After drawing the curtains, Li Qiu took a running start on the soft wool carpet, intending to leap onto the 2.3 meter long bed.
That jump had nearly cost her life. She had rushed in earlier without looking carefully, and there were actually two zombie corpses covered by the blanket.
An iron skewer that had been used for barbecue was stuck in each of the zombies’ heads.
Just now, Li Qiu had almost jumped right onto those two skewers.
She had to use a bit of strength to pull the skewers out of the two corpse brothers’ brains. Quite a bit of blackened cerebrospinal fluid came out with them, and Li Qiu tossed the skewers under the bed in disgust.
These two zombie corpses still looked very fresh. They had died at most around two days ago, and were most likely the handiwork of those human survivors.
Li Qiu thought to herself, finding food when I’m both tired and hungry, could this be the reward for doing a good deed?
Thinking of this, she lost all desire to sleep again. Since she had already decided to be a good person to the end, she might as well check whether those survivors had managed to escape.
So Li Qiu pulled the blackout curtains open again and stood in front of the enormous floor to ceiling window.
The room she had entered was on the same side as the human survivors’ room. She could see their movements from the window on her side.
As early as when Li Qiu had thrown the meat onto the escalator, the survivors had already used safety hammers to smash the four corners of their floor to ceiling window at the same time. The window shattered accordingly, and a huge opening was easily smashed through, large enough for everyone to pass.
The tremendous noise from smashing the window had indeed attracted some of the zombies that were farther away from the meat. But they were all jammed in place by the other zombies that had already gone mad, and for the time being they had no way to reach the room where the sound had come from.
After all the fabric in the suite had been tied together, it still hung around two floors above the ground, but that was already enough.
The lobby manager took the lead, and then the mother and daughter climbed down.
Next came the fat male student who had cut off his flesh earlier, and the middle aged couple. The fat student and the middle aged man had each cut a piece of flesh from their thighs. Their legs hurt unbearably as they slid down, but neither of them was slow. Everyone clearly understood that this opportunity to escape might only come once.
In addition, the janitor and the fat student’s three roommates brought up the rear.
Sliding down from such a height while holding onto a not particularly sturdy cloth rope, not a single person showed any fear.
Earlier, nearly all the zombies on the ground had been attracted into the hotel building.
Only a few zombies with missing arms or legs, incapable of crawling, were scattered across the lawn. After these mutilated zombies discovered them, they let out roars, but they could no longer pose even the slightest threat.
All ten people landed safely, not one missing.
They only needed to run out of the hotel entrance and follow the route Li Qiu had taken to reach a safe place.
Li Qiu stood by the floor to ceiling window and looked down from above, ripples of happiness passing through her heart.
She had almost exhausted all her strength to help these people, partly because they had once been her compatriots, and partly because she held onto a small hope.
If ghosts and gods truly existed in this world, then saving one life being better than building a seven story pagoda should count for something.
She had saved ten people, so she ought to have accumulated at least a little virtue.
She hoped the virtue she had accumulated would bless her with an early return home, and protect her parents and best friend, letting them wait safely for her in her hometown.
After coming back to her senses, Li Qiu finally relaxed. She was just about to draw the curtains shut again when she realized that the human survivors kept looking in her direction.
She recognized one of them. He was the young man who had spoken to her through the crack in the door. She had heard the others inside call him Hao Ming. He wore a green parka, black pants, and carried a bloodstained waist pack. It was a very youthful and lively outfit.
When Hao Ming saw that Li Qiu had finally noticed him, he immediately jumped up and waved his arm.
Oh my, human compatriots are so polite! They’re even thanking me. Li Qiu felt delighted inside.
She waved back as well.
Because they were too far apart, she neither saw nor heard Hao Ming’s lip movements.
He was saying, “Wait for us to bring people to rescue you!”
The ten of them would probably all have died here, but now Li Qiu had exchanged her life for theirs.
Anyone with even the slightest sense of gratitude would not simply leave Li Qiu trapped alone in a certain death situation after escaping themselves.
Zombies could never replace humans. Zombies did not possess so many complicated emotions and feelings like humans did.
Afterward, the group followed the lobby manager and the janitor, who were familiar with the route, and quickly left the area around Yanhu Lake Grand Hotel.
They ran toward a certain place within the Yanhu Lake Scenic Area. The road ahead was completely unobstructed, and there was no sign of zombies anywhere.
The sun had already risen completely.
The sunlight shone upon everyone, warm and gentle, dispelling the chill from their bodies.
Very soon, the group arrived at the shore of Yanhu Lake. Several small boats for tourists to enjoy the lake were still moored there. To create a rustic atmosphere, these boats were all manually rowed wooden boats and did not even have motors installed.
After being left here for more than a month, the boats had accumulated layers of dust and fallen leaves, along with some trash that had drifted in from who knew where.
Two boats were enough for ten people. The remaining boats could be left for other survivors who came here.
But obviously, some people were unwilling to board right now.
“San Ge, you and Uncle Yu should get some rest and leave first on the boat. The three of us still need to go back and rescue our benefactor.” As he spoke, Hao Ming squatted in front of the fat student and carefully checked the tourniquet on his leg.
The fat student, whom they called San Ge, looked up at his roommates and nodded.
“You’re really going back?” the janitor asked, sitting heavily in the boat and panting as he frowned at the college students.
He truly could not understand young people these days. They had finally escaped, yet they still wanted to go back.
“We can use our benefactor’s method too. We’ll catch some fish from Yanhu Lake and smear our blood on them to lure some of the zombies away. Then we’ll find some loudspeakers, record sounds, and play them on a loop to attract another group. That way, our benefactor can take the opportunity to escape. If we manage to save her, we’ll bring her onto the boat and come find you.”
Everyone felt that Hao Ming’s plan was far too idealistic and was just about to argue with him when they suddenly noticed that his expression had changed.
Hao Ming had heard a rustling sound coming from the distant reeds.
There were still zombies?
All ten people immediately entered a state of maximum alert. Whether injured or not, everyone stood up and grabbed whatever weapons they had at hand, preparing for a bloody battle.
But what came was human voices.
“Captain Zhou, there are people ahead.”
At the same time, there was also the extremely distinct sound of a bullet being chambered.
The ten of them looked at one another, their expressions becoming even more solemn than before, not knowing whether the newcomers were enemies or friends.
In the apocalypse, zombies and humans were equally terrifying. Humans were even more sinister and vicious, making them impossible to guard against.
The reason these ten people had survived until now was inseparable from the trust they had in one another. If even one person had harbored malicious intentions, the ten of them would never have had the chance to survive and escape.
The two groups quickly came face to face.
There were ten people on Hao Ming’s side. There were even more on Zhou Jinshi’s side, a full twelve people. He had brought away nearly half of the ability users in the camp, leaving the rest behind to protect the camp and its ordinary residents.
Zhou Jinshi spoke first and also put away the divine art in his hand.
“You don’t need to be afraid. We’re here looking for someone.”
“We have a companion who may have run into Yanhu Lake Grand Hotel. He’s a boy around seventeen or eighteen years old named Su Zhihai. Have you seen him?”
Zhou Jinshi was tall and imposing, with an upright and dependable appearance. The moment he spoke, he gave people a sense of reassurance, gradually causing Hao Ming and the others to lower their guard.
“No, we haven’t seen him.” After looking at everyone for confirmation, Hao Ming answered with certainty.
With his hearing ability, he knew better than anyone how many living people were inside the hotel. During these past few days, aside from the few of them, he had only detected their benefactor. But their benefactor was small and slender, and her voice clearly belonged to a girl, so she was obviously not the person these people were looking for.
Zhou Jinshi looked toward Shen Yucheng, who was following behind him not far away. His gaze was not cold and could even be described as calm.
Yet it was precisely this calmness that made Shen Yucheng feel as though he were walking on thin ice, giving him a suffocating sense of being completely seen through.
Shen Yucheng had absolutely no idea which direction Su Zhihai had run.
He even wished that Su Zhihai had run straight into the zombie horde and died. That way, no one would ever learn the truth about those matters.
From the very beginning, his claim that Su Zhihai had entered Yanhu Lake Grand Hotel had been a fabrication, intended solely to make Zhou Jinshi give up searching for Su Zhihai’s whereabouts.
Who could have imagined that Zhou Jinshi was such a fearless madman?
Had he known this earlier, he might as well have simply said that everyone else had died and that he alone had made it back alive.
But if he had said that, the suspicion directed at him would have been even greater.
Now that he had stubbornly followed them here, he could neither advance nor retreat and could only continue insisting on his original story.
“Captain Zhou, everything I said is true. Zhihai really did run toward Yanhu Lake Grand Hotel.”
…
Li Qiu felt that her life right now was somewhat blissful.
The blackout curtains were drawn in the room, and it was pitch black without a trace of light. She lay calmly between two zombie corpses, treating both equally, pulling over the hand on her left and taking a bite, then pulling over the hand on her right and taking another bite. As she chewed, the meat traveled from her throat to her stomach. Her hunger gradually drifted away, and Li Qiu’s strength also began slowly recovering.
But this peaceful and happy life was once again shattered.
With a piece of meat still in her mouth, Li Qiu sat up on the bed. She tidied her hair, put on her hat, and looked expressionlessly at the several zombies that had barged through the door. Finally, she chose to question the one leading them.
“Li Dong, are you trying to start a rebellion?”
Her voice was very soft, not enough for the crowded zombies to hear it incorrectly and go berserk.
Li Dong’s gaze locked onto her. While baring his teeth and driving the other zombies back, he walked toward Li Qiu.
He stopped in front of Li Qiu’s bed and spread open his bluish purple palm.
Resting in his palm was half a piece of bloodstained meat.
Li Qiu recognized this piece of meat immediately. It was one of the pieces she had thrown onto the escalator, although only half of it remained now. She froze and raised her head to look at Li Dong. Only then did she notice that many wounds had appeared on his wrinkled face. Some were bite marks, and some were scratches. There was no need to think to know how much effort Li Dong had expended to keep this half piece of meat.
Although D Rank Intelligent Species were high ranked, they were not omnipotent in the face of tens of thousands of crazed zombies.
“You…” Li Qiu felt somewhat bewildered. She did not quite understand why Li Dong was doing this.
A D Rank Intelligent Species possessed the intelligence of a human child around five or six years old. Could it be that Li Dong thought of her as his mother?
When Li Dong saw Li Qiu staring blankly, he pushed the meat in his hand farther forward. All Li Qiu had to do was lower her head to eat this piece of ability user’s meat. Eating a piece like this was worth gnawing on zombie corpses for half a day.
Nourishing! Extremely nourishing!
Even though she had not figured out Li Dong’s motives, Li Qiu still opened her mouth and swallowed the meat.
She barely chewed before swallowing it down.
After all, the surrounding zombies were like hungry wolves, eyeing it greedily from nearby.
Only after the smell of the meat disappeared did they wander away in confusion, as though they had lost their target.
When Li Dong saw that Li Qiu had finished the piece of meat, he suddenly crouched down and held her hand. Then he extended his black tongue and licked clean the traces of blood remaining on Li Qiu’s palm.
During this process, the fine barbs that had grown on his tongue lightly scraped against Li Qiu’s palm.
The barbs on the tip of his tongue quickly scraped away a small piece of skin from Li Qiu’s hand, and Li Dong swallowed it down without changing his expression.
Only he himself knew that this flavor fascinated him more than all living humans. It reminded him of hiding inside the garbage bin several days ago. At that time, his teeth had also sunk into Li Qiu’s palm and scraped off a little skin.
Although Li Qiu thought Li Dong looked somewhat perverted, when she remembered that he was a zombie, licking blood seemed to be an instinct he had been born with, so she did not shake him off.
However, after he finished licking, she hurriedly wiped her hand against the bedsheet. This guy’s saliva was not ordinary levels of excessive.
“Li Dong, don’t do this again next time. So many zombies ganged up on you, and it would be very hard for me to avenge you.”
Li Qiu climbed off the bed with a gloomy face. As she spoke, she kicked away the few zombies that had chased Li Dong the most fiercely.
These zombies were extremely heavy, but they were still not as heavy as the iron frame sofa in the first floor lobby. Almost every one of them was accurately kicked out the door by Li Qiu, as lightly as footballs.
Most importantly, the attacks of these F Rank Walking Corpses and E Rank Crawling Species produced absolutely no reaction from Li Qiu.
They simply allowed Li Qiu to push and beat them.
Only the other four zombies that, like Li Dong, belonged to the Intelligent Species remained standing in the corridor. Not a single one dared approach Li Qiu. Their faces displayed an indescribable expression that could only be called terror and fear.
Li Qiu knew that she was merely an Intelligent Species with great strength after eating her fill. It was fine to teach some F Rank and E Rank subordinates a lesson, but she pretended not to see the few that were also D Rank. If she rushed over only to get pinned down and beaten, it would be too embarrassing.
Running away was still the best strategy.
After packing the remaining meat from the bed and the two iron skewers into her backpack, she grabbed Li Dong’s arm.
“Let’s go. Since we can’t sleep anyway, we might as well go sightseeing. Before the apocalypse, you worked every day and definitely didn’t have time to travel, right?”
Li Dong followed behind her with wide eyes, thinking that his strange companion seemed even stranger after eating food.
As he went downstairs, he looked back and discovered that those Intelligent Species were looking at him with pitiful and sympathetic expressions.
Li Dong bared his teeth, rolled up the whites of his eyes, and revealed a sinister gaze.
“Hurry up.” Li Qiu tugged at Li Dong. Because she used too much strength, she almost pulled him into a stumble.