Did someone beat them to it?

Though Lin Chu had hoped that such a thing wouldn’t happen in an ideal scenario, she had to admit that the probability of this happening was very high, considering they were dropped into a place where the zombie virus seemed to have been rampant for some time.

She didn’t even know if the system had dropped anyone else before their group.

Moreover, there were also indigenous people in this world, and given how long the zombie virus had been active, the convenience store was probably one of the first places to be looted for zero cost.

The deserted road was nearly clear, and Lin Chu remained on high alert as she quickly reached the convenience store.

The door was wide open, and the chaotic footprints were mixed with thick, fresh bloodstains.

The person was already gone.

Lin Chu examined the footprints with the toes pointing outward and silently made a judgment in her mind.

She didn’t rush inside; instead, she pressed herself against the door and listened carefully for a while.

There was no sound of breathing, nothing unusual.

Holding a bone club, she cautiously stepped into the store.

The sticky blood clung to the soles of her shoes, and the heavy stench of blood made her furrow her brow involuntarily.

It was strange. Even after killing so many zombies and seeing so many brutal scenes, she had never felt this uncomfortable.

Blood?

Yes, everyone had been quickly taking out zombies by striking vital points with just a few hits, so there was rarely such a large amount of blood spillage.

Now, the blood at her feet seemed as if it had been spilled by a deranged killer, deliberately making a mess…

Lin Chu’s gaze sharpened, and her thoughts were interrupted.

She saw the source of the blood.

It was a woman.

Thrown onto the ground like a broken doll, her face up, both cheeks slashed with a large X, with blood and flesh spilling out, making her look horrific.

The source of the blood was her neck.

There was a horizontal gash, more than ten centimeters long, where the skin and flesh were torn and flipped outward, as if repeatedly cut with a blunt instrument.

She was completely naked, drenched in fresh blood and filth.

Further down, it was too horrendous to bear.

Lin Chu’s heart skipped a beat.

She had seen the same scene before.

A year ago, when she had just become an intern forensic doctor, the first case she handled was almost identical to the one she was facing now.

The death of the female victim was nearly identical to the corpse in front of her.

Was it imitative killing?

Or was that deranged killer dropped into the infinite apocalypse?

But if she remembered correctly, that deranged killer had already been executed six months ago.

Lin Chu felt that there was some connection, but she knew too little at the moment, and everything had to remain speculation.

After confirming there were no living people in the convenience store, Lin Chu quickly moved forward and checked the woman’s body temperature.

It hadn’t completely cooled down, indicating she had died not long ago.

It seemed the killer hadn’t gone far.

This was not a good sign.

Lin Chu frowned slightly and gently closed the woman’s wide-open eyes.

Her cold eyes swept around the small 20-square-meter convenience store, and then she stood up and picked up a red, white, and blue plastic cloth from the floor, covering the woman’s body.

Then she began her first zero-cost shopping.

In the apocalypse, the most crucial things for ordinary people to stockpile were water and essential supplies.

Next were scarce commodities like cigarettes and alcohol.

Looking around, Lin Chu couldn’t find any of these things in the store. Even the common items like contraceptives and chewing gum that usually occupied the counter were missing.

The shelves were nearly empty.

But while others might have looted items from the shelves, Lin Chu was more interested in the shelves themselves.

She reached up and took the three shelves at the back of the store, which hadn’t been splattered with blood, and stored them in her spatial backpack.

At the moment, her shelter was still quite small, and the space in her backpack was limited. The shelves made good use of the overhead space, making them perfect for storage.

However, she couldn’t take too many shelves, given the current space limitations.

Each shelf was 2 meters long, 1.7 meters high, and 0.5 meters wide, and these three shelves nearly filled up the remaining space in her backpack.

Fortunately, the shelves could also hold items.

Lin Chu found a box of bread in the corner that had expired a year ago and had grown green mold. Perhaps the mold was so intimidating that even this non-perishable food had been left untouched in the store’s corner.

Lin Chu cheerfully collected the entire box of expired bread and placed it on top of one of the shelves in her backpack.

Who knows whether it’s edible now, but she could try turning it into something useful later.

Aside from that, Lin Chu also found half a box of instant noodles, a box of milk tea that had turned into a suspension, and two swollen boxes of milk in the store’s small storage room, all of which had gone bad.

What surprised her the most were two boxes of short-shelf-life ready-to-eat boxed meals. They had been in the small storage room and hadn’t been found at first. When the later scavengers found them, they were spoiled and moldy, unfit for consumption.

That had worked out well for Lin Chu.

Although she didn’t know exactly what “turning waste into treasure” could do to these foods, at least from the name, it seemed like it could transform inedible things into something edible.

Lin Chu stored one box after another of spoiled food in her backpack. As she looked inside and saw half a shelf filled, her originally heavy heart began to lighten.

What pleased her the most was when she finished packing, she found a box of unopened tissue and a box of sanitary pads in the corner.

Although she loved materials that could be used for turning waste into treasure, Lin Chu also eagerly accepted the basic necessities, quickly packing them into her backpack.

As she came out of the small storage room, which was about 2 square meters, she paused for a moment before pushing aside the curtain that blocked the door.

Her current shelter was incredibly rudimentary—there was no door between the room and the bathroom, only a short white half-curtain, and there was no door or even curtain between the bathroom and the newly constructed anatomy room.

Thinking of this, Lin Chu quickly removed the light blue curtain from the small storage room.

Walking to the side, she entered the convenience store’s employee break room.

The door still had a light blue curtain, and Lin Chu easily removed it.

The door to the break room had already been shattered. The marks above it suggested there had been a fierce struggle here. Even the only small window inside had its glass shattered into pieces.

Now, the break room was left with only a simple bed frame and a mess on the floor.

As soon as Lin Chu saw the bed frame, her eyes lit up.

It was exactly what she needed for her anatomy room.

Although the bed frame was a bit low, it was long enough, and it could be folded if necessary. As for the height, Lin Chu planned to find some bricks or hard objects to prop up the bed.

The bed frame was stored in her backpack, and she happily continued searching the floor.

Perhaps because the apocalypse had been going on for so long, this convenience store had been looted multiple times. Most of the useful and portable items had already been taken.

What was left were either broken, expired items or large, cumbersome things like shelves and bed frames that were hard to carry without enough space.

Some leftover old flyers and promotional posters also remained.

While rummaging through everything, Lin Chu found an old “one-shot” gun in the corner, though it was a bit worn from use.

Recalling some transformation videos she had seen, Lin Chu held her nose and wrapped the gun in multiple layers of advertising paper before storing it in her backpack.

Just as she was counting her spoils from the convenience store, a series of footsteps approached from a distance.