After eating her fill, Li Qiu felt as if she had endless strength coursing through her body.
Not only did she jog forward while carrying a load, she also took advantage of a zombie’s night vision to admire all the scenery along the way.
This was the first time in her life that Li Qiu had visited a popular tourist attraction with so few people.
This was a 5A scenic area, after all. Before the apocalypse, not only did the tickets cost more than a hundred yuan, but the place had also been packed with people everywhere. Even taking a few commemorative photos required standing in line to check in. The only regret was that she did not have a phone or camera with any battery left to take pictures.
Li Qiu ran with all her might. Along the way, she only occasionally saw a few stray cats and dogs.
No one knew what those cats and dogs had been eating to grow up, but every single one of them was plump and strong, their eyes gleaming with the cold light of predators. This made Li Qiu completely lose the courage to go over and pet them.
What if zombies could also get rabies?! Stay! Alert!
After running until she was somewhat tired, Li Qiu stood inside the Moon Inquiry Pavilion and looked around. She discovered that Li Dong was still slowly walking in the distance. After all this time, he had only just passed the artificial rock garden. As a Crawling Type, he seemed to drop onto all fours and enter a crawling state only when preparing to attack. The rest of the time, he still wandered around like a Walking Corpse.
This was simply too deceptive. If a human survivor who did not understand the Crawling Type ran into Li Dong and blindly assumed he was an F-rank Walking Corpse, they would probably walk right up to him and get eaten.
“Li Dong, hurry up!” Li Qiu shouted. “We’re almost there.”
Because there was no one around and the surroundings were eerily quiet, Li Qiu’s voice carried very far.
Li Dong was indeed attracted by the sound, and his wandering steps quickened.
Before long, Li Dong had run over to Li Qiu.
A trace of blood-red flickered through his grayish-white pupils. The expression on his wrinkled face was incomparably calm as he quietly looked at Li Qiu.
He no longer mistook Li Qiu for food like before.
Li Qiu believed that the reason Li Dong had made such a great improvement was because he had evolved from F-rank to E-rank and had become a little smarter, enough to understand the summons of her, a D-rank Intelligent Type!
“There are a lot of forks in the road here, don’t get lost.”
Kindly, Li Qiu handed one end of the crowbar to Li Dong while she held the other end.
This was much better than tying him up with a plastic rope like before. Earlier, Li Dong had suddenly been attracted by Zhao Siyuan and the others, and the rope had pulled so tightly that there was still a ring-shaped mark on her hand.
Speaking of it, this crowbar had also been equipment dropped by Chen Mi. Li Qiu had scrubbed it over and over with lake water to wash off the bloodstains.
If she did not wash it, she was afraid that if she became desperately hungry again, she might start sucking on the crowbar itself.
Just imagining that scene made her feel perverted. It absolutely could not happen.
Li Qiu’s thoughts were wandering when she suddenly came back to herself and saw that Li Dong had already walked ahead of her.
“Wait for me!” she shouted.
Yanhu Lake Grand Hotel was not only the largest hotel in Yanhu Lake Scenic Area, it was also one of the liveliest commercial districts in Chilan City.
There were not only all kinds of luxurious guest rooms and presidential suites here, but also gyms, hot spring baths, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a water park, various restaurants spread across three floors, shopping centers, book bars, and more. It perfectly recreated another downtown CBD of Chilan City.
Seeing that there was only one kilometer left before reaching it, Li Qiu gradually slowed her pace. She hesitated slightly and vaguely sensed that something was wrong.
As far as she knew, the zombie tide had erupted very suddenly, and many people had had no concept of taking precautions.
After all, she herself had been bitten during the public institution recruitment examination.
Before that, neither national news, local news, nor independent media had released any information about zombies.
The only unusual thing was that many people all over the country had developed high fevers, and experts had called it a new type of influenza.
No matter how severe the flu was, it should not have been fatal. At most, people would take more cold medicine, and everyone’s lives continued as usual.
Those who needed to work still went to work, and those who needed to attend school still went to school. No one stopped moving forward because of this flu.
Who could have known that on August 19, the day Li Qiu took her examination, almost more than half of the flu patients had turned into zombies.
It was also on that day that the apocalypse had truly arrived.
If that was the case, there should have been many tourists visiting Yanhu Lake Scenic Area that day.
Without any exaggeration, during the peak tourist season of August, the daily visitor traffic of Yanhu Lake Scenic Area was estimated to be around five hundred thousand people.
Excluding those who had already finished sightseeing and left, there should still have been at least fifty to sixty thousand tourists and staff members inside the scenic area when the zombie tide erupted.
Yanhu Lake Scenic Area was composed of three small islands surrounding the lake, and the tourists should have been scattered throughout these three areas.
That meant each area had at least twenty to thirty thousand people.
Even if some of those twenty to thirty thousand people managed to escape during the zombie tide, what about the rest who had turned into zombies?
Li Qiu had not encountered a single zombie on the way here.
The only possibility seemed to be that they were all inside the hotel.
If they were inside the hotel, there could only be one reason, hunting living people.
…
Inside the presidential suite at the highest point of Yanhu Lake Grand Hotel.
Just as Li Qiu had imagined, there really was a group of human survivors here.
One of them was the hotel’s lobby manager, one was a janitor, and the other eight were tourists. Among those eight tourists, four male students were from the same university dormitory, one man and one woman were a middle-aged couple, and another was a mother traveling with her ten-year-old daughter.
After the apocalypse arrived, this enormous hotel had become an arena. All ten of them had fought through bloodshed for more than a month and had only survived until now by not daring to relax for even a moment.
Even the youngest person among them, the ten-year-old girl, possessed an ability that allowed her to manipulate any inanimate object within a one-meter radius.
Every one of them held onto the belief that they had to survive.
But today, they had almost lost hope. For some unknown reason, the zombies in the scenic area had not dispersed. Instead, they had all gathered today and converged on every floor of the hotel. The densely packed zombies were like raindrops falling from the sky, seeping into every crack.
They were sniffing out scents floor by floor and room by room, searching for traces of them.
Finding this room at the highest point was only a matter of time.
There were no lights on in the room, and the curtains were tightly shut. Only an aromatherapy candle stand had been lit in the very center of the floor, giving off a faint glow that illuminated the sorrowful faces of the ten people.
“I have an idea,” one of the chubby university students said.
Everyone immediately became energized.
“We’ll weave the curtains into a rope and have one person swing outside the window to attract the zombies’ attention. Then the others can take the opportunity to climb down from the other side and escape,” he said.
“Good idea!” Quite a few people agreed, hope appearing in their eyes.
The boy paused before continuing, “But the person swinging outside will have to figure out their own way to escape. If everyone agrees with this plan, then let’s draw lots now.”
In truth, he had put it very tactfully. As long as one was not stupid, everyone knew that the person attracting attention had almost no chance of survival.
It was just like that ancient question. A train’s brakes had failed. There were five people on the tracks ahead, and one person on the branch line to the side. Which track should the train be directed toward?
Some people would choose to stay on the established route and let the five people die. More people, however, would change tracks, believing that sacrificing one person was better than sacrificing five.
Right now, the best option was for one person to possibly die instead of ten people definitely dying.
Who would be willing to become that person?
Drawing lots was the fairest method.
The boy tore a sheet from a notepad and made marks on it by candlelight. He placed each paper ball of roughly the same size into a tissue box and shook it.
“Draw. There are nine slips with ‘Safe’ written on them and one slip with ‘Peace.’ The person who gets ‘Peace’ is the one,” the boy explained the rules. To avoid suspicion and prevent people from accusing him of cheating, he did not draw first.
Everyone stretched their hands out from the darkness and submitted themselves to fate’s selection.
They were even somewhat reluctant to open them. Who could have imagined that one day they would fear the character “Peace”?
“Has everyone opened theirs?” The boy was the first to unfold his paper and place it beside the candlelight. Written on it was a hastily scribbled character for “Safe.”
“It’s me.” A voice came from the darkness. It was the man from the middle-aged couple. He and his wife had opened a breakfast shop, waking up early and working until late every day selling buns and steamed buns. After supporting their son through his studies abroad, the couple had finally found time to travel, only to discover that they could never go back.
“It’s me…” The woman grabbed her husband’s hand, tears in her eyes as she dared not shout too loudly for fear of attracting the zombies. “I’ll go.”
Everyone else fell silent.
The person had already been chosen. Whether it was the man or the woman, it would ultimately be one of the couple.
The lobby manager’s ability was Danger Perception. He was so flustered that his heart pounded violently, and he quickly urged them, “I feel like those zombies are about to reach this floor. Hurry up.”
In the end, it was the man who tied one end of the curtain around his waist. With an ashen face, he pulled aside a corner of the curtain and was just about to smash the window and go out when he suddenly stopped.
He turned back toward the people in the room and said, “S… someone is coming.”
At this moment, Li Qiu and Li Dong had already reached the entrance of the hotel.
Li Qiu stared at the scene before her in dumbfounded shock. All kinds of zombies were wandering here. There were not only Walking Corpses and Crawling Types, she even vaguely saw a zombie staring back at her.
That was… a D-rank Intelligent Type?