Surviving the Game as a Zombie - Chapter 43

The village entrance, devoid of any light, was as dark as if covered by a cloth, making it impossible to see anything. Low growls and whimpers rose and fell in the darkness, occasionally accompanied by the cawing of black crows.

The air smelled of death.

The group, however, felt relieved. As long as it wasn’t players, it was fine.

They were all too familiar with this putrid stench—it was their stinky zombie kin.

Lu Lu was running at the back. As she passed the supply room, she grabbed a flashlight. Now, having caught up with the others, she clicked it on.

The pale beam of light swept across the village entrance a few times. The group saw about a dozen zombies gathered there, currently blocked by the wooden spikes.

These wooden spikes had been set up by Tang Yu and the others earlier, placed in a circle around the village’s perimeter precisely to defend against these mindless zombies that appeared out of nowhere.

The aunties were also woken up. They ran out with hoes and sickles, nervously shouting threats, “Back off!” trying to scare the zombies away.

Tang Yu glanced back, using the flashlight’s beam. Seventeen people, and not a single one was holding a gun, even though the guns were right there in the public storage area, next to those hoes and sickles.

This won’t do. I have to teach the aunties how to use guns as soon as possible.

Tang Yu looked away and exchanged a glance with Jin Ye. With a tacit understanding, they moved aside the defensive spikes, closed them again, and then charged into the zombie horde with their weapons.

Jin Ye was still using a short submachine gun. Its large magazine capacity and high rate of fire suited her well.

Tang Yu, on the other hand, swung her knife directly, cutting through the zombie horde with ease. Almost instinctively, the tip of her blade aimed straight for the zombies’ spines.

Xiao Li, being human, stood in a safe spot, occasionally firing a shot to finish one off.

For the leveled-up group, eliminating twelve ordinary zombies was a piece of cake. They had no weapons and only knew how to charge. Sometimes, they even ran right onto the edge of Tang Yu’s blade themselves.

Compared to the swarming zombies in the cities, these lone kin in the mountains seemed incredibly fragile. They were drawn by the scent of humans, with no strategy or plan, practically delivering themselves to their doorstep.

As Tang Yu killed them, a sense of sorrow washed over her. The weak, whether zombie or human, were always the ones to suffer.

Did those players preparing to hunt them feel the same way?

The zombies’ vulnerable position made Tang Yu’s hand slow a little. They were, in a way, her kin. But if she didn’t kill them, they would threaten the NPCs.

When the last zombie fell, Tang Yu sheathed her knife. Lu Lu’s flashlight shone on her. Seeing Tang Yu standing there dazed, she waved the beam back and forth. “Are you okay?”

Tang Yu pushed aside the spikes and returned to the village, flashing a bright smile. “I’m fine. We’ll clean up these zombies tomorrow. We need to bury them far away, or there’s a risk of viruses.”

The aunties came to their senses. Their hoes and sickles hadn’t even been used, and the zombies were already gone. This was something they couldn’t have imagined before. Back then, if they encountered zombies, one or two people in their group would have inevitably died.

Someone started clapping, and the applause instantly spread.

“So amazing!” someone exclaimed in admiration.

Back in Huang Village, the aunties had seen Tang Yu and Jin Ye fight players, but that was a human-versus-human conflict. As outsiders, they couldn’t tell who was good or bad, strong or weak.

It wasn’t until Tang Yu and Jin Ye faced the zombies they feared that they could make a concrete judgment: the village chief and deputy chief were truly capable.

In their hearts, their sense of security was instantly maxed out.

Tang Yu turned and glanced into the darkness. With more human scent in the village, these wandering zombies would probably come every night from now on. They needed to set up an electric fence.

“Xiao Li, help me pass this on: tomorrow morning, we’ll teach everyone how to use guns,” Tang Yu announced her plan before the crowd dispersed.

The next day, Tang Yu gathered everyone. Except for Huang Qianqian and another underage girl, fifteen villagers each held a gun—even Granny Mei was cradling one. They stood helplessly in a fallow field, looking at the targets made of bundled bamboo tubes in the distance. Their faces showed complex expressions, as if they were holding hot potatoes.

These people had never held a gun before.

The weapons in this world were scattered everywhere, claimed by more capable players. For NPCs, getting a gun was unthinkable.

But now, they were actually holding these things, and next, they were going to receive shooting training.

Among the group, Jin Ye and Xiao Li knew more about firearms, so they took on the role of instructors. Tang Yu was happy to have some free time and tagged along, planning to learn a thing or two herself.

The fifteen guns varied in length, mostly shotguns and submachine guns, with three revolvers as well. Jin Ye planned to have the villagers take turns learning. Even if they weren’t proficient shooters, they had to know how to use various types of firearms.

They started with a simple introduction to the structure of the guns, types of ammunition, proper grip, and aiming stance, and finally moved on to practical application.

These aunties were all common folk. They wouldn’t remember too much theory, so the best teaching method was to have them hold a gun and fire a shot.

The aunties were trembling. Someone fired a shot, and the bullet flew off to who-knows-where. Someone else couldn’t control their gun and was so startled by the recoil that they cried out in alarm.

There was also someone trying to stuff 7.62mm bullets into a 5.8mm magazine. For a moment, everyone was in a state of chaos.

Tang Yu laughed until she was out of breath. Excellent, just like the first time she handled a gun.

For the first lesson, each person was allocated eight bullets. By noon, everyone was more or less familiar with one type of firearm. The following week, they would learn about other firearms, as well as shooting and movement techniques for combat.

Further down the line, Tang Yu would teach them self-defense fighting techniques.

The aunties were very apprehensive at first, but later they discovered that these “instructors” were serious. If they did poorly, they would be corrected on the spot, so they too gave it their all.

By noon, Aunty Pang had already learned how to use a submachine gun. Although her aim was poor, it made her very proud. “We can protect ourselves now,” she said with a hearty laugh, standing taller than usual.

After half a day of training, the villagers returned to their normal work routines in the afternoon.

Each team continued to advance their tasks. The tool-making team showed the fastest results; by evening, two brand-new bamboo baskets were placed in the supply storage area.

Tang Yu called Jin Ye and Lu Lu to help move the zombies from outside the village and bury them. After the precedent with the crab, Tang Yu didn’t dare let the NPCs touch zombie corpses. If both parties had open wounds and accidentally came into contact, it would be a disaster.

NPCs would truly die if infected, and Tang Yu didn’t want to lose anyone in the village.

Burying corpses was no easy task. Tang Yu frowned, thinking, This won’t do. I need to assimilate more zombie players.

Tang Yu thought of Zhou Zhou. Since Zhou Zhou hadn’t actively asked to become a zombie, it meant she didn’t want to. Perhaps she still had dealings with people on the outside; she had no desire to become a zombie, and Tang Yu couldn’t force her.

That left only one option: leave the village to find people.

No matter how dangerous it was outside, they had to leave the village again, perhaps many times.

The list of missing items had many new additions from the villagers, such as urgently needed consumables like electric lights and chainsaws. Tang Yu planned to make another trip to the city next month.

This time, she would absolutely not cause any trouble and would focus solely on finding supplies.

However, what no one expected was that they didn’t have to go out looking for people; someone came to them.

Fifteen days later, everything in the village was on track. The firewood for building the first house was ready, and the foundation was half-dug. The fallow fields had been deeply tilled and plowed, and the cultivated seedlings had been transplanted.

Bamboo pipes for irrigation had already channeled stream water to the fields, ready for planting the rice seedlings as soon as they were nurtured.

At first, it was Granny Mei who noticed something unusual. The potato tubers she had just planted yesterday were gone when she checked the next day, leaving only empty pits. When Granny Mei returned to the village, she said, “Oh no, I hope there aren’t wild boars on this mountain. They’ve rooted up all my vegetables.”

When Tang Yu heard this: Wild boars? Where are the wild boars? I want meat!

Granny Mei led everyone to the potato patch. In a small plot the size of a blackboard, a third of it had been dug up into pits.

Xiao Li pointed at a neat pit and said, “Can a wild boar dig such a perfect hole?”

People shook their heads. It was too strange. The pits were uniform in shape, as if dug by hand.

“Could it be monkeys?”

But during the day, the farming team had been working in the fields the whole time and hadn’t seen any strange creatures. That meant it was possible this thing came at night.

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. The aunties decided to send someone to lie in wait at night.

This operation involved the entire village. Except for the two underage girls who stayed behind with Zhou Zhou, who was conducting experiments, everyone else took up their guns and hid below the potato patch.

After three training sessions, the aunties were already familiar with how to use the guns. Now, they lay prone in the weeds, cradling their weapons with perfect form.

In the pitch-dark, they were afraid of running into zombies, so they all gathered in one spot. If zombies appeared, they could support each other.

In the first half of the night, a wave of zombies did indeed visit, but there weren’t many, only three or four. The group worked together to eliminate them and then continued their stakeout in the field.

They waited until the second half of the night, until people were starting to get impatient, when a faint, bean-sized yellow light finally flickered out from the woods on the mountainside.

This development completely baffled Tang Yu.

What? The visitor wasn’t an animal, but a person.

Tang Yu let out a soft “shh,” signaling for everyone to stay still. As the yellow light descended along the winding mountain path and drew closer, Tang Yu could finally make out the figure. It was indeed a person.

A woman, at that.

The woman held a candle at waist level. The candlelight didn’t reach far, so her face remained hidden in the darkness. Everything from the neck up was black, which was an unsettling sight.

Tang Yu thought, No way. I haven’t heard anything about female ghosts in this game.

A lone, wandering ghost, no less.

The woman first glanced toward the village for a while. Seeing no movement, she seemed to relax, stuck the candle in the dirt to secure it, and then squatted down to continue digging pits.

Her back was to the group, completely exposed.

Tang Yu shot up and rushed forward.

Startling Dragon flashed in the candlelight, arcing through the darkness to wrap around the woman’s neck, its tip pressing against her chin.

Seemingly sensing a zombie behind her, the woman shuddered. She retracted her neck and, like a water snake, slithered out of Tang Yu’s encirclement.

She snatched the candle and ran toward the forest.

But to her surprise, the aunties had already raised their guns and surrounded her.

Lu Lu clicked on her flashlight, casting its ghastly white beam onto the woman’s face.

Xiao Li shouted angrily, “Who are you? Why are you stealing our vegetables!”