Surviving the Game as a Zombie - Chapter 50

Not good. Lan Lin’s internal alarm bells went off. She predicted that all her subsequent attacks would be dodged by Tang Yu. So, she released Tang Yu’s arm, changed her strategy, and swam towards the approaching boats.

“There’s a zombie in the water!” Lan Lin shouted as she swam. “It’s that mutated zombie, kill her, quickly!”

Her shouts caught the attention of the others. In the time it took her to speak, five boats had already surrounded them, and someone reached out to pull Lan Lin aboard.

The moment Lan Lin swam away, Tang Yu had already silently slipped into the water. She ignored the returning reinforcements for now and instead went back to her companions, blocking the bald man’s path of escape.

The bald man was undoubtedly Lan Lin’s capable assistant, with decent skills. Although he was large, he was also exceptionally agile in the water.

With a thought, the scene in Tang Yu’s mind instantly separated from what her eyes were seeing. In her consciousness, the events of the next minute played out rapidly like a revolving lantern. She saw the bald man break free from Jin Ye’s control and slash diagonally towards her with a backhand strike.

This preview lasted only a moment in her consciousness. When Tang Yu came to her senses, the bald man before her was still entangled with Jin Ye. But soon, Jin Ye was pushed away by the bald man’s palm, exactly as in the previewed scene. The bald man then set his sights on Tang Yu.

Tang Yu couldn’t help but curl the corner of her lips. Her bl00d boiled with excitement and joy. This ability was too useful. She could clearly know what would happen next. Although separating her vision from her consciousness caused a moment of dizziness, it was negligible.

Just as she had foreseen, the bald man suddenly pulled a small dagger from his waist and lunged at Tang Yu. Tang Yu deftly flipped over in the water, simultaneously twisting her hips for power and kicking the bald man in the abdomen, just like the kick Lan Lin had given her.

The man, who hadn’t taken a breath for a long time, let out a muffled cough from the kick, his face flushing red. Tang Yu then kicked off the bald man’s shoulder, pushing him deeper into the water.

At that moment, Jin Ye, who had caught up, swiftly swung her dagger. While the bald man was unable to fight back, she easily slashed his neck. Tang Yu raised a hand and grabbed the bald man’s arm with such force that her nails dug into his flesh.

The assassination and assimilation happened simultaneously. The moment the bald man turned into a zombie, Jin Ye plunged the knife deeper, driving it directly into his spine.

Dark red bl00d quickly spread, mixing with the turquoise river water, creating an exceptionally foul stench.

Tang Yu let go of the bald man and then, grabbing her zombie companions, hid under the overturned rubber dinghy.

The completely overturned dinghy formed an air pocket with the water’s surface. The four of them stuck their heads out of the water, gasping for air, relieving their urgent need.

Tang Yu called out a warning to Zhou Zhou, who was clinging to the other side of the dinghy, “Don’t touch the river water. It’s been contaminated by zombie bl00d.” Her clawing of the bald man hadn’t been without reason. Since the other reinforcements had surrounded them, she had to stop them from entering the water to fight.

Hearing this, Zhou Zhou quickly pulled back the lower half of her body, which was still in the water.

Li Chengjian took a few breaths, then glanced down at the backpacks and raft that had sunk to the bottom. He took a deep dive, retrieved the three backpacks in one go, and handed them to Jin Ye and Fu Mengqing. They each put one on.

“What’s the situation on the surface? We can’t see from under the boat,” Tang Yu asked.

Zhou Zhou said in a distressed voice, “Five boats have returned, about twenty-something people. They’re staring at me menacingly. Huh, Miss Song has also returned.”

“Hiss… Can you dodge if they open fire?”

“The space is too small to dodge, and I can’t touch the water now.”

Tang Yu pondered for a moment and said, “Pretend to be a hostage. Don’t say you’re with us. Blend into their group.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

The five small boats drew closer and closer, and Tang Yu could already hear the voices of the people on the surface. A player had already plunged into the water with a splash, but soon, the people on the boats noticed something was wrong.

The person who went in quickly resurfaced. By the time he emerged, he had already been assimilated into a zombie. The bloody water had likely infected him through his eye sockets and nasal passages. His expression had become ferocious, and seeing people on the boat, he recklessly tried to climb aboard.

“Zombie! It’s a zombie!” someone shouted. The man’s companion swung a long blade and, without hesitation, slit the throat of his now-zombified teammate.

The bl00d in the river grew thicker.

Now, no one dared to enter the water anymore. The zombie bl00d spread further and further, completely contaminating this section of the river. The already murky water was now even harder to see through.

They had no choice but to put away their swords and blades, take out their guns, and aim them at the water’s surface and at Zhou Zhou.

Zhou Zhou, on the dinghy, immediately raised her hands in a gesture of surrender. “Don’t shoot! I’m not with those zombies.”

“You’re lying!” Lan Lin, who had just been rescued, cursed loudly, her usual elegant image completely gone. “How are you not with them? You helped them capsize my boat and kill my subordinate, and you still say you’re not with them?! Save that lie for your grandmother.”

With a pained expression, Zhou Zhou said, “I was coerced. It wasn’t my intention.” She was soaked to the bone, her glasses were covered in water spots, and coupled with her naturally slender frame, she looked pitiful and helpless.

“Don’t listen to her, she…” Lan Lin was about to retort again when she suddenly saw Zhou Zhou make a hushing gesture. Zhou Zhou placed one finger on her lips and pointed to the space beneath the dinghy with her other hand.

Her action confused the few people on the boat. After a moment, the players on the boat finally realized that Zhou Zhou was signaling them.

The zombies were under the dinghy.

The man on the boat closest to Zhou Zhou believed her. He pulled her onto the boat, then gestured to the others. In an instant, all the gun muzzles were aimed at the overturned dinghy.

Lan Lin simply shut her mouth. She had lost her subordinate and was now alone, no longer a “Jie.” In the player circles where power spoke, this was somewhat disadvantageous. She could only adopt a mindset of not taking the lead and watch the show from the sidelines.

During this lull, Zhou Zhou carefully observed her surroundings. She noticed Song Lengzhu standing on the farthest boat. As usual, Song Lengzhu hadn’t drawn her gun, just waiting to reap the rewards without effort.

Soon, someone made a firing gesture. A series of ten gunshots rang out, all aimed at the dinghy, riddling it with holes.

“How many times have I said it, don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” A tomb-raiding player who frequented Ghost Valley was on one of the boats, practically jumping with anxiety. These players, gathered from the city, completely ignored their warnings.

However, still no one paid them any mind. Everyone’s eyes were fixed on the dinghy.

Suddenly, the dinghy moved, and a muffled grunt of pain came from underneath it.

“A hit?!” the people on the boat exclaimed in pleasant surprise.

Zhou Zhou felt a flicker of worry inwardly, but on the surface, she echoed their surprised expressions. The people on the boat gave Zhou Zhou a thumbs-up; some were now completely convinced of her innocence.

No one knew that Tang Yu was completely unharmed underwater and had deliberately made the noise.

Long before the shooting started, Tang Yu had already instructed her other companions to dive under the other boats. She remained under the dinghy, already knowing what would happen in the next minute.

With her precognitive ability and the defense of Startling Dragon, these randomly fired bullets couldn’t harm her at all. Tang Yu blocked two of the more accurate shots, then nudged the dinghy and faked a muffled grunt as if she’d been hit.

While the people on the boats were celebrating, she had already dived deeper and slipped past the surrounding boats.

From now on, their attention would no longer be on her. Because, in the instant she had surfaced for air, Tang Yu had already foreseen what was about to happen.

The first to alert everyone to look at the water was Zhou Zhou. The hanging coffin that had fallen into the river had finally been carried by the current to their location.

It must have been bumped during its drift, as the un-nailed coffin lid had been pried open and had fallen off somewhere.

An open coffin floating on the water’s surface was more or less enough to make one’s hair stand on end.

To make matters worse, the tomb-raiding player on the boat cried out in a trembling voice, “We’re done for! We’ve disturbed the master of the hanging coffin! We’re going to have bad luck! I told you not to shoot, not to shoot, but you just wouldn’t listen.”

Seeing their reverence, some people were infected by the mood and showed signs of fear.

But most were players who didn’t believe in ghosts and gods. They had struggled on the cutting edge for so long and had seen countless corpses; they didn’t pay this small coffin any mind.

“What’s there to be afraid of? I’ll blast it to pieces too.” The speaker was a man with a bushy beard. He raised his gun and, before anyone could stop him, fired three shots directly at the floating coffin.

The weapon he held was an extremely powerful multi-shot shotgun. The sound was already as loud as a thunderclap, and with the reflection and amplification from the cliff walls, the entire valley bottom momentarily echoed with the tremendous noise.

The previous round of shooting had already shaken the hanging coffins on the cliffs. This new disturbance directly caused three more coffins to fall from the cliff faces on both sides.

The timing of these coffins’ fall was too coincidental. One coffin fell at a bad angle, smashing against a protrusion on the cliff. The already decaying wood couldn’t withstand the impact and shattered into pieces in mid-air. A charred corpse plunged into the water with a thud and disappeared from sight.

Everyone’s heart skipped a beat. Just then, the bullet-ridden coffin fell apart, and a floating corpse, wrapped in cloth that obscured its features, floated out.

This coffin had been interred a long time ago. The cloth on the floating corpse had grown mold, giving it a nauseating green color. The corpse now drifted downstream, getting closer and closer to their boats.

“Holy sh1t! What kind of unlucky thing is this? Let’s go!” The people on one of the boats had already started their motor and hastily left the area.

The people who remained watched the floating corpse drift closer and couldn’t help but mutter, “Why are these remains so small?”

The size of the floating corpse indeed didn’t resemble an adult’s skeleton. The thing wrapped in moldy cloth strips was only about the length of an arm.

“It’s… it’s a baby. A dead baby.” Someone’s lips trembled. Though no one had pushed him, he still staggered back a step, finally collapsing onto the gunwale in a panic.

The bushy-bearded man who had fired first also shuddered. For some reason, humans have a natural fear of infant corpses in coffins.

It was an existence even more frightening than an adult corpse.

The moldy-green infant corpse drifted closer and closer. To make things worse, the bl00d in the water soaked into the rotten cloth on the body. Red stains slowly crept up the corpse, dyeing the infant remains a pale red.

Just then, two sharp cries came from somewhere along the cliff. It was impossible to tell if it was a corpse reanimating in broad daylight or an animal’s call, but it sounded particularly creepy at that moment.

For a moment, everyone fell silent. Without any prompting from the tomb-raiding players, they quickly started their motors and tried to leave.

As for whether the zombies underwater were dead or alive, who had the mind to check now?

Tang Yu, submerged in the water, also felt her hair stand on end when she heard the others’ conversation. She forced herself to calm down and grabbed onto the gunwale of the last boat.

The sudden appearance of a dripping wet hand startled the three people on the boat. Their minds were still on the corpse from the hanging coffin, so they naturally attributed this hand to the reanimated dead.

“A ghost!” Someone let out a bloodcurdling scream, scaring the people on the other two boats so badly they nearly died of fright. They immediately cranked their motors to full power and vanished in a flash.

Tang Yu herself jumped in fright. She was also afraid of ghosts, and a chill ran down her back as she soaked in the water.

Jin Ye and Fu Mengqing climbed onto the gunwale from the other side, scaring the people on the boat into another round of shrieking. With a swift slash of her blade, Jin Ye killed one of them. Her belief in ghosts and gods was only at ten percent, and she was completely unaffected by the hanging coffin.

Tang Yu also leaped onto the boat, slit the throats of the remaining two, and tossed them into the water.

They had taken over a new boat.

This boat was a covered fishing boat, not very large, with an electric motor attached to the stern. The controls were inside the canopy towards the back, and its speed was decent.

Tang Yu leaned against the stern, scanning the water’s surface. It was fine when she wasn’t looking, but when she did, she discovered that the infant corpse had vanished for some reason.

Tang Yu sucked in a cold breath, forced herself to look away, and turned her head to look at another small boat on the river that hadn’t sped up.

That small boat was quite far from theirs. The two boats were on almost opposite sides of the cliff, separated by a dozen or so meters.

Tang Yu’s eyesight was excellent, and she could see clearly. Standing at the stern of that boat was Song Lengzhu. Her tea-colored long hair was too conspicuous, and Tang Yu recognized her easily.

Song Lengzhu was also surveying the river’s surface. She too had noticed the infant corpse was missing and was frowning in thought.

After waiting a while and seeing nothing else unusual happen, Tang Yu withdrew her gaze, got up, and walked into the boat’s canopy.

The light inside the canopy wasn’t very bright. Her companions were checking the supplies in their backpacks.

Except for the vacuum-sealed compressed biscuits, which were unaffected, the rest of the clothes and medicine were soaked. The flashlights Tang Yu and the others carried had also been waterlogged and stopped working.

However, the camping lantern hanging from Tang Yu’s waist was waterproof. Tang Yu switched it on and off a few times to confirm it still worked.

She was just testing it casually, but the light shining inside the covered boat scared the wits out of the other players who looked back. They had already heard the sound of heavy objects falling into the water and thought the crew of that boat was done for, a perfectly good boat now empty. But at this moment, an eerie light was shining from within the empty boat’s canopy.

It was even flashing on and off. Even in broad daylight, it was pretty scary!

Tang Yu was completely unaware of the psychological impact she was having on the others. She first peeked her head out to check the surroundings, and after confirming it was safe, she opened her game panel to check her newly acquired skill.

【Acquired Ability: Precognition. This is an active ability. When activated, it can predict events that will occur within the next minute. It can be used continuously for five minutes with no cooldown. Flaw: When the ability is activated, the user’s five senses are detached from their consciousness. Frequent use can easily cause mental fluctuations and dizziness. Please be mindful of the frequency of use.】

So that’s how it is.

Tang Yu’s guess was correct. Lan Lin was limited by the ability’s flaw and wasn’t keeping it active all the time.

But even so, this ability was extremely practical. Moreover, besides her and her teammates, no one else knew she had this ability right now.

Unlike invisibility, this ability wasn’t immediately noticeable upon activation. People fighting her for the first time would just think she had quick reflexes. This gave Tang Yu a huge amount of room to maneuver. She could even use it to judge if her attacks were effective and then make timely adjustments.

In addition, her points had also increased significantly. The number of players she had assimilated and killed at the bottom of the valley this time was more than ever before. Her points increased by 60, reaching a total of 420.

A new basic skill was unlocked. Tang Yu looked through it and found the new basic skill was “Dismantle.”

It didn’t seem very useful.

Looking at the panel again, Tang Yu discovered that the points required to unlock the next skill had doubled, now needing 800 points.

“What a rip-off!” Tang Yu couldn’t help but complain.

Jin Ye asked, “Those boats have all sped up. Are we going to keep following them?”

“Where are they even going?” Fu Mengqing couldn’t help but ask.

Li Chengjian answered, “We’re almost there. If this group is looking for the Old Blind Man, they’ll stop at the river fork up ahead. The Old Blind Man is active in that area.”

“This canyon has a fork?” Tang Yu asked.

“Yes, the canyon splits into two paths. The wider one continues straight on, eventually becoming a shallow beach with a mangrove forest on it. That’s the place where Fu Mengqing’s sister fell from the cliff. The other, narrower channel is very treacherous, with many hidden rocks and whirlpools.”

“Which side is the great tomb on?” Tang Yu asked.

“On the side with the narrow channel.”

Tang Yu frowned. If Xiao Li had been captured by players, she was most likely heading for the great tomb, but the place where Fu Mengqing’s sister fell was in the other direction.

Should they split up to search?

Intuition told Tang Yu that splitting up the team was definitely not a good decision.

Tang Yu made a decision. “Let’s follow the fleet for now. We’ll wait until the fork to see the situation and then decide. We might run into the people who captured Xiao Li there.”

The group cranked the motor to full power, then hid inside the boat’s canopy, lowering the curtain. The small boat shot forward quickly.

To outsiders, their boat had become an empty vessel, yet it was still moving, giving it a rather haunted feeling.

The covered boat soon overtook the two fleeing boats ahead. At that moment, Zhou Zhou was on one of them, playing the part of an innocent victim. The other boat carried Lan Lin.

Tang Yu had no mind to kill the people on these boats. There were too many to kill. All they needed to do now was travel at full speed.

But soon, Tang Yu noticed the sound of a boat’s motor getting closer and closer. She lifted a corner of the curtain and looked back to see Song Lengzhu’s small boat catching up from behind.

At that moment, the woman surnamed Song was standing at the bow, staring in her direction with a half-smile.

Tsk. Tang Yu lowered the curtain and muttered. The other small boats couldn’t wait to get as far away from them as possible, but Song Lengzhu’s boat was getting closer. Tang Yu guessed that woman had been observing the whole situation and must have spotted her earlier. Now she was following their covered boat, and Tang Yu had no idea what she was up to.

Before she could finish complaining, the covered boat suddenly lurched as if it had been struck by something heavy.

Anger flared in Tang Yu. How could that Song woman ram them? She lifted the curtain, only to find that Song Lengzhu’s boat was still three meters away, nowhere close enough to hit them.

Just as she was feeling puzzled, Song Lengzhu’s small boat was also hit, lurching violently.

Both of their pupils contracted, and they instinctively leaned out to look at the water’s surface.

Underwater, a child-sized black shadow flashed past the bottom of Song Lengzhu’s boat. Before Tang Yu could get a clear look, it zipped back into the depths.

What the hell was that?!