“Jiujiu, come eat some meat.”
Lu Chen grilled two fish—one for himself and one for Ling Jiujiu.
Ling Jiujiu lowered his head to look at the fish that smelled of tree roots, then glanced at Lu Chen, not even lifting a hand.
Lu Chen sighed helplessly and lightly tapped his little head.
“So picky. What will you do if there’s a time when you have to eat in front of others?”
Ling Jiujiu covered his head, looking pitiful. “I can go seven days without eating.”
Lu Chen: “Just take one bite. It shouldn’t be that hard to swallow.”
Ling Jiujiu still shook his head—he didn’t want to chew on tree roots!
He wanted fresh meat.
Lu Chen had no way to deal with him and threatened, “If you don’t eat, people outside will suspect your identity and blow your head off.”
Ling Jiujiu turned his face away. Did Lu Chen really think he didn’t know he was just trying to scare him?
He was a zombie with experience. He had personally witnessed how humans interacted with each other.
Humans wouldn’t give food to others—they’d even fight over a single bite.
So the situation Lu Chen described, where others would give him meat to eat, simply didn’t exist!
“If you don’t eat, you won’t get any meat,” Lu Chen threatened.
Ling Jiujiu was taken aback.
“No meat?”
Lu Chen raised his head. “That’s right. This is today’s meal. If you don’t eat it, there’s nothing else.”
Was this a threat?
It probably was.
But… what kind of threat was this? He could go out and find meat himself.
He didn’t need anyone to take care of him—he was a zombie who could support himself.
He could even support Lu Chen, a living human, on top of that.
To prove he didn’t need to rely on anyone, Ling Jiujiu got up, went to the kitchen, picked up a fishing rod, and headed outside.
Ling Jiujiu sat by the river for most of the day and, with some luck, actually caught two fish.
It was a case of the willing taking the bait.
Lu Chen had no choice but to think of another method.
By the time Ling Jiujiu returned with the two fish, Lu Chen had come up with a plan that would both make Ling Jiujiu willing to eat and avoid raising suspicion.
He turned the fish into sashimi, a well-known dish.
The fish, sliced into thin pieces, was arranged on a plate like a blooming flower—quite a pretty sight.
Ling Jiujiu found it novel and was almost reluctant to eat it.
Lu Chen handed him a small dish of soy sauce. “Dip it in this—it tastes better.”
Ling Jiujiu admired it for a long time, nearly drooling, before finally picking up his chopsticks.
He picked up a slice from the very center, glanced at the dark liquid beside it, frowned slightly, and ate it without dipping.
The thin slice of fish entered his mouth, and Ling Jiujiu chewed it carefully for a while, realizing it seemed a bit tastier than what he usually ate.
More importantly, these fish slices had no bones, so they wouldn’t prick his tongue.
Lu Chen, who had spent most of the day picking out fish bones, felt somewhat relieved when he saw him eat.
This way, even if they encountered others, he could blend in well and wouldn’t be chased down and killed.
However, the most pressing issue now was that the little guy’s eyes were clearly different from those of ordinary people.
In fact, if not for his eyes, even Lu Chen couldn’t tell the difference between him and a human.
It seemed he’d have to go outside tomorrow to look for colored contact lenses to cover them up.
Actually, the contact lenses weren’t an urgent matter. They could wait until they had no choice but to leave this place and search for them along the way.
The reason for going out tomorrow was to confirm something.
Since no other zombies were seen here, he didn’t know whether his supernatural ability was indeed absorbing Crystal Cores.
If it was, what could the Crystal Cores he absorbed transform into?
There were too many unknowns; he needed to figure these out to prepare for survival in the future.
After all, in the apocalypse, zombies weren’t the most terrifying—those mutated animals and some awakened who had lost their humanity were the real threats.
After finishing the remaining two fish heads and tails, Lu Chen went to the kitchen to sharpen his knife.
The next day, Ling Jiujiu woke up to find Lu Chen, who had been sleeping beside him, gone.
Thinking Lu Chen had gone hunting, he didn’t pay much attention.
But when Lu Chen still hadn’t returned by noon, Ling Jiujiu finally grew restless.
He worried that Lu Chen had fainted again like before.
Human bodies were fragile—even minor bumps and bruises hurt for a long time, and they could bleed to death easily, nothing like zombies that could withstand so much.
He got up to look for Lu Chen but, remembering that Lu Chen might need ointment if injured, turned back to grab the small medical kit before heading out.
……
In the town.
Lu Chen was searching house to house for supplies.
On his way here, he had seen an abandoned car by the roadside.
The person inside had turned into a zombie, but the car was still usable.
This place was desolate, and traveling without a car was inconvenient.
He drove to the nearest town, which wasn’t particularly prosperous but had plenty of supplies.
Lu Chen’s current supernatural ability was Clairvoyance, allowing him to see what was inside houses without entering them.
This greatly increased the efficiency of his supply searches.
His luck was decent—in one household, he found several boxes of colored contact lenses, all purely decorative black large-pupil ones without prescription, perfect for Jiujiu.
After filling every usable space in the car, Lu Chen finally picked up his machete to deal with the zombies.
Inside the house, he quickly dispatched a family of three zombies.
Thanks to his clairvoyant vision, Lu Chen could directly see whether there were Crystal Cores in the zombies’ brains, saving him the time of digging through their heads.
Lu Chen dug open the male zombie’s head and found a silvery-white Crystal Core.
He had never encountered a Crystal Core of this color before and didn’t know what supernatural ability it represented.
He picked up the silvery-white Crystal Core, and it vanished the moment it touched his fingers.
Lu Chen clearly felt the silvery-white Crystal Core merging into his body.
Unsure what this supernatural ability was, he placed his hand on the wall and tried to use it.
After waiting for a while, the wall showed no changes, and nothing happened.
That shouldn’t be…
Lu Chen didn’t dwell on it here, planning to dig up a few more Crystal Cores to test further.
As he turned around, he saw a flower on the windowsill and thought it would be nice to take it back and plant it in the yard.
But the moment his hand touched the flowerpot, it suddenly disappeared.
Lu Chen stared at his hand, stunned.
The flowerpot wasn’t a Crystal Core—surely he couldn’t make everything he touched disappear.
However, he soon realized this wasn’t the case.
To his surprise, he discovered a strand of silvery-white light appearing in his mind.
Lu Chen focused his thoughts, using his consciousness to explore the silvery-white light.
He found that the missing flowerpot was inside.
It was a dimensional space, not very large—about one cubic meter in size.
A small storage space isn’t a big deal—he could continue absorbing Crystal Cores to enhance his supernatural ability.
With this dimensional space, he wouldn’t need to carry piles of supplies around during relocation, making things much more convenient.