Li Qiu was no longer in a hurry to look for Li Dong, who had disappeared the moment she let go of him.
To verify this sudden burst of tremendous strength, she casually shoved down another row of zombies.
The sound of countless heavy objects crashing to the ground clearly reached her ears.
Li Qiu looked up and found the zombies piled on top of one another.
Not a single one of them cried out in pain. Instead, they all let out the distinctive roars unique to zombies.
Those roars merged together, cold and heavy, like a grand chorus from the zombie horde. They carried far into the distance and seemed especially eerie at this moment when the sky had only just begun to brighten.
Li Qiu swallowed nervously, feeling somewhat at a loss. She thought that she might have gone too far.
If tens of thousands of zombies charged at her all at once, she would probably be trampled to death on the spot.
Thinking about such a terrifying way to die, Li Qiu quickly crouched down in the bushes and silently recited, “We sprang from the same root, why should we torment each other so?”
Unfortunately, even the bushes were not peaceful. There were actually bits of brain matter and internal organs hanging there, scattered from who knew where.
Li Qiu had intended to grab a branch, but the moment she reached out, she touched those things instead, disgusting her so much that she nearly jumped up.
She did not dare make a sound and quickly rubbed her hand against the ground, barely managing to wipe off whatever had gotten on it.
Fortunately, those zombies she had pushed over did not come looking for Li Qiu.
Their roars seemed to be in response to the D-rank Intelligent Type. After responding, their volume subsided, and they quickly stood up again one after another. The vast zombie army then marched majestically toward the hotel.
Li Qiu no longer had the courage to continue experimenting with her newfound strength.
She tugged on the brim of her hat and sneaked along a side path.
After eating her fill, she could run quickly and actually entered the hotel building before many of the zombies.
As she walked, Li Qiu mentally made a checklist. First, find a map. Second, find useful supplies. Third, find a large room and rest. Fourth, after resting, get up, eat, and continue on her journey.
The top priority was finding a map!
With a map, she would know the general route back home.
The walls of the hotel’s first-floor lobby were designed with hollowed metal patterns, giving the place a strong sense of depth.
The nearly thirty-meter-high central atrium made the entire space feel even more open.
The first floor was clearly divided into sections. The front desk, elevators, and resting area with tall screens were located on the left side of the lobby.
To the right were the tea room, café, restaurant, and a Western-style spiral staircase.
There were also many guide signs placed around the floor, allowing guests to find their desired destinations at a glance.
Li Qiu rushed straight to the resting area. Generally speaking, rest areas would have magazines, local newspapers, as well as travel information and maps for guests to browse.
“Huh? Why isn’t there one?” Li Qiu quickly scanned the resting area. It was a complete mess. The screens had fallen onto the leather sofas, vases and floor lamps lay shattered across the floor, and patches of dried blood stained the ground. There was even a hotel robot lying on the floor with no power left.
Yet there was no rack for holding publications and maps.
While she was searching, a large number of zombies had already poured in.
Li Qiu continued wearing the plastic bag over her head to block her scent and had no time to pay attention to them.
She only made her movements quieter to avoid attracting their attention and wasting time that could be spent searching for the map.
Fortunately, hard work paid off. Sharp-eyed Li Qiu spotted several newspapers beneath an overturned sofa.
The rack had actually been trapped beneath the sofa!
Lying on the marble floor, Li Qiu looked underneath the sofa. Both ends of the rack were firmly wedged under it. There were only two ways to reach the scattered maps beside the rack. Either she found something as long as a clothes-drying pole and hooked the maps out, or she lifted the sofa and pulled the rack free.
The sofa was made of a steel frame wrapped in leather and probably weighed several hundred pounds. Thinking of her incredible strength, Li Qiu spat twice into her hands and prepared to use both arms and her back to lift the sofa.
Even she herself had not expected it. She merely grabbed the two corners of the sofa and effortlessly raised the four- or five-hundred-pound piece of furniture above her waist.
The marble floor immediately echoed with the scraping sound of the sofa.
In an instant, every zombie searching for living humans was attracted by the noise.
Li Qiu had just managed to grab the map when she found a zombie giving her a face-to-face scare.
A bloodied and mangled face was only a few centimeters away from her, lying on the floor and staring at her fixedly.
It was a Crawler just like Li Dong.
All four of its limbs were pressed against the ground. Its head was unusually large, and black veins bulged around its neck, making it resemble a humanoid lizard.
Li Qiu was certain that if it became even a little more suspicious of her, it would sink its sharp teeth into her skin.
Fortunately, other than observing her from an extremely close distance, the Crawling Type made no further movements.
Li Qiu slowly stood up. Looking around, she discovered that the zombies had formed a huge encirclement around her.
The ones closest to her were several Crawlers crouching on the ground, and beyond them, circle after circle outward, were F-rank Walking Corpses.
Li Dong was standing at the outermost edge of the encirclement.
Li Qiu saw him standing on the European-style classical spiral staircase, with several other zombies beside him. Their lips moved continuously, as though they were speaking to each other in low voices.
Of all the zombies visible in the first-floor lobby, only those few remained standing on the staircase and had not come down.
They possessed judgment, could think, and could converse.
Were they all D-rank Intelligent Types?
Standing in the middle of the zombie encirclement, Li Qiu did not feel afraid. This was the only thought that crossed her mind.
One, two, three, four, and counting Li Dong, there were five Intelligent Types here.
Li Dong had become an Intelligent Type.
Li Qiu felt that her judgment had not been wrong. But she was curious why Li Dong had leveled up so quickly. Was it because he had eaten Chen Mi?
That should not be the case. She herself had eaten not only parts of Chen Mi and Zhao Siyuan, but also a piece of Fang Qi’s flesh. So why had she not leveled up?
Li Qiu knew that above a D-rank Intelligent Type was a C-rank Long-Tongued Type. She stuck out her tongue and checked it, but did not notice any signs that it had become longer.
So she had not leveled up at all.
Li Qiu was deeply speechless.
Li Dong did not look particularly remarkable, but he was actually a genius among zombies.
Could there also be underachievers and geniuses in the zombie world?
Li Dong, who had been communicating with the other Intelligent Types, suddenly fell silent.
His grayish-white eyes stared motionlessly in Li Qiu’s direction. He knew she was looking at him, so he responded with his gaze.
His strange companion was currently wearing a heartbroken expression of utter despair that absolutely should not belong to a zombie.
Li Dong stopped looking at Li Qiu and raised his head. His indifferent yet puzzled gaze shifted toward the top floor of the hotel.
The elevators in the hotel had stopped operating on the day the zombie tide broke out. Since there was also no electricity now, the only way to reach the suite on the seventh floor was to walk up step by step. But it would not take long.
Those people would eventually become food on their plates.
His strange companion also needed to eat more fresh food to nourish her brain, Li Dong thought.
When Li Qiu discovered that Li Dong and the other Intelligent Types were heading upstairs, the zombies around her that had been staring at her intently also retreated like a receding tide. At this moment, every zombie had only one target, the top floor.
“There is real food there.” Amid the sounds of zombie footsteps and roars, Li Qiu caught this message.
She hurriedly stuffed the map she had worked so hard to find into her backpack and bit down on the tassel hanging from her scarf, forcing herself to calm down.
As a zombie with human thinking, she could accept eating human or zombie corpses to fill her stomach. But she could not watch humans being killed by zombies.
Of course, bad people were an exception. For example, people like Zhao Siyuan and Chen Mi, who had betrayed their companions.
The values and moral system that Li Qiu had developed over twenty-two years of living in human society left her with only one choice when facing such a situation, sit on the mountain and watch the tigers fight, helping neither side.
But now, since she did not know whether the humans on the top floor were bad people or not, Li Qiu chose to presume innocence and give them as much of a chance to escape as possible.
Of course, she also would not let those human survivors discover her true identity. Otherwise, the story might turn into an apocalyptic version of The Farmer and the Snake.
If things really went in that direction, then she could only throw herself into the zombie camp.
…
The survivors in the top-floor suite paid close attention to every movement in the hotel.
The sun gradually rose from behind the mountains, and the first ray of morning light soon reached their window.
Among the ten people was a university student with a hearing ability. During these past days, everyone had relied on his extraordinary hearing to avoid many dangers.
At this moment, he was concentrating on listening to the sounds coming from the first floor of the hotel.
The janitor sighed. “So many zombies chased after her. She definitely won’t survive.”
The man from the middle-aged couple said, “Maybe there’s still hope.” There had to be hope, otherwise he would still have to smash the window and become the bait.
The little girl and her mother remained silent, the two of them embracing each other without saying a word.
The lobby manager wiped the sweat from his forehead. “She knocked down so many zombies with a single punch. She must be someone extraordinary. Maybe she’s part of a rescue team sent by the authorities. She won’t die that easily.”
One of the university student’s roommates spoke in a low voice. “Why don’t you all talk even louder? Then Hao Ming can listen to you instead.”
Hao Ming was the student with the hearing ability. The range of his power was limited, and listening to the sounds on the first floor from the well-insulated top-floor suite was already extremely exhausting for him.
Yet there were still so many people around him who could not stop talking.
Fortunately, after his roommate’s sarcastic remark, silence once again descended upon the room.
This time, without relying on Hao Ming’s ability, everyone seemed to hear the sound of countless zombies climbing the stairs.
“They’re almost here?!” The janitor mouthed the words this time and could not help tightening his grip on the iron tongs in his hand.
Hao Ming sat up wearily, his forehead covered in sweat, a sign that his ability was nearly exhausted. The others hurriedly handed him water and waited for him to explain the situation.
Hao Ming shook his head helplessly. “At first, I could still hear her speaking, but afterward it was nothing but zombie noises.”
“If I’d known this would happen, we should have warned her from the beginning and told her to run. There was no way one person could fight so many zombies,” the lobby manager said.
The chubby boy frowned. “Then we can only use the old method.”
The old method, smash the window. One person dies, and nine people live.
The woman from the middle-aged couple wrapped her arms around her husband’s arm, her expression a mixture of terror and reluctance.
“There’s no time left. We have no other choice,” several people persuaded her.
But at that moment, Hao Ming suddenly spoke.
“Do you hear someone knocking on the door?” His hearing ability would not make a mistake.
Would zombies knock?
Apparently not?!
At least according to their experience, zombies either pounded on doors or crashed into them.
So the one outside the door was a person?
There really was a person outside the door, Li Qiu, who had run all the way up from the entrance to the emergency staircase and had nearly died from exhaustion.
She swore that she had never run faster in her life than she had this time.
She was not competing against one person. She was racing against tens of thousands of zombies.
Tens of thousands of zombies were slowly climbing the sightseeing staircases, while she had sprinted from the first-floor emergency stairwell all the way to the seventh floor.
Seven floors had consumed too much of her strength, and the feeling of hunger seemed to be eyeing her greedily once again.
Li Qiu crouched at the suite door that emitted a delicious smell and knocked lightly again and again.
No one opened the door for a long time.
Li Qiu knew there was not much time left. She did not know whether the people inside could hear her. “If you trust me, then cut off two pieces of flesh and give them to me, at least as big as a palm. After giving me the meat, immediately close the door, then smash the window and jump down.”
No one opened the door, but faint knocking sounds came from inside, responding to Li Qiu.
“Hurry.” As she spoke, Li Qiu kept an eye on the sounds coming from below the seventh floor.
There were two staircases leading up, so she needed two pieces of meat to attract the zombies’ attention.
Whether the people inside could survive depended on whether they were willing to give up two pieces of their own flesh. Or rather, it depended on whether they trusted her.
In this world, how could a stranger possibly risk their life to save others like this?
The moment the door opened, the first thing Li Qiu saw was a pair of eyes.
Brown eyes, normal human eyes.
Then she smelled blood. Two palm-sized pieces of flesh wrapped in tissues were handed out. From inside the room came the sound of someone exhaling in pain. She had no idea whose flesh had been cut.
“What about you? Come with us.” The door opened a little wider as they invited Li Qiu inside.
If throwing the meat worked, then perhaps they all could escape.
Li Qiu froze in surprise for a moment. She looked up into those eyes and replied from behind her scarf, “No need.”
She reached out and closed the door, separating two different worlds.
The two pieces of meat in her hands held a fatal attraction for Li Qiu, but she merely swallowed her saliva. She first ran to the nearest staircase and threw down one piece of meat, then quickly ran to the other staircase and tossed the second piece.
The fresh scent of blood immediately attracted the attention of every zombie, including the few Intelligent Types mixed among them.
There were too few living humans in Yanhu Lake Grand Hotel. They had not eaten anything for a long time.
After throwing the meat, Li Qiu was exhausted to the point of death. She randomly entered an open room and slammed the door shut.
With a great sense of ceremony, she drew the blackout curtains.
Sleep! Zombies needed sleep too!