Hurrying over to the passenger side, Su Cheng found Yan Yu’s backpack and fire axe resting there. Without a second thought, she opened the backpack.
The cold medicine happened to be right on top. Su Cheng pulled out a cold tablet and an anti-inflammatory pill.
Lifting Yan Yu up, she patted her face. It was scorching to the touch. “Wake up! Let me get you to take some medicine…”
Furrowing her brows tightly, Yan Yu was in a daze, but she instinctively opened her mouth to swallow the medicine, quickly sinking back into a heavy sleep soon after.
Su Cheng turned off the car headlights and placed Yan Yu’s backpack and her own plastic bag up on the front dashboard as a visual screen.
She simply settled into the passenger seat, keeping the spear and fire axe within arm’s reach.
Looking out the window, amidst the curtains of rain, faint figures could be seen moving slowly in the distance.
Zombies were extremely sensitive to sound. As long as people didn’t make loud noises, the “shh-shh” sound of the rain served as a form of protection to a certain extent.
“I hope this rain keeps falling for a while longer…”
Su Cheng suddenly remembered she had rubbing alcohol. She used it to wipe Yan Yu’s forehead, the hollows of her neck, and her palms to bring down her fever physically.
After finishing these tasks, Su Cheng leaned back in her seat.
The interior of the car was very quiet, with only the sound of Yan Yu’s steady breathing. Combined with the sound of the rain outside, it felt like a lullaby to her already exhausted body and mind.
Holding the spear in her left hand and the fire axe in her right, Su Cheng muttered, “I’m the only one awake, I can’t fall asleep.”
She forced her eyes wide open. “I need to think of something to stay awake… I remember the last time I ran for my life like today was during my high school physical education exams…”
Su Cheng sighed and began recalling the zombie movies she had watched in the past. “I never expected that one day I’d go from being a spectator to an actual participant.”
And the protagonists in those movies could repeatedly snatch victory from the jaws of defeat not just because of plot armor, but because of their own strength.
This strength wasn’t just physical power, but also willpower, acute reflexes… and even sheer luck. To survive in a dungeon, one had to grow stronger.
Returning alive from a dungeon back to the apartment was no easy task. Most apartment residents were undoubtedly ordinary people just like Su Cheng, and she didn’t believe the apartment wouldn’t provide any form of assistance whatsoever.
Once she emerged from the dungeon, she was determined to check out the supermarket on the apartment’s first basement floor; she had a gut feeling she could acquire something useful there.
Time passed by unnoticed, and eventually, the torrential downpour finally showed signs of easing up.
Yan Yu woke up.
The very instant Yan Yu opened her eyes, she bolted upright. Seeing Su Cheng, her consciousness returned, and she relaxed slightly.
“How long was I asleep?”
Drooping her eyes, Su Cheng spoke with the listless tone of someone pulling an all-nighter, “I don’t know, a whole night anyway… Compared to before you went to sleep, the sky seems a little brighter.”
Yan Yu offered her genuine thanks: “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. We’re a small team now anyway, helping each other out is only natural.”
Yan Yu took a sip of water. Though she still had a mild fever, after sleeping and sweating it out, she felt much more comfortable.
Perhaps feeling that Su Cheng was someone worth befriending, Yan Yu started the engine and remarked, “Let’s exchange contact info after we get back. I live in Apartment Building D, Room 3654. Just search my name—there should only be one Yan Yu in Building 3654.”
“Okay!”
Su Cheng nodded. Despite their brief acquaintance, she felt Yan Yu was a good person.
The sky wasn’t completely bright yet, remaining gray and overcast, but the headlights were now enough to illuminate the road ahead.
“Buzz—”
With the rain easing, the engine’s roar sounded jarring and loud against the quiet, breaking dawn of the roadside.
Fortunately, there were no zombies nearby. Even if a zombie heard it from afar, by the time it rushed over, Su Cheng and Yan Yu would have already driven away.
Su Cheng guessed correctly: past the overpass lay the direction leading toward the suburbs.
The farther they got from the city, the stronger Su Cheng’s sense of grounded security grew.
Yan Yu said, “Next, we need to find a place with food where we can hide. Hopefully, we can find a gas station before the car runs out of gas. If things go smoothly, a gas station makes for a decent resting spot.”
Su Cheng understood what she meant. Gas stations had enough food to coast through five days, and if things went south, they could jump right back in the car and drive away—both offensive and defensive. Naturally, she had zero objections.
Drawing from her life experience, Su Cheng noted, “Generally speaking, once you leave the city heading toward the suburbs, the highway will have gas stations servicing inter-city and rural traffic.”
“Yeah, assuming I can pick the right road. I’m feeling much better now. Get some sleep, I’ll wake you if anything comes up.”
“Alright.” Su Cheng didn’t decline. Before entering the apartment, she had already worked a full day and hadn’t closed her eyes since, leaving her genuinely exhausted.
Su Cheng had expected she’d need to doze a bit before falling asleep, but the moment she shut her eyes, she plunged straight into deep slumber.
There were occasional bumps along the road. Blinking awake in a daze, she would realize she was still on the road, only to sink back into a heavy sleep…
When Su Cheng was woken up by Yan Yu, the sky was completely bright and the rain had stopped. The air carried the humid, muggy aftermath of a storm mixed with the earthy scent of wet soil.
They had arrived at a gas station.
The gas station was completely empty, without a single vehicle in sight, and the convenience store doors were tightly shut.
Su Cheng rubbed her neck and massaged her arms.
Falling asleep after intense exertion usually resulted in a specific condition: lifting arms and legs or even abdominal breathing felt heavy, sore, and achy.
Parking the car right beside a fuel dispenser, Yan Yu shouldered her backpack, picked up her fire axe, and hopped out. “Come on, let’s go check it out.”
Su Cheng acknowledged, following closely behind with her fruit-knife spear. As she jumped out of the vehicle, her legs went weak and she nearly dropped to her knees—ah, the classic, long-awaited lactic acid buildup pain.
Looking at the agile Yan Yu, she thought: People really shouldn’t be compared to each other…
Since holding weapons made carrying supplies inconvenient, Su Cheng only kept her canvas crossbody bag, leaving the rest of the items in the car for now.
The two approached the convenience store one after the other. The front doors of the store were locked from the inside, meaning brute force was the only way to open them.
Just as Yan Yu raised her axe high, Su Cheng stopped her, pointing toward the window where a shadow had just flashed past. “There are living people inside.”
Living people, not zombies.
They were likely convenience store employees.
Frowning, Yan Yu pounded hard on the door twice and stated flatly, “Is anyone in there? Either open the door, or I’m chopping it open to get in.”
Such a direct and overbearing speech.
Recalling how Yan Yu had also prepared to hack her way into the pharmacy with an axe earlier, her style truly was: If brute force can solve it, don’t waste breath.
Movement came from inside the convenience store. Coughing lightly twice to supplement, Su Cheng added, “We’re not bad people, and we aren’t infected. We came here because we need gas and food.”
After a few seconds, the convenience store door clicked open. True enough, it was a gas station employee—a woman in her forties wearing a red short-sleeve work uniform, with a slightly plump build.
She looked Su Cheng and Yan Yu over. Seeing that they were just two young women, her guard dropped slightly. “You guys can come in.”
After letting the two inside, she quickly locked the door securely behind them.
Frowning with a worried expression, the female employee asked urgently, “Are you coming from the city? What on earth happened in there?”
The female employee had worked the night shift last day, and when her morning shift colleague failed to show up long past time, she called her supervisor, only to be told that riots had broken out at several gas stations in the city.
Instructing her to stay inside the convenience store, lock the doors, and not come out until the situation was resolved… the supervisor had hung up in a hurried rush.
The employee then tried contacting her family, but couldn’t get through at all… After the heavy rain, cell service flickered on and off, completely cutting her off from the outside world.
Since the storm the previous night, not a single customer had visited the gas station.
Remembering her supervisor’s words, the employee hadn’t planned on opening the door, but seeing that Su Cheng and Yan Yu didn’t look like bad people and possessed a forceful vibe, she had no choice but to open up, hoping to ask about the situation in the city.
Su Cheng didn’t conceal the truth. “A zombie virus has broken out in the city. Anyone bitten by an infected person loses consciousness and turns into one of them.”
Half-convinced yet half-doubtful, but seeing that Su Cheng and Yan Yu didn’t look like they were lying, combined with the abnormal events of last night and today, the employee panicked slightly. “I need to go back and find my son…”
Disapprovingly, Yan Yu advised, “You’d better hide right here and not go out. Zombies are mostly concentrated in the cities right now, but there’s no guarantee the spread won’t reach the surrounding areas later.”
The employee’s face fell. Her lips parted, but she didn’t know what to say. She slumped onto the chair behind the cash register, clutching her phone with a face full of blank helplessness.
Su Cheng and Yan Yu exchanged glances without saying much more. In situations like this, a person could only rely on themselves to adjust; comforting words from outsiders had minimal effect.
Once Yan Yu confirmed the convenience store was safe, she went outside to refuel the off-road vehicle first.
Su Cheng looked at the distressed employee and asked, “Can we take a little bit of the stuff in the convenience store?”
The employee offered a bitter smile. “Eat whatever you want. If the outside world is truly going to pieces, nobody’s going to care about this anymore…”
Su Cheng grabbed two oversized plastic bags from the cash register. She eyed the neat rows of canned goods—they were simply too ideal for packing up.
The items sold on the convenience store shelves were primarily food, followed by daily necessities like toilet paper and sanitary pads.
Su Cheng specifically made a point of grabbing extra toilet paper; consumables like that were something you could never have too much of.
Recalling the apartment rules stating that dungeon supplies could be brought back to the apartment, she couldn’t stop her hands from grabbing more.
By the time Yan Yu returned, Su Cheng had already filled two large bags.
Yan Yu raised an eyebrow and paused for a second. “Uh, won’t it be hard to carry if you pack this much?”
“Didn’t the apartment say we can bring things back?”
Yan Yu had a sudden realization. “Are you a newbie? Is this your first dungeon?”
Su Cheng answered with certainty. “Yeah. This probably isn’t your first dungeon, though.”
“That’s right. This is my third dungeon. You might not know this, but unless you have special items, the amount of supplies you can bring back to the apartment per trip is limited. You won’t be able to carry away that much anyway.”
“Ah…”
Su Cheng’s disappointment hit rock bottom. So many supplies right before her eyes, yet she couldn’t take them with her. This felt even more agonizingly helpless than having a phone with no Wi-Fi!
Sympathizing with her, Yan Yu patted Su Cheng on the shoulder. “Stop mourning. Come help me push that display shelf over there.”
“Sigh, do you have any special items?”
“Yeah. You can buy items at the supermarket that let you carry more supplies when leaving a dungeon.”
The envy in Su Cheng’s eyes was practically about to materialize into substance as she put extra muscle into pushing the display shelf.
A small storage room inside the convenience store contained a cot for employees to rest on.
However, the two of them had no intention of fighting the employee for the break room. Instead, they pushed aside a display shelf in the corner, clearing out a resting space for themselves.
Yan Yu set her backpack down, piling it next to Su Cheng’s large bags of supplies.
The employee brought over two folding lounge chairs. “You guys probably need these.”
“Thanks.”
Shaking her head, the employee said, “I’m heading to the break room. Call me if you need anything.”
“Okay.”
Unfolding the lounge chairs, Su Cheng and Yan Yu each took one.
Now that they had a moment to rest, Su Cheng eagerly leaned in to seek advice from her senior, Yan Yu: “What kind of dungeons have you been to before?”
Yan Yu unscrewed a canned mandarin orange, tasted a bite, and spoke: “The first one was a high-temperature dungeon; the hazards were dehydration and sunburn. The second one was on a train, related to a serial killer. This current one is my third.”
High temperatures, serial killers… Dungeons were indeed just as dangerous as Su Cheng had imagined.
Swallowing the mandarin orange, Yan Yu continued: “Each dungeon has different missions, and points are tied to the difficulty level. My mission for the high-temperature dungeon was to survive for 5 days, yielding 300 points.
The serial killer dungeon had two missions: first, survive for 48 hours for 300 points; second, counter-kill the serial killer for 400 points. I only completed the first one.
And this zombie dungeon only gives 100, probably because we arrived at the early stage of the zombie outbreak, giving us room to escape and hide.
Whether pressing the elevator button drops you into an easy or difficult dungeon comes down entirely to luck.”