Chapter 17: Hedong Panda Roars
Song Yuqing had no choice but to scavenge supplies from this nightmare of a world to replenish the empty spaces on her shelves. On this point, Master Fu showed absolutely no mercy; the store displays had to remain completely full.
In just five days, it would officially mark one month since she had assumed the role of manager at God’s Supermarket. In another five days, this bizarre, post-apocalyptic reality would have existed for a full thirty days. Song Yuqing had never felt time fly so fast. Zombies, mutated flora, a completely shattered and rebuilt human order—she had foolishly assumed that things couldn’t possibly get any worse.
She wasn’t alone. Every single survivor who had made it through the night of the meteor shower shared the exact same sentiment: This has to be bedrock bottom. Things can’t get worse than this.
They were wrong, of course. This twisted new world was more than happy to teach proud humanity a brutal lesson.
Well before March, the weather had taken a severe turn. The air grew intensely hot, and the mutated plants that had been lush and thriving just days prior began to wither and crisp under a relentless, scorching sun.
When exactly had this heatwave started? Song Yuqing couldn’t pinpoint the precise moment. But by the time she resolved to venture out to Chen Town’s largest shopping mall to hunt for inventory, the relatively cool weather of the previous day had vanished without a single warning sign.
The absolute second Song Yuqing stepped past the threshold of God’s Supermarket, she felt as though her feet were on fire. The pavement was so radiatingly hot she half-joked to herself that all she needed was a sprinkle of cumin to be fully roasted.
“Move it! If you don’t go right now, the remaining stock inside that mall is going to spoil under this extreme temperature,” Master Fu urged dryly in her mind. “Go out there and salvage those supplies!”
“Why on earth am I restricted to entering a parallel universe only once a month?” Song Yuqing grumbled, genuinely unable to comprehend the restriction.
“Because you haven’t earned the proper clearance level yet.”
Song Yuqing: “…”
Beside her, Little Meat Bun gently tugged at her hand, his small black eyes wide as he tried to offer his silent encouragement.
Song Yuqing reached for an umbrella, only to realize the sun’s glare was so violently intense that a common parasol did absolutely nothing to block the heat.
Sensing its moment to shine, Little Meat Bun scrambled back inside the store, grabbed the heavy camping tent bundle, and bolted onto the street. He rapidly set up the high-tech structure and waved a frantic paw, ushering Song Yuqing inside.
Song Yuqing watched him, entirely bewildered, having no clue what the bear was trying to achieve. But the panda simply nudged her through the flap. To her absolute surprise, the interior of the tent was remarkably cool, proving infinitely more effective at blocking the thermal radiation than any umbrella.
The bear proudly puffed out its chest, shooting her a look that clearly meant, Just sit back and watch me work!
Taking a massive, deep breath, the panda began drawing the surrounding air into its lungs. His body inflated rapidly, swelling into a perfectly round, plump shape.
Song Yuqing sat cross-legged inside the tent, peeling back a section of the window curtain to stare at the bear in utter confusion. Within moments, Little Meat Bun had ballooned until he was as tall as the surrounding rooftops. His front paws, which now looked comically tiny compared to his massive, spherical body, reached down and gently hoisted the tent by its top loops as if he were casually carrying a wicker grocery basket.
As the inflated bear took off, Song Yuqing swayed gently back and forth inside her hovering shelter.
Strangely enough, not a single zombie attempted to harass them along the highway. The local undead were currently undergoing their own catastrophic trial; they were either actively liquefying into grease under the intense sun, or barely managing to survive the heat by desiccating into hardened, heat-resistant mummies.
The mutated flora had it even worse. Unlike the mobile zombies, the plants had no means of escape. They could only stand anchored to the soil, silently waiting to crisp into piles of black ash.
As for humanity? The ordinary civilians holed up deep inside underground bunkers stood a decent chance of surviving the thermal spike, though they were merely existing in misery. Meanwhile, the extreme heat made it exceptionally difficult for the superpowered elites to channel and control their elemental reserves.
Under this oppressive, suffocating glare, Song Yuqing chose to focus entirely on her own survival: gather the goods, stock the shelves, and secure her position at God’s Supermarket.
Moving with massive, sweeping strides, Little Meat Bun arrived at the entrance of Chen Town’s commercial mall before Song Yuqing could even fully get used to the cradle-like rocking of the tent.
The multi-level shopping complex was absolutely swarming with walkers. Some staggered aimlessly through the atrium, while others had collapsed against the glass partitions like melting wax figures.
Because the bear’s comically protruding belly completely blocked his downward line of sight, he failed to notice a tiny, emaciated child zombie staggering out from a blind spot. Little Meat Bun had fully intended to use his massive, juggernaut weight to shatter the glass doors and flatten the crowd inside. But the instant the small zombie dug its jagged, gray fingernails deep into his thigh, the structural integrity of his power failed. The air violently rushed out of his body like a balloon punctured by a needle.
In the final millisecond before shrinking back down to his standard size, the furious bear brought a massive paw down, slamming the child zombie flat against the pavement. An instant later, the tent Song Yuqing was sitting in crashed heavily onto the concrete.
Looking thoroughly dejected and guilty, Little Meat Bun scrambled over, carefully unzipping the flap to help Song Yuqing out of the collapsed nylon.
“I’m alright, don’t worry about it,” Song Yuqing said gently, rubbing the thick fur behind his ears. The panda leaned into her touch, barely managing to hold back its tears of frustration.
It was entirely that stupid zombie’s fault! it grumbled internally.
Up on the mall’s third floor, right next to the escalator banks, a bright orange forklift loaded down with massive pallets of bottled water sat silently in the dark. In the reflection of the glass elevator shafts nearby, a shadow shifted as a figure peered intently down at the ground floor atrium.
Once she verified that Little Meat Bun hadn’t sustained any actual injuries, Song Yuqing led the bear through the shattered glass entryway into the complex. Based on standard retail layouts, the basement level usually housed a massive supermarket, the first floor held high-end apparel brands, the second floor carried general clothing lines, and the third floor was dedicated to dining and arcade entertainment. Song Yuqing resolved to test her luck in the basement first.
However, the main staircases and escalators leading down to the grocery hub had long been overrun. The concrete steps were slick with a thick, sticky layer of decomposed bodily fluids. With the facility’s electrical grid permanently dead, the interior had degenerated into a massive, sweltering landfill—stagnant, suffocatingly hot, and drowning in absolute chaos.
Song Yuqing clamped a hand tightly over her nose, but the gesture did absolutely nothing to block the aggressive, physical assault of the stench.
Sensing the sudden, fresh scent of a living human and a healthy animal, the surrounding walkers perked up instantly, let out low snarls, and began converging on their position from every corner of the dark atrium.
Song Yuqing materialized her heavy kitchen knife, adjusting the collar of her high-tech athletic gear. She knew with absolute certainty that she lacked the physical prowess to fight her way through a dense crowd like this, but she trusted she could use her armor’s passive defense to forcibly push a path through the cluster.
“The second we hit a gap, sprint as fast as you can, Little Meat Bun,” she whispered.
The giant panda stood its ground, its large, round eyes glaring intently at the approaching wall of rotting flesh.
Inhale… exhale… inhale… exhale…
Suddenly, the bear paused and turned to look at Song Yuqing. He raised his front paws, firmly clamping them over his own ears, and thrust his chin up at her significantly.
Watching his odd movements, Song Yuqing assumed the panda was simply terrified by the snarling crowd. She freed her hand and gently reached out to stroke the back of his large head to calm him.
The bear pouted, catching her wrist with his paw. He gently but firmly guided her hand away from his head and pressed it flush against her own ear.
“Huh?” she muttered.
Little Meat Bun nodded with absolute, solemn gravity, using both paws to firmly anchor her hands over her ears.
That’s it. Keep them covered. I’m about to drop a cosmic move.
Under Song Yuqing’s bewildered gaze, the giant panda drew an impossibly deep, lung-expanding breath. In the sudden, dead silence of the atrium, he unleashed a sonic roar of such pure, catastrophic volume that every pane of glass in the storefronts instantly shattered into dust.
The wave of zombies that had been lunging forward froze dead in their tracks, entirely paralyzed by the sheer concussive force of the blast. A fraction of a second later, the massive shockwave tore through the lanes. The entire horde was violently hoisted into the air by a furious column of localized air pressure, thrown heavily in every direction, and smashed against the concrete pillars, shattering their already decaying limbs into splinters.
Song Yuqing pressed her hands as tightly as she could against her head, ducking low behind the bear’s massive bulk. The sheer vibration of Little Meat Bun’s shout had nearly knocked her off her feet.
Up on the third floor of the complex, the sudden acoustic vibration jarred the forklift, causing several heavy water barrels to roll off the pallet and crash loudly down the escalator banks.
Deep within the dark recesses of the third-floor arcade, two men violently clamped their hands over their ears in agonizing pain, huddling tightly behind the metal frame of a claw machine.
One of them was Lin Han. The other was Ah Hu, a heavy-labor psychic Lin Han had explicitly dragged out from the base to help him haul resources.
Lin Han gritted his teeth, his vision swimming from the concussive sound. “What the literal hell was that?!”
Ah Hu didn’t answer. He had no clue what kind of monster could produce a blast like that. He simply cowered tighter behind Lin Han’s frame, which only infuriated the spatial user more, prompting Lin Han to deliver a sharp, angry kick to his shin.
The two men waited in terrified silence until the final echoes of the roar completely died away. Lin Han grabbed Ah Hu by the collar, violently dragging him toward the emergency exit stairs. He was determined to see exactly what kind of entity had just leveled the ground floor.
They sprinted down the concrete steps, cautiously cracking open the heavy fire door to peer into the main atrium. The moment Lin Han’s eyes locked onto Song Yuqing’s signature silver athletic gear, his heart stopped, and he violently yanked Ah Hu back into the shadows of the stairwell.
“Song Yuqing is down there,” Lin Han hissed, his voice dropping into a dangerous whisper. “Why the hell didn’t you report her arrival to me?”
His mercenary squad had spent the morning trying to figure out how to compromise the invulnerability field around God’s Supermarket, and they had followed her out here explicitly to corner her.
Ah Hu felt a massive wave of grievance washing over him. He had honestly been trying to report it!
He explained that he had finally tracked Lin Han down in the retail sector while the boss was busy stuffing clothing crates into his spatial void. But right as he had opened his mouth to brief him, that terrifying, glass-shattering roar had blasted through the structure.
Who could have anticipated that a common woman and a random giant bear would violently break into a high-density zombie zone like this? Looking closely through the gap in the door, the woman was an exact match for the mysterious manager of God’s Supermarket they had been monitoring back at the base.
Ah Hu had initially thought he could use this supply run to show off his efficiency and earn Lin Han’s favor. Instead, that horrific sound had nearly scared him into wetting his pants, completely stripping him of his dignity.
Lin Han glared at the trembling laborer, a look of profound disgust crossing his face. If it weren’t for the fact that Ah Hu possessed a rare physical tolerance to the extreme heatwave, he never would have brought such a cowardly, useless psychic along on a major run.
Down in the atrium, Little Meat Bun let out a series of heavy, ragged gasps, his chest heaving. It had been an incredibly long time since he had channeled his vocal abilities, and the technique felt a little rusty.
Song Yuqing stared at the giant bear in absolute, breathless awe, her eyes wide as she clapped her hands in pure admiration.
“Wow! Incredible job, Little Meat Bun!” she cheered, beaming at him. “The Hedong Panda’s Roar is truly a legendary move!”
