Don’t tell her he’d just killed a chicken!
Xin Xiaoru had an alarmingly sharp intuition. Her first instinct was to shove him out, slam the door shut, and make a run for it!
But looking at his bulging backpack, who knew what was stuffed inside, she didn’t dare move.
The man was very tall, and entering the RV looked a bit cramped for him. He swept a glance over the interior. “Can I take a shower?”
Xin Xiaoru said, “Yes. It’s in that small compartment.”
This RV was a Class B model, with very little interior space, only about five square meters. The bed was placed crosswise at the very back, with walls on three sides. In the middle was a neat little sofa and a foldable table; the table was folded away now, leaving room for people to move about. Beside it was a fixed storage counter and cabinets.
After coming in, the man didn’t put his dusty backpack on the cabinet countertop. Instead, he set it on the floor, took out a set of clean clothes from inside, and went into the small compartment next to the cabinets to shower. He left behind a single sentence: “I’ve sent the next destination to your phone. You can start driving.”
Xin Xiaoru hadn’t even had time to introduce anything before she heard him fumble his way into the bathroom and turn on the cold water for a shower.
She glanced at the large backpack on the floor, suspecting it might be hiding weapons or contraband, and hesitated between immediately bolting and continuing to play “landlady” and drive the guest.
“System, can you protect my safety inside the RV?”
The system replied proudly, “No one can hurt you inside the RV! Right now, the entire RV is mine! But if someone attacks the RV from outside, I can’t do anything about that…”
“No, no!” Xin Xiaoru reassured it. “That’s already very good!”
If things were really as the system said, then she wasn’t afraid anymore!
She opened the guest’s booking information and confirmed that his ID matched his appearance, then approved his stay.
The man was called He Guying, from the south. Besides staying in the RV, he wanted to take it to many different places. Just the addresses he’d sent Xin Xiaoru in private messages numbered more than fifteen! Clearly, it was a list of places to visit over the next seven days.
Xin Xiaoru searched them up. All the addresses were somewhat remote wholesale sites or factories, private grain warehouses, garment factories, vehicle modification workshops, agricultural equipment processing plants, and so on. The more she looked, the more alarmed she became.
Weren’t these all places you’d go to stockpile supplies for the apocalypse? Could he also be a reborn person?!
Not just reborn, he might even have already killed a few zombies!
Of course, she couldn’t pin everything on the apocalypse. Thinking in a darker direction, it was also possible he was some kind of wanted criminal, traveling around smuggling or trafficking goods…
She quietly searched his ID number online. If he were a wanted fugitive, it would show up immediately.
Mm. He wasn’t. Thank goodness.
She suppressed the instinctive wariness she’d felt at first sight of him, reported the tenant’s information to Aunt Qian, and even set up a scheduled text message to be sent to the police officer whose number she’d left when reporting the incident earlier, so that if anything happened, the police would at least be able to track down the culprit…
After doing all that, Xin Xiaoru seriously began acting as an RV landlady, taking her guest to his first destination: a private grain warehouse.
The man, He Guying, showered quickly. In just five minutes, he even washed his hair. Afterward, he used the outdoor sink to wash his dirty clothes and underwear, then hung them in the small bathroom compartment, in a spot behind it where they couldn’t be seen from the driver’s seat. The heavy bloody smell Xin Xiaoru had initially sensed was blown and diluted by the air conditioning and fresh airflow, fading considerably.
He came out wearing a loose white T-shirt, leaned back against the sofa, closed his eyes to rest, and before long his breathing evened out, as if he’d fallen asleep.
But when Xin Xiaoru was about to turn at an intersection, he spoke suddenly without opening his eyes: “Go straight. Don’t take the crowded roads through the city center.”
“Oh. Okay.” Xin Xiaoru didn’t refuse. She was wary of crowded places anyway, the more people there were, the more she feared not knowing when the zombie virus might break out.
When they reached the destination, Xin Xiaoru watched the man start hauling things around. They were all vacuum-packed grains of various kinds. Some were clearly rice from the past two years; others were old rice from several years ago, the grains yellowed and sold very cheaply.
She observed coldly for a while. Seeing that he didn’t intend to ask her for help, she got out of the RV and wandered around to ask prices.
The cheapest rice she’d bought before was two yuan per jin. Here, the old rice was astonishingly cheap, only fifty or sixty fen per jin!
Xin Xiaoru felt shamefully tempted. “Boss, can I buy some?”
In the sweltering heat, a worker, drenched in sweat, snapped, “No sales! No sales! Don’t give me extra work!”
Xin Xiaoru: “…”
He Guying was still silently carrying rice. He glanced at her, put the rice he was holding into the back of the RV, and asked, “How much do you want? I’ll contact the boss.”
Xin Xiaoru lit up. “As much as there is, buy it all!”
Vacuum-packed rice didn’t spoil as easily as loose rice. Even if it sat for another two or three years and went bad, it would still be far better than ordinary rice.
The man said coolly, “It won’t fit. For these seven days, I need all the space in your RV.”
“That’s not a problem either.” Xin Xiaoru immediately called Aunt Qian and asked her to come help move the rice.
Aunt Qian was utterly speechless. “One moment you’re running some RV hotel, the next you’re buying old rice, and you want me to buy tens of thousands of jin at once??? Have you gone crazy?”
By now, Xin Xiaoru had basically confirmed that the apocalypse wasn’t a nightmare, it was really going to happen. That being the case, how could she let Aunt Qian continue without making preparations?
She glanced at He Guying and deliberately stood at a distance that was neither too close nor too far, making sure he could hear her. Anxiously, she said, “The world’s about to become unstable! Today at Guangming Tower I saw a dead person fall from a window, and he was still moving! Just like a zombie! Listen to me, stockpile more supplies with me!
If nothing happens, that’s great. The extra rice can be donated to animal rescue shelters. Tens of thousands of jin of rice would be eaten up by dogs in a month anyway, there’s no worry about where it’ll go. But if something does happen, this will be life-saving food!”
Qian Zhengli objected, “That’s just wasting money!”
“I’ll use my own money! My money, okay? Not yours! I recently ‘won the lottery’ and picked up 210,000, if I don’t spend it, it’ll just go to waste!”
As Xin Xiaoru hoped, He Guying spared her a glance amid his busy work, then went right back to what he was doing.
After much persuasion, Aunt Qian finally agreed to come help buy supplies.
As the owner of an RV campground, she had both trucks and vans, and she drove one of the trucks to haul the goods. She even brought along a helper, so the three of them moved the supplies together, and surprisingly, they finished before He Guying did.
The warehouse boss at the private grain depot was not happy. The money went to the boss, the warehouse was cleared for the boss, and he, on a fixed wage, just wanted to do as little as possible. Now, in the scorching heat, he had to move goods for a man, and then three women on top of that, and he complained the whole time.
Xin Xiaoru endured it, sped up her work, finished moving her own supplies, and then helped He Guying.
By now, her attitude was completely different from before.
This was a small, cheap, and nearby grain warehouse connected through He Guying’s own network, and she went along with it for his sake.
He Guying could carry a hundred jin of grain on one arm at a time. Xin Xiaoru didn’t have his strength, so she carried smaller loads, kept pace with him, and chatted to pass the time and get closer.
Once they finished and returned to the RV, she felt a bit more familiar with him and tried to see if he had any insider information.
But he didn’t say a word. Back in the RV, he closed his eyes and pretended to nap, letting Xin Xiaoru drive to the next destination.
This time it was a garment factory.
Xin Xiaoru brought Aunt Qian along as well.
By the time they reached the factory, it was already evening. The goods He Guying ordered weren’t much and weren’t heavy, just bulky. Not only clothing, but also various down comforters and silk quilts, just looking at them in the summer heat made her feel hot.
Aunt Qian was on the verge of losing it, but out of consideration for the outsider, she forced herself to restrain her temper. After buying and loading many of the winter clothes and quilts, she refused to move any further.
“You can go crazy by yourself, I’m not joining in!”
Xin Xiaoru reluctantly sent her off.
The mysterious big brother still had plans to buy knives later, and she wanted to buy those in bulk too!
“Aunt Qian, have Sister Qian come back as well.” Sister Qian was Aunt Qian’s daughter, currently studying at university out of town.
Anywhere crowded would be dangerous when the apocalypse came. If there wasn’t a familiar rural area to set up camp, it was better to just return to the campground.
In her previous life, this campground had been trapped and isolated by earthquakes and landslides, people inside couldn’t get out, and outsiders couldn’t get in.
At that time, Qian Zhengli had been trapped inside the campground, guarding the food and electricity at her small store, waiting for people outside to clear the roads. It took another three days of immense effort before she finally managed to escape.
But once she got out, she realized it would have been better not to escape at all!
Inside, the landslide-damaged mountains had already collapsed as far as they could, so any further earthquakes couldn’t cause more damage. Later, even floods wouldn’t reach it because the terrain wasn’t that high. Wildfires were a concern, but the campground’s parking lot was a vast open space with very few trees, fires couldn’t spread across it anyway.
And because the roads were blocked, once the zombies fully broke out outside, they couldn’t reach her there either.
In short, it was extremely safe.
Now, gathering some rations for the dogs and trying to improve the soil for farming from here on out made it feel like a little post-apocalyptic paradise!
“Girl, go to school and behave! Get back to work at the hospital if you’re fine, don’t get caught up in all this nonsense!” Aunt Qian’s patience was exhausted.
Xin Xiaoru sighed.
The next day, as the sun rose, she received some good news.
“Initial mission completed. Your guest, He Guying, stayed one night at the RV hotel, paid 30,000 yuan, and gave a 5-star rating. The RV’s flying ability has now been successfully activated.
The initial mission was a simple task. Subsequent missions will be more difficult. We hope the boss continues to do her best.”
In her mind, the display panel updated with a new mission:
【Accept 20 guest stays. Each person staying one night and giving a 5-star rating counts as one guest stay. Completing this task will grant the RV one additional square meter of space.】
“Emmmm…” Xin Xiaoru made her usual exasperated face.
Twenty people, one square meter each. He Guying still had six days to stay in the RV. If he was satisfied all six nights, that would complete 6/20.
That left 14 more, how was she supposed to find new guests?
She instinctively opened the familiar Airbnb app. After He Guying, there were no new inquiries.
She put her phone away: “I guess I’ll just have to take it one step at a time.”
That day, Xin Xiaoru was exceptionally busy. And to get a bit closer to He Guying (and, more importantly, to stockpile supplies), she contacted the hospital’s procurement manager for medicines and got the contact information of a pharmaceutical rep, who could sell her a batch of medicines at 40% off.
They were all common drugs, anti-inflammatories, fever reducers, various vitamins, and also bandages for stopping bleeding. Getting them at that discount was already very cheap.
Of course, some were nearing their expiration date, but she didn’t have time to worry about that, better to stockpile them now.
He Guying helped her with the stockpiling.
He had sharp but indifferent eyes and spoke very little. After two days, Xin Xiaoru’s fear of him had decreased a lot. Her naturally forward personality now made her seem like a bold social butterfly trying to coax a shy recluse.
Sometimes she would ask, “What are you going to do with all these extra supplies? For personal use or…?”, carefully probing around in circles.
Other times she asked bluntly, “Is the apocalypse coming? Are you like in the novels, a reborn big shot?”, a straight question from someone who truly had been reborn herself.
Finally, that second night, whether annoyed or persuaded by her, He Guying for the first time genuinely said: “Stockpile more with me, then hide it, don’t let anyone see.”
Even as he said this, his voice remained cold, and his striking face still bore the expression of “keep your distance from strangers,” but Xin Xiaoru was satisfied.
She wasn’t alone! Now it was time to stockpile! Stockpile with all her might! Go all out!
She had no money, those hundreds of thousands of yuan all came from He Guying.
He Guying was very busy and barely slept at night. While she drove, he would doze off in a half-hearted way, but once they reached a destination, he would spend the entire night moving supplies.
He found ways to buy large amounts of gasoline, strange materials, and even bicycles.
By the third night, the RV was packed to the brim. Even the bed was covered with items, leaving no room to sleep.
He didn’t care. Nearly two meters tall, if he couldn’t endure it, he would sleep on the tiny sofa.
When even the sofa was piled with items and the front passenger seat was filled, he spread out a coat, found a small corner on the floor, hugged his knees, and leaned against the door to sleep.
Xin Xiaoru: “…”
How to put it, at first she thought she was facing a hunting lion, but after two days, she realized it was just a little kitten???
This was the third day she worked with He Guying, and the sixth day since her rebirth.
She still remembered the earthquake and had been constantly reminding Aunt Qian to stay away from the mountain and just stay at the campground.
For once, Aunt Qian didn’t scold her. Instead, she asked if Xin Xiaoru wanted to return to the campground first.
“Something happened at Guangming Tower.”
Guangming Tower was the place where Xin Xiaoru had seen a zombie fall from the second floor. Aunt Qian, being a longtime resident of Yicheng, had apparently heard some news: “That day, more than one person died. They say over a dozen people inside the building were dead!”
At the same time, a message came from her hospital colleague group: “A doctor was taken away. It seems related to the Guangming Tower case, apparently he was covering for a wealthy person’s imported medicine documents and brought in some illegal drugs. Might even be poison/drugs.”
Xin Xiaoru’s hands trembled. Just then, a police siren passed by outside, and at the same moment, her phone rang.
It was the police officer whose number she had left: “Xin Xiaoru, right? I need to confirm something with you. Besides seeing the corpse on the ground moving abnormally, did you notice anything else? Were there other people inside Guangming Tower?”
At this moment, Xin Xiaoru had already set up a tent connected to the rear door at the back of the RV. The tent was separated from the interior space of the vehicle, yet it could still catch the cool air blown out by the RV’s air conditioning. Meanwhile, He Guying was tying many spare tires onto the roof of the RV.
“I saw figures moving,” Xin Xiaoru said in a low voice. “I didn’t see exactly who they were.”
The police officer said solemnly, “I regret to inform you of something. A major homicide has occurred inside Guangming Tower. The murderer is currently on the run and appears to be killing witnesses as well. If you feel in danger, you can immediately go to a police station for help. You can go to the nearest station, I’ll call ahead. Or you can come to me; the address of my station is xxx…”
“Wait, wait!” Xin Xiaoru jolted. “A homicide? Still killing people? Do you have any information on the suspect?”
“There’s surveillance footage of him passing through the first-floor entrance. I’ll send you a screenshot. You must stay alert.”
Xin Xiaoru nodded, and soon received an MMS message.
In it, a man wearing a long-sleeved athletic outfit in the height of summer, with a black mask and a baseball cap, seemed to have noticed the camera. He pressed down the brim of his cap while glancing toward the lens out of the corner of his eye.
Sharpness, killing intent, the stench of blood, it all seemed to rush straight at her.
It was him.
He Guying.
Even though she had long harbored suspicions, Xin Xiaoru still felt her scalp go numb.
By the time she came back to her senses, a tall figure was already standing in front of her.
Xin Xiaoru jerked her head up, meeting those sharp eyes identical to the ones in the photo.
Her heart leapt into her throat.
If not for the courage forged in the apocalypse, she could have let out an earth-shaking roar on the spot.
She sat at the entrance of the tent, looking up at him, her hand reaching toward the dagger by the pillow inside the tent.
The two faced off. She didn’t know how much time passed, only that when the wind blew, the back of her sweat-soaked neck felt icy cold, even in the height of summer.
Just as her ferocity was stirred and she was about to fight him to the death, He Guying finally spoke.
“I won’t kill you. If you’re afraid, leave on your own.”
Xin Xiaoru: “…”
She wasn’t sure whether she should feel relieved. In the end, she packed up her tent, left the RV to He Guying, and slipped away in disgrace.
In fact, she knew that when He Guying killed “people,” it was very likely zombies he was killing, not humans in the conventional sense.
But how would he know those people were zombies? Was it because they were secretly up to something, stirring trouble and overstepping boundaries? Or was it because he was reborn, knew some inside information, and wanted to eliminate the first people infected with the zombie virus?
Anything was possible. Xin Xiaoru knew far too little, and obviously he wasn’t going to tell her.
The only option was to stay far away from trouble.
But the police said that person had killed someone else afterward, who did it? One of He Guying’s accomplices?
And what about He Guying approaching her, was he here to kill her??! Maybe he thought she saw something she shouldn’t have, or maybe he thought she was infected with the zombie virus, so he came to eliminate her?!
Xin Xiaoru shook her head violently.
For heaven’s sake, she’d better find a safe place to hide, wait for the RV to complete its seven-day mission, and let him come to her.
The place where she and He Guying were now was remote, with only a few small inns nearby. She decided to pick any room with a window, safe and easy to escape from, for a few nights.
The small inn quickly checked her in.
But not five minutes after she settled in, the police knocked on her door and took her to the station on suspicion of being “an accomplice of the murderer.”
Xin Xiaoru: “…”
White walls, black iron bars, this was the first time she had ever been detained, and interrogated overnight! What had she done to deserve this? She didn’t deserve it!
“You can see, this is the RV rental I posted on Airbnb!” She had already handed over her phone and given them the lock screen password. “All the private messages he sent me are still there!”
“But why would he give you 210,000 yuan?” The police simply didn’t believe her.
Xin Xiaoru didn’t know either. “Maybe he had too much money and didn’t know what to do with it?”
“Do you even believe what you’re saying?”
Xin Xiaoru: “…”
To be honest, she didn’t.
But she did need the money. Everything she had bought recently came from that 210,000 yuan. Who cared what his intentions or schemes were? Money made her the boss!
Xin Xiaoru suddenly thought of something and touched her flawless face: “He’s definitely after my body!”
The police: “……”
Completely at a loss!
The police still didn’t believe her and continued the interrogation.
Nowadays, severe physical punishment isn’t allowed, so there was only one thing left, endurance. The officers stayed up with her through the night. No one was going to sleep.
Just then, the bright overhead lights flickered once and plunged the room into darkness.
Some commotion came from outside. The officer pressed his walkie-talkie. “What’s going on? Has the backup power been activated?”
A crackling hiss of static came through the radio, and the voices seemed to be distorted by interference, unable to get through.
The officer searched under the desk, pulled out a low‑wattage rechargeable reading lamp, and handed it to Xin Xiaoru. “If you’re scared, use this for light. I’ll go take a look.”
“No!” Xin Xiaoru instinctively grabbed his wrist. “Don’t go out! You can’t go out!”
Her eyes were large to begin with, but she usually looked listless, often like a dead fish with no spark. Now she had them wide open, and in the dim light the officer couldn’t help but sigh.
Just a kid in her twenties.
“It’s fine. Hold onto the lamp. Don’t be afraid. I’ll protect every citizen.” He tried to push her hand away, but Xin Xiaoru clung to him tightly and wouldn’t let go.
Right now, she had nothing, no resources, no power, only a bit of foreknowledge and the instincts beaten into her by the apocalypse.
There were many chaotic sounds outside, but among them all she distinctly heard the sound of fingernails scraping against a wall, scritch, scritch, sharp and grating.
The footsteps were heavy and uneven. The breathing was labored too, like the final gasps of someone on the verge of death.
“Someone is turning into a zombie!” Xin Xiaoru gripped his wrist hard, with no intention of letting go. “If you go out, either shoot it dead, or seal off the area where it’s trapped and evacuate everyone else.”
Yet even with all her strength, her grip on the officer’s wrist was still something he could easily break free from, trained as he was through years on the force.