Surviving the Game as a Zombie - Chapter 56

Tang Yu lengthened the strap of the camping lamp and secured it to the top of her head. Then, one after the other, they squeezed into the rock crevice.

Song Lengzhu had a slender build, and the crevice was a perfect fit for her body. She stretched her hands above her head, reaching into the opening first. Then, using her hands and feet and engaging her core, she leaped lightly, as if sucked into the crevice, and quickly disappeared from the light.

Tang Yu’s build was a bit sturdier, so the feeling of being squeezed was more intense for her than for Song Lengzhu. As soon as she got halfway in, she found it extremely difficult to move forward. Her entire body felt like it was being forced into a steel pipe; she couldn’t lift her hips or arch her back. On top of that, the crevice was inclined upward at a 50-degree angle, making it hard to find any leverage to advance.

If she encountered any sharp rocks, they would unexpectedly scrape her skin. If she tried to force her way through with brute strength, she feared she would scrape off a layer of skin.

How did she climb? How did Song Lengzhu do it, disappearing in an instant? Tang Yu couldn’t help but wonder if the woman was made of water.

Asking for tips was out of the question, and besides, she couldn’t open her mouth to speak anyway.

But Tang Yu was someone who used her head. She painstakingly adjusted her movements, keeping her right hand close to her body to retrieve the climbing pick from her belt. She slowly moved it above her head, raised her other hand to be level with her forehead, and then used the pick to exert force, crawling forward in small increments.

With the help of the climbing pick, her upward climb became twice as effective. This dead guy’s “trash” hadn’t been picked up for nothing.

The water flowing through the crevice soon soaked Tang Yu’s clothes and hair again. Ever since they had encountered the red earthworms, not a single spot on them had been dry.

A few droplets inevitably splashed onto Tang Yu’s face and lips. She pursed her lips and licked them; the water was cool and sweet, appearing crystal clear in the light.

This was running water, or perhaps a mountain spring. Either way, it meant the crevice had an exit and wasn’t a dead end.

Moreover, the crevice continued to slope upward, meaning they might soon be able to return to the surface.

Tang Yu climbed for five minutes, and the crevice gradually widened, no longer squeezing her body so tightly. After another two minutes, the gap grew even wider, enough that she could even bend her legs to crawl.

Before long, Tang Yu saw Song Lengzhu’s figure up ahead. The other woman was braced on her hands and feet. From Tang Yu’s angle, all she could see were the soles of high-top hiking boots and the legs of black cargo pants that almost blended into the rock wall.

However, Song Lengzhu had stopped moving forward. She turned her head and angled her body, her gaze falling on Tang Yu, who had caught up.

Tang Yu dutifully kept her promise, stopping three meters away from Song Lengzhu. She can’t be waiting for me, can she? she thought. So kind?

But then Song Lengzhu extended a hand toward her. “Give me the lamp. Something’s not right up ahead.”

Of course, Tang Yu wasn’t going to hand over the lamp. It was a precious resource, and there was no reason to give it to someone who wasn’t a teammate.

Instead of taking it off, she crawled forward a few steps. The three-meter safe distance between them shrank to two meters, and finally to one. Song Lengzhu pressed her lips together but said nothing, apparently having no objection.

Tang Yu waved at Song Lengzhu, gesturing for her to move her legs so the light could pass through. With a sense of resignation, Song Lengzhu pressed herself against one side of the rock wall, yielding half her space to give Tang Yu room to aim the light.

The light cast a halo on Song Lengzhu’s soaked hair. Using the light, they examined the crevice ahead. The upward path they had anticipated wasn’t there. Instead, there was only a crack in the rock above them, about a finger’s width wide and nearly a meter long.

The water was seeping down from here, the droplets forming a trickling, gurgling stream.

The flowing water had indeed led them to an exit, but it was only a finger’s width wide and completely impassable.

Judging from the direction and altitude, the mountain stream was right above their heads, likely separated by a layer of rock more than ten meters thick.

Song Lengzhu reached up and felt it. The rock here was exceptionally hard, not like the kind from before that shattered with a single strike. It would be impossible to dig through.

However, the situation wasn’t entirely hopeless.

The crevice they were in didn’t end here; it continued onward.

“Keep going.” Song Lengzhu showed no sign of discouragement as she took the lead, crossing over the trickle of water.

Tang Yu followed at a distance, neither too close nor too far. As they continued, the inside of the crevice started to become dry, and the flow of water on the ground disappeared.

They were like worms wriggling through a fissure in a cliff, with no idea where they were or if there was an exit ahead.

Tang Yu felt as if she had been crawling in the dark for hours, but her rational mind told her it hadn’t been that long—perhaps only ten minutes or so. The darkness and confined space easily dulled the senses, making the concept of time blurry. Unable to straighten her back for so long, her muscles began to ache.

At some point, the angle of the fissure leveled out, as if becoming flat ground. This made crawling much easier for them, but the crevice didn’t widen. In fact, it seemed to be narrowing again.

This was common; naturally formed cracks in rock were winding and varied in width.

Song Lengzhu suddenly spoke up. “Strange.”

Tang Yu glanced up at the figure ahead. What is it now?

“Have you noticed we’ve started going downhill?” Song Lengzhu asked, turning her head toward Tang Yu as she advanced.

At her reminder, Tang Yu immediately glanced back at her toes. Judging by her line of sight, they had unknowingly started to crawl downward.

This was not a good sign. After all the trouble of getting closer to the surface, they were now heading back underground.

But they had no choice other than to follow this crevice.

They shuffled forward a few more steps, and the sensation became even more pronounced. The crevice ahead not only sloped downward, but the angle was also increasing. Tang Yu estimated it was already close to 30 degrees.

Song Lengzhu stopped again up ahead. This time, without waiting for a prompt, Tang Yu consciously moved closer, shortening the distance and taking on the duty of lighting technician.

In the light, the crevice split into two paths.

The passage on the left had a relatively gentler slope and was a bit wider.

The other path, however, abruptly turned into an almost vertical shaft dropping straight down.

The camping lamp had a limited range and couldn’t penetrate the darkness of the shaft at all. Song Lengzhu pried a small stone from the wall and dropped it into the vertical crevice. The faint sounds of the stone striking the sides echoed, audible for a long time.

It was very deep, and the crevice wasn’t straight.

They both simultaneously chose the easier path on the left. Neither wanted to recklessly venture into a nearly vertical crevice.

The crevice they chose maintained a slope of about thirty degrees. After crawling downward for ten minutes or so, Tang Yu suddenly saw the rock on one side reflecting the light.

It looked like the sheen of wet rock.

Tang Yu reached out to touch it, but she snatched her hand back the moment it made contact with the wall.

Her fingers felt sticky and greasy. This wasn’t water at all!

“Song Lengzhu!” Tang Yu subconsciously called out to the woman who had already crawled farther ahead.

Song Lengzhu heard the shout and turned back to see Tang Yu waving two fingers at her.

What is she doing? Rock-paper-scissors again? Is this the time or place for that?

Tang Yu gesticulated, waving her fingers and then pointing at the cliff wall to warn the other woman to be careful.

Song Lengzhu looked at the cliff wall in confusion. It seemed unremarkable, but as Tang Yu’s movements caused the light to flicker, it caught a reflection, and she too saw the wet stains on the black rock.

In that brief moment, Tang Yu had already drawn Startling Dragon.

This combat-ready posture immediately made Song Lengzhu understand that what she was seeing was definitely not a simple wet stain.

Song Lengzhu also took out her small golden dagger. They cautiously crawled forward two more steps and soon discovered piles of white, foam-like mucus on the rock. Looking ahead, they saw that the crevice was filled with it.

Tang Yu guessed that it had been left by some kind of animal or insect, and that they had trespassed into its territory.

This path was a no-go; they couldn’t advance any further.

Before they could halt their advance, a rustling, crawling sound suddenly emerged from the darkness ahead. It was extremely faint, but in the silence of the crevice, it sounded exceptionally clear.

Goosebumps immediately broke out on Tang Yu’s arms. The sound was like a snake slithering down the back of one’s collar, its tongue flicking against the nape of the neck, causing a visceral discomfort.

“Back up!” The moment the crawling sound began, Song Lengzhu made a swift judgment. Unable to turn around in the crevice, she immediately started backing away, her eyes fixed on the darkness ahead.

Tang Yu reacted just as quickly, beginning to retreat at almost the same moment as Song Lengzhu. In the process, she rapidly activated her precognition ability.

In the one-minute preview, Tang Yu saw that she and Song Lengzhu would be pursued by a group of strange creatures. But these things remained hidden in the darkness, never entering the beam of the lamp.

They only made continuous sounds to unnerve them. Their numbers were vast, their size unknown.

They crawled backward for dozens of paces, but the sound pursued them relentlessly, growing denser. The noise wasn’t just coming from the ground in front of them; it now also came from the rock wall overhead.

The unknown was the most tormenting. After retreating for two minutes, Song Lengzhu did something that defied Tang Yu’s prediction. Dagger in hand, she charged into the darkness ahead—a clearly spontaneous decision.

Immediately, the content of Tang Yu’s precognition changed. Song Lengzhu had clearly drawn out the creatures besieging them; numerous palm-sized organisms charged into the light.

Tang Yu got a clear look at them. They were dark red, centipede-like insects, their bodies covered in legs. But unlike centipedes, they weren’t symmetrical. Their legs, which resembled spikes, were of varying lengths and encircled their entire bodies, so densely packed it was impossible to count them. The strange rustling sound was produced by their legs rubbing together.

Tang Yu faltered for a moment, then shouted a warning, “Run! There are so many of them!”

But Song Lengzhu, who was already outside the range of the light, didn’t seem to hear her.

Shortly after she spoke, the insects appeared overhead, just as she had foreseen. They hung upside down from the rock, crawling as if on level ground at an incredible speed.

Song Lengzhu still hadn’t come back. A flicker of worry rose in Tang Yu’s heart; she couldn’t foresee anything outside her line of sight.

Tang Yu raised her knife and knocked an insect from overhead. With a flick of her wrist, she sliced it in two. A dark green liquid, so thick it was almost black, oozed from its corpse. Tang Yu looked up and saw that wherever the insects went, they left behind that foamy mucus.

The crevice was narrow, and their crouched positions were ill-suited for combat. They had to quickly retreat to the fork in the path, turn around, and change their retreat into an advance.

“Song Lengzhu!” Tang Yu shouted again.

This time, Song Lengzhu responded and retreated. Tang Yu saw the soles of her boots appear within the beam of light and subconsciously breathed a sigh of relief.

She had no idea how the woman had dealt with those insects, managing to charge into the darkness and retreat unscathed.

“Withdraw.” This time, Song Lengzhu’s word was concise.

Using both her hands and feet, Tang Yu retreated rapidly. Song Lengzhu was even faster, and they no longer cared about the three-meter safe distance. Soon, they were practically on top of each other.

“Faster,” Song Lengzhu urged, though her tone wasn’t impatient.

The swarming insects followed close behind, but for some reason, they didn’t attack immediately.

Only when the two of them retreated back to the fork did the insects become frenzied.

As she retreated, Song Lengzhu put something away in her hand and said, “The chemical has worn off.”

Tang Yu didn’t get a clear look at the object, and this wasn’t the time to be concerned about it. Without hesitation, the moment she reached the fork, she jumped straight down into the vertical crevice.

Song Lengzhu said nothing more and immediately jumped down after her.

They had both reached the same conclusion: turning around to retreat toward the cavern with the snakeskin would take too much time. They couldn’t afford it. Jumping down was the most efficient option.

They should have chosen this path from the start. As it turned out, the path that looked safest was the most dangerous one.

Tang Yu didn’t let herself free-fall. The shaft was very deep, and jumping straight down would not end well. She braced her feet against the walls, sliding down by pushing off both sides of the crevice while using her hands to maintain balance. The immense friction effectively slowed her descent, though it made the soles of her feet burn and her palms ache.

But Song Lengzhu had jumped straight down, making no effort to slow her fall.

Damn it, Tang Yu cursed inwardly, forced to free a hand to protect her head.