Chapter 15: Corpse
That kind person still remembered that small favor.
Lin Huai knew that even if she offered raw materials in return, he would never accept them. So she took the blueprint directly, crafted the items, and sent three finished teleportation cards straight to him.
When she woke up the next morning, she felt completely refreshed and full of energy.
Having finally waited out the twenty-four-hour limit, Lin Huai quickly brought out the Golden Qi Pulse Gun, ready to open the prize.
This bone-crushing box genuinely made her nervous. In her previous life, she had only found one in the late stages of the game. That single chest had allowed her vehicle to jump to level four and raised her coffin by an entire level.
Yet opening it back then had nearly cost her life.
The red-clothed vengeful spirit and the terrifying wave of corpses triggered by that chest still sent a shiver down her spine whenever she thought about it.
This time, although she was lucky enough to get a bone-crushing box during the Newbie Protection Period, having it did not guarantee she would survive opening it.
Lin Huai moved back ten meters, raised the Golden Qi Pulse Gun, and carefully took aim from a safe distance.
A burst of golden light flashed through the air. With a crisp click, the lid popped open.
To her astonishment, no monsters sprang from inside. There was only a rich pile of supplies.
While not every chest held monsters or deadly curses, higher-tier boxes carried a much greater chance of danger. Lin Huai did not believe her personal luck was good enough to pull a high-level chest completely free of monsters.
There was only one reasonable explanation: her offerings at the stone altar had matched the god’s taste perfectly. The boy had been so delighted that he handed her a safe, clean chest.
Lin Huai patted her chest, letting out a long breath as her racing heart finally began to calm.
Yet before she could fully relax, several deep, heavy roars echoed from the rivers on both sides of the road.
One zombie after another crawled out of the dark water, rushing toward the highway with surprising speed.
Even without a red-clothed spirit inside the chest, opening a bone-crushing box had still drawn a swarm of the undead.
Lin Huai scanned the area quickly. Perhaps because the Newbie Protection Period was still active, high-level monsters had not taken their posts yet. The corpses gathering on the road were mostly hopping purple and white zombies, along with two or three green zombies.
Unlike the slower white corpses, green zombies jumped with startling speed. They feared neither living humans nor barking dogs and roosters; their only real weakness was fire.
Before the rest of the undead could reach the asphalt, the three green zombies launched themselves at Lin Huai.
She raised the weapon and fired a sweeping beam of light, managing to take down only one of them.
The other two dodged with extreme agility, leaping out of the path of the golden beam.
One of the green zombies lunged forward with sharp claws and bared fangs, a wet, rattling hiss wheezing from its throat.
Lin Huai shifted her stance slightly. Instead of blocking the strike head-on, she slipped in close. Her left arm wound around the outside of its lunging right arm like a nimble snake.
Her move was not a brute-force block. Spreading her fingers, she clamped down on the creature’s elbow joint. Using its own forward momentum, she delivered a sharp, twisting pull.
With a sickening crunch, the stiff arm bone was forced backward into an unnatural angle by this deceptively smooth motion.
The green zombie’s charge broke instantly, sending it stumbling off balance toward the ground.
Lin Huai did not hesitate. Spinning around, she aimed straight at its head and fired.
Smelling living human blood, the second green zombie lunged hungrily at her exposed back.
Lin Huai moved as if she had eyes behind her head. The moment the wind from its claws brushed against her jacket, her waist bent with the graceful flexibility of a willow branch, dodging the blow by a hair’s breadth.
Dropping her center of gravity into a low crouch, she let the claws swipe harmlessly through empty air. Then, her right leg whipped upward like a steel rod, slamming a vicious kick right into the inner knee of the creature’s standing leg.
The sharp crack of shattering bone rang out once more.
The monster’s leg bent inward at an impossible angle. With a muffled groan, it crashed to the ground, its remaining leg and two arms clawing uselessly at the road.
Another headshot ended it on the spot.
By the time Lin Huai finished off the three green zombies, dozens of weaker corpses had finally reached the road, bringing with them a foul stench and clumsy bloodlust.
Lin Huai pulled the remaining Yang energy crystals from her bag, slotted them into the pulse gun’s magazine, and held her ground. Sweeping the beam back and forth across the incoming crowd, she cut down the horde until the road was still once more.
She exhaled slowly, lowered the weapon, and walked back to the bone-crushing box.
That fighting technique was the Lin Clan’s Corpse Suppressing Hand, an ancient art Old Lin had taught her specifically to deal with reanimated corpses.
Whenever she used it, Lin Huai could not help but picture Old Lin, remembering the days when he had taught her the forms as a child.
Back then, she had to practice low horse stances in the graveyard every night, surrounded by rows of silent coffins. Every so often, a “person” would suddenly sit upright inside one of them. If she failed to force them back down, she would get scratched, spend the next two weeks eating bitter glutinous rice to purge the poison, and endure Old Lin’s teasing before being dragged back out for more practice.
Her memories of Old Lin were always a little eerie, yet strangely warm.
After gathering all the items from the box, Lin Huai’s eyes drifted back toward the golden nanmu coffin.
She had collected enough materials to upgrade to level three, and she was only a few resources away from level four.
Old Lin, I will definitely find you.
Opening the menu, the options now included upgrades for the Yellow Springs Road Guide and the beginner workbench.
Lin Huai already knew that special equipment could be improved. Checking the requirements for the Road Guide, she found that its basic material cost was even higher than taking a vehicle to level three.
Worse, it required rare items like the Heart of Amber and Azure Water Jade—things she had never even seen before.
Upgrading it now was simply impossible.
Fortunately, the Road Guide had only three stages: Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. It was currently at the Beginner stage, meaning its next step would take it directly to Intermediate.
The workbench followed the same three-tier system. Its upgrade materials were equally rare, and she possessed none of them yet. Upgrading both the workbench and the guide would require three hundred upgrade cards alone!
While it looked like she had choices, in reality there was only one path forward. She could only upgrade her vehicle.
Ten upgrade cards were just enough.
The moment she tapped confirm, the process began.
A bright golden glow wrapped around the vehicle for half an hour. When the light finally faded, a completely new machine stood before her.
The small electric tricycle was gone.
In its place sat a stunning, ruby-red modified Mercedes-Benz luxury van!
The body stretched 6.2 meters long with a 4.2-meter wheelbase, its sleek lines giving off an air of smooth, heavy power.
She pulled the door open. The driver’s cabin was simple yet elegant, lined with polished metal accents and dark peach wood. A floating, diamond-shaped jade hologram pulsed steadily over the dashboard screen.
Since the vehicle only needed one person at the wheel, the front passenger area had been turned into a comfortable, spacious resting lounge.
A solid steel partition separated the driver’s cabin from the rear compartment, with only a small sliding door connecting the two spaces.
