Anhua wanted to save Lin Aijing and negotiations were absolutely off the table, he would have definitely chopped that person into a human stump and preserved them before proceeding with the ability exchange.’

‘He would never have cared what the person, who was only valuable to him for their ability, thought. He would never have used such “gentle” methods.’

Ren Anhua once again stopped her thoughts about the RV team.

She felt like she was always inexplicably making excuses for them.

‘This is the result of the mental modification. I must find a chance to deal with this group of vexing people. Before that, it’s better not to think about their issues.’

‘Not only that, I must constantly remind myself not to be influenced by the thoughts that make me feel close to them.’

“No, I have nothing to say to you.”

Ren Anhua opened the car window and climbed out.

Seeing her on the roof of the car, Shi Mu cooperatively drove his vehicle a little closer.

As a Level Four, she leaped over with ease, but she didn’t return to the vehicle’s interior.

Instead, she stood before Er Gou.

“Congratulations, you’ve been liberated ahead of schedule.”

Although Er Gou was alive, he looked more like a dead man than anyone else.

Ren Anhua kicked him.

The immense force dislocated his limbs, ripping him away from the truck frame that held him tightly.

He crashed onto the highway, a pool of blood forming beneath him.

Ren Anhua picked up the tablet.

She needed something else to occupy her chaotic mind right now.