Surviving the Game as a Zombie - Chapter 27

She’s lying! Tang Yu materialized and complained to her companions, “She was applying medicine to people in the square during the day. Isn’t that saving people?”

The three of them turned their gazes to the medicine cabinet in the research lab.

Inside, several rows of pharmaceuticals were arranged neatly.

Zhou Zhou followed their gaze and gave a couple of dry laughs.

“I’m a researcher. While I am indeed proficient in medicine, I’m sorry, but I really don’t save people.”

At that moment, a sudden cry of alarm came from the two teams fighting fiercely outside the window. Someone was shouting “Teacher Gu,” followed by a furious roar.

The people inside the room looked away from the window; the battle outside had escalated once again.

Immediately after, the sound of four or five sets of footsteps came running toward the research lab. Someone was shouting, “Professor Zhou! Professor Zhou, please save Teacher Gu, he’s been shot!”

The footsteps grew closer. Tang Yu and the other two quickly ducked behind the medicine cabinet, weapons already in hand.

The research lab wasn’t large, and they couldn’t truly hide. Even if Tang Yu could turn invisible, Jin Ye and Xiao Li would definitely be exposed.

But the people who rushed in didn’t pay close attention to the three figures by the medicine cabinet. A young man, supporting Teacher Gu, ran up to Zhou Zhou. His hands were covered in bl00d as he pressed down firmly on Teacher Gu’s neck. After bringing Teacher Gu into the lab, the others immediately turned and ran back to the battlefield outside.

By this point, Teacher Gu was on his last breath.

“Professor Zhou, save him! He was shot in the neck by Eighth Master!” The remaining young man’s face was fraught with anxiety, his voice trembling.

Tang Yu crossed her arms, staring at Zhou Zhou. She wanted to see whether Zhou Zhou would save this man or not.

Under everyone’s watchful eyes, Zhou Zhou made a very strange gesture. She raised her hand, her eyes darting around a few times, but said nothing.

Tang Yu realized Zhou Zhou was looking at the game panel.

At a time like this!

After a few seconds, Zhou Zhou lowered her arm, smiling harmlessly. “Not saving him.”

Not just the young man, but Tang Yu and her companions also drew in a sharp breath. Hiss… she really wasn’t going to save him.

The young man seemed to fly into a rage. Supporting Teacher Gu with one hand, he drew his gun with the other and pressed it to Zhou Zhou’s head. “Save him!”

“No.” Zhou Zhou smiled and pushed the gun barrel away. “You know the rules. If you force me, I’ll use poison.”

The young man paused for a moment, his imposing manner weakening. “Professor Zhou, please have mercy and save him. For you, it’s just a simple task.”

Zhou Zhou’s smile remained amiable. “Nope. It’s not a simple task for me. He was hit in a major artery. Saving him would consume a great deal of my energy.”

Tang Yu couldn’t help but feel sorry for Teacher Gu. What a cold-blooded statement. It was as if she were saying, “You’re only losing a life, but I’m losing my energy!”

As they spoke, Teacher Gu’s neck stiffened, and he breathed his last.

He died so quickly, probably from being angered to death by Zhou Zhou, Tang Yu thought.

Seeing this, the young man’s anger surged, and he raised his gun to shoot, thinking only of killing Zhou Zhou, as he was indebted to Teacher Gu.

Zhou Zhou ducked to the side and said angrily, “This is so unreasonable. I’m not the one who killed him, so why are you shooting at me?”

The young man had lost all reason. He fired several shots, chasing after Zhou Zhou.

Tang Yu and her companions stood to the side, once again becoming spectators to the drama.

Tang Yu noticed that Zhou Zhou’s movements were extremely agile as she fled, managing to dodge the young man’s bullets several times. This was a level of skill beyond that of an ordinary person.

But she was only focused on escaping, showing no intention of fighting back.

Tang Yu was puzzled. What kind of principles did Zhou Zhou operate by? She wouldn’t save someone even when her own life was threatened. Such a person was too strange.

After chasing her around the lab three times, the young man still couldn’t catch Zhou Zhou. Zhou Zhou pointed out the window. “Instead of shooting at me in here, you should go kill your real enemy.”

The young man turned and left resentfully. As he passed the medicine cabinet, his now-calmer mind finally noticed the three other people in the corner, two of whom were zombies with black lines on their necks.

He swiftly turned his gun on Tang Yu and Jin Ye.

The people in this camp had a conditioned reflex to fight zombies.

Great. So much for being spectators; the drama had now come to them. Tang Yu raised her hand and, with a single slash, sliced off the barrel of the young man’s gun.

Her physical strength had been enhanced before, and she had been eating and drinking well for a while, so dealing with a rookie like this young man was more than easy.

With the help of Jin Ye and Xiao Li, they took care of the young man in just a few exchanges.

By now, the sounds from the square outside were gradually fading. The three of them peeked out. The people in the square were either dead or had fled, and now there was no trace of them, only zombies that had broken through the camp’s defenses, now roaming around in search of food.

A camp of considerable size was destroyed just like that by internal conflict.

Tang Yu closed the lab door and locked it. It would be a hassle if these zombies rushed in.

Their business with Zhou Zhou wasn’t over yet!

Xiao Li asked the question on everyone’s mind. “Are you restricted by some ability? Why are you so determined not to save people? It’s clear you know medicine.”

Zhou Zhou stood behind the operating table, keeping her distance from them. She smiled with a hint of helplessness. “Why do you keep asking? My reasons are quite absurd. Do you really want to hear them?”

The three of them nodded in unison.

Zhou Zhou explained, “I do specialize in medicine, and I also do research, but it’s purely out of interest, not because I want to be a benevolent doctor who saves the world. So, I never save people; I only do missions. If something involves mission points, I’ll do it, whether it’s killing or saving someone.”

“Not even if you’re threatened?”

Zhou Zhou glanced at Teacher Gu’s body on the floor. “When I first entered the game, I was indeed threatened often because I was too weak. But later, aside from Knowledge, I’ve put all my points into Agility. That man just now couldn’t have killed me. Speaking of which, why is it that no one criticizes others for threatening me to do things I don’t want to, but everyone reacts so strongly when I refuse to save someone?”

Zhou Zhou was still smiling kindly, but Tang Yu now understood. She wasn’t as kind as she appeared. Zhou Zhou didn’t care about the life or death of players; she had no compassion for life and operated by her own set of principles.

Moreover, perhaps because she had been threatened so much in the early days, Zhou Zhou spoke of it with a hint of disgust. Maybe a rebellious mentality had set in, making her even more reluctant to save people.

As for what these Agility points were, Tang Yu still wasn’t sure. She looked at Jin Ye, hoping for an explanation.

Jin Ye was slightly shocked. She explained seriously, “After accumulating 3200 points, you unlock a basic skill called ‘Point Allocation’ and a radar chart. You can choose to distribute your excess points among various stats. There are usually five: Stamina, Health, Attack, Agility, and Knowledge. Completing missions also increases these stats.”

Tang Yu recalled seeing a notification about her agility increasing before.

But what kind of person would think of putting all their points into escaping and knowledge? Besides, escaping required stamina too!

Then, Jin Ye added, “She has so many points, she must have been playing the game for a long time. And she’s strong, stronger than we can imagine, though this strength isn’t in terms of combat power or physical stamina.”

Tang Yu’s expression turned serious. Since losing her memories, this was the first time she had encountered someone with such a personality.

So, was Zhou Zhou treating people in the square also for mission points? Tang Yu relayed this to Xiao Li, asking her to voice the question.

Hearing this, Zhou Zhou sighed. “Oh, I didn’t want to say it, but you’re forcing me to.” She pointed at Xiao Li. “Let’s put it this way: applying medicine to patients in the square today was to test a new drug. I get points when the new drug is released. That includes implanting that special agent in this girl to attract the Zombie King—that was also for mission points. Dissecting and researching zombies on a daily basis is the same.”

“You probably don’t want to recruit someone like me, right? Even if you did, I might not save you,” Zhou Zhou said, her tone rising at the end, which made her sound rather aloof.

How absurd.

“Some missions are only triggered after they’re completed. Maybe you’d get points for saving someone,” Xiao Li said.

“I never do missions like that,” Zhou Zhou replied, her smile full of goodwill.

After hearing Zhou Zhou’s words, Xiao Li became a little angry. She had originally thought Zhou Zhou implanted the bait chip in her because she was being oppressed by Shen Xu. It turned out this person was just a shameless profiteer who had probably stayed in Shen Xu’s camp willingly.

Although Zhou Zhou wasn’t the executioner who directly killed the captives, she showed no remorse. Xiao Li’s impression of her hit rock bottom.

“Have you never considered that we are all living people?”

Zhou Zhou seemed stunned and a little confused. “This is a game. Everyone is just a string of code, a virtual projection. Dying in the game doesn’t mean you actually go to heaven, and being eliminated from the game is just an instantaneous event. Besides, this is the apocalypse. Clinging to morality in the apocalypse will only get you killed.”

Tang Yu fell silent. Zhou Zhou was right. In the eyes of most players, this was just a game.

Except for her and Xiao Li, whose identities were special, other players more or less held this view, including herself. That was why she felt little psychological burden when assimilating players; she was just erasing a piece of data.

Xiao Li also fell silent. It seemed they were all cut from the same cloth.

However, someone like Zhou Zhou, who was so single-mindedly focused on missions without a shred of compassion, was exceptionally rare.

“If it were a player who would die in real life if they died in the game, would you still not save them without points?” Xiao Li asked.

“I wouldn’t. At most, I’d refrain from killing a good person.”

What a self-serving, unscrupulous, cold-blooded woman!

Tang Yu shut her mouth, deciding not to reveal her and Xiao Li’s identities.

Zhou Zhou was right. Recruiting someone like her seemed useless. If one day she was on the verge of death and begged for treatment, this woman would probably just look at her game panel by the bedside and say nonchalantly, “Oh, no mission triggered. Not saving you,” while smiling from the sidelines.

What damn use was she!

It seemed this negotiation was a failure. But because of their recent conversation, Tang Yu didn’t feel the urge to kill her. Whether she could even kill Zhou Zhou was one thing, but to kill someone who bore her no ill will simply because they refused to join her camp would make her no different from Shen Xu or Brother Hu.

Besides, she probably couldn’t kill her anyway.

“Can we take some medicine then? We can trade guns or food for it,” Xiao Li asked, prompted by a signal from Tang Yu.

“Regular medicine is fine, but nothing rare.” Zhou Zhou was surprisingly generous. She took Tang Yu’s backpack, picked out some painkillers, hemostatic agents, and anesthetics from the cabinet, threw in some tools like tweezers and small knives, and casually handed the backpack back to Tang Yu.

“These things are of little use to me. It’s no problem giving them to you.”

Tang Yu took the backpack and said no more. A person like Zhou Zhou was not on the same path as them in terms of temperament. This woman had clear and firm goals and would not be bound by the people around her or by so-called emotional ties.

That being said, it was no wonder she could become someone like a researcher.

Before leaving, Xiao Li couldn’t help but ask one more question, “Now that North Camp is gone, where do you plan to go?”

Zhou Zhou thought for a moment. “You know Miss Song, right? I remember she was there the day you all caused a scene at the camp. I have to go to A-City to find her. I left something with her.”

Tang Yu’s hand, holding the backpack, paused for a moment.