Chapter 391: No One Takes on Dead Weight
Chapter 391: No One Takes on Dead Weight
“Then you go wash, I’ll go see her.”
An Ran turns and heads toward Zhao Ru’s room. The energy from her abilities radiates around her, and the underground root system has consumed many subterranean creatures—field mice, ants, snakes. These burrowing animals have had their eggs and larvae all eaten by An Ran’s plants.
In the short term, no creatures can grow in number. Even if some threatening creatures break the surface, their numbers are small, and one Zhan Lian is enough to handle them.
Entering Zhao Ru’s room, the space is gray and dimly lit. Zhao Ru sits on a small single sofa, looking at Zhao Qianrong lying on the bed—already “taken care of” as a zombie. Next to her is a bucket, into which her hand dangles, dripping water.
“Have you overdrawn your ability?” An Ran looks at Zhao Ru, noticing Zhao Ru is trembling slightly all over, and asks, “Why are you doing this?”
“Every team doesn’t accept dead weight,” Zhao Ru says with a pale, grayish face. She looks up at An Ran, her eyes already dried from crying. “I just want to let myself feel this pain of overusing my ability more. I’ve taken too many detours. Now I finally understand the truth in it.”
She’s been wrong before—thinking everyone regards water-based ability users as treasures, so she tries hard to hide her water ability and doesn’t practice it enough. So even after three or four months into the apocalypse, she can only manage to release a little water for others.
Even just releasing that little water causes her unbearable pain. Like Tang Siluo, she’s basically just dead weight—but she’s slightly better because she can release water.
And isn’t it exactly because she can release water that An Ran stands up for her?
Zhao Ru is smart. In this chaos, she quickly finds her proper place. As a water-based ability user, why hide it? Look at An Ran—she can grow a vast area of cactus with a wave of her hand. If she has such strength, why bother begging others to save her aunt?
She closes her eyes, and two clear tears stream down her pale face.
Seeing this, An Ran sighs, pulls a chair, and sits down not far from Zhao Ru. She says faintly, “You’re not wrong. No team accepts dead weight. You have to think clearly—some people leave, some stay. Relying on yourself is the safest.”
Zhao Ru nods and continues to release her water-based ability. When she can’t hold on any longer, she absorbs crystal cores. She doesn’t have many; as a well-hidden water-element user, Zhao Ru has never kept any for herself when gathering crystals before. All the crystal cores she has now are given by Liang Ziyu.
Liang Ziyu is a power user. At first, he has many crystal cores, but later he gives all the cores he picks to Zhan Lian and Luo Feifan—two big consumers of crystal cores. Now he doesn’t have much left.
An Ran sees this and takes the initiative to give Zhao Ru a big plastic bag filled with some.
Zhao Ru looks at An Ran in surprise, shakes her head, sweat covering her forehead, and refuses, “You didn’t get all these crystal cores by yourself. If you give them all to me, others will have opinions.”
Although Zhan Lian is An Ran’s ex-husband and treats her well, many crystal cores are the result of joint efforts by Zhan Lian, Luo Feifan, Yun Tao, and Liang Ziyu. An Ran gives them all to her on her own initiative. Zhao Ru worries that An Ran might anger Zhan Lian, causing her to lose favor with him.