Chapter 6
Lin Tu spent the entire day clearing the zombies along the road, scavenging supplies from the houses on both sides, and sweeping the path to Combatants clean.
By the time she got home in the evening, she had traded a slingshot for a cannon—her motorcycle was strapped in the trunk, and the car rattled up the mountain road, fully loaded.
The houses further in were sparse; a few owners seemed to have grabbed everything useful and fled, so Lin Tu only cleared five or six houses before finishing and heading back before dusk.
Even so, the abundance of supplies and the kill count displayed on the Anju app left the Butler stunned.
"Master, welcome home!" After dutifully reporting Xiao Huang's itinerary for the day, the Butler said excitedly, "You killed a full 23.5 zombies today! That brings your total to 32.5 points over the past two days!"
"How is there a 0.5?" Lin Tu asked in confusion while hauling stuff inside.
"Let me check..." The Butler answered a second later. "You killed a bird zombie. Its reward was 0.5 points."
That bird was only worth five grand?
Lin Tu, who had been hard at work all day, suddenly felt like a laborer whose sweat and blood had been siphoned off by a capitalist. "So zombies have different ranks too? You [Anju] people are really stingy."
"It's not [Anju]," the Butler said, finally getting the chance to explain. Lin Tu had been so focused on her retirement plans that she'd never asked about this aspect before. "We're in a game called [Infinite Calamity]. It's said to be a game created by a true god who rules the world. The rules inside are all generated according to His will, and the points system is the same."
"[Anju] is part of [Infinite Calamity]. Although our cabin exists outside the main flow of [Infinite Calamity] with its own independent management system, we're still in the world of [Infinite Calamity] and must follow its basic rules."
Lin Tu got it. Wasn't [Anju] just the DLC of [Infinite Calamity]?
"So technically I'm an [Infinite Calamity] player, and the points I earn are from that game too..." Compared to the Anju app, which she'd already flipped through countless times, she was far more curious about this mysterious game. "But the other players in this game don't have [Anju], and they don't use points to renovate a cabin—they use them to..." She paused, offering a very reasonable guess. "Buy things?"
The Butler hadn't expected Lin Tu to catch on so quickly, let alone deduce the existence of a game shop. He nodded hastily. "Yes, [Infinite Calamity] has a shop where players can purchase supplies. Items are sold in the form of vouchers—for example, staple food vouchers or drink vouchers. Once you finish this current disaster, you'll gain official [Infinite Calamity] player status and unlock the shop. At that point, you'll be able to buy shop items before and after games."
Lin Tu nodded, signaling that she understood.
As for what [Anju] actually was, why it existed independently of [Infinite Calamity], why other players didn't have it, or why it was bound to the shabby house her grandfather had left her—Lin Tu had absolutely no intention of digging into any of it.
Because she was just a penniless wretch. She had only 32.5 points in hand, plus the 115 points left over from buying supplies before the disaster, for a total of 147.5 points. That wasn't even enough to complete the lowest-level cabin upgrade, let alone buy anything from the game shop.
Instead of racking her brain over some truth, she'd be better off figuring out how to stay alive.
"Tsk." Lin Tu felt she needed to grind even harder.
"Wake me up at six thirty tomorrow morning," she said, hauling supplies into the house. She set the king crab leg can she'd scavenged today—along with a big bag of bread and a jar of pickled cucumbers—by the cupboard, planning to make sandwiches for lunch tomorrow.
"Are you going to..."
"The road to Combatants is cleared. I'm heading there tomorrow," Lin Tu said. "If I can get my hands on a few guns, I'll rack up points a lot faster."
The next morning, Lin Tu packed her pickled cucumber and crab leg sandwiches and drove out in her car.
What she didn't know was that, a few dozen kilometers to the southeast, a group of people had trekked on foot across the Lena River and finally reached the edge of the city. Using map navigation, they quickly located the nearest car dealership.
Once they entered the city, they realized that even though this was the outskirts, calling it a bustling metropolis was no exaggeration. There were far more zombies than they'd imagined. A single glance showed not ten, but at least twenty of them.
Fortunately, Luo Yongzhi had a crossbow. He cleared out the zombies along their intended path, and the group slipped quietly down the road.
Zombies a bit farther away caught their scent and shuffled stiffly toward them. The group barely dared to breathe. They moved with the utmost caution yet maximum speed, inching toward the car dealership.
The shop was secluded, and they reached it quickly.
As they caught their breath, nearly a hundred zombies suddenly surged out of the rest area, bathroom, and workshop inside.
A dark, seething mass of rotting, reeking faces.
"Holy shit!" Someone in the group couldn't help cursing. "Where the hell did all these zombies come from? Isn't this just a 4S shop?!"
They turned to look behind them—outside the dealership, more zombies had been drawn by the noise and were slowly closing in. Truly, a wolf at the front and a tiger at the back. No escape above, no door below.
"What rotten luck!" Luo Yongzhi had become the group's second-in-command purely on the strength of his beefy muscles and ability to haul supplies. But what good was his bulky frame now? Even he panicked.
"Don't panic." Dong Huadan spoke up in time. "Jingjing and Zisheng, find the keys at the front desk. The rest of you, with me. We just need to hold out long enough to get a car started, and we'll be out of here."
Her words steadied everyone. The two women dashed toward the front desk nearby.
The others formed a protective circle around the desk, each pulling out a weapon. Luo Yongzhi wielded a steel pipe, swinging it with fierce vigor; Han Yu raised a spiked club; Zheng Yangyang produced a steel whip; Dong Huadan drew a dagger and engaged the zombies in close combat.
They weren't professionals, but they'd each practiced a move or two and could put up some resistance.
Still, when the dark tide of zombies surged forward, the fear and pressure of fighting alone against so many crashed over them like a wave.
"Found them yet?!" Luo Yongzhi gasped for air.
"Almost! Almost!" The two at the front desk shouted back.
"What's taking so long? Do you girls not know what a car logo looks like?!" Zheng Yangyang, on the verge of breaking, demanded in frustration.
"The key cabinet is locked! We're breaking the lock!" Tian Jingjing was about to crack too, her hands trembling as she yanked at the drawer.
Beside her, Zhang Zisheng steadily slammed the hammer head against the lock. His face showed nothing, but his voice was already shaking so hard it was climbing toward a shriek: "Really, almost there! Just hold on a few more seconds! The lock's about to break!"
"We don't even have a few seconds!"
The moment Zheng Yangyang finished speaking, Han Yu—who had spent years sitting at a desk—nearly got his face clawed off by a zombie. He dropped to the ground, staring at the relentless, hideous tide of undead, certain his life was about to end.
"Help!" He squeezed his eyes shut and screamed.
"Fuck!" was the only word for it.
Luo Yongzhi hadn't expected Han Yu to be so useless. He quickly pulled a paper card from his belt and tossed it to Han Yu. "Use this!" he shouted. But the zombie was already right in front of him; everything seemed to be moving in slow, inevitable motion.
"We can't hold on!"
Dong Huadan gritted her teeth and pulled a small red flag from her backpack.
She waved the flag, and her clear voice rang through the entire shop. "I am disaster rescue worker Dong Huadan. Supplies have arrived. All zombie residents nearby, please line up in order!" With that, she tossed the red flag into a corner of the room.
The words seemed to carry magic. In an instant, the surging zombies froze.
Unable to resist, they turned their heads in a strange, synchronized motion toward the red flag. Then, with comical, shuffling steps, they walked one by one to the flag and stood there, well-behaved, as if queuing up.
Han Yu opened his eyes blankly. The zombie that had been about to bite his neck now ignored the delicious meal in front of it, turned away, and walked off, its rotting stench fading with distance.
Pulled back from the brink of death, he gasped for air.
"Thanks, Sister Huadan. You're the real MVP!" Luo Yongzhi gave a thumbs up.
"We owe you our lives. If you hadn't been here, we'd be dead." "Scared me to death! Thank you, Sister Huadan!" The others, grateful to have survived, chimed in.
At the same time, a loud crack—the lock was broken. They could finally get the hell out of this godforsaken place!
"Can we take this chance to kill all these zombies?!" Zheng Yangyang suddenly said, raring to go.
These zombies were all points! Points were crucial—in the apocalypse, everything from food and clothing to shelter and transport required points. Zheng Yangyang's steel whip, for instance, had cost thirty points. But earning points was no easy task. In a low-level world, making a hundred points in one disaster was already considered a lot.
There were a full hundred zombies here. If they split it, each of them could earn nearly twenty points!
"Sister Huadan decides." The others were clearly tempted and turned to her.
"Don't be greedy!" Dong Huadan shook her head. "There's nothing we can do. Grab the keys, hurry up, and get out of here. We have to leave right now."
With that, she took out her phone, opened the [Infinite Calamity] App, and tapped on the [Backpack] > [Special Items] section, pulling up the item description for the red flag she'd just used—
[Rescue Team 023 Equipment Box: You are a rescue team member distributing supplies after the flood. This is your equipment box.
Effect: The rescue box contains three red flags. Place a flag on the ground and shout, "I am disaster rescue worker [name]. Residents, please line up in order!" Your authority takes effect immediately. All residents attempting to cut in line will obey your command and line up in front of the flag at once.
Notes: 1. The duty of a rescue team is glorious and righteous. We guarantee that the personal safety and property of all residents lining up in front of the flags will be one hundred percent protected;
2. Each flag is single-use and becomes inactive after use;
3. Each flag can manage up to 100 people, and the more people, the shorter the control time—minimum ten minutes, maximum three hours.]
"Read the notes carefully. This item's nature means there's no way to harm them with it. I've tried before," Dong Huadan shook her head. "And there's another problem: I don't have any more red flags, and the zombie count here is nearly at the limit. That flag can only control them for ten minutes."
"Damn!" was all anyone could say.
Zheng Yangyang, full of restless energy, tried to crack her steel whip at one of the zombies, but Luo Yongzhi blocked her.
"Don't waste the time Sister Huadan bought us. Move out now."
Zhang Zisheng grabbed the keys and went to test the car. The others quickly packed up their gear, loaded it into the vehicle, and sped off without looking back.