Chapter 10: Base No. 27 (Part 2)
If it weren’t for the zombies constantly shuffling past, Song Yuqing might have actually fooled herself into thinking she was out on a spring picnic. The season was truly in its prime.
Unfortunately, her pleasant mood didn’t last long. The wild foxtail grass lining the road had mutated, turned vicious, and started aggressively picking on travelers.
The overgrown weeds lashed out like massive, sweeping brooms, repeatedly thumping against Song Yuqing. While her parallel-world athletic gear shielded her perfectly from the undead, it offered zero protection against the aggressive flora.
Griping, Song Yuqing swung her kitchen knife, hacking away at the grass blocking her path. But the severed stalks simply shattered into countless sharp, wooden thorns that swept across her face.
Before long, her exposed skin was covered in stinging scratches. Learning her lesson, Song Yuqing protectively covered her head with her arms and ducked her chin, carefully weaving her way through the brush. Although she didn’t have the exact coordinates of the sanctuary, she kept her eyes glued to the dirt, following the deep vehicle tire tracks pressed into the road.
She kept a steady, cautious pace, but night had already fallen by the time the perimeter of Base No. 27 came into view.
Rather than approaching in the dark, Song Yuqing materialized a sleek, milky-white camping tent from her spatial void. She furnished the interior with her premium inflatable mattress and a plush, soft duvet, then threw her arms and legs out, collapsing into a comfortable, deep sleep.
The night was remarkably quiet, save for the eerie rustling of mutated vines outside. The plants repeatedly tried to puncture the fabric of her shelter, but the high-tech tent easily deflected every attempt.
Yep. Free white noise, she thought drowsily.
Under the rhythmic, hypnotic scratching of the carnivorous plants, Song Yuqing drifted into a peaceful slumber.
The next morning, well before dawn, a barrage of angry shouting violently jolted Song Yuqing awake.
“Why should we?!” a voice protested.
“Because those are the rules! Every single crystal core must be turned over to the base supermarket! If you’re caught absorbing cores in secret, you will be severely punished!”
Song Yuqing sat up instantly. The moment the word “supermarket” cut through the air, her brain automatically flagged it as store business.
Crawling out of her tent, she scanned the treeline and spotted a group of people shoving and arguing in a clearing a short distance away. After quickly packing the tent back into her spatial inventory, Song Yuqing marched toward the woods. As she neared the clearing, a group of eight menacing-looking men brushed past her, shooting her dirty, predatory glares.
“What are you looking at?!” Song Yuqing snapped, glaring right back at them.
When she was a little girl, her parents had taught her a vital lesson: whenever someone looks at you with malice, you stare them down with twice the ferocity.
“Song Yuqing?!”
Song Yuqing spun toward the familiar voice and gasped. It was Liu Xiaona!
The burly man was half-kneeling in the dirt, drenched in blood, desperately cradling an unconscious figure in his arms.
“What on earth happened?” Song Yuqing cried, sprinting over to his side.
“Those absolute scumbags!” Liu Xiaona growled, glaring at the retreating backs of the thugs. His teeth clicked in pure rage. If he hadn’t been anchored down by the dying man in his arms, he would have broken their jaws long ago.
The person he was holding was a frail, deathly pale old man. A horrific, jagged laceration ripped across his chest, stretching all the way from his shoulder down to his ribs.
“How did he get hurt like this? And where are Sister Qin and the others?”
Liu Xiaona’s broad shoulders slumped like a deflated balloon.
Ever since the five of them had arrived at this miserable base, absolutely nothing had gone right.
He explained that the day they arrived, he and Sister Qin had headed straight to the villa district to check out the official Base Supermarket. While the storefront looked bright, sleek, and modern, the interior was practically barren—it didn’t hold a candle to the massive inventory inside God’s Supermarket. Outside the entrance, several ragged, skeletal laborers were kneeling in the dirt, begging desperately for anyone to spare a scrap of food.
True to his nosy, soft-hearted nature, Liu Xiaona had gone over to investigate. It turned out these refugees were ordinary civilians without superpowers who worked the base’s hard labor details. Because they had failed to meet their grueling physical quota for the day, management had docked their food entirely. Out of desperate frustration, the workers had muttered a few curses, which were unfortunately overheard by the tyrannical owner of the base supermarket.
Amused by their misery, the owner forced the men to kneel outside his doors and beg for their meals as a public spectacle. He decreed that if no one threw them food within twenty-four hours, they would be permanently exiled from the base.
But because everyone in the compound survived strictly at the whim of the executive boss, not a single soul was willing to risk their own skin to extend a helping hand to those who had crossed him.
The more Liu Xiaona spoke, the more his voice shook with rage, and Song Yuqing’s heart grew increasingly cold. The world was fracturing so rapidly that such blatant, unchecked cruelty could be practiced out in the open.
Unable to watch them starve, Liu Xiaona had dragged Sister Qin out into the wasteland to hunt zombies and dig out crystal cores. They exchanged their haul at the desk for food rations, immediately splitting their earnings to feed the kneeling beggars. However, their raw combat efficiency drastically outshone the other hunter teams on the payroll, quickly breeding intense jealousy among the local factions.
The veteran hunters began actively ostracizing them, deliberately splitting Liu Xiaona and Sister Qin up and assigning them to separate, hostile squads. Even Aunt Zhang, Ai, and the wind-user had been pressured into submission; terrified of being associated with the outcasts, they now pretended not to know them, completely ignoring Liu Xiaona and Sister Qin whenever they crossed paths.
Their existence inside the base had become infinitely more dangerous than surviving out in the wild.
During their latest scavenging run, this frail old man—who possessed a superpower but lacked the physical stamina of the younger elites—was universally detested by the squad as a liability. Watching him struggle, Liu Xiaona had secretly slipped the old man a harvested crystal core, telling him to absorb it to boost his strength.
Tragically, the rest of the squad caught them in the act. Without a single word of explanation, they violently beat the old man half to death, shouting that they were “clearing out the dissidents on behalf of the supermarket boss.”
Liu Xiaona was choked with bitter guilt. He had stepped away to use the restroom for only a few minutes, returning only to find the old man broken and bleeding in the dirt.
Song Yuqing stared down at him, completely at a loss for words. In a horrific situation like this, empty words of comfort were entirely useless.
Reaching into her spatial void, she pulled out a stash of clean bottled water and packaged food, pressing them firmly into Liu Xiaona’s bloody palms. She hadn’t thought to bring medical supplies with her on this trip, so beyond providing basic sustenance, she was entirely powerless to heal the old man’s wounds.
A grim realization settled into her mind: her supermarket inventory was missing a vital category. Medicine. She made a firm mental note that during her next monthly trip to the parallel universe, she would prioritize buying out an entire pharmacy.
Liu Xiaona stared blankly at the clean water and food in his hands. Suddenly, he snapped his head up, his bright eyes locking onto Song Yuqing with a sudden spark of intensity.
“Director Song… I have a crazy plan. Do you want to hear it?”
Song Yuqing raised an eyebrow. “I’m all ears.”
“I want to secretly act as your broker inside the compound. I’ll convince the refugees and rogue hunters to sell their zombie kills to us instead. Your store only requires the actual bodies, right? You don’t care about the crystal cores.”
Liu Xiaona didn’t ask for a single point of commission or a cut of the supplies. He simply felt that rather than letting everyone get crushed under the heel of the tyrannical Base Supermarket, it was worth taking a massive gamble. This plan wouldn’t just save starving people—it would completely sabotage the corrupt thugs who treated the base supermarket like their personal kingdom.
Song Yuqing agreed without a moment’s hesitation. It was a perfect win-win situation.
The two quickly coordinated, agreeing to meet outside the base perimeter at dusk, with Liu Xiaona promising to bring Sister Qin along to help manage the logistics.
Song Yuqing helped Liu Xiaona carry the wounded old man back to the base gates. Once Liu Xiaona disappeared inside the compound, Song Yuqing stayed behind, opting to wait out the day in the open. She materialized her inflatable mattress on the grass right outside the fence, lying down leisurely to watch the clouds drift by while swinging her feet.
Suddenly, a strange sensation pricked at her skin.
Sensing a heavy gaze, she glanced up and locked eyes with the one-armed guard posted at the fence.
“Hey,” the guard called out, his eyes glued to the plush mattress. “Give me that bed, and I’ll grant you free entry into the base. No questions asked.”
Song Yuqing offered a flat smile. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
The guard blinked, thoroughly stunned. It was the first time since the apocalypse began that he had encountered someone who actively refused to enter the sanctuary. His arrogant, thuggish demeanor faded slightly, replaced by genuine curiosity.
“Who exactly are you?”
“I’m the manager of God’s Supermarket,” Song Yuqing announced smoothly. “I’m out here trading premium food and survival supplies in exchange for zombie corpses. And as a bonus—my customers get to keep the crystal cores for themselves.”
The guard’s eyes went completely wide. He could readily believe that a woman dressed this well possessed a massive stockpile of food, but he couldn’t comprehend the trade logic. Who on earth would want a useless, rotting zombie shell after the valuable power-core had already been dug out?
“Are you serious? You really don’t require the crystal cores?”
Song Yuqing nodded firmly. “Absolutely serious. So if you want real food, start bringing me bodies and let’s do business.”
The guard’s head instantly dropped like a withered flower. He didn’t possess any spare cores, and he had obviously never thought to collect foul, decomposing zombie meat. Who in their right mind would hoard corpses?
Song Yuqing’s gaze drifted to his missing arm, noting that at least half of his shoulder joint was completely gone.
“What happened to your arm?” she asked quietly.
“Got nipped by a walker,” the guard grunted carelessly. “So I hacked it off myself.”
Song Yuqing suppressed a shudder. He was an incredibly ruthless man; she couldn’t even begin to fathom the sheer willpower required to survive such an ordeal.
Meanwhile, back in Chen Town, a crowd had gathered outside the reinforced walls of God’s Supermarket.
Lin Han stood at the front, flanked by five armed mercenaries. He pounded furiously against the front door, but his fists hit solid, unyielding metal. The entrance didn’t budge a millimeter.
Losing his patience, Lin Han barked a harsh command. “Open fire! Blow the door down!”
The mercenaries raised their rifles and unleashed a hail of bullets. But it was entirely futile. The moment the ammunition struck the storefront’s invisible perimeter, the kinetic energy vanished, and the flattened lead slugs simply clattered harmlessly onto the pavement.
Lin Han stared at the pile of spent brass, a dark realization dawning on him. So that’s how it is. It wasn’t that Song Yuqing possessed godlike personal strength—it was the building itself that was anomalous. The structure of God’s Supermarket obeyed its own laws.
“Boss… this place is creepy. It’s straight-up supernatural,” one of the mercenaries muttered, his hands trembling slightly as he reloaded.
“No shit! I don’t need you to tell me that!” Lin Han snarled viciously, kicking a piece of debris out of his path. “Pack it up! We’re heading back to the base!”
Since he couldn’t force his way into the stronghold, he would simply have to pivot his strategy. He would wait for Song Yuqing to return, then use a calculated mix of brutal coercion and lavish inducements to force her into compliance. There were a million ways to break a weak woman, and he would ensure she willingly handed over the keys to God’s Supermarket one way or another.
