Surviving the Game as a Zombie - Chapter 74

The weather grew hotter and hotter. The fresh firewood piled together dried out quickly under the sun. The dried wood was ready for immediate use, which was a good thing for the construction team.

The medicinal herbs drying in Zhou Zhou’s courtyard also piled up, soon covering the entire yard, leaving no room to even set foot.

Every few days, Zhou Zhou would give some bl00d-replenishing and qi-nourishing herbs to Xiao Li, saying her courtyard was too full and they needed to be used up. Thanks to these herbs, Xiao Li recovered quickly. A month after returning to the village, her movements were no different from a normal person’s.

As for Tang Yu and Jin Ye, their constitutions were special to begin with. Their healing abilities were better than those of humans; even if left alone, their wounds would scab over automatically, though the scars weren’t very pretty.

Tang Yu sat in the courtyard, lifting her pant leg to examine her scars. Since entering the game, she was always getting injured. On her calf, where black veins spread, deep and shallow scars overlapped, feeling almost prickly to the touch. There was also a long-healed bullet wound on her shoulder blade. Tang Yu touched it; it was from the day she first entered the game, when Song Lengzhu had shot her.

Just then, Aunty Pang suddenly burst into the courtyard in a panic, shouting, “Xiao Tang, something terrible has happened! You have to come see!” She was out of breath from running, her forehead covered in fine beads of sweat.

Tang Yu shot to her feet, grabbed her knife, and followed Aunty Pang out of the courtyard.

Was it an invasion? Had the camp been exposed so quickly? Tang Yu’s gaze darkened, her expression turning serious.

Aunty Pang said as she ran, “On the back mountain… there are two huge snakes on the back mountain, coiled on our firewood, not moving at all. It’s terrifying! You have to go see.”

Hearing this, the tension on Tang Yu’s face eased. She guessed it must be the snake king and queen who had come to the back mountain. Tang Yu hadn’t explicitly told the aunties about the giant snakes, so it was normal for them to be surprised. After a moment’s thought, Tang Yu called for Zhou Zhou, and they ran toward the back mountain together.

The place where Aunty Pang was cutting wood was some distance from the village. As they passed the farmland, one of the aunties asked why Aunty Pang was in such a panic. Aunty Pang described the scene with great embellishment. Hearing this, several other aunties, both frightened and curious, followed behind Tang Yu.

They were curious about just how big the snakes were. Soon, the group heading up the mountain grew from two people to a crowd.

When everyone reached the logging area, they indeed saw the snake king and queen lying on the ground, their heads raised, staring at the aunties behind Tang Yu.

Tang Yu took a closer look and saw that the golden-eyed giant snake was carrying a person on its back.

Aunty Pang let out a cry of alarm. “Wh-what kind of monster is that?”

Tang Yu chuckled. Under the terrified gazes of the aunties, she nonchalantly walked up to the giant snake and reached out to stroke its neck.

The aunties gasped.

This village chief of ours, how many more surprises does she have that we don’t know about?

Tang Yu called out, “Xingyue.”

The young girl on the snake’s back then slid down with a smile. She recognized Tang Yu’s voice and obediently called out, “Tang Jie.”

Xingyue was older than Xiao Li, but her speech and mentality were often childlike. Even Xiao Li didn’t call Tang Yu “Jie,” but Xingyue said it naturally and smoothly.

Zhou Zhou also walked forward and asked, “Why are you alone? Where’s your sister?”

Xingyue replied, “My sister is at the bamboo house. Master said I can go out alone now, so I took Xiao Jin and Xiao Hong for a stroll. After we got here, Xiao Hong sensed a familiar aura. I figured it must be the camp Tang Jie mentioned, so we stopped here for a bit.”

Tang Yu didn’t realize that what Xingyue called “a stroll” meant crossing several mountain peaks.

Zhou Zhou examined the snakes’ bodies. In one month, both snakes had recovered well. Tender red flesh had already grown over their wounds, though there was a bare patch that had lost the protection of its scales.

The two giant snakes lowered their heads and gently nuzzled against Zhou Zhou and Tang Yu, as if expressing friendliness.

Zhou Zhou said, “Perfect. Xingyue, you haven’t been to the camp yet. Come on, let’s go have some fun in the village.”

Xingyue didn’t refuse. She climbed back onto the snake’s back and followed behind Tang Yu and Zhou Zhou.

The aunties kept their distance. Although they now knew the pythons wouldn’t harm them, they were still worried about getting too close and provoking them. Tang Yu also had the aunties stay back. After all, it was the first meeting between the giant snakes and the aunties; there was no foundation of interaction. Perhaps because they had been persecuted by humans a century ago, they were very wary of strangers.

The two giant snakes were left at the village entrance. Their massive bodies would have difficulty squeezing into the village; they would probably knock over the newly built wooden houses. Besides, there were six chickens and a clutch of incubating eggs in the village.

The sudden appearance of the behemoths drew all the village aunties to the side to gawk. Taking the opportunity, Zhou Zhou introduced Xingyue to the villagers.

The aunties had long heard that Fu Mengqing had a blind younger sister but had never met her. Now that they finally saw her, they found that Fu Xingyue really resembled her sister, with delicate features and great beauty. The prominent scar over Fu Xingyue’s eyes made her seem all the more pitiable.

It was also Xiao Li’s first time meeting Xingyue. She immediately introduced herself, but she kept her distance from the two giant snakes.

After introducing herself, Xiao Li began introducing the other aunties in the village to Xingyue. She told Xingyue what each person was responsible for and what their names were. Fearing Xingyue couldn’t see, she had the aunties greet her aloud so Xingyue could remember their voices.

She was incredibly thoughtful.

Jin Ye watched Xiao Li with a smile. She knew that Xiao Li felt a sense of kinship with Xingyue, born from shared misfortune, and couldn’t help but want to take good care of the new member.

Unexpectedly, as Xiao Li was introducing the aunties, the two giant snakes also tilted their heads, as if trying to recognize the people, which startled Tang Yu.

These two snakes… have they cultivated themselves into demons?

Tang Yu dismissed her strange thought and welcomed Xingyue into the village.

Xingyue turned back and gave some instructions to the giant snakes, telling them to go play on their own and that she would summon them later.

The crowd watched as Xingyue hissed a few times like a snake, and the two enormous snakes obediently left the village, disappearing into the forest. The aunties’ jaws dropped in astonishment. The pity in their eyes when they looked at Xingyue was immediately replaced by a sense of awe.

Zhou Zhou smiled. “You’re getting more and more skilled.”

Xingyue accepted the praise naturally. “Master says I have a high aptitude. But in another two days, Xiao Jin and Xiao Hong will go into the deep mountains to find their own habitat. Master’s courtyard is too hot for them to live in long-term.”

“That’s good. You can find them anytime anyway.”

“Yes,” Xingyue replied cheerfully. Then she added, “Next, Master will teach me how to train wolves. I’ll come riding a wolf next time.”

Tang Yu couldn’t help but exclaim, “So cool.”

With a new member in the camp, lunch naturally included extra dishes. Xingyue stayed in the camp for the better part of the day, only leaving the village reluctantly after Fu Mengqing anxiously asked about her whereabouts in the camp group chat.

The people in this camp were all very friendly, completely different from Xingyue’s impression of what a camp should be like. She liked it here. In the future, after she completed her apprenticeship, she wanted to move here.

Life in the village passed peacefully. Another five days went by in the blink of an eye. The dirt road from the village to the reservoir was completely dug out, two wooden houses were quickly built, and the generator, after some tinkering by the aunties, was put to use. However, they still lacked materials like iron wire for an electric fence, as well as daily necessities like light bulbs.

Everything was progressing faster than Tang Yu had anticipated, and everyone’s life was becoming more and more comfortable. But correspondingly, the list of needed supplies was also getting longer and longer.

First were food and seasonings like oil, rice, and flour. A camp of twenty people had a huge consumption rate, and their inventory was running low. Next were construction materials like nails, cement, iron wire, and varnish. Then there were daily necessities like lights, water pipes, and valves. The team leaders of each group had written long lists. When Lu Lu showed it to Tang Yu, the thick notebook was filled with twenty pages of items.

Seeing that Xiao Li’s injuries were gradually healing, Tang Yu began to plan their trip into the city.

She gathered the few players to discuss the matter and decided to leave for the city in two days. Zhou Zhou seemed busy developing a new medicine and had no interest in leaving, clearly stating she wouldn’t participate. Lu Lu also said she wanted to stay in the camp. That left the old team of Tang Yu, Xiao Li, and Jin Ye.

This time, they might stay out longer. It would take a long time for just three people to gather supplies. Despite being short-handed, Tang Yu didn’t want to take the aunties out of the village. Given Tang Yu’s constitution for triggering unexpected incidents wherever she went, it wasn’t suitable for the aunties to go with them. They also couldn’t spare the energy to look after ordinary people.

After making the decision, they explained the situation to the aunties and distributed their current tasks to other members.

The village was like a paradise. Except for the zombies that visited every night, they hardly felt like they were living in an apocalyptic world, so they were oblivious to the changes outside.

Xiao Li would occasionally check the posts on the game forum, but most of them were meaningless spam and arguments. The truly skilled players wouldn’t waste time on the forum, so they didn’t get much useful information. Some posts were just infuriating to read. Gradually, Xiao Li started checking it less often.

But this time, since they had decided to leave the village, Xiao Li carefully browsed through the game forum.

The post calling for a crusade against Tang Yu was still occasionally bumped to the top. Xiao Li skimmed through it; it was still the same old speculative and condemnatory tone. However, after the Ghost Valley incident, some players from the large teams that had escaped the ancient tomb had posted vivid and embellished descriptions of their encounters with the zombies on the forum.

These people had crossed paths with Jin Ye in the tomb, so their attacks were mostly aimed at her, even escalating to personal insults. It made Xiao Li’s bl00d boil; she wished she could crawl through the system and give those people a good beating.

Song Lengzhu and Zhou Zhou were also implicated, as some people had seen them mingling with the zombies. However, not many people cursed them, probably because their names were well-known. Weaker and more cautious players didn’t dare to provoke them in a public forum.

The rest were mostly posts with no substance.

Xiao Li sighed and was about to close the panel when her peripheral vision caught a word: “Help.” It wasn’t the word itself that caught her attention, but the sentence that followed.

“Help | Is anyone in the restricted area? We’re trapped in a research lab and have encountered the zombie trio. Please rescue us!”

The post was new, showing only two replies, and didn’t stand out among the other threads.

Xiao Li paused and examined the title carefully. She had seen the previous posts and knew that she, Jin Ye, and Tang Yu were mistakenly called the “zombie trio” by other players. But they had been staying quietly in the deep mountains and forests; when had they ever been to a research lab?

Xiao Li clicked on the post and saw the main description.

“Zone 2 Restricted Area, is anyone passing by?! Offering a large reward for rescue.

Our group of five is trapped in a room on the lowest level of the research lab. The zombie trio is leading a horde of zombies, eyeing us menacingly from outside. Are there any passing comrades who can lend a hand!”

The poster clearly still held out hope for other players, but it was predictable that players had no interest in rescuing others. Many help requests on the forum had sunk without a trace.

However, for players seeking excitement or those determined to kill Tang Yu and her group, this was a guiding signal.

Sure enough, the first reply was to confirm the reliability of the information with the poster. “Are you sure it’s the zombie trio?”

The poster replied: “I’m sure. The characteristics are exactly as everyone described: one woman, with two female zombies always following behind her. They’re super agile and carry weapons. I definitely didn’t see wrong!”

The second reply asked about the number of zombies outside, but the poster didn’t surface again to answer.

Xiao Li let out a sound of surprise and quickly forwarded the post’s content to the camp group chat.

Tang Yu laughed. “What? Are we so famous now that people are impersonating us?”

Jin Ye said, “What’s there to impersonate? Aren’t they just rushing to become living targets?”

Tang Yu thought about it and agreed. She then became interested in the restricted area mentioned in the post. She asked Jin Ye what the restricted areas were, and Jin Ye replied, “The game supposedly has five restricted areas. They’re places where monsters are most concentrated. Most players won’t go there; it’s a death sentence. However, some players with a challenger’s mindset will go exploring, but the risks basically outweigh the rewards, so not many people discuss them.”

Tang Yu raised an eyebrow. “Monsters? Not zombies?”

“They include zombies, but also other mutated creatures. These mutants don’t leave the restricted areas, and few people have seen them, so I’m not too clear on the specifics either.”

Tang Yu said, “Oh,” and didn’t ask any more questions.

They hadn’t paid much mind to the matter at first, but when Xiao Li checked the forum again the next day, she found a sudden flood of new posts, all claiming to have seen the zombie trio in Zone 2.