Chapter 135: Action Begins
Song Yuqing slept relatively soundly that night, but the moment she opened her eyes, Liu Xiaona was already knocking frantically on her door.
Many residents of God’s Community hadn’t slept a wink. At the first light of dawn, they swarmed toward the storefront, pooling around the entrance. The God’s Supermarket Guards’ hesitant, uncomfortable reactions to the rumor the night before had filled the crowd with acute terror, which rapidly curdled into deep resentment. It was unclear who had started the chanting, but God’s Supermarket had instantly become the primary target for their displaced anger.
If the management of God’s Supermarket already knew the absolute truth, why had they deliberately hidden it from the census? Did they just want the survivors to keep working like obedient little slaves for the store’s profit?
Zhang Hua stood trapped within the restless crowd circling the building. The second he had returned to his quarters the previous evening, neighbors had cornered him, aggressively demanding to know if the universe was truly a virtual simulation.
He couldn’t bring himself to lie and say he didn’t know, but he also couldn’t explicitly confirm it. Operating under the assumption that Song Yuqing would formally declassify the data and explain the layout to everyone the next morning, he had tried to brush them off with a few vague, evasive remarks. Tragically, the sheer panic written across his features only validated the crowd’s worst fears.
If a rumor like this had circulated before the meteor strike, very few citizens would have credited it. They might have toyed with the philosophical concept, but it would have remained a passing, hypothetical thought.
But this was the apocalypse. Countless impossible, rule-breaking anomalies had already fractured reality, and everyone’s baseline worldviews and moral values were in a state of constant, volatile evolution.
If their universe was a total fabrication, then their entire existence was a sick joke. Since the permanent termination of their timeline was mathematically locked, why should they bother abiding by the current infrastructure? Why shouldn’t they just throw themselves into a chaotic, lawless carnival to celebrate their final days?
Zhang Hua had marched out to the square this morning intending to maintain operational order, but he quickly found himself entirely stripped of the will to command. He was still desperately trying to digest the psychological horror of Song Yuqing’s briefing himself. While his own mind could barely process the parameters, he certainly lacked the leverage to pacify a rioting crowd.
The God’s Supermarket Guard, now numbering over a hundred elite espers, could only do their best to form a physical perimeter, working frantically to suppress any localized outbreaks of violence. At this stage, that was the absolute limit of their capabilities.
Fortunately, the vast majority of the survivors were still relatively rational. They possessed a deep, foundational trust in Song Yuqing and the integrity of the storefront.
Before turning the handle of the primary entrance, Song Yuqing tried to establish a mental link with Master Fu. But after waiting in the silence of her mind for a long moment, the interface remained entirely dark.
The supervisor had vanished without a trace once again.
He hadn’t broadcasted a single line of code since the previous evening.
Liu Xiaona’s anxiety spiked over Master Fu’s sudden radio silence. The AI consistently seemed to drop offline the exact second a massive systemic crisis was about to detonate. To put it bluntly—was the entity planning to permanently cut his losses and abandon them to the purge?
“Forget about him. Even if Master Fu were online right now, it wouldn’t magically rewrite our immediate layout,” Song Yuqing comforted her gently.
At the end of the day, when the curtain began to fall, they could only rely on their own strength. Master Fu simply wasn’t one of them.
“I know,” Liu Xiaona sighed, heavily patting her chest. “It just… it makes me feel a bit abandoned.”
Beside them, Little Meat Bun and Gaha remained completely silent.
Song Yuqing threw back the heavy entryway flaps, opening the doors of God’s Supermarket. Instantly, a deafening wall of chaotic noise flooded the lobby.
“What are we supposed to do now?!” “We’re all scheduled to die anyway! You might as well unlatch the vaults and distribute the entire supermarket inventory to the public right now!”
Hearing the aggressive demand, Liu Xiaona’s temper violently flared. She began rolling up her uniform sleeves, fully prepared to march into the crowd and hunt down the individual orchestrating the chant, but Song Yuqing firmly caught her arm, holding her back.
“Everyone, please listen to me!” Song Yuqing’s voice rang out across the square, perfectly measured and calm. “It is a verified fact that we are living within a virtual program. However, this matrix isn’t some digital video game—it is a hyper-advanced doomsday simulation. When I first unearthed this data myself, my reaction perfectly mirrored yours: I felt an absolute, suffocating wave of despair and fury.
“But even if our reality is running inside a virtual program, I ask you: so what? Our lives continue to move forward exactly as they did yesterday. The environment we interact with remains completely real to our senses. Even if the underlying framework is a script, this world operates under its own rigid laws of physics, completely indistinguishable from a material universe. The programming code might be virtual, but the love we feel, the choices we make, and the grief we carry are absolutely real.”
The raging crowd fell into a brief, contemplative silence. But before the logic could settle, a harsh, mocking voice cut through the quiet.
“What is the point of spouting these beautiful philosophies?! The program is locked for termination! Everyone in this square is going to die sooner or later!”
The crowd instantly erupted into an uproar again.
“You’re acting as if we would all be immortal if we weren’t trapped inside a simulation,” Shen She noted, his youthful yet weathered voice cutting through the din with a leisurely detachment.
“Wait, he’s actually right…” a survivor murmured.
“To hell with that!” another voice barked from the center of the throng. “Are you characters seriously defending this garbage doomsday simulation?! What are your hidden motives here? Are you even part of our species, or are you just tools of the machine?!”
The second those targeted words clipped her ears, Song Yuqing knew a severe operational threat had compromised the grid. Hostile agents had successfully infiltrated the assembly.
She threw a sharp, calculated look at Little Meat Bun and Gaha. The two non-human staff members instantly locked onto the telemetry, silently slipping into the crowd toward the source of the voice. Threading through the panicked survivors, their eyes locked onto the targets: Wan Youzhi and Lin Han had covertly breached the perimeter when no one was looking.
Catching sight of the giant panda and the gargoyle closing in on their coordinates, Wan Youzhi and Lin Han immediately began weaving backward through the press of bodies. It was time to execute an evacuation; their strategic objective of fracturing the community’s morale had already been flawlessly achieved.
Shen She, Zhang Yimiao, and Xiaoyi spotted the core staff breaking into a hunt and instantly lunged forward to provide combat support.
The rest of the crowd remained completely hyper-focused on Song Yuqing, desperately waiting to hear her next statement. Almost no one registered the life-or-death pursuit unfolding at the fringes of the square. Wan Youzhi and Lin Han rapidly led Shen She’s detachment out toward the perimeter walls of God’s Community, where an aggressive, high-tier elemental skirmish instantly detonated.
Liu Xiaona shifted her stance, shielding Song Yuqing’s flank to ensure no radicalized survivors could launch a physical assault against the manager or the storefront.
“Everyone!” Song Yuqing continued her address, her voice swelling with conviction. “What truly dictates the value of our existence isn’t the final day the world ends, but how we choose to navigate each day leading up to it. No matter what algorithmic conclusion is hardcoded into the system, I desperately hope that within this limited window, we retain our capacity to love, to build, and to fight for change. I refuse to believe our lives are meaningless. We owe an honorable stand to every companion we have lost to the meteorites and the zombie hordes!”
As her words began to steady the crowd’s volatile emotions, the Base Zero research experts stepped up to the podium, carefully presenting a massive, partially assembled rectangular monolith.
They took the microphone to hammer home the final point: since their universe functioned as a doomsday simulation, there had to be a mathematical method to override the purge conditions. Just like a highly complex strategy game, an elite tier of players could always isolate a path to achieve a perfect completion run. And the research division had already mapped out the baseline solution. According to their calculations, by systematically locating and fusing every single remaining meteorite fragment on the planet, the doomsday parameters could be permanently alleviated. They would take the fight one step at a time, forcing the system to surrender the key to saving their world.
Ultimately, the logic of the think tank broke through the community’s panic. The survivors slowly began to disperse across the sectors, privately processing the reality as they sought out their own personal anchors to keep moving forward.
They were still breathing, and their lives had to go on.
Now that the internal trust crisis had been neutralized, Song Yuqing, Liu Xiaona, and Shen She sprinted out toward the perimeter to link up with the tracking detail.
They found Little Meat Bun, Gaha, Zhang Yimiao, and the rest of the squad sitting exhaustedly against the base of the reinforced wall. Lin Han had successfully weaponized his unique spatial void mutation at the last second, cleanly shifting himself and Wan Youzhi out of the sector.
“Catch your breath quickly,” Song Yuqing instructed, her eyes hardening as she surveyed her tired fighters. “We are initiating our tactical counter-operations right now.”
She no longer cared whether Master Fu was online to log her stats; she had an immense mountain of real-world logistics to execute immediately.
Moments later, Liu Xiaona called out from the primary terminal inside the supermarket. Her screen was flashing with a massive influx of high-tier distress signals broadcasting directly from Survival Base No. 3, Base No. 8, and Base No. 11.
The unified mutant legions were launched into a full-scale assault against the human strongholds.
“It’s highly probable the horde is executing a simultaneous strike against every active base on the continent,” Shen She noted quietly, standing right behind Song Yuqing as he skimmed the incoming coordinate logs.
Song Yuqing froze. So it’s actually happening.
Right on cue, the computer terminal began to unleash a relentless, rapid succession of ping alerts. Ever since Nanjiao had repaired the subterranean communication root lines across the southern wastes, the system had never intercepted hundreds of thousands of incoming data packets simultaneously like this.
Every single message was a desperate, panicked prayer, begging God’s Supermarket to deploy emergency supply drops and reinforce their defensive lines with military assets.
Song Yuqing had always known this catastrophic day would eventually overwrite their peace, but she had never anticipated the script would deploy it this morning. One crisis after another had fractured their grid, and her energy reserves were already severely strained, even though afternoon hadn’t even claimed the quadrant.
“Move out,” she ordered firmly. “We deploy immediately.”
Her logistics were already perfectly prepared. Master Fu’s recent upgrade had expanded her personal pocket dimension until her void was large enough to house an entire metropolis; it was time to weaponize that massive spatial capacity.
Moving with absolute efficiency, Song Yuqing pulled Liu Xiaona, Little Meat Bun, Gaha, Nanjiao, Shen She, Zhang Yimiao, Xiaoyi, and the elite core of the Guard into her dimension. They were acting as the vanguard for the multiversal aid deployment.
“Wait, what about our sector?!” Xie Hao barked, frantically pointing a finger at his own chest and then at Xie Zetian. “Are we being left out of the rotation? You’re only taking a handful of fighters to reinforce multiple bases?!”
“Your detachment holds the line right here,” Song Yuqing countered, her voice dropping into a solemn register. “Take command of the remaining residents and fiercely defend the borders of God’s Community.”
After all, the main, absolute bulk of the high-tier zombie horde was mathematically locked to march straight for the supermarket itself.
“Ensure every citizen is fully armed and prepared to fight at a moment’s notice.”
The second the final command left her lips, a sudden wave of surprise rippled through Song Yuqing’s chest. She could hardly credit that she was the individual articulating such powerful, militaristic orders.
She had truly changed a great deal since the night the world collapsed.
