Hearing the noise, Song Jinhe immediately turned and ran back. She and Cheng Yan, who had just arrived, each grabbed one side of the zombie and dragged it away. Then, with Cheng Yan’s assistance, Song Jinhe raised her crowbar and killed the creature.
This time, the Space seemed to expand slightly.
It truly was only a tiny bit—unnoticeable if she hadn’t been paying close attention—but it was enough to fit two more sets of thick clothing inside.
Tears streamed down Zhang Yi’s face, her chest heaving violently. She stared at the corpse beside her and retched a few times. It took a long while sitting on the floor before she regained her composure and accepted the mint Song Jinhe handed her.
Song Jinhe informed the others and headed off alone to a high-end watch boutique. She engaged in a “Zero-Yuan Purchase,” picking out a few watches she liked. she put one on to keep track of the time and stashed the rest away as spares.
Along the way, whenever she saw a corpse, she would poke it with her crowbar first. If it was playing dead, she would finish it off the moment it tried to get up.
In a world overrun by zombies, neither the living nor the dead could be easily trusted.
Song Jinhe leaned against a display cabinet to rest for a moment. These zombies were incredibly difficult to kill—nothing like the movies where smashing a head was easier than cracking a walnut.
As it turned out, the expansion of the Space required a tiered increase in the number of kills. Moreover, according to her theory, a zombie with only half a body carried a different “weight” than a full one, so there was little point in targeting those.
When she returned, Song Jinhe was carrying two travel bags she had taken from a luggage store. She pointed out the location of the shop to the other three.
Her efficient and practiced, bandit-style looting operation once again stunned the trio. Aside from the fact that she didn’t bother to fold the clothes neatly, there was nothing to criticize.
It made sense—who bothers with organization during a “Zero-Yuan Purchase”? Usually, people just charge into a store with a sack, sweep the shelves with a series of clatters, sling it over their shoulder, and sprint a hundred meters until they vanish.
Cheng Yan was momentarily dazed. This girl, who looked like she couldn’t even twist open a bottle cap, was adapting to the apocalypse remarkably fast.
Meanwhile, he still hadn’t fully accepted the state of the world, harboring a sliver of unrealistic hope that things might return to normal.
Returning to where they had parked, the group packed some supplies into their backpacks and put the rest in the car. Since most of Song Jinhe’s supplies were in her Space, she cleared out half the trunk for them to store their belongings.
She found a key in an office and locked the door leading to the loading dock.
By the time they finished, it was nearly dark. The four of them used the escape passage to reach the bath center on the adjacent eighth floor. There, they encountered other survivors—over a dozen people, including men, women, the elderly, and children.
The arrival of Song Jinhe’s group alerted the others to the vulnerability of the escape passage. Several young men immediately brought chains, tables, and chairs to block it off.
Outside the window, lightning flashed and thunder roared as the groans of zombies echoed through the city.
In the bath center, all the curtains were drawn, leaving only the faint light of a single candle for illumination.
The people there looked at Song Jinhe’s group with varying degrees of suspicion and wariness, but when they saw the backpacks, their gazes turned expectant and eager.
“Where did you come from?” The man speaking was in his thirties, with a scruffy beard. His eyes never left the backpacks on their shoulders. “The outside is crawling with zombies; you must have driven here, right?”
“Yes.” Song Jinhe lowered her gaze, putting on a look of lingering fear. “We ran into a horde.”
“So, you’re planning to stay here?” A pot-bellied man nearby scoffed. “We got here first.”
“Everyone is here for refuge. This place shouldn’t belong to whoever arrived first, should it?”
As soon as Song Jinhe finished speaking, the man glanced at the bamboo lantern in her hand. Thinking she looked like she had just come back from fishing in a river, he barked, “Is it a woman’s place to speak? Let your leader come talk to me—”
In the next second, his voice cut off abruptly. His eyes widened in terror as he looked down at the crowbar nearly pressed into his neck. He froze, not daring to move.
“I just fought some zombies, and the blood on this hasn’t been washed off yet. You should be careful,” Song Jinhe said, tilting her head. “I was speaking to you nicely, but you refused to listen. Can you speak like a human being now?”
The man’s eye twitched. Meeting Song Jinhe’s gaze, his arrogance immediately wilted.
Not only did no one step in to help him, but many also watched with amusement. Wu Dayong was a bully who feared the strong; he was known for being verbally and physically abusive to his wife. Seeing Song Jinhe’s slender frame and young age, he had thought she was an easy target. Now that he had hit a steel wall, everyone was more than happy to watch him squirm.
Finally, Wu Dayong’s wife looked at Song Jinhe apologetically and pulled him back.
“What’s all this for? It’s just a misunderstanding. It’s late; if those things find us, we’ll all die.”
A bearded man stepped out to play mediator. He introduced himself as Yang Minghao and kindly suggested that everyone should help each other during difficult times. He noted that there were plenty of empty rooms and suggested they look out for one another on the way to a shelter once the water receded.
He spoke very well, but in a place where no one could see, the kindness in his eyes instantly faded.
To reach a shelter safely, he needed a few more people who could stand on the front lines.
These four had a car and supplies, and they had come from the outside. He could gather a lot of information from them and eventually find a way to make them hand over their goods. He had nothing to lose.
The bath center occupied two floors. Song Jinhe and the other three chose connected VIP rooms on the eighth floor to rest.
As soon as she entered, Song Jinhe locked the door. Looking at the tidy environment and the comfortable lounge bed, she couldn’t help but marvel that a luxury bath center was a great place regardless of whether it was before or after the apocalypse.
She took out two wooden planks from her Space, heated some water for a quick sponge bath, and stood before the mirror to cut her waist-length hair short.
Then, she began organizing her supplies. Good organization could squeeze out a lot of extra space.
The floodwaters wouldn’t recede for another seven or eight days. During this time, people from the outside couldn’t enter the Western District, making it a prime opportunity to scavenge for supplies.
Suppressing her exhaustion, Song Jinhe finished organizing her things, covered herself with two duvets from the bath center, and quickly fell asleep.
The heavy rain turned into solid sheets as fierce winds raged through the clouds. Overnight, the temperature silently dropped by over ten degrees.
In a residential building, a young man holding a walkie-talkie shivered violently. “What’s with this weather? It’s suddenly so cold. We haven’t found them either; they were probably eaten by zombies long ago.”
A man with a cigarette between his fingers analyzed the situation. “If the people are dead, the cars won’t just vanish. We haven’t even seen a wheel. They’re good at hiding. It’s too cold to waste time; the other team is already on their way.”
The next morning, the torrential rain had turned into a drizzle.
Song Jinhe woke up and ate some toast and milk. The food in the bath center had surely been picked clean, so she planned to search the surrounding areas and other floors today to urgently expand her Space.
Although she had water and food in her Space, it was all bread, biscuits, and instant noodles. It could prevent her from starving, but eating like that long-term was bad for her health.
When Song Jinhe stepped out with her bag, she heard that something had happened in the lounge area.
“My child can’t breathe! Who has medicine? Please help us…” A young couple held a boy about nine years old in their arms, anxiously pleading for help from the people around them.