Chapter 143
Chapter 143
In the end, they ran into Rao Lin and Song Zhu in the hallway as the two were coming back from Bao Yi’s room. After that, they went to the civilian district to look for Qin Genan, and after being coaxed along the whole way, Ning Wang contentedly put both flowers into his Backpack.
Qin Genan had mentioned before that the younger sister’s name was Xu Ansong. After searching around and failing to find Qin Genan, they found the person in charge of the civilian district and asked where Xu Ansong was.
The reply was perfunctory. He directly tossed them a roster. “The ones with X’s on the list are the people who couldn’t handle the hard labor and just ran off.”
Anyone staying in the base and receiving its protection had to provide value. Those who couldn’t go out and kill zombies would be assigned jobs by the base and made responsible for its daily operations.
When they looked for the name Xu Ansong, they found that there were actually more names marked with X’s than names without, and most of them were elderly people or children.
Ning Shuo suddenly thought of the zombies they had killed yesterday. About half of them had been smaller in stature, nothing like young or middle-aged adults.
It was just that after zombification, physical traits naturally changed a great deal compared to ordinary humans. On top of that, there had been so many of them that no one paid it much attention.
Thinking of what Ding Pan and Bao Yi had said, Ning Shuo immediately asked, “Do you remember when those X’s were marked?”
“How would I still remem-”
A dagger was held to his throat. Ning Wang said coolly, “Nan-ge is on my team. You’d better think carefully before you speak again. Otherwise, this knife is more than fast enough to cut out your tongue.”
Ning Shuo’s eyes instantly lit up. “Captain, are you speaking up for me?”
Ning Wang immediately moved a tiny bit farther away from him in disgust. “You’re thinking too much. I’m worried about Nan-ge.”
The person in charge, already showing signs of mutation, reached for the roster with trembling hands. “This batch… this batch just left last night…”
Song Zhu frowned. “A batch?”
Time was pressing, so Ning Shuo tugged at Song Zhu’s sleeve. Realizing the people here might know the inside story, Song Zhu did not keep pressing the issue. They went to find the captain in charge of resource allocation and learned that no vehicle had been assigned to Qin Genan when she left.
Although not assigning Qin Genan a vehicle made it easier for them to track her down, it also indirectly confirmed one fact: the base had its own chain of contempt.
Ability users > exceptional ordinary people > ordinary people > the old, the weak, the sick, and the disabled.
Ning Wang asked for a car. “Nan-ge wasn’t assigned a vehicle, and it hasn’t even been an hour yet. We can still find her in time.”
In the car, Ning Shuo repeated what he had heard from Ding Pan. Song Zhu said, “So you’re saying the base has been turning a lot of sick and frail living people into zombies, and infection only takes a single injection?”
Ning Shuo nodded. “And Xu Ansong left last night, which means that by then, Xu Ansong may already have been injected.”
Rao Lin pressed a hand to his forehead. “There’s another really deadly point: Nan-ge seems to have developed feelings for that NPC.”
“Nan-ge said that NPC looks a lot like the younger sister from her modern life.”
…
Qin Genan was exhausted.
Taking on so many zombies alone and ending up with only scratches was already a pretty good result.
At least she hadn’t been bitten.
In her hand was a bracelet she had swiped from that supermarket. On her first trip back to the base, she had given it to Xu Ansong.
The little girl was quiet and well-behaved. She was seven, the same age as the younger sister Qin Genan remembered, though far better behaved than the one back home.
Qin Genan had not seen that little sister in a long time. That girl was noisy and full of mischief, but whenever she climbed onto Qin Genan’s back and shouted, “Gege, fly!” she would turn clingy too.
So clingy that every time Qin Genan woke in the middle of the night from a dream, she would hold her pendant and stare blankly for a while, and the wish in her heart would deepen another layer.
He had to go back.
He had to return to the modern world and see his family.
But Qin Genan had to admit that in this Script, he had grown emotionally attached.
Xu Ansong really did look a lot like that brat Qin Hebei.
Her features, her face shape-the moment he saw her, Qin Genan had almost thought that Qin Hebei, like Zhu Xiangfeng, had entered the System at a very young age and become an NPC.
After going through so many Scripts, Qin Genan naturally knew that developing feelings for an NPC was a major taboo. So after learning that Xu Ansong had gone missing, and under the scrutinizing gaze of the person in charge, Qin Genan had only planned to come out, make a show of looking for her, and then head back.
But not far from the base, he found Xu Ansong’s bracelet. There wasn’t much dirt on it, so it was obvious it had only been dropped recently.
In other words, not long ago, Xu Ansong had been here.
Qin Genan pressed his lips together. He told himself he’d search for ten minutes and then stop, but before those ten minutes were up, he was surrounded by countless zombies.
This place was already very close to the base’s inner city. As Qin Genan killed zombies, he looked for the patrols in charge, only to find that there wasn’t a single person anywhere.
With this many zombies, there was no way the base hadn’t noticed.
Qin Genan’s heart began to pound faster. Zombies were no slower than ordinary people-if anything, they were faster. Rather than trying to make a run for it back to the base at a time like this, he was better off fighting while retreating.
It drained his stamina badly, and his progress was slow.
But it was the best way to make sure he didn’t get bitten.
Qin Genan gritted his teeth and kept falling back until he spotted Xu Ansong collapsed beneath a dead tree.
He was sure it was Xu Ansong because the last time he had seen her, yesterday, she had been wearing this exact outfit.
Qin Genan hesitated for a moment, but still hurried over, never fully letting down his guard.
He was wary, but not wary enough.
Because up to now, no intelligent zombies had ever appeared, and zombies didn’t lie on the ground as if asleep.
So when Xu Ansong’s bluish face suddenly lunged close, even though Qin Genan had been on guard, his arm still got slashed.
A scratch wouldn’t infect him. Qin Genan kicked Xu Ansong away and fought his way back toward the base while killing zombies.
His blade had gone dull, and the System Shop didn’t sell weapons, so his efficiency at killing zombies dropped sharply.
Zombies only counted as dead if their heads were damaged or cut off outright. Qin Genan knew this had been his own misjudgment-emotion had gotten the upper hand. If he died for it in the end, he’d have no one to blame but himself.
He exchanged for a voice recorder, recorded a single sentence-“The zombies have evolved intelligence!”-then threw it out. Whether his teammates would find it or not was up to fate.
And yet, just as a zombie pounced on him and opened its mouth to bite, a playing card carrying internal force pierced straight through its skull.
Ning Wang’s driving skills were insanely good. With one drift, he sent the zombies flying. Rao Lin yanked open the car door and, under the oppressive tension, reached a hand out to Qin Genan. “Nan-ge! Get in, quick!”
Even after being saved, Qin Genan still didn’t forget to casually dig a crystal core out of the softened head of the dead zombie. The instant he jumped into the car and the door slammed shut, he grabbed his teammates and wailed, “Captain! Z! Shuo! Wang! I almost thought I’d never see you guys again!”
The one he was hugging was Rao Lin, but the green blood on the crystal core in Qin Genan’s hand was just about to drip onto Ning Shuo behind him.
Ning Shuo abandoned every last bit of a solitary, profound King’s bearing and let out a heart-rending shriek: “Nan-ge! Put the crystal core in your Backpack! I just changed clothes!!”