Chapter Five: The Situation

Chapter Five

As night fell, Mei and Mo Chen, forced to take a detour along a side road due to the main route's collapse, found themselves without shelter and had no choice but to spend the night in the wild. Fortunately, there weren’t many zombies roaming the countryside, so finding a safe spot was not too difficult.

They built a campfire, and Mo Chen took out his portable cooking equipment to prepare dinner. Though he wasn’t much of a cook, he was still leagues ahead of a certain someone. Heaven only knew how she managed it—her food always looked exquisite, like a work of art, but tasted like poison. A single bite would leave your tongue numb for ages, and everything else tasted oddly foul afterward. She was truly a rising star in the world of culinary disasters.

After one unfortunate experience, Mo Chen never dared eat anything Mei prepared again, not even instant noodles.

He boiled a pot of noodles, mixing in eggs, ham, luncheon meat, shrimp, and vacuum-packed mushrooms and bamboo shoots. With all these fine ingredients, the humble instant noodles were elevated to a gourmet dish. Especially after chewing on dry rations all day, the two of them savored this meal as the most delicious thing on earth.

Once they were contentedly full, Mo Chen pulled out a tablet and opened up a map to check their current location. Unfortunately, the apocalypse had crippled the network, leaving the map unable to update in real time; no matter how long he searched, he couldn’t pinpoint their exact position.

“The government must have a secret network still running. Can you get us connected?” Clearly, Mo Chen had great confidence in Mei’s abilities when it came to technology.

Mei, however, wasn’t as sure of herself. To say she couldn’t do it anymore would only complicate things. Left with no choice, she harnessed her mental power, accelerating the integration of this aspect of her memory.

“I’ll give it a try,” she murmured, pressing her lips together. She took out a laptop, linked Mo Chen’s tablet to it, and began to operate. Her fingers started slowly, then flew across the keyboard, lines of code flickering on the screen. Mo Chen sat atop the car, eyes closed as if resting, but in truth he was alert to their surroundings. Had he looked at Mei, though, he would have noticed something strange.

Her large dark eyes were empty and lifeless, her small face void of expression, like a doll moving her fingers purely by instinct. In reality, Mei was indeed acting on instinct—her use of mental power to stimulate memory integration had unexpectedly activated some residual instincts of this body.

After a quarter of an hour, she succeeded in opening a hidden channel and tapped into the government’s encrypted network.

“It’s done,” Mei said, handing the tablet back to Mo Chen and rubbing her forehead with some discomfort. This was all new to her, and her mind buzzed from the effort; she would need more time to fully absorb and accept all this knowledge.

But she found herself fascinated by computers. For the first time, she began to tinker with the device before her of her own volition. The laptop was loaded with various programs, a sizable collection of cartoons, and nearly a thousand songs of different genres.

Reading pure text was out of the question—her mind was too foggy to focus. The cartoons were from a foreign country and entirely in another language she couldn’t yet understand. In the end, she put on a pair of headphones and began sampling the music.

In her original world, Mei had also been fond of music, and her own talent in the art was exceptional, making her a discerning and critical listener. She would dismiss a song for its lackluster composition or complain that the singer’s voice ruined an otherwise passable track.

She skipped through tracks with little patience until suddenly, a deep and seductive male voice caught her attention, halting her finger just as she was about to skip to the next song.

What a beautiful voice!

Mei checked the singer’s name, then searched for all his songs and listened to them one by one. His ballads whispered like a lover in your ear; his faster songs were brimming with passion. After sampling them all, she realized she liked every single one.

“What are you listening to?” Mo Chen asked as he finished updating the map. “An Zi You? You like his songs?”

“Not bad,” Mei replied, handing him the headphones and inviting him to listen for himself.

“With the volume so low, you can actually hear it?” Mo Chen was incredulous after trying the headphones. The sound was barely audible, yet she had been listening with ease.

“I hear it perfectly,” Mei shrugged. Her ears were naturally more sensitive than most, and as her body continued to integrate, her senses only sharpened.

Mo Chen gave her a speechless look but dropped the subject.

“At present, there are five major bases nationwide established by the government, and another thirteen set up by local authorities, not counting the smaller ones. The Yuehua Base, which we’re heading to, is a mid-sized base under local control,” he explained, having gathered some information while the map updated. He was cautious, so the information was limited.

“Is the base’s leader also part of the government?”

“Not exactly. According to the data, Yuehua Base is controlled by a man named Huang. Before the apocalypse, the Huang family made their fortune in grain trading, dominating supply in the southeast. When the disaster struck, they were the first to put forth a supply of grain and joined forces with the local military to establish the base. Outwardly, the Huang family manages all supplies, but in reality, control is evenly split between them and the military.”

“I see.”

“This structure is common among medium and small bases, and the government actually encourages such arrangements.”

“Of course they do—so long as the military ultimately answers to the government, having someone else feed the troops is a win for them. Since Yuehua Base is so typical, I suppose we’ll be staying there for a while,” Mei said absent-mindedly, copying all of An Zi You’s songs onto a small, elegant MP3 player.

“Bingo,” Mo Chen said, snapping his fingers with a flourish. “I’ll take the first watch, you the second.”

With their agreement settled, Mei waved him off to rest in the car and donned her headphones, releasing her mental power as she sat cross-legged atop the vehicle, bow in hand. Every blade of grass and leaf within a radius of five hundred meters was under her surveillance.

Zombies were always more active at night, their territory no longer limited to the vicinity of buildings—they began to wander further afield. Though they were miles from any village or town, by midnight Mei had already shot down three zombies.

Just past midnight, Mo Chen emerged from the car, intending to relieve Mei on watch, only to be waved away.

“Keep sleeping—I’ll catch up on rest while we’re on the road,” she insisted. Unlike in the city, they had to travel during the day now, and as he was their only driver, she’d rather avoid any accidents.

“I’ll take over at three, then,” Mo Chen conceded, seeing her unmoved atop the vehicle.

At three in the morning, the coldest hour of the night, Mo Chen climbed out again. He stoked the dwindling campfire, set a pot of water to boil, and heated up a can of coffee and a bottle of milk.

“Here, drink this and get some rest,” he said, handing the warm milk to Mei and urging her to bed.

“Thank you,” Mei replied, taking a sip. Though she wasn’t particularly cold, the warmth and richness of the milk made her eyes narrow in contentment. Mo Chen couldn’t help but smile at her cat-like cuteness, gently pushing her back into the car before settling by the fire himself with his coffee to continue the watch.

At first light, the two set off again. With the updated map, their route was much clearer than before. By evening, they had arrived at a small mountain village. Not expecting to find any survivors, they didn’t enter, but instead stopped for the night at a deserted little temple some twenty miles away.

The temple was small, but included a front hall and back rooms. The hall housed a shrine to the mountain god; the rear rooms consisted of a bedroom and a kitchen, meant for the caretaker. Clearly, no one had lived there in ages—a thick layer of dust coated everything, and the kitchen was empty of food.

They inspected the temple thoroughly. The main door was damaged; it served to block the wind but offered no real security. There were side windows, small but with sturdy wooden bars. The back bedroom and kitchen each had a broken window, obvious security hazards.

Since they only planned to stay one night, they decided to block off the door leading to the rear rooms and brace the front door with supplies from their storage, making do in the main hall.

That night, Mei took the first watch as usual. Proximity to the village meant more zombies than the previous evening; she shot nearly ten scattered zombies in total.

At one in the morning, Mo Chen took over. He didn’t have ranged weapons, but his abilities made up for it—if a zombie approached, he’d simply strike it down with lightning.

Daylight broke later than usual. Thick clouds loomed overhead, threatening rain at any moment. After some discussion, they decided not to travel that day—who knew what effect apocalyptic rain might have on people?

After nine, the rain began to fall. Mei set a bowl outside the door; it soon filled with inky black rainwater. Just looking at the color of it was enough to give them pause—they were glad they hadn’t ventured out. Their original plan had been to explore the nearby village.

By ten, the rain intensified. Just then, the sound of an engine approached rapidly in their direction.