Chapter 13: Put the Zombies into the Space
Chen Ke crossed her arms over her chest, doing her absolute best to project a fierce, intimidating expression as she stared down the burly man standing before her.
“Why did you steal the vehicle?”
Watching from the side, Song Yuqing felt a sudden wave of familiarity. Isn’t this the exact same death stare a head teacher gives to a pair of mischievous students caught red-handed?
Liu Xiaona shot Song Yuqing a desperate, pleading look for help. Song Yuqing silently took a step back, completely removing herself from the line of fire. She had a strong suspicion that the industrial tractor had come from an incredibly sketchy, unauthorized source.
“You aren’t a registered resident of this base, are you?” Chen Ke suddenly pivoted, turning her sharp gaze directly onto Song Yuqing.
Song Yuqing could only offer an awkward, tight smile. How does a girl who looks this soft and sweet manage to make the surrounding air feel so suffocating?
“I’m just out here doing a bit of business,” Song Yuqing replied smoothly. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Liu Xiaona’s frantic, silent lip movements: Don’t tell her anything!
Liu Xiaona was practically sweating through his clothes, terrified that Song Yuqing wouldn’t be able to read his lips. Chen Ke’s absolute, fanatic loyalty to the base supermarket was completely off the charts!
“Doing business?” Chen Ke repeated, her eyes narrowing as she assessed her. A dark theory formed in her mind: this stranger had likely teamed up with Liu Xiaona to violently plunder supplies from the compound’s inventory.
Chen Ke took a heavy step closer to Song Yuqing, the toe of her boot resting right on the invisible border fence of the camp. “If you want to conduct trade within this sector, you need to clear it directly with our General Manager Lin.”
“Mr. Lin?” Song Yuqing echoed, the image of Lin Han—the greedy camera assistant who had tried to rob her shop—instantly popping into her head.
“Yes. Mr. Lin Han,” Chen Ke declared proudly, acting like the official corporate spokesperson for the monopoly. “He is the executive boss of our base supermarket.”
Song Yuqing raised an eyebrow. She had heard plenty of horror stories about the tyrannical owner of the compound’s market over the past twenty-four hours, but she hadn’t expected the grand dictator to be an old acquaintance.
“I have urgent matters to attend to today. We’ll have to discuss this another time,” Song Yuqing said cleanly. She turned on her heel and executed a perfectly neat departure.
Left behind, Liu Xiaona shot a nervous glance at Chen Ke, silently counting on his fingers as his brain scrambled to fabricate a plausible alibi.
The moment Song Yuqing walked far enough to completely clear Chen Ke’s line of sight, she stopped and knit her brows in deep thought.
So, Lin Han was the supreme ruler of the base supermarket. By selling premium rations to the local refugees, she was effectively declaring open economic warfare against his monopoly. Given Lin Han’s vindictive, predatory personality, he wouldn’t hesitate to crush her if he found out. It wasn’t that she feared his strength, but God’s Supermarket was still in its absolute infancy. It was tactically foolish to openly provoke a entrenched local tyrant before she had built up her own power.
Finding a cool, shady clearing that offered a perfect, unobstructed view of the front gates, Song Yuqing materialized her inflatable mattress and settled down to rest.
Whenever a hunter dragged a zombie corpse out of the compound, she would quietly wave them over, verify their delivery against the account book, and stamp their tabs. She made sure to give every customer a strict, hushed reminder: Keep your mouths shut. Do not let the base supermarket management find out I’m draining their workforce.
Lin Han was operating out in the open, while she was pulling the strings from the shadows. The tactical advantage was firmly hers.
As dusk began to settle over the wasteland, the squads that had left the compound at dawn began filtering back through the gates, hauling their zombie kills behind them. Not a single customer attempted to default on their debt; everyone was buzzing with excitement, eagerly anticipating their next transaction with her. The vast majority of the hunters had dug out the crystal cores, carefully burying the stones deep inside their pockets. Only a few exceptionally daring individuals took advantage of the chaotic crowds to absorb the cores directly into their bodies when they thought no one was watching.
A small cluster of unawakened, ordinary civilians—including the thin little boy—marched up to her clearing, proudly hauling two heavy zombie corpses between them. They explained that they had successfully dug a primitive trap across a known walker trail, waiting for the monsters to plunge inside before swarming them with their electric batons and kitchen knives.
“What kind of trap did you guys build?” Song Yuqing asked, her curiosity genuinely piqued.
“A bamboo spike pit,” a middle-aged man boasted, a proud smirk breaking through the heavy scratches on his face, which had clearly been carved by mutated vines.
“Manager Song… can we buy some more food on credit?” the little boy asked quietly. He looked up at her with large, earnest eyes, his clothes completely shredded from the hunt.
“Yeah,” the middle-aged man chimed in, nodding. “Only when we’ve got a full stomach do we have the raw stamina to put down more walkers.”
Song Yuqing was far from heartless. Reaching into her space, she pulled out a hearty bento box and placed it gently into the boy’s small hands. The meal had originally been reserved for Liu Xiaona, but since the burly man had been caught stealing heavy machinery, she figured he wouldn’t be able to slip out to eat anyway.
The boy stared blankly down at the warm container, glanced nervously at the adults standing beside him, and went entirely silent. He protectively pulled the bento tight against his chest, ducking his head.
Seeing the sheer hunger radiating from the rest of the group, Song Yuqing sighed and pulled out a second bento box—the one she had specifically earmarked to ensure Xie Hao’s continued loyalty.
“Please, miss… do you have anything else?” one of the laborers pleaded, his voice tight. “We’ve got a massive crew waiting in the tents. Can we please borrow a few more meals on credit?!”
Song Yuqing gritted her teeth, reaching into the absolute back of her spatial inventory to retrieve the very last bento box—the one she had left for her own dinner.
“This is the absolute last one!” she stated, holding it out.
“Thank you so much, Manager Song! We swear to God we’ll clear an entire horde tomorrow to pay you back!”
Song Yuqing smiled warmly, nodding her encouragement. She harbored an immense amount of respect for these ordinary civilians who refused to curl up and die, fighting tooth and nail to survive without the luxury of superpowers.
As the last remnants of daylight bled from the sky, Song Yuqing flipped through her ledger. Two-thirds of the outstanding debts had already been neatly crossed out.
Some customers were likely still out in the ruins pushing their luck in the dark; others had undoubtedly fallen to the horde and would never return. Such was the brutal reality of the apocalypse.
Still, she sat on her mattress, patiently waiting out the clock.
Before long, a heavy dragging sound echoed down the path. Xie Hao emerged from the treeline, hauling a massive, bulging burlap sack which he threw violently onto the grass at her feet.
“There! Down payment for my new prosthetic arm!”
Song Yuqing untied the twine and systematically counted the contents. There were exactly twenty-five zombie corpses stuffed inside. Every single body was coated in a thick, suffocating layer of gray dust, their mouths and noses completely choked with dirt.
Xie Hao aggressively dumped the rotting shells onto the grass, wanting to keep the burlap sack for his next run.
As the corpses spilled out, a sudden glint of light caught Song Yuqing’s eye. Embedded deep into the sole of one zombie’s foot was a massive, familiar golden blade.
Xie Hao noticed it too. His reflexes were surprisingly fast for a one-armed man as he reached down and violently wrenched the sword free from the dead flesh. “Ha! Finders keepers. This beauty belongs to me.”
“Wait! Hold on!” Song Yuqing gasped, her right eyelid twitching violently. “That’s Sister Qin’s signature weapon!”
Xie Hao tightened his grip on the hilt, showing absolutely zero intention of handing the steel over. He explained that he had run into this particular zombie about five kilometers away from the compound, and it had taken an immense amount of physical effort to put the creature down. Because a secondary wave of walkers had swarmed him immediately after, he hadn’t possessed the luxury of time to retrieve the blade on the spot.
To his track of mind, it didn’t matter who had owned the golden sword in the old world; he had bled for it, so it belonged to him now.
Listening to his breakdown, a heavy stone dropped into Song Yuqing’s stomach. If a premier warrior like Sister Qin had lost her primary weapon to a common walker five kilometers away, it meant she was likely in catastrophic danger—if she wasn’t already dead.
“Hand the golden sword over to me,” Song Yuqing negotiated, her voice deadly serious. “Do that, and I’ll clear the entire balance for your prosthetic limb right now.”
“No way.”
Xie Hao gently ran a hand along the flat of the metal, completely mesmerized. The golden blade seemed to possess an almost supernatural allure, dragging him into an intense, addictive fascination the longer he held it.
Watching his eerily obsessed expression, Song Yuqing’s lips twitched in discomfort. Deciding to pivot, she packed up her inflatable mattress and thrust the bundle into his remaining hand.
“Fine. Keep the sword, but you owe me a massive favor. Keep your ears to the ground and bring me any intel regarding Sister Qin’s whereabouts.”
Xie Hao greedily snatched the premium mattress. “Deal.”
“And keep a close eye on Liu Xiaona too,” she added.
Xie Hao readily agreed, humming a cheerful little tune as he happily marched back toward the gates with his new gear.
Left alone in the dark clearing, Song Yuqing looked back at the massive, towering pile of rotting zombie corpses behind her. A truly foul, stomach-churning stench of decomposition filled the air.
How the hell am I supposed to transport all of this back to Chen Town? she realized with a pang of dread.
Am I seriously going to have to stuff these rotting things directly into my personal spatial void?
Absolutely not! Song Yuqing’s entire soul recoiled at the thought.
By the time Liu Xiaona finally managed to slip past the base guards and sprint out to the clearing, the massive pile of corpses on the grass had completely vanished. Song Yuqing stood alone in the dark, her face twisted in a severe scowl as she prepared to trek back to God’s Supermarket.
“Oh, gross!” Liu Xiaona squealed, instantly faking a violent gagging motion. “You actually shoved those rotting walkers straight into your personal inventory space?!”
Forcing a playful scowl, Song Yuqing stepped forward and delivered a sharp, reprimanding knock to the burly man’s head. “Shut it. Are you alright? Did management give you a hard time?”
“I’m fine,” he grunted, rubbing his head. “I told Chen Ke and the guards that you were a wealthy merchant looking to purchase a heavy vehicle to scout the outer grid, and that I had simply ‘borrowed’ the tractor to see if you’d buy it from the base.”
It was a brilliantly crafted lie. After all, what kind of altruistic hero would steal an industrial tractor just to help a rogue merchant transport goods?
Upon hearing the cover story, Lin Han and Chen Ke had been completely left speechless. Both had universally concluded that while Liu Xiaona possessed the physical build of an elite warrior, he had the brain of an absolute blockhead.
Naturally, the stunt still carried penalties. Management had officially slashed his food privileges; his already miserable ration of two meals a day was cut down to a single fistful of rice.
“But who cares about their garbage rations anyway?” Liu Xiaona bragged, his eyes lighting up. “Director Song, you’ve got a massive stash of delicious food set aside for me back at the shop, right?!”
Song Yuqing offered an incredibly awkward smile, slowly raising her hands to shrug her shoulders.
“Actually… no. Right now, the only things occupying my spatial void are twenty-five rotting corpses.”
Liu Xiaona’s ecstatic grin instantly vanished.
Grrrrmble…
His stomach chose that exact millisecond to mount a loud, structural protest.
“Look… why don’t you just abandon this place and follow me back to God’s Supermarket?” Song Yuqing offered gently, testing the waters. She had been actively looking to recruit a dependable clerk to help manage the storefront and keep her company, and Liu Xiaona was the absolute perfect fit.
“I can’t,” he muttered, shaking his head downcast. “I have to stay right here until Sister Qin comes back.”
The moment she passed through those gates, the two of them were going to pack their bags and desert this corrupt camp together.
Song Yuqing looked at him, her chest tightening with sorrow. “Liu Xiaona… I think something terrible might have happened to her.”
She quietly recounted the details of her conversation with Xie Hao, explaining how the guard had discovered Sister Qin’s prized golden blade embedded in the foot of a walker miles away.
Liu Xiaona froze, the color completely draining from his face as he stood paralyzed in the dark.
