Chapter 124: Fatal G City (Part 9)

Xiao Muyu brought the can into the kitchen, grabbed a pair of chopsticks, and returned to the room.

Shen Qingqiu was sitting lazily at the desk, seemingly lost in thought. But her gaze naturally settled on Xiao Muyu when she came in and immediately noticed the can and chopsticks in her hands.

Her eyes twinkled with amusement, though she feigned ignorance and asked with mock confusion, “Didn’t have enough at dinner?”

Xiao Muyu sat beside her, opened the can, picked up a piece with her chopsticks, and popped it into her mouth. “Mm-hm,” she replied quietly.

It tasted decent for canned beef—nicely seasoned and savory, not the cheap synthetic kind. This picky ancestor of hers should be able to stomach it.

Xiao Muyu took her time eating, not bothering to ask if Shen Qingqiu wanted some. Shen Qingqiu watched her blankly before leaning in very close. “You’re not going to ask if I want any?”

Her tone and look were full of grievance.

Xiao Muyu didn’t lift her head. “I know you’re picky. This doesn’t taste great. You won’t like it.”

“But I’m still hungry.”

“Anything would taste good if you were hungry. But since you were picky at dinner, you’re probably not.” Xiao Muyu’s words hit hard and fast.

Shen Qingqiu wasn’t upset. She knew her girlfriend too well. She rested her head against her hand and watched Xiao Muyu. “But watching you eat makes it seem delicious. It doesn’t matter whether I like it. If you feed it to me, I would gladly—”

Xiao Muyu shoved a big chunk of beef into her mouth, making her last words garbled.

Her cheeks bulged as she chewed with effort, and Xiao Muyu laughed. Once Shen Qingqiu had almost finished, she took a napkin and wiped the soup from the corner of her mouth, then asked casually, “So? Does it taste good when I feed you?”

Shen Qingqiu smacked her lips. She had only eaten it because Xiao Muyu gave it to her—good or bad, she would try it. But it was not bad.

“Better than I expected,” she said.

Xiao Muyu fed her another piece and then handed her the chopsticks. “Feed yourself.”

Shen Qingqiu wasn’t trying to be shameless, so she obediently took them, then picked up a piece and offered it to Xiao Muyu.

“Did you bring this here because you were worried I’d be hungry?” Shen Qingqiu asked cheerfully, taking another bite, her eyes narrowing in a smile.

Xiao Muyu didn’t look at her. “No. Chen Kaijie gave it to me,” she answered, which was the truth.

Shen Qingqiu sighed. No matter how flirty she tried to be, she could never crack Xiao Muyu’s calm.

She ate quietly, but Xiao Muyu couldn’t sit still and snuck a glance at her.

After a while, she spoke softly. “Don’t eat too much at night. We don’t have a full handle of the situation yet, so bear with it for now. I’ll cook for you if we can get some vegetables tomorrow.”

Xiao Muyu had barely finished speaking when Shen Qingqiu’s ears perked up. She beamed at her. “Really?”

Xiao Muyu didn’t try to play it cool this time. She nodded. “Yes.”

Shen Qingqiu set the can aside, slumped against her, and shook her head with a smile. “Forget it. Cooking for so many people would be exhausting. Make something for me when we get out. I won’t share.”

Xiao Muyu loosely wrapped an arm around her and laughed. “Are you my ancestor now? I’m just supposed to wait on you hand and foot?”

Shen Qingqiu smiled. “Not your ancestor. I’m your wife.”

Xiao Muyu froze, looked down at her, and then a smile slowly spread across her face. “Wife? I feel more like your maid.”

Shen Qingqiu turned her head to look at her. “Nonsense. Where would I get the luck to have such a beautiful maid?”

They laughed and teased each other, but then Shen Qingqiu remembered the information they’d gotten from Lin Jian. Without warning, she lifted Xiao Muyu’s shirt.

Xiao Muyu quickly held her hand down. “What are you doing?”

“Let me see your wound. Has it really healed?” Shen Qingqiu asked, still worried.

The two scars on her abdomen were pink, like they had just closed up. Shen Qingqiu frowned. “These look fresh. Are you sure they don’t hurt?”

“I’m sure,” Xiao Muyu replied. “Dr. Lin said my body is naturally unusual. If I can recover from a ruptured liver, a few wounds are nothing.” She didn’t want Shen Qingqiu to worry. This person didn’t make a sound even when someone broke her arm and sliced her abdomen open. Why was she getting all worked up now?

Shen Qingqiu frowned deeper. “As he said, your body has many oddities. From what I’ve seen, the chances of a player having cards and supernatural abilities in a game instance are extremely low. But during surgery, they found real internal bleeding, so there should be a wound. If they saw none, then it must’ve already healed.”

That could only mean one thing—something had happened to Xiao Muyu.

“Yeah, I’m just a player. The system would never grant me rapid regeneration. Wouldn’t that be cheating?” Xiao Muyu paused, her eyes narrowing slightly in thought.

The tiny shift made Shen Qingqiu frown. “Don’t do anything reckless.”

Xiao Muyu blinked. “A small cut should be fine. It’s better to rule things out, given all these uncertainties.”

“Even if you did confirm something, it would only prove that your body is special,” Shen Qingqiu said firmly. “And don’t forget, we’re in an apocalypse. You will face zombies. If it turns out to be useless, you’d only add the risk of infection for no reason.”

Her words got through, and Xiao Muyu gave up the idea. She was right. There was no benefit in hurting herself.

“But Lin Jian mentioned something else. The first case at Yaxiang Waterside Homes happened to be admitted to the hospital on the same day as my car accident. The Second Hospital—there might be a clue there.”

She didn’t sound hopeful, though. In the apocalypse, hospitals were the last place you wanted to go. It had enclosed spaces and high foot traffic.

The worst part was their design. Either the main entrances needed keycards to open, or the patient rooms had no locks. With no place to hide, it was way too dangerous.

“We’ll talk to Lin Jian again and see what else he knows about the Second Hospital,” Shen Qingqiu said, sensing her worry. “But things are too uncertain right now. We shouldn’t go there yet. Let’s scout out some other places first. Maybe we’ll find new clues.”

No one slept well that night. It was the first night, and the zombies outside never stopped making noises. Something also kept slamming into the iron door in the hallway, the sound echoing sharply in the stillness.

Having so much on her mind, Xiao Muyu didn’t sleep.

Shen Qingqiu was the first to get up in the morning, already on the balcony, stretching her muscles.

Xiao Muyu looked at the woman wearing a black sports tank top and recalled her in the first instance. But then she remembered men were around, and she coughed awkwardly. “Go wash up, change your clothes, and get ready for breakfast.”

Shen Qingqiu had just finished an hour of exercise, and her body glistened with light sweat. At Xiao Muyu’s reminder, she glanced at the others in the room who were trying to avoid looking her way and then changed her clothes.

“Leader Xiao, where are we going today?” one of the others asked as they sat together, munching on toasts and discussing their plans.

Xiao Muyu made the breakfast. Although it was just regular bread, she had added fried eggs and bacon. The bacon was slightly oily, and the egg was crispy on the outside but soft and tender on the inside, just the way Shen Qingqiu liked it. It was so delicious that she ended up eating another.

Xiao Muyu glanced at Shen Qingqiu, who was leaning against her and eating slowly. Her eyes softened, and then she circled a spot on the notebook in front of her.

“We’ll go to Nuoru Pharmaceuticals first. If things look bad there or we don’t find anything useful, we’ll head to the research institute where you worked, Chen Kaijie.” She’d already thought it through the night before. A player’s spawn point should hold clues. After all, it was the only place they knew upon arriving.

The outside world was dangerous, but all five team members had cards. That made them far better equipped to deal with zombies than Lin Jian, who had spent all his time in a hospital. Plus, they didn’t want him to know about the cards, so it was best he stayed behind.

Lin Jian looked like he wanted to object but accepted it. He wasn’t stupid. He could tell Xiao Muyu and the others weren’t ordinary. Normal folks wouldn’t stay this calm in the face of zombies, let alone carry a decapitated corpse outside without flinching. And the way Shen Qingqiu killed zombies? Even as a surgeon, he found it breathtaking.

“I know you’ve got things to do, and I won’t pry,” Lin Jian said. “You all don’t seem like bad people. Your leader even saved my life. Have a safe trip, and I’ll be here waiting for you.”

He honestly felt lost. With phones dead, the internet down, and no signal on the TV, information had reverted to the Stone Age. He had no idea what he was supposed to do.

“Thank you. Our mission will benefit you, too, so don’t worry. Just remember—don’t open the door for anyone, especially those you don’t know. You’ve seen for yourself how cruel people can be. Stay alert. If you want to help someone, wait for us to return first. You know how those ‘farmer and the snake’ stories go. There are plenty of them.”

Xiao Muyu bore no ill will toward Lin Jian, and he’d been very kind to them, so she gave him as many instructions as he needed.

“I understand,” said Lin Jian.

There weren’t many people left in Lin Jian’s residential complex. Since killing zombies earned them points, they didn’t hesitate to take down any wandering zombies that had lost all traces of humanity.

The five could fit in one vehicle, so they traveled together to keep a low profile and save fuel. Following the map Lin Jian gave them, Shen Qingqiu drove them toward the Nuoru Biopharmaceuticals building.

“It’s so strange. Why did the outbreak happen in various places at the same time?” Chen Kaijie stared at the devastated cityscape outside. “From remote areas to the city center, everything fell. Can something like this really overtake G City in a few short days since May 3rd? Something doesn’t add up.”

“That would mean it was already spreading before that, just without apparent symptoms,” Su Jin said but then remembered the theory they’d discussed yesterday.

“If man caused this, how could they have pulled it off? And why did some people get infected while others are fine?” asked Zuo Tiantian. She couldn’t figure it out.

“It’s a tangled mess right now. We don’t have enough information,” Xiao Muyu said, trying to keep everyone calm. “Let’s investigate first. We can start piecing things together once we have more data.”

Along the way, the sound of their car attracted nearby zombies, who began staggering toward them. Shen Qingqiu drove fast, brutally slamming away any zombies that got too close. The others gripped the handles tightly, silently in awe at how beastly Shen Qingqiu was behind the wheel.

With Xiao Muyu navigating and Shen Qingqiu driving, they swiftly reached their destination without trouble.

Shen Qingqiu quickly flung the door open after stopping the car, followed by the others.

In their team, Shen Qingqiu wielded her dagger, Chen Kaijie had a tang sword, and Xiao Muyu, Zuo Tiantian, and Su Jin carried sturdy iron rods they’d salvaged from the residential complex.

“Stay close to me, Muyu,” Shen Qingqiu said. “Your attack power is weaker without a proper weapon. Su Jin and Zuo Tiantian, stick close to Chen Kaijie. You don’t have to kill them. Just make sure they don’t touch you.”

“Got it,” the girls answered.

They first cleared out the surrounding zombies. Once the area was secure, Xiao Muyu led them toward the building. The front of the high-rise prominently displayed the name “Nuoru Biopharmaceuticals.”

The main entrance was wide open. The lobby was deserted, with blood smears across the floor and signs of chaos everywhere.

Shen Qingqiu was the first to enter, with the others close behind. They kept their voices low. It was so quiet after they’d dealt with the zombies outside. They could probably hear if a pin dropped.

“Stairs or elevator?” Su Jin whispered.

Xiao Muyu thought for a moment. “Which floor is your office on?”

“Ninth,” Su Jin answered quickly. “It houses two departments—R&D and Finance.”

“Then we take the elevator,” Xiao Muyu decided. In a panic, most people would’ve tried escaping by the stairs. That meant more zombies likely ended up there.

In contrast, the elevator’s cramped space would help them deal with any zombies inside more easily, as long as they guarded the doors.

Chen Kaijie stepped forward, turned his body sideways, and pressed the elevator button.

*Ding*

The elevator doors slid open.

But the moment there was a sliver of gap, noise exploded outward like water exploding in hot oil.

A guttural roar tore through the air as a man in a suit slammed into the partially-opened doors. His face had been mauled beyond recognition—rotting and torn with chunks of flesh missing—and it suddenly lunged forward through the crack. He bared a mouth full of jagged teeth, bits of meat hanging from them, and kept trying to force his way out.

A wave of putrid stench hit them. Shen Qingqiu drew Chen Kaijie’s tang sword, swinging it down with one hand. The zombie man’s head and the arm that had squeezed through the elevator gap fell to the floor with a thud.

She gave the mass of zombies trapped in the elevator no chance to react, wielding the tang sword with the deadly grace of an ancient warrior.

The doors fully opened. Every arm or head that poked out, Shen Qingqiu immediately severed.

A female zombie lunged forward, shrieking. Shen Qingqiu gripped the sword with both hands and drove the blade straight through its open mouth, piercing the brainstem. Withdrawing the sword, she spun around and decapitated another zombie leaping toward Xiao Muyu. The head hit the floor before the body did.

They had always known Shen Qingqiu was formidable, but that had been in the context of supernatural entities. Seeing her face down these once-human zombies, they finally understood how terrifying she was.

Every slash, movement, and angle was flawless and swift. She didn’t even need to look. It was as if she’d fought through scenes like this countless times, just moving through muscle memory.

“Can a normal person even move that fast? Vice-Leader is seriously not human.”

The elevator could hold only eighteen people and was packed to the brim. At least a dozen zombies were inside. Su Jin and Zuo Tiantian used three iron rods to block the doors, while Shen Qingqiu cleared the rest single-handedly.

Corpses piled up like a hill. Xiao Muyu stared before muttering, “We’ll take the stairs.”

Shen Qingqiu wiped the tang sword on a corpse and tossed it back to Chen Kaijie, shrugging. Letting those things out would’ve been way too risky.

“Vice-Leader, aren’t you keeping it?”

“You need it more than I do,” she replied casually.

Chen Kaijie was speechless.

As the team stepped onto the stairs, the system chimed.

“Welcome, Team Xiao Muyu. You have activated Instance No. 005’s side-quest: Explore Nuoru Biopharmaceuticals. The time limit is 1 hour.”