Surviving the Game as a Zombie - Chapter 12

For Tang Yu, knowing she was a criminal was slightly better than not knowing who she was at all. Her unknown origins had always left her with a sense of floating in a void.

This identity gave her an anchor; what it actually was didn’t matter as much.

Tang Yu pulled up another vine. Luckily, this sweet potato was even bigger than the one Jin Ye had found. She grinned from ear to ear. Seeing Jin Ye standing frozen to the side, she asked, “If I were a criminal, would you be afraid of me?”

“Not really,” Jin Ye said. “My next-door neighbor got locked up for a month just for eating too much. Interstellar law is a bit messed up.”

Tang Yu: “…Let’s pray I wasn’t locked up for eating too much.”

Jin Ye paused for a moment, then smiled silently.

Tang Yu’s crime must have been serious; otherwise, she wouldn’t have been sentenced to death.

But in the time they had spent together, Tang Yu had been loyal and respectful of her companions, with a lively and optimistic personality. She didn’t seem like a grim murderer. Although Jin Ye felt a little uneasy, the discomfort quickly faded.

The three of them rummaged through the fields, searching every inch of the nearby abandoned farmland.

Their luck was good. They found three or five sweet potatoes, a few small potatoes, and some ripe tomatoes.

Cradling their hard-won food, they walked into the village.

The trio first circled the village, found a relatively clean well, and then handily chopped down three sections of bamboo from in front of a house’s fence.

After confirming there were truly no people or zombies in the village, they found a relatively intact earthen house and prepared to start a fire to cook.

There was a ready-made earthen stove inside, but the opening for the pot was very large, unsuitable for Jin Ye’s small portable pot. So, they built a simple stove in the courtyard.

Tang Yu brought out broken tables, chairs, and benches from the house, then used Startling Dragon to chop them into wooden strips and tossed them into the stove. Poor Startling Dragon, a treasured blade, was being used to chop firewood.

The lighter Tang Yu had picked up earlier now came in handy. Jin Ye skillfully used flammable dry grass to start the fire, then set up the pot.

Meanwhile, Xiao Li had already prepared the potatoes and tomatoes, cutting them into chunks with the small knife from Jin Ye’s bag.

Since they had no meat, they couldn’t render any fat. Xiao Li added water to stew the potatoes and tomatoes, while the sweet potatoes were stuffed into their backpacks as reserve rations.

Tang Yu noticed that Xiao Li was very skilled at cooking. She pulled out some spice bottles scavenged from a store in Jin Ye’s bag and, going by feel, added a suitable amount of salt and pepper.

It was the kind of ease that only came from someone who cooked often. Tang Yu imagined that if she were the one adding the seasoning, she’d probably want to count out the grains before daring to put them in the dish.

The rising smoke from the cooking fire was scattered by the wind, but Tang Yu and Jin Ye still kept a sharp lookout in all directions. After all, starting a fire to cook in the wild was a dangerous affair, but they really didn’t want to shortchange themselves.

The resulting tomato and potato stew had a beautiful color. Although they were simple vegetables, the ripe tomatoes had cooked down into a rich broth that made one’s mouth water.

Tang Yu and Jin Ye were zombies and had a natural preference for red-colored food. They eagerly ladled the stew into the bamboo sections and, using wooden strips as chopsticks, began to savor it with relish.

“This is bliss.” Tang Yu squinted her eyes in satisfaction. “I never thought that as a zombie, I’d still get to eat a hot meal.”

Jin Ye, while eating, didn’t forget the cook. “Xiao Li’s cooking is amazing. Even ordinary wild vegetables can become a masterpiece in her hands.”

Xiao Li couldn’t understand their conversation, but she could tell from their expressions that the two zombies were enjoying the meal. She slowly served herself a portion and ate it deliberately, chewing carefully.

After a good meal, one starts craving an even better one. A thought struck Tang Yu. “Have the animals in this game mutated?”

Jin Ye replied, “Some have, but they’re easy to tell apart.”

Getting the answer she wanted, Tang Yu was excited. “I want to eat meat. Let’s get some meat next time.”

“That’s not a bad idea. Xiao Li is very good at preparing meat.”

The two hit it off immediately. Tang Yu looked at Xiao Li with eager eyes. From now on, she’d be counting on Xiao Li for her meals. She and Jin Ye would protect this precious little girl together.

After eating and drinking their fill, Tang Yu washed the bamboo tubes they had used for eating and placed them neatly in her backpack.

With that, the single hiking backpack was now bulging. The most urgent task was to find two more backpacks.

Backpacks were rarely used in the village. Tang Yu had seen plenty of canvas bags, but they weren’t very convenient to carry while fighting.

Coincidentally, they were heading to Y-City next. There would be more useful supplies in the city, which would be a perfect opportunity to restock.

After the meal, Tang Yu suddenly recalled that when they had rescued Xiao Li, Professor Zhou had been injecting the captives with something.

Tang Yu’s gaze shifted to Xiao Li’s wrist. Because she had been cooking, Xiao Li had rolled up her sleeves, revealing a dark red scar on her fair skin.

She pointed at Xiao Li’s scar, her face full of confusion.

Xiao Li understood, “Oh”-ed, and replied, “Before you arrived, that female researcher put something in my body. I don’t know what it is. It seemed like an electronic chip, but when I press on it now, there’s no hard object.”

Tang Yu looked at Jin Ye. “Is it some kind of tracker?”

“Can’t rule it out. Jian Wu said they were planning to use Xiao Li to lure the Zombie King. It could be a tracker, or it could be some kind of weapon.” Jin Ye’s brow furrowed into a knot.

“That’s not right either. If it were a tracker, Shen Xu would have caught us by now.” Tang Yu reached out and pressed on Xiao Li’s wrist. Indeed, she couldn’t feel any hard, metal-like object.

She was a little surprised. “Don’t tell me it fused into her body? Should we cut it open and see?”

Jin Ye hesitated. Cutting open the flesh would be very painful, and Xiao Li’s constitution might not be able to handle it.

But Xiao Li seemed to understand their concern. She took the small knife used for cutting vegetables and made a slice along the scar.

Fresh bl00d quickly welled up. Tang Yu and Jin Ye ignored the scent of bl00d that wafted into their noses and carefully inspected the wound. As expected, they saw no foreign object.

“It’s fused into my body.” Xiao Li discovered this herself. A grave expression appeared on everyone’s face. The origin of this thing was unknown, and having it fused inside her body could lead to who knows what kind of disaster.

“It’s fine. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” Xiao Li was surprisingly philosophical. “This girl won’t die.”

Tang Yu glanced at Jin Ye resentfully. “This little girl is quite brave. It seems she doesn’t really need your protection.”

Without lifting her eyes, Jin Ye said, “She does. She cries when she sees a bug.”

Tang Yu thought to herself: Fine, whatever you say.

They tidied up briefly. Jin Ye picked up the submachine gun and examined it. A low-tier weapon, 40 rounds, 10-second reload time.

It was better than nothing. She slung the weapon over her back and followed Tang Yu’s steps.

Tang Yu didn’t know where Y-City was, and the game had no map, but Jin Ye had survived in the game for a year and knew the general direction.

They followed winding mountain paths. Just like in human society, places frequently traversed by animals also formed easy-to-travel trails. The three of them followed these paths over nearly three more mountain peaks before they faintly saw the buildings of a city nestled in a low-lying area, surrounded by mountains.

Because they were on foot, the journey took them almost three days. During these three days, they caught a wild rabbit and found some edible wild vegetables, picking a large handful of things like capillary artemisia and abrus herb. Xiao Li said one could be used for porridge and the other for soup. By the time they realized it, their food supply had become quite rich.

With no backpacks to carry them, Tang Yu carried the ingredients in her hands.

Rather than heading to the city to find zombies, they looked more like they were going to the city to sell vegetables.

The three stood on high ground, determined the general location of the city center, had a simple meal, and only then started walking toward the city.

The city was different from the wild. There were more zombies and more human players. From the moment they stepped into the city, they constantly faced unknown threats.

The Zombie King was worth 500 kill points. Tang Yu guessed that Y-City had already attracted a large number of players. Shen Xu and Song Lengzhu would definitely come here too. They planned to act cautiously, observe from the shadows, and if they were lucky, they could play the oriole stalking the mantis that stalks the cicada.

After entering the outskirts of the city, Tang Yu randomly found a house to search for the supplies she wanted.

Things like backpacks were easy to find, as most households would have them. They picked up two large-capacity backpacks, one for each of them, and divided the supplies. Xiao Li also went to the kitchen and grabbed a kitchen knife for self-defense.

In the city, being too conspicuous was not a good thing, so they chose black backpacks. Jin Ye took a change of clothes—a windbreaker jacket—from their supplies and handed it to Tang Yu. Back at the camp, her clothes had been stripped off by Song Lengzhu.

Now, all three of them were wearing black windbreaker jackets, looking very low-key. Tang Yu even found a few caps.

With their disguises, they looked like ordinary survivalist players. Their faces were hidden under baseball caps, concealing most of their zombie features. Plus, with a genuine human among them, almost no one would recognize them as zombies at first glance.

Except for Song Lengzhu.

Tang Yu thought of this as well. They had hidden so well at the camp, yet Song Lengzhu had still discovered them. Tang Yu naturally suspected the factor of scent. She had suffered because of her scent before; zombie hordes also relied on it to identify their own kind.

But right now, there was no better way to conceal it. Forget about luxuries like perfume; they couldn’t even find a single bottle of mosquito repellent.

It would all come down to who could run faster.

Traveling through the city, taking the wide-open main roads was definitely not an option. So, Tang Yu chose a small path, following the alleyways of a residential complex toward the city center.

Despite this, they still encountered a large number of zombies. The zombies didn’t show obvious aggression toward Tang Yu and Jin Ye, but Xiao Li’s human scent was too strong, and several groups of zombies wandering the streets swarmed over to surround them.

They had to hide from humans and hide from zombies. Tang Yu felt like she was caught between a rock and a hard place, in a difficult position.

They had no choice but to act, clearing out the zombies that had surrounded them.

This was a thankless task. Accumulating points was of utmost importance in the game, yet they gained almost no benefit from killing these zombies, and it was very strenuous.

After killing a few zombies, an idea struck Tang Yu. She said to Jin Ye, “Forget the zombies on the roadside, but for the ones that try to attack us, you and I will be responsible for holding them back, and Xiao Li just needs to land the final blow. The points will go to her, so it won’t be a waste.”

Jin Ye was a little surprised. This was a clear act of yielding benefits. She had rarely met someone so generous in the game.

“Are you sure? You get no benefit from it.”

“I’m sure. We have to kill them anyway. It’s better to give the points to an ally than to let them go to waste,” Tang Yu said with a nonchalant expression.

In truth, she wasn’t some bleeding-heart do-gooder. On the contrary, she was very shrewd and understood that only sincerity could win people’s hearts in a team. Besides, the help she would need from Jin Ye and Xiao Li in the future was far more valuable than a few dozen points.

Jin Ye also thought of this in an instant. She couldn’t help but smile. What a clever person. She liked dealing with clever people.

The two of them used gestures to convey the meaning to Xiao Li. Xiao Li didn’t stand on ceremony, grabbing her kitchen knife and stabbing with deadly accuracy.

The trio intermittently dealt with about ten zombies and made their way out of the residential complex on the outskirts.

Further ahead was a small, single-story supermarket.

From a distance, Tang Yu saw a pile of zombies blockading the supermarket entrance, about fifty of them in total. Faint gunshots and someone shouting could be heard from within the zombie horde.

They had run into other players.