Surviving the Game as a Zombie - Chapter 108

Clink, clatter… With a series of crisp sounds, the bullets failed to penetrate the shadow’s defense, falling to the ground, bouncing, and then settling.

The gel-like shadow retreated from her view, and in an instant, all five of her senses returned to Tang Yu.

Her arms were still gripping the toilet man, firmly, not loosening in the slightest.

Only four seconds had passed.

Four seconds was enough time to be killed, and also enough time to turn a crisis into safety.

A murderous aura began to appear in Tang Yu’s eyes. This sudden turn of events had greatly provoked her; if not for the shadow blocking the bullets, she would have been shot in the head just a moment ago.

By Song Lengzhu’s bullet, no less.

She stared intently at the toilet man’s eyeballs and spoke, word by word: “Who are you?”

Where are you hiding?

This toilet man was completely inhuman, most likely a puppet controlled by someone else. There was another person behind it, or rather, another being.

The toilet man did not react to Tang Yu’s question. Its sunken eyes, stretched wide, looked as if they might burst at any moment.

The mechanical voice didn’t reappear, as if the earlier warning had just been their imagination.

“Tang Yu…”

Song Lengzhu’s voice trembled slightly. She hadn’t yet recovered from the lingering fear of what had just happened. Leaning on the doorframe, she walked in, her eyes scanning Tang Yu from head to toe.

The little zombie was okay. Thank goodness. The heart that had leaped into Song Lengzhu’s throat finally settled, bringing an unfamiliar sting to her nose.

“Don’t come over yet,” Tang Yu said, her gaze fixed forward. Not caring if Song Lengzhu understood, she instantly carried out her revenge.

She leaned back, still maintaining the posture of struggling with the man, but a murderous aura swirled around her, and her black eyes burned with a strong will to fight.

Tang Yu summoned one of the shadows before her, and it gradually transformed into a thin film. It lost its humanoid shape, spreading out slowly like a flattened tablecloth, and then flew at the toilet man’s face with extreme speed. It writhed and expanded, enveloping the toilet man’s upper body in a matter of seconds.

Tang Yu released her grip on the toilet man, allowing the shadow to cover him completely, cutting off all of his contact with the outside world.

The shadow had this ability; she had experienced it herself.

Being enveloped by the shadow was like falling into a pool of wet cement; all five senses were sealed off, sight and hearing stripped away in an instant.

This method could be used to save people, and of course, to kill them.

Bullets could have their trajectory altered by an unknown force, but the shadows could not.

The shadows only obeyed Tang Yu; they couldn’t be controlled or taken away. Tang Yu understood this the moment the shadow saved her.

Tang Yu’s eyes were fixed dead ahead. With a thought, she silently commanded, and the thin film of shadow changed shape again. The flowing gel poured into the toilet man’s ears, nose, and mouth. Then, at the position of his eyeballs, sharp spikes suddenly shot inward.

With a soft squelch, the toilet man’s eyeballs were pierced straight through.

“I don’t care who you are.” Tang Yu walked toward the toilet man step by step, leaned down, and looked directly at where his eyes were. “Want me dead? It’s not that simple.”

The black shadow receded slightly, revealing one of the toilet man’s eyeballs. The eye, pierced by the spike, met Tang Yu’s gaze and slowly lost its luster.

The surroundings fell silent.

“Tang Yu…” After a long moment, Song Lengzhu finally couldn’t help but open her mouth, but she didn’t call out.

The little zombie before her, bent over and staring at the enemy, seemed like a different person—so calm and powerful she was almost a stranger. Song Lengzhu had never seen the little zombie erupt with such intense killing intent.

“Hm?”

Tang Yu sensed that Song Lengzhu seemed to have said something. She turned to look at her, then tilted her head. “What’s wrong?”

And yet, her face was harmless again, her lively eyes sparkling, as brilliant as jade.

“N-nothing.” Song Lengzhu suppressed the shock in her heart. She walked over to Tang Yu and asked, “Are you hurt?”

Tang Yu stood up straight and shook her head, then pointed toward the toilet man.

The shadow gradually receded from the toilet man’s body. The sound of static filled the air—two soft crackles that Tang Yu managed to catch.

Immediately after, the man’s body melted like ice cream. Not only that, but the bloodstains on the floor began to disappear, the zombies behind him instantly turned into smoke, and even the stench in the air vanished.

On the clean toilet lid, only the fallen Startling Dragon and the two pierced eyeballs remained.

The eyeballs wobbled twice before rolling onto the floor.

Tang Yu picked up Startling Dragon. There wasn’t a single trace of bl00d or dirt on it; it was as clean as if it had never been used.

Tang Yu raised her hand, brought Startling Dragon to her face, and sniffed it gently, her nose wrinkling slightly.

There was no smell.

This action, witnessed by Song Lengzhu, made her heart itch again. Tang Yu’s behavior was so unpredictable. How could she kill someone so decisively one moment, and then act so… harmlessly the next?

And she was completely unaware of it.

Song Lengzhu averted her gaze unnaturally and pressed her lips together.

Tang Yu didn’t notice Song Lengzhu’s expression at all. She put down Startling Dragon and turned to look at the bathroom mirror.

The bloodstains on the mirror had completely vanished, and the door that had been split open by Startling Dragon now looked tattered and worn, as if it had been kicked countless times.

An idea struck Tang Yu. She took out her pen and paper and quickly wrote two words to show Song Lengzhu.

“Illusion.”

Indeed, everything illogical here was an illusion.

Song Lengzhu stared at the words on the paper and mused aloud, “The zombies, the stench, and the other attacks were like a defense mechanism to prevent people from entering this room, most likely to hide something.”

Their gazes simultaneously fell upon the eyeballs on the floor.

Tang Yu crouched down and, on a whim, picked one of them up.

Surprisingly, the eyeball was hard and cold to the touch, like a piece of glass, not a soft, slick vitreous body.

Tang Yu turned the eyeball over. Its pupil was pierced through—a hole made by the shadow’s spike. On the cross-section of the hole, there were traces of broken machinery and wiring.

“An electronic device?” Song Lengzhu picked up the other eyeball and examined it in her hand. “This is the first time I’ve seen one.”

“Me too,” Tang Yu grunted. She closed her hand around the eyeball, then placed it in the tool pouch on her waist, apparently intending to carry it with her.

Song Lengzhu was taken aback. She held up her hand. “Then, I’ll hold on to this one for now?”

“Sure,” Tang Yu was quite generous, nodding in agreement.

Then Tang Yu stood up and cautiously lifted the toilet lid in front of her.

For some reason, the toilet was very ordinary, with nothing strange about it. It was even sparkling clean.

After the man disappeared, this place seemed to have become just a normal bathroom.

Tang Yu turned again to examine the mirror above the sink. It was still a one-way mirror; from the side, she could see the hard ceramic tiles behind it. Tang Yu ran her fingers over the mirror’s surface and found a mark made with a water-based pen in the bottom-left corner, just as she expected.

It was a circle.

Why had her past self been talking to a bathroom mirror? Did she encounter some kind of illusion when she entered this bathroom back then, too?

Was it the same situation as when she had just been talking to the eyeballs?

Tang Yu’s fingers stopped in the center of the glass. She raised Startling Dragon and aimed the hilt at the middle of the mirror.

Once, twice…

“What are you doing?” Song Lengzhu walked over and asked.

It was hard for Tang Yu to explain. Instead, she used all her strength and slammed the hilt into the center of the mirror.

“Clack.” Just a single crisp sound.

But it didn’t break. The mirror didn’t break.

Tang Yu excitedly took out her pen and paper and quickly wrote a few words: “This room operates outside the laws of physics.”

This wasn’t some ordinary bathroom. There was definitely something wrong with this place.

To test her words, Song Lengzhu hesitantly reached out and turned on the faucet.

A gushing stream of clear, transparent water poured out.

There was clean water in the faucet, a sight they hadn’t seen in a long time.

Tang Yu then tried flushing the toilet and turning on the shower; they all had water.

Even the lights could be turned on as usual.

This room was actually completely independent of the game’s setting.

“A BUG,” Tang Yu wrote on the paper. This was the “game BUG” her past self had been looking for.

But why this BUG existed and what its purpose was, she still had no clue.

Song Lengzhu suddenly remembered something. “That sticky note that looks like a map, take it out again.”

Tang Yu took out the sticky note and flipped to the third page, where the crooked lines connected together.

Song Lengzhu said, “Could this be a map of the game? And each region has a special room like this. We don’t know the purpose of these rooms yet. They could be safe rooms set up by the game, or something like a central server room for storing data.” Her finger tapped on the paper, where the black dot drawn with a water-based pen and the word “Library” were particularly conspicuous.

Tang Yu took out her little notebook and wrote, “Does the game map look like this?” She didn’t have a map function; only Jin Ye did, and it only showed places they had already been.

“Probably not,” Song Lengzhu shook her head. “This isn’t the game’s actual map, at least Xinzhou’s borders don’t look like this. This is probably a regional division from the game’s development process. For example, like having the snow mountain region as one block and the desert region as another.”

The borders of a certain state or county couldn’t serve as the standard for dividing a large map. Factors like scenery, terrain, and climate were more important considerations for setting up different weather and lighting systems.

Tang Yu glanced at the sticky note. Besides the marked library in Xinzhou, the other six territories on the paper were blank.

Perhaps her past self had only found this one special room.

And then she was forcibly removed from the game.

Why was her past self looking for these seven special rooms, and what would happen if she found them? The current Tang Yu had no idea.

Also, the voice that came from the toilet man’s mouth was clearly not human, and it was different from the crisp electronic notification sounds of this game system. Instead, it was similar to the warning prompt Tang Yu heard before she woke up.

Who was it? A game developer? Or the system itself?

Will it pull me out of the game again?

A sudden fear struck Tang Yu at this thought. Now that she had found this room again, would she repeat her past mistake?

She really didn’t want to have her memory wiped and start all over again.

Tang Yu stared at Song Lengzhu’s face, lost in a daze. What if I forget Jin Ye, Xiao Li, and Zhou Zhou? What if I forget Song Lengzhu?

“Zoning out again,” Song Lengzhu said, a hint of exasperation in her tone. Tang Yu had stared at her in a daze once before, back at the altar.

What do you mean, “again”? Tang Yu snapped back to reality. She rarely zoned out.

Tang Yu took out her pen and paper, chewed on the end of the pen for a long time, and then briefly wrote down her worries for Song Lengzhu.

Song Lengzhu’s gaze followed Tang Yu’s writing, her expression growing darker. She pondered for a moment before saying, “It probably won’t happen this time. After all, I came in with you. Even if they remove you, I’ll still be here as someone who knows. The game can’t possibly force a normal player out.”

“What if?” Tang Yu wrote. Song Lengzhu’s assurance had no basis.

“There is no ‘what if.’ They wouldn’t dare,” Song Lengzhu said seriously.

Tang Yu was completely baffled. Why wouldn’t they dare? How come they dared to do it to me, but not to Song Lengzhu?

“If that day really comes,” Song Lengzhu changed the subject, “I will find you.”

Tang Yu blinked. Those words sounded a bit like a lover’s promise.

Then again, Song Lengzhu had said something similar before, but back then it was a threat.

Whatever. Tang Yu pushed her worries to the back of her mind and decided to trust Song Lengzhu this one time.

The small bathroom didn’t have much space or many items. Tang Yu touched every corner and every object but found nothing else special.

Or perhaps, the entire room was special.

They had too little information on hand. It seemed this mystery wouldn’t be solved anytime soon.

Tang Yu simply stopped her search, turned on the faucet, and washed her hands meticulously, cleaning her nails and her bare arms with great care.

Since there was water, she might as well not let it go to waste.

Finally, she stepped aside for Song Lengzhu and made an inviting gesture.

Song Lengzhu raised an eyebrow. This little zombie adapted to her environment so quickly. It seemed she had accepted the abnormality of this place very fast and was already making use of it.

Song Lengzhu hesitantly extended her hands. The cool water flowed through her fingers, washing away the bloodstains on her palms.

It felt quite nice.

Taking advantage of the moment, Tang Yu shook the water from her hands, leaned against the wall to write a note, and handed it to Song Lengzhu.

Song Lengzhu’s pupils contracted sharply.

“Let’s just take a shower too! There’s a shower stall!”