The hotel had expanded in size, growing from two floors to three.
The first floor didn’t change much overall. The original space for the shelves had been replaced with a vending machine. The items that had been on the shelves were intelligently transferred into the vending machine by the system, each with a price tag.
The hallway was longer now. There used to be four rooms, now there were eight, and the hotel’s footprint had extended outward.
The bathhouse and public restroom remained mostly unchanged.
On the second floor, there were now two single rooms and six double rooms. The facilities inside the rooms hadn’t changed much.
The third floor was newly added with two suites, each with two bedrooms and a living room. They included kitchens and bathrooms and were about 100 square meters—perfect for a small family.
Chen Xi planned to price each suite at 30 Crystal Cores, double that of a double room. After all, each suite had two double beds, plus a kitchen and shower, making it more cost-effective than booking two double rooms separately.
While Chen Xi was eating lunch, two people suddenly rushed in from outside, hurriedly closing the door behind them. They sat by the wall, panting, and listened to the sounds outside.
Chen Xi: …Why does everyone always slam the door? And why do they come when I’m eating?
Seeing that they didn’t plan to approach immediately, Chen Xi observed the two: they were women, one younger, around thirty, and the other older, likely in her fifties or sixties.
They looked somewhat alike, so Chen Xi guessed they were mother and daughter. Judging by how nervous they were, she decided to let them calm down before speaking. There was no immediate danger, and if she spoke too soon, she might scare them further.
So Chen Xi calmly continued her meal.
At this moment, their state was indeed distressed. Lin Man hadn’t expected that she and her mother would end up in such a situation. Her heart was heavy, and as she listened to the zombies approaching outside, she hugged her mother tightly and closed her eyes in despair.
After a long while, there was no pain as she had feared, and no sound of zombies breaking through the door.
Carefully, Lin Man opened her eyes. Through the gap in the fence, she saw that the zombies seemed oblivious to their presence and were wandering off in different directions.
What was going on?
“Manman, can they not get in?” her mother’s voice whispered.
Lin Man snapped back to reality and replied, looking at the zombies: “It seems that way.”
Before they could figure it out, a voice came from the building nearby: “Do you want to come inside and rest for a bit?”
Lin Man looked and saw a young girl slowly walking toward them from the building’s entrance. She immediately assumed a defensive stance.
“Don’t be scared, don’t be scared. I won’t hurt you. I’m the manager of this hotel. If you want something to eat or a place to stay, you can come in.”
“Eat? You have food here?”
Lin Man and her mother hadn’t eaten anything since the night before. She could endure it, but her older mother could not.
“We have food, drinks, and supplies. You can exchange them for Crystal Cores. Do you have any Cores?” Chen Xi said warmly.
Lin Man nodded. Seeing that Chen Xi had no intention of harming them, she relaxed slightly.
Lin Man helped her mother follow Chen Xi into the hotel and was shocked by the vending machines inside, though she didn’t ask many questions.
They had brought some Crystal Cores from the base before leaving. Not many, but enough to buy food.
Lin Man chose the cheapest cookies and bread, along with a bottle of water, and shared them with her mother.
After finishing, Lin Man started talking with Chen Xi, and Chen Xi learned more about her background.
Lin Man was originally from a neighboring city of S City. Her father had passed away when she was young, and her mother had raised her alone. After graduating from university, she went straight to work in S City.
The night the apocalypse arrived, she and her mother had been at home. Her mother had stored some food, which helped them survive the initial chaos.
Later, when the food ran out, Lin Man went out to look for more. She heard that a safe base had been established in the city, so she brought her mother along.
After contributing some supplies, they stayed in a single room together.
The currency in the base was Crystal Cores. Many ability users would go out during the day to kill zombies. Lin Man and her mother had no abilities, so they could only do chores like laundry and cleaning.
But the rewards were too small. They could barely afford food. Lin Man bit her lip and decided to go out with ability users to fight zombies.
After killing zombies, many ability users found digging for Crystal Cores themselves tedious and disgusting, so they would bring ordinary people along and pay them some cores.
At first, Lin Man just followed the ability users to dig cores, sometimes finishing off zombies that were still alive. Gradually, she started fighting zombies herself.
Due to her physical limits, she couldn’t take down hundreds of zombies at once like ability users, but she could handle a dozen or so per day, and sometimes earn over twenty Crystal Cores if lucky.
Cookies and water in the base cost five cores each. Buying two cookies and a bottle of water daily left a few cores to save.
Unfortunately, the good times didn’t last. In the apocalypse, human greed and malice were magnified. Because Lin Man was fairly attractive and she and her mother were weak, they soon became targets of other ability users in the base.
At first, the base’s rules restrained the perpetrators. They only harassed Lin Man verbally and tried to take advantage, which she endured.
But then, the night before yesterday, when she went out with ability users to a far location, they rested overnight in a building.
While she was asleep, an ability user sneaked into her room attempting to assault her. Lin Man fought desperately, getting slapped several times and screaming, but no one came to help.
She realized that the others had known all along and had simply watched her being abused.
In the end, Lin Man mustered all her strength, knocked the ability user out with a bedside ornament, and jumped out the window. She escaped under the cover of night, taking her mother with her back to the base, fleeing for safety.