Chapter 19: The Former Store Manager Turned Into a White Bone Demon
The skeleton slumped in dejection, letting out what must have been his thousandth sigh over his miserable fate.
Song Yuqing scrutinized the living pile of bones with the intense curiosity of a scientist. She was genuinely baffled. Without eyeballs, how could he see? Without a cochlea, how could he hear? And without vocal cords, how on earth was he speaking?
Being stared at so intensely made the skeleton feel incredibly self-conscious. If he still had skin, his face would have been beet red by now.
“Please,” the skeleton muttered, “men and women should maintain proper boundaries. Don’t get so close.”
Feeling a little embarrassed herself, Song Yuqing quickly took a step back.
“Let me introduce myself. My name is Song Yuqing, and I’m the manager of God’s Supermarket.”
“God’s Supermarket?!” The skeleton jolted upright as if he had been struck by lightning.
“Huh? Have you heard of it?” Song Yuqing couldn’t exactly read his facial expressions, so she had to rely entirely on his exaggerated body language to guess what he was thinking.
“Wow, he really found a replacement that fast…” the skeleton muttered to himself, nervously interlacing his bony fingers. He looked up at her hesitantly. “Can I… can I come back with you to take a look?”
Song Yuqing and Little Meat Bun exchanged a wary glance, wondering what this “White Bone Demon” was really after.
Pfft—
In the dead silence of the room, Little Meat Bun let out a loud fart.
The giant panda froze, desperately trying to pretend nothing had happened while frantically comforting himself internally: It’s fine, it’s fine! Loud farts don’t smell bad!
Song Yuqing held her breath, subconsciously taking a wide step away from the bear.
Pffft—
Unable to hold it in, Little Meat Bun clenched his paws and sprinted toward the restroom behind them in a panic.
Song Yuqing: “…” Is the poor kid having stomach issues?
“I didn’t expect that even pandas would mutate,” the skeleton remarked, shaking his skull. As he moved, his joints clicked and clattered against each other.
Song Yuqing turned her attention back to the skeleton. Her intuition told her that this creature wasn’t going to hurt her, but she still needed to keep her guard up.
“I can take you back to God’s Supermarket, but I need to know where you came from first.”
“Well…”
Once the skeleton started talking, it was hard to get him to stop. Even before the apocalypse, he had always hated this trait about himself—the tendency to overshare his entire life story with anyone who would listen.
His name was Huo Bin. Before the world ended, he had been the owner of a small, ordinary convenience store on Lingdang Street, a modest business passed down by his parents. Believing he had no special talents or ambitions, he had simply taken over the shop after graduating from university.
On the morning of the third day before the apocalypse, Huo Bin woke up to a disembodied voice whispering in his ear, warning him that the end of the world was imminent. The voice claimed to be “Master Fu.” Huo Bin initially thought he was hallucinating, but then he discovered he could suddenly manipulate metal, even generating it directly from his palms. To completely shatter his skepticism, Master Fu forced him to watch a horrifying, hyper-realistic vision of the coming doomsday.
Any ordinary person would panic upon experiencing something like that.
In a state of pure, absolute terror, Huo Bin locked the doors of his convenience store and drained his entire life savings trying to hoard supplies. Unfortunately, his funds were painfully limited; at best, he only managed to stockpile enough food to last a single month. Huo Bin cursed the unfairness of fate. He had never been the protagonist of his own life. Even though he had been given advance warning of the apocalypse, what did it matter? He didn’t have a magical “golden finger” or plot armor to change his future.
Right on cue, Master Fu’s indentured servitude contract materialized. Master Fu promised Huo Bin that as long as he signed the paper, changed the shop’s name to “God’s Supermarket,” and managed the store efficiently, his absolute safety would be guaranteed.
“Wait, you signed the contract, which means you can’t die, right?” Song Yuqing asked, feeling a wave of complex emotions as she looked at her predecessor.
“I was terrified of dying, so I signed my life away,” Huo Bin replied. He tilted his skull up, staring at the ceiling—or perhaps looking right through it, trying to trace the cruel path of his own fate.
The day before the meteor shower hit, Huo Bin officially became the first manager of God’s Supermarket. He had seemingly accepted his destiny, but deep down, he was consumed by crippling anxiety, unease, and fear. In a peaceful world, he could have lived comfortably as a shopkeeper. But in the apocalypse? How was he supposed to run a store all by himself? Where would he get fresh supplies? Who would the customers be? He was convinced he couldn’t do it.
Master Fu had urged him to pull himself together, unlock the doors, and start operating immediately. But Huo Bin refused to listen. He had paced back and forth inside the locked shop, his hands covered in red marks from pinching himself in a manic panic.
Master Fu, possessing a terrible temper of his own, had furiously berated Huo Bin for his cowardice.
“So… I just ran away,” Huo Bin said, his jawbone chattering at the memory. “On the night the meteor shower actually hit, I panicked and tried to run back to the shop to find Master Fu, but the fleeing crowds ended up pushing me straight into this mall…”
Because of the absolute immortality clause in the contract he had signed with Master Fu, Huo Bin physically could not die. However, since a single man couldn’t fight off a horde of walkers, he was cornered in this very bathroom and eaten alive. He felt every agonizing bite. After being completely stripped of his flesh and reduced to mere bones, he found that he could no longer channel his gold-based superpowers.
Song Yuqing’s heart felt incredibly heavy. Huo Bin wasn’t a bad person; he was just an ordinary guy who lacked courage, and it had cost him everything.
“Come back with me to God’s Supermarket. After all, it used to be your home.”
Song Yuqing wanted to bring him back primarily so she could extract more answers from Master Fu. She had a strong suspicion that the AI was hiding a lot of critical information from her.
Huo Bin enthusiastically grabbed Song Yuqing’s hand, shaking it with overwhelming gratitude. Hiding in a toilet stall for an entire month without moving had finally paid off. It was all worth it to meet a good person like her.
Song Yuqing winced, calmly but forcefully pulling her hand out of his bony grip. His hard knuckles actually hurt her skin.
Just then, Little Meat Bun trotted out of the restroom, holding his paws out as he excitedly ran toward Song Yuqing.
Look! I brought you something good!
Both Song Yuqing and Huo Bin immediately took a few large steps back. No matter how adorable a giant panda was, basic hygiene still mattered!
Noticing the clear look of disgust in their eyes, Little Meat Bun pouted unhappily. He opened his massive paw to reveal three glowing, brilliantly red crystal cores resting in his palm.
Here. I refined the superpowers I swallowed and converted them into these.
Staring at the three rubies, Song Yuqing marveled in absolute awe. The dense, pulsating energy contained within these red cores far exceeded anything she had seen from the primary or intermediate zombies. Little Meat Bun’s devouring ability was insanely overpowered!
“What are those?” Huo Bin asked. Having been trapped in a bathroom stall for nearly a month, he was entirely out of touch with the new world’s mechanics.
“They’re crystal cores. They contain energy that can level up your superpowers,” Song Yuqing explained, carefully plucking the stones from the panda’s paw.
“Can I have one?”
“No.” Song Yuqing rejected his request without a second of hesitation. She was a good person, but she wasn’t running a charity.
Right in front of Huo Bin’s hollow eye sockets, she let the three high-tier crystal cores dissolve into her palm, absorbing their raw energy directly into her body.
“Alright, Huo Bin, just wait here for a minute. I’m going to run upstairs to collect some supplies, and then I’ll take you back to God’s Supermarket.”
The second the words left her mouth, Song Yuqing’s vision violently blurred. Her eyesight was suddenly overtaken by dense, erratic static, making the world look like the screen of a broken vintage television.
A sudden, terrifying wave of heat exploded from her core. Her entire body felt like it was on fire, and her face flushed a deep crimson, as if she were blackout drunk.
“Why… why is it suddenly so hot?” she gasped.
Seeing her distress, Little Meat Bun immediately began circling her, thoughtfully using his massive paws to fan cool air toward her face.
But her sudden fever didn’t break. In fact, it escalated rapidly. Her muscles seized, and her body began to twitch uncontrollably.
Alarmed, Huo Bin reached out to check her temperature. The instant his white, bony finger brushed against her forehead, the bone violently caught fire.
Huo Bin shrieked, frantically blowing out the flames on his hand. It was a terrifyingly close call; his finger had nearly been incinerated. Standing nearby, Little Meat Bun quickly backed away as the sheer ambient heat radiating from Song Yuqing’s body began singeing his thick fur.
Inside, Song Yuqing felt a raging, molten current tearing through her veins. The boiling energy was growing exponentially stronger by the second, building up an agonizing pressure as if it were about to violently burst right through her skin.
Her convulsions grew more violent until her legs completely gave out, and she collapsed heavily onto the floor.
