When the alarm rang, Room 618 immediately entered a tense state of preparation.
As they watched the time on the alarm tick by second by second, they waited anxiously.
At 11:32 p.m., the plants in the farm suddenly grew in an instant, showing that they were ready for harvest.
At the same time, other online players within range all received a rotating red notification.
[Player “Dawn”’s crops have matured]
Chen Jianwei had already selected the [Harvest] tool.
[Harvest Successful]
[Congratulations to player Dawn for harvesting crops for the first time at 100%, you have received a Bountiful Harvest Gift Pack]
[Harvest 150%] tool x1
[Fertilizer 2 hours] tool x1
[Grudge Ledger 24 hours] tool x1
[Congratulations to player Dawn for upgrading to a Level 2 Farm. You can now receive the following benefits]
1. Unlock one plot of land
2. Crop stealing range increased by 10 meters
3. Ability to purchase Level 2 seeds
[Keep working hard, higher levels will grant even more rewards!]
“Unlock land?” Ying Ran noticed this first, clearly because this piece of information was the most tempting, but they did not yet know how many points it would cost.
She found the option to unlock land in the toolbar. When she saw that unlocking one plot required 5 points, she immediately hesitated.
The two garlic crops they had just harvested only earned them 2 points, and they currently had only 10 points in total. Spending half of it to unlock a single plot felt a bit painful.
Perhaps they would only consider such things once their points gradually became more abundant.
After harvesting this batch of crops, they began thinking about planting the next round of seeds.
Now that their farm had upgraded to Level 2, there were also more seeds available for planting.
At this moment, Duan Minmin suddenly recalled something. “Didn’t the beginner gift pack give us three seeds earlier? I think we can spend 5 points to unlock three plots of land and plant all three seeds.”
The cherry seed, pea seed, and sunflower seed were all from the system’s gift pack, essentially extra gains for them.
If they could harvest successfully, cherries would yield 8 points, while peas and sunflowers would each yield 10 points, for a net gain of 28 points.
In comparison, the 5 points spent to unlock land did not seem like much anymore.
Hearing Duan Minmin say this, Ying Ran immediately found it reasonable.
So she tapped [Warehouse] → [Crops], selected [Garlic x2], and sold them for 8 points.
Then she selected the [Unlock Land] tool.
[Confirm unlocking land x1]
[Congratulations to player Dawn for successfully unlocking one plot of land]
Next, she selected the [Plant] tool and planted all three seeds from [Warehouse] → [Seed Storage].
The cherry would take 14 hours to grow, while the pea and sunflower seeds would take 17 hours.
Based on the current planting time, the harvest times should be 1:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. the next day.
Luo Mushi set alarms for 13:30 and 16:30.
“How about we turn off the lights first? If there are zombies outside, and we keep the lights on, they might notice someone is here and come scratching at the door,” Luo Mushi said. After staying tense all day and not knowing what tomorrow would bring, she was indeed exhausted.
Now that they had successfully harvested this batch of crops and planted the next one, it was better to get a good night’s sleep and deal with tomorrow when it came.
After turning off the lights, they each returned to their beds. Once the bed curtains were drawn, everything fell into darkness again.
Chen Jianwei covered her legs with a blanket, leaned against the wall, and continued using her phone.
Information online was chaotic and varied. The Haishi University Plaza had now turned into a real time reporting hub for zombie sightings across various universities. Scrolling down, it was filled with posts like “Zombies spotted at XX location in XX University.”
She searched using Haishi University as a keyword and found mentions of five locations where zombies had appeared: the back entrance of Lanzhou Garden cafeteria, the Lanzhou Garden study room, in front of Building 3 of Zhuyuan dormitory, the library square, and the equipment room of the gymnasium.
But why had so many zombies suddenly appeared across the campus overnight?
The campus was enclosed by walls and iron fences, and the normal entry and exit points were just the four main gates.
Yet the earliest zombie sightings had been on the central lake island in Yaobei District, with victims being students from Haiqing Normal University. As of yesterday, the police had already prohibited tourists from entering or leaving the island.
So how had the zombies spread out afterward and ended up everywhere?
While scrolling through posts on the Haishi University Plaza, Chen Jianwei was about to tap the next page when she suddenly froze.
She felt the wall behind her vibrating.
Once, then again.
It was as if someone was knocking against the wall.
A chill ran down her spine. Chen Jianwei immediately sat upright and opened the group chat of their dorm.
Their dorm group was named “Wall Street Presidents Exchange Group.”
It was very edgy and perfectly suited their personalities.
“Did you hear anything?”
Chen Jianwei sent the message and specifically tagged Luo Mushi.
Since Luo Mushi slept on the same side as her, she would definitely feel the wall’s vibrations.
The dorm’s soundproofing was not good, especially in the dead of night.
To avoid being overheard by the next room, Chen Jianwei could only communicate through the group chat.
Luo Mushi replied a few seconds later, “I thought it was just my imagination.”
The adjacent dorm was Room 619.
“Is 619 knocking on the wall?” Duan Minmin, who slept on the opposite bed, also asked.
They all felt the wall vibrating, so it should be Room 619 knocking.
If it was not 619 knocking, then it would be too terrifying.
After thinking for a moment, Duan Minmin quietly climbed down from her bed, grabbed her iPad, and climbed back up.
She opened the electronic surveillance camera feed and slowly controlled the camera to turn toward Room 619.
The corridor remained quiet, with only the green “Exit” sign at the end of the hallway blinking.
There did not seem to be anything unusual.
“Do you think someone in the next dorm has turned into a zombie?” Duan Minmin proposed boldly.
At a time like this, they did not even dare make noise inside their own dorm, so Room 619 should not be banging loudly on the wall either.
But if someone in 619 had undergone a zombie transformation, that would be far more terrifying.
Duan Minmin even began analyzing seriously, “We still do not know what the source of the zombie virus is. Whether it is a curse from the blood moon or an alien virus brought by a meteor, both are possible. That means anyone who has come into contact with the source could become part of the first batch of zombies, it might just be a matter of sooner or later. Those who have already turned into zombies are one thing, but those who are infected yet have not transformed and are quarantined together with normal people, that would turn a safe zone into a danger zone.”
Luo Mushi was completely confused. “Wait, let me sort this out… but aren’t zombies already dead? They become zombies because they died, right?”
Chen Jianwei understood what Duan Minmin was trying to say.
Zombies were indeed dead, at least in the sense that they had lost human reasoning and consciousness.
But no one could clearly explain how the very first batch of zombies had appeared.
If there really were carriers of the zombie virus hiding within human “safe zones,” it would be as dangerous as wolves entering a flock of sheep.
Duan Minmin felt extremely fortunate that they had already installed an electronic camera in the corridor outside their door.
Even if a few wandering zombies appeared in the corridor tomorrow morning, they would be able to observe the situation outside through the camera.
“Room 619 is still knocking on the wall,” Chen Jianwei continued typing in the group chat as she felt the vibrations persist.
“But if it really were a zombie transformation, it would not just be knocking, right?” Luo Mushi pressed her ear against the wall, but aside from the vibrations, she heard nothing else.
It made no sense.
Ying Ran tagged Chen Jianwei and Luo Mushi in the group chat.
“Check the Lanzhou Garden 2 group chat. Someone asked about it.”
Chen Jianwei returned to the Lanzhou Garden Building 2 group and scrolled up through the messages.
[620 Wu Zhenyi: @619 Liu Huan What is going on in your room? It is the middle of the night, are you going to let people sleep or not?]
[620 Ye Wan: Exactly! It is already midnight, everything outside is quiet, yet you are still making so much noise. What if you attract zombies?]
After a while, Room 619 finally responded.
[619 Liu Huan: We are really sorry]
[619 Liu Huan: One of my roommates is feeling anxious, we are already trying to comfort her]
Seeing Liu Huan say this, Room 620 asked what exactly had happened, but Liu Huan did not reply again.
“I think it is very suspicious,” Duan Minmin carefully sent a message to her roommates.
“But in a situation like this, I think anxiety is pretty normal,” Chen Jianwei said after some thought.
If they had not had other things to distract themselves, and if they had not stocked up on supplies in advance, then if they had spent the entire day scrolling through zombie related content, they might have become anxious, agitated, and even unstable as well.
Separated by just a wall, the noises from Room 619 gradually became inaudible.
Chen Jianwei placed her phone in the basket to charge, then lay on her side and covered herself with the blanket.
She hoped that tomorrow would bring good news.
She silently prayed before falling asleep.
In a hazy half asleep state, she felt the bed shake slightly, probably from Luo Mushi getting out of bed.
Soon, the sound of a toilet flushing came from the bathroom.
Chen Jianwei turned over, and suddenly heard Duan Minmin speaking in a hushed voice from the opposite bed.
“Ah Wei, do you know how to use that grudge notebook?”
What grudge notebook? Chen Jianwei thought groggily.
Luo Mushi had already come out of the bathroom. Hearing this, she also asked curiously.
“It is that [Bountiful Harvest Gift Pack] we got after harvesting, right? One increases crop yield, one is fertilizer for speeding growth, and the other is the grudge notebook,” Duan Minmin recalled, then suddenly flipped over and got out of bed, pulling open her bed curtain. “I think the grudge notebook records who comes to our farm to steal crops. Then we secretly hold grudges, and when we get the chance later, we go find them offline and fight them in real life.”
Chen Jianwei found Duan Minmin’s description extremely vivid.
She felt that [Farm Game] was deliberately sowing discord among people.
Whether it was the crop maturity notification feature or the [Grudge Ledger], both seemed designed to stir conflict.