Surviving the Game as a Zombie - Chapter 30

The group parted ways.

“I’ll come back here after I get the pharmaceutical ingredients. See you again if fate allows.” Zhou Zhou stroked the black cat peeking out of her backpack, then turned and walked toward the city hospital. The others stepped into the urban village.

Huang Qianqian told them that she and her mother usually only moved about within the urban village. The original residents had fled elsewhere, but after a group of outsiders came and cleared out the zombies, some of the old neighbors gradually returned. Compared to the city proper, it was much safer here.

Tang Yu saw that the entrance and exit of the village’s main road were locked by an added iron gate. Through the gaps between the bars, she could see the scene inside the urban village.

These iron gates, about four or five meters high, were likely meant to block zombies, their tips adorned with iron spikes or glass shards. But right now, there were no zombies wandering the streets, perhaps cleared out by the players who had recently gathered here.

Without damaging the lock, Jin Ye opened the gate. The group walked into the village, and Tang Yu casually closed the gate behind them.

By now, the sky was beginning to lighten, the light chasing away the darkness of night but unable to dispel the thick, putrid stench. On the narrow, dilapidated streets, enormous rats scurried about, completely ignoring the few people passing by.

Tang Yu held her knife horizontally across her chest, surveying her surroundings as she walked. The distance between the “handshake buildings” was incredibly narrow. Only one main road cut the entire urban village into a tic-tac-toe pattern; otherwise, it was all winding, interconnected narrow paths. Scraps of paper advertising rooms for rent flew about on the ground.

The main road was only wide enough for two cars to drive side-by-side. Many abandoned food stalls lined the street, their surfaces smeared a nauseating dark green by the mold from rotten fruits, vegetables, and spicy hot pot ingredients.

As far as the eye could see, not a single window in the surrounding buildings was lit. It made sense. Turning on a light was undoubtedly an announcement to others that there were people or supplies here. For humans, zombies weren’t the only thing to guard against in the apocalypse.

Huang Qianqian had said there were still some original residents here, but when Xiao Li asked where they were, she couldn’t say. She only said she had secretly seen people coming to find her mother to exchange for daily necessities. She herself hadn’t left the small convenience store in a very long time.

Her mother probably didn’t want her daughter to be exposed to outsiders. After all, in the barren apocalypse, humans were also a type of resource.

Tang Yu’s sharp eyes spotted a window on the second floor of a rental building to the left, cracked open just a sliver. As her gaze fell upon it, the window was abruptly shut.

There were people here.

Tang Yu calmly retracted her gaze. As she looked elsewhere, she couldn’t shake the feeling that behind every window, there was a pair, or several pairs, of prying eyes.

She made a swift decision, leading the group off the main road and into a narrow alley. After winding through a few turns, they finally found the stairwell of that building.

The iron door of the rental building was shut tight, with a dozen or so rotting corpses piled up beside it.

Jin Ye picked the lock in a hushed voice, and the group crept up to the second floor, arriving outside the room with the window they had just seen.

This was a converted building. A not-so-spacious floor had been partitioned into six single rooms. An old advertisement for “800 a month” was still pasted on the wall, intended for migrant workers who came to the city. But now, the people living here were likely no longer those tenants.

With a click, Jin Ye opened the lock. As Tang Yu peeked her head inside, the person within was still watching by the window. They only spun around abruptly upon hearing the sound.

The sudden appearance of four females at her door—two of whom were zombies and one a child—was an indescribably bizarre sight. The woman in her sixties inside the room was so frightened she fell to the floor, trembling uncontrollably, unable to even scream.

Xiao Li rushed into the room, intending to help her up, but it had the opposite effect. The old woman was scared out of her wits and scrambled backward.

Jin Ye pulled Xiao Li back. Xiao Li quickly took two steps back and said, “We’re not bad people. We don’t mean you any harm.”

Tang Yu also sheathed her knife. Judging by her actions and appearance, the other party was likely just an NPC, not the player she had assumed.

Just then, Huang Qianqian peeked her head out from behind the door and timidly called out, “Granny Mei.”

Only then did the old woman dare to glance over, her face filled with astonishment. “Ah, Qianqian? You’re still alive?”

Tang Yu led Huang Qianqian inside. Since these two villagers knew each other, things would be easier. She closed the door behind her and surveyed the surroundings.

The room seemed to have been ransacked. Besides a wooden plank bed, there was basically no furniture. Outside the room was a small kitchen and a small balcony. To the left of the kitchen was the toilet. All three functional spaces were so small they could barely fit one person.

Outside the balcony was the window of the adjacent building, extremely close—close enough to reach out and shake hands. No wonder the buildings in the urban village were called “handshake buildings.”

Additionally, there was a small window in the room facing the main road, the very one Tang Yu had seen from outside.

While she was observing, Huang Qianqian had already explained the situation to Granny Mei. It took some more time to reassure her. After the old woman was no longer afraid, they helped her onto the wooden bed. Xiao Li, being a human who could speak, played a significant role.

Huang Qianqian asked Granny Mei if she had seen her mother. Granny Mei’s eyes darted around for a moment, and she didn’t answer.

“It’s okay. The child has to know eventually,” Xiao Li said, already assuming the worst.

“She was rescued by a team of outsiders… no, that’s not right. It was more like… she was captured.” Granny Mei stammered, then grabbed Huang Qianqian’s hand and said apologetically, “Qianqian, don’t blame Granny. I… I couldn’t save her. She clearly saw me, she was asking me for help…” As she spoke, she seemed to recall the scene from that day and began to tremble uncontrollably.

Hearing this, Qianqian was terrified, her little face flushing red.

Tang Yu frowned. It seemed Qianqian’s mother was in grave danger. As for the “outsiders” Granny Mei mentioned, Tang Yu guessed they were players like them.

“How many people captured her? When? Which way did they go? Did you see?” Xiao Li asked, trying to gather information while soothing the old woman’s emotions.

“Two days ago. There were… there were four people. The leader was a woman. They went in that direction.” Granny Mei walked to the window and pointed. “Down this road. I don’t know if they were going to the old well in the center of the village.”

The group exchanged glances, secretly alarmed.

Four people… Tang Yu instantly thought of Song Lengzhu. It couldn’t be such a coincidence, could it? Why would she capture Qianqian’s mother? For a quest?

Besides that, Jin Ye noted that Granny Mei had mentioned the old well. This corresponded to a piece of information on the game forums—”A special quest is triggered at the old well in the urban village.”

Tang Yu pondered for a moment and decided to lead the group over to check it out first.

As if remembering something, Xiao Li asked again, “Do you live here alone?” Tang Yu and Jin Ye both understood the implication of her words. Though it was cruel to say, it was very difficult for the elderly to survive a year in the apocalypse.

At the mention of this, Granny Mei’s eyes dimmed, and a film of moisture quickly covered them. “I used to have a son and a daughter, but they both fell ill last month and passed away.”

A jolt went through them all. Xiao Li quickly asked, “What illness? Were they infected with the zombie virus?”

“No, no, no.” Granny Mei waved her hands repeatedly. “They didn’t turn into zombies. I don’t know what illness it was. They just suddenly developed a fever, a high fever that wouldn’t go down, and then their whole bodies swelled up. In less than a day, they had respiratory failure…” As Granny Mei spoke, the sad memories brought tears to her eyes again. She didn’t have the means to bury her children, so she could only lock their bodies in another room and let them rot. But doing so was better than throwing them onto the street to be eaten by zombies.

Xiao Li stopped asking questions. From the moment they entered, they had been frightening the old woman, and they felt quite bad about it.

Jin Ye took some potatoes and sweet potatoes from her backpack and placed them in Granny Mei’s kitchen. Before this, she would never have given up her own rations for an NPC, but Tang Yu’s actions yesterday had reminded her that these people were people too.

Consider it payment for the information.

Granny Mei’s tears, which she had been holding back, now flowed freely. This wasn’t the first time she had encountered outsiders. The previous ones hadn’t killed her, but they had plundered all her belongings. Now, Jin Ye had actually given her something.

“You’re good people… good people,” Granny Mei repeated, wiping her tears nonstop.

Tang Yu turned and walked out. They weren’t good people. They didn’t hesitate when it was time to kill.

Before closing the door, Xiao Li reminded Granny Mei, “Don’t stand by the window and watch anymore. If we can spot you, others can too.”

Granny Mei nodded and murmured, “I’m just too lonely. I wanted to see if any old neighbors were around…”

The three of them said nothing more, leading Huang Qianqian out and closing the door tightly.

“When this is over, I’m taking her back to our village.” Tang Yu had changed her camp’s recruitment strategy. Besides players who had turned into zombies, she could also take in these helpless NPCs with nowhere to go.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. She’s a human. Living among a pile of zombies isn’t necessarily safe,” Jin Ye reminded her.

“Xiao Li is human too,” Tang Yu said with a grin. “From now on, I’ll only recruit zombies who don’t eat people and have high self-control. Anyone with less self-control than Lu Lu is not welcome.”

“Lu Lu would be very upset if she knew she’d become the minimum standard,” Jin Ye teased, dispelling the heavy atmosphere.

A Close and Loving Family currently only had three zombies. Compared to Tang Yu and Jin Ye, Lu Lu’s self-control was indeed a bit lower. After all, she had even told Tang Yu that she wanted to eat Xiao Li.

With a change of mood, the four of them went downstairs. As they passed the pile of corpses by the door again, they noticed that it wasn’t just zombie corpses piled there, but also human corpses with swollen bodies.

Putting the information together, they gradually pieced together the story of this quest: a strange disease had appeared in Huang Village, and the survivors who had moved back were dying one after another. The quest was likely for players to find the cause of the disease and the cure.

Tang Yu thought to herself that almost everyone living here was an original resident, and players usually didn’t treat original residents well. The ones who could gain the villagers’ favor to trigger the quest and get information were probably only the small fraction of players who still had a conscience.

Tang Yu raised her hand to look at the game panel and saw that her villager favorability value had somehow accumulated to 3. This change made her dismiss her previous guess.

No, it’s probably not just players with a conscience, but also those who feign kindness to gain favorability points. They might constantly approach the villagers to farm favorability, but under the surface, they remain ruthless, self-serving killers.

Like Song Lengzhu!

Tang Yu gritted her teeth. Since Granny Mei used the word “captured,” it meant she must have seen Qianqian’s mother resisting. Qianqian’s mother did not go with Song Lengzhu willingly.

Tang Yu spat mentally. That she-devil was too evil!

The group followed the winding alleys toward the old well. With the precedent of Granny Mei, they didn’t plan to show themselves on the main road again. There was no telling how many players were watching the road. They decided to employ the old tradition of A Close and Loving Family: lie low.

The putrid smell in the urban village grew stronger. Xiao Li tore four strips from a curtain she found in some corner. They each took one and tied it over their noses to block the smell. It was better than nothing.

The alleys were a labyrinth. After dozens of turns, they were completely disoriented. Fortunately, Huang Qianqian was a local. In the peaceful days before the zombie outbreak, she often played hide-and-seek with her friends in the alleys, so she knew the way.

A dozen or so minutes later, they finally reached the very center of the tic-tac-toe layout. Tang Yu peeked out from the gap between two buildings and saw a square-shaped open space in the distance. In the center of the space grew a large banyan tree. The tree’s aerial roots had reached the ground and formed new root systems; it looked like an ancient tree.

Beneath the banyan tree was an old well, surrounded by a railing, as if it had once been protected as a cultural relic. But now, the railing was severely damaged, and two male corpses lay sprawled on the bluestone slabs around the well.

Judging by their clothing, they were players. Their windbreakers were high-quality, and the bags on their backs had been ripped open, their contents looted. There were no weapons in their hands. It was likely that two teams of players had met and clashed here, and the victorious side had taken their supplies.

The group scanned the area but found no sign of Qianqian’s mother or Song Lengzhu. Other than the two corpses, the square open space was empty.

But the same couldn’t be said for the surrounding buildings.

Tang Yu retracted her gaze and looked up at the surrounding buildings. They were all residential buildings with a wide field of view. Through the windows, one could see every move in the open space. If players wanted to set up an ambush, they would definitely choose to hide here.

Tang Yu took a step back, hiding her figure in the shadows. After a quick discussion in their group chat, they decided to also find a room to lie low in and wait for Song Lengzhu and Qianqian’s mother to appear.

Tang Yu chose a building directly facing the old well. The building’s iron door had been violently broken, a clear sign that other players were already hiding here. But this building had the best view, unobstructed by the large banyan tree, allowing them to get firsthand information immediately.

If their luck was really that bad and they ran into other players, they would just have to fight.

As she stepped onto the first stair, Tang Yu had a flash of inspiration. She announced in the group chat, “Let’s go check the rooftop. The chance of running into people is smaller.”

These self-built houses were only five stories high. They tiptoed upstairs, careful not to make any noise in the stairwell.

The black cat had jumped out of the backpack at some point and was now running ahead. Its padded paws made no sound at all on the tiled floor.

Tang Yu couldn’t help but sigh. It was great to be a cat.

As they reached the third floor, a door suddenly creaked open.