Chapter 134: Is It True?
“Go grab the camera and take their ID photos,” Song Yuqing said evenly.
“Huh?” Xie Hao blinked, failing to catch on.
Xie Zetian, however, instantly understood the implication. “I’ll go get it right now!”
It wasn’t until Xie Zetian returned clutching the miniature diagnostic camera—the exact prototype the experts had successfully reverse-engineered—that Xie Hao’s brain finally clicked.
These two could be zombies! Danger!
Xie Hao’s gaze hardened, instantly filling with undisguised hostility as he glared at the two young men. Catching his shift in demeanor, Song Yuqing smoothly stepped forward, deliberately using her body to block Xie Hao’s fierce stare. She shot him a sharp, warning wink, silently ordering him to rein in his emotions and play along.
“Got the camera!” Xie Zetian announced, his voice a pitch too bright. Even before he closed the distance, he subtly aimed the lens directly at the two youths. For a fraction of a second, his expression darkened severely.
“I’ll handle the portraits,” Song Yuqing offered smoothly, plucking the camera from his hands and raising the viewfinder toward the newcomers.
Just as she suspected. The digital screen remained completely blank. The two young men standing right in front of her were physically invisible to the sensor.
Song Yuqing’s mind raced, rapidly formulating a containment strategy. Regardless of the tactical objective these infiltrators were trying to execute inside God’s Community, her primary goal was to neutralize them as quietly and efficiently as possible.
“Is this how you guys normally shoot ID portraits?” Xie Hao asked, deliberately snatching the camera back from Song Yuqing to mask the tension. He genuinely wanted to see the diagnostic failure for himself, as he couldn’t read a single emotion on Song Yuqing’s perfectly composed face.
“Shouldn’t ID photos be framed individually?” one of the disguised zombies asked, his tone cautious.
Facing the mutants’ subtle skepticism, Song Yuqing merely offered a warm, relaxed smile.
“This is standard procedure for our settlement. Xie Hao, would you please escort our new guests to the intake sector?”
Xie Hao forced his muscles to relax, offering a tight nod. “Sure thing.”
Wait, where am I supposed to lock them up? he thought frantically. “Where exactly should I quarter them, Manager?”
Song Yuqing pretended to ponder the logistics for a moment. “Let’s just have the security gate system randomly assign their housing coordinates.”
The Xie brothers froze for a split second before the brilliant reality of her instruction hit them. She’s trying to trick the zombies into walking straight through the main security gate so the system will automatically incinerate them.
The two mutants suspected absolutely nothing. Nodding obediently, they fell into step behind the Xie brothers, marching directly toward the supermarket’s primary threshold.
Everything seemed to be proceeding perfectly. Or so the two zombies believed, right up until they stepped onto the approach ramp.
By the time their advanced instincts flagged the lethal anomaly within the gate’s architecture, it was entirely too late.
They frantically attempted to pivot and flee, but the Xie brothers and several nearby espers instantly collapsed the perimeter, tightly surrounding them. The second the mutants spun around, Song Yuqing sharply signaled the courtyard, silently warning the crowd to lock down the grid.
At this juncture, whether the two infiltrators wanted to cross the security threshold or not, they were mathematically out of options.
Realizing their deep-cover operation had been completely burned, the two zombies executed a final, desperate gambit right before the gate’s energy field could dissolve their biology. Moving with microscopic subtlety, they quietly dropped several small, folded squares of paper from their sleeves.
This had been their primary objective all along. The tactical blueprint dictated that once the human survivors discovered the notes and absorbed the terrifying data written inside, they would naturally begin to gossip, quietly sowing absolute chaos and despair throughout the colony. While the internal society tore itself apart, the mutant legions would launch a massive external siege, utilizing these two martyrs to systematically dismantle God’s Supermarket from within.
However, the tiny paper squares didn’t escape Gaha’s hyper-attuned vision. The gargoyle lunged forward the moment they hit the dirt, rapidly snatching the notes up one by one and presenting them directly to Song Yuqing.
Song Yuqing unfolded a square, her eyes skimming the text. Every single note bore the exact truth she had been desperately trying to suppress.
“We all live inside a virtual program, and every single one of you is nothing more than an NPC. This simulation is scheduled to be permanently terminated, and when it goes dark, everyone will die.”
Song Yuqing quietly crushed the note in her palm, slipping it into her pocket. She truly hadn’t anticipated that the zombie hierarchy possessed this level of cosmic intelligence.
Processing the variables, she quickly deduced the source of the leak: Wan Youzhi must have utilized his prophetic mutation to access the system’s baseline reality.
But this close call radically shifted her tactical perspective. Song Yuqing realized that attempting to bury the truth was a failing strategy; it would be significantly safer to officially declassify the data to the public as soon as possible. The earlier the colony understood their existential reality, the faster they could fortify their psychological defenses, preventing the zombie coalition from weaponizing the truth against them.
She needed to meticulously craft a narrative to break the news to the community. She wanted to emphasize that regardless of whether they inhabited a material universe or a virtual simulation, their lives, their emotions, and their daily struggles belonged exclusively to them. Above all, she had to aggressively downplay the paralyzing implications of the word “virtual.”
Just as she lost herself in the complex logistics of the impending announcement, a commotion broke out at the perimeter.
Two guard espers marched into the supermarket lobby, physically carrying a literal human skeleton between them.
“Manager Song! This White Bone Demon managed to slip through the perimeter while the wall was still being patched, but we apprehended him!” The guards were buzzing with adrenaline. They had engaged countless zombies in the wastes, but they had never encountered a living corpse completely stripped of its flesh before.
Song Yuqing looked up, her jaw dropping. Wait… isn’t this Huo Bin?!
“Gagaha!” Gaha squawked in sheer astonishment, utterly baffled that the cowardly skeleton was somehow still functioning.
Huo Bin hung his bleach-white skull in shame. “Can you… can you please take me back in?”
He deeply regretted ever leaving the sanctuary of God’s Supermarket. Following his final, cowardly defection, navigating the wastes had become an incredibly brutal, lonely nightmare.
“You actually have the nerve to crawl back here?!” Master Fu’s voice suddenly boomed over the intercom, dripping with absolute contempt. Staring down at the pathetic, incompetent former store manager sent a wave of profound depression through the system’s core.
Drawn by the spectacle, a massive crowd of curious onlookers quickly formed a ring around the supermarket entrance, eager to catch a glimpse of the bizarre skeletal entity.
“Wow, a White Bone Demon is way rarer than a standard zombie!” a survivor whispered in awe.
Huo Bin felt a sharp pang of profound sorrow. Song Yuqing was truly an exceptional store manager. He had heard rumors of God’s Supermarket’s massive expansion while surviving in the wastes, but seeing the sprawling, heavily populated metropolis it had become with his own eyes was staggering. He was absolutely no match for her leadership capabilities—not by a long shot.
“God’s Community will grant you asylum,” Song Yuqing sighed, genuinely feeling a twinge of pity for the miserable skeleton.
However, the moment she authorized his residency and asked her staff which apartment block currently had an open unit, a dead, uncomfortable silence fell over the gathered crowd.
Who in their right mind would voluntarily accept a terrifying, unknown skeletal demon as their next-door neighbor?
“Just let him crash in the treehouse I used to occupy,” Shen She called out. The boy had been out for a casual stroll and had stopped to watch the drama unfold.
Hearing Shen She’s suggestion, Huo Bin instinctively snapped his skull toward the massive Chinese tallow tree towering near the courtyard, eyeing the small, weathered tent pitched high up in its branches.
“I… I think I’d be perfectly fine living in a treehouse,” the skeleton mumbled.
Song Yuqing hesitated, her brow furrowing. “Isn’t that a bit harsh?” Forcing Huo Bin—the original, founding manager of the establishment—to live outside like a feral animal in a tree felt uncomfortably close to bullying, regardless of his past cowardice.
“Make him live in the damn tree! Listen to me very carefully, Song Yuqing: if you assign that pathetic worm a proper apartment, I will permanently revoke your access to the second-floor café portal, and you will never set eyes on that beautiful ocean ever again!” Master Fu roared over the speakers. “Huo Bin abandoned his post once, twice, three separate times! Letting him sleep in a tree is a monumental act of mercy!”
The corners of Song Yuqing’s mouth twitched uncontrollably.
Hearing Master Fu’s absolute ultimatum, Liu Xiaona nodded in firm agreement. Besides, the heavy-duty tent secured in the branches wasn’t exactly small; it was structurally sound and relatively comfortable. At the very least, it beat sleeping in the radioactive mud.
Huo Bin frantically raised four bony fingers into the air. “I’ll take the treehouse! I swear to you, I will never, ever attempt to sneak out of God’s Supermarket again!”
“Hmph. As if anyone actually cares whether you run away or not. You act like your existence holds significant system value,” Master Fu snorted coldly.
“Alright,” Song Yuqing conceded. “The treehouse is yours.”
Late that night, while the core supermarket staff and the executive think tank were locked in a closed-door meeting to finalize the script for their public reality-disclosure announcement, a far more terrifying, apocalyptic rumor began to sweep through God’s Community like wildfire.
During the initial skirmish at the gate, one of the folded paper squares hadn’t been intercepted by Gaha. It had tumbled away in the mud, coming to rest directly against the exposed roots of the tallow tree. And it had been scooped up by Huo Bin as he awkwardly climbed the trunk to reach his new quarters.
Huo Bin had carefully unfolded the note and read the text. Initially, he assumed it was just a bleak, nihilistic joke, completely dismissing the weight of the words. But desperate to ingratiate himself with his new neighbors and establish friendly relations, the skeleton decided to take a stroll through the camp to chat.
And to initiate a conversation, one naturally needed a compelling icebreaker.
Huo Bin casually pulled the note from his ribs, presenting it to a group of survivors lounging near a fire. “Take a look at this. I found it sitting under the tree earlier. Isn’t it bizarre? You think there’s any truth to it?”
Huo Bin didn’t actually believe a single word written on the paper; he was simply using it as conversational bait, a casual networking tactic he had picked up while surviving on the road.
The survivor who took the note read the text, his brow furrowing. His mind instantly began to connect the dots: the sudden, aggressive infiltration of the disguised zombies earlier that afternoon, Gaha frantically scrambling to gather dropped items from the dirt, and the deeply troubled, conflicted expression locked on Manager Song’s face all day…
“Wait… I literally saw the infiltrator drop this exact note with my own eyes…” the survivor whispered, his face draining of color.
“Are you saying those mutants executed a suicide run against our gates just to deliver these messages?”
“I… I don’t think it’s impossible…”
The paranoia was contagious. One person whispered it to ten; ten people frantically relayed it to a hundred.
Virtually overnight, the terrifying contents of the note infected the entire population of God’s Community.
This world is nothing more than a virtual simulation. The humans, the zombies, the very ground they walk on—everything is just a line of code programmed into a machine.
When the members of the God’s Supermarket Guard finally returned to their barracks after concluding their executive meeting, they were immediately swarmed by terrified citizens demanding answers.
The Guards, bound by their vow of secrecy, traded panicked, uncomfortable glances, their sudden, abnormal silence acting as a devastating confirmation to the crowd.
Could it actually be true?
