Chapter 12: Let’s Fight the Zombies!
Standing at the very back of the queue the previous night were a handful of ordinary civilians who hadn’t managed to purchase any supplies. Lacking superpowers, they were completely incapable of defeating zombies on their own. They had lined up simply to try their luck, holding onto a sliver of hope.
In fact, some had even been prepared to morally blackmail Song Yuqing into giving them food out of pity.
However, the moment they witnessed the young boy proudly accept his weapons and steel himself to hunt zombies for his own survival, the adults completely lost the nerve to beg. If a mere child was willing to put his life on the line and fight, how could they use their lack of superpowers as an excuse to beg for sympathy?
Besides, hadn’t they already tried the alternative? They had crawled into the base begging for protection, only to be rewarded with the lowest, most degrading status in the compound.
“I want to buy a kitchen knife on credit too! And an electric baton!” an ordinary man at the back of the line suddenly shouted.
“Shh! Keep your voice down!” Xie Hao warned, his brow furrowing as he glared at the speaker.
“We need weapons to fight the zombies too…” the other civilians at the back of the crowd whispered in rapid succession.
“Alright!” Song Yuqing called out, deeply moved by their sudden resolve. Human resilience truly was a remarkable thing. “One kitchen knife and one electric baton for each person. The price is exactly one zombie each.”
By the time the crowd finally dispersed, every single piece of gear Song Yuqing had brought was completely gone. The only things left in her possession were three modest food rations, reserved for herself, Liu Xiaona, and Xie Hao for the coming day.
Song Yuqing eagerly flipped through her ledger, her heart hammering with excitement. This trip to the base had been incredibly worthwhile. In just a single night, she had secured advanced orders for over a hundred zombies, completely smashing her initial sales target.
With the darkness deep over the wasteland, the entrance to Base No. 27 finally returned to its quiet, deserted state.
Song Yuqing pitched her high-tech tent and prepared to turn in for the night. However, Liu Xiaona lingered right outside the flap, looking so dejected that she felt entirely too guilty to go to sleep and leave him out there.
“Why haven’t you gone back to your block yet?” she asked, poking her head out.
“I’m waiting for Sister Qin,” he muttered.
“Is it possible she already slipped back into the compound while we were distracted by the crowd?” Even as she offered the theory, Song Yuqing’s gut told her something was wrong.
Urged by Song Yuqing to get some rest, Liu Xiaona finally trudged back inside the base. Instead of heading straight to his own cot, he took a detour to Sister Qin’s tent. Inside, one of her roommates was still awake, happily devouring a pack of instant noodles she had borrowed on credit from Song Yuqing.
“Excuse me, have you seen Sister Qin?” Liu Xiaona asked urgently.
“She refused to follow the captain’s explicit orders during the mission,” the roommate grumbled between mouthfuls, looking thoroughly annoyed. “I have no idea where she ran off to.”
“Where exactly did she get separated from the rest of the squad?”
“Uh, I forgot.”
“She’s incredibly powerful, why are you losing sleep over her?” another roommate chimed in, curling her lips in disdain.
Liu Xiaona hadn’t been overly anxious at first, but midnight had come and gone with absolutely no sign of her. This was completely unlike Sister Qin. No matter how brutal or grueling a scavenging run was, she always made it a point to return to the compound promptly to check in on him. The two of them looked out for one another like real siblings.
“Who knows? Maybe she got slaughtered by the horde…” the roommate eating the noodles remarked, casually drawing a finger across her neck and sticking her tongue out.
“Shut your mouth!” Liu Xiaona snapped fiercely. “Keep talking nonsense, and I’ll make sure Song Yuqing blacklists you from ever buying food again!”
The room fell instantly silent, the roommates pulling back obediently. They were well aware that while the corrupt base supermarket existed to exploit them, Song Yuqing’s God’s Supermarket was their literal savior.
Song Yuqing tossed and turned inside her tent all night, unable to catch a wink of sound sleep. She kept her ears strained, tracking every faint movement outside the fabric walls, praying for Sister Qin’s safe return.
Before the first rays of dawn could even break the horizon, the various superhuman squads inside the base were already gearing up and heading out. Even Xie Hao took advantage of his early shift change to march out into the ruins to hunt. Every single person moved with a manic, driven energy—a stark contrast to the dull, defeated lethargy that usually plagued the camp.
Chen Ke had spent the night wrapped up in Lin Han’s luxury quarters in the villa district, completely oblivious to the massive shift that had occurred within the tent cities and labor blocks. When she stepped outside that morning, her jaw practically dropped at the sight of the heavy hunter teams marching out of the gates. It was the absolute first time a scavenging team had set out at the crack of dawn without her having to scream at them or threaten to cut their rations.
Song Yuqing sat cross-legged at the entrance of her tent like a living lucky cat statue. Virtually every single survivor who passed by her camp flashed her a massive, genuine smile and called out a warm greeting.
She felt like a certified celebrity, her facial muscles growing stiff from returning so many smiles.
A handful of refugees who had missed out on the black market the previous night crowded around her, desperately asking when she would be restocking or demanding the exact geographic coordinates of God’s Supermarket in Chen Town.
Song Yuqing made a mental note to find a way to print physical maps. She needed to clearly mark the location of the main store and hand them out to the base populace. Although she and Liu Xiaona had verbally agreed that he and Sister Qin would act as her primary logistics team—driving back and forth to transport supplies to the base and haul zombie corpses back to the store—what if something unforeseen happened to them?
“Good morning, Sister Song!”
The cheerful shout violently broke her train of thought. She looked up to see the thin little boy from the construction site marching past. He was clutching his heavy kitchen knife in one hand and his high-voltage electric baton in the other.
For a kid his age, hauling a lethal blade and a military-grade stun baton looked profoundly surreal no matter how she sliced it.
“Stay sharp out there. Be careful,” Song Yuqing called out warmly, watching his small back vanish into the trees.
“Song Yuqing! Sister Qin never made it back last night!”
The moment the boy cleared the path, Liu Xiaona came sprinting over, his face pale with panic.
“Take a breath, Liu Xiaona. Try not to panic,” she urged, forcing a steady tone. “Sister Qin is incredibly strong. I’m sure she’s blessed with good fortune.”
Just as she managed to soothe the burly man and send him off to join the hunt, a large group of ordinary civilians armed with their new kitchen knives and batons swarmed her tent once again.
“Manager Song, can you bring us some more intimidating weapons next time?” one asked eagerly.
Song Yuqing agreed without a moment’s hesitation. She had already decided that during her next monthly trip to the parallel world, she would buy out a massive stock of protective athletic wear like the outfit she was currently wearing. If ordinary, unawakened civilians wanted to survive the horrors of the apocalypse, that gear would be an absolute game-changer.
By eight o’clock in the morning, the sprawling tent cities and labor sectors of Base No. 27 were completely ghost towns. The superpowered elites had formed massive, coordinated hunting parties to clear the undead, while a substantial wave of ordinary civilians followed closely in their wake, brandishing their blades and batons in the hope of picking off stray walkers or securing leftovers.
The primary base construction zone, which was usually a chaotic, bustling hive of slave labor, sat completely abandoned under the morning sun.
What the hell is going on here? Do these people suddenly not want to eat anymore?
Lin Han, who was currently conducting a formal inspection of the perimeter alongside Chen Ke, felt a deep sense of unease as he stared at the scattered, empty workstations.
“Where the hell is everyone? Where are my workers?” Lin Han demanded, violently grabbing the shoulder of an elderly woman who was struggling to haul a heavy burlap sack of soil by herself.
The old woman had desperately wanted to follow the horde-hunters to earn real food, but she had arrived too late to secure weapons on credit the night before. Left with no alternative, she had been forced back into the grueling hard labor detail.
“They… they all went out into the ruins to fight zombies,” she stuttered, trembling under his grip.
“Oh?” Lin Han muttered, releasing her.
He didn’t think much of the development. He simply assumed the starving, powerless dregs of the camp had grown desperate enough to try mimicking the superpowered elites, foolishly believing they could easily secure a full meal.
I just hope enough of them survive to come back, Lin Han thought coldly. After all, someone still had to stay behind to do the dirty work around the compound.
Chen Ke, however, looked deeply anxious. “Brother Lin, these people are openly flouting the regulations you put in place. The moment those squads return, I’ll personally handle the discipline and force them back into their proper places.”
“Good.” Lin Han smiled, thoroughly satisfied with her subservient efficiency. He made a mental note to finally grant her permission to move into one of the luxury villas.
Inside her quiet tent, Song Yuqing lay flat on her back, her mind racing as she compiled a massive mental shopping list: Protective gear, heavy weapons, packaged foods, medical crates… what else am I missing?
She was going to pull in an absolute mountain of zombie corpses, which meant she could convert them into a staggering balance of points to buy whatever she wanted.
But a logistical nightmare suddenly hit her. Is a single vehicle even going to be enough to haul that many bodies?
The previous afternoon, Liu Xiaona had confidently vowed that he would secure a heavy vehicle to load the zombies and help her transport the haul back to Chen Town. But where on earth was a rogue hunter supposed to acquire a functioning truck inside a heavily monitored base?
At exactly two o’clock in the afternoon, the roaring chug of an engine answered her question.
Liu Xiaona had successfully dragged a heavy sack of fresh zombie kills back to her camp earlier, promising he would secure a ride. True to his word, he had delivered.
He had tracked down the elderly mechanic who managed the heavy machinery for the construction blocks. After quietly bribing the old man with a hefty sum of ten crystal cores, Liu Xiaona had demanded an impromptu, on-the-spot driving lesson.
“You absolute blockhead! Turn the wheel!” the old man had screamed, cursing him out the entire time.
Now, Liu Xiaona was at the helm of a massive, roaring industrial tractor. Sweat poured down his face as he white-knuckled the steering wheel, carefully weaving the heavy machine around the perimeter structures and scattered pedestrians before rolling triumphantly out of the front gates.
Chug-chug-chug-chug…
Sitting high up in the exposed metal cockpit, the burly man looked utterly hilarious. The sheer momentum of the heavy tractor caused the flesh on his face to vibrate rhythmically, and Song Yuqing burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter at the sight.
“Stop the vehicle right now! Where do you think you’re driving that?!”
A sharp, furious shriek cut through the air. Chen Ke had suddenly materialized at the tree line, pointing an angry finger as she marched toward the tractor.
Liu Xiaona’s entire body went rigid with panic. Startled by her sudden appearance, his hands jerked on the controls, causing the massive steel tractor to veer wildly and almost plow headfirst into the base’s reinforced guardrails.
