Surviving the Game as a Zombie - Chapter 106

Tang Yu took the yellow sticky note with the keyword written on it and put it in a pocket with a button on her tool bag.

She was too lazy to write, so she gestured to Song Lengzhu, pointing at Song Lengzhu and the table and chairs, then at herself, and finally at the restroom sign hanging upside down from the ceiling.

Do you want to go to the restroom with me? Or stay here and rest?

Because of the language barrier, Tang Yu’s body language was forced to become more expressive, sometimes even requiring facial expressions to convey emotions.

It was unclear how much of this information Song Lengzhu would receive.

Song Lengzhu took in all of Tang Yu’s movements. “You’re going to the restroom?” she asked.

Yes, Tang Yu nodded.

She felt like she had done a lifetime’s worth of nodding tonight.

“I’ll go with you,” Song Lengzhu replied quickly. “I don’t know if Fang Yiming will come back. It’s best we don’t split up.”

Tang Yu raised her hand and made an ‘OK’ sign. What Song Lengzhu said made sense, and besides, going to a deserted restroom alone in the middle of the night, one always feared running into something unclean.

But… Tang Yu pointed at Song Lengzhu’s lips. The crimson color was hard to ignore.

Your injury…

It seemed Song Lengzhu didn’t have any healing-related abilities. Her wrist was still wrapped in a bandage, and her recovery speed depended entirely on her base stats.

And this woman was extremely reserved, not uttering a single complaint, not revealing the true extent of her injuries to Tang Yu.

Shouldn’t you rest first? Tang Yu made a ‘pause’ gesture, pulled out a stool, and prepared to sit down.

Song Lengzhu met Tang Yu’s gaze and quickly wiped the bl00d from her lips with the back of her hand. “It’s nothing.” She stood up calmly and casually picked up the small flashlight from the table.

Fine, she’s a tough one.

The “restroom” on the sticky note didn’t specify which floor it was on. Tang Yu contacted Qi Jinyin through the ally system, but there was no response. Jin Ye said in the group chat that Qi Jinyin was in a deep sleep and asked her to try again later.

So Tang Yu decided to start searching from the fourth floor.

The public restroom on the fourth floor was huge. Probably considering the high traffic of the city library, it had been built with more than twenty stalls.

Tang Yu walked in past the partition wall. She looked up at the sign on the wall and entered the women’s restroom.

It had rarely been used since it was abandoned. The floor was clean, the decor was simple and elegant, and the air didn’t smell too bad—not as strong as the bloody smell of zombies in the forbidden zone.

There was a large glass mirror above the sinks. When the light hit it, it reflected their two figures.

Tang Yu’s gaze fell on the bottom left corner of the mirror. A small ‘X’ was drawn there with a black marker, inconspicuous, as if it were a mark left accidentally by a construction worker.

Tang Yu approached the glass mirror and touched the mark. The dried ink left an uneven texture.

“Did you find something?” Song Lengzhu walked forward and stood behind Tang Yu.

In the mirror, their figures overlapped, one behind the other. Behind them was an inky blackness.

Tang Yu pressed her finger against the glass. There was a clear gap at her fingertip.

A one-way mirror, perfectly normal, nothing special. Tang Yu shook her head and walked towards the stalls.

No zombies, no bloodstains. All the stall doors were open, revealing a row of tightly closed toilets. The tanks were also intact. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Tang Yu had no intention of opening the toilet lids; who knew what might pop out.

She also didn’t dare to stray too far from Song Lengzhu. The moment she stepped out of the flashlight’s beam, her heart would start to pound.

Running into a zombie would be fine, but if some supernatural entity jumped out, she really couldn’t handle it.

After searching the entire area and finding nothing, Tang Yu stood back next to Song Lengzhu, frowning.

“It’s okay. Finding a clue immediately would be more suspicious.” While Tang Yu was busy, Song Lengzhu had been leaning against the outermost wall to rest.

She spoke to comfort Tang Yu, then turned her head to look at the mirror. In it, her face was pale, and fine red threads of bl00d seeped from the ruptured capillaries on her cheek.

It looked rather unsightly. Song Lengzhu frowned.

Tang Yu followed her gaze to the mirror, her eyes flickered, and then she looked away without a change in expression, trying her best to ignore Song Lengzhu’s captivating face.

So far, they had made no progress. Tang Yu drew Startling Dragon.

Maybe I should try smashing it?

No sooner said than done. Tang Yu walked to the sink, pressed the hilt of her knife against the top of the mirror, then flicked her wrist. With a slight application of force, the stone collided with the glass, producing a crisp sound.

With a sharp crack, a fissure appeared in the glass mirror. Tang Yu struck it four more times, and the mirror shattered into pieces with a crash, falling onto the sink and revealing the ceramic tiles behind it.

Her guess was wrong. Behind it was a solid wall.

It seemed there was nothing special here after all.

Perhaps the restroom on the sticky note referred to the men’s room, or one on another floor.

Disappointed, Tang Yu turned around and pointed towards the door, signaling to Song Lengzhu that they should leave.

Song Lengzhu received the signal, straightened up, and sighed casually, “They really did a thorough job.”

“What?” Tang Yu paused, a look of confusion on her face.

“The game script.” Seeing Tang Yu’s interest, Song Lengzhu explained as she walked, “That is, the interaction logic. What events are triggered under what circumstances. For example, if you strike a piece of glass with a hard object, the glass will shatter. Or if you cut your hand with glass, it will bleed. The amount of bleeding varies with the force applied. Rules like these, big and small, are pre-set, or rather, generated by programming.”

Tang Yu had noticed this before. Every interaction in the game was close to reality. But… Tang Yu took out her personal sticky note and wrote on her palm: “Can a person handle such a large amount of settings?”

Impossible. No matter how brilliant a programmer is, they can’t possibly write out a massive number of rules one by one.

“AI.” Song Lengzhu glanced at Tang Yu. “Artificial intelligence is already being used very deeply. You only need to manually define the basic framework and resources of the game, and the AI will automatically generate the scripts for the remaining details based on the fundamental logic.”

Such scripts cover all aspects. A drop of water, a cloud, each has its own trajectory.

“It’s like… on a huge scroll painting, every pixel can be freely drawn and set. This way, players can have a high degree of freedom to explore. After developing to a certain point, the game will develop self-balancing properties, like an ‘invisible hand.’ This ecosystem will self-regulate and self-repair.”

“This is very common in interstellar games,” Song Lengzhu added.

Therefore, when players harm life forms in the game, they don’t have much of a psychological burden. Most people understand that these are just pre-written programs, including the NPCs.

It’s just that NPCs are more advanced programs, capable of self-awareness and self-evolution.

Tang Yu fell silent, receiving such higher-level information so directly for the first time. She only had memories from within the game, which made her more like a person living in the game, a member of this ecosystem. She lacked a higher-level perspective and had a very different mentality from ordinary players.

Once you learn this, it becomes very difficult to judge whether an NPC’s actions are based on their own consciousness or a pre-set program.

But, Tang Yu suddenly thought of Jian Che.

The existence of this little girl meant that the evolution and generation of AI in the game were not absolutely error-free. This game had bugs, or rather, weaknesses.

Was the old Tang Yu looking for such weaknesses?

During their conversation, the two of them, one after the other, arrived at the entrance to the men’s restroom.

It stank. Much worse than the women’s restroom.

Song Lengzhu covered her nose. Due to her ability enhancement, her constitution was much more sensitive to smells. She really didn’t want to go into this restroom.

Tang Yu also froze, her facial features scrunched up.

She decided to contact Qi Jinyin again, even if she had to shake her awake.

Qi Jinyin’s voice sounded hoarse, as if she had been asleep for a long time. After listening to Tang Yu, she responded, “You’re looking for a restroom? You’ve been to every restroom in the library, I’m not sure which one it is… But, in the westernmost corner of the fourth floor, there’s a single office with a private bathroom. You might miss it if I didn’t mention it. Why don’t you go check there?”

A private bathroom, that sounded very suspicious!

Tang Yu quickly took two steps back, away from the public restroom.

The single office wasn’t easy to find. Not only was it in a remote location, but there was also a partition wall outside with a “Staff Only” sign on it.

Next to the wall was a bookshelf that had been moved aside. Behind the bookshelf was an arched hole in the wall. The two of them went around the hole and saw piles of unsorted books stacked together.

After navigating around these piles of books, they finally saw the so-called single office.

The office was large, furnished with a leather sofa and a mahogany desk. The boss’s chair was pushed to one side, and the desktop and cabinets looked like they had been rummaged through.

Tang Yu picked up a nameplate from the floor. The words “Deputy Director” were stamped on it.

This deputy director’s office was in a rather strange location. There were no other offices nearby, and it was some distance from the elevators and stairs. One could only imagine how inefficient it must have been to convey tasks to subordinates.

Tang Yu casually placed the nameplate on the mahogany desk and then examined the layout of the office.

It wasn’t a single room; the office was connected to two other rooms, both with their doors tightly shut.

Song Lengzhu pushed open one of the doors and looked inside. It was a break room with a soft mattress and a simple wardrobe, presumably for the deputy director’s afternoon naps.

The other door, however, wouldn’t unlock.

“Let me.” Tang Yu signaled for Song Lengzhu to step back. She took a deep breath and then kicked hard at the closed wooden door.

The handle rattled, but the door didn’t budge.

Huh? Tang Yu had clearly used her full strength. With her power level, it was impossible for her not to be able to kick down a wooden door.

She retracted her leg and drew her knife.

When the tip of the knife touched the wooden door, it scraped out a metallic-like scratch.

Could it be that it wasn’t a wooden door?

Tang Yu simply aimed her knife at the lock and swung fiercely. A piercing metallic sound grated on the nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard. After one strike, a deep groove appeared on the door.

Tang Yu couldn’t help but be shocked, her expression turning serious. There was something wrong with this door. With the enhanced hardness of Startling Dragon, this metal door should have been pierced.

She composed herself and struck several more times before the lock was completely destroyed.

With a creak, the door opened a small crack.

It stank. It stank horribly.

Like the putrid stench of a corpse that had been sealed away for months, it seeped out from the crack in the door.

Tang Yu was standing close and got an unexpected whiff. Her nasal cavity was instantly filled with the intense stench, and her body’s instinctive reaction made her step back and gag.

Beside her, Song Lengzhu vigilantly drew her gun, her face grim, instantly entering a combat state.

“Creak.”

The faint sound was like an eerie incantation. Although no one was pushing it, the crack in the door widened.

The first thing Tang Yu saw was bl00d.

Large patches of dark bloodstains covered the white ceramic tiles. They had probably been there for a long time and had coagulated into solids. The drag marks on the floor were very obvious, as if someone had dragged a body inside. The bloodstains practically covered the entire field of vision.

Yet, in the office outside, not a single drop of bl00d could be seen.

Then, the door opened wider, and a toilet came into view.

What made one’s scalp tingle was that there was a person sitting on the toilet lid.

A fat man, covered in bl00d, his clothes filthy.

As the door crack widened, the man stiffly turned his head. Unexpectedly, his gaze met Tang Yu’s.

Sunken eyeballs, collapsed facial features and face—he no longer possessed any characteristics of a living person.

“It’s a zombie,” Song Lengzhu calmly warned, firing a volley of shots with her left hand.

Three bullets left the muzzle one after another, accurately embedding themselves in the man’s head. The impact caused his body to tilt back slightly.

But then, he straightened back up, sitting firmly on the toilet lid without any reaction, just staring at the people outside the door.

He wasn’t dead.

Tang Yu had thought the man was the only one in the restroom, but suddenly, several dark figures flashed out from behind the door.

It was as if a pile of zombies had been locked in here. As the door opened, they seemed to be released from a seal, pouncing towards the outside with lightning speed.

Leading the charge was a gaunt zombie. It was on all fours, its legs bent inwards, and it lunged at Song Lengzhu’s face in a bizarre posture.

Song Lengzhu was the primary target of the zombie’s attack!

Tang Yu took a step back, precisely blocking its attack path. Then, gripping her knife with both hands, she slashed downwards diagonally, very quickly and decisively cutting the zombie in half.

Foul-smelling pus slid down the blade, splattering onto the floor along with the two halves of the corpse.

Song Lengzhu was injured and at a disadvantage in close combat. The zombies couldn’t be allowed to get near her. Tang Yu stood grimly in front of Song Lengzhu, raising her knife in an attack stance.

The small restroom was crowded with six zombies, including the fat man. These zombies moved faster than ordinary ones, using all four limbs, their bodies hunched over, so withered they no longer looked human.

Tang Yu had no time to think about the strangeness of the restroom and quickly activated her precognition ability.

But after just two seconds, she silently switched to her newly acquired ability—Shadow Transformation.

Three shadows that emerged from the corners of the office solidified in a few seconds. They had no facial features, no substance, and constantly dripped a tar-like gel. When the liquid hit the ground, it merged into the shadows without a trace.

Other than being as tall as Tang Yu, the shadows bore almost no resemblance to the ability user.

Tang Yu’s eyes flickered. The shadows’ palms directly transformed into the shape of Startling Dragon’s military knife. She had learned this trick from Black Scorpion.

Tang Yu quickly took two steps back.

In an instant, the three shadows rushed into the bathroom and began to fight with the charging zombies.

Tang Yu was not at ease. These three shadows consumed her stamina. If she was strong, the shadows were strong. Even their combat state was closely related to her emotions.

This was the drawback of Shadow Transformation; Tang Yu couldn’t just be a hands-off commander.

And she could only summon three at most; any more was impossible.

“Attack the man on the toilet,” Song Lengzhu prompted in a low voice. She stood at the back, holding her gun with one hand, the muzzle shifting from the man’s head to his heart.

“Okay,” Tang Yu grunted, stepping into the bathroom.

Song Lengzhu’s pupils constricted. She hadn’t expected Tang Yu to go in herself.

Tang Yu wasn’t acting recklessly. This man had been sitting still the whole time, and she didn’t know where his fatal weakness was. The shadows wouldn’t think when they attacked. Tang Yu decided to charge directly at the man and pull him off the toilet.

The moment she stepped into the restroom, the overwhelming stench assaulted Tang Yu’s senses. The smell was strange; you couldn’t smell it at all before the door was opened, but once inside, it was as intense as a biochemical weapon.

Tang Yu felt like the top of her head was about to be blown off by the smell. She forcibly held her breath and quickly scanned the room.

The bathroom was only about ten square meters. Besides the toilet area, there was also a small shower. Beneath the thick bloodstains, cream-colored tiles were faintly visible. There was a mirror above the sink, smeared with bl00d by someone’s hand.

Tang Yu only glanced at it for a moment before focusing all her attention on the man on the toilet.

He was pot-bellied, wearing a suit and tie, looking like he had a high status in life. But now, he sat motionless on the toilet lid like a monster, his sunken eyes fixed on Tang Yu’s movements.

Song Lengzhu’s bullet traced a straight line through the air, heading straight for the man’s heart.

Tang Yu was very close. She saw the man’s chest cavity cave inward like a balloon, then swallow the bullet.

It was as if the bullet wasn’t shot in, but sucked in by him.

Tang Yu moved, circling to the man’s side. She swung her knife with her right hand, aiming for his neck.

When the blade struck his flesh, it was like hitting a pile of mud. She couldn’t find a point of purchase, and all the force from her hand was invisibly dissipated.

Tang Yu tried to pull her knife back, only to find it was embedded in the back of the man’s neck.

What kind of monster was this? Tang Yu could no longer hold her breath and took a gasp.

The foul air filled her lungs, and Tang Yu felt like she was stinking from the inside out.

The knife wouldn’t cut and couldn’t be pulled back, and she was being stared at up close by a pair of dead fish eyes. Tang Yu steeled herself, holding the knife with her right hand and pulling out the gun from her waist with her left. She aimed at one of the cloudy eyes and pulled the trigger.

But at that moment, the man on the toilet moved.

He reached out and, with great force, blocked the muzzle of Tang Yu’s gun.

The bullet couldn’t penetrate his palm and the gun instantly misfired. Tang Yu had to jump away quickly, not even having time to pull out Startling Dragon, barely managing to avoid the small explosion.

“The eyes!” Tang Yu leaped up and shouted, pointing at the man’s eyes.

He only reacted when she attacked his eyes. It was very likely his weak point.

Whether Song Lengzhu could understand depended on how much chemistry they had.

Soon, a series of five bullets shot towards the man’s eyes, each one precise, not deviating by a single fraction.

But the man on the toilet raised his hand, blocking the front of his eyes, and the bullets were once again swallowed by his arm.

Tang Yu was horrified. She ignored how filthy he was, jumped up, and kicked the man on the toilet. The moment he stabilized himself, she grabbed his arm.

The feeling was like grabbing a pile of limp, rotten mud. Even through the clothes, she could feel that sticky, nauseating sensation.

Tang Yu pulled with all her might, trying to yank the man off, but it was completely useless. He seemed to be glued to the toilet. Even though his upper body tilted, his lower body didn’t move an inch.

So disgusting. Tang Yu felt like she was under a dual biochemical and psychological attack. Although the man on the toilet hadn’t attacked her directly, he was harder to fight than any zombie. He was stinky and disgusting. Anyone with slightly less composure might have gone mad.

This thing was beyond the scope of a zombie. Something was wrong, very wrong.

Tang Yu had just been discussing game interactions with Song Lengzhu, and in the blink of an eye, she encountered a situation that defied the laws of physics.

Tang Yu gritted her teeth, used both hands, and switched to grabbing the man’s other arm.

“Song Lengzhu!” Tang Yu roared with all her might. This gasp for air subjected her to another assault of the stench.

I’m tainted, I’m tainted, Tang Yu thought inappropriately, her brows furrowed.

She was like in a tug-of-war with the man on the toilet, pulling his hands tightly to drag him forward, creating an opportunity for Song Lengzhu to attack.

Thanks to her several collaborations with Song Lengzhu, their chemistry had gradually improved from an initial negative value. Now, as long as Tang Yu made her oinking pig sound, Song Lengzhu could immediately receive the information she was conveying.

The moment her voice fell, another five golden-tinged bullets grazed past Tang Yu’s arm and shot towards the man’s eyes.

“Warning.” Abruptly, two words came out of the man’s mouth.

Mechanical, cold, emotionless words.

Tang Yu’s heart skipped a beat. She had heard this voice before.

In that instant, the five bullets suddenly stopped dead in front of the man’s eyeballs, unable to advance even a fraction.

The next moment, the bullets bent at a completely illogical angle and shot towards Tang Yu.

“Tang!” Song Lengzhu’s pupils constricted. She rushed towards the door, the name she called out only managing to get the first syllable out.

It was too late, too late. Tang Yu hadn’t activated her precognition ability; she couldn’t dodge.

Damn it, why can’t “Position Swap” be used on zombies!

Song Lengzhu’s throat was seized by immense fear. She could only watch helplessly as her own bullets pierced through Tang Yu.

A second? Probably less.

In just half a second, the shadow behind Tang Yu suddenly enveloped her. Before her vision was completely swallowed by darkness, Tang Yu’s pupils reflected the shape of the five bullets.

“Close.” Her mouth hadn’t even fully formed the word, but the unspoken command had already been transmitted to the shadow.

It was like an innate perception. The moment danger arrived, Tang Yu’s mind reacted faster than her body.

The bullets were close, very close.

They almost touched the tips of her eyelashes.

The next moment, Tang Yu’s vision was completely engulfed by darkness, and even her breathing was smothered.

Before losing her five senses, Tang Yu heard Song Lengzhu calling her name.