She returned to the RV and tossed the bagged trash she’d just collected into the garbage bin through the window beside the sofa.
After tidying up, she stood on the staircase and looked up to the second floor, only to find there was still space left.
The ten fifty-jin bags of rice and ten fifty-jin bags of flour were neatly arranged at the rear.
Ten jugs of oil sat in two rows at the front, and the fifty bags of salt were stacked together in boxes.
Altogether they took up only about two-thirds of the available space.
Meng Shiwan felt excited. She could still stockpile more, she could keep stocking up.
Right now, nothing gave her a greater sense of security than hoarding supplies.
She stripped the outer packaging from the salt boxes and took it downstairs to throw out.
Anything bulky and useless had no place in her RV.
Then she pulled all the seasonings from the cabinets and refilled the bottles on the seasoning rack.
Even the gaps inside the seasoning cabinet were tightly packed with small sachets of hot-pot base or seasoning, leaving no empty space.
The rest was repackaged into the smallest possible units and neatly arranged. Bulkier bottles like soy sauce and vinegar were moved to the second floor with the oil and salt.
The cabinets now had half their space freed up again, leaving room for more supplies.
Meng Shiwan looked at her handiwork with great satisfaction.
Every extra bit she stored could truly be life-saving at a critical moment.
She checked outside. The plaza had quieted, zombies wandering aimlessly everywhere.
It was a little after 2 p.m. now. Those who could hide had hidden, those who couldn’t had turned into zombies.
By her rough count, there were several hundred zombies in the plaza alone, with many more still roaming inside the mall.
If they were all cleared, and luck was on her side, she might even get a few crystal cores.
There was no way she’d go out and kill them one by one. Once they heard the noise and surrounded her, she’d be in real trouble.
But now she had the RV.
An RV permanently immune to all damage.
That meant collision damage should be negated too, right?
At the thought, excitement welled up in her.
She climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine. Looking at the stone bollards blocking the road ahead, a flicker of madness crossed her eyes.
The next second, she floored the accelerator and rammed straight into them.
The three round bollards were shoved aside by the impact, and the RV rolled smoothly into the plaza.
Meng Shiwan leaned out to inspect the front.
Not even a scratch.
Her eyes lit up.
“So it really works. This RV isn’t just a fortress anymore, it’s practically a tank. If it can ram, then ram it.”
Watching the zombies surge toward her, the excitement in her eyes grew stronger.
Since zombies couldn’t be wiped out entirely, she’d just run them over with the RV.
After all, it was built on a light-truck chassis. Crushing a few zombies would be effortless.
She wasn’t foolish enough to drive into the densest part of the horde, though. Instead she circled the edges, deliberately picking off isolated zombies.
As long as their heads were crushed, they’d die for good.
The horde chased the RV while she drove in seemingly random loops, skirting the crowd’s edge. Every collision sent several zombies flying.
Under the heavy wheels, flesh and bone were crushed into a mangled mess.
In the vast plaza, a bizarre chase unfolded.
Some people hiding in nearby buildings looked out at the scene below, scalps tingling.
“Where did this badass come from? They’re toying with zombies like they’re playing with monkeys!”
“That RV is insane! It plowed through several stone bollards without a dent!”
The zombies were terrifying enough, yet someone was mowing them down as casually as cutting grass.
The zombies inside the mall, drawn by the commotion, came pouring out too.
Meng Shiwan welcomed every one.
One came, she ran over one.
Two came, she crushed both.
Twenty minutes later, the plaza was covered in blood-red tire tracks. Fragments of flesh and human remains lay scattered everywhere, turning the place into something out of hell.
She could only fight like this because she’d been lucky.
It was a weekday, and the outbreak had begun around noon, so there weren’t many shoppers.
The mall itself was newly built. The surrounding commercial district hadn’t fully developed, and there was little traffic on the nearby roads, so the local zombie population wasn’t dense.
After wiping out this group, only a relatively small number of zombies were drawn over by the noise, arriving in scattered clusters she could still handle.
Had she tried the same in a busy commercial district, she’d probably have drawn every zombie for blocks, trapping her RV in the middle of a horde.
Not only would she never finish running them over, but they’d likely pen the RV in completely, leaving her unable to escape.
Seeing she’d cleared most of the zombies, Meng Shiwan returned to the RV, picked up the multifunctional outdoor trowel, and prepared to go search for crystal cores.
But when she opened the door and saw the ground covered in blood and mangled remains, she hesitated.
After bracing herself for a moment, she closed the door again, dug out a few garbage bags, and wrapped them around her feet.
She also found a disposable rain poncho and put it on, covering herself head to toe before getting out.
She’d bought all these supplies the day before.
She’d only picked up the RV from the factory yesterday, so she’d only had time to buy essentials, sofa covers, bedding, pots and pans, garbage bags.
After one night in the RV, she’d traveled back to this morning.
It wasn’t that she was squeamish about blood.
After three years in the apocalypse, she’d long grown used to it.
She simply didn’t want to dirty her spotless RV.
Walking across the blood-soaked ground, she raised the trowel and split open the relatively intact zombie heads as if chopping watermelons.
Some zombies had only had their bodies crushed while their heads still writhed on the ground. Meng Shiwan split those in half too. Finding no core inside, she moved on to the next.
The people hiding upstairs had already been horrified by the gruesome scene below.
Now, watching Meng Shiwan casually split zombie heads like watermelons made their scalps tingle even more.
“It’s actually a woman. Isn’t that a bit too brutal?”
“That young lady is so cool! The way she cracks zombie heads is unbelievably badass.”
“How is she doing this? Everyone else is panicking, and she’s calmly killing zombies.”
Meng Shiwan searched the plaza with complete focus, hunting for crystal cores.
Whenever an unwary zombie charged, she swung the trowel down hard, caving its skull with a single blow.
The motions of killing zombies had long become instinct, engraved through countless repetitions.
In fact, a few zombies alone weren’t all that frightening.
They were slow and clumsy and couldn’t run fast.
What made them truly terrifying was that they felt no pain, possessed tremendous strength, and even the slightest scratch would infect a human.
As long as someone was physically fit, knew hand-to-hand combat, had quick reflexes, and had mastered the techniques, taking on three to five zombies alone wasn’t much of a problem.
The real danger wasn’t individual zombies.
It was the horde.
When an overwhelming tide of zombies surrounded someone, even an awakened ability user could drain all their power and eventually be worn down and killed.
Unfortunately, modern people generally disliked exercise.
Some did hardly any physical labor and seemed ready to faint at the slightest exertion.
Nor did they know any combat techniques.
In the end, they could only become food for the zombies.