The smell threaded through cracks in the asphalt, crept down into the shattered drainage system, and crawled up the floors of the tilting buildings still standing in the dead quarter of the city.
Scattered in other dark corners, survivors clinging to their last breaths began lifting their heads one by one. Some were Awakened who'd once been strong enough to wipe out a small pack of Deadwalkers alone. Others were the weak—huddled behind iron doors, surviving on sips of dirty water and half a moldy cracker. But the moment that smell reached them, they were all the same.
Hungry.
"Move."
Three-Notch dropped low, hugging a concrete wall scorched black on one side, then cut fast across the open stretch of road. Broken glass crunched underfoot, crushed cans and fallen signage littered the ground.
Tin and Ledger followed right behind. Tin was younger, his knuckles white around his gun, swallowing dry every few seconds like he was trying to force his stomach to shut up. Ledger was steadier—one lens of his glasses cracked, a strip of cord tied around the back of his head in place of the missing arm—but the eyes behind those lenses moved fast, scanning the rubble for anything out of place.
The smell kept getting stronger.
In a world where even a damp ration bar was worth risking your life over, that smell was almost a form of torture.
"Damn. It's up ahead."
Ledger kept his voice barely above a whisper, rough from thirst and the effort of holding himself still. He pointed toward the far end of the alley, where a faint light was bleeding out from behind a row of old kiosks.
Three-Notch didn't answer right away. He held up two fingers, signaling the group to slow, then pressed himself against the wall at the alley's end. He listened for a moment before tilting his head to look.
Beyond the wall was a fairly wide concrete yard—probably a parking area or shared lot for the row of shops before everything fell apart. Half of it was swallowed by abandoned motorcycles, overturned trash bins, and torn tarps. At the far end, in the middle of a block that had been eaten whole by darkness, a small shop was lit up.
The white bulb hanging under the awning wasn't especially bright, but in a city that had grown used to total dark, it was almost painful to look at.
*Dai Jun General Store.*
Right in front of the entrance, a large multi-function electric pot was rolling at a full boil. Reddish-brown broth churned in waves, a slick of oil shimmering under the light. Soft yellow noodles tangled with deep-red slices of instant sausage, rising and sinking with each bubble. Just looking at it, Tin's throat produced an audible, involuntary swallow.
Beside the pot, a young man in a house T-shirt and loose pants leaned against the doorframe. His posture was almost offensively relaxed—one hand holding chopsticks, the other braced on the door's edge—more like a shop owner watching a late-night pot than someone standing in the middle of a ruin crawling with Deadwalkers and armed survivors.
Three-Notch's neck went cold instantly.
*Trap.*
The thought fired the same moment the smell of noodles hit him in the face. Everything was too obvious, too clean, too bright, too wrong. No normal survivor set out a steaming pot of food in the open, turned on a light in the middle of the night, and stood there like he was waiting for customers to stop in for a pack of instant noodles. That wasn't the posture of prey. That was bait—laid out and ready, just waiting for someone hungry enough to lose their mind and walk straight into it.
Tin and Ledger had clearly reached the same conclusion. Both stood pressed behind Three-Notch, eyes locked on the boiling pot. Their breathing had gotten heavier, but neither foot dared move another half-step.
Logic was pulling them back. Their stomachs were practically screaming at them to run forward.
Right then, Tin's gut let out a long, low growl. Not loud—but in the dead silence of that yard, it might as well have been a fist on a tin drum.
Three-Notch's expression darkened. He was about to turn and glare at Tin when the corner of his eye caught a very slight movement across the yard. Behind the burned-out shell of a pickup truck, a shadow had just shifted its shoulder.
Not a Deadwalker.
In the dark, a tall, lean man in a black jacket was pressed flat against the front of the truck, his form just as disciplined as their own. He'd spotted Three-Notch's eyes at the same moment. He froze—then slowly raised one finger to his lips.
Three-Notch's chest sank.
They weren't the only group here.
He pulled his gaze back immediately, forced himself to stop looking at the pot, and scanned the whole yard again with different eyes. Without the smell dragging his attention, the details hiding in the shadows started to surface.
On the second floor of the building to the left, behind a window frame stripped of its glass, a silhouette moved. At the mouth of the alley on the right, a pile of trash had been stacked high—and behind it, a tiny flash of reflected light had just blinked out, the kind that came off metal. A gun barrel. A knife edge. Directly behind them, on the other side of the collapsed wall, fabric scraped against broken brick and went immediately silent.
One group. Two groups. Three groups.
No—at least four.
All of them pulled here by the smell of noodles. All of them staring at that steaming pot. And all of them sharp enough to understand that what was sitting in front of them was too good to be normal, too dangerous for anyone to want to be the first one to step out.
Tin finally registered that something was wrong. His face went pale, both hands clenching the gun until his knuckles stood out white. Ledger said nothing—just quietly adjusted his stance so his back wasn't fully turned to the wall behind them.
They'd thought they were the first ones to find the treasure. Now they understood: they were small fish who'd just swum into a pool full of sharks.
A thin film of sweat had formed on Three-Notch's forehead. He looked back toward the shop.
The young man was still leaning there. He even yawned. His whole bearing was lazy, unbothered—as if he had absolutely no idea that several gun barrels were trained on him from the dark.
Three-Notch didn't buy it for a second.
A person who dared set out a pot of noodles in a place like this, dared turn on a light, dared open a shop—there was no way that person was an idiot.
Zhang Jun knew there were people outside. More than one group.
The pot in front of him had reached a full boil. Steam rose in thick columns, carrying the smell of seasoning across the yard and into every alley and gap in the walls like an invisible net. From the moment Three-Notch's group appeared, he'd been hearing footsteps. Then the sound of fabric catching on a trash bin, metal grazing brick, breath held too long and too carefully.
Plenty of fish had shown up.
Zhang Jun set his chopsticks on the rim of the pot, rolled his shoulders once, and stepped out of the shop at an unhurried pace. His shoulder joints cracked softly a few times. His eyes swept across the second floor on the left, the burned-out pickup across the yard, the alley mouth on the right—then paused briefly on the wall where Three-Notch's group was hiding.
"Seen enough?"
His voice wasn't loud, but in the stillness of the yard, every word landed clearly in the ears of everyone concealed in the dark.
No one answered.
The silence stretched for a few more seconds. In the dark corners, fingers tightened on triggers, breaths were unconsciously held down. Behind the wall, Three-Notch's back went cold and wet. He knew he'd been made—and worse, the other groups now knew that everyone had been made.
Zhang Jun seemed not to notice the atmosphere, wound tight enough that a single spark would set it off. He turned back, picked up a slice of steaming instant sausage with his chopsticks, blew on it once, and put it in his mouth. Only after he'd finished did he continue:
"Relax. I'm open for business. This isn't a hunting ground."
That single sentence made the darkness around the yard shift slightly. No one stepped out, but every bit of attention had been pulled toward him.
"The shop has noodles, water, instant sausage. Eat here or take it with you—doesn't matter. Pay the right price and I won't ask where you came from."
More than a few people's breathing audibly deepened. For them, the words *noodles* and *water* hit harder than any promise could. In the Collapse, food was life. Clean water was life. And a hot meal with sausage was the kind of thing that only showed up in dreams right before you starved to death.
Behind the burned-out pickup, the man in the black jacket licked his cracked, dry lips. He looked around once, saw that no one else was willing to speak first, and finally couldn't hold back.
"What's the price?"
Zhang Jun turned toward him, expression as neutral as if he were quoting prices in an ordinary convenience store.
"Gold or Deadwalker Cores."
The man in the black jacket went still.
Small reactions rippled through the other dark corners as well. Deadwalker Cores made sense—those were hard currency in the hands of the Awakened, usable to boost abilities, trade for weapons, medicine, even entry into certain safe zones. But gold was different. In this wrecked city, gold couldn't be eaten, couldn't be drunk, and couldn't stop a Deadwalker. A gold chain was sometimes worth less than a sheet of corrugated metal thick enough to board up a door.
From the mouth of the alley on the right, behind the trash pile stacked over head height, a rough, hoarse male voice cut out:
"You serious? Asking for gold right now? You think we're shoppers at some market?"
No one backed him up immediately, but the atmosphere had already shifted. The people in hiding were running fast calculations. One pot of noodles, a shop with clean water, one young owner with no obvious weapons. If everyone rushed at once, taking it wasn't out of the question.
The rough voice seized on that moment of wavering.
"You all heard him. This guy's not actually selling anything. He's baiting us out here to squeeze us. Talking about gold and silver when people are starving—that's just playing with us. Better to rush him together, deal with him first, split what's in the shop after."
The killing intent spread fast. Not loud—no shouting, no war cries—just a few safeties being clicked back into position, a few shoes shifting on broken brick, a few breaths dropping lower behind whatever cover people had found.
Three-Notch didn't move. He stared at Zhang Jun, and the longer he looked, the more dangerous the man seemed. A normal person hearing all this would at least flinch—step back inside, lock the door, beg to negotiate. Zhang Jun just bent down, picked up another pinch of noodles with his chopsticks, blew on them, and ate at a completely unhurried pace.
The golden noodles lifted out of the reddish-brown broth, steam curling off them in the lamplight. To the starving people watching from the dark, that single gesture was like pouring gasoline on a fire.
When he'd finished the bite, Zhang Jun looked up. He glanced toward the alley mouth where the rough voice had come from, and smiled—just barely.
"You're welcome to try."
The yard went one level quieter.
Zhang Jun set his chopsticks back on the rim of the pot. His voice stayed even, unhurried, not loud:
"But I'll say it once. Whoever makes the first move loses trading privileges."
His tone was completely calm—and somehow that made every person hiding in the dark feel a chill run down their spine.
*Loses trading privileges.*
In other words: no matter how much gold or how many Deadwalker Cores they brought out afterward, they'd be standing there watching everyone else eat noodles and drink broth while they held their empty stomachs and endured. For people who'd gone hungry long enough to be half out of their minds, that was its own kind of torture.
The air seemed to freeze solid. The rolling boil of the pot became the only sound still clearly audible, each bubble striking the taut nerves of the survivors like a small blow.
Behind the trash pile at the alley entrance, the rough-looking man stared at the pot of noodles, the muscles in his face twitching repeatedly. His breathing was heavy enough that the people near him could hear it. Logic told him to stop. But that maddening smell kept dragging the hunger in his gut upward, pushing every clear thought further and further back.
Finally, he ground his teeth and swore.
"To hell with it—I don't buy it!"
The shout tore through the silence. He burst out from behind the trash pile, both hands raising a homemade shotgun cobbled together from steel pipe and salvaged parts, the black muzzle aimed straight at Zhang Jun.
"Everyone rush him! Doesn't matter how tough he is—there's only one of him!"
On his signal, two more men—both skeletal thin—crawled out of the dark behind him, one gripping a machete, one clutching a length of steel pipe. The move happened so fast that the other groups all froze. Three-Notch immediately pressed himself tighter against the wall, making no move to join in. The tall, lean man in the black jacket behind the abandoned vehicle stayed flat, eyes fixed on the shop entrance.
Everyone was waiting.
Waiting to see how deep the water in this particular pond actually was.
"Die!"
The rough man pulled the trigger without hesitation.
*BOOM!*
The gunshot cracked hard through the night. A bloom of orange-yellow fire erupted from the muzzle, a spray of steel shot and metal fragments fanning out in a dense pattern straight toward Zhang Jun.
And then every person watching went wide-eyed.
The spread of shot—enough to shred a human body—flew to within about a meter of the Dai Jun General Store's entrance and *stopped*, as if it had hit an invisible wall. No violent impact sound. No sparks. Every pellet and fragment simply lost all momentum and clattered to the brick in a dry, scattered *tink-tink-tink-tink.*
Through all of it, Zhang Jun's expression didn't change once.
He calmly picked up another pinch of noodles from the pot, blew on them, and put them in his mouth at a leisurely pace.
The entire yard fell into an eerie silence. The man who'd fired stood rigid, the ferocity draining from his face and leaving nothing behind but blank, stupid shock. His two companions—machete and steel pipe—were frozen mid-step, one foot already forward, unable to advance, equally unable to retreat.
"That's impossible… That's impossible…"
He muttered it, the color leaving his face fast, replaced by fear he couldn't hide.
At that exact moment, behind the abandoned vehicle, the tall lean man in the black jacket narrowed his eyes. He hadn't been scared off by what he'd just seen—if anything, he looked like he'd noticed something.
Physical attacks were useless?
What about a mental attack?
He quietly raised his right hand, palm facing Zhang Jun. The air around it twisted slightly, an invisible pulse condensing into a point, silently launched toward Zhang Jun's temple.
That was his Awakened ability—*Thought Spike.*
No sound, no visible form, nearly impossible to guard against. Since the Collapse hit, that ability had carried him through more than a few near-death situations. He was confident that whatever strange defense had stopped the bullets could block physical force—but it couldn't block a direct strike to the mind.
The pulse hit the invisible boundary in front of the shop entrance and vanished.
No ripple. No reaction. As if it had never existed.
*Pfft.*
The tall lean man spat a mouthful of blood and crumpled behind the vehicle, his whole body going limp. His face was ashen, his eyes flooded with terror. His attack hadn't just been neutralized—it had been reflected back at him, nearly intact.
This time, even those who hadn't understood exactly what happened could see one thing clearly.
That shop was not a place they could take by force.
And the young man standing inside it was not prey. As long as he remained within that space, they simply did not have the standing to hurt him.
A fear heavier than anything they'd felt facing a pack of Deadwalkers spread through everyone present. Behind the low wall, Three-Notch's shirt was soaked through with cold sweat. He was quietly grateful he hadn't been reckless enough to rush out.
Zhang Jun finished the noodles in his mouth, then speared a slice of instant sausage from the pot with his fork. He looked up, letting his gaze pass over the frozen figures scattered around the yard, and finally let it settle on the man who'd fired and his two companions.
All three of them were visibly shaking.
"I already said it."
Zhang Jun's voice stayed level—no anger in it, no satisfaction either.
"Whoever makes the first move loses trading privileges."
He bit into the sausage, chewed, swallowed, then asked:
"Anyone else want to try?"
No one answered.
The silence this time was heavier than before. The steel shot scattered across the ground had crushed whatever last scrap of luck the survivors had been holding onto. No matter how hungry they were, they understood: the person in front of them was not something that could be threatened with knives, guns, or a few words of provocation.
The smell from the pot was still maddening enough to make a person lose their mind—but now it wasn't just temptation. It was a wire pulled tight around their throats, forcing them to look, to want, but not daring to take a single wrong step.
Zhang Jun stirred the pot lightly with his fork, letting the heat and the smell of seasoning rise thicker. He didn't need to do anything else. Just standing there was enough to press an invisible weight down over the entire yard.
Right as the tension was about to stretch past its breaking point, the sound of high heels came clicking out of the deep dark.
*Click. Click. Click.*
*Click. Click. Click.*
The sound was crisp, unhurried, perfectly metered—unsettling in a way that gunfire never quite managed. In a ruin thick with blood-dust, corpses, and starving people, the sound of high heels was like noise bleeding in from another world entirely.
Every head turned at once.
A lean silhouette stepped out of the dark. Deep crimson curls, a black leather outfit fitted close to the skin, features sharp enough to border on theatrical. Each step was unhurried—as if the gun barrels, the drawn blades, and the hunger lurking in every shadow weren't worth a second thought.
Hong Van.