Chapter 14: Long Time No See, I’m Collecting Junk
Liu Xiaona was determined to stay behind at the camp and wait for Sister Qin to return, leaving Song Yuqing to trek back to Chen Town alone under the cover of night. She pushed her pace to the absolute limit, desperate to purge the decomposing corpses from her spatial inventory; she couldn’t tolerate the thought of them anchoring her down for a single second longer.
The ruined highway was swallowed by an absolute, pitch-black dark, illuminated only by the cold rays of a high moon. Under the pale moonlight, the feral silhouettes of the hunting walkers looked infinitely more terrifying.
Strangely, though the monsters bared their teeth and tracked her with ravenous eyes, they actively maintained a strict distance, refusing to cross an invisible perimeter around her.
Song Yuqing ducked her chin and quickened her stride, keeping her eyes glued to the pavement. Yet, a prickly sensation crawled across her skin. She could feel a heavy, sentient gaze drilling into her back.
By the time she finally crossed the town lines into Chen Town, pre-dawn shadows still cloaked the streets, hiding the shifting vines of mutated flora and the low groans of lurking walkers.
Her palms slicked with nervous sweat. She wasn’t terrified of the common undead or the aggressive plants anymore—she was terrified of the unknown entity that had trailed her footsteps across the entire twenty-kilometer trek.
She couldn’t be absolutely certain someone was stalking her. However, whenever she approached a cluster of local walkers, the creatures would invariably glance past her shoulder as if receiving a silent command, their milky eyes glazing over as they obediently shuffled out of her path.
Crack—!
Song Yuqing accidentally stepped squarely onto a mutated plantain leaf. The plant hissed in fury, violently throwing out its thick stems to wrap around her ankle and send her crashing to the asphalt.
A wet, guttural “Gaha…” echoed from the darkness directly behind her.
Song Yuqing scrambled to her feet, her heart hammering against her ribs as she whirled around, tightening her white-knuckled grip on her kitchen knife.
Standing beneath the shadow of a rusted streetlamp was a girl. Her skin was a deathly, translucent white, and she wore a pristine white dress shirt. Her head hung loosely at an angle, a thick curtain of long, straight black hair veiling her eyes.
“Ahhh—!”
Panicking completely, Song Yuqing hurled the kitchen knife with everything she had. The heavy steel blade flew true, burying itself squarely into the center of the girl’s forehead with a solid thud.
One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.
The pale girl didn’t drop. Instead, she slowly raised a thin, bloodless hand, gripped the handle of the kitchen knife, and casually slid the steel out of her own skull.
“Gaha~~”
Song Yuqing threw herself into a frantic roll, leaped to her feet, and bolted down the street in a blind sprint.
Suddenly, a massive shadow swept across the sky. Towering talons dropped out of the air, snagging the back of Song Yuqing’s high-tech jacket and violently hoisting her straight up into the clouds.
The terrifying sequence of ambushes happened so fast that she hadn’t even possessed the presence of mind to trigger her spatial evasion. As the buildings of Chen Town shrank into tiny blocks beneath her dangling feet, Song Yuqing felt her sanity slipping away.
She had an absolute, crippling fear of heights.
The colossal bird soared toward a high-rise, touching down smoothly on the concrete roof and gently nudging Song Yuqing onto a safe patch of gravel. The creature flapped its massive wings, arching its elegant neck to allow a young woman wearing a pair of thick, heavy-framed glasses to slide down its feathers.
“Surprised?” the newcomer asked, a brilliant smile breaking across her face as she used her index finger to push her glasses up the bridge of her nose.
It was Ruan Fanfan!
Gasping in sheer shock, Song Yuqing lunged forward and threw her arms tightly around Ruan Fanfan’s neck. They had been inseparable childhood friends, though their paths had naturally drifted after heading to separate universities.
“Yep, you still smell exactly the same,” Ruan Fanfan giggled, inhaling deeply against her shoulder.
Startled by the odd remark, Song Yuqing instantly recoiled, jumping a full meter away in alarm.
Behind them, the massive bird shook its head, letting out a soft clicking sound that sounded suspiciously like laughter.
“Relax, I haven’t turned into a monster,” Ruan Fanfan sighed, waving her off. “It’s just been a literal eternity since we last saw each other. I genuinely missed you.”
The two lifelong friends sat side-by-side on the ledge of the roof. At a quiet command, the massive bird rapidly shrank down to its natural size, fluttering up to perch obediently on Ruan Fanfan’s shoulder. Its feathers were a breathtaking, vibrant cobalt blue, highlighted by a massive, curved black beak that hooked downward like a scythe.
“Let me introduce you. This is my hyacinth macaw,” Ruan Fanfan said proudly, gently stroking the bird’s chest. “If it weren’t for her protection, I would have been zombie food on day one.”
Before the meteor shower turned the world upside down, Ruan Fanfan had worked at an exotic animal sanctuary, constantly flooding her social media feeds with selfies alongside various creatures.
“Thank you, little Macaw,” Song Yuqing said, offering a grateful smile.
“She has an official name, you know. It’s Conghui—Wisdom.”
The cobalt bird nuzzled its large head affectionately against Ruan Fanfan’s cheek, letting out a soft coo.
Slipping effortlessly back into their old dynamic, the two women took turns recounting the madness they had endured since the world ended. When Ruan Fanfan heard that Song Yuqing had been scammed by a disembodied AI named Master Fu into signing an indentured retail contract, she didn’t offer sympathy—she was profoundly envious.
To survive a landscape where every plant and animal was actively mutating into a apex predator, Ruan Fanfan had been forced to flee the sanctuary and scrape together a living as an independent information broker. She traveled between private strongholds, trading vital regional intel for basic food crates. Occasionally, she acted as a scout for the private bases, tracking down and recruiting high-tier superhumans to bolster their ranks in exchange for a premium payout.
As they were talking, a sudden, sharp sensation twinged in Song Yuqing’s mind. She could feel the spatial energy shifting; the pile of zombie corpses packed into her three-cubic-meter void was beginning to liquefy and decompose rapidly.
Oh no, the timer, she realized. She needed to get back to the shop storefront immediately to process the haul before her inventory became a permanent biohazard.
“Let’s head down to this supermarket of yours and check it out!” Ruan Fanfan declared, not even waiting for her to explain the rush.
Ruan Fanfan was brimming with absolute excitement. Owning an absolute monopoly on retail supplies in a post-apocalyptic wasteland was a fast track to becoming a legendary tycoon. She had finally hit the jackpot—she officially had a wealthy best friend!
The brilliant macaw shifted back into her massive form, crouching down to let the two women secure themselves onto her feathered back before taking off into the morning air.
At that exact moment, the sun finally crested the horizon, painting the sky with the most breathtaking sunrise Song Yuqing had ever witnessed. A soft, golden luminescence bathed the ruined landscape of Chen Town. Below them, the massive, mutated flora uncurled their leaves and stretched lazily under the light, making the infected town look like a whimsical kingdom straight out of a dark fairy tale.
Guided by Song Yuqing’s directions, Conghui glided down, landing heavily at the mouth of the alley housing God’s Supermarket. However, in the few days she had been gone, the storefront had been utterly neglected. The professional sign was choked with thick spiderwebs, and a massive, mutated arachnid was currently perched above the frame, frantically weaving silk to turn the entrance into its personal fortress.
With lightning speed, the macaw snapped her beak forward, instantly pecking the mutant spider out of existence.
“Wait… this is the grand supermarket?” Ruan Fanfan blurted out, making absolutely no effort to mask her profound disappointment.
Song Yuqing ignored the comment, her eyes dropping to the spent brass casings littered across the pavement. A wave of exhaustion hit her; she had fought off a small army of mercenaries right on this doorstep before heading to the base.
In her mind, Master Fu chimed in dryly: …You’re welcome for the invulnerability field, by the way.
Pushing open the heavy wooden door, Song Yuqing gestured to the pristine aisles. “Go ahead and look around. Pick out whatever you want; it’s on the house.”
Ruan Fanfan didn’t hesitate, immediately reaching for a package of premium instant noodles.
She pulled. The noodles didn’t budge. They felt entirely anchored to the wood.
Ruan Fanfan turned around, throwing her friend a thoroughly helpless look.
Song Yuqing quickly bypassed the security locks to prepare a hot bowl of noodles and crack open a fresh bottle of water for her friend. Once Ruan Fanfan was settled, Song Yuqing marched over to the glowing security gate and began violently unloading the massive pile of rotting corpses from her spatial void.
Gag—!
Ruan Fanfan was in the middle of slurping her hot broth when the sudden, concentrated stench of advanced decomposition hit the room. She violently choked, nearly throwing up her breakfast.
“What the hell are you doing?! Are you running a junk yard?!”
Out of the corner of her eye, Ruan Fanfan had seen a massive, gray mass materialize on the floor. She had initially assumed her friend was unloading scrap metal or salvageable machinery. Looking closer, she realized it was a literal mountain of mangled, rotting zombie corpses.
“Yep. I’m officially a professional ragpicker now,” Song Yuqing replied deadpan. Moving with the mechanical precision of a factory robot, she gripped the ankles of the corpses and systematically hurled them into the static field of the security gate one by one.
Ding~ Primary zombie.
Ding~ Intermediate zombie.
Unable to handle the stench, Ruan Fanfan scooped up her noodles and water and bolted out into the fresh air of the alley. Conghui strutted close behind her, using her massive beak to lazily snap at any stray walkers that tried to creep into the lane.
Once she finished her breakfast, Ruan Fanfan took her bird for a casual stroll around the perimeter, exploring the ruins. Chen Town had been a historic tourist hub before the apocalypse, and she had always wanted to check out the local architecture.
By the time she grew bored of sightseeing and wandered back into the shop, Song Yuqing was still stuck in the exact same position, mechanically tossing rotting bodies through the electrical field.
“You want to step in and help me out here?” Song Yuqing muttered, not even bothering to look up from the ledger.
“Haha… no thanks.” Ruan Fanfan immediately took a deliberate step backward, spinning on her heel to take Conghui out for a second walk.
Song Yuqing’s mind went entirely numb.
The moment the final corpse dissolved into a shower of white static, Master Fu’s triumphant voice boomed through the shop’s sound system.
“Congratulations to Manager Song Yuqing for absolutely obliterating her sales target for her premier month of operations!” Master Fu cheered, doing his absolute best impression of a high-energy game show host.
“Do I get a bonus milestone reward for crushing the quota?” Song Yuqing demanded, entirely prepared to squeeze the AI for every point of value she could get.
“Dun-da-da-dun~! Milestone Unlocked: You are now the proud owner of a genuine Giant Panda!”
Song Yuqing: “???”
She absolutely adored pandas, but the world was a literal post-apocalyptic wasteland. She could barely manage to scrounge together enough resources to keep herself fed; how on earth was she supposed to play zookeeper to a high-maintenance, fragile bear?!
