Bai Zhuo stood where she was without moving, watching from on high as Gu Zhun and his group found a car by the roadside, skirted the ruins, and drove out of Ning City over snow that had yet to melt.
【System, does my mission count as complete?】
The glaring red countdown was still ticking. A flicker crossed Bai Zhuo’s eyes, should she just go ahead and kill Gu Zhun?
No sooner had the thought surfaced than she heard the system chime in.
【Congratulations, host. Special mission complete. The reward has been delivered to your system inventory.】
Bai Zhuo drew her gaze back, turned, and smiled at Xue Yanhen. “Let’s go. Time to pack up.”
Gu Zhun and the others, already driving out of Ning City, wore grave expressions, not for any other reason, but because Xiao Wu had found, in the pocket of his own combat uniform, the meteorological data they needed.
“Captain, this—”
Gu Zhun’s eyes narrowed slightly, and Bai Zhuo’s figure flashed through his mind. It could only be her.
Gripping the wheel tightly, he spoke in a steady voice. “Since she meant to help us, then we can only accept the kindness.”
When they met again someday, he would surely repay this debt.
Bai Zhuo and Xue Yanhen gathered up everything, dealt with any traces of what they couldn’t carry off, and left without a shred of reluctance.
As the weather warmed and the ice and snow melted, it wasn’t only surviving humans who ventured out to test the world, it was also the zombies lucky enough to have evolved.
Bai Zhuo ran a zombie through with her crowbar in one clean thrust and kicked it off the point.
Faint footsteps sounded. Bai Zhuo turned her head, eyes narrowing toward the rooftop entrance.
Not far off, Xue Yanhen had clearly heard it too. She signaled to Bai Zhuo and slipped soundlessly around the other side.
Xue Yanhen wrenched the iron door open. The person eavesdropping inside stumbled and nearly fell flat on the floor.
Before he could steady himself, the blade in Xue Yanhen’s hand was already resting against his neck.
The youth, a shock of red hair, stiffened and raised his hands. “Sis, sis, easy now! I didn’t mean any harm!”
Bai Zhuo walked over, looked him up and down, and let out a scoffing laugh. “No harm, huh? Then what were you doing crouched back here, sneaking around, listening in?”
“I, uh…”
The youth’s eyes darted about, and then he flashed an ingratiating smile. “I just wanted to see if you two big sisters might leave a poor guy a sip of the broth. [1]share a scrap of your spoils jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2936272_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2936272_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });”
Bai Zhuo tapped his leg with the crowbar. “If you weren’t hiding something on you, I might’ve believed that.”
The youth had never expected to be exposed in a single stroke. His face changed at once, and he lashed out at Bai Zhuo.
At the very same moment, a zombie’s snarl rose up not far away.
Bai Zhuo dodged the red-haired youth’s attack and swung the crowbar down at his back. He jerked his arm up and, in an utterly grotesque contortion, blocked the crowbar.
Bai Zhuo’s pupils contracted, this guy’s arm was made of putty!
Behind her, Xue Yanhen spun to meet the zombies lunging at her. The modao was perfectly obedient in her hands, and these few were only level-one zombies, no match for her at all. In three swift moves she cut them all down.
Xue Yanhen glanced back toward Bai Zhuo just in time to see the youth’s arm twist like it had no bones at all, wrenched practically into a fried-dough twist. Her eyes went round.
Bai Zhuo’s crowbar slipped from her grip. Seeing her disarmed, the red-haired youth grinned, his face full of malice.
“Why do you have to make things so hard on yourselves? Ordinary humans, trying to compete with ability users, are you even worthy?”
“Ability users, huh—”
Bai Zhuo murmured the words softly to herself, then smiled, a bright, sunny smile that made the red-haired youth’s gaze waver.
She shook out the hand still tingling from the blow, but her eyes went cold, degree by degree.
“Ability users have to die for me too!”
The frying pan appeared out of thin air in Bai Zhuo’s hand, and without the slightest hesitation, she slammed it hard down onto the red-haired youth’s head.
He clearly didn’t expect her to conjure a weapon from nowhere, he had no time to react, and got knocked out cold with one solid clang of the pan.
Bai Zhuo nudged his body a few times, and only after confirming he was truly out did she look toward Xue Yanhen.
Xue Yanhen strode over. She had no reaction whatsoever to the frying pan that had appeared in Bai Zhuo’s hand, only saying in a low voice, “We’ve made too much noise here. More zombies will be swarming in soon, we need to leave, fast.”
As for the red-haired youth Bai Zhuo had knocked out with the pan, the two of them exchanged a glance and quickly frisked him, digging out a hard card.
Bai Zhuo tucked the card into her pocket, and when she looked up she saw a zombie climbing over the ledge.
This one moved fast. A cold glint flashed through Bai Zhuo’s eyes, a level-two zombie!
The zombie opened its mouth wide and hurled itself at them with a snarl. Up close, you could even smell the rotten stench coming off its body and out of its mouth.
Bai Zhuo looked down at the red-haired youth, whose chest was barely rising, and sneered. “Playing dead, are we?”
The youth still didn’t move, even his breathing didn’t change. He really did look like he’d been clubbed unconscious by her frying pan.
“Then you can stay right here.”
The youth’s heart lurched. Had she actually seen through him?
No, she had to be bluffing.
Only when the violent breathing and the zombie’s rotten reek hit him in the face did the red-haired youth snap his eyes open and, like a snake, wriggle out from under the zombie.
The white-gleaming tip of the modao brought his movements to a dead halt.
Bai Zhuo smiled. “Look behind you.”
He didn’t even need to look to know a zombie was rushing him.
He glared at Bai Zhuo with vicious hatred, and just before the zombie’s sharp claws could land on his shoulder, he twisted his body at an unbelievable angle and dodged the attack.
“You just wait!”
“Can’t wait.”
Bai Zhuo’s voice carried to his ears on the wind, and then he saw the frying pan plummeting from the sky, growing larger and larger.
After the pan smashed his nose into a gushing fountain of blood, Bai Zhuo leapt down after it, whipping out her crowbar.
Xue Yanhen didn’t follow Bai Zhuo’s lead and jump, she walked down the stairs like a normal person.
Seeing that the red-haired youth had already been dealt with, she signaled that it was time to go.
The two entered a residential building and picked, at random, an apartment whose iron door stood wide open.
Inside was a shambles, but thankfully there was no sign of zombies, likely just a family that had fled in a panic.
“Let’s rest here for a couple of days.”
Xue Yanhen nodded in agreement. “I’ll go see if there’s anything else usable.”
Bai Zhuo pulled out a coil of climbing rope. She had to lock the door tight, in case another zombie came crashing through.
Her hands kept working while, in her mind, she called out to the system.
【There’s a gold box in the special-mission reward, isn’t there? I just saw it.】
【Yes, host.】
【Open it.】
Bai Zhuo was rather curious about what this first-ever gold box might contain.
References[+]