Chapter 24: Ran Out
“Then… can I use this kind of bullet too?” Zhan Yun suddenly asked, a flash of inspiration crossing his mind.
If he could, wouldn’t that mean he’d never have to worry about running out of ammunition again?
“Of course you can.” Su Ruizhe nodded. “But I need to take a look at your gun. Otherwise I won’t be able to make the bullets exactly the same.”
Zhan Yun drew the gun from the back of his waistband and handed it to Su Ruizhe. It was a semi-automatic revolver using 9mm steel-core rounds, with a magazine capacity of ten bullets.
Su Ruizhe quickly took out a handful of bright green peas from his spatial storage, held them in his left hand for a few seconds, and in the next moment they had turned into a set of emerald-green bullets.
To be honest, not long after Su Ruizhe had discovered this new way of using his ability in his previous life, he’d been locked up in a research institute. Later, he’d only learned by accident, overhearing the researchers’ conversations, that his pea bullets caused very special damage to zombies.
Those researchers hadn’t wanted to cooperate with him through normal means—they’d wanted to completely control the secrets of his ability. That hellish period of time was something he never wanted to recall. Now, all he wanted was to live well together with Zhan Yun.
Zhan Yun removed all the bullets from his gun, carefully packed them into a small bag, and had Su Ruizhe put them into the spatial storage. He then loaded the pea bullets into the pistol himself.
Fighting zombies at close range was far too dangerous—shooting them from a distance was much safer. Back in the police academy, his shooting scores had always been perfect. Now, with an unlimited supply of ammunition, his confidence soared.
“Let’s go,” Zhan Yun said, about to head for the door.
“Wait a moment.” Su Ruizhe walked over to the zombie dog’s corpse and forcefully pulled out the cleaver that was lodged in its skull.
Zhan Yun thought he just wanted to keep the cleaver—it was a sharp weapon, after all. But the next moment, Su Ruizhe raised it and hacked down again at the dog’s head, splitting it cleanly in two. Then he used the blade to dig out an irregular, semi-transparent crystal about the size of a quail’s egg from the zombie dog’s brain.
“Little Zhe, what is that?”
“This is called a crystal core. It’s a kind of energy crystal—pretty valuable stuff.” Su Ruizhe blinked at Zhan Yun. “Once we find a safe place, I’ll explain what it’s used for.”
“Alright.” Though Zhan Yun and Song Chengshu were bursting with curiosity, they didn’t ask any further questions.
After Su Ruizhe put away the crystal core, the four of them left the supermarket.
By now, the sky was gradually growing light. They no longer needed flashlights to see their surroundings.
But the ground was soaked in blood—an utterly horrifying sight.
They hadn’t gone far when they saw a mangled corpse lying by the roadside. Its throat had been completely torn out, most of its face gnawed away, and its body ripped to pieces—an extremely miserable sight.
Yet from the remaining half of the face and the clothes, they recognized the corpse as one of the people who had been with the man in the suit earlier.
Song Chengshu turned his head away, unable to bear the sight. Zhan Yun, meanwhile, silently raised his gun. He’d just seen the corpse twitch slightly—it was probably about to turn into a zombie.
Zhan Yun pulled the trigger, hitting the corpse squarely in the head. It didn’t move again.
The pea bullets were incredibly effective. Perhaps because they were modified by an ability, they had tremendous lethality even without a real firearm, and they were also relatively quiet, making it less likely to attract other zombies.
“Was there a crystal core in his head?” Zhan Yun asked Su Ruizhe.
Su Ruizhe shook his head. “Ordinary zombies that have just transformed don’t have energy crystals yet. They only form after some time.”
Zhan Yun nodded, then frowned as he looked in the direction the bloodstains led.
“Someone over there was probably injured. Judging from the blood trail, they ran toward the back door. How about we go out the front?” Zhan Yun felt the back exit wouldn’t be very safe.
At that moment, the young man being supported by Song Chengshu slowly opened his eyes. He still had a low fever, but his complexion seemed a little better.
“Don’t… don’t go out the front…” the young man said weakly.
“Why?”
“Too many…”
“Too many what?”
“Monsters… man-eating monsters!”
Zhan Yun thought of the people who had smashed the glass at the supermarket’s front entrance and immediately understood. They must have made too much noise and attracted a swarm of zombies. If those people had all died inside, then the number of zombies would indeed have increased significantly…
“Tsk. Then we’ll go out the back.”
They had no choice but to leave through the back first and take out the vehicle once they reached a safe place.
When they reached the rear exit, they saw another corpse—a zombie whose head had been smashed to pulp. The four of them didn’t stop, continuing onward.
On the early-morning streets, there were hardly any people—only some stiff-moving zombies wandering about.
But the moment Zhan Yun and the others stepped onto the sidewalk, those zombies that had been aimlessly roaming slowly turned toward them.
“Damn…” Their sense of smell was way too sharp!
Su Ruizhe wasn’t particularly surprised. Driven by their instinctive craving for flesh, zombies had extremely sensitive senses of smell and hearing. As long as there were living people nearby, it was hard not to be detected.
“Run!” Zhan Yun hoisted the young man up from the other side and ran together with Song Chengshu, with Su Ruizhe close behind.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Relying on his excellent marksmanship, Zhan Yun fired as he ran, taking down seven or eight zombies in quick succession before they rushed into a pharmacy.
But the moment Zhan Yun entered the shop, he heard a clear chewing sound. Not far behind the counter, a disheveled woman was kneeling on the floor, head lowered, apparently eating something.
When Zhan Yun looked closer, he saw that she was holding a severed leg bone… and lying beside her was a corpse in a white lab coat, gnawed to pieces.
Zhan Yun didn’t hesitate—he shot the female zombie dead, then quickly locked the shop door, pulled down the curtains and blackout panels, and dragged cabinets over to block the entrance completely.
Those actions finally had some effect. The zombies didn’t pursue them further, instead wandering around nearby.
“Little Zhe, collect the medicines in the shop. I’ll go check if there’s another exit in the back.”
“Got it.” With outsiders present, Su Ruizhe took out a large woven sack and, using it as cover, stored all the medicines from the shelves into his spatial storage. In the apocalypse, medicine was extremely scarce—sometimes a single cold pill could sell for a sky-high price.
“Will giving him fever medicine help?” Song Chengshu helped the young man sit on a stool by the counter.
“It won’t.” Su Ruizhe shook his head, then tossed over a pack of cooling patches. “This isn’t an ordinary fever. Put these on him—at least it’ll help clear his head a bit.”
Song Chengshu nodded, tore open the cooling patch package, and stuck it directly onto the young man’s forehead.
The cool sensation made the young man’s head, which felt like it was about to explode, much more comfortable. His mind did become clearer, though his body was still weak.
“Thank you for saving me.”
“No problem—helping each other out is what we should do.” Spotting a few unopened bottles of mineral water under the counter, Song Chengshu opened one and handed it to him.
After thanking him, the young man took two big gulps before introducing himself.
“My name is Zheng Jiahe. I’m a student at S University.”
“S University? Then how did you end up here?” This was the suburbs—far from the S University campus.
“It was the weekend,” Zheng Jiahe explained. “I came out to hang out with some friends. We were playing games in an internet café when the people around us suddenly turned into monsters.” Thinking back on it made him shudder. “We ran out of the café, exhausted and starving, with no idea where to go. Then we ran into some people who were heading to a supermarket to look for food, so we followed them…”
As he spoke, his voice began to choke. If they hadn’t followed those people, maybe his friends wouldn’t have died.
“Hey, try to look on the bright side. There’s a saying: ‘A blessing in disguise.’ Who knows—you might even awaken an ability!” Song Chengshu patted him on the shoulder.
“An ability? What’s that?” Zheng Jiahe looked at him blankly.
Song Chengshu froze for a moment, then looked to Su Ruizhe for help.
Su Ruizhe smiled. “Once your fever goes down, you’ll know.”
A little later, Zhan Yun came back from checking the back of the pharmacy and signaled to Su Ruizhe. “There’s a small storage room and a restroom in the back. There’s nothing much in the storage room, but the restroom has a ventilation window—we can climb out from there.”
“I’ll go take a look.” Understanding immediately, Su Ruizhe headed straight for the “nothing much” storage room and stored away all the shelves packed full of medicine.
“How are you feeling?” Zhan Yun asked Zheng Jiahe.
“Much better. Thank you for saving me.” Zheng Jiahe could tell that this tall man was the one in charge among the three. He quickly straightened up and offered his thanks again, more formally.
“It was nothing.” Zhan Yun waved it off, then looked him up and down. “Do you feel anything different about your body?”
Zheng Jiahe shook his head in confusion.
Just as they were talking, the corpse in the white lab coat—gnawed to pieces on the floor—suddenly sat up. The contents of its torn-open abdomen spilled out with wet splats.
Song Chengshu nearly threw up at the sight. Zhan Yun was about to draw his gun when Zheng Jiahe sprang to his feet, grabbed the stool he’d been sitting on, and smashed it down hard on the zombie.
And then…
He smashed it straight into a puddle of mush.
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