Chapter 980: A Safe Haven for Shiyi

Inside the employee dorm at Territory Fifteen, Ye Shiyi lay in bed and watched Uncle Ye wheel himself out. After quietly shutting the door for her, he slipped out a tiny watch face from the inside of his protective mask.

She snuggled deeper into the crisp, sun-warmed blanket, powered on the watch and sent two little star emojis to her mom. Quietly, Shiyi closed her eyes and used her magnetic sense to feel for people nearby.

Mom had taken her to the top of Hill Fifty to carefully observe this territory. So Little Shiyi knew exactly which dorm room she was in. Through her magnetic sense, she could sense 16 people within ten meters around her.

Of them, 11 had calm and steady magnetic fields—definitely sleeping. Three radiated pure happiness. The last two felt down and defeated.

Number of hostile or aggressive magnetic fields: zero.

The people here weren’t anything like the always-miserable, gravely wounded ones in Hidden Valley, or the desperate, angry crowds back in Lan Five Safe Zone, and definitely nothing like Zheng Jialin’s group—those people looked cheerful on the surface, but their fields made Shiyi’s head throb.

Her mother said this was already the best living environment they could find for now. She wondered what the magnetic fields of the kids back at school would be like…

Little Shiyi yawned wide, fighting to keep her eyes open as she stared at the watch, waiting for Mom’s reply.

There was no sense of hostility here, and after ten days of tension, Shiyi finally felt somewhat safe. Sleepiness and exhaustion crept over her like a wave.

After her eyes involuntarily closed for the fifth time, the watch face finally lit up. Delighted, she hugged her legs, curled up against the wall in the blanket and tapped open the message. When she saw Mom’s three star emojis, she grinned in silent joy for a few seconds before her smile faded. Quietly, she wiped away her tears.

She had never been apart from her mother before. She missed her so much.

A hundred li southeast of Lan Five Safe Zone, deep inside a tiny tent inside a massive, two-meter-thick evolved tree in the Evolved Forest, Zhang Shi, exhausted, replied to Xia Qing and stared gently at the little stars sent by her daughter, tears rolling silently down her cheeks.

“Ye Yang, I’m sorry… it’s just… I had no other way. That’s why I forced myself to lie and ask you to take Shiyi in. There’s a fifty-thousand credit card hidden in her protective suit pocket—it’s everything I have. Please, for her innocence… and because she’s a Ye too… give her something to eat…”

In the shaky, blurry video, the man’s face was swollen and ulcerated, his voice frail and trembling as he pleaded tearfully with Ye Yang to take in his daughter.

Yue Haiying set aside the second smart watch hidden in the sole of Ye Shiyi’s shoe, then looked at Ye Yang.

Ye Yang explained, “His name’s Ye Yuliang. We’re from the same hometown. Back in year eight of the disaster, I heard he was at Lan Five and managed to contact him, hoping he knew anything about my brother’s whereabouts.”

Ye Yuliang’s way of handling things certainly wasn’t right, but Yue Haiying understood the man’s desperation to save his daughter. “So… what are you planning to do?”

Ye Yang didn’t want to lie to his friend, but Little Shiyi’s background was just too sensitive. He had no other choice. “We’re both from the same place, and we share the Ye name. His daughter is family too. I want to raise her myself.”

Yue Haiying nodded. “In that case, best not tell anyone else about her identity. Tomorrow, I’ll have the people living in the east side—”

“Brother Yue,” Ye Yang cut him off, “I’d like to use the credits Ye Yuliang left for Shiyi to build two rooms here. The title can go to Qi Qi, but Shiyi will always have the right to live there. That way, even if something happens to me, she’ll still have a roof over her head.”

“We’ll need to check with Junjie and Qi Qi about this, but it shouldn’t be a problem,” Yue Haiying replied, already making plans as experienced as ever. “If they agree, we’ll have Shiyi live closer to Qi Qi, so the two kids can go to school together.”

Yue Haiying and Ye Yang wasted no time. By nine the next morning, Ye Yang called Xia Qing and asked her to come by and help decide the house layout, hoping to get it built before the third Devastation Rain so he could move in with his niece.

There was no urgent farmwork in the territory lately, so Xia Qing hung up, loaded Qi Fu and Zhao Ze into the car, and drove into Territory Fifteen.

Surveying the land, picking the spot, sketching blueprints and calculating the supplies—Zhao Ze’s specialty. As for actually building the house, that was right up Qi Fu and Xia Qing’s alley.

In less than two hours, Ye Yang and Little Shiyi’s two-story house was fully designed.

The layout was similar to Tan Qi and Xia Qing’s own home: two stories, with a spacious living room in the center of each floor, two rooms on either side, split north and south. Kitchen on the first floor, bathrooms upstairs and down.

Little Shiyi would have the upstairs, Ye Yang the floor below.

The house was set a hundred meters east from Tan Qi’s, and over six hundred meters from the territory’s retired soldiers’ dorm. It was higher ground too, safe from flooding.

Zhao Ze suggested raising the ground on the east side of Tan Qi’s place with a bulldozer to bring Ye Yang’s house even closer to Tan Qi and Jiang Ying’s, but Ye Yang turned it down. It was too much work, and he felt a bit of distance might help keep Shiyi’s origins under wraps.

Xia Qing agreed that it might be better to keep some distance from Tan Qi’s home.

For Little Shiyi, with her C-rank magnetic sense, not having anyone else within a hundred meters really let her relax. Plus, as the territory’s lord, Tan Qi’s emotional ups and downs shouldn’t be under constant surveillance.

Once the site was chosen, the real work started—digging the foundation and building the house. With Ye Yang’s solid budget, they went with reinforced concrete and sturdy plastic-steel doors and windows.

The steel bars and cement would all come from the Safe Zone. When the cement arrived, they’d add special repellent powder and anti-corrosion material made at Territory Eight’s Compost Factory to make the high-quality disaster-proof concrete used in the post-calamity world.

These two cement additives were only manufactured by the Compost Factory at Territory Eight when an ally needed them. In other words, they were a special perk for Alliance members, not sold to anyone else.

While the adults discussed construction plans, Little Shiyi—now wearing a different face—gripped her uncle’s wheelchair with both arms to keep it from rolling off.

Ye Yang’s wheelchair had a locking function. He picked up his little niece and settled her on his nearly numb legs, pointing at the blueprint to show her what their new house would look like.

They looked every bit the part of a close uncle and niece.

Qi Fu and Zhao Ze watched the well-behaved child with warm hearts. Xia Qing, though, was caught by the scar on Ye Shiyi’s left temple.

Yesterday, Little Shiyi had been wearing a grubby protective mask, so Xia Qing hadn’t noticed her scar. But sitting so close today—and with half-step level nine vision evolution—Xia Qing couldn’t detect even a hint that the scar was fake.

How was she so sure it was fake? Because Ye Shiyi was a Recovery Evolutionary—there’s no way she could have a scar.

That scar was a protective talisman carved onto her by Zhang Shi.