Chapter 15

When Guan Yuanfeng woke up from his nap and came over, Zhou Yun had already taken a shower and changed into clean clothes. He looked refreshed, no longer the weak and fragile person he had been when suffering from the high fever.

Guan Yuanfeng was somewhat surprised. “You’re really better? You had a fever for three days. Don’t push yourself.”

Zhou Yun smiled. “I’m a doctor, of course I’m better now. Let me check your pulse.” He had predicted that he would soon fall ill and faint due to awakening his abilities, so he had left an acupuncture needle in Guan Yuanfeng’s ear, and it was time to change it.

Guan Yuanfeng looked at him, and sure enough, Zhou Yun stood tall, moving nimbly and quickly. His mind was clear, and his complexion seemed to glow, his skin as smooth as jade. He looked healthier than before, and Guan Yuanfeng was surprised. “Could it be that the fever virus actually had a transformative effect?”

Zhou Yun couldn’t help but laugh as he turned on the radio.

The radio was still repeating various announcements, urging survivors to go to the rescue base, but now it had changed from nearby hospitals to the city hospital. Afterward, it broadcasted information about the zombies’ weaknesses, characteristics, how to avoid them, and the symptoms of how people with fever turn into zombies.

Guan Yuanfeng frowned. “It seems that it’s no longer feasible to maintain multiple rescue bases; they’ve had to consolidate to just one.”

Zhou Yun nodded. “Since a fever can lead to virus infection, the personnel responsible for rescue might get infected as well. One zombie can infect countless people.” Soon, the base in Danlin City would no longer be able to survive, and they would have to retreat further to the provincial capital, retreating again and again, until abilities were discovered, and humans had the chance to fight back.

Guan Yuanfeng replied, “Yes, the more people gather, the more dangerous it becomes. So, it’s better to stay here and wait for the situation to change.”

Zhou Yun looked at him, knowing he wouldn’t go out. He felt slightly reassured, though he was unsure how, in his past life, his comrades had contacted him and persuaded him to leave and join the ability activation experiment.

No matter what, things were off to a good start now.

He checked Guan Yuanfeng’s pulse, removed the acupuncture needles, and began brewing some medicine. Then, he took a knife and cut a cucumber, intending to first help Guan Yuanfeng’s body recover before using a crystal core for ability activation.

Guan Yuanfeng, however, was not the type to stay idle. “I want to go down to the community and check the situation.”

Zhou Yun had already prepared for this. “We don’t know the situation outside yet. The zombies are too fierce. I heard on the radio that they’re stronger than wild animals, faster than ordinary people, and have zombie toxins. You shouldn’t be reckless. Wait a moment, I have a drone. We can use it to check the situation in the community first.”

Guan Yuanfeng paused. “A drone?” His spirits lifted. This was definitely a better option than going out himself, especially since he was in a wheelchair.

He was used to gaining an understanding of the surrounding situation when things were unclear, so he wanted to take advantage of the elevator still having power and go check the situation downstairs as quickly as possible.

Otherwise, if the power was cut off later, he would truly be trapped on the rooftop, relying on Zhou Yun, a doctor with no combat experience.

This was an unspoken shame for him. His strong pride and his physical disability never seemed to coexist. But he hadn’t expected Zhou Yun to completely overlook the flaw of his wheelchair and instead calmly propose another reasonable solution.

Zhou Yun said, “Yes, I used to play with it, controlled by my computer. I even set up a radio base station back then. Let’s eat first, I’ll adjust it later, I’ve been busy planting medicinal herbs recently and haven’t played with it much.”

Guan Yuanfeng said, “Your hobbies are really diverse.” Playing with drones and being a doctor are hard to connect.

Zhou Yun sliced the cured meat and sprinkled it into the bamboo shoot soup. He glanced at him and smiled. “What’s so strange about young people liking these things? From high school to university, drone hobby groups are quite common. I don’t like singing or dancing, so I ended up playing with these.”

Guan Yuanfeng looked at Zhou Yun’s bright eyes and the smile in the corners of his eyes. He was a keen observer and was surprised to think that Zhou Yun looked even more handsome after his illness. He smiled and said, “You must have been quite popular with the girls at school.”

Zhou Yun smiled slightly but didn’t say anything. He served the delicious cured meat and bamboo shoot soup, then poured the stewed pork bones from the pressure cooker into the dog’s bowl. The two men and the dog began their meal.

After dinner, Zhou Yun went to the study, turned on the computer, and took out the drone.

Guan Yuanfeng looked at it and admired, “Satellite positioning, built-in new energy battery, infrared night vision, light sensitivity, infrared thermal imaging, temperature measurement, night mode, intelligent cruise, wireless charging… so many features. This is the latest configuration.”

He sighed again, “This must be expensive. Even military-grade drones don’t have such good specifications. You even set up your own base station; you’re a high-end player. No wonder you can’t save money. Your hobbies are all quite expensive.”

Apart from planting and medicine, there’s also the drone, archery, and playing with knives. And you always buy the expensive ones. You seem young, but your interests are really wide.”

Zhou Yun asked, “This one also has the function of a mobile base nest. It can be installed on the car roof, smart cruise, smart return home. Brother Guan, do you know how to use it too?”

Guan Yuanfeng said, “I’ve also received specialized communications and reconnaissance training. I understand some, though I’m not an expert. It’ll take some time.”

Zhou Yun inserted the battery into the drone, then adjusted it for a while, opened the window, and placed the drone on the windowsill. He then opened the computer to drive it, adjusted the parameters, and handed the remote control to Guan Yuanfeng. “Try it out. The images will sync to the computer.”

It was the end of summer, around noon, and the sunlight was bright in the community.

The drone took off, and after a while, Guan Yuanfeng found the feel for it and slowly operated it through the window, lifting it to the rooftop for a circle.

Under Zhou Yun’s instructions, Guan Yuanfeng flew the drone over the solar panels and rainwater collection system to check if the equipment was intact. Then, he slowly ascended to a higher altitude to look down at the entire community.

The two of them gathered around the computer to watch the drone’s perspective.

Zhou Yun pointed, “Over the square, it seems the zombies don’t like the sunlight much? Or maybe they just don’t like open spaces. They’re probably all inside the buildings, maybe floor by floor? Let’s first check the roads and public facilities in the community.”

Guan Yuanfeng controlled the drone to glide over the community fountain square. “Let’s take a look at the public roads around the entrance and check the electrical room for anything useful.”

He looked serious. “We’re probably going to stay here for a long time, so we need to gather all available resources.” Though they had stocked up on daily necessities, food, and medicine, if they were trapped for a long time, they’d need to find opportunities to collect more supplies. Social order would likely be hard to maintain, but to survive, they still needed food and water.

Zhou Yun knew that Guan Yuanfeng’s independence and leadership were exceptional and happily agreed, “In that case, we should check the property office, the electrical room, the underground parking lot, and the community cafeteria. You tell me what to do, I’ll take notes and make a list to prioritize.”

The drone soon reached the foot of the mountain and started to climb up. Guan Yuanfeng’s sharp eyes quickly spotted something unusual on the infrared thermal imaging screen: “In the small forest, it’s full of zombies.”

He cautiously controlled the drone to approach the roadside forest and slowly flew through the path.

The forest was full of peach trees, plum trees, maple trees, crepe myrtle, oleander, and other ornamental trees, lush with leaves in midsummer.

In the forest, many zombies with gray-green skin, bulging eyes, fangs, and long claws were hunched over and wandering back and forth!

The drone flew over, causing some movement, but when the zombies realized it wasn’t flesh, they staggered away.

Guan Yuanfeng said, “They have good hearing, but their eyesight seems poor. They mainly rely on smell.”

Zhou Yun nodded, then placed a cushion behind Guan Yuanfeng’s waist on his wheelchair.

Guan Yuanfeng moved slightly to adjust the cushion, but his attention remained focused on the screen, controlling the drone to fly through the forest, slowly coming back to another side. After a while, he counted, “There are about two hundred zombies in the small forest.”

Zhou Yun found a map from the bookshelf, unfolded it, and marked it with a colored pen.

Guan Yuanfeng looked down and was surprised. “Where did you get the community map?”

Zhou Yun said, “It was handed out with the promotional flyers when I bought the house. Back then, they encouraged the relocation of households and gave out many design maps. The layout is pretty much the same as now.”

Guan Yuanfeng sighed again, “You really keep everything, don’t you?”

It was almost like he had hoarding tendencies. He remembered when he saw Zhou Yun collecting pineapple skins from the vendor to make fertilizer. That was when he realized Zhou Yun was no ordinary person.

These days, the leftovers had either been fed to the dog or turned into fertilizer. Did he throw anything away?

Zhou Yun couldn’t help but laugh. “Not praising me because you’re afraid I’ll get cocky?”

Guan Yuanfeng quickly gave him a thumbs-up.

The drone soon reached the underground parking lot of the community. The signal was weak there, and he didn’t dare stay too long, but it was enough to see that the parking lot’s door had been broken, and countless zombies were wandering inside.

A portion of the parking lot still had vehicles parked, and it was clear that many had already driven out. The exit was blocked by cars, and it could be seen that a few zombies were locked inside, clearly the result of a family’s escape process turning into an accident. The zombies had no intelligence and couldn’t open the doors, so they were stuck inside, scratching at the windows.

Guan Yuanfeng furrowed his brows and said, “I wonder if the new energy charging stations downstairs will still have power.”

Zhou Yun replied, “The community has gasoline and diesel generators, which should be in the distribution room, but the signal is weak there, so drones can’t get in. We’ll mark it for now.”

“If the power runs out next, we can go check it out. Also, we can collect all the gasoline from the cars in the underground garage to store for power generation.”

Gasoline, diesel, and other energy sources were incredibly valuable in the apocalypse.

Guan Yuanfeng’s expression was serious as he controlled the drone, which flew over to the public store area near the community plaza.

Many of the store doors were torn open, and it was obvious they had been ripped apart by zombies, leaving deep, beast-like claw marks and large holes. It was possible that someone had been hiding inside and was attacked and killed by zombies.

Although they knew that most survivors had evacuated with the main group the day before, and even those who hadn’t made it out likely fell to the zombies in the past three days, it was still shocking to see, through the drone’s perspective, the once lively community plaza now only filled with zombies.

Meanwhile, Zhou Yun was writing down notes, counting as he spoke: “The fruit shop. We can go down and collect some durable fruits, those with seeds we can plant.”

“The convenience store. We can grab some daily necessities. There’s a freezer in the store that sells ice cream. We should take the freezer.”

“The print shop. We can gather supplies like printers, computers, and photocopy paper. These industrial goods may be hard to come by later.”

“The pharmacy. This is useful. We need to find time to take all the medicine. They have a cold storage for medicines.”

“The flower shop… we can collect some potted plants from there, but that’s not urgent.”

“The fast-food restaurant. There should be rice and noodles here. We can gather them and store them. I remember they have a freezer, and they seem to have gas stoves and alcohol stoves too.”

“The mother and baby store. This should have good supplies. Milk powder, rice cereal, vitamins, fish liver oil, all these can be used for Comet. We should go in and collect as much as we can.”

“The arcade and internet café. It has computers, so we can mark it for now. They may have servers or some power equipment we can use. There should also be instant noodles and bottled water in there, the kind of things the store owner sold to the kids playing games.”

“There’s a delivery pickup point here. It should have many packages that haven’t been picked up. We should find time to carefully unpack them; there should be a lot of useful things inside.”

Zhou Yun continued writing quickly, while Guan Yuanfeng, who had initially felt heavy-hearted after witnessing the zombie-infested, deserted world, gradually found himself influenced by Zhou Yun’s optimistic attitude as he listed useful supplies. His mood lightened a little.

Even though he knew that with just the two of them, it would likely be impossible to break through the zombies everywhere to collect these supplies in the short term, having this information in advance provided him with great psychological comfort.