Chapter 69: Live Broadcast
The young man looked down at his ill-fitting, oversized clothes and gave a blank nod.
He was indeed Shen She, though he had been only eleven years old moments before.
To save Nanjiao, Shen She had funneled every ounce of his internal energy into a desperate strike, completely disrupting the natural flow of time. Before the apocalypse, the patch of land where the service desk stood had been nothing but a barren wasteland. By shifting the local timeline, the massive fireball from the sky was pulled into the deep past, burning away the empty desert of a decade ago. In the present timeline, the vaporized command center rose anew, perfectly intact.
Everyone inside the building came back to life, their consciousness fully intact as they watched the destruction around them seamlessly reverse.
But the price of altering history was paid in Shen She’s own time. In a single, agonizing flash, nine years of his life vanished.
“Well, you can’t call me a brat anymore,” Shen She grinned, a deep, raspy edge filtering into his newly matured voice. He hadn’t expected his own abilities to be quite this terrifying.
No one answered him. A heavy, somber silence filled the space. Shen She’s temporal attribute carried a devastating toll—every major activation actively fed on his lifespan.
Staring at the grown youth on the other side of the monitor, Song Yuqing felt a sharp pang of heartache.
“Sister Song, look at them! They forced me to run this live broadcast for you instead of letting me join the vanguard,” Shen She pouted, his shoulders slumping as he complained. “They’re totally underestimating me.”
“Hey! If you don’t keep that stream steady, I’m cutting off your shopping privileges permanently!” Song Yuqing threatened, feigning a harsh corporate tone. In reality, she knew exactly why Nanjiao and the others had benched him; they were trying to protect him.
“See? I told you the kid would listen to her. He’s your responsibility now,” Nanjiao muttered off-camera. He forcefully shoved the smartphone into Shen She’s palm, causing the video feed to shudder violently.
Song Yuqing could barely believe her ears. Did Nanjiao and the Xie brothers seriously think she could babysit a teenager through a digital monitor from hundreds of kilometers away?
“Alright, Sister Song, watch closely. I’m going to take you right into the thick of the action—”
Before Shen She could finish his sentence, Song Yuqing barked across the line, “You just drained your entire energy reserve, and you’re already talking about jumping into a melee? What, do you think Base No. 35 will instantly collapse if you aren’t on the front lines?”
Shen She smacked his lips, sheepishly tilting his face away from the camera.
Suddenly, a long, piercing siren wailed through the air. On screen, Nanjiao and the Xie brothers turned on their heels and sprinted toward the main gates. The siege had begun.
“Sister Song, do you want to get closer? Let’s check it out!” Shen She urged, his eyes lighting up. Even if his energy was depleted, he could still swing a kitchen knife with the best of them.
“You absolutely have to stream it!” Liu Xiaona cheered, excitedly rubbing her hands together. “But you need to find a secure vantage point first!”
Without waiting for Song Yuqing to voice her objections, Shen She gripped the phone tightly and sprinted out of the building, trailing behind the rushing combat units.
“Don’t you dare get too close!” Song Yuqing and Liu Xiaona screamed at the monitor in unison.
“I know, I know! I’m just—” Before Shen She could finish his sentence, a cluster of bulky logistical workers intercepted him, grabbing him by the shoulders and dragging him out of the rush.
“You’re the kid with the time power, right? I remember you!”
“Stay off the battlefield, little brother! Leave the heavy lifting to us this time!”
“Conserve your energy and go get some rest!”
Before Shen She could even utter a protest, he was physically bundled into the logistics department—a heavily reinforced shelter stacked high with emergency provisions, where several older base residents sat on watch.
A narrow, reinforced slit window cut through the rear wall of the structure, offering a panoramic view of the battlefield outside the main gates.
An elderly woman shuffled over to Shen She, peering curiously over his shoulder at the glowing smartphone screen. “Oh my, look at that! We can actually do video calls nowadays?”
Song Yuqing caught her eye and smiled warmly through the lens. “Grandma, that young man right there is severely exhausted but he’s still trying to sneak onto the battlefield. Can you do me a huge favor and keep him pinned down?”
“Say no more, dear!” The old woman’s grip locked onto Shen She’s arm like a vice, forcefully shoving him down onto a wooden stool. “Be a good boy now. Tell Grandma where it hurts.”
Unable to bring himself to use physical force against an elderly civilian, Shen She surrendered, obediently scooting his stool closer to the narrow window frame.
“Can you hoist the camera a fraction higher? The angle is too low!” Song Yuqing shouted across the network.
As Shen She adjusted the lens, a clear picture materialized on the supermarket monitor. Dozens of heavily armored, modified combat vehicles were gridlocked just outside the perimeter of Base No. 35.
Wan Youzhi, Lin Han, Zhang Lei, and Ruan Fanfan stood clustered atop the reinforced roof of the lead vehicle, staring down in absolute horror at the endless torrent of heavily armed psychics flooding out of the stronghold.
The supreme confidence on their faces had completely shattered.
Staring at Ruan Fanfan’s panicked face on the screen, a heavy weight settled in Song Yuqing’s chest. She desperately wanted Base No. 35 to survive the assault, but the thought of a decade-long friendship ending in a bloody wasteland made her stomach churn.
“Engage!” a commander roared.
Instantly, the psychics of Base No. 35 unleashed a coordinated barrage of elemental attacks, raining destructive energy directly onto Lin Han’s vanguard.
“What the hell is going on?! Aren’t these people supposed to be starving and defenseless?! Why are their ability outputs so insanely high?!” Liu Xiaona narration-boomed, mockingly imitating the exact words she figured were running through Lin Han’s head.
Her assessment was dead accurate. On screen, a furious, panicked Wan Youzhi and his inner circle scrambled off the roof, retreating back into the safety of the armored cabin. The vanguard from Base No. 27 was completely overwhelmed by the explosive counter-offensive, falling back in a chaotic retreat within the opening minutes of the clash.
Then, the trap snapped shut. Nanjiao and the Xie brothers suddenly emerged from the flank with a massive reserve unit, cutting off the invaders’ escape route and hammering them from the rear. They had deliberately taken a wide detour through the dead forest, lying in wait to catch the retreating forces completely off guard.
“Yes! Brilliant!” Liu Xiaona slammed her palms on the counter, cheering as wildly as if she were watching a championship football match.
“What’s so brilliant?” a voice asked.
The water-type mutants who had fled Base 27 walked into the lobby, dragging several freshly slain zombie corpses behind them. Thanks to the waxy tallow soap, their skin had entirely cleared up, and their overall energy levels looked phenomenally restored.
“Come here, quick! Come watch your old base get absolutely demolished!” Liu Xiaona gestured frantically, beckoning them over.
“Should we… put these down?” The mutants at the front of the crowd hesitated, looking down at the gruesome undead corpses in their hands. Dragging rotting monsters directly up to the pristine checkout counter felt like a massive breach of store etiquette.
“Gaha! Gaha!” Gaha sprinted forward, enthusiastically snatching the corpses by the ankles one by one and feeding them directly into the glowing security vortex.
Little Meat Bun rolled his eyes, padding forward to shove Gaha out of the way to claim his share of the labor.
The refugees had noticed the two peculiar creatures the moment they arrived at the God’s Supermarket. They couldn’t wrap their heads around how a zombie and a miniature panda could comprehend human speech so flawlessly. While they maintained a healthy fear of Gaha, they instinctively coddled Little Meat Bun.
Being handled entirely too roughly by the enthusiastic crowd, the chubby creature bared his teeth, rolling his eyes in a desperate bid to look menacing.
“Oh, he is so precious!” Sister Qin’s former roommate squealed, reaching out to pat his head.
“Shh!” The crowd huddled around the monitor hissed in unison, gesturing for silence.
On the screen, Lin Han, Zhang Lei, and Ruan Fanfan had emerged from their vehicle, screaming frantic, animated commands toward the rear lines.
“The audio is too muffled, I can’t make out a word.”
Song Yuqing instructed Shen She to zoom in on Lin Han’s face so she could try to read his lips.
“Lin Han is calling for a temporary ceasefire,” Shen She reported from the bunker, acting as the primary combat commentator. Despite his quiet, stoic demeanor, his technical play-by-play was surprisingly gripping.
Watching Lin Han’s ranks dissolve into utter chaos, the liberated water mutants gloated openly.
“The bastard deserves every bit of this! I hope they beat him into a pulp!”
“Look at that coward Wan Youzhi, still cowering inside the cabin! Someone need to drag him out by his hair!”
“Um… excuse me, if I hand over this core, could I get a pack of instant noodles?” a timid voice whispered amidst the shouting.
Without looking, Little Meat Bun snagged a pack from the shelf and hurled it directly at the speaker. The mutant caught the brick cleanly, crushing the noodles inside the wrapper to eat them raw. Chewing happily, his eyes remained glued to the live stream.
The suspense was getting to Song Yuqing as well. Reaching into her spatial storage, she pulled out a thick slab of dried pork jerky, snapping it down the middle to share half with Liu Xiaona.
“Is that jerky on the inventory menu?” a refugee asked, sniffing the air.
“Sure is. Ten pieces for a single zombie soul,” Song Yuqing called out randomly, inventing a price on the spot.
Instantly, Master Fu’s critical voice boomed in her mind, layered with an electronic scold. Randomly inflating prices?! Is this how a professional merchant conducts business?!
However, since the pork jerky was an artisanal batch Liu Xiaona had cured by hand in her spare time rather than official system warehouse stock, Master Fu had no choice but to back down, letting her slide just this once.
With the sheer number of refugees squeezing into the lobby, the checkout counter was completely gridlocked. Song Yuqing manually rotated the heavy monitor outward so the entire room could watch the live feed together.
But that single, brief adjustment of the screen caused her to miss a critical development on the battlefield.
On the monitor, a thick, swirling vortex of pitch-black mist was beginning to bleed from Lin Han’s palms. Deep in the chaos of the melee, Nanjiao and the Xie brothers remained entirely oblivious to the dark energy gathering at his fingertips—and at that exact microsecond, Shen She had turned his head away from the window to speak to the old lady.
