As for the people without any wounds, Xin Xiaoru did not let them leave either. Instead, she had them go with her to the driver’s and front passenger’s seats, flattening the space between the two so that later, herself included, the three of them could rest there.
She threw the corpses out of the RV, deliberately choosing a spot overgrown with weeds to avoid trouble.
There were eight people with injuries, exactly four men and four women. The women sat leaning against the small bed, while the men crowded onto the sofa and the floor.
The air conditioner hummed steadily. The onboard TV was turned on, playing variety shows she had downloaded earlier.
A patient auntie asked softly, “This… doesn’t have radiation, does it?”
Xin Xiaoru shook her head and took out the radiation detector. “My RV can isolate it.”
As she spoke, she opened a window and extended the detector outside, waving it around. The readings on the device shot up visibly, startling everyone inside.
But once she brought it back into the RV, the readings returned to normal.
Several people unconsciously let out sighs of relief.
“I brought you out, and I’ll observe you for one day,” Xin Xiaoru said. “If after a full day there are no signs of zombification, that means you’re fine, and I’ll let you go. I can’t promise anything else. I can only say this: on my turf, my word is law. Other than me, no person or zombie can harm you.”
When Xiaohua had helped her hit someone earlier, she hadn’t actually hurt them. Her full-force blow had felt like striking an uneven steel plate shaped like a face, she didn’t injure the other person at all, and instead her own hand hurt badly, going numb.
Xin Xiaoru had noticed Xiaohua’s condition at the time. Now she brought over a basin of clean water to help her apply a cold compress to reduce the swelling. “Thank you. In the future, you don’t need to help me fight. When in doubt, grabbing someone’s hair is actually useful.”
Under the RV’s defensive rules, it seemed that as long as the force used to grab hair didn’t exceed a certain limit, it wouldn’t trigger a problem. That was why Xiaohua had successfully pulled the person away who had been choking Xin Xiaoru.
Xiaohua looked dejected.
She was close to Xin Xiaoru and shared some similarities with her, such as not liking to gamble on luck.
From childhood to adulthood, she had never bought lottery tickets, and when shopping she never understood the point of blind-box merchandise.
Now, she likewise didn’t believe she would be the lucky one.
“I’m probably going to die soon,” Xiaohua said sadly, picking at the bedsheet.
Xin Xiaoru replied, “Your wound isn’t obvious. It might just be a scrape from bumping into a table or cabinet during the chaos, not necessarily a scratch from fingernails. Even if it was a fingernail, it could have been from a non-infected person accidentally scratching you in the hospital turmoil. In any case, being alive means there’s hope.”
She gently patted Xiaohua’s head to comfort her. But to the others listening, those words took on a different meaning.
“If there are so many possibilities,” a woman hiding in a corner couldn’t help but speak up, her tone fearful yet accusatory, “then why did you kill those two people?”
Xin Xiaoru countered, “They were that agitated, does that look like someone who just got an accidental scrape? Someone who isn’t sure whether they were scratched by an infected person wouldn’t be desperate to rush outside. Just like you, because you still have a bit of hope, you only dared to speak up after things had settled down.”
The woman was left speechless.
Xin Xiaoru had hit the nail on the head. She truly wasn’t sure how the wound on her body had come about.
The hospital had been far too chaotic. Police and security had rushed in and forcibly locked people into wards, isolating them separately. Many people resisted and tried to move into the corridors. Inside and out, there was pushing, shoving, grabbing, somehow, people ended up with new injuries without even realizing it.
Those two people’s intense reactions just now were indeed suspicious.
Still, the woman refused to admit it. “Even if they were infected, isn’t it possible they could become ability users? Before there were any results, you just killed them, too…” She didn’t dare make her words too sharp, paused, and softened it, “…too inappropriate…”
Xin Xiaoru showed no emotional fluctuation and replied flatly, “If I forcibly kept them, they’d resent me. If they turned into ability users, they’d become powerful enemies who disliked me. Why should I trouble myself for the sake of morality and keep bombs around that could explode at any time?”
She hoped the world would fall into chaos as late as possible, and if it could be delayed, then delay it. She would absolutely never let zombie-virus carriers go free. As for infected people who were unwilling to cooperate, Xin Xiaoru didn’t care whether they might later become zombies or ability users. There was only one ending for them: death.
“Aren’t you afraid that once the zombie-virus situation is resolved, the police will have time to come after you?!”
Resolved? “If there really comes such a day, that would actually be a good thing.”
The room fell silent.
Night deepened quickly.
Xin Xiaoru and the two uninjured people dozed in the driver’s cabin. The other eight crowded together on the bed, the sofa, and the floor, sleeping in disarray.
At two in the morning, Xin Xiaoru heard the system prompt: “Two people failed to hold out and are undergoing zombification.”
She got up and turned on the lights, startling everyone awake.
After confirming that the two were dead, their pupils dilated and their eyes completely black, everyone scrambled to tie them up. Xin Xiaoru dragged them outside the vehicle, smashed their heads with two hammer blows each, and then returned to the RV.
Over the next six hours, three more people developed high fevers that wouldn’t subside.
Xin Xiaoru pried open their eyelids and showed the others. “Once the black pupils start to dilate, it usually means the virus has invaded the central nervous system. There’s no hope of recovery or mutation into an ability user. You can deal with them in advance.”
She didn’t torment these desperate people further or provoke them. She quietly waited for them to die and turn into zombies, then tied them up, dragged them out, and crushed their heads.
When the sun rose, there were fewer and fewer people left in the RV. By the afternoon, only six remained.
Among them, Xin Xiaoru and the two uninjured people were perfectly fine. The three injured ones were basically confirmed to have only accidental scrapes or to have narrowly escaped by chance, and they could decide for themselves whether to stay or leave.
Those who had survived the ordeal fled without stopping, wishing they could get as far away as possible. Only Sister Lin, Sister Xiaohua, and a male doctor in his forties stayed behind.
They explained their request: they wanted to go back to pack up their belongings, and then asked Xin Xiaoru to take them in.
Xin Xiaoru naturally agreed.
Her RV upgrade was basically secured!
She stayed in a good mood for a full two hours, then reality struck faster than plans. After the male doctor and Sister Lin returned home, both said they wanted to bring their families along to seek refuge as well.
“……”
As a young adult with no parents and long accustomed to living alone, Xin Xiaoru had genuinely overlooked the whole “family” factor.
Both of them had parents, spouses, and children. Now that they knew there were zombies and radiation outside and it wasn’t safe, of course they wanted to hide in the RV, and naturally, they hoped to bring their entire families with them, all together and accounted for.
Not just them, even Aunt Qian was calling, asking whether Xin Xiaoru could go to another city to bring Sister Qian back.
Xin Xiaoru was completely baffled.
She had been carefully rationing her RV’s stamina points, calculating every drive, when it was more cost-effective to use stamina points and when to use fuel. Meanwhile, Aunt Qian simply said, “My daughter is afraid to take crowded planes or trains back, so I can only ask you to go pick her up,” and expected Xin Xiaoru to give it a try.
Xin Xiaoru said flatly, “Unless it’s you who’s out of town, I’m not going to pick up anyone else.”
Then she hung up the phone.
Everyone had a price in her mind. Aunt Qian was family to her, the one who had let her stay at the RV campsite for free for so long and taken good care of her. Xin Xiaoru was willing to protect her, support her with supplies, and give her as much convenience as possible.
As for Sister Qian in another city, that was beyond what she could manage.
Right now, all Xin Xiaoru wanted was to upgrade, and to do so while minimizing the consumption of supplies. With so many people coming, they could barely squeeze in to live, but what about food and water?
She had no intention of selling instant noodles for ten yuan a cup or bottled water for five yuan a bottle!
So after Sister Lin and the male doctor proposed bringing their families, Xin Xiaoru said, “Five hundred yuan per person per day, no meals included. And everyone will have to squeeze into the five square meters of space in the RV. If you’re willing, then come.”
Both families looked at each other in silence.
In the end, since their family members hadn’t personally witnessed the horror of the hospital zombies, they couldn’t bear to spend that much money and gave up. Doctor Lin and the male doctor couldn’t persuade them, chose to stay with their families, and didn’t move into the RV.
Each of them gave Xin Xiaoru ten thousand yuan as a thank-you fee, thanking her for rescuing them from the hospital.
“If it weren’t for you, even a single scratch in the hospital would’ve finished us.”
Xin Xiaoru thought to herself, If you’re really grateful, then help me complete my mission!
In the end, she said nothing. She accepted the money and set off with Sister Xiaohua, the only one without family ties.
She needed to make use of the newly acquired cash as quickly as possible to stock up on supplies!
Xin Xiaoru opened her phone to look for He Guying, only to realize that the charging ports in the vehicle had all been used to charge the male doctor and Sister Lin’s phones. Her own phone hadn’t been charged at all and had already shut down.
She could only charge it first.
Night had fallen. Xin Xiaoru pulled over on a secluded roadside. While waiting for the phone to charge, she and Sister Xiaohua cleaned up the interior and changed the bed sheets.
“Xiao Ru, what’s this?” Sister Xiaohua picked up a watch from the floor. “It looks like a men’s watch.”
Xin Xiaoru turned to look.
Wasn’t this the smartwatch He Guying wore on his wrist?
She instinctively took it, assuming it was dead and unresponsive, and connected it to the RV’s power supply. The next second, the screen lit up. At the same time, the sound of the RV automatically unlocking a device rang out in her mind, and dozens of unread messages popped up.
Knowing it wasn’t right to look through someone else’s messages, Xin Xiaoru’s body nevertheless acted honestly, and quickly, tapping into the chat window.
The first unread message was:
【Leaving me on read, are you planning to defect, or are you feeling guilty about letting the witness from Guangming Tower go?】
The second message read:
【Don’t think I don’t know. You’ve been living in that RV with the witness these past few days. This is how you let go of a killing target assigned by the organization?】
Xin Xiaoru: “…???”
I don’t understand it, but I’m deeply shocked!
So there really was no such thing as a free 210,000 yuan! That was bait, the cheese on a mousetrap!
After a brief moment of shock, Xin Xiaoru scrolled through all the unread messages spanning four days, reading them from start to finish. Her eyes shifted slightly.
So that’s how it was…
Just then, her phone reached 5% battery and powered on automatically. Xin Xiaoru opened He Guying’s chat window.
There was an unread message from two hours ago:
“I’m injured. Can you come pick me up? The price is negotiable.”
Xin Xiaoru smiled faintly.
This big shot, note the key points: well-supplied, freshly betrayed the organization, and now with nowhere to go, was hers now!
In the city center, in a dead-end alley that only long-time locals knew about, sat an off-road RV that absolutely shouldn’t have been there.
The vehicle was huge. Once it drove in, there was no way to turn around, but the owner had no other choice.
Rewind time by one day.
After rescuing his brother, he fled like mad. At first, he managed to shake them off by a large margin. But almost all of Yicheng’s police had been tied up at the hospital, and the small number of soldiers were busy chasing zombies elsewhere and maintaining order. They had no energy to deal with reports unrelated to zombies.
So those lunatics in the organization went all out. They drove modified off-road vehicles, ramming people out of the way, all just to hunt down He Guying, the traitor.
They were just about to catch up when traffic police arrived, trying to force the off-road vehicle to stop.
The result was that the group opened fire directly, blowing out the police car’s tires, then crushing over the front of the patrol car blocking the road and continuing the chase.
That single shot instantly set off the traffic officers’ nerves. They leapt out of the smoking patrol car at once, drew their guns in return, and fired at the tires and the driver.
Amid screams and chaos, He Guying’s RV swerved wildly left and right, finally reaching a secluded corner he had once discovered by accident.
He felt himself burning up with fever. In the corner of his vision, Zhao Changyue looked like a man drenched in blood, his chest rising and falling faintly, the aura of a zombie growing stronger around him.
With no time left to hesitate, He Guying injected one of the two vials he had fought through countless dangers to obtain into Zhao Changyue’s body.
As for the other vial, He Guying hesitated for a moment but ultimately did not inject it into himself. He found some hemostatic medicine and fever reducers, swallowed them, and then passed out like that.