At that moment, Xin Xiaoru spotted someone sneaking to grab a shovel, the same one she had lent them earlier to dig for people. Without a word, she dashed over and swung her own iron shovel, hitting the other person’s wooden-handled shovel.
Clang! The tool fell to the ground, but Xin Xiaoru quickly picked it up. “Aunt Qian, hold onto these. We’re getting ready to go.”
Qian Zhengli was stunned and didn’t react immediately. Xin Xiaoru nudged her and whispered, “We’re leaving first, taking all the stock from the warehouse. We’ll come back once the others are rescued by the relief team.”
With just Xin Xiaoru, Qian Zhengli, and a worker that Qian Zhengli had hired at the campsite, only three people, they could maintain control simply because they appeared stronger and more aggressive. The others, after all, still thought in the mindset of a peaceful, orderly world.
The downside: these people assumed mutual help was a given. Seeing someone risk their life but also taking profit seemed “heartless.” Plus, they had paid for services, whether the RV inn, medical care, or even instant noodles, and felt entitled to good service; if they didn’t get it, they were genuinely displeased.
The upside: they hadn’t realized the apocalypse was coming, or that money would soon be worthless. They didn’t understand the value of the resources in the camp, so they had no thought of stealing or fighting. Seeing Xin Xiaoru as a ruthless character who would seize anything and her magical RV, they didn’t dare to go all out.
This was the duality of the situation.
Xin Xiaoru acted furious, rushing Aunt Qian back to the warehouse to organize supplies, but internally she was calm, methodically sorting everything.
She wanted to give these people the illusion that she was leaving with all the resources. That way, when they eventually left and realized the world was chaotic, they wouldn’t come back thinking they could claim anything. Of course, if they remembered the terrain and returned intentionally, there was nothing she could do.
About fifty kilometers north of the camp was a relatively open valley, an undeveloped grassland that Aunt Qian had a partnership with but hadn’t yet developed. It was perfect for hiding safely.
So Xin Xiaoru, with Qian Zhengli and the worker, packed all the supplies from the campsite into the trucks and RVs. Then, using specially reinforced steel bindings, they suspended the truck and Aunt Qian’s gray RV beneath Xin Xiaoru’s beige RV, which lifted off the ground and flew.
The survivors at the camp watched in shock as the RV carried people and supplies away.
“What? They’re leaving without making money? How can they just take off like that?”
“What about us left here?”
Some relatives still had legs trapped and were messaging, saying they couldn’t wait for rescue and wanted the RV owner to help with amputations. Now the owner was gone, what were they supposed to do?
Some tried to lighten the mood while Xin Xiaoru packed, speaking politely. But Xin Xiaoru “acted angry,” projecting an attitude of, “I saved your life, I’m your dad, and yet your lives are worth less than instant noodles. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have saved you.” This stunned everyone and prevented anyone from continuing to flatter her.
“Not even a few lousy bucks? Go buy yourselves a decent coffin!” she said, then turned and received 100,000 yuan from them.
Xin Xiaoru was delighted, she felt no humiliation from the money. Lightly, she said, “You’re sensible. I’m very satisfied.” Then she took off, heading toward the undeveloped valley.
At that moment, Qian Zhengli and the worker were on Xin Xiaoru’s RV, looking out the window at the outside world, completely astonished.
The green mountains and clear waters had long been destroyed by the earthquake and mudslides, and the winding roads were completely wrecked, broken and scattered. The originally very spacious undeveloped valley had been halved by landslides; only a narrow, elongated strip about 100 meters wide in the center remained passable. The ground was uneven and unstable, but it was enough for emergency shelter.
Qian Zhengli saw Xin Xiaoru acting as if she were going to settle here and felt conflicted.
The campsite worker, Zhou Fengyun, a 37-year-old woman from the countryside in her prime, was like Qian Zhengli, divorced and single. She had no special skills or ambitions, had worked at the campsite for six years, and was very accustomed to Qian Zhengli. Seeing their boss uneasy, she gently tugged at her sleeve: “Xiao Ru already saved them. If they die in the mountains after this, it’s fate.”
Qian Zhengli frowned tightly.
Her thinking was simple: arguments aside, if you can help someone survive, why make things absolute?
“Let them go hungry for a day. Tomorrow I’ll collect a payment and then send them out,” Xin Xiaoru said at the right moment.
There were 31 people, and sending them out would earn 31 stamina points. She disliked them, but she wouldn’t go against her own interests.
Hearing this, Qian Zhengli finally exhaled in relief.
At this time, Yicheng was stable yet chaotic.
He Giying, suspected in many “murder cases,” had not been arrested. Instead, he drove his off-road RV through the city, marking target points for looting once chaos erupted. He then spent all the remaining cash to buy as many delicious prepared foods as he could, foods he might never get again, and stored the leftovers in the RV’s fridge.
That day, he also killed several non-infected members of his organization and successfully rescued a brother from a heavily encircled area.
When Xin Xiaoru sent him a message, he was still in the middle of a firefight. Shards of glass flew everywhere, screams and the stench of blood filled the entire corridor.
By the time he rescued the barely-living brother and descended the building with an escape rope, the wound on his lower back split open, and he was completely covered in blood.
He used a lighter to cut the rope, blocking anyone trying to slide down after them. He slung his brother’s arm over his shoulder and carried him toward the off-road RV.
Once in the vehicle, He Giying roughly pulled out some plastic tape and bound his lower back to stop the bleeding, then floored the accelerator, heading for less populated suburban roads.
Xin Xiaoru sent him a new set of coordinates, explaining the situation at the campsite. After a long time with no reply, she put down her phone and continued organizing the RV and trucks.
She had a lot of supplies, most of which had to be stacked on the truck so people could stay in the RV.
When the RV wasn’t moving, running the air conditioner would consume stamina points. Hot weather consumed more, cool weather less, and sometimes none at all.
In the coming two months, Yicheng would get hotter and more tense. Without replenishing stamina, they would eventually exhaust all resources.
Zhou Fengyun, as a guest in the RV, could add 1 popularity point and 1 stamina point per day. Her five-star rating, given out of friendship like a nurse’s, didn’t reflect real recognition of the RV inn’s value; she hadn’t endured the hardships of the apocalypse and wouldn’t truly think it deserved five stars.
The key point: Zhou Fengyun was considered one of their own and had helped a lot with supplies along the way. Letting her stay in the RV would not incur a charge.
It looked like she had already completed 6/20 of the RV task, yet it was stuck right here…
If the RV’s space couldn’t be expanded, her supplies would forever have to stay in the cargo truck outside, always at risk of being looted. How could she get new five‑star reviews without overexposing herself or consuming even more supplies?
Unconsciously, Xin Xiaoru looked at the hospital staff group chat on her phone.
There had been no new messages in the group for the past two days. They were probably being confined inside the hospital, with signal jammers turned on to prevent information from leaking out and causing panic.
“If only people who’ve actually been through a disaster will sincerely give the RV inn five stars, then should I go to the hospital, the place hit hardest right now, and pull people out? That would inevitably mean clashing with the police.”
After a moment of thought, Xin Xiaoru decided to go take a look at her own Class II hospital.
The flying vehicle started up again, heading to the foot of the mountain where the highway was still relatively intact and also the edge of the city. She landed, switched to normal driving, and headed toward the Class II hospital where she used to work.
Just as she had expected, the hospital was indeed sealed off, doors and windows tightly shut, warning tape everywhere.
However, Xin Xiaoru knew of a spot where one could climb over the wall. It was at the edge of the small grove in the inpatient ward’s greenbelt. The wall looked intact, but the top had rusted through and collapsed in one section, hidden by trees and impossible to see clearly unless you actually went over and pushed on the upper railing.
Xin Xiaoru quietly felt her way over, successfully reaching that corner and climbing inside. On the way, she even spotted a stray cat dozing atop the wall.
There weren’t many people patrolling inside the hospital. Only from time to time did someone stand by a window with binoculars, monitoring the inside and outside of the building.
She twisted and weaved her way around, dodging the surveillance of three pairs of binoculars, and entered the inpatient building.
The inpatient building had twenty floors. The nurse and doctor she was close to, both from the thymus department, were on the twelfth floor.
She didn’t take the stairs directly. Instead, she slipped behind an empty information desk, took a colleague’s nurse uniform and cap from a cabinet, put them on, donned a mask, and pretended to be an on‑duty nurse.
She climbed the stairs, stopping on each floor to listen to what was happening outside. From the first to the fifth floors, the noise was relatively chaotic, so she skipped them. The sixth floor was especially loud, which instead made Xin Xiaoru bold enough to take out a mirror and check the situation.
As soon as she angled the mirror around the corner, she saw the chaos on the sixth floor through the reflection. Many people who had already turned into zombies were locked in rooms 6 through 15, while police were pulling triggers and dealing with them one by one. Other rooms held patients frantically smashing windows and doors, trying to break out.
At a glance, she recognized quite a few familiar colleagues. But they were filthy and disheveled, and it was impossible to tell whether they had injuries that hadn’t yet become infected.
Police stood guard in the corridor, forcing people back.
“They’re injured, but I’m not! Why won’t you let me leave?”
“I’m just a patient—I only checked in recently, I don’t know anything! Let me go!”
“What right do you have to lock me up? You’re killing people!”
Among the patients in the ward who were still conscious, there was every kind of reaction. Right now, being conscious for them was a cruel kind of awareness, they could only watch themselves running a fever, gradually losing control of their bodies, and turning into monsters.
They wanted to run, but any attempt to escape would undo the police and military’s efforts over the past few days, so most of them could only wait to die with grim awareness.
Xin Xiaoru estimated that it would already be extremely lucky if there were even two superpowered individuals on this floor.
Before the police’s gaze could sweep her way, she pulled the mirror back and continued up the stairs.
By the time she reached the ninth floor, someone was smoking at the stair landing. Xin Xiaoru didn’t dare go up, so she waited quietly. Once the person walked away, she cautiously moved forward.
The eleventh floor was unusually quiet. Xin Xiaoru still used the mirror’s reflection to observe secretly from the stairwell. Starting from this floor, conditions were generally better. Doors were closed, personnel were less densely packed than on the lower floors, and she could see small groups talking through the glass windows. Although they looked anxious, overall they seemed relatively relaxed, without obvious injuries or marks from being grabbed or pulled.
The twelfth floor, her target floor, was similar to the eleventh. The corridor had no police presence, only a familiar security guard. He clearly wasn’t very strict, he was “guarding” while chatting with the doctors and nurses inside the ward.
“Uncle Zhang,” Xin Xiaoru recognized him and greeted proactively.
The guard looked over, surprised. “Aren’t you… Xiao Ru?”
“Yes, it’s me,” Xin Xiaoru said lightly. “I had severe insomnia last week, so I took leave. Now the hospital’s in trouble, so I applied to return to work, just to see if our department needs any help.”
Uncle Zhang’s expression was incredulous. “First time I’ve ever seen someone willingly jump into a fire! Don’t you value your life? Aiyah, you were lucky not to be in the hospital, and you came back anyway!”
He kept sighing, wishing he could swap places with her and be free outside.
“It’s too late to talk about that now,” Xin Xiaoru said cheerfully. “I’m helping you move supplies, deliver food, and bring toiletries. Isn’t that a good thing?”
“Sigh… kids these days just don’t get it,” Uncle Zhang said helplessly, but he didn’t dwell on it. Instead, he immediately asked, “How’s it outside?”
“It was chaotic before,” Xin Xiaoru replied, casually scanning him to make sure he had no injuries, then sat down on the chair next to him as if nothing were amiss. “After the hospital and police station were completely locked down, it got a lot better. But it’s just that no zombies are outside now; public security is worse.”
Uncle Zhang nodded repeatedly, then lamented, “Just in our hospital, several cops died… there’s nothing you can do, the madness doesn’t pick and choose… By the way, you said these zombies exist, is that real? I don’t really understand. I heard zombies were only abroad. How did they get here?”
“Yeah… how did they get here?” Xin Xiaoru echoed.
She chatted casually with the guard while walking along the floor. After a round, she still hadn’t seen the nurse and doctor she was close to.
Other colleagues, seeing Xin Xiaoru, were excited and greeted her, and she naturally went over to talk with them. Through these conversations, she learned that floors below the 11th were full of people who had been bitten or were suspected of being bitten. There weren’t enough staff to meaningfully distinguish bite marks from surgical wounds or minor scrapes. Floors 11 through 20, however, were in relatively good condition.
“Where are Sister Lin and Sister Xiaohua?” Xin Xiaoru asked.
“They were bitten two days ago; now they’re on the ninth floor,” a colleague replied.
Xin Xiaoru felt a sinking weight in her chest. Someone was smoking on the ninth floor, most likely police or security, so it was certain that someone was stationed there. How was she supposed to get people out?
She looked at the relatively comfortable colleagues on the ninth floor. These people weren’t necessarily willing to leave with her. Only those in despair, holding onto even a thousandth of hope, thinking maybe they hadn’t been infected and could survive in a new place without the threat of zombies, would take that chance.
And only such people, after surviving a disaster, would sincerely give the RV Inn a five-star rating.
Xin Xiaoru silently apologized to the police officers in her heart, sorry, she was probably about to create trouble for them.
Still, she wanted to do something. Whether it would work or not, she had to write down what she knew and tell them.
Coincidentally, a batch of supplies had arrived, today’s fruits and boxed meals. The administrator notified each floor’s person in charge to come pick them up. Xin Xiaoru naturally went down with Uncle Zhang, the security guard, to collect the meals.
This time, they took the elevator. Perhaps it was psychological, but as soon as she stepped inside, Xin Xiaoru felt a rush of panic and a general discomfort all over her body.
After collecting the supplies, she carried them to the twelfth floor in two trips. The first trip carried the majority of the load; the second was just a decoy, she carried it straight out of the ninth-floor elevator to deliver the items elsewhere.
The police on the ninth floor were too tired. They assumed the supplies came from a neighboring floor and didn’t pay attention. It wasn’t until they saw someone walking around the corridor halfway to the fifteenth ward that they realized something was off. “Where are you coming from?!”
Xin Xiaoru, looking half-asleep, continued circling the corridor. Finally, when she reached Ward 15, she saw the unusually anxious Sister Lin and Sister Xiaohua.
“Stop!” a police officer rushed over and grabbed Xin Xiaoru’s arm. “Which floor are you from?!”
Xin Xiaoru, still sleepy-eyed, replied, “19th floor. Isn’t this the 19th floor?”
“This is the ninth floor!” the officer said suspiciously. “Where’s your radio?”
“It’s on the meal cart… huh? Didn’t bring it. Sorry, I’ll make sure to carry it next time.”
At that moment, the elevator completed a loop and reopened, inside was another police officer delivering meals.
Seizing the opportunity, Xin Xiaoru muttered, “Gotta get the food to them quickly,” and stepped into the elevator, pressing the close button.
“Wait!” the police officer shouted, trying to grab her, but Xin Xiaoru had already closed the elevator first. The lift responded immediately, carrying her upward.
Elsewhere, the officer contacted the 19th floor over the radio. When both sides cross-checked, Xin Xiaoru’s ruse was about to be exposed.
She reached the twelfth floor, pushed the meal cart out, smiled at Uncle Zhang, and said she needed to use the restroom. Then she turned, climbed two floors via the stairwell, smashed a window, and slid down using her climbing hook.
Thanks to five years of trial and error in her previous life, she had scavenged and used all kinds of tools, usable or not. The climbing hook she was using now had been purchased with He Guying, excellent quality and easy to retrieve.
Counting the floors down to the eighth, Xin Xiaoru retracted the hook and moved horizontally along the window ledges and air conditioner supports. Hearing movement above, she immediately hid beneath a cluster of external AC units.
In the summer breeze, she could hear the police asking about the security cameras.
Unfortunately, the staff member in the monitoring room had been among the first to collapse and turn into a zombie on day one. The person who took over was just a police officer who wasn’t very familiar with the hospital’s camera system.
To prevent disputes between doctors and patients, this Class II hospital had surveillance cameras in the elevators, stairwells, and corridors. But there were simply too many cameras, while the monitoring room had only a limited number of screens. When no one was manually controlling them, the displays would automatically cycle through dozens of camera feeds according to a set pattern.
The officer in charge of surveillance first followed orders to pull up the footage inside the elevator and at its stop on the twelfth floor, then clumsily tried to access the stairwell cameras.
Because he wasn’t proficient, and because the officers giving instructions couldn’t figure out Xin Xiaoru’s objective and issued confused commands, in the end they only managed to spot a shattered window on the fourteenth floor.
There were no cameras outside the building, so they could only rely on the naked eye from the ground floor and between levels.
It also couldn’t be ruled out that Xin Xiaoru was using a feint, breaking the window to make it look like she’d escaped, while actually still hiding in the stairwell. For a moment, the entire inpatient building descended into chaos.
Xin Xiaoru looked down at the more than twenty-meter drop below. She took a deep breath, suppressed her instinctive fear, and waited quietly. When the commotion upstairs subsided and the people looking up from below were distracted by the harsh summer sunlight, and because Xin Xiaoru’s white nurse’s uniform and cap blended into the white wall, making her hard to distinguish, someone glanced away to look elsewhere. At that instant, Xin Xiaoru moved according to her memory of the surveillance blind spots, jumped through a laboratory window into the room, then shut the window and drew the curtains again.
Wiping the sweat from her face, Xin Xiaoru skillfully found the water dispenser and paper cups in the dim laboratory and poured herself a glass of water.
Come to think of it, could her RV purify water…? In the apocalypse, clean drinking water wouldn’t be easy to come by. Should she stockpile water…?
Hearing Xin Xiaoru’s thoughts, the system immediately perked up. “As long as there’s water, I can purify it!”
Xin Xiaoru instantly caught the key point. “So if there’s a drought and there’s no water for me to give you, you can’t just produce water out of nothing, right?”
“Mm-hmm!”
“…” Xin Xiaoru sighed.
She would still have to rely on herself to prepare more supplies.
After resting for a bit, Xin Xiaoru sorted out her thoughts.
Sister Lin and Sister Xiaohua still had to be rescued, whether they were infected or not. If they weren’t infected, Xin Xiaoru would gain two stable “tenants” who were very likely to help her complete the system’s mission. If they were infected, killing them inside the RV wouldn’t be a problem either. After all, the system had said that as long as they were inside the RV, attacks from internal personnel wouldn’t be effective. Before dying, Sister Lin and Sister Xiaohua would at least pass away relatively peacefully, and they could still contribute 2 points of popularity and stamina to the RV.
The only downside was that if they were infected, Xin Xiaoru would have to find other reliable people who were currently in dire straits to help complete the mission.
Call her cold-blooded or heartless if you like, right now, what she was thinking about wasn’t friendship, but the mission, and the extra square meter of space that would be unlocked after the RV upgraded. If these two friends could help her complete the task, it would save her a lot of trouble.
For now, she would rest and recover some stamina. Later, she’d see if she could find an opportunity on the ninth floor. If not, that was fine too, she could simply fly the RV up to the ninth floor, smash Sister Lin’s window, and take them away.
Having made up her mind, Xin Xiaoru felt settled. She took out pen and paper from a desk drawer in the laboratory and began to write.
Suddenly, she noticed the sound of something printing in the lab. Looking over, she saw that a printer connected to a testing machine had automatically printed out a set of test results.
So the machinery was still running.
Had the lab doctor left in too much of a hurry and forgotten to shut everything down? Or had the lab technician turned into a zombie, leaving no one to wrap things up in the lab?
Xin Xiaoru leaned toward the latter and stood up to retrieve the test report.
“DNA mutation rate…?” She couldn’t understand every indicator, only the sections where the numbers were clearly abnormal.
Besides the freshly printed report on top, there were many others underneath. What was strange was that across these reports, the DNA mutation rate was steadily increasing.
What did that mean? Were they observing genetic mutations in zombies at different stages?
But this laboratory, and the entire hospital, had been sealed off for at least three days. If the doctors had remained in good condition during those three days and were still running tests, they should have been doing so on the safer floors above the eleventh. How could there still have been new samples sent in for testing just two hours ago?
Unless there were a large number of samples waiting, and the machine was testing them one by one.
Xin Xiaoru had never used this analyzer before, so she didn’t dare press any buttons at random. She circled the equipment and, inside a transparent sealed compartment, saw many preserved samples.
As more and more data were analyzed and printed out, Xin Xiaoru realized that the concentration of DNA mutation in the samples really was getting higher and higher.
She continued comparing the printed test results and suddenly spotted the biggest problem of all: although the mutation rate was increasing, the portion of DNA that didn’t change was identical in every report.
In other words, these tissue samples had very likely all come from the same zombie’s body.
The severed specimens were still mutating.
Suddenly, a warning pop-up appeared on the data-monitoring software running on the computer:
【Room radiation level exceeds safe limits. Please shut down the radiation source and evacuate immediately. Reminder: room radiation level exceeds safe limits. Please shut down the radiation source and evacuate immediately.】
Xin Xiaoru abruptly looked at the samples still being tested. Forgetting about procedure, she yanked out the power cord to shut down the analyzer, forcefully pried open the sample chamber, put on gloves, took the specimens out into a dry glass container, poured in alcohol from the alcohol lamp, and set them on fire.
Yet the lab’s radiation detector still showed levels above the limit. That intense sense of heart-pounding unease she’d felt in the elevator came rushing back.
It wasn’t the samples, it was something else acting as the radiation source.
After a moment of hesitation, she decided to unplug every piece of equipment in the lab, leaving only the radiation detector running.
Strangely, each time she shut down a device, the radiation level dropped a little. After everything visible in the lab had been powered off, the radiation was still relatively high, but no longer at a level that would directly cause genetic deformities.
Holding the radiation detector, Xin Xiaoru moved around the room, intermittently turning on and off the devices she hadn’t yet broken, including the computer.
She confirmed one thing: for reasons unknown, these devices were now emitting extremely high levels of radiation. Simply turning one on for a single minute would expose a person to 0.1 millisieverts, more radiation than a chest X‑ray. If left running, the radiation dose would keep accumulating.
By the standard that exposure above 4,000 millisieverts is fatal, a single computer left on for a month would accumulate a lethal dose of radiation in the human body.
Previously, none of the equipment in the entire laboratory had been shut down. When the computer triggered the alarm based on the readings, the radiation level inside the room had been even higher.
Carrying the radiation detector to the doorway, she discovered that any electronic device in the corridor, including the ceiling lights, could cause the radiation level to rise.
She suddenly felt that Yicheng’s power outage might actually be a good thing.
In her previous life, there had already been a theory that the zombie virus was related to ionizing radiation. But by the time that theory spread, the entire world had been without power for a long time. Xin Xiaoru had never realized that electronic devices and ambient radiation could stack together to produce such severe effects.
She planned to cut the hospital’s power. Maybe it would slow the rate of mutation in these people, and it could also count as a small compensation for the chaos she was about to cause.
More importantly, it would give her a much better chance to take Sister Lin and Sister Xiaohua with her.
The inpatient building had a main breaker located on the first floor. The key to the breaker box was kept by the power-room administrator.
Using the same trick again, Xin Xiaoru waited for a gap in the patrols downstairs, hooked a grappling hook onto a window, and slid straight down to the first floor.
Because the entire building was searching for Xin Xiaoru, the outsider, especially the people on the first floor, everyone was focused on scanning the exterior walls of the hospital, watching to see whether a nurse‑clad intruder might be hanging somewhere outside.
Slipping into the inpatient building on the first floor was actually safer.
Moving like she was playing hide-and-seek, Xin Xiaoru searched through many rooms on the first floor and found the administrator burning with fever in one of them.
In the same room were more than a dozen people who were also feverish, or already dead and in the process of turning into zombies. Xin Xiaoru’s heart leapt into her throat as she tapped on the window.
Those who still had a shred of consciousness turned their gaze toward her.
Xin Xiaoru’s mind flicked. Outside, a deafening horn suddenly blared. A RV seemed to have a broken horn button, jammed in the “on” position, blasting nonstop and drawing away most people’s attention.
Seizing the moment, Xin Xiaoru shouted, “Give me the key to the breaker box! I’ll shut off the power and let you out under cover of darkness!”
The administrator made a rasping “hiss-hiss” sound from his throat. For a long while, there was no movement.
Someone nearby who was a bit more clear-headed felt a surge of selfish resolve, hurriedly rummaged through the administrator’s backpack, successfully found the key, and forced it out through the crack in the door.
One minute later, the entire inpatient building plunged into darkness. An uproar erupted. Some of the still‑lucid people who had long been plotting to escape immediately began looking for anything they could use to smash doors or windows.
However, the hospital had once experienced an incident where a patient jumped to their death, so every ward had been designed to be extremely clever and sturdy. Even the corridor windows could only be opened a small amount, they couldn’t be pushed wide.
When Xin Xiaoru had jumped down from the 14th floor earlier, she had only been able to break a window and enter the 8th floor because the lab windows there could be opened and weren’t locked.
As for patient wards? Forget it. Unless you had a hammer or some other heavy tool, the windows and doors simply couldn’t be broken.
Having stirred up such a huge commotion, Xin Xiaoru didn’t hesitate at all and sprinted straight for the ninth floor.
On the way, she ran into several groups of police but managed to narrowly avoid them each time by hearing them approach in advance and hiding in the blue trash bins in the stairwell.
She staggered up to the ninth floor, took out a hammer, and smashed the window glass of the ward where Sister Lin and Sister Xiaohua were. She shouted loudly: “Go wait by the eastern corridor window!”
Then she entered the ward.
The others didn’t know what this former colleague was doing, but they were already desperate, completely unwilling to continue waiting in this place of certain death. So wherever Xin Xiaoru told them to go, they went.
Without hesitation, Xin Xiaoru went into the room. For those who were immobile and turning into zombies, she smashed their skulls one by one with the hammer, then ran toward the window, blood covering her.
The RV, which had been blaring its horn nonstop, had now flown up and positioned itself perfectly in front of the ninth-floor eastern window, leaving the people intending to escape stunned.
Xin Xiaoru shouted, “Get in the car!”
The RV’s door was aligned with the window, and the window had already been broken. One flip was all it took to jump inside.
For a moment, everyone jumped in, dazed and disoriented.
Xin Xiaoru was the last to enter. Before leaving, she slipped a letter in a very conspicuous spot at the fire hydrant entrance and immediately drove the RV away.
Everyone followed in a haze. It wasn’t until the RV had flown for a long time and finally landed that they exhaled and broke down crying.
Some of them hadn’t actually been bitten, but because everyone insisted they hadn’t, no one could be trusted.
Previously, the police and doctors had tried to check each person individually, separating men and women to verify their identity. But they soon realized it was impossible, while they were checking, someone pretending to be normal would suddenly go insane, biting a previously verified police officer or doctor.
After two days of painful lessons, the hospital had no choice but to receive the newly “insane” patients and lock them up, while grouping the innocent but exhausted people with those already on the same floor, or even in the same ward or office.
In a department, either everyone was lucky and unharmed, so nothing would go wrong in a single ward, or everyone perished together.
Unfortunately, the lower floors, which had temporarily received the “insane” patients and had larger numbers of patients and family members due to the nature of the department, faced the highest risk, so many floors below the 11th were wiped out. Above the 11th floor, staff were more experienced and decisive; anyone showing high fever or mutation would immediately get a sedative injection and be moved to a designated room on floors 1–10 for observation. If they “went insane,” the police were immediately notified to execute them.
By this coincidence, the hospital ended up divided at the 11th floor, almost like two separate worlds.
Xin Xiaoru was silent for a moment, then said, “Actually, it’s not just about being bitten. Even if there’s no wound, just being in the same room can cause mutation.”