Doomsday Reboot: My Superpowers Absorb Everything

As the aroma of wild boar stew with potatoes wafted across half the valley, Lin Ye was sitting on the watchtower of the fortress, cleaning his gun. The barrel reflected the golden glow of the setting sun, and he suddenly stopped—the silver veins on his right arm began to burn again, this time not with a sharp sting, but with a tingling numbness like being soaked in warm water, spreading along his veins towards his heart.

"Not feeling well again?" Su Ya brought up a ceramic bowl, oil slicking over it. "Zhao Feng said you didn't eat lunch, so he specially saved a piece of meat with tendons." She placed the bowl on the watchtower's wooden plank, her fingertips lightly touching the silver patterns on the forest floor. The moment the green energy seeped into the patterns, tiny specks of light appeared on the silver. "These patterns are getting brighter and brighter. Is it trying to tell me something?"

Lin Ye glanced down at the meat in his bowl and suddenly remembered the black-robed man's last words. "The Corpse Mother is in the heart of the city..." He picked at the meat with the tip of his knife and shook it. "Do you think 'heart' might refer to the clock tower in the old town? It used to be a city landmark, and it's connected to three subway lines underground."

Su Ya followed his gaze towards the city; the distant clock tower's spire looked like a rusty needle in the twilight. "On Zhao Feng's map, the crimson symbol is indeed drawn at the clock tower's location." She suddenly grabbed Lin Ye's wrist, green energy pulsating rapidly. "Oh no! The Iron Hoof Alliance is tearing down the low wall on the east side!"

The two hurriedly descended the watchtower, and as soon as they reached the edge of the fortress, they heard an argument. A burly man from the Iron Hoof Alliance was grabbing Li Hu by the collar, spitting all over his face: "Why should your people live in the inner circle? We risked our lives to bring the steel bars back, and now we can't even get a dry place?"

"The inner circle is for storing medical supplies and seeds!" Li Hu's face flushed red, his rifle creaking in his grip. "What's wrong with you guys staying on the outer circle? The fortifications were all built by our people at the base first!"

Zhao Feng walked over, leaning on a hastily whittled wooden cane. He placed his one arm on the shoulder of the bearded man, the force making the man grimace. "What's all the noise about? If you keep making a fuss, I'll throw you to feed the mutated vultures." He glanced at the crooked, broken low wall, his brows furrowing. "Who gave you permission to damage the fortifications?"

"Why can the people at the outpost guard the warm shed while we have to stand in the cold wind?" the bearded man shouted, his neck stiff. "Besides, what good is this lousy wall? It broke through so easily last time the shadow zombies came!"

Lin Ye suddenly spoke up: "Rebuild the wall. Leave three rooms in the inner circle for the wounded and those raising seedlings. The rest will be distributed according to the number of people. The Iron Hoof Alliance will live in the eastern half, and the stronghold will live in the western half. The greenhouses will be divided in the middle, with each side using half." He paused, his silver markings gleaming in the twilight. "Starting tomorrow, we'll take turns on night watch. The Iron Hoof Alliance will be on duty for the first half of the night, and the stronghold will be on duty for the second half. If anything goes wrong, both sides will be punished."

The bearded man wanted to say something, but Zhao Feng gave him a cold glance, and he shut his mouth in a huff. As everyone hurriedly built the low wall back up, Lin Ye noticed that the Iron Hoof Alliance members still harbored some resentment in their eyes—like dynamite buried in the ground, ready to explode at any moment.

It was Lin Ye's turn to keep watch late at night. He was dozing off against the support of the greenhouse frame when Yinwen suddenly became burning hot. He opened his eyes abruptly and saw an eerie red light emanating from the night sky in the direction of the clock tower, as if blood was churning in the clouds. What sent chills down his spine was that countless tiny black shadows seemed to be wriggling within the red light, drifting with the wind towards the valley.

"It's spores." Zhao Feng appeared behind him unnoticed, his one arm resting on a wooden cane. "The 'Corpse Mother' the black-robed man mentioned is probably a mutant that can release infectious spores." He pointed below the red light. "Look at those buildings. They used to be a hospital, but now they're probably culture dishes for spores."

Lin Ye took out his binoculars. The hospital building in the lens looked like a sponge soaked in blood, with dark red slime seeping from the cracks in the walls. Several mutated bats fell straight down as soon as they flew close, their wings quickly getting stuck in the slime and turning into a wriggling ball of flesh.

"We have to burn that building down." Lin Ye put down his binoculars, the burning sensation in the silver veins growing stronger. "If the spores drift into the valley, the seedlings and people in the greenhouse will all suffer."

"I'll take a team with me." Zhao Feng turned around to gather his men, but Lin Ye stopped him.

"You're not good at close combat with only one arm, so keep it to guard the fortress." Lin Ye checked the rifle magazine and loaded a few bullets coated with antiviral serum. "I'll take Li Hu and three Iron Hoof Alliance members with me, and we'll use incendiary bombs."

Zhao Feng frowned: "The people of the Iron Hoof Alliance cannot be trusted—"

"We only bring them along because we don't trust them." Lin Ye's gaze swept over the sleeping crowd. "It's better to let them see the danger of the Corpse Mother with their own eyes than to let them stay in the fortress and harbor suspicions."

At three in the morning, Lin Ye led his squad to the back entrance of the hospital. The three Iron Hoof Alliance soldiers, as expected, weren't on guard. They were huddled in a corner smoking cigarettes they'd secretly kept. One of them, a skinny guy, was complaining, "Those guys at the stronghold are so troublesome. What's so great about burning down a dilapidated building..."

Before he could finish speaking, a "tick-tock" sound suddenly came from the corridor. Lin Ye made a shushing gesture, raised his gun and kicked open the door of the duty room—the hospital bed inside had been gnawed down to its skeleton, while more than a dozen "people" were hanging upside down from the ceiling, their skin swollen like plastic bags, their limbs twisted into pretzel shapes, and soft bubbles popping from their throats.

"They're infected with spores." Li Hu's voice trembled, his hand holding the gun shook, "They're not quite dead yet..."

Those "people" suddenly opened their eyes, the whites of their eyes bloodshot, their bodies dangling from the ceiling like octopuses, their sticky tentacles brushing against the ground. The skinny monkey couldn't resist pulling the trigger, the bullet hitting the infected, only blasting a bloody hole, which instead provoked them to roar wildly.

"Use incendiary bombs!" Lin Ye threw a grenade. In the instant the flash went off, he saw that each infected person had a fleshy growth embedded in their chest, pulsating like a heart. "Shoot the growth!"

Li Hu's rifle accurately struck a tumor, green sap spurting out, and the infected instantly collapsed into a pile of rotten flesh. The Iron Hoof Alliance members finally reacted, hurriedly changing magazines. Skinny Monkey, firing and cursing, said, "Damn it! This is ten times more disgusting than the Shadow Corpses! The people at the stronghold weren't lying..."

After cleaning the duty room, the group made their way to the pharmacy. Just as Lin Ye was about to pour gasoline on the medicine shelf, Yin Wen suddenly felt as hot as a branding iron. He turned his head sharply—the freezer deep inside the pharmacy was shaking violently, and dark red viscous liquid, mixed with fine bone fragments, was seeping out from the gaps in the cabinet door.

"Get out of here!" Lin Ye grabbed Li Hu, who was still carrying alcohol, and rushed out. Just as they ran out of the pharmacy, a loud crash came from behind. The freezer was ripped open from the inside, and a monster made up of countless severed hands and feet crawled out. Its torso was a swollen tumor with dozens of eyes embedded in it, all staring at them.

"It's the Corpse Mother's 'Nest'!" Li Hu's voice changed. "The heart the black-robed man mentioned isn't the clock tower at all; it's this thing!"

The skinny monkey's leg got tangled in the slime on the ground, and just as the monster's tentacles were about to wrap around him, Lin Ye turned around and shot the slime around his feet, shouting, "Run to the roof! Burn the ventilation ducts on the roof!"

The group scrambled up to the rooftop. Li Hu, trembling, lit three incendiary bombs and tossed them into the ventilation duct. Flames shot down the duct, the monster's roars were deafening, and the concrete floor of the rooftop cracked. Lin Ye watched as the red light below was gradually replaced by fire, and just as he breathed a sigh of relief, he noticed a burly man from the Iron Hoof Alliance pointing a gun at Li Hu—a patch of skin on his neck had turned dark purple, clearly infected by spores.

"You..." The burly man's eyes rolled back, and his finger reached for the trigger.

Suddenly, Lin Ye's silver markings erupted with a bright light, and dark purple energy surged out from the gun barrel, forcefully stopping the bullet in mid-air. He rushed over and punched the burly man in the neck. The light from the silver markings seeped into the skin, and the purple patches slowly faded away.

"It's silver veins...it can suppress spores!" Li Hu was both surprised and delighted.

The burly man shook his head, his eyes regaining their clarity. Looking at his hands, he was filled with lingering fear: "Thank... thank you, Brother Linye."

The firelight on the rooftop illuminated half the sky, but Lin Ye, watching the gradually fading red glow, felt uneasy. He took out the map Zhao Feng had given him and noticed that the location of the clock tower had been circled in red with a new symbol—like an open eye.

"Let's go back." He slung the gun over his shoulder, the silver sheen still gleaming. "There's probably something even more troublesome inside the fortress."

As the squad retreated into the valley, Lin Ye deliberately had the Iron Hoof Alliance members walk in front. Skinny Monkey, passing the corner of the burned-down hospital wall, suddenly stopped, picked up half a bloodstained nameplate, and handed it to Lin Ye: "This is... the nameplate of the former leader of the Iron Hoof Alliance. He disappeared here last year."

Lin Ye gripped the cold nameplate; the burning sensation of the silver patterns had completely vanished, replaced by a bone-chilling cold. He seemed to understand—the Corpse Mother's spores could not only infect the living but also control corpses. The Iron Hoof Alliance's suspicion of the stronghold might not be solely due to unequal distribution.

When they returned to the valley, it was just dawn. Lin Ye had just climbed the watchtower when he saw Su Ya running towards him, carrying a withered sunflower, her face covered in dirt: "The seedlings in the greenhouse... suddenly wilted, as if something sucked away their nutrients."

He looked down at the foundation of the fortress, where the soil had turned a dark purple and was climbing up the supports of the greenhouse. Silver Pattern trembled slightly at this moment, as if issuing a warning—the Corpse Mother's spores had not been completely burned away and had already burrowed into the foundation of the fortress.

At the top of the clock tower further away, the "eye" symbol appears and disappears in the morning light, as if it is coldly watching this land that has just experienced quarrels and war, waiting for the moment when the cracks will completely explode.