Doomsday police, please show your god/demon ID card.

The lights in the conference room were turned off.

Tang Long went up to the rooftop of the main building alone.

The night wind was cold, making his training uniform flutter loudly.

From the thick fog in the distance, faint roars could be heard, making one's heart inexplicably race.

"Phew~"

Tang Long took a deep breath, walked to the edge of the rooftop, raised a high-powered telescope, and looked towards the city center.

The city's outline, distorted and indistinct, appeared and disappeared in the thin night fog.

Tang Long patiently adjusted the focus, and the world shrank and zoomed in through the lens. He wanted to see if he could observe the things in Gao Tianlang's diary.

One minute, two minutes...

All that could be seen was ruins and deathly silence.

Tang Long sighed and was about to put down the binoculars when his pupils suddenly contracted.

On the distant, dark horizon, atop that steel forest, night and fog stirred.

That wasn't a light, nor was it a bird.

It's like an outline squeezed out from the thick fog and the night, without a fixed shape, like a living, ever-expanding shadow.

Tang Long's palms were sweating, but he subconsciously focused the camera lens.

The outline was wriggling, changing.

Suddenly, part of it became clear.

That looks like... an eye?

wrong!

Tang Long's breathing stopped.

Those aren't eyes!

Those were heads! The heads of the infected!

Countless heads—infected, mutants, and possibly even those not fully decayed—were densely packed, layer upon layer, forcibly bound and compressed by a network of flesh and mucus, forming a black cloud floating in the sky.

Suddenly, thousands of heads in one area turned around in perfect unison, their empty eye sockets all "looking" in the direction of Tang Long.

A cold, sticky, and malicious "gaze" pierced through Tang Long's brain like a real needle, traveling tens of kilometers.

His mind went blank, and his hand holding the binoculars trembled so badly he could barely grip it.

An indescribable murmur seemed to echo directly in his brain, frantic and chaotic.

"Tang Long?"

A soft voice sounded behind me.

Tang Long shuddered like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, and the binoculars in his hand fell to the ground with a clatter.

He staggered back a step, his face ashen, gasping for breath, his back soaked in cold sweat.

Su Yan stepped forward quickly, her brows furrowed.

"What's wrong with you?" She looked in the direction Tang Long had been looking, but there was nothing but thick fog and darkness.

Tang Long did not answer. He simply leaned against the wall, looked up again, and stared intently at the city center.

It was completely empty there.

It was as if everything that had just happened was merely his illusion.

"What did you see?" Su Yan sensed something was wrong and pressed for an answer.

"Phew~"

Tang Long took a deep breath, hesitated for a moment, and then slowly shook his head.

"No...it's nothing."

He then asked in return, "Why are you here?"

Su Yan paused for a moment, then nodded: "I noticed you hadn't come downstairs, so I came to check on you. Is something wrong?"

"You..." she said, her face showing concern, "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine, nothing's wrong." Tang Long picked up the binoculars from the ground and turned to walk towards the stairs.

"Let's go! It's time to go back."

"..."

The next day, early morning.

The square at the police station base was packed with people.

Besides Tang Long's core team, the remaining two hundred-plus survivors, including newcomers rescued from the university town and KTV, all gathered here.

The air was thick with tension and unease.

Zhao Fan, along with a dozen newly recruited police officers, stood on the perimeter, armed and maintaining order.

Tang Long stood on top of the armored vehicle, his gaze sweeping over the crowd below.

"I know you're all confused as to why I called you all here so early in the morning."

His voice, transmitted through a handheld megaphone, resounded throughout the entire square.

"To make a long story short, we are about to launch a project called 'Lighthouse'."

"The target is the new municipal government building in the southern district."

"We will retake that place and use the building's public address system to broadcast our location to the entire city."

"We want all the survivors who are still alive to know about this place, to know about us, so that they will come and seek refuge with us!"

He paused.

"And you! You are the logistics personnel for this mission! Those with technical skills will assist Chen Ming, and will be responsible for cracking, installing, and debugging broadcasts and building lighthouses."

"Those who know nothing will be responsible for moving equipment, building barricades, and clearing rubble... This trip might take more than a day or two; we'll need to establish a temporary camp there until the mission is complete!"

Tang Long's words were like a boulder thrown into a calm lake.

After a brief silence, the crowd erupted in uproar.

"What? Go to the city government? That's practically suicide!"

"Are you crazy?! You just came back from the South District, and now you're going back?"

"Broadcast? Won't that attract all the monsters?"

Doubts arose, panic ensued, and chaos reigned.

Wang Hu frowned, about to shout, but Tang Long stopped him with a look.

He had anticipated this reaction.

"Quiet!" Tang Long raised his voice a few decibels, suppressing the noise.

"I know what you're afraid of. But is it safe to stay here?"

He pointed to the city center.

"There, a terrifying monster dwells, it is awakening, and its influence is expanding."

"If we cower here, we're just waiting to die."

"Taking the initiative, gathering all available resources, and establishing a sufficiently large safe zone is the only way to survive!"

Tang Long's words were firm and resounding, and the square quieted down considerably.

Some of the people who had followed Tang Long since the university town showed thoughtfulness and agreement on their faces.

But many survivors rescued from the KTV still had fear and distrust in their eyes.

Just then.

A discordant voice rang out from the crowd.

"That sounds nice! In the end, isn't it just gambling with our lives for your ambitions?"

A middle-aged man wearing gold-rimmed glasses, who looked quite refined, stepped out from the crowd.

His name is Ma Wentao. Before the apocalypse, he was a department manager at a company and one of the survivors imprisoned by the Wild Wolf Gang.

Tang Long remembered him; when the supplies were being distributed yesterday, he was the one who complained the most, saying the biscuits were too hard and there wasn't enough water.

Ma Wentao pushed up his glasses and met Tang Long's gaze without fear.

"Captain Tang, we are very grateful to you for saving us."

"But we are not your soldiers, you have no right to decide our life or death."

"You say there's danger in the city center, but who saw it? Just based on your word?"

His words ignited doubts and dissatisfaction among many people.

"Yeah! We don't want to go!"

"We barely survived, we don't want to take any more risks!"

"There are walls and guns here, wouldn't it be better to guard this position?"

A dozen or so people stood behind Ma Wentao and loudly echoed his sentiments.

Wang Hu's face was as black as the bottom of a pot, and his hand had already reached for the holster at his waist.

"What the hell are you spouting!"

"Captain Tang saved your lives, gave you food and drink, and now you're complaining?"

"A bunch of ingrates!"

"Wang Hu!" Tang Long stopped him.

He looked down at Ma Wentao, his eyes calm and unreadable.

"Are you done talking?"

Ma Wentao felt a little uneasy under his gaze, but still forced himself to say, "Captain Tang, we don't want to rebel. We just want to survive."

"Our demands are simple. First, cancel this insane operation. Second, distribute resources fairly; you can't have all the decisions. Third, base decisions must be made by a vote of all of us!"

"That's right! Let's decide by voting!"

"We want democracy!"