Chapter 125: The World of Night (Part 2)
Nanjiao and the Xie brothers had initially set out to locate the experts and administrators who had mysteriously vanished from Base Zero. They did manage to track them down outside the perimeter, but before they could secure them, they were unexpectedly ambushed by the mutant coalition. Disguised flawlessly as human survivors, the high-tier zombies had made easy captures of the scouting party. Instead of standard ropes, the captors had bound them tightly with heavy-duty steel cables, rendering Nanjiao and the Xie brothers completely helpless prisoners.
As for the experts and leaders who had been taken prior, they had been systematically tricked into stepping outside the safety of the base by the deep-cover zombies masquerading as their fellow citizens. Once past the gates, they were completely trapped; the open desert spanning a hundred miles around Base Zero had become the undisputed territory of the undead.
After listening to the grueling complaints and bitter curses of Nanjiao and the Xie brothers, Song Yuqing fell into a somber silence. The mutant horde hadn’t executed the captives immediately. It was obvious they were trying to extract something valuable from them.
“They’re after the meteorite fragments,” one of the captured research experts confirmed.
“But what about Lin Han? Why on earth is a human hanging out with a legion of zombies?” Song Yuqing pressed, thoroughly bewildered by the dynamic. After completing her horrific evolution into a half-human, half-zombie alpha, Chen Ke had clearly despised Lin Han to death. Why would she suddenly agree to form a joint coalition with him? And were her own parents actively being manipulated by Chen Ke’s vanguard?
Nanjiao and the others could offer absolutely no insight into her questions. At this stage, their collective intelligence regarding the high-tier undead was simply too sparse. Overnight, the zombies had become entirely unpredictable, completely abandoning their baseline, mindless hunger for human flesh.
However, the experts and administrators who had been held hostage in the desert camp for several days could definitively confirm one critical weakness: the relationship between Chen Ke, Lin Han, and Wan Youzhi was far from harmonious. Although they had brokered some tier of tactical agreement, their day-to-day cooperation was incredibly volatile. After all, during their time in the pens, the prisoners had done nothing but listen to the trio violently argue. In fact, it was during a particularly explosive shouting match between Lin Han and Chen Ke that the spatial fissure had ripped open, swallowing the hostages into the void.
Song Yuqing’s curiosity flared, a sudden urge to gather intelligence hitting her. “What exactly were they fighting about?” She looked at the speaking expert with intense anticipation, sensing that the key to breaking the entire doomsday deadlock was buried right here in their petty drama.
The expert shook his head, a look of sheer disbelief crossing his face as if he still couldn’t credit the absurdity of what he had witnessed.
Nanjiao eagerly cut in to explain. “Chen Ke was adamant about keeping us alive, confident that she could eventually break our resolve and extract the coordinate codes for the meteorite vaults. Lin Han, on the other hand, argued that harboring hostages was a useless waste of resources and insisted that the sooner we were executed, the better. But that prophet fellow, Wan Youzhi, backed Chen Ke’s play, so Lin Han was completely blocked from killing us.
“The morning the layout fractured, I woke up to Lin Han and Chen Ke screaming at each other over a single roasted pigeon. Apparently, that specific bird was a high-tier mutation whose meat could significantly accelerate a zombie’s evolution or permanently boost an esper’s energy metrics.”
“Yeah! The two of them literally turned our lives into a game over a piece of poultry,” Xie Hao laughed, a hollow, speechless amusement tracking his voice. “They decided that whoever could beat us the fastest would win the right to consume the roasted meat.”
“And while the two of them were actively competing to thrash us, Lin Han suddenly weaponized his black hole mutation, accidentally swallowing our entire group into the void,” Nanjiao gritted his teeth, his temper flaring at the memory. They never should have been forced to endure such a ridiculous sin.
Song Yuqing stood entirely speechless. Were Chen Ke and Lin Han simply that unhinged and playful? Or had Lin Han deliberately provoked the alpha zombie to manufacture a chaotic window so he could eliminate Base Zero’s administrative elite without facing direct blowback from his allies?
She let out a cold, sharp snort. She had absolutely no intention of letting Lin Han get his way. A sudden, fierce urge ignited in her chest to track down every single survivor Lin Han had ever banished into the multiverse, form a massive coalition, and beat the man to a bloody pulp—or at least force him to experience the indescribable terror of being discarded into the void himself.
“Gaha…”
Gaha, who had been listening to the tragic account in silent contemplation, suddenly lifted her claw to point toward the ceiling. High above them, cutting straight through a vibrant curtain of the aurora borealis, the live reflections of their exact group were being broadcasted in vivid detail. The specific frame housing their images was a perfect circle, manifesting significantly larger and brighter than the fractured rectangular surveillance feeds rippling across the rest of the night sky.
“This dimension is deeply unsettling. Where on earth are we anchored?” Nanjiao muttered, staring up at the celestial projection as his skin crawled. Crime shouldn’t even be mathematically possible within a society like this; after all, given the omniscient surveillance layout, every single illicit act could easily be nipped in the bud before a citizen could even execute it.
Yet, the price was an absolute, suffocating execution of personal privacy. Looking across the feeds at what the inhabitants of this world were doing, everyone appeared to be living out their days like mindless drones, navigating a thoroughly bored, uninspiring existence with their eyes wide open.
Every survivor in the lot stared intensely at their own reflections rippling across the green hues of the aurora. For some inexplicable reason, their collective shadow began to steadily expand, inflating until it consumed a full tenth of the northern sky. Simultaneously, the thousands of other surrounding surveillance feeds began to systematically shrink and compress, reducing the native population to a mere footnote and backdrop to their own massive projection.
A thick layer of goosebumps erupted across Song Yuqing’s arms. A frantic instinct urged her to flee the open streets and sprint toward any shelter where the invisible surveillance network couldn’t track her movements.
“Come on! Move, move! Inside, fast!”
The group fled the open courtyard in a hurried panic, scrambling past the thresholds to take sanctuary inside the local iteration of God’s Supermarket.
The interior of the facility was remarkably mundane. Because the storage shelves were packed incredibly close together, the layout actually felt quite cramped and claustrophobic—a stark, disjointed contrast to the spectacular, massive neon signage blaring across the exterior.
Song Yuqing quickly partitioned their shopping list to streamline the supply run, instructing each member of the crew to browse separate rows. She was desperate to finalize her procurement tasks in this quiet reality as fast as humanly possible so they could return to the brutal, zombie-infested grid of their home world.
The merchandise aisles of this particular supermarket were meticulously categorized according to structural scale. The inventory spanned standard foodstuffs and daily provisions all the way up to highly intricate miniature blueprints. The specific section Song Yuqing had steered her shopping cart into was dedicated entirely to architectural models.
The structures displayed on the shelves were staggeringly exquisite, looking exactly like the premium sand table models showcased inside high-end real estate sales offices. Incredibly, each architectural miniature was priced at a mere 0.6 transaction points.
Refusing to waste precious time browsing the real estate layouts, Song Yuqing pushed her metal cart forward at a brisk pace.
Suddenly, a small silhouette darted out from between two towering shelves, stepping right into her trajectory. It was a young girl who looked to be roughly eight or nine years old, her hair neatly woven into two swinging braids, a pair of adorable dimples framing her face as she smiled.
Song Yuqing startled, instantly halting her cart. This was the first native inhabitant of this dark world who had actively chosen to initiate direct contact with her.
“Hello, big sister! Are you a newcomer to our sector? I’ve never caught your signature in this grid before,” the child chimed warmly.
Song Yuqing studied her features for a long moment before offering a slow nod.
The little girl’s vibrant, radiant smile struck a sudden, violent chord deep within her chest. A shocking realization paralyzed her mind: the facial structure of the child standing before her was a flawless, mirror image of her own self during her youth.
Their features were completely identical. It was structurally impossible to separate them.
Could this child… literally be me?
“What exactly is your name, sweetie?” Song Yuqing asked, her voice trembling slightly with tentative awe.
“Song… Yu… Qing!” the little girl chirped cheerfully, rhythmically bobbing her head with each syllable.
Song Yuqing cautiously dropped into a low squat to match her eye level. “Well… hello there, Song Yuqing.”
“Nice to meet you!”
“What are you doing here by yourself?” Song Yuqing pressed.
“What are you doing here by yourself?” the little girl instantly echoed back, tilting her head with a playful, mimic-like grin.
Song Yuqing couldn’t help but reach out, gently pinching the little girl’s soft, chubby cheek. She had forgotten just how adorable she used to be as a child.
“Where are your parents?”
“They’re working their shifts,” the girl replied simply.
Following a brief, gentle interrogation, Song Yuqing unraveled the reality: the little girl had trekked to the commercial terminal entirely on her own. She wasn’t attempting to purchase provisions; she was simply wandering the aisles to pass the time.
Song Yuqing’s lips curled into a soft smile. She had shared that exact trait during her youth. Back then, the convenience store her family operated had been far too cramped to explore, and a simple corner shop could never match the infinite, magical allure of a grand hypermarket.
“Listen, I’m entirely new to this quadrant and don’t understand the local layout,” Song Yuqing suggested gently. “Would you be willing to act as my personal tour guide?”
“Oh, absolutely! No problem at all, just leave it to me!” the child declared generously, puffing out her small chest.
Song Yuqing’s focus drifted for a fraction of a second, a wave of subtle confusion hitting her. Wait. I definitely wasn’t this outgoing or confident when I was eight years old. Back then, I was incredibly timid, easily startled, and completely terrified of interacting with strangers.
The little girl familiarly clasped Song Yuqing’s fingers in her own small palm, eagerly tugging her away from the aisle toward a separate bank of storage shelves.
“Are you looking to secure a new residential shelter unit?” the child chattered happily. “The layouts over in this block are infinitely nicer!”
