The fact that the police still hadn’t arrived made Jiang Qi feel that something was wrong. She took out her phone and searched for the police station closest to the hotel, discovering it wasn’t far at all, only about five kilometers away, just two streets over from the city library.
She had even passed by it while stockpiling supplies earlier that day.
Walking there on foot would take at least an hour and a half. Better to find some kind of vehicle instead.
Jiang Qi stood up and patted the front desk receptionist, whose face had already gone pale with fright after seeing the corpse at the hotel entrance. “Sorry to bother you, but could you help me with something?”
At a time like this, the receptionist’s professional instincts were still barely functioning.
“What kind of help?”
“Do you have a vehicle?”
“Huh?”
Ten minutes later, Jiang Qi set off on the electric scooter she had borrowed from the receptionist.
Through the curtain of pouring rain, her gaze swept rapidly across both sides of the road. She noticed there were very few monsters wandering in the middle of the streets, but many of them were lurking in twos and threes at the entrances of residential compounds, hotels, and office buildings.
Their hearing was extremely sharp, and they could pick up the sound of her scooter even through the rain. Quite a few monsters abandoned their ambush positions and began trailing her from a distance. Before long, more than a dozen monsters were following behind her.
“There are too many monsters. I need to deal with them first.”
Remaining calm, Jiang Qi steered the scooter toward a nearby park.
When she spotted an old-fashioned octagonal pavilion, she stopped.
“Perfect place.”
Just right for dealing with monsters.
Jiang Qi parked the scooter somewhere sheltered from the rain, then picked up a large plastic bucket and poured a circle of quicklime powder around the pavilion.
By the time she finished preparing, the monsters following her had finally arrived at the park.
Working together with practiced coordination, they spread out and surrounded Jiang Qi at the center, occasionally making rattling sounds from their throats like rattlesnakes shaking their tails.
Seeing this, Jiang Qi pulled out her shotgun, gripped it firmly, and flicked off the safety. Faced with being surrounded, she showed no panic at all. Instead, she sneered. “Thanks so much for preparing this many live targets for me.”
What did she lack the most right now?
Experience.
At this distance, if she still missed, she might as well give up living.
Jiang Qi raised the gun, aimed at a monster’s chest, and pulled the trigger.
Bang!
The bullet shot out, and the recoil made her entire upper body jerk violently.
Unfortunately, the excitement lasted only a second. The monster struck in the chest showed no sign of severe injury or pain. Instead, like a frog catching prey, it shot out a long tongue straight toward her.
“What the hell is that?!”
It was so disgusting she almost threw up.
Jiang Qi immediately leaped several steps backward, only to realize…
The monster’s tongue was at most one meter long. It couldn’t even reach her standing inside the pavilion.
“Huh?”
That’s it?
Your tongue’s only one meter long and you still dared surround me?
Do I look like some helpless pushover?!
Jiang Qi scoffed. “You’re practically asking to die.”
Wooden targets were hard to find inside an instance, but monster targets?
Those were easy enough.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Gunshots rang continuously through the silent park late at night. Even though shooting the monsters didn’t cause much damage, it helped Jiang Qi gain shooting experience.
Free experience was free experience.
Finally, under Jiang Qi’s relentless gunfire and provocation, one of the monsters couldn’t hold back any longer and lunged at her.
Then its bare, slick feet stepped directly onto the quicklime powder.
A familiar scream rang out once more.
“Good thing I covered my ears beforehand.”
While riding the scooter earlier, Jiang Qi had already noticed that none of these monsters wore shoes or socks. They seemed to love the rain and were extremely adapted to moving around in it.
She suspected that if they weren’t hunting humans, these creatures would probably choose not to wear clothes at all.
The monster’s agonized shrieks appeared to frighten the others.
They retreated cautiously and in an orderly manner.
Noticing this, Jiang Qi frowned and muttered, “They feel fear… they test things out… they cooperate when hunting… just like wild animals…”
“What exactly are you?”
They looked human, but their behavior no longer resembled humans at all.
Rubbing her sore arm from all the shooting, Jiang Qi killed the monster lying in front of her, unable to stop herself from feeling a little regretful.
Sigh… If only I could mix quicklime powder into bullets. Then I’d have both close-range and long-range attacks.
When Jiang Qi stopped moving, the monsters no longer dared move either. The two sides remained locked in a standoff.
Trying to trap her here?
Jiang Qi’s plan tonight was to head to the police station and investigate the situation. Having her plans disrupted before she could even carry them out was what she hated most. But there were eighteen monsters surrounding the pavilion in total. If she rashly charged out…
The possibility of being attacked from behind was far too high.
“Think of something… think…”
Her gaze dropped to the plastic bucket, and she noticed there was still half the quicklime powder left unused.
Jiang Qi suddenly slapped her forehead in realization.
“Ah! I’m such an idiot!”
Even if quicklime powder couldn’t be mixed into bullets, she could still stick it onto other things!
Just so happened, she still had some unused double-sided tape in her backpack.
The eighteen monsters surrounding the pavilion watched as Jiang Qi happily took off her raincoat, carefully dried it, then used double-sided tape to attach strips all over the outer layer before sprinkling it thoroughly with quicklime powder.
“All done!”
Carefully, Jiang Qi put on the raincoat, now coated as though it had been dusted with flour. Then she opened the umbrella she kept in her backpack for emergencies and rested it over her shoulder, preventing the quicklime powder from getting wet in the rain before it touched the monsters.
“Hahaha, come on! Let’s fight to the death!”
Jiang Qi charged straight into the rain toward the monsters surrounding her.
The monsters: “!!!”
Terrified, the monsters turned and ran.
Shameless! How could there be such a shameless human?!
Jiang Qi chased after them, laughing wildly. “Hahaha! Why are you running? Weren’t you the ones chasing me? Come on! Keep going!”
***
Meanwhile…
Nine-year-old Duan Xue and her sixty-year-old grandmother, Yan Mei, were desperately fleeing through the rain.
“Hurry… hurry upstairs…”
Yan Mei no longer had the strength to keep running. The hotel they had originally stayed at was very close to the police station. They had thought being near the station would be safer, but that very night the police station had been overrun by monsters. Afraid of getting caught up in it, they had no choice but to change locations overnight.
But the night was too dark and the rain too heavy. They were discovered by the monsters while fleeing, and in their panic accidentally ran into a residential complex, only to find that there were monsters everywhere inside as well.
Every single one of them was crouched outside the apartment buildings, lying in wait.
Yan Mei exhausted all her strength to kill two monsters. Clutching her injured shoulder, she forced a smile and urged her granddaughter, “Be good. Listen to Grandma and hurry upstairs.”
Duan Xue wiped the rainwater from her face and shook her head over and over. “No! I can’t leave! I can’t abandon Grandma!”
Seeing that her granddaughter refused to leave alone, Yan Mei could only let her support her as they entered the apartment building together, both helpless and comforted at the same time. But not long after they entered, seven or eight monsters came chasing after them again.
They seemed to be communicating through rattling, clacking noises, and the rough meaning was probably…
Should we go in?
Hate dryness.
But there’s food.
***
Tears dripped from Duan Xue’s face one after another, but she still stubbornly supported her grandmother while helping treat the shoulder wound that was bleeding nonstop.
Blue light flickered continuously in her hands.
This was the ability she had drawn from her beginner gift pack.
Wound Healing (A+1-rank): usable once per day, with each use lasting 10 seconds. Before upgrading, it had only lasted 5 seconds.
In their previous instance, the grandmother and granddaughter had chosen the coastal route. With Yan Mei’s ability helping them, they had been luckier than most players and cleared the instance ahead of schedule. Duan Xue had thought the instances weren’t all that difficult. As long as Grandma was there, they would definitely survive. She never expected the Parasite Instance to be this hard. It was only the first day, and they were already about to die.
Bang!
After finally reaching the rooftop, they slammed the door shut and locked it.
The torrential rain battered the grandmother and granddaughter, who were already soaked through from head to toe.
“Grandma, will the monsters come up here?”
Duan Xue clutched tightly at her grandmother’s clothes, her whole body trembling uncontrollably, from the cold and from fear.
“I don’t know. Let’s hope not.”
Yan Mei held her granddaughter tightly in her arms.
But things clearly weren’t going to turn out so well. The tightly shut door shook violently under the monsters’ pounding. Realizing what was happening, Yan Mei hurriedly pulled her granddaughter over to move the junk on the rooftop to barricade the door.
“Even blocking it like this will only buy us a little time…”
Yan Mei turned and quickly walked to the edge of the rooftop to look downward, anxiously searching for air-conditioning units and pipes. Seeing what her grandmother was doing, Duan Xue asked in confusion, “Grandma, what are you doing?”
“Xiao Xue, are you afraid of heights?”
Yan Mei stared at her young granddaughter with a firmness Duan Xue had never seen before.
“Huh?”
Duan Xue froze.
Yan Mei was a little old lady only about 1.6 meters tall. Kids these days were well-fed, and though her granddaughter was only nine years old, she had already almost grown as tall as her.
“Xiao Xue, Grandma will hold the door. You climb down along the air-conditioning units and pipes.”
Duan Xue immediately refused. “No! I can’t leave Grandma! I can’t survive on my own—”
“Then run as far as you can!”
Yan Mei gripped her granddaughter’s shoulders tightly. “Things are different now, Xiao Xue. If you want to survive in the apocalypse, you have to be braver than everyone else.”
“Don’t let Grandma down, alright?”
Gentle pleas often carried more power than harsh scolding. Although Duan Xue cried so hard she could barely breathe, under her grandmother’s encouraging gaze, she still slowly began climbing down along the pipes running outside the apartment building.
They had done this once in the previous instance. Barely, but it still counted as practice.
***
By the time Jiang Qi rode her electric scooter near the police station, she had already changed into a different raincoat.
Where had it come from?
A zero-cost shopping spree at the supermarket.
It couldn’t be helped. Once you’d done it once, the second time came naturally. Besides, opportunities like this would only become more common in the future.
She didn’t approach the police station directly. Instead, she found a nearby five-star hotel and rented a room with windows and a balcony facing the police station. Taking out a pair of binoculars to observe carefully, she discovered the situation was even worse than she had imagined.
“The police station has already fallen…”
It looked like if she wanted to clear the Parasite Instance, she would have to rely entirely on herself.
Moving around at night was far more inconvenient than during the day. After gathering enough information, Jiang Qi planned to return to the original four-star hotel to rest. Don’t ask why she wasn’t staying at the five-star hotel instead. First, she didn’t want to keep changing hotels. Second, all her supplies were back there.
But just as Jiang Qi was preparing to head back, her electric scooter had barely traveled ten meters before a young girl recklessly rushed toward her.
Probably a little girl? She was fairly tall, but her face still looked childish.
“You—”
Jiang Qi had barely managed to say a single word before she was interrupted.
“Please save my grandma! My grandma knows where the parasite mother is! I also have healing abilities! I can heal your injuries! I’m really useful, and I can give you my points too…”
“Alright, alright, stop.”
Jiang Qi pressed a hand to her forehead helplessly. “Where’s your grandma? Just tell me.”
Duan Xue’s eyes instantly lit up brighter than the streetlights in the dark night, her voice choked with tears.
“She’s in the residential complex! I’ll take you there!”