Jiang Qi returned to her room, Room 1032, on the tenth floor.
She set the books down in her arms and sat on the bed, deep in thought.
“How am I supposed to find the parasite mother and kill it?”
She had guns. She had high-damage weapons. That was her advantage. But she also had a fatal weakness. She had the weapons, yet no experience actually using them.
And besides…
“Killing the parasite mother has to be done before the flood disaster starts.”
If the flooding truly began and the entire city of Yu City was submerged underwater, Jiang Qi suspected that both the “infected hosts” and the “parasite mother” would become vastly stronger.
Not only that, once the city flooded, players’ movements would become severely restricted.
Jiang Qi wasn’t a fish. There was no way she could move freely underwater.
“No. I have to make my move tonight.”
Time was too tight. There was no room for delay.
Jiang Qi changed out of her soaked clothes and put on warm layers. Then she wrapped tape around her sleeves and pant legs, sealed heat packs onto herself to maintain her body temperature, and finally pulled on a black tactical jacket along with a raincoat large enough to completely cover her body, plus a hat and face mask.
She had bought all these daily supplies from the supermarket.
Once fully prepared, Jiang Qi looked toward the two books lying on the hotel bed: Weapons Enthusiast: Individual Weapons and Weapons Enthusiast: Famous Guns of the World.
The camera only had one use left today. Aside from the time she materialized egg tarts for testing purposes, she had used another chance to materialize liquid sulfuric acid.
Why?
Because she had no experience firing guns or fighting in combat. Killing zombies was one thing. Zombies were stupid and slow. Jiang Qi had only managed it because she had enough courage, not because of any actual combat ability.
But the monsters in the Parasite Instance were clearly different.
What if she missed when she fired at the monster during a fight?
Then she’d splash sulfuric acid on it instead.
Jiang Qi was someone who loved making plans. Charging in recklessly was impossible for her. Even when taking risks, she would choose the method with the highest possible chance of success.
“If I run into the monster head-on, should I shoot first, or wait until it gets close before using a blade?”
Jiang Qi imagined herself fighting the monster with both weapons in her mind. After a while, she shook her head.
“No, no! That’s way too risky!”
As someone who knew her own limits, she had zero confidence in her combat abilities.
The monsters in the parasite instance clearly possessed intelligence, and they moved even faster than ordinary humans. She might be able to handle one monster alone despite her near-zero combat experience, but there were three monsters outside the hotel entrance.
One against three, and successfully counter-killing them?
Impossible. Absolutely impossible.
“I have to come up with a plan that’s guaranteed to work…” Jiang Qi bit her finger as she racked her brain for a foolproof strategy.
For now, she had no clue how to kill the parasite mother, but she felt there was no harm in killing a few infected hosts first. After all, only by fighting them would she learn what kind of monsters they were, what weaknesses they had, and how difficult they were to kill.
“Monsters that like water…”
“Would they be afraid of hot water?”
Jiang Qi walked to the corner where the books were piled up and found several books related to agriculture and chemistry. After flipping through them for a while, she finally found what she was looking for.
[High-Purity Quicklime Powder]
This was something farmers specifically used for sterilization, disinfection, and moisture removal.
Most importantly…
Quicklime generated heat when it came into contact with water. Under ideal conditions, the temperature released by quicklime reacting with water could even reach 700 degrees Celsius, hot enough to scald a fish to death or boil an egg.
Jiang Qi only knew this because she had studied chemistry.
“Whether it works or not, I have to test it first.”
Before the monsters got close, she could throw quicklime powder onto them. If that failed, she would follow up with sulfuric acid. If the quicklime worked, then she wouldn’t need to fear the other two monsters wandering outside the hotel entrance. And if it failed, she would immediately retreat back into the hotel and think of another plan.
In any case, there was only one core principle behind this operation.
Staying alive came first!
***
12:30 a.m.
Fully armed, Jiang Qi stepped into the hallway. On her back was a large bucket of quicklime powder. In her hand, she carried a glass pressure sprayer filled with liquid sulfuric acid, basically a watering can. In the left pocket of her raincoat was a Colt M1911, and strapped behind her waist was a sharpened machete.
She had used up all four photo materialization chances from yesterday and today.
“Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.”
After silently repeating it three times to herself, Jiang Qi resolutely walked toward the elevator.
Whether the experiment would succeed depended entirely on tonight!
Even at midnight, a four-star hotel still had staff on duty in the lobby. The young receptionist had been slacking off and reading a novel when his attention was suddenly drawn to Jiang Qi stepping out of the elevator. His mouth unconsciously fell open.
That outfit…
Are you going to rob a bank?!
How could a normal person wrap themselves up that tightly? It wasn’t even cold enough for winter clothing yet, was it?
Jiang Qi met the receptionist’s shocked gaze and paused. A few seconds later, she kindly warned him,
“No matter what you hear or see later, do not leave the hotel, understand?”
“Miss… have you run into some kind of trouble?” the receptionist asked stiffly. Surely he hadn’t encountered a lunatic, right?
“It has nothing to do with you. Just remember what I said.”
Jiang Qi had no intention of explaining further. She continued forward until she reached the hotel entrance. Outside, the heavy rain was still pouring down with no sign of stopping.
Within the curtain of rain, three silhouettes stood silently in the darkness. If one didn’t look carefully, they could easily miss them entirely.
Jiang Qi found the monsters’ behavior somewhat strange.
Why were they guarding the hotel entrance? Waiting for prey to walk into a trap?
The monsters, whose movements were completely unaffected by the rain, quickly noticed Jiang Qi’s appearance. They proactively began walking toward her, then stopped about five meters away from the hotel doors.
Although they didn’t come any closer, their eyes stared fixedly at Jiang Qi like wild beasts eyeing prey they desired.
Having once been chased by zombies before, Jiang Qi actually wasn’t very afraid. After all, she was only facing three monsters, not an entire horde. If it had been a group of monsters, she definitely would have turned and run, but with just three, she could still maneuver around them.
So she raised a hand, crooked her finger at them, and shouted provocatively,
“Come at me!”
Monsters: “?”
The atmosphere instantly became awkward.
The three monsters exchanged glances, seemingly communicating about something. Then they quickly spread apart, taking up positions like predators surrounding their prey. The tallest one, the “adult man,” lunged at Jiang Qi first.
Jiang Qi neither retreated nor hesitated. She raised the pressure sprayer and aimed directly at the “adult man’s” face before pressing down.
Psssh—!
The “adult man,” splashed full in the face with sulfuric acid, immediately let out a sharp, ear-piercing scream.
It sounded nothing like something a human could produce.
The hotel receptionist jumped in fright.
“What was that sound?!”
It was practically like hearing an owl screech.
Jiang Qi moved quickly. While the “adult man” was clutching his face and screaming in agony, she swiftly grabbed a large handful of quicklime powder with her gloved hand and threw it all over him.
The parasite monsters loved the rain and weren’t afraid of the cold, so their clothing was very thin, leaving large patches of skin exposed. That made it easy for the quicklime powder Jiang Qi scattered to come into direct contact with the “adult man’s” body.
And then…
An even more agonized scream rang out.
Sizzle, sizzle—
An even more violent reaction than sulfuric acid corrosion erupted across the adult man’s body. Everywhere the quicklime touched began turning red, scorching hot, and swollen with blood.
The horrifying sight scared Jiang Qi into taking several steps back. She watched helplessly as the “adult man” seemed to be boiled alive, the blood beneath his skin bubbling violently as though countless worms were frantically crawling around inside him. Finally, his whole body collapsed to the ground with a thud.
“What… is that thing?”
Red, worm-like creatures, long and thin like earthworms, began wriggling out from the “adult man’s” mouth, nose, ears, and eyes, twisting nonstop across the ground.
Disgusted, Jiang Qi threw another large handful of quicklime powder onto the worms.
Sizzle, sizzle.
The worms finally stopped moving because they were completely dead. All that remained on the hotel entrance floor were shriveled bodies, scalded dry by the heat.
These monsters were afraid of heat? Afraid of warmth? Afraid of anywhere warm? Or perhaps…
The worms parasitizing humans were actually some kind of bacteria-like organism from the water?
Otherwise, why would quicklime kill them?
A cold smile curled across Jiang Qi’s lips.
“Hmph, so that’s how it is.”
She had thought these monsters would be something extremely difficult to deal with. It turned out they had a fatal weakness after all.
“AHHHHHHHHH! HELP! Someone’s dead!”
The front desk receptionist, who had come over after hearing the screams, immediately went weak in the knees and collapsed to the floor when he saw the body lying at the hotel entrance.
“C-call the police… I need to call the police…”
The moment Jiang Qi noticed the receptionist come out, she vigilantly scanned the surroundings. Unfortunately, after searching around, she still couldn’t find the other two companions of the monster.
“They disappeared? They ran pretty fast.”
Turning around, she walked back into the hotel lobby. The front desk receptionist was trembling as he dialed the police, and after hesitating for a long while, Jiang Qi chose not to stop him. She was thinking that if the police came, they would definitely notice something wrong with the monster’s body. Maybe they could even help eliminate some of the monsters.
But reality soon proved that such wishful thinking was impossible in this instance.
The receptionist did get through to the police, and an officer on the other end said they would arrive immediately. Yet even after half an hour had passed, no one showed up.
The front desk receptionist anxiously paced around the lobby.
“Why aren’t they here yet? Why haven’t they come?”
Jiang Qi, who had been sitting on a sofa in the hotel lobby waiting, also found it strange that the police had not arrived.
“Hmm… don’t tell me there’s traffic even at night?”
***
At that very moment, every important building in Yu City had already been surrounded.
The moment the police cars left the station, they discovered densely packed “humans” standing outside the entrance.
“Why are all of you blocking the police station in the middle of the night instead of sleeping? Obstructing official duties is against the law!”
One officer leaned out with a stern expression to question them, but soon a scream rang out as a long tongue shot from a monster’s mouth and violently pierced his eye.
“AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!”
Before long, every officer inside the police cars had fallen within the encirclement.
…
Nine-year-old Duan Xue pulled the curtains shut with a worried expression before turning around. “Grandma, the police station has already been taken over by the monsters.”
The elderly woman in the room, her hair already half white and reading glasses resting on her face, stood up upon hearing that.
“Let’s go, granddaughter. We need to leave this hotel.”
“Okay! Grandma, I’ll help you.”