When Li Qiu was full, she could jump and run around, and even felt that running a marathon would be no problem.
But when Li Qiu was hungry, it immediately felt as though a mountain had been placed on her back. She moved as slowly as a snail. Fortunately, although snails were slow, they could still crawl forward.
Li Qiu spent nearly half an hour walking a distance that had previously taken only a few minutes. Her panting sounded like a hair dryer.
When she reached the hotel’s lobby exit, she first rubbed her eyes, then opened her mouth and silently stared at the scene before her.
Compared to the hundred or so corpses in the old neighborhood before, the number of bodies here had increased by nearly dozens of times.
Everywhere Li Qiu looked, zombie corpses lay scattered across the ground.
They had all died in different ways and looked different in death. The only thing they had in common was that nearly every zombie’s brain had been stirred through by a sharp weapon.
The crystal cores inside their heads were all gone, like walnuts with the kernels removed. Those crystal cores had perhaps already become materials for some ability user’s advancement.
Li Qiu glanced around and discovered that the few intelligent zombies who had gathered with Li Dong during the day were also dead.
Their treatment specifications were better than those of the lower level zombies. They had been smashed into pieces and then piled together.
At first glance, they looked like a freak with eight arms.
Li Qiu wrapped one arm around the other and felt a wave of relief. If she and Li Dong had run just a little slower, the two of them would be piled over there too.
Then the eight-armed freak would have become a twelve-armed freak.
Twelve arms? The Wan Nu King from The Lost Tomb?
No matter when or where she was, Li Qiu could always think of strange things.
A gust of wind blew over, sending her messy wig flying and bringing her thoughts back.
Li Qiu met the gaze of several stray dogs that had come from somewhere unknown.
Some of these dogs were local breeds, while others were pet dogs like Alaskans and Teddy dogs. They were more than twice the size they had been before the apocalypse. Li Qiu looked carefully and found that all of their eyes were an abnormal grayish white color. They appeared to be zombie dogs.
Zombie dogs were not zombies. Humans and dogs were never the same species to begin with, and they would not stop eating people just because humans had become zombies.
At that moment, they stared fixedly at Li Qiu, drool dripping from their mouths.
Li Qiu knew that she absolutely could not show fear at a time like this. When facing dogs, the fiercer one appeared, the less likely they were to approach easily.
Sure enough, compared to Li Qiu, who looked capable of fighting back, the zombie dogs preferred to start with the zombie corpses in front of them.
Li Qiu immediately breathed a sigh of relief.
She had once been chased by a stray dog as a child and had jumped into the neighborhood pond to avoid being bitten, nearly drowning in the process.
As an adult, she loved small animals. Not only did she frequently visit cat cafes to pet cats, but she also bought cat food and chicken breast to feed the stray cats at school. However, she had always kept her distance from dogs. Small dogs were manageable, but if they were larger or looked fiercer, then the phrase “her legs trembled so much she could barely walk” described her perfectly. She would be rooted to the spot, too frightened to move.
Who would have thought that after the apocalypse, dogs would become even larger!
Then Li Qiu sat on a corpse to keep herself out of the zombie dogs’ line of sight. Based on the idea that higher level zombies should keep her full for longer, she picked up a piece of intelligent zombie flesh and started eating.
She had to eat quickly so she could have enough strength to pull Li Dong back up.
More importantly, once she had enough strength, these zombie dogs would no longer be her opponents.
Night had fallen. Dark clouds covered the moon, and it seemed that a heavy rain would soon arrive.
Li Qiu sat amid mountains of corpses and a sea of blood, chewing and swallowing. She ate quickly, completely absorbed in her meal, as though no one else existed.
After swallowing the corpses of four intelligent zombies, Li Qiu felt an unprecedented sense of satisfaction.
As her hunger disappeared, her immense strength returned. She merely squeezed lightly, and the shriveled thigh before her turned into a pile of minced flesh. Li Qiu quickly finished eating the meat paste, then dragged more nearby corpses over and continued eating.
She ate until raindrops landed on her face, and there were still more than two hundred corpses left uneaten on the ground.
The few zombie dogs had already moved very close to her.
Rain? The obsession with eating slowly faded under the battering of the raindrops, and Li Qiu looked up at the sky.
She could not feel pain, but that did not stop her from sensing the abnormalities in her body.
This rain was not ordinary rain. It seemed to carry some corrosive properties.
As the rainfall grew heavier, the corrosiveness became stronger as well.
The hand Li Qiu held out to catch the rain felt a burning pain.
“Holy shit.” Li Qiu sprang up from the ground like a carp and dashed into the hotel lobby. Before entering, she did not forget to carry two more corpses inside.
As she ran into the lobby, the five zombie dogs followed right behind her.
After all, under acid rain, humans and dogs were equal.
Inside the lobby, Li Qiu had one corpse tucked under each arm by the neck as she frowned and stared at the five howling zombie dogs.
The five zombie dogs gradually tightened their encirclement around Li Qiu. Their targets were the zombie corpses in her hands, as well as Li Qiu herself, the living zombie standing right before them.
Li Qiu bared her fangs and glared at the dogs with fierce eyes.
In the dim corridor, Li Dong stood there.
He saw his strange companion fighting with dogs. He did not step forward and merely watched quietly.
The battle between human and dogs ended with Li Qiu knocking them down one punch at a time.
The dogs were beaten dizzy by her immense strength. It was as though all three souls and seven spirits had been blasted out of them. Howling miserably, they all ran off together.
Li Qiu patted the dog fur stuck to her hands and grinned happily, revealing the fangs at the corners of her mouth. This was not merely a simple battle between a human and dogs, it was her victory over her psychological trauma. From this day onward, the Li Qiu who had once been frightened by a dog into jumping into a pond no longer existed.
The acid rain outside gradually intensified, changing from a light drizzle into a torrential downpour.
Although it was already morning, it was so dark outside that one could hardly see anything.
Li Qiu carefully finished eating the two corpses she had brought in before wiping away the filth on her body and preparing to find Li Dong. But when she turned around, she saw Li Dong standing not far behind her.
He stood perfectly straight and made no sound at all, strange like a statue made of human flesh.
“A zombie scaring another zombie can still scare someone to death.” Li Qiu patted her chest.
Li Dong repeated, “Scare to death.”
Li Qiu: “…”
After being speechless for a while, she suddenly remembered something. “How did you get up here? I hadn’t even gone to rescue you yet.”
Li Dong seemed to understand her question and stretched out his hand to make a climbing gesture.
“You’re that amazing? You climbed up by yourself?!” Li Qiu widened her eyes, then slapped her forehead. “I forgot. You’re already an intelligent zombie, so you definitely know all the crawler type’s tricks too.”
“It’s dangerous outside. Don’t go out. Let’s find our backpack first.” At that moment, Li Qiu walked as though the wind were beneath her feet.
When she ran to the restaurant counter and rummaged through it, her wonderful mood from being full instantly changed from sunny skies to dark clouds.
“Which damned bastard stole my backpack?!” Li Qiu cried out in anguish.
Her voice was so loud that fortunately, the heavy rain outside drowned it out. Otherwise, surviving zombies would certainly have been attracted over by her.
Very quickly, Li Qiu forgot this sorrow.
Without ability users around, Yanhu Lake Grand Hotel had become her paradise.
Li Qiu smashed open the door of the café and climbed inside. She loved coffee and somehow managed to make two cups of hand ground coffee without anyone teaching her. Then she moved a small table and two chairs beneath the eaves.
The two cups of coffee emitted steam on the table. Li Qiu wore a casual sun hat and a windbreaker as she leisurely sat in a chair. Through the small balcony here, she could take in the entire landscape of Yanhu Lake and its surrounding mountains, enjoying the beautiful scenery without ever leaving the building.
Before the apocalypse, enjoying this place would have cost at least a hundred yuan. Now it not only cost nothing, but there was also no sea of people blocking her view.
“Drink. You definitely drank plenty of American coffee while you were working before, right? Hurry and see if it tastes familiar.” Li Qiu picked up her own cup and encouraged the rigidly seated Li Dong beside her.
Li Dong did not drink. He merely stared at her with his grayish white eyes.
“If you don’t drink it this time, it’ll be hard to find another chance in the future.” As she spoke, Li Qiu took a big sip.
The coffee, which should have been rich and slightly bitter, had no taste at all.
Li Qiu had expected this long ago and did not care as she continued drinking.
She drank three sips in total.
She put down the cup and patted Li Dong’s shoulder. “Excuse me, turn around first.”
Li Dong’s body was pushed until his back faced her.
Then Li Qiu bent over and vomited wildly onto the floor.
The coffee could not be absorbed by her body at all. It had simply been sloshing around in her stomach, and if she did not throw it up, she would continue feeling uncomfortable.
Li Qiu vomited until she nearly died, then wiped her mouth and tried to save face. “I’ve thought of an idea. Next time I’ll add some minced meat to it. Coffee meat soup, what do you think?”
Li Dong said, “Good.”
The acid rain fell intermittently for an entire day.
Whenever there was a pause in the rain, Li Qiu directed Li Dong to go outside with her and move corpses.
The zombie corpses were arranged neatly in a row against the wall by Li Qiu.
To her surprise, she discovered that the corpses of F-rank shambling zombies had almost all been corroded beyond recognition. However, the corpses of E-rank crawler types had suffered only minor burns.
“Could it be that the higher a zombie’s rank, the stronger its resistance to corrosion?” Li Qiu thought.
She felt a little regretful. She had eaten those intelligent zombie corpses too early! Otherwise, she could have let them be exposed to the acid rain and conducted an experiment. As for now, she certainly could not take herself or the still-living Li Dong out into the rain for a test.
“Li Dong, how come you level up so quickly while I don’t?” Li Qiu humbly asked for advice.
In just a few short days, Li Dong had gone from F-rank to D-rank. As for her, she had also worked hard, but there had been no signs of leveling up at all. It would be wonderful if she could become an even stronger C-rank zombie and lash out with a tongue three or four meters long to attack from a great distance. Then she would not have to fear ability users at all!
Li Dong did not answer her question and merely repeated a few words from what she had said. “Level up quickly.”
“I think you might be a parrot spirit in disguise.” Li Qiu patted his shoulder, then turned around and went to loot supplies in several other buildings.
Early the next morning, the skies finally cleared.
Bringing along a pile of supplies and Li Dong, Li Qiu climbed into the sightseeing vehicle the hotel used to transport guests. After crashing into several trees, she finally mastered how to drive it and wobbled her way toward the road leading to the Yanhu Lake parking lot.
She already had the map and had enough supplies. All she needed now was to find a vehicle with fuel and continue heading south!
At this moment, in the survivor camp, a meeting had just ended.
By majority vote, everyone had decided to break camp and set off today.
That way, they could avoid being caught off guard by even more extreme weather in the future.
As for searching for Su Zhihai in the Yanhu Lake Scenic Area, that matter could only end here.
At this moment, everyone was busy packing. Zhou Jinshi, who had already finished, stood on the high ground of the camp and looked into the distance.
Not being able to fight the mysterious zombie beneath Yanhu Lake Grand Hotel remained one of his regrets.
However, he had now successfully upgraded his ability with the crystal cores he had brought back, so the regret no longer felt quite so regrettable.
Right now, the most important thing was the route heading south.