Zhang Yi lied without remorse. "Supplies were scarce everywhere. I checked every supermarket and mall—empty. Still, I didn't give up. I scavenged the city and found this at a mall."
He handed the bags to Uncle You, called for Zhou Ke'er, and rang the building: come collect food. Neighbors poured into the stairwell—gaunt, frantic, some already thinking of grabbing and running—until they caught sight of his pistol. The mood changed instantly.
"I worked for this," Zhang Yi told them. "In times like these I don't feed freeloaders. Eat now, then arm up and fight. Eat and slack off, and you'll pay double." It was a plain carrot-and-stick: sustenance for effort, punishment for shirking. Cowed, the crowd accepted it.
Someone started a chant. "Long live Zhang Yi!" Uncle You bellowed it first; the building echoed it back like a nervous prayer.
Fang Yuqing and Lin Caining pushed through the crowd, disheveled and frantic. Fang Yuqing called out, "Brother Zhang, it's me!"—still clinging to delusion. Lin Caining begged for extra rations. They quarrelled like scavengers fighting over scraps.
Then four men from the Tianhe Gang burst through the lobby, eyes fixed on the food. "Rob it!" they shouted.
Zhang Yi didn't shoot. He took a step back, raised his voice and baited them instead. "This food is yours—stop them! Kill one, get five rations!"
The offer hit like a match. Hunger and the promise of reward erased hesitation. The neighbors surged forward—shovels, pipes, anything they could grab. Uncle You led the charge, swinging an iron rod with the blunt authority of a man who'd once trained to fight.
The melee was brutal and brief. The gang was outnumbered and unprepared for a desperate mob. When the dust settled, six people lay still on the stairwell: four gang members, two neighbors. Blood and snow mixed on the steps.
Zhou Ke'er watched, expression hardening. As a surgeon she knew the difference between wounds and death; the two neighbors might still have been saved in another world. Here, with no antibiotics, no operating room, no time—she could do nothing but exhale and whisper, "Is this what the world has become?"