Chapter 85: Cinema (Part 2)
The vibration felt remarkably similar to the tremor that had shaken the building during God’s Supermarket’s very first upgrade.
Right on cue, the store computer began chiming. A rapid-fire succession of ping-ping-ping order notifications filled the air, cutting through the chaos just a few seconds before the shaking intensified.
“What’s going on?!” Song Yuqing heard Zhang Yimiao shout in a panic from outside.
Inside her head, Master Fu’s voice echoed, carrying a distinct note of amusement. “Congratulations on completing the task ahead of schedule, Song Yuqing. Consider this your reward.”
A reward? By throwing an earthquake at me?
No, it wasn’t a disaster—it was the layout restructuring itself.
Song Yuqing wrenched her bedroom door open and stepped out. “Don’t panic, everyone! The supermarket is just undergoing an upgrade. It’ll pass in a moment!”
Seeing the healthy color back in her cheeks, Liu Xiaona and Gaha let out collective sighs of relief.
“Gaha!” The little gargoyle trotted over, carefully reaching out a claw to touch the minor scratch on her face.
“I’m perfectly fine!” Song Yuqing gave them a reassuring wink. She was clearly blessed with a long life. “Xiaona, can you check the console and see what those new orders are?”
The rolling tremors finally threw her off balance, sending her and Gaha tumbling to the floor together. The relentless pinging from the computer was getting slightly grating.
“On it!”
Clinging to the walls for stability, Liu Xiaona shimmed her way over to the checkout counter.
Meanwhile, Zhang Yimiao and the rest of the external espers had already cleared out of the building, standing safely in the open street as they watched the outer structure of God’s Supermarket warp and expand.
On the screen, a massive log of transaction details was scrolling down. What left Liu Xiaona completely speechless was the origin of the purchases: Base Zero, Base One, and Base Five. Every single order had a specific tag appended to it: [Remote Raffle Entry].
“Oh my god… how is Nanjiao moving this fast? He’s already wired up three separate bases in just a few days?” Liu Xiaona swallowed hard. How was a “remote raffle” even logistically possible?
Drawn by her stunned silence, Song Yuqing and Gaha dragged themselves across the room, using the walls to pull themselves up next to the monitor.
“We’ll just film a live broadcast later and draw the physical tickets on their behalf,” Song Yuqing said, a massive grin breaking across her face as she looked at the flooded inbox. Truly, those who survive a near-death experience are bound for good fortune.
“Think this is a lot of trouble? Don’t worry, there will be far bigger headaches down the road,” Master Fu chimed in unexpectedly.
Song Yuqing rolled her eyes. She was just a humble supermarket manager. What could possibly be more difficult than staring down a literal zombie siege?
“You’ll realize soon enough that things are never that simple.”
Assuming Master Fu was merely cryptic-talking about Chen Ke’s lingering threat, Song Yuqing just curled her lip and ignored it. “By the way, I ran into Huo Bin earlier. He looked like he wanted to come back to the store, but he bolted the second we hit the alley mouth.”
“Leave him be,” Master Fu replied, his tone turning noticeably rigid. Foolish, stubborn idiot.
After about a minute of heavy rumbling, the ground finally fell still. Song Yuqing scanned the interior, but nothing on the first or second floors seemed out of place.
“Whoa! Look up! There’s an entire new level!”
Outside the shop, Zhang Yimiao and her squad were crane-necking toward the sky, pointing excitedly at the roofline.
Song Yuqing, Liu Xiaona, and Gaha hurried out onto the porch to look. Sure enough, God’s Supermarket had sprouted a brand-new third story, looking sleeker and far more luxurious than before.
“Shall we go up and explore?” Song Yuqing winked at her staff, leading the way toward the interior stairwell.
Zhang Yimiao and the rest of the espers exchanged glances. Curiosity getting the better of them, they desperately wanted to peek inside as well.
“Hey, Song Yuqing did say she wasn’t turning into a zombie, right?” “Even if she does, there’s a whole squad of us here. What’s there to be afraid of?” “God’s Supermarket is a walking miracle anyway. As the manager, she’s bound to have some sort of immunity.”
Nodding in agreement, the crowd began filtering back inside, carefully hauling the harvested mutant corpses toward the security gate. Each person made sure to keep a strict mental tally of exactly how many bodies they had contributed.
Seeing them micromanage the pile, Zhang Yimiao muttered, “Do you really need to count every single piece…” Her voice, however, was completely drowned out by Liu Xiaona’s loud command from the counter.
“Alright, hurry it up, you lot!”
A few of the operatives looked visibly displeased, trading shifty glances behind Zhang Yimiao’s back as they mounted the stairs to the third floor. The muttering didn’t stop.
“Why shouldn’t we keep track of our own kills?” “Exactly. The more zombies you bring in, the higher your odds for the grand prize, right?” “Logically speaking, we raided that building as a unit. We can’t just let one person hoard all the credit.” “No way.” “She’s totally monopolizing the rewards.” “Just look at last time—those zombie protective suits weren’t distributed fairly at all.”
Zhang Yimiao rolled her eyes so hard they nearly stuck. She spun around on the step, glaring down at the complainers. “What are you idiots gossiping about back there? Ask him, or him, or him—am I really the type of person to steal your loot?!”
She pointed aggressively at several of her core teammates.
The dark-skinned man who always ran point with her spoke up, his voice deadpan and serious. “I already ran the metrics. We brought back more than enough corpses to guarantee every single person in the squad gets a raffle ticket.”
The gossiping faction traded embarrassed looks, instantly lowering their heads and falling silent.
“Hmph! Try to do people a favor and this is the thanks you get,” Zhang Yimiao huffed, turning back around to catch up with Song Yuqing. She was utterly incensed. They had bled together for months, yet these people were still entirely comfortable throwing shade behind her back.
If she hadn’t taken the initiative to lead them to this coordinates, half of them wouldn’t have even had the guts to venture this far into the sector!
Don’t get angry, don’t get angry, she chanted to herself. Anger causes wrinkles.
Having overheard the petty squabble, Song Yuqing waited for the frustrated red-head to close the distance before lightly patting her arm. “Next time people are throwing shade at you, don’t waste your breath trying to prove your integrity. Just find their single biggest insecurity and tear them down with it instead.”
Zhang Yimiao blinked, processing the advice. Huh. Is that how it’s done?
Noted!
Looking at the slender profile of the manager walking beside her, a sudden wave of warmth hit her chest. “I really am glad you’re okay.”
“Well, it turns out I had a few specialized drinks on hand that completely neutralize the mutation process.”
Zhang Yimiao froze dead on the step. “You have what?!”
Good god, an actual cure? The veteran virologists and researchers back at Base Zero had been pulling round-the-clock shifts since the outbreak and hadn’t even found a viable lead!
“Don’t worry, I’ll be stocking them on the store shelves very soon,” Song Yuqing smiled back over her shoulder.
The group summited a brand-new, polished spiral staircase, arriving at a structure that closely resembled a boutique movie theater. A sleek, modern plaque hung directly above the double doors, inscribed with three simple words:
Predicting the Future
Song Yuqing’s heart did a sudden, violent flutter.
Wow. Talk about an absolute cheat-code feature.
Liu Xiaona held her breath, every fiber of her being wanting to burst through the doors to see what lay inside. But noticing that her manager was staring at the sign in a daze, she suppressed her excitement, stepping back to let Song Yuqing have the honor of entering first. After all, she knew what Song Yuqing’s profession had been before the world went to hell: she was a filmmaker. Perhaps this cinema was a personalized wish granted by Master Fu.
Gaha, being entirely illiterate, merely blinked at the stylized text, his eyes darting to the ring of small white LED lights embedded around the frame.
“Predicting the future?” “Is that literal, or just a flashy name?”
The surrounding espers began to whisper amongst themselves, crowding the new landing.
Calming her racing pulse, Song Yuqing slowly reached out a hand toward the door handle. But before her fingers could make contact, the mechanisms whirred, and the panels parted smoothly on their own. An automatic door.
The interior wasn’t massive—roughly thirty square meters in total—and featured a modest arrangement of exactly five plush stadium seats.
Song Yuqing, Liu Xiaona, and Gaha instinctively marched toward the center row and took their places. Zhang Yimiao and her dark-skinned companion slid into the remaining seats right behind them. A few other curious espers attempted to squeeze inside, but the automatic doors abruptly snapped shut, locking the rest of the crowd out.
The moment the seals engaged, the theater plunged into a state of absolute, oppressive pitch-blackness.
Instantly, Song Yuqing felt a pair of frantic hands clamp onto her arm like a vice.
“Oh my god,” Zhang Yimiao gasped into the dark, her voice trembling. “Why is it this dark? They didn’t even hook up an emergency exit sign!”
