Qi Yue was jolted awake by the increasingly violent pounding on the door, still groggy and momentarily unsure of where he was.
Bang!! Bang!!!
The sound of zombies pounding on the door!!
His blurry eyes snapped open. Seeing the two people standing by the window, he quickly rushed over as well. From the window, he saw that the front gate of the small building’s courtyard was about to give out. Outside, roughly a hundred zombies were pacing anxiously in front of the house they were in.
He really wanted to swear. Why were these two not nervous at all? Sure, they weren’t afraid, their abilities were strong. But he was terrified.
“My bag’s with you, right? Give it to me,” Qi Yue urged.
Han Fei, confused, took Qi Yue’s always-with-him large backpack out of his space and handed it over.
Qi Yue grabbed the backpack, opened it, and rummaged through it. He pulled out a large roll of extremely thin steel wire, then grabbed a handful of screws and stuffed them into his jacket pocket. Several fell to the ground with a clatter, he didn’t have time to pick them up. He pulled out a hammer and sprinted downstairs.
What was he doing? Han Fei had no idea. He was only confused when Qi Yue started digging through the bag but the things he pulled out left Han Fei stunned, mouth slightly agape. Just what was inside this kid’s bag?
When he saw the items that had fallen earlier, Han Fei began to doubt his own eyes. He bent down to take a closer look, no mistake. They were screws.
The steel wire… okay, weird, but maybe understandable. Screws… fine, still barely understandable. But a hammer? To nail in the screws?? Was this a whole matching set? And not heavy?? When he first met Qi Yue, that bag was always strapped to him everywhere he went.
Outside, the zombies were about to break through. Han Fei had plenty of weapons stored in his space and had originally planned to blow up the staircase and kill the zombies from the second floor using abilities and guns.
Lin Yuze watched from the side, also very curious. What exactly was Qi Yue planning? The two of them followed him downstairs.
The pounding was terrifying. The door wouldn’t last long. Seeing the two men coming down the stairs, Qi Yue quickly said, “Don’t come down. Go back up.”
His hands never stopped moving. He tied steel wire to the door, to the windows, to cabinets, to heavy objects in the room. He stretched the lines tight, some high, some low, starting from the entrance of the first floor, weaving multiple wire lines across the room like a web, extending toward the staircase.
Just as they reached the stairs, the front gate outside collapsed with a loud crash. Zombies surged inside.
Qi Yue’s hands moved even faster. He pulled out long nails, wrapped wire around them, and hammered them rapidly into the walls, crisscrossing them. In no time, the staircase was also lined with steel wire.
The wire he prepared was extremely thin but strong, something he had carefully chosen before the apocalypse at a hardware store. Even humans might overlook it if they weren’t paying attention.
Done. Not bad. He was very pleased.
Qi Yue sat down on the stairs, eyes burning as he stared at the door.
Lin Yuze glanced at him, then also turned to stare at the entrance, eyes excited. He couldn’t wait to see what would happen next.
Bang!!!
The door inside was smashed open by zombie brute force. Zombies surged forward, having already smelled the delicious scent of ability-user flesh.
Patta patta — rotting flesh dropped to the floor.
The zombies were sliced into chunks of various sizes as if chopped by knives, cut apart by the steel wires. Zombies behind them, smelling the scent of ability users inside, shoved forward even harder. Some that lost their legs tried crawling with their hands. Flesh scraped off by the wires didn’t bother them at all.
The hall filled with the overwhelming stench of rot. The floor was covered with scattered chunks of rotting meat, truly nauseating.
But Qi Yue, sitting on the stairs, watched with great interest. Very successful this time. Next time he passed a hardware store, he definitely needed to collect more wire, this was effective. He occasionally shot crawling zombies, and when he happened to hit one in the head, he would chuckle to himself.
The two men standing beside him were dumbfounded. Seventy or eighty zombies were taken out just like that. The living room now looked like a slaughterhouse, the floor covered in grisly pieces. The whole thing was disgusting.
“Look, doesn’t it look like the dumpling filling I made last night?” Qi Yue said. “I added chopped pickled vegetables, mixed with the meat it looked this dark too. And the zombie fluids on the floor… pretty similar.”
Han Fei felt last night’s dinner rising up. Seeing Lin Yuze’s stiff expression beside him, lips pressed tight, he felt slightly better.
“Let’s eat the soup-filled steamed buns I made last night! Eat before we go. It’s safe here.”
Qi Yue, excited, brought out a plate of the buns he made the previous night and offered them.
Seeing Lin Yuze’s reaction, his voice got smaller and smaller. “If you don’t like buns, I have dumplings… or noodles… I also have—”
The strong stench of rot, combined with the thought of dumplings and soup-filled buns, plus Qi Yue’s cheerful offering, Lin Yuze couldn’t hold back. He ran to the side and threw up.
Han Fei felt relieved. Youth, no experience, no mental fortitude.
Qi Yue looked innocently at Lin Yuze. Was it because of the zombies nearby? He’d get used to it eventually. After all, he’d seen so many zombies while eating that it didn’t bother him anymore.
He turned to Han Fei. Han Fei quickly said he wasn’t hungry. Qi Yue shrugged, took out chopsticks, picked up a bun, and ate happily. Hmm, the pickled vegetable filling was pretty good.
Han Fei sat rigidly, face pale, suppressing wave after wave of nausea. He had seen plenty of bloody scenes before, no way he was going to embarrass himself like that kid.
Qi Yue continued eating one bun after another, very satisfied with his own cooking. He finally burped contentedly.
“Let’s go.”
The other two weakly waved, agreeing.
Seeing their exhausted expressions, Qi Yue took the initiative to provide a way downstairs. He tore bedsheets into strips and tied them into a long rope.
He hadn’t planned on going through all this trouble, he could’ve just cut the wire and walked out the front door. But the two men, strangely in sync, adamantly refused. Sure, it was dirty, but they could wash their shoes afterward. It was the apocalypse, who cared? And he hadn’t even dug out the crystal cores yet. What a waste.
“How about you two use this rope, and I go down through the first floor?” Qi Yue muttered while cutting fabric. “The zombies’ crystal cores haven’t been dug out yet. Such a waste. Even if you two are level three now and don’t need level one cores, they can be exchanged for things at the base.”
He really couldn’t bear it. All in all, there must be dozens of cores down there.
“Shut up.” Han Fei barked. This kid had been muttering for ages.
“What do you want? I’ll give it to you.”
Qi Yue felt wronged. He wasn’t after their stuff, he just had itchy hands when he saw crystal cores. It was habit, after years of scavenging.
He looked at Lin Yuze for help.
Lin Yuze, feeling Qi Yue’s gaze, turned his face away to stare out the window. He really couldn’t bear the thought of this innocent, pretty kid digging through that pile of rotten corpses. Just imagining stepping on that mush made him shudder.
Seeing both of them ignore him, Qi Yue reluctantly shut up.
They climbed down the makeshift rope from the second floor.
Han Fei summoned the car. By now he was used to storing it in his spatial garage to prevent shady people from eyeing it.
Lin Yuze drove. Han Fei planned to sit in the back like the previous day and cling to Qi Yue again.
As soon as the car started moving and everyone had settled, Qi Yue spoke up:
“Um… take out the stuff you stored last night, you said I’d wrap the buns in the car today.”
Han Fei: “No. What if you dirty the car?”
“It’s not your car,” Qi Yue retorted. “It’s Lin Yuze’s. He didn’t say anything.”
Han Fei: “I’m sitting in the car.”
“I’ll be careful. I won’t dirty anything.”
“No. You need space to roll out the dough and chop the filling.”
“I already rolled the dough and chopped the filling yesterday. I just need to wrap them.”
“No.”
Qi Yue got angry. He wanted to practice his ability, why couldn’t Han Fei allow it? And Han Fei was the one who said he could wrap them in the car today!
Seeing Qi Yue’s small, tense face, Han Fei gave in, sighing, and took out the materials he stored. So that’s why, indeed, everything was ready: a big basin of uniformly rolled dough skins, identical like they’d been stamped from a mold, and a bucket of black-red filling.
“Stop the car!”
Screech—
Bang!!!!
Qi Yue didn’t have time to react. While lowering his head to wrap a bun, he slammed his forehead into the back of the seat. Tears instantly sprang up.
What kind of terrible car was this? The seatback even had a little handle sticking out. It hurt!
Han Fei climbed from the back seat into the passenger seat, gesturing for the car to keep going.
Qi Yue rubbed his head angrily.
When did these two become so close?? Sitting together now??
In the rearview mirror, the two men watched Qi Yue wrapping bun after bun, the interior of the car filling with the smell of meat. Both of them had sour liquid rising in their throats.
No one said anything. The atmosphere was peaceful yet strangely eerie.
Yangcheng Hospital was chaotic. These past few days, a strange illness had appeared. Many people were hospitalized, and the staff were overwhelmed.
Inside a private VIP room lay a sixteen-year-old girl with delicate features.
Suddenly, she sat upright, gasping for breath, sweat dripping down her forehead. She looked around at the familiar surroundings.
Liu Yue smiled sweetly.
She was back.
This time, she would plan everything carefully.
Author’s Note: The next two chapters will be a bit short, I need to explain some twisted things~~
