Chapter6

Zhou Lingxin did not expect to be suddenly attacked by a fish monster hiding in the shadows. She was very confident that they had all already left the village since she hadn't seen even a single one during her walk outside.

This turned out to be a disastrous mistake on her part.

Due to some kind of luck, however, she managed to prevent the fish creature from biting into her neck by quickly defending with her stick. Her stick managed to rest between the creature's opened maw, preventing it from chomping down on her.

Taking advantage of the fish creature's lacking mobility due to its head being locked into place, she gave its belly a kick, knocking it off of her.

Her combat instinct had somewhat improved as a result of her recent encounters with these things, and if there was one thing she had learnt really well, it was to not hesitate.

With this lesson firmly engraved into her head, she swung her stick, not giving the still reeling fish monster a breath's span of time to recover from her kick.

Splat!

With one firm strike, the once lively fish creature was destroyed. Though this was the case, instead of feeling happy about it, Zhou Lingxin thought that something was off.

Why was the fish creature here inside the house? Shouldn't it have ran back towards the lake with the others? As she pondered the potential reasons, she could only think of a few. The most likely reasons was probably that it was attracted to something in the house. Something the outside didn't have. For example, something like shade. Shelter from the light.

She had now remembered how the fish creature was holing up in a dark part of the room, where almost no light reached. Now, seeing the thing's corpse on the floor, she noticed something peculiar about it skin when it came into contact with the sunlight that was feeling pouring in through the window.

The fish's skin appeared to be a little different from the other fish she had seen before. It was almost a little… flaky and dry. As if it had spent all day boiling under the sun, when in reality it was only a few dozen seconds.

The gears in Zhou Lingxin's mind started to click, and finally she had come up with a somewhat plausible explanation.

These fish were actually weak against sunlight!

Or, maybe just heat in general. No wonder she found it very easy to take care of this thing. Even if her overpowered stick and her slightly more polished combat experienced played a role in her quick defeat of it, the sunlight was perhaps the most important aspect.

Because, in the presence of this weakness, the fish creature's combat potential was actually greatly reduced. Its reaction time was dulled. Its strength was restricted. And its instincts were affected.

If she were right about this, then the villagers odds of success against the rampant fish creatures would be doubled! Maybe even tripled!

Grumble!

Noticing her stomach making a sound, Zhou Lingxin was drawn out of her thoughts. Saving the village was nice and all, but she couldn't do it on an empty stomach.

With her purpose in returning home once again established itself in her mind, she searched all the kitchen cupboards for something to eat. Surprisingly enough, most of the food here was no good. It was either rotting, smelly or infested with insects.

This made no sense to her, since she had last checked on the food only a day ago, and all the food was fine. So how could it be that everything was now ruined?

She then thought back to how all the power was suddenly cut after the fish monsters had shown up. Perhaps this current phenomenon she was observing now also had something to do with the appearance of this unearthly creatures. This was the only explanation she could come up with.

Even though she managed to understand this, she was by no means pleased. The reason? Because now she didn't know where to get food. No wonder the rations occuring in the Mayor's Mansion were even a thing. Food supply was now scarce, and even though a significant portion of the village's population had passed away yesterday, it was unknown if there was enough food for everyone to live off of.

As a final result, the ration system was introduced, to ensure that the village doesn't lose anymore villagers, because then things would truly be disastrous.

This considered, she doubted if the big guard by the food supply would let her get an extra meal. After all, everyone was hungry, and only the strong and those with authority would have their opinions be respected. Her complaining about her stolen food would not get her anything useful, and it might even make some other villagers annoyed at her for bothering them with her own problems.

She pondered about her choices as she began to tear apart the fish creatures body. Whatever those spheres were, she instinctively felt that she should pick them up and collect them.

As she located the sphere in the recently killed fish creature's leg, no ways of obtaining food struck her. Begging was not going to work, and scavenging was unlikely to produce any acceptable results. All the food that was still edible was probably already collected and put into the ration pile by the others.

Zhou Lingxin walked out of the door, lost in thought before she heard the clanging sounds of a loud bell. It was coming from the backyard of the Mayor's House!

As she quickly hurried over, she noticed that almost all that was left of the remaining villagers were gathering up. Thankfully the bell that was being rung had nothing to do with news of more fish creatures heading back to the village. She sighed in relief at this and joined the massive circle of perhaps around three hundred people.

As she sat down somewhere random, she saw Ning Tai alongside Fang Li, and the two made eye contact. Ning Tai simply nodded at her and then proceeded to return back to his duties. She also saw her step-father further into the crowd, and she gripped her stick in anger at the sight of him.

"Everyone! I'm sure you must be confused as to what is happening right now. But you mustn't panic. The situation may be dire, but it is still salvageable," Fang Li started, attempting to reassure the crowd.

"As all of you should know, the entire village is suffering from power loss, and radio signals are not working. To top it off, we are unable to start up any of our vehicles, and are essentially in a state of isolation, unable to contact anyone from outside the village."

On hearing Fang Li's shocking words, the people in the crowd that were barely containing their unrest started to go wild, each screaming different things.

At this moment, Ning Tai appeared, and fiercely hit onto a bell, creating a sound that was perhaps strong enough to mute everyone else's voices, ushering a period of silence.

"But," Ning Tai shouted, causing everyone to pay attention to his following words purely because of how awe-inspiring he was, "this is the least of our troubles. Creatures foreign to the face of this planet suddenly appeared from out of nowhere and raided our homes, killed our people, and ruined our peace. For now, let's call these devilspawn the fishermen. From the intel we've gathered at the cost of many lives, we've come to learn that these beings appeared from out of the lake. Though they may be small and quick, we have methods to counter them. These things are not the real problem. Though they come in numbers far outnumbering us, without human intelligence to back them up, they are just like slightly fatter children trying to beat adults at a game of chess. We compete in different aspects, and there prowess helps them in no real way, on the condition that we keep our wits. If it were just these fishmen though, it wouldn't be too much of a problem. We may suffer some casualties, but we'd eventually come up on time. The main purpose of today's gathering is actually not these fishmen though. It's something dozens of times more troublesome. It's the mutated species of the fishmen, which are bigger, stronger, smarter and more aggressive. The fishmen veterans, we'll call them. While even an average man of the village can put a normal fishman to rest, there are only a few experts in the village that can manage to come out alive after a tango with the fishmen veterans, and even then luck would play a very important role."

The crowd was silent, their brains registering this information. There were even scarier opponents out there?

"However do not fear!" Ning Tai had started speaking again.

"We will prepare for the likely event that we are attacked once again. The fishmen do not seem to respond well to sunlight, and although the effect it has on the veteran fishmen is not confirmed, we can assume that they also suffer from a similar weakness. We will make use of this knowledge, and instead of waiting for the fishmen to make a move on us, we will prepare against them and fight strategically. This way, the number of casualties on our side can be greatly reduced. I will not feed you with words of deceit. A lot of us will die in our future endeavours. However, to have even a fraction of hope, we must not shy away from the enemy. If there is ever a need where we must put our lives on the line, I hope everyone acts responsibly, remembering the people behind us and fighting alongside us. If one does not contribute, one must not expect to be fed"

Ning Tai then stopped speaking, giving the crowd a hard look, as if asking people to challenge his authority.

Hearing his words, and the threat contained within them, numerous people did not know how to react. Slowly, however, as more and more pieces of information became to register properly in their minds, their expressions started to change.

Risk their lives against the fishmen? Those who don't fight should not expect to be fed? These very thoughts inevitably made everyone feel fury in their hearts. How could they accept such things? In a matter of moments, those of them who were once afraid of even looking at Ning Tai in the eye on normal occasions, were now cussing and rebuking him.

"What?"

"You can't decide that!"

"Thats unfair!"

"What is the meaning of this?"

Several cowardly men, the elderly, the women and some younger children cried out in protest, but Ning Tai slammed the bell again, and they were all silenced once again, sending only an unhappy look their way.

"Now calm down!" Ning Tai exploded, beckoning to Fang Li to speak

"Although everyone will have to fight, it does not necessarily have to be on the front lines. You can also contribute by helping us prepare. As it is now daytime, we still have the need to scout the area and search for other stragglers that are still displaced. We will set up a perimeter and build pits around it. We are also handing out weapons to all those who want one, yet do not have the luck of owning one."

As Fang Li finished his speech, Ning Tai and his trusted warriors began to quickly and efficiently split up the work. Some villagers were chosen to build pits, while others were to raise fences and stakes around the mayor's house. There were even quite a few that were chosen to continue to scout the village for anything and everything that could be used for the following days to come.

Zhou Lingxin was assigned the task of digging pits, and she was handed a shovel.

"Make sure to return this back when you're done," said the man who handed it to her.

Without hesitation she walked outward and was directed to an area by one of Fang Li's men. Once there, she began to dig a hole with two others. They made eye contact, but there was no chatter amongst them. In their current predicament, no one had the heart for words, especially considering boulder after boulder had just been tossed onto them by Fang Li and Ning Tai's words.

After some time, the hole was completed. Immediately after, they were redirected, and another pit was to be dug. It was laborious work and Zhou Lingxin's stomach constantly rumbled the more she did it, but no one gave it a second thought. Zhou Lingxin tried to suppress her hunger as she dug and dug.

It was a couple hours later until the bell once again rang out, signaling for everyone to return to the backyard.

"Every one, it's time to get some rations, and try to be honest about it. There will be punishments for taking more food than what you are assigned," one of Ning Tai's men said, before heading somewhere else.

"Everybody line up or don't expect a morsel of anything!" said the surprisingly ferocious voice of the man standing guard by the rations.

Although there was shoving, everyone formed a makeshift line out of fear that there would be no food available for them if they made too much of a ruckus. The ones that had refused to work had also been forcefully heavily marked so that they would not receive any food. Although this lead to protesting and crying, those that did were quickly dragged away to who knows where. They didn't reappear that's for sure.

As Zhou Lingxin lined up until it was finally her turn to get some food, a hand suddenly gripped her by the arm. Turning around, she noticed it was her step-father. Looking at the man straight into the eyes, she noticed that he was grinning rather evilly.

"Have fun working, I suppose?" he commented sarcastically, before once again following her in to get food.

She almost didn't want to get any, in hopes of spiteing this man, but her rumbling stomach allowed her to do no such thing. She quickly formed plans on how to escape without having her food snatched by the man, but the growing impatience of the people behind her and the guard didn't allow her to plan much. Unable to dawdle and think some more, she quickly went over to the food, got her arm marked again, and received some dry and bland pastries.

As she tried to struggle past her step-father though, she found herself unable to do a thing against him. In the face of someone that was stronger, her weapon elsewhere, she was indeed much too lacking to compete. Her food was once again taken from her and she was pushed onto the floor without a bite to eat.

Just like last time, no one was willing to help her out of her unfavourable situation. Some even stared at her with looks of disdain. What a weakling, they all thought to themselves. You had to be an idiot to not try and fight to keep your own rations. It was her own fault for being weak and submissive to fate.

Realizing this, Zhou Lingxin walked away with a downed head, a body full of aching limbs and an ever-rumbling stomach. She soon returned to the quiet little corner where she had hidden her stick weapon, sat down on the grass.

The day was beginning to age, and night time was around the corner. By that time, she had no idea what would become of her. She was now severely fatigued, and she was sure that even a regular fish creature would have no problems with finishing her off.

There was little hope for survival. Her step-father, who only knew how to steal her food, would definitely not help her. And even if he did, it would only be to once again steal food from her on a later occasion. All-in-all, everything seemed helpless.

As Zhou Lingxin lay down on the grass facing the clouds, a little red core rolled out from within her pockets, glimmering faintly in the sunlight.

In Zhou Lingxin's eyes, this little thing was indeed very peculiar, and she had seen nothing like it. It had come from within the fishmen, and it should be something that she should find innately disgusting. However, perhaps because it was due to her hunger, she seemed to want to taste the core.

If Zhou Lingxin were still in her normal state of mind, she wouldn't do such a thing even if she was a hundred times stupider. Now though, when her survival itself was a big question mark, she thought to take a chance and see what happens.

Worst comes to worst, she would choke on it and die, which didn't really seem as bad as the future that was in store for her.

Picking it up, she only stared at it for a second before tossing it straight into her mouth.