At this point, even Yu Zhitian believed Zhang Cui’s speculation was correct.

These “people” who had suddenly appeared above the base were all noticeably taller than the Velvet Star natives.

Their language sounded completely different from that of any country on Velvet Star.

Even their firearms were of a structure Yu Zhitian had never seen before.

So either, as Zhang Cui said, everyone in the Yunyang Base had somehow ended up in another world…

Or these “people” had come into their world instead.

It wasn’t just Yu Zhitian—everyone in Yunyang Base could clearly see how different the people of the Blue Sea were.

They had once lived in a medium-sized survivor base, and they knew very well that official forces had already been completely wiped out at the earliest stage. The people in front of them could not possibly be military personnel from Velvet Star.

So what now?

How were they supposed to communicate? How were they supposed to interact? Could they even understand each other just by gestures?

At this moment, all the survivors—including Yu Zhitian—assumed they were completely unaware of each other’s backgrounds and intentions.

Just as Zeng Tian hesitated over how to express their harmless intent and how to initiate communication—

The leading officer slowly spoke in somewhat unskilled, halting Velvet Star language:

“Is Dr. Yu Zhitian here?”

The survivors froze.

If, a moment ago, everyone had been desperately trying to figure out the situation and what to do next—

Then now, the entire Yunyang Base went completely blank, as if someone had wiped their minds clean.

Dr. Yu?

How did these people know about Dr. Yu? And why were they specifically asking if she was here??

Almost instinctively, everyone’s gaze turned toward Yu Zhitian.

But just as quickly, most of them looked away again.

Over the past half-year, Yu Zhitian had become the hope of the entire base. She was no longer just a person—she had become something akin to a symbol of faith for the survivors.

Not knowing whether the other side was friend or foe, they instinctively did not want to expose her.

But for the Blue Sea people, whose vision was extremely sharp, even a glance that lasted less than a second was enough.

The leading officer accurately turned his gaze toward Yu Zhitian, who had been slowly shielded behind the base’s leadership group.

“Dr. Yu Zhitian, hello. Please come with us.”

The officer scanned the remaining survivors.

“They can come as well, if you wish.”

Cheng Qisheng, who had been watching from the sidelines, silently gave it a thumbs up.

Having experience rescuing experts from this world really made a difference.

Without Yu Zhitian even needing to make a request, the Blue Sea side already knew what to say to move her.

Yu Zhitian handed the child in her arms back to its mother, gently pushed aside Zheng Tian, who was standing in front of her, and looked directly at the officer above her.

“Alright.”

She did not ask who they were, nor where they were taking them, nor what they needed from her.

At the very least, it couldn’t be worse than the situation they were already in, right?

—

Twenty minutes later, Yu Zhitian boarded a tracked troop transport vehicle.

The people from Yunyang Base also got on various vehicles scattered around.

Only after coming out did they realize there were far more people outside than they had imagined—so many that it almost felt like there were more humans than cattle and sheep.

Lots of people, and lots of vehicles.

The vehicle Yu Zhitian was in was accompanied front and back by many similar military vehicles capable of traversing all kinds of terrain, forming an escort.

And once she got on board, a man in white—a “doctor”—came with several nurses and performed a basic full-body examination on her.

Some of the equipment was slightly different from Velvet Star’s, but the principles were the same, and the usage was more or less familiar.

After the examination was done, less than three minutes later, someone brought her a bowl of warm lightly salted water, followed by thin rice porridge.

The young woman delivering the porridge explained:

“You’re suffering from malnutrition caused by long-term starvation. Your stomach has already atrophied, so you can only eat very easily digestible food for now.”

Yu Zhitian noticed that her tone wasn’t stiff at all, and even carried a slight accent from Qianli City on Velvet Star. She took a sip of the porridge and then asked casually:

“You’re from Qianli City, aren’t you?”

“Ah, you can tell, Doctor? Yes, my hometown is Qianli City. Later my whole family moved to Miang’an City. My name is Wang Moning.”

Wang Moning grinned.

She really couldn’t help being happy.

Because the exploration team she was with was relatively well-off, they had rented a vehicle to come here. Along the way, aside from a slightly sore butt from the bumps, the hunting itself had been exciting and interesting.

And with so many people around, there was a strong sense of safety—almost like she could relax completely and just enjoy herself.

Right after she had just experienced what hunting felt like, she heard that the military was looking for local residents who could act as translators.

The key point was that the translator only needed to ride back to the main base—and would be paid 700 points as compensation.

This was basically a windfall from the heavens!

Wang Moning immediately raised her hand to apply. After competing with two other Velvet Star people, she successfully got the job thanks to her speaking skills, which she had honed through daily chatting and bragging with her teammates.

She had already captured a sheep, earned points, and the military was also very easy to work with—they even helped her exploration team bring the hunted prey back by tying it to the roof of the vehicle.

Song Xi and her teammates practically saw her off with cheers.

As the weakest combat member in the team, finally being able to contribute made Wang Moning so happy she felt like she was flying.

She had been paid, so she did her job.

She used the summary skills she had developed during exams to explain the current situation to Yu Zhitian.

In simple terms, it was this: the Dark Star Blue Sea civilization, the great Creator God, other Safe Cities, the eventual destruction of the world, and Safe Cities continuing to move on.

But why the deity was looking for Yu Zhitian—Wang Moning didn’t know, so she didn’t say.

Yu Zhitian also didn’t ask. After absorbing such a huge amount of information, she focused on only one thing:

“Will Velvet Star definitely be destroyed?”

Hearing this, Wang Moning also showed a confused expression.

“I don’t know, but Blue Sea has a lot of outsiders who came from another Safe City—people from other worlds. They know a lot of things.”

“Someone told me that Safe Cities are built upon worlds that are already destroyed. So they can only anchor the coordinates of worlds that are about to be destroyed or are already in the process of destruction, and keep bringing residents along as they flee continuously.”

“It’s like an escape pod—you can only follow the escape route, and you don’t know where the final destination will be.”

Yu Zhitian exhaled softly.

“I see.”

Cheng Qisheng, sipping through a straw, observed her through Wang Moning’s perspective.

“This Dr. Yu’s reaction earlier—it looked like she suspected the zombie virus was released by Blue Sea.”

Although she had received Wang Moning’s explanation, she was still clearly suspicious. It was just that, having noticed Wang Moning’s admiration for Blue Sea and her obvious sense of belonging, Dr. Yu had carefully concealed her thoughts.

The younger Wang Moning didn’t notice, but Cheng Qisheng’s observational skills had been honed over hundreds of billions of years in Dark Star. No matter how well Yu Zhitian hid it, she could still catch the slightest trace.

As for Aether, it couldn’t see anything at all.

Its detection range was limited to a certain area around the Safe City, but the jellyfish-like AI had already gotten used to the fact that its city lord always seemed able to see far beyond that.

In theory, someone with powerful enough mental strength could extend their perception range infinitely. If strong enough, observing an entire planet—or even other planets—was not impossible.

Aether convinced itself and, using its reasoning and imagination, joined in the conversation with the city lord:

“Situations where local civilizations believe that Safe Cities are the source of disaster are quite common. The more technologically underdeveloped the civilization, the more likely they are to form such assumptions.”

“But after the Safe City leaves, they usually realize they were wrong. So, City Lord, you don’t need to care about the opinions of local civilizations.”

Cheng Qisheng tapped her fingers and pulled the jellyfish that was currently sitting on her notebook into her hand.

“I’m not worried about what the Velvet Star people think.”

“I’m worried about why a virology expert on a world mission meant to be rescued would believe that the zombie virus was deployed by aliens.”

“Did she discover something while researching the virus?”

Ordinary people guessing that a virus was released by aliens might just be a casual remark.

But a virologist was different.

The more professional someone is, the less likely they are to make random guesses. Yu Zhitian’s words revealed that she had already done some research into the zombie virus—and that she suspected it was an ‘external’ substance.

No wonder the world mission was to rescue Dr. Yu Zhitian.

She might actually be able to develop a vaccine for the zombie virus.

For the next two days, Cheng Qisheng kept a close watch on the convoy escorting Yu Zhitian and also sent a message to Alice, asking her to send more people as backup.

Although rationally she knew that the Blue Sea military had already cleared out the zombie hordes along the way, and that the western region was sparsely populated with few zombies, making trouble unlikely—

The psychological shadow left by the previous seven civilizations was simply too deep.

One sip of water, and a civilization collapses.

One trip to the bathroom, and a civilization collapses.

Wake up after a sleep, and a civilization collapses.

Until she personally saw the convoy safely enter the Blue Sea Safe City, Cheng Qisheng would not be able to truly relax.

The first ninety-nine steps were already done—there was no way she was going to fail at the very last step.

Fortunately, the journey was smooth and uneventful. Nothing like the kind of melodramatic incidents that might have happened occurred. When the reinforcement troops arrived in missile-launch vehicles, Cheng Qisheng knew everything was stable.

<< _ >>

The post Safe City Ch.24.1 first appeared on A Wandering Potato.

Richard, the man with the lip piercing, had always been Jonathan’s right-hand man and staunchest supporter.

For certain reasons, he was desperately short of money, while Jonathan happened to be extremely wealthy and largely devoid of moral scruples. He was more than willing to adopt the endless stream of underhanded schemes Richard came up with in pursuit of attention and online traffic. The two hit it off immediately, birds of a feather flocking together—the very embodiment of partners in crime.

Even if the entire world were to abandon Jonathan, as long as he still had money, Richard would remain a loyal dog at his feet.

As a result, at a time when everyone had turned against him, the person Jonathan was most willing to trust was naturally Richard.

Unfortunately for him, Richard told a story that differed little from the one he had given the police. What’s more, Richard himself seemed to believe it, convinced that Everly really was an actress Jonathan had hired to pull a reverse prank on everyone.

“No! How could that be? Maybe I could understand other people misunderstanding, but you too? We planned this entire prank together! Our script never involved turning the prank back on our own team—you know that perfectly well!” Jonathan protested indignantly after hearing the story.

“Drop the act. We’ve already seen the chat logs between you and that woman. We’re not falling for this!” Mike, who had played the pregnant ghost, crossed his arms and interjected angrily.

The accident during the performance had left him both physically and mentally shaken. Although no knife had actually pierced his chest, the skin in that area still ached faintly even now. The lingering pain only worsened Mike’s temper, and he couldn’t swallow the humiliation of having been made a fool of. Since he had already decided to quit the team, he no longer cared whether speaking bluntly would offend Jonathan.

Based on Jonathan’s usual personality, everyone expected him to immediately fire back and start a shouting match. Instead, after hearing those words, Jonathan froze for a moment. Then he lowered his head and frantically began scrolling through his phone.

To be fair, his performance looked remarkably convincing. If they hadn’t already checked the chat records between him and Everly, they might almost have believed him.

Mike snorted and kept his arms folded across his chest, standing there and watching Jonathan’s performance.

Jonathan had now heard the phrase “chat records” more than once. He hadn’t paid much attention to it before, but thinking about it now, even the police needed evidence when handling a case. There was no way they would simply believe whatever that crazy woman said.

Since everyone kept bringing up these so-called chat logs, then he’d pull them up and make everyone shut up.

“What app were these messages on?”

“WhatsApp.”

Jonathan immediately opened WhatsApp. He was just about to shove the phone in front of everyone and prove his innocence when he noticed that the very first conversation on the screen was with an unfamiliar contact named “Everly.”

What the hell was this? He didn’t remember ever adding her as a contact…

Could it be that the crazy woman had secretly tampered with his phone while he was unconscious?

Very possible!

If that was the case, then all he had to do was look through the chat history. The timestamp of their very first conversation would reveal when they had added each other.

His fingers flew across the screen. Without even reading the messages between himself and “Everly,” he scrolled all the way to the top and found their earliest exchange.

The timestamp above it showed that the conversation had taken place at 5:24 PM on the day of the hospital visit—a very peculiar time. It was after his first encounter with Everly at the reception desk, yet before the prank livestream that evening.

But how was that possible?

At that time, he had been busy checking and double-checking every detail related to the livestream. He certainly didn’t remember losing his phone, and the idea that he had secretly added the girl and chatted with her was complete nonsense.

The veins on Jonathan’s forehead throbbed. He scrolled through the conversation, skimming the messages at a glance.

At first, their exchanges were stiff and formal, nothing more than the polite small talk of two strangers.

Then Jonathan got straight to the point. He introduced himself and explained why he had added Everly as a contact in the first place.

[WOW! I can’t believe how interesting this plan is!]

[Can I really join your short film production? Really, really, really?!]

Everly showed intense interest in the reverse-prank video Jonathan had mentioned. Her tone immediately became much more enthusiastic.

[Yes! Absolutely!]

[From the moment we happened to meet in the lobby, I knew you were the leading lady my film needed! It was that feeling that it simply had to be you. You know what I mean? That fateful encounter, that thrill of being struck by inspiration—without a doubt, you are my muse!]

[If you accept my proposal, then let’s go over the script together…]

Jonathan read through the entire conversation from beginning to end. The more he read, the more horrified he became, and the more he questioned reality itself.

Whether it was the slightly slick, flirtatious tone woven throughout the messages, the theatrical and overblown exclamations that sounded like lines from a stage play, or the phrase “YWIMS?” that appeared over and over again—a verbal tic Jonathan had recently picked up, short for “Y’know what I’m sayin’?”—everything matched his texting style perfectly.

By the time he finished reading the chat log, it wasn’t just everyone else who was almost convinced.

Even Jonathan himself was beginning to believe it.

Honestly, it was too convincing.

It was so realistic that he almost started wondering whether he had lost his memory…

Wait.

Hadn’t he?

The more he thought about it, the stranger it felt. For a brief moment, Jonathan even suspected that he might have somehow developed a split personality—one being the normal self everyone knew, and the other an evil alter ego that cared about nothing except its own amusement…

No. Stop.

That was ridiculous.

No matter what, this damned chat log had to be fake.

He had no idea how it had been forged, but he was absolutely certain of one thing: he had never discussed any collaboration with Everly.

After all, hadn’t everyone seen how terrified he was when that girl suddenly went berserk?

His pants were still wet.

Naturally, Jonathan would never tell anyone something that humiliating. So even after reading through the chat logs and being confronted with what appeared to be irrefutable evidence, he kept a straight face and stubbornly insisted on his innocence, demonstrating the phrase “lacking reason but not lacking confidence” to perfection.

“Believe it or not, that crazy woman and I have absolutely nothing to do with each other…”

As he repeated the same argument yet again, the resentment in everyone’s eyes may have provoked his rebellious streak. Suddenly changing targets, he turned his attention to Edron and Mohawk Head and said in a mocking tone:

“Speaking of traitors, there’s something I’ve been wondering about. Perhaps the two of you could explain it to me?”

The others were one thing. During their chase-and-escape ordeal with the crazy woman, they had all been knocked unconscious by her knife-hand strikes. Being sprawled in pools of blood and playing dead bodies had been entirely against their will.

But those two were different.

When the crazy woman had surrounded the surveillance room, they had actually staggered to their feet and shuffled around like zombies, repeatedly slamming their foreheads against the door. The sight had scared Jonathan and Richard half to death inside.

The crazy woman didn’t have any supernatural ability to control people. That meant all of their bizarre behavior had been entirely voluntary.

Thinking back on it now, if those two teammates hadn’t suddenly switched sides and intensified the fear and panic he and Richard were feeling, then during the final confrontation they might not have lost so miserably. They might even have managed some meaningful resistance instead of being wiped out by that woman in one sweep.

And his pants wouldn’t have…

Ahem.

Faced with Jonathan’s accusation, Edron and Mohawk Head showed not the slightest hint of guilt.

“Because that woman told us you hired her specifically to scare your own team members,” they replied. “She also said that if we acted well, you’d give each of us a thousand bucks. If we didn’t perform well, we wouldn’t get paid.”

“That’s why we put our hearts into it,” Edron added. “I almost knocked the silicone fake face I was wearing clean off my head from all that head-butting.”

The silicone fake face he was referring to was one of the scare props that Reiner’s team on the eighteenth floor had prepared in advance. It looked like a grotesque face with a layer of skin peeled away and the eyeballs gouged out. Add a little fake blood, and at first glance it was realistic enough to make anyone jump.

Just thinking about that face made Jonathan furious.

As one of the organizers of the livestream, he and Richard had personally handled all the props. They should have recognized it as fake immediately. After all, that mask hadn’t been cheap, and it was distinctive enough to leave a strong impression.

Yet when Edron had worn it and lain on the floor covered in blood, pretending to be a corpse, neither of them had noticed anything suspicious. Instead, they had been frightened out of their wits, squawking like startled turkeys.

The mere thought of it was mortifying.

To make matters worse, Edron seemed completely incapable of reading the room and continued pouring fuel on the fire.

“So, Boss, what do you think? Weren’t our performances super convincing? Richard said even he got scared badly. About that thousand dollars you promised us…”

Jonathan exploded.

“She said there’d be money and you just believed her?!”

“Why wouldn’t we?” came the reply. “We weren’t actually dead. The thing she used to ‘kill’ people was just a trick knife that pumped out fake blood. We saw her pull it out of her pocket with our own eyes. If she wasn’t already prepared to act in your production, who would carry something like that around?”

“And she’s incredibly skilled, too—like an action movie star! Around here, running into a pretty girl isn’t unusual. But running into a pretty girl who’s agile and ridiculously good at fighting? The odds are way too low. So we immediately figured she had to be an actress you’d hired!”

The moment money entered the discussion, the two men completely shed their earlier timidity. They took turns speaking, each argument sounding more reasonable than the last.

Not only had they convinced themselves, but the people around them were nodding along in agreement.

Wait, what?

How is this making her look even more like an actress Jonathan hired?

Jonathan felt despair creeping in.

Yet, there were indeed many things in this incident that couldn’t be easily explained away—for example, the woman suddenly producing a high-powered flashlight and a folding prop knife, her bizarre and almost supernatural fighting skills, the extra chat logs that had appeared on his phone, and the lights and surveillance cameras that had all started malfunctioning at the same time…

No—stop.

The more he thought about it, the more terrifying it became.

Who exactly was that woman?

The anger and courage inside him slowly deflated over time, like air leaking out of a balloon.

Forget it, he told himself. There was no point continuing to argue. All it would do was make him even more frustrated. He might as well just let it go—at least that way he wouldn’t look completely stupid in front of the rest of the team.

Besides, the footage from tonight’s surveillance could still be turned into good content…

With that thought, Jonathan sighed. Like a powerless husband, he covered his face with both hands and slumped back into the chair.

“Richard, later sort out the footage from the different camera zones and stitch it together into a short video. We’ll upload it to the livestream homepage…”

“I was actually just coming to talk to you about that.”

Richard, the man with the lip piercing, stepped up to the monitor console. After a few keystrokes, he opened the backend storage system for the surveillance footage.

“For some reason,” he said, “all the recordings from tonight are gone.”

“What did you say?!”

<< TOC >>

The post Rules Ch.280 first appeared on A Wandering Potato.

Jonathan’s consciousness drifted in darkness.

Pain surged in from all directions like a rising tide. His frail body became a small wooden boat trapped at sea, tossed helplessly through stormy waves—plunging, rising, and rolling without rest.

Half-asleep, half-awake.

In his dazed state, chaotic sounds kept forcing their way into his ears.

Very close to him, a phone rang nonstop. A deep, buzzing tone filled the space, irritating and impossible to ignore. Not long after, sharp sirens approached from afar, slicing through the quiet. People came and went. Angry shouting and curses swelled around him like a storm of voices, making his head feel like it would split open.

Then, at some unknown point, the noise faded.

In its place, he heard fragments of conversation.

“…we… police… report…”

“…joke… all fake… sorry…”

The female voice replying sounded vaguely familiar—cold, clear, and somewhat arrogant. It reminded Jonathan of the wealthy girl who had dumped him. A surge of disgust rose in him, and he strained to listen more carefully.

“…yes… it’s all my fault… I swear I won’t… prank anymore…”

“…alright… not the mastermind… this is your statement… confirm… remember to… sign…”

A rustling sound followed, and the voices gradually faded away.

Replaced instead by slow, approaching footsteps.

Tap. Tap.

They stopped right beside him.

“It’s too late, I have to go now. Goodbye, Jonathan… and, by the way, I’m sorry I messed everything up.”

The female voice leaned close to his ear, speaking in a deliberately artificial tone.

After that, the footsteps gradually receded.

Jonathan was still trying to make sense of what she had said when suddenly someone grabbed his shoulder and shook him firmly.

“Jonathan… Jonathan…”

The drowsiness gradually faded. The fog-like heaviness that had trapped his consciousness dissolved into nothing.

Jonathan’s body jolted.

He suddenly opened his eyes.

Looking left and right in confusion, he found himself in a somewhat familiar room. In front of him stood two people in police uniforms.

“Hello, Jonathan Hopkins. Let me introduce myself—I’m Mike, and this is my colleague Sharon. We’re officers from the Dwight State Police Department. While patrolling a nearby interstate highway, we received an anonymous report about a major homicide at this hospital…”

The older male officer, with streaks of gray in his hair, introduced himself.

Hospital. Mike. Homicide.

The keywords triggered fragments of memory in Jonathan’s mind. Scenes of blood and horror flashed rapidly before his eyes.

His body trembled violently, and his expression shifted into panic almost instantly.

“Help! There’s a ghost! There’s a ghost in the hospital! AAAAAAH!”

The two state troopers exchanged a glance, each showing a hint of helplessness.

“Mr. Jonathan, filming has already ended. You don’t need to keep acting anymore.”

Officer Mike raised his hand and patted Jonathan on the shoulder. The force was a bit heavy, making Jonathan’s thin body sink downward—but he didn’t notice at all.

His attention was completely captured by what Mike had just said.

“W-What do you mean… filming has already ended? No need to act anymore?”

As he spoke, his last memories before fainting surfaced in his mind.

Remembering the places where the female ghost had stabbed him with a folding knife, his face turned deathly pale.

His hands began to shake uncontrollably as he reached up—first touching his neck, then his chest, abdomen, and lower back…

Everywhere hurt—painfully so.

It felt as if he had been stabbed dozens of times with a cold, razor-sharp blade.

Cuts through flesh and tendons, deep enough to reach bone beneath. Even the slightest touch from his fingertips made his whole body nearly convulse.

And yet—strangely—whenever he overcame his fear of pain and carefully pressed those areas again, he discovered something impossible.

There were no wounds.

Everything was intact.

Aside from dried, filthy blood on the surface, there was nothing underneath at all.

When his hand reached between his legs, Jonathan’s fingertips came away slightly damp.

A faint, foul smell lagged behind and drifted into his nose.

Only then did he remember—he had lost control of his bladder out of sheer terror.

His expression twisted further in disgust and embarrassment.

What the hell had happened?

Why wasn’t he dead?

Why wasn’t he injured?

“Your accomplice, Everly, has already confessed everything to us. There’s no need for you to keep hiding it anymore,” the female officer, Sharon, said from the side.

At the word “no need to hide,” a completely different set of images surfaced in Jonathan’s mind.

He thought of the bodies lying in the basement, on the 18th floor, and outside the surveillance room door.

After the massacre, he had contacted people from the black market gang to handle the cleanup.

But for some reason, when he woke up, the ones who appeared before him were police officers—and not even local city police, but state troopers from Dwight State.

What had happened to those dead people?

The corpses? The bloodstains on the floors and walls?

Had the gang members actually come? Had they really cleaned everything up?

A flood of questions filled his mind. Fear and guilt tangled together until his thoughts nearly froze.

Because he was too preoccupied with his own schemes, it took him a while to process what the female officer had just said.

“W-Who…? Who did you say my accomplice is? That woman named Everly?”

Of course he knew who Everly was.

During the day, while idling at the front desk, he had briefly encountered that attractive girl who had come to visit a patient.

He had only intended to flirt a little—but to his surprise, the girl was extremely cold and arrogant. She barely acknowledged him, humiliating him in public.

Her attitude reminded him of his ex-girlfriend.

That same condescending, superior air.

It had only been a drunken slap—an accident, really—but that damn woman had flipped the table over it, made a scene that spread everywhere, and even ruined a marriage alliance between two powerful families. In the end, she made him a complete laughingstock in their social circle.

Jonathan had always hated women like that—those who relied on their family background and looks to act superior and look down on everyone else.

Being rejected had left him bitter.

And thinking back to tonight’s original filming plan, an idea suddenly formed in his mind.

So, using his status as the “young master” of the Hopkins Hospital family, he forcibly obtained the visitor registration log from the front desk—and found the name of that cold, arrogant girl.

Everly.

Decided.

He would make that obnoxious woman the target of their prank livestream, humiliate her in front of countless viewers, and punish her for her arrogance.

And so, ignoring all objections, Jonathan—or rather “Dr. J”—abruptly changed the target of the prank stream.

The livestream was scheduled to begin at 20:30, and visiting hours in the inpatient building ended at 21:00. To ensure the girl would still be in the hospital long enough, his team went to considerable lengths—bribing doctors, intimidating nurses, and even coordinating with the MRI department.

Richard alone prepared six or seven backup plans.

Fortunately, Hopkins Hospital belonged to his family. Even if the staff were dissatisfied, none of them dared disobey him. Otherwise, the plan would never have gone so smoothly.

Everly had clearly been the result of half a day’s careful planning by the entire livestream team, finally “pulled into” the prank broadcast.

Yet for some reason, the version presented by the two police officers described a completely different and baffling chain of events:

The state troopers told him that Everly had personally admitted she was an accomplice he had hired in advance. According to her statement, everything that happened that night was a solo “prank operation” orchestrated by Jonathan himself—its purpose being to reverse-prank his own livestream team and capture their most authentic reactions in the face of life-and-death fear, ultimately producing a never-before-seen prank film.

“Everly showed us the chat logs between you and her. She said she only agreed because she found the idea interesting, and she wasn’t aware you hadn’t told the rest of your team that it was all acting. After the police arrived, she publicly apologized to those who were frightened and obtained their forgiveness. We determined that she wasn’t significantly involved in the core situation, so we let her leave first.”

“What did you say?! The others… the others are still alive?”

The older officer frowned slightly, as if sensing something, and said in a subtle tone:

“Of course they’re still alive. Otherwise, if they had actually died according to the script’s design during the performance, that would be a completely different matter. It would become an unprecedented major criminal case…”

Jonathan’s scalp tightened.

He immediately realized that what he had just said had already aroused police suspicion.

Although he still had no idea what had actually happened, to avoid unnecessary trouble, he decided to go along with their version of events for now and admit everything.

Otherwise…

What was he supposed to say?

That he didn’t even know anything about that woman’s so-called “reverse prank plan,” that he thought she had really gone out of control and killed the entire team, and that he had tried to use his connections to cover up multiple deaths and suppress the incident?

Only an idiot would admit something like that.

“Yes… sorry. Earlier during filming I accidentally fell and hit my head, so I’ve been a bit confused mentally.”

“That’s exactly what Everly said. To make the footage more realistic, I secretly planned a reverse prank without telling the rest of the team. Some people may have taken it seriously and got scared enough to call the police. I’m very sorry about that—I’ll definitely be more careful next time and won’t do something like this again.”

“I see… so it really was just a misunderstanding.”

Officer Sharon flipped through her notepad and smoothly defused the situation.

“Since it’s not a serious issue and no real harm was caused, we’ll just finish the statement here on site and consider the case closed. Okay?”

This outcome was exactly what Jonathan wanted.

He nodded repeatedly.

After that, the three of them spent some time completing the written statement. Once Jonathan signed to confirm, the two officers got into their patrol car and left the inpatient building.

Only when the red-and-blue police lights turned the corner and disappeared down the road did the weight in Jonathan’s chest finally drop.

He turned around and returned to the surveillance room—the team’s temporary base of operations.

As expected, the rest of the livestream crew was still there.

Just as the officers had said, everyone was alive. No missing limbs, no serious injuries. If anything, aside from their clothes being stained and messy with blood, they looked completely normal.

The unfortunate part was that they all seemed to believe Everly’s version of events.

To them, the entire “nightmare escape” had been a staged performance between Jonathan and Everly.

As a result, their attitude toward Jonathan was extremely hostile.

The moment he appeared, more than one person stormed up to him, angrily calling him a selfish bastard—and firmly announcing that they were quitting.

The remaining crew members, pressured by livelihood concerns, didn’t dare openly vent their anger at Jonathan. Instead, they gave him cold, distant looks.

He was used to being the center of attention wherever he went, so this sudden shift in treatment felt deeply uncomfortable—an unsettling reminder of how uneven the world could be.

“So what exactly is going on? Can anyone answer me?”

“Stop pretending! The police already figured it out—it was all your plan!”

“Btch! Son of a btch! Go eat shit!”

The moment he asked, he was met with “enthusiastic greetings” in the form of middle fingers from several resigned staff members.

Jonathan’s veins bulged at his temples. He clenched his teeth so hard it looked like he might break them.

For a split second, he even wanted to pull out a gun and shoot every single one of them.

But that was only a thought.

In reality, he couldn’t afford to act rashly.

Not after just causing a major incident serious enough to attract state police attention.

Others might not know it, but Jonathan himself did: because of the failed marriage alliance earlier, his standing within the family was already precarious—on the verge of being discarded.

If he were to cause a real homicide now, the family might indeed step in to clean up the mess for the sake of reputation.

But that would also mean one thing: they would completely abandon him.

From then on, he would lose all access to family power and become nothing more than a hollow shell with a bit of money and nothing else.

Not worth it.

Absolutely not worth destroying his future over a bunch of trash.

Forcing himself to calm down, Jonathan shifted his dark, narrowed gaze toward the lip-pierced man beside him.

“Richard, you answer!”

<< TOC >>

The post Rules Ch.279 first appeared on A Wandering Potato.

Zeng Tian felt that his brain really must be broken.

He took a few quick steps forward, climbed up directly, supported Zhang Cui by the arm, quickly helped him down, and then went up himself.

And then Zeng Tian froze.

Outside could only be described in four words: a sea of people.

How… how could there be so many people?

Not zombies—human beings?!!

—The people of Blue Sea had completely gone wild.

When building houses, they were extremely hardworking.

When killing zombies, it was extremely relieving.

But when they saw so much “meat, meat, meat”…

That thread in every Blue Sea person’s mind called “reason” snapped with a hiss.

Many of them had originally rented firearms just to be safe, but once they arrived at a field full of cattle and sheep roaming everywhere, they completely forgot they were even carrying them.

It was an instinct buried in their genes—making them want to climb trees, break off branches, and use them as spears.

Snares, long sticks, or even just brute force to grab prey—the whole scene was truly primitive and savage.

Cheng Qisheng rested her chin on her hand, watching this scene of wild, feral chaos.

“I knew it would be like this.”

This was the real way for Blue Sea people to relieve stress.

Put them on a vast grassland and let them hunt and chase with their own effort.

After releasing their energy through the pursuit of prey, the people of Blue Sea would feel genuine happiness from the bottom of their hearts.

If they were kept inside a safe city all the time, it probably wouldn’t be long before large-scale depression set in again.

The military had also prepared in advance, driving in with vehicles and barbed wire to seal off the area, preventing zombies from slipping in while the Blue Sea people were excitedly hunting.

They enclosed roughly 1.5 million mu of land—about the size of a whole county—so Zeng Tian’s impression of a “sea of people” was not wrong at all.

The officers dispatched by the military for this mission were standing in the trees, looking down at the scene through binoculars, finally letting out a deep breath of relief.

“The Marshal was right. The way we conduct combat really does need to be adjusted going forward.”

“Yeah,” another officer standing in a nearby tree agreed. “Things are different now. We need to shift from the old model of group combat to letting civilians fight individually.”

When they first arrived in this world, the government had once seriously considered gradually transforming the entire country into a military system.

After all, they were no longer short on battles—there were plenty of zombies outside to fight at will.

But it didn’t take long for the higher-ups to realize that this approach wouldn’t work.

First, if the whole population were placed under a military system, it would not be favorable for the country’s long-term resource management. A single wrong decision could potentially doom the entire nation.

Second, not every Blue Sea resident could accept being strictly controlled.

Following rules in normal society and living under military discipline were completely different things.

During the large-scale recruitment of new soldiers this time, many recruits developed rebellious tendencies under strict control, becoming irritable and prone to anger.

The Bureau of Mental Health Services quickly intervened to investigate, and ultimately concluded that the cause was a reduction in living space.

In the past, on Dark Star, residents had vast living spaces of their own. There were archery ranges, and they could travel to mountains and wilderness to experience nature.

Those with more money could even purchase a “wilderness survival” qualification.

People who bought such qualifications would be transported by professionals to uninhabited grasslands or tropical rainforests, places with no traces of human civilization.

These people wore only a single set of clothes and carried simple stone spears and homemade bows, immersing themselves in wilderness survival for two or three months.

They would drill wood to make fire, build camps, hunt prey, catch fish under waterfalls, wander barefoot through forests, and sit on mountaintops in the early morning to watch the sunrise.

Although this kind of “wilderness survival” was an extreme pleasure reserved only for Blue Sea’s wealthy class, even the poorest Blue Sea residents before the apocalypse were not so deprived that they never had the chance to walk alone in an open space.

Even in large cities filled with skyscrapers, multiple urban parks would still be built.

Ever since discovering the problems among new recruits, the military had kept itself constantly on edge.

What they feared was not that recruits would disobey orders, but that other citizens might also develop similar rebellious tendencies.

With 360 million people crowded into a single city, life was already difficult enough. If internal chaos broke out as well, it was impossible to imagine how disorderly things would become.

Fortunately—fortunately.

Many informed officers in the military could see that ever since the Marshal proposed, and the President approved, allowing residents to freely leave the city and treat zombie hunting as a civilian mission, the atmosphere inside the city had become more and more relaxed day by day.

People smiled more, argued less, and even fights had decreased.

Even scavengers who lacked combat ability and could not expand new territories would feel mentally refreshed just by going out for a walk and bringing back some local wild grass.

Moreover, Blue Sea was obtaining more crystal nuclei as well.

At the same time, the amount of consumed supplies such as food had been steadily replenished.

As civilians dispersed to search for resources, they would often find usable supplies scattered across the ruins—for example, boxes of instant noodles or biscuits—which they happily carried back to eat, naturally saving Blue Sea’s resources.

On a larger scale, these scattered civilians were also discovering a large amount of valuable supplies across the ruined land, enough to be reported up the chain of command.

For example, just yesterday, some residents discovered the underground storage area of a large supermarket.

No one knew how they managed to find a warehouse buried beneath a collapsed ruin.

What was even more impressive was that this group of people had spent several days enthusiastically digging through the rubble. They even called in a petite resident to crawl inside and investigate, and after multiple attempts, they finally confirmed that there really was an underground warehouse down there.

After reporting it, the military gave them reward points and curiously asked how they had known there might be a supermarket storage area underneath.

The residents answered very straightforwardly:

“We didn’t know. We just saw supermarket shelves in the ruins above ground and thought there might be something below.”

“So you dug for days without even knowing?”

“Digging through ruins is kind of fun anyway. You always find all sorts of random stuff—it feels like treasure hunting, so we just kept digging. Hehe.”

That was the Blue Sea people.

When gathered together, they could flatten every region they went through.

But when scattered, no one could predict what they might do.

The key point was that even if they didn’t make major contributions, they could at least sustain themselves, reduce the burden on the state, and sometimes even feed resources back into the country.

Now many military officers had realized that the old military model suited to Blue Sea needed to change.

Perhaps allowing ordinary civilians to freely develop and hunt was the most suitable survival method in the apocalypse.

An officer stared at the residents chasing cattle and sheep and said:

“Honestly… I kind of want to go too.”

Officer B replied, “It’s fine, wait a bit longer. When they calm down. When we first secured this territory, we specifically fenced off another ranch separately. Later, the younger soldiers in the army can also relax a bit.”

Officer A: “?”

“Only the younger soldiers get to relax?”

What, are the not-so-young officers not allowed to relax too?

Officer B: “Hahahaha, I was just teasing you. Look how anxious you got. Don’t worry, we’re all going to join in. The higher-ups sent us down here precisely to let us relax. There’s nothing else going on today anyway. We’ll run around properly in a bit.”

While the two were talking, a family working as a team had just dragged over a cow caught in a snare, successfully turning it into their own prize.

The cow crashed to the ground.

The youngest child in this five-person family—a ten-year-old—suddenly spoke up:

“Mom, the sound is wrong. It sounded like it hit steel.”

“Steel?”

The mother rolled up her sleeves and called to the rest of the family.

“Come on, help lift it together. Maybe it’s a cellar. If there’s stored grain inside, we’ll be rich!”

The five of them pulled hard on the rope and forcibly dragged the cow away.

Beneath it, something that really looked like a steel plate was revealed—like a door hidden underground.

The parents gestured for the children to step back.

They put down the crude bows and arrows used for hunting cattle and sheep, and instead pulled guns from behind their waists.

Together, they forced the door open and aimed their weapons downward.

And then they saw at least a hundred living people—ragged, thin, staring blankly up at them.

The couple froze.

In their minds, the first word that popped up was “weaklings,” followed by “a group of weaklings.”

Then they suddenly realized what they were seeing and instinctively raised their tactical watches toward the group below.

Immediately, joy exploded in their expressions. While still keeping one hand holding a gun aimed downward, the husband and wife embraced each other with their free arms.

“By the God above!! It—it’s a local base!”

“We’re rich! We’ve got enough points to watch VR movies!!”

“We can watch ten times together as a whole family!!!”

Cheng Qisheng, who had been slowly loosening the soil, suddenly lifted her head—

Well, not exactly “suddenly,” since her body coordination wasn’t great; in the end she still raised it rather slowly.

But her mood instantly brightened.

A base?

A virology doctor?!

Twenty thousand crystals?!!!

The nearby Blue Sea residents who had been running around shouting in excitement also caught those words with laser precision. They immediately stopped even their hunting.

Their already highly excited minds were instantly flooded with one thing—points.

“A base? Where? Where?!”

“Where is it?!”

“God above! A base!!! Is it that virology doctor’s base?! We found the virology doctor?!”

“Where? Where’s the base?! Let me see too! I want to see!”

On distant tree branches, several officers observing the crowd through binoculars fell silent.

“…Why do I feel like I’m about to work overtime?”

“You’re not wrong. I read their lip movements—they’re shouting ‘base.’ Looks like they’ve discovered a local survivor base.”

“Alright then… if it’s the base our god is looking for, I’m willing to work overtime.”

The two officers jumped down from the tree—

The branches, having just been stepped on, swayed heavily for a moment under the sudden load, but ultimately held and did not break.

“All units one through nine, follow me. Move out!”

Inside the cold storage, the members of the Yunyang Base were still struggling to process the fact that they had been discovered so suddenly, and hadn’t even figured out how to react when they realized that above them—

With a rustle of motion, countless heads suddenly popped up at the entrance of the underground cold storage, all staring straight at them.

Their expressions were filled with amazement, envy, and curiosity.

Zeng Tian couldn’t help but take a step back under that intense, scorching gaze—only to bump into Yu Zhitian behind him.

Yu Zhitian was holding a child. She met the gazes of the Blue Sea people above and immediately confirmed that it was a language she could not understand at all.

A group of civilians wearing all kinds of clothing quickly parted to the sides, revealing a line of people in uniform military dress.

They, too, were encircling the entrance in a neat formation, all lowering their heads to look down in unison.

Yu Zhitian pinched herself first to confirm this was not an illusion. Only then did she let out a long breath.

“Director, it seems that no matter what’s going on, at least we don’t need to worry about being killed. They have their own rules and their own military. From the way they’re looking at us…”

“We… seem to be some kind of rare species to them.”

<< _ >>

The post Safe City Ch.23 first appeared on A Wandering Potato.

“What’s going on? Is the voltage unstable?”

The two men in the surveillance room sat stiffly in their chairs like wooden puppets, staring blankly at the flickering lights overhead with a mixture of fear and confusion. The lights flashed wildly until, unable to withstand the strain, they suddenly went out.

The moment darkness swallowed the room, both men nearly screamed.

Fortunately, the blackout lasted only an instant. Before long, the lights came back on, restoring brightness to the room.

Beep.

The electronic monitors on the desk powered up again, emitting their startup chime.

“That scared me to death. I thought something had gone wrong again.”

Dr. J wiped the sweat from his forehead and sighed to the man with the lip piercing.

After speaking, he waited for a response, but none came. Puzzled, Dr. J turned his head and saw that his companion was staring fixedly at the monitors in front of him. His pupils trembled, his face was filled with terror, and his eyes were opened so wide they seemed on the verge of tearing at the corners.

“W-What’s wrong…? Haha, don’t scare me like that…”

A sense of foreboding swept through him, and Dr. J shuddered. Forcing a smile, he turned his gaze toward the monitors as well.

What he saw made his blood run cold.

The dozens of screens, which should have been displaying footage from different areas of the hospital, had somehow all switched to the same camera feed.

The camera was pointed at an empty corridor.

On the floor of that corridor lay two blood-soaked corpses.

One corpse had a massive hole in its chest. The skin of its face had been cut away, and its eyes had been gouged out.

The other had been stabbed so many times that its body looked like a sieve, covered from head to toe in bloody puncture wounds.

Beneath the bodies spread a large pool of dark red blood. Beside it were bloody handprints and clear signs of a desperate struggle.

Yes.

The footage playing on every screen was the live feed from right outside the surveillance room.

And now, in that footage, the two people who should have been dead were twitching.

Their joints crackled with unsettling clack-clack sounds as they pushed themselves up from the floor. Their movements were strange and stiff, their bodies jerking unnaturally as they slowly rose to their feet.

“T-They’re still alive?”

“That’s impossible! They lost that much blood—there’s no way they could still be alive…”

Fine beads of cold sweat appeared on the lip-pierced man’s forehead. His face had gone pale, and he refuted the idea in a trembling voice.

As if to prove his point, after struggling to their feet, the two “people” moved like marionettes on strings, swaying unsteadily as they approached the tightly shut surveillance room door in unison. Then they lowered their heads and slammed them hard against it.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The dull impacts came simultaneously from both the actual doorway and the speakers connected to the surveillance feed.

One strike after another.

Like the footsteps of Death drawing nearer, each blow clenched the hearts of the two men inside tighter and tighter.

They hit the door with terrifying force.

With every impact, fresh bloodstains appeared on the door panel—at first only a few scattered spots, then spreading and joining together into larger patches. Eventually, the flesh on their foreheads split apart from the repeated collisions. The mangled tissue stuck to the door like glue, while dark-red droplets of blood sprayed outward in all directions.

The sight made people’s teeth ache and their scalps tingle.

No human being could behave like that.

If they weren’t human, then…

Were they ghosts?

The two men exchanged a glance, each seeing the same bone-deep terror reflected in the other’s eyes.

Flicker, flicker.

At that moment, the lights overhead began flashing erratically once again.

At the same time, the two men heard a strange creak… creak… coming from above.

At first, the sound seemed distant, as though it were coming from near the door.

But it quickly drew closer.

The source of the noise seemed to move from the doorway into the room itself, until at last the eerie creaking was directly above their heads.

What could that sound be?

The lip-pierced man slowly raised his head and stared upward in horror.

Drip.

Without warning, a drop of liquid fell from above and landed directly in his eye.

“Urgh…”

He groaned and instinctively raised a hand to cover it.

And at that very moment, accompanied by a faint zzzt sound, every electrical device in the room suddenly stopped working at once.

The inpatient building was located in a remote suburban area, with few other structures nearby. Once the lights went out, the room was instantly plunged into complete darkness.

“What the hell! D-Don’t tell me the power’s out again?”

Dr. J’s trembling voice came from nearby.

A moment later, the lip-pierced man saw a beam of light appear beside him—Dr. J had turned on his phone’s flashlight.

Seeing this, the lip-pierced man quickly lowered the hand covering his face and reached for his own phone.

Drip.

Just as he lit up the screen, another droplet fell from above and landed squarely on it.

Frowning, he casually wiped it away. But under the glow of the screen, he was horrified to discover that the liquid carried a faint reddish tint.

His face went pale.

Bringing his finger to his nose, he caught a familiar metallic scent.

The hand holding the phone trembled violently.

A chill ran down the back of his neck, and every hair on his body stood on end.

Blood.

It was blood!

Something above them was dripping blood!

Remembering the horrifying walking corpses that had appeared outside the surveillance room moments ago, the lip-pierced man shuddered.

Only then did he suddenly realize that the pounding on the door had stopped.

When had it stopped?

And why had they stopped trying to break the door down?

Perhaps they had given up.

But a far more terrifying possibility was that there was no longer any need to break the door down because…

Because they were already inside.

BANG!

BANG! BANG!

Heavy crashing noises suddenly erupted from overhead.

They were accompanied by the rattling clang of metal mesh shaking violently—harsh, piercing sounds that echoed through the ceiling pipes and reverberated throughout the room.

The lip-pierced man’s heart pounded wildly.

An overwhelming sense of dread rose within him.

Clenching his jaw, he switched on his phone’s flashlight.

Together with Dr. J, he slowly raised his head and looked upward.

Crash!

Before they could even see what was happening, a torrent of red liquid poured out from the ventilation grate overhead like vomit.

The two men below had no time to dodge and were instantly drenched.

Sticky.

Cold.

Carrying a heavy metallic stench.

It stained everything it touched red…

Yes.

There was no mistake.

It was blood.

The liquid pouring from the ventilation duct was human blood.

“AAAAAH! AAAAAAHHHH!”

“What the **** is this thing?!”

Now covered head to toe in blood, the two men frantically wiped at themselves while screaming hysterically. It was as though they were trying to vent the terror building inside them through sheer panic and shouting.

BANG!

At that moment, another impact sounded from above.

This one was even louder and heavier than the previous ones, so violent that it almost seemed as if some monster were dancing on the ceiling.

The fragile metal grate let out a strained creak.

Then it finally gave way.

With a loud clang, it fell from the ventilation opening and crashed onto the floor.

The two men froze.

As if someone had cast a petrification spell on them, they stopped screaming at the same time.

Shoulders hunched, breath held, they stood trembling beneath the vent.

Their necks felt welded in place, unable to summon even the slightest courage to look up.

Only their eyes moved.

Wide and bulging, both pairs of eyes rolled upward in unison, as though they might pop from their sockets at any moment.

The contradiction of desperately wanting to see what was there while being utterly terrified to look was written plainly across their faces.

Then a faint song drifted down from above.

“Darling, don’t run. I’ll never hurt anyone.

The evil witch’s lurking around…”

The lip-pierced man’s face instantly turned deathly pale.

A bead of cold sweat slid down his forehead.

Instinctively, he blinked.

Only then did he notice faint black strands hanging at the very top of his vision.

Whenever they brushed against his eyelids, they produced an irritating tickling sensation.

What was that…?

“Heehee… hahaha…”

A crystal-clear laugh sounded from directly above.

It was so close that the lip-pierced man could even hear the faint, indistinct breath at the end of each chuckle.

That was… that was…

His scalp tightened.

Slowly and stiffly, the lip-pierced man raised his head.

The moment he saw what was above him, his entire body froze, and an icy chill engulfed him.

It was a female ghost hanging upside down.

Covered in blood, she was suspended in midair in a grotesquely impossible posture, feet up and head down. Her cold eyes stared directly at him, and her scarlet lips stretched impossibly wide as she burst into manic laughter.

Her long black hair hung from her head like oil-soaked seaweed dredged from the ocean depths—dirty, tangled, and matted together.

The black strands he had noticed earlier were the tips of her hair.

In the unsteady beam of the flashlight, they swayed and writhed as if alive.

For a moment, they seemed to transform into countless slender black worms, twisting and squirming, waiting only to seize their prey before burrowing into flesh and bone to devour and tear it apart.

“Ah… AAH… AAAAAAHHHH!”

The lip-pierced man screamed and tried to run.

But before he could move, a pair of blood-smeared arms reached down from above and wrapped tightly around his head.

A tremendous force pressed down on him from overhead.

The lip-pierced man was thin and slight; the pressure nearly knocked him backward.

To keep his balance, he instinctively reached out and grabbed Dr. J beside him.

Unexpectedly, even though he was the one being held by the ghost, Dr. J reacted even more violently.

“No! No no no no no! AAAAAAAHHHHH!”

Dr. J shrieked hysterically, flailing both arms wildly through the air in a desperate attempt to shake off the lip-pierced man’s grip.

Caught completely off guard, the lip-pierced man took several solid blows from Dr. J’s frantic swinging.

As a result, he screamed even louder.

Everly felt like her ears were about to go deaf.

Her hands dropped down and gripped the lip-pierced man’s shoulders tightly. Using his body as support, she lightly pushed off the ventilation duct with her boot.

Tap.

With a soft sound, her blood-red body swept through the air like a night owl in the forest, landing gracefully on the floor beside them.

The impact of her landing was the final straw for the weak, trembling lip-pierced man and Dr. J, whose legs were shaking like sieves.

The two grown men shoved and collided into each other in panic, losing all dignity as they collapsed onto the cold, hard floor.

Their arms and legs flailed wildly against the blood-slick surface, making them look like two writhing maggots.

A strange odor drifted through the air.

Everly lowered her gaze and saw that Dr. J had wet himself.

That immediately killed her remaining interest in teasing them.

Seriously?

With that little courage, how did they even dare to scare others like that?

“Are you ready? Come… let’s go to hell together…”

She stood with her back to the window, head tilted to one side against her shoulder, striking the classic horror-film ghost pose as she issued a chilling invitation to the two men.

The moment her words fell, before either of them could respond, a flash of vivid red swept across the room.

The next second, sharp pain struck.

One after the other, the two men lost consciousness completely.

…

<< TOC >>

**TN

Oww. It’s the end of the arc. I love this arc so much, Psycho Everly is so fun. XD

The post Rules Ch.278 first appeared on A Wandering Potato.

Ding-dong!

The surgical elevator stopped at the first floor, and the crisp notification sound rang out as the metal doors slid open. Just as Everly raised her eyes, she happened to meet a face illuminated by the elevator’s light.

It was a rebellious-looking young man covered in tattoos. He didn’t seem very old. His face was pale, and his expression carried obvious unease.

He was likely just passing by. Seeing the elevator open, he instinctively glanced over.

That single glance was enough for him to lock eyes briefly with Everly inside the elevator.

“Uwa—ahhh!!”

The young man froze for a split second, then let out a terrified scream as if he had seen something unimaginably horrifying. He dropped the chain lock in his hand, turned around, and ran down the corridor.

Everly narrowed her eyes slightly.

She recognized him—this was the same man she had encountered not long ago when she was trapped in the basement. Back then, when she had tried to ram open the emergency door at the end of the left corridor, it had briefly cracked open, and this very same tattooed man had been on the other side, desperately trying to hold it shut in panic.

According to Tom’s description, his name was probably Elron… or Edron…?

How convenient. She hadn’t even gone looking for him yet, and he had delivered himself right to her.

A faint, bloodthirsty smile appeared on Everly’s face.

With a light push of her boot, she launched herself out of the elevator like a night owl taking flight, effortlessly leaping forward in pursuit of Edron.

……

Inside the control room.

After sending Edron off, the lip-ringed man and Dr. J returned to the monitors, switching between the left stairwell and the first-floor corridor, closely tracking the movements of both the “mad woman” and Edron.

The woman was still descending the stairs.

She had already reached the second floor. If she continued downward, she would soon arrive at the basement level. That was the lowest point of the stairwell—once she finished the stairs and pushed open the corridor door, that monster would enter the hallway.

To prevent the “mad woman” from using the elevator to go upstairs, the lip-ringed man had already locked down the normal elevators in advance. This meant her only option was to pass through the pitch-black basement corridor and head toward the right-side stairwell.

And what Edron had to do was get there before her and lock the basement’s right-side emergency door in advance, blocking her path upward.

In terms of distance, Edron could still make it in time. However, considering his timid, cowardly, avoidance-prone personality, they still didn’t feel at ease unless someone was there to personally supervise him.

So they kept switching the surveillance feeds between the two of them.

At first, everything was normal—the “mad woman” was descending the stairs, while Edron, chain lock in hand, quickly made his way through the corridor toward the right-side emergency passage.

But midway through, something suddenly went wrong—the surveillance feed covering Edron’s route went black. Both the first-floor corridor and the basement cameras went dark, leaving nothing visible at all.

“What’s going on? Why is this happening!”

“I don’t know—maybe there’s a circuit failure in that area.”

The lip-ringed man broke out in a cold sweat, his fingers flying across the control panel, but he still couldn’t restore the surveillance feeds on Edron’s side.

Dr. J grabbed the intercom and called out into Edron’s channel repeatedly, but there was no response at all.

“He probably left his headset in the basement.”

“Then his phone? You’ve got his number—call him!”

The lip-ringed man shrugged.

“My SIM card got pulled out by you.”

“F**K!”

Dr. J grabbed his phone, angrily tossed it to the lip-ringed man, and turned to switch the main surveillance screen to the left stairwell, scanning for any sign of the “mad woman.”

If they couldn’t track Edron’s situation, then at least knowing the woman’s movements—and her current location—would slightly ease the unease in his chest.

The lip-ringed man caught Dr. J’s phone, opened his own contacts list, found Edron’s number, and dialed it digit by digit.

Beep… beep…

At the same moment the call connected, an intense heavy metal rock ringtone suddenly blasted from the doorway.

The lip-ringed man immediately recognized it—it was Edron’s phone ringtone.

Sure enough, the next second, someone knocked on the control room door.

Knock, knock.

“It—it’s me… Edron. Open the door…”

A muffled voice came through the thick door panel.

“He’s alive?!”

Dr. J tore his gaze away from the surveillance monitors and kicked the mohawked man hard in the side.

“You useless piece of trash, go open the door!”

Ever since Mike died, the mohawked man had been mentally unstable, sitting curled up in his chair with hollow eyes like a puppet that had lost its soul.

Even after being kicked, he didn’t cry out. He slowly stood up and drifted toward the door as instructed.

“Wait! Don’t open it yet—”

The lip-ringed man suddenly had a bad feeling and tried to stop him, but it was already too late.

With a sharp click, the lock was undone.

The metal door swung inward.

Before the mohawked man could even see what was outside, a heavy, warm body suddenly collapsed forward into him, knocking straight into his arms.

“W-what… what is this…?”

The mohawked man instinctively reached out and caught the body.

From the clothing, it looked like Edron—but how had he ended up like this…?

“No… damn it! It’s that mad woman!”

His sluggish mind was still trying to process what was happening when rapid footsteps suddenly sounded from behind him.

He only felt a sharp pull on the hem of his clothes. Turning his head, he saw the lip-ringed man grabbing him, clearly trying to drag him back.

He was about to ask why he was pulling him when his body suddenly froze in place.

He saw it—

Through the lip-ringed man’s widened pupils, he saw his own stunned, vacant expression… he saw Edron’s half-limp head resting on his shoulder… and he also saw the woman standing at the doorway, smiling at them.

Half of her body was soaked in blood. Her face beneath the hat and scarf was splattered with crimson droplets, looking like a demon crawling out of a blood-soaked hell.

And yet that face—

Those deep, captivating blue eyes, the straight bridge of her nose, the perfectly shaped lips—

It fulfilled every human definition of “beauty.” Even drenched in blood, it remained beautiful.

Like a poppy flower. Like a venomous snake. Beneath that stunning exterior lay cruelty, madness, and violence.

But how could she be here…?

A cold hand suddenly closed around his wrist.

The grip was terrifyingly strong—calloused palms and fingertips like iron clamps. Once it latched on, there was no escaping.

Before he could even resist, a tremendous force yanked him forward. A nearly 100-kilogram man was dragged off balance and stumbled violently toward the front.

Even the lip-ringed man holding onto his clothes couldn’t escape; he was pulled forward as well, forced to stagger two steps toward the doorway.

“Found you all, hehe… let’s play together~~”

Everly tilted her head down about forty-five degrees, revealing a wide, crimson smile split unnaturally across her lips beneath the scarf. Her glass-like blue eyes rolled slightly upward, locking onto the people at the door.

Her voice was sweet—

and chillingly eerie.

This angle was deliberately chosen by her.

Light spilling from inside the control room struck her face at an oblique angle. Most of it was blocked by the fur hat and her high brow ridge, leaving only faint, dim illumination that outlined her blood-soaked cheek and her eerily distorted expression.

Even the most beautiful person would look ghostly and sinister under this kind of lighting.

Let alone her—she no longer resembled anything close to “beautiful.” If anything, she looked less like a human and more like a monster that had crawled out of hell.

“Aaaah! Aaaahhh! Help! Help!”

The mohawked man broke down completely, tears and mucus streaming down his face as he screamed and flailed his arms in panic.

Physically, he was actually quite strong—his forearm muscles were thick and well-defined, his arm circumference nearly rivaling Everly’s calf. But despite having a strong body, its owner had neither the courage nor the combat instincts to match it. Faced with danger, he could only cry, shout, and swing wildly without any structure or purpose.

He didn’t hit Everly.

Instead, Edron—the one who had been shoved into his arms earlier—was struck first.

With a dull thud, Edron’s body collapsed to the ground like a rag doll.

The lip-ringed man instinctively looked down—and immediately met Edron’s face.

It had been brutally mutilated.

From chin to forehead, all the skin had been peeled away, exposing raw layers of muscle and fat beneath. His eyes had also been gouged out, leaving behind two pitch-black empty sockets where the eyeballs should have been.

Those hollow sockets now stared directly at the lip-ringed man with deep resentment—like they were questioning him.

Why did you push me out to lock the door?

Why did you get me killed?

Why… did you do this to me?

“I’m not—no, no, it wasn’t me!” the lip-ringed man screamed, his scalp crawling and his whole body drenched in cold sweat. Even his voice had changed pitch. “If you want someone, blame Dr. J! Don’t come after me—this has nothing to do with me!”

After saying that, he rushed to the door, trying to slam it shut—but the mohawked man was still blocking it, and the control room door wouldn’t close properly.

“Move!”

Dr. J’s cold voice came from behind him.

The lip-ringed man instinctively stepped aside.

A dark blur shot forward from inside the room, violently slamming into the mohawked man at the doorway and knocking him completely outside.

“Close it!”

Taking the command, the lip-ringed man’s eyes darkened. He forcefully pulled the door shut—

BANG!

A loud impact echoed.

At the same moment, the black figure beside him moved with incredible speed, twisting the lock beneath the handle and flipping the deadbolt into place. Then he slumped against the door, sliding down the wall, gasping for breath.

“No! Open it! Open the door!”

Fists hammered against the thick door panel.

Then came the screams—agonized, desperate wails that pierced through the wood and into everyone’s ears inside.

The sounds were horrific.

Intermixed with the dull thuds of bodies colliding and the wet, sickening pu-chi of blades stabbing into flesh.

It was enough to make one’s spine go cold—and the stomach turn.

“Block the door first…”

Dr. J’s face was ashen as he stepped away from the entrance.

The lip-ringed man, equally unwilling to listen any further, nodded silently. Together, they moved to the table and lifted the heavy wooden desk, dragging it toward the door and wedging it in place.

Thud.

When the desk was finally set down, the outside had already fallen silent.

Only a thin trail of blood seeped through the crack under the door, slowly spreading inward.

The vivid red looked like a blade slicing into the lip-ringed man’s vision, filling him with a wave of nausea—and an overwhelming sense of guilt.

“I’m sorry…”

He looked away, lips trembling as he mouthed the apology without sound.

“I’m sorry… Dr. J told me to do it… don’t blame me…”

The control room had only one door and one window facing the outside of the hospital. Because this was a critical surveillance hub, the hospital had installed iron security bars outside the window during construction.

The bars were sturdy—without special tools, even the “mad woman,” no matter how strong she was, would not be able to break in.

So in theory, as long as they held the entrance, they were safe.

After hurriedly moving tables, cabinets, and other heavy objects to block the door, the two men finally returned to the monitors and collapsed into their chairs in exhaustion.

They thought that as long as they did this, they could finally breathe easy.

But at that moment—

Crackle, crackle.

The ceiling lights, along with more than a dozen surveillance screens, suddenly began to flicker without warning.

<< TOC >>

The post Rules Ch.277 first appeared on A Wandering Potato.

The captain of the “Rush Rush Rush Squad” was much more accustomed to it. Blue Sea had always been like this.

Back in wartime, there had even been merchants crossing battle zones to do business.

“The prices are acceptable,” he said.

Though a bit expensive, compared to the potential gain of hunted cattle and sheep, it was negligible.

But… the captain glanced at the merchant’s backpack.

“You don’t actually have the goods with you. When will they be delivered?”

“The goods are behind us. Our caravan rented vehicles specifically to transport them, but the roads are difficult. I’m just the advance scout responsible for taking orders. If you place your order now, you get a 10% discount. The goods will arrive by tomorrow morning at the latest.”

The captain thought for a moment.

“Can you swear to our god that the goods are real?”

The merchant patted his chest.

“I can!”

“And since there’s no network here for transfers, are you willing to swear by your resident ID that you will pay the full amount immediately upon returning to the safe city?”

The captain also patted his chest.

“I can!”

And so, the deal was concluded.

The merchant handed them a small token as proof, then continued walking with the crowd, promoting the [Everywhere-Is-A-Trade Team]’s goods to others along the way.

The “Rush Rush Rush Squad” stayed behind, waiting for the supply truck.

For Yun Yu, a local resident, this was the first time seeing business done like this. He opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again—unsure whether to speak.

But thinking back to the divine blessing he had once felt, he felt that this kind of oath actually carried a certain sincerity.

If gods truly existed, then oaths would naturally become contracts.

And somehow, Yun Yu decided this way of doing things didn’t seem so bad after all.

Yun Yu was still young and not very good at spotting lies. Before the apocalypse, he had worked part-time jobs and had even had wages withheld by employers who refused to pay him.

Now things were different. With oaths made under the watch of a real god, at least he no longer had to worry about being cheated.

As Yun Yu was happily thinking about this, the captain walked over carrying a bag of flatbreads.

“Here, here, everyone have some while they’re still warm. They’ve even got sesame seeds on top.”

Yun Yu blinked.

“? Where did these flatbreads come from?”

The captain pointed.

“Over there! That tricycle is selling flatbreads and soy milk. Extra spicy costs another 10 points. I figured none of us like spicy food, so I didn’t order it.”

Yun Yu looked in that direction and, sure enough, saw someone running a food stall.

Once again, he was speechless.

“…Even though there are more people around now, this still counts as a dangerous area, doesn’t it?”

The captain took a bite of his flatbread.

“It’s fine. Back when Blue Sea was at war, people set up stalls on battlefields too. The higher the risk, the bigger the profit.”

Yun Yu: “…”

Alright then. Apparently he still didn’t understand Blue Sea deeply enough.

The captain sounded a little envious.

“I’m telling you, that vendor just told me that they used to sell flatbreads near the edge of the safe city’s cleared zone. At first they carried all their equipment themselves. But lots of residents from other safe cities were willing to pay with nucleus crystals—sometimes several times the normal price—and happily bought the food because they said they couldn’t get enough to eat in their own cities.”

“Maybe when we get back, we should set up a stall too. Look at that guy—it’s only been a few days, and he’s already earned enough points to rent a vehicle.”

Yun Yu took a bite of the delicious, crispy flatbread. The warmth of freshly cooked food, something he hadn’t enjoyed in a long time, filled him with happiness.

“I think setting up a stall is a good idea. But Captain… can you actually make flatbreads?”

One of the teammates burst out laughing.

“The captain cooked for me once. I’d rather skip a meal than eat that again. In the end, he had to eat it himself.”

Yun Yu looked surprised.

“Is it really that bad?”

“It’s awful,” the teammate said. “The captain dumped in a ton of seasonings and it still tasted terrible. Total waste of ingredients. After that, he never cooked again. If he wants food, he just goes to the cafeteria.”

The captain’s face turned red.

“Ahem, don’t exaggerate. I only added a little too much seasoning.”

Trying to salvage his dignity, he argued:

“It was just a tiny bit bad. Not that bad.”

—

In the Yunyang Underground Base, a woman wearing glasses ate a bowl of mush-like food.

The taste made her frown involuntarily, but she still held her breath and forced herself to finish it in one go.

She had no choice.

If she didn’t consume enough nutrition, her immune system would quickly weaken.

And once her immunity dropped, she would soon fall ill in this crude underground shelter—a former frozen-meat warehouse that had been hastily converted into a survival base.

Getting sick was disastrous.

There were no medicines, no medical equipment, and barely any hot water. Recovery depended almost entirely on the body’s natural healing ability.

More than a hundred people in this shelter had already died from illness.

Before the apocalypse, many of these conditions would have required nothing more than a visit to a clinic for some medication or an injection.

Some illnesses would have healed on their own after a few days of rest.

But after the apocalypse, food was scarce, water was often contaminated, survivors lived under immense psychological stress, and everyone carried constant anxiety about survival.

Any one of those factors could leave the body without the resources it needed to recover from disease.

Minor aches and illnesses that had once been insignificant had now become life-threatening.

People died from infected wounds after being bitten by ants or rats.

People who had bones broken by cattle had no choice but to endure the pain and hope for the best.

A single heavy rainstorm could trigger an outbreak of disease.

Coughing echoed everywhere, but the cold-storage warehouse was only so large. There were neither the materials nor the space needed to isolate the sick.

Darkness.

Oppression.

Suffering.

Everyone lived crammed together in the same space—eating, drinking, sleeping, and relieving themselves side by side. They endured constant hunger while their bodies sounded alarm after alarm, and yet there was nothing they could do about it.

Over the past few days, several more people had taken their own lives.

It wasn’t that they didn’t want to live.

They simply couldn’t bear this kind of life anymore.

This was the apocalypse.

People could escape the zombies and hide underground, but they couldn’t escape disease, loneliness, pain, or despair.

The woman tilted her head back and looked at the gloomy ceiling above.

“Dr. Yu, we’re running out of food. At the latest, the day after tomorrow, we’ll have to risk leaving the base and hunting cattle and sheep outside.”

The person who had established this base was named Zeng Tian.

Originally, their base had been located in a high-rise building. At its peak, there had been more than three thousand survivors.

Everyone gathered together, working to rebuild a home. They cleared the zombies around the building, sealed off the lower floors below the third story, and used ladders to travel up and down.

At first, the Yunyang Base developed quite well.

Living high above the ground meant they didn’t have to worry much about zombies. Teams regularly ventured out to scavenge supplies. There was enough food, and water could be obtained from a nearby small water treatment plant.

They believed that if they continued developing steadily, they would eventually see hope.

They scattered flyers everywhere, hoping more survivors would join them.

Then that zombie appeared.

Its enormous body and terrifying strength destroyed the entire Yunyang Base—including all the food, medicine, and supplies they had painstakingly gathered over the course of six months.

Fortunately, although the ruins had destroyed their home, they had also blocked the pursuit of ordinary zombies.

The giant zombie itself wasn’t particularly fast. The survivors of Yunyang Base scattered in all directions to escape. Some sacrificed themselves, while others were led westward in vehicles.

Thankfully, the giant zombie drew away most of the regular zombies, allowing them to get away successfully.

This area had once been a ranch. Beneath it were numerous cold-storage facilities, and one of the survivors happened to be the child of a cold-storage owner and knew where the keys were kept.

Out of more than three thousand people, only a little over five hundred remained.

Those survivors took refuge inside one of the cold-storage warehouses.

The meat stored inside had long since spoiled without electricity. Everyone endured the stench and spent a long time cleaning the place out.

Then began an even harsher struggle for survival than they had faced in the city.

At first things seemed manageable.

But it didn’t take long for the survivors of Yunyang Base to realize that this was the territory of cattle and sheep—and of the predators attracted by them.

When the giant zombie first appeared, it had frightened off the local animals, giving the survivors an opportunity to slip into the underground cold storage.

A few days later, however, the animals realized the danger was gone and gradually returned.

At first, the survivors were delighted.

They thought food was practically delivering itself to their doorstep.

Reality soon hit them hard.

A little-known fact: herbivores can be extremely dangerous.

Before the apocalypse, ranch workers had tools such as electric prods and other equipment to control livestock.

After the apocalypse, there were no such tools.

The survivors had fled in a hurry and possessed very few weapons—not even enough basic ones.

Ordinary humans, empty-handed and weakened by hunger, are no match for a sheep weighing around 100 kilograms that can charge and ram enemies with its horns.

Not to mention cattle, which can weigh over a thousand kilograms.

The survivors of Yunyang Base not only couldn’t defeat the herds of cattle and sheep that constantly roamed around in groups, they couldn’t even leave the cold-storage warehouse to find another place to live.

The moment they showed themselves, any herd that noticed these “weaker creatures” trespassing on its territory would immediately charge over and attack.

They had tried fighting back as a group, but whenever they gathered together, the cattle and sheep outnumbered them by an even greater margin. In the end, several survivors were killed, and the sheep they had finally managed to bring down was dragged away by a pack of wild wolves.

Reluctantly, everyone could only retreat once more.

The remaining survivors of Yunyang Base were trapped inside this underground cold-storage facility that had virtually nothing left.

The only reason they had survived this long was the food that had originally been stored there. But with scarce medicine, inadequate medical care, and the harsh environment, people were dying every few days.

Now, even their food reserves were running out.

Yu Zhitian looked at Zeng Tian.

“Fine. While everyone still has enough strength left to move, let’s make one last stand.”

“Either we all go out together and risk our lives to bring back a kill, or we all get trampled to death by the sheep and cattle outside.”

Zeng Tian immediately objected.

“You can’t go out. If the rest of us die, then we die. But if you die, there truly won’t be even the slightest hope left of ending this disaster.”

Yu Zhitian gave a bitter smile.

“I don’t have any lab equipment anymore, no tools, no virus samples. Staying here doesn’t help at all—it’d be better if I went out with you.”

“We’ll have them again later. We’re only temporarily trapped. Once we find a chance, we can gather the equipment again.”

Zeng Tian added slowly,

“You are everyone’s hope. If anything happens to you, then the people in the base truly won’t have any way out left. If we don’t make it back, you can come later.”

Yu Zhitian fell silent for a moment.

“Alright. I’ll wait for you here in the base.”

“If you don’t come back… I’ll go find you.”

Half a year. They had barely survived for half a year.

From initial hardship, to struggling just to survive, to glimpses of hope, and then sudden despair.

Yu Zhitian was already fifty-seven years old. She could clearly feel her life, in these unbearably difficult days, rapidly approaching its end.

At times, she even wondered whether, on the entire Velvet Star, only the Yunyang Base survivors were still alive.

At the beginning, there were three thousand people.

When they escaped, there were five hundred.

Now, only a little over three hundred remained.

Yu Zhitian couldn’t help asking herself again and again, deep in her heart:

Does humanity still have hope?

The more she understood the zombie virus, the more despair she felt.

This virus was almost like an irreversible breakdown of genes—was it really something human power could ever stop?

Even if she truly managed to develop a zombie vaccine, after seeing that mutated zombie towering dozens of meters high, with the current human population—could they even still resist such a monster?

Inside the cold-storage facility, everyone remained silent, including toddlers barely one or two years old, who also stayed unusually quiet.

Only Zeng Tian and a few of the base’s leaders were still trying to ease the heavy atmosphere a little.

The day passed quickly. Then another day passed.

On the morning of the third day, everyone lined up to receive food.

This was the last of their supplies. After eating it, they would all have to go out for a final desperate battle.

Yu Zhitian stood there. The seven children in the base were placed beside her.

A mother holding a two-year-old child walked over and handed the child to her. Only after Yu Zhitian took the child did she force out a dry, strained smile.

“Dr. Yu, I’m leaving her in your care.”

“If… if we don’t make it back, please, give her a quick end. Don’t let her suffer.”

Yu Zhitian’s eyes did not redden, and the child’s mother did not cry either.

There was too little water left in everyone’s bodies for tears anymore.

And after half a year of the apocalypse, most people had already grown numb to life and death.

Yu Zhitian simply held the child and nodded solemnly.

“I will take care of her. Don’t worry.”

Everyone stood by the cold storage ladder, and the first person began to climb up.

—BOOM!

—BOOM!

The cold storage suddenly began to shake. Their first reaction was that it was an earthquake, but soon they realized the sound didn’t match.

“Is it… cattle and sheep running?”

“No, it sounds like vehicles passing by?”

“Why do I feel like it’s a lot of people running? I think I even hear voices?”

“I heard someone shouting ‘woo-hoo’… am I hallucinating?”

The survivor on the ladder didn’t guess. He climbed up, carefully cracked open a small gap in the cold storage door, and cautiously peeked outside.

Then, as if struck by lightning, he suddenly pulled his head back in.

Zeng Tian pushed through the crowd.

“Zhang Cui, what’s going on outside? What did you see? What’s making that noise?”

Zhang Cui, still standing on the ladder, didn’t answer. It was as if something outside had completely stunned him.

He slowly opened the gap again and stuck his head out.

Outside—

Herds of cattle and sheep were frantically fleeing at the front, while behind them, a group of people at least 1.8 meters tall and powerfully built were desperately chasing after them.

People. A lot of people.

So many it felt like more than the population of an entire county—dense and endless, stretching as far as the eye could see.

Those sheep and cattle that used to act arrogantly, lowering their heads to charge at the slightest provocation, now looked like helpless chicks in the hands of this group, completely without any ability to resist.

The sheep herd ran past, and the human crowd chased after them.

The cattle herd ran back, and the humans chased them back again.

These people all had extremely long strides, moving so fast they almost left afterimages, while shouting incoherently:

“Woohoo!!!”

“%￥#￥%#￥!!”

Simple, crude lassos were thrown out one after another, landing on the cattle and sheep. The animals tried to escape, but were forcibly yanked back by the humans shouting unintelligible cries.

Some people, while chasing a herd of cattle, dodged a wild bull’s charge, grabbed onto the back of a cow, and actually climbed onto it mid-run—ending up riding it as it sprinted forward.

That man raised his left arm:

“Woohoo!!!”

Zhang Cui’s eyes were vacant. Was this still human strength?

Or was this a hallucination before starvation?

He pulled his head back in.

Then stuck it out again.

Pulled it back again, then stuck it out again.

Zeng Tian watched him going in and out like that without speaking, growing more and more anxious.

“Zhang Cui, just tell us what you saw!”

If you’re not going to speak, at least stop blocking the ladder!

Zhang Cui: “I… I don’t know how to describe it… Director, have you ever read novels?”

Zeng Tian: “?”

Zhang Cui rubbed his face hard, still dazed.

“I think… we might be like in those novels. We’ve crossed over into another world. Like—”

Zeng Tian began to suspect Zhang Cui had finally cracked under pressure. Still, he stepped closer and followed along:

“Like what?”

Zhang Cui wiped his face again, completely stunned.

“‘The apocalypse arrives, and our entire base gets transported into a primitive wilderness world’?”

<< _ >>

The post Safe City Ch.22.3 first appeared on A Wandering Potato.

In the new map, what awaited the actors was, of course, nothing warm or pleasant.

The elevator, after being restarted, still followed the operating logic that had been tampered with by the livestream team.

No matter which floor the actors selected inside the elevator, when it stopped, the floor display would always show “13th Floor.”

Upon reaching this level, the elevator lights would go out again and come to a suspended stop, forcing the actors to step out and enter the current floor.

Of course, as mentioned earlier, Hopkins Hospital did not actually have a 13th floor—so in reality, the actors were arriving on the 18th floor.

Since the hospital had only recently been put into use, everything above the 16th floor had not yet been officially opened. This gave the livestream team room to operate.

They had already altered all the floor signage on the 18th floor, changing the number “8” into “3,” and—following the corresponding plot of the urban legend about “the 13th floor you can never leave”—they rearranged the interior layout accordingly. Their goal was to create locations inside the 18th floor that would match elements of the story for anyone familiar with it.

In this way, once the actors stepped out of the elevator, the combination of the floor signs and the urban legend would easily mislead them into believing they had “entered the 13th floor described in the story.”

The livestream team had stationed an employee named Renier on the 18th floor in advance.

During the actors’ exploration, Renier would make strange noises to draw them toward one side of the corridor, and at the end of the hallway he would throw a bouncing red ball—this was tied to another hospital urban legend, also fabricated by the livestream team specifically to scare people, just like the 13th floor and the “pregnant ghost.”

After using the ball and various technical tricks to thoroughly scare the actors and make them embarrass themselves, Renier would finally force them into the left-side emergency stairwell and lock the stairwell door behind them.

The livestream stage would then smoothly shift from the 18th floor to the left stairwell.

From this point on, the elevator is completely “freed.” Staff members who were previously hiding in the morgue on the basement level and in the corridors will take the elevator up to the upper floors to join Renier and complete the final performance together.

The left-side corridor had also been pre-arranged.

The livestream team tampered with the floor labels from the top floor down to the ground floor, making every level display “13th Floor,” while also removing small details that might give the trick away, ensuring that each floor looked nearly identical. In this way, no matter whether the actors went up or down, the number they saw would always be 13.

The stairwell was equipped with motion-activated lights that stayed on for only one minute per floor before turning off. If someone stood by the railing and looked up or down beyond the lit area, all they would see was darkness. In addition, the stairwell had no windows, and the doors leading to the corridors were locked, making it impossible for anyone inside to accurately determine which floor they were on.

Since the 18th floor was located in the middle of the building, there were many “buffer floors” both above and below. If the actors went too far up or down, the staff would use special sound effects, rolling severed heads, sudden bloody handprints, and other horror elements to scare them, restricting their movement.

—As a side note, the security doors between the stairwell and each floor’s corridor were also locked, to prevent actors from accidentally opening them and stepping into the hallways outside. After all, the livestream team did not have the manpower or resources to modify the signage and layout of every floor in the hospital building.

After a few attempts, the actors would likely become convinced that they were trapped in a loop, falling into intense panic.

At that point, the final scare would make its grand entrance—

A patient-dressed Renier would quietly enter the stairwell at the moment the actors were at their most panicked, creating an unexpected “chance encounter” with them.

Renier had undergone special effects makeup. He looked pale and gaunt, as if a skeleton had been draped in a layer of human skin. His movements were heavy and exhausted; upon his first appearance, he kept his head lowered and shuffled slowly through the seemingly endless corridor, like a wandering ghost.

When he saw the actors suddenly appear, Renier’s expression changed dramatically. His eyes instantly lit up with an intense, almost blinding fervor.

“The door! The door has appeared again? I’ve waited so long—finally, the door is open!”

Shouting with a trembling voice, Renier staggered toward the stairwell door and pushed at it with all his strength.

But the emergency door was locked. It was impossible to open.

After slamming into it more than a dozen times, Renier collapsed onto the floor in despair. He looked up at the actors who had suddenly appeared in the corridor and asked cautiously, “Today… what date is it today?”

The actor: “blah blah.”

“So that’s how it is… I’ve already been wandering here for half a year… haha… hahahaha…”

After dramatically acting out the role for a while and perfectly connecting with the protagonist of the “never-ending 13th floor” urban legend, Renier raised a prop knife. In front of the actor, he stabbed himself and fake blood sprayed all over the actor.

“I’m sorry… I’m truly too desperate…”

That was Renier’s final line.

……

The above was the livestream team’s original script.

After hearing Tom’s recounting of it, Everly’s temples throbbed. She felt this prank livestream was vicious to an absurd degree.

If she hadn’t been experienced and noticed the cameras in advance, she had no idea which stage would have made her jump in fright.

What a damned group of people—so focused on entertainment value that they didn’t care at all about how the participants would feel.

In that case, Everly naturally had no need to consider them either.

“Those who harm others will themselves be harmed; those who scare others will themselves be scared. The wheel of fortune turns, and now it’s their turn to experience what it feels like to be pranked and frightened!”

The livestream team consisted of 11 people in total. Seven were on the basement level: one responsible for playing the “ghost,” four hiding in the morgue, and two stationed behind the emergency doors. One was on the 18th floor—that was Renier, the patient role. The remaining three were in the first-floor control room, including the two main operators of the livestream account: Dr. J and Richard.

Among the two operators, Dr. J handled funding and public appearances, while Richard stayed behind the scenes to provide ideas. Neither of them was a good person.

Everly had already KO’d seven of them. The remaining four fugitives—she had no intention of letting any of them go.

In order, she would start with the control room on the first floor.

She walked all the way down the stairwell, calculating the actual floor count as she went.

When she reached the number six, Everly stopped at a security door and knocked.

Knock, knock.

A clear sound echoed from the other side. A moment later, the locked metal door was pulled open slightly.

Behind the crack in the door stood Misha, leaning on a cane, a pried-open chain lock still in her hand.

“Wow, that’s quite a setup,” Misha said upon seeing Everly, now covered in blood. A gleeful, chaos-loving excitement spread across her face. “Orff has already hacked the activation permissions for the surgical elevator. You can just take it directly. He’ll black out all the cameras along your route. Go give them a proper lesson!”

“Thanks. I’m heading there now!”

Everly patted her friend’s shoulder and, while the corridor was clear, quickly ran toward the elevator hall with a folding knife in hand.

Meanwhile, in the control room, Dr. J and Lip Ring Richard, after a round of mutual persuasion, had already returned to the surveillance monitors and were closely watching Everly’s movements.

In the United States, surveillance cameras were not widely deployed everywhere. However, hospitals were public facilities, so in non-private areas such as corridors, stairwells, and reception desks—places not involving patient privacy—cameras were still installed.

When Everly reached the platform on the 6th floor, the surveillance feed flickered for a moment, experiencing a brief stutter. When it returned to normal, Everly had already shifted slightly forward, crossed the landing, and stepped onto the stairs leading down to the 5th floor.

“All the emergency stairwell doors are locked, right?”

“Yes, they’re all locked, and warning signs for maintenance have been placed at each entrance… No—wait, the basement level door isn’t locked!” the lip-ringed man suddenly widened his eyes.

The basement emergency door was being guarded by Tom and Edron, because they were responsible for the “blood-splashing prank on the pulling-door actors,” so that particular door had not been locked.

“What do we do if that crazy woman—”

Before Dr. J could finish speaking, a series of knock-knock sounds suddenly echoed.

The two men inside tensed instantly and instinctively looked at the monitors. Seeing that the “mad woman” was still moving between the 4th and 5th floors in the stairwell, they let out a small sigh of relief.

Dr. J kicked the mohawked man’s leg, ordering the underling to go check who was at the door, while he turned back to discuss the basement door issue with the lip-ringed man.

But then a familiar voice came from outside.

“It—it’s me, Edron. Open the door…”

“It’s Edron—he’s still alive!”

“Wait, if that’s the case, then doesn’t that mean the basement door—”

The two men inside exchanged a glance and quickly formulated a plan.

So when Edron finally made it to the control room, trembling and exhausted after walking the entire way in constant fear, what he received from his so-called companions was not comfort or relief—but an extremely difficult assignment.

“You take this chain lock right now and go through the right-side emergency passage to the basement. Lock the emergency door down there.”

Dr. J stood behind the door and forced a heavy chain lock into Edron’s hands.

“W-what…?”

“Do I need to repeat myself?” Dr. J said coldly. “Take this and lock the basement’s right-side emergency door. That woman is currently moving down the left stairwell and should already be on the 3rd floor. You know very well the basement emergency door isn’t locked. If she reaches the basement, crosses the corridor, and enters the right-side stairwell, she’ll be able to take the stairs all the way up to the first floor and find the control room. Then all of us will be in danger!”

Edron’s hands flailed as if he had been burned.

“No, no, no—impossible! I can’t do it! I’ll die! That woman is basically a demon—I can’t do it!”

Dr. J’s voice turned ice-cold.

“No, you can. And you must. Otherwise, what you did to Tom and the others will be on the front page tomorrow.”

“W-what…?”

“I don’t have time to persuade you slowly,” Dr. J continued sharply. “Let me put it simply: you know my influence. If I want to, I can make all the deaths tonight fall on you. Do you really want your elderly grandmother to be unable to hold her head up in front of the neighbors because her grandson is labeled a murderer?”

“You—y-you…” Edron’s chest heaved violently. Shock, anger, fear, regret—his emotions flickered rapidly across his face.

At last, as if everything had finally clicked into place, his hesitation and retreat vanished. His pale, deathlike face settled into resignation.

“…I understand. I’ll do it.”

<< TOC >>

The post Rules Ch.276 first appeared on A Wandering Potato.

“Ah! AHHHH!”

The lip-pierced man screamed, as if he had been burned. He flung his hand and threw the phone away.

“What’s wrong with you? Are you out of your mind!” Dr. J was startled and snapped at him.

For once, the lip-pierced man ignored Dr. J. Trembling, he rushed to the surveillance console and pulled up the cameras set on the 18th floor. He scanned through the small screens one by one, and quickly found Renier’s figure.

He was wearing a white striped hospital gown, lying face down in the corridor not far from the elevator, completely motionless. A large pool of red had spread beneath him—it was clear at a glance that he was already dead.

A blood-stained red rubber ball lay beside Renier’s hand. Not far from it was a phone smeared with blood.

The phone was still connected to a call. If the image were enlarged, the screen would show that the caller was none other than the lip-pierced man himself.

Since the phone was on the ground, where had that mad woman gone?

There was no time to grieve for his dead companion. Cold sweat rose all over the lip-pierced man’s back as he hit rewind. Soon, he found the mad woman’s figure—

Half a minute earlier, just as he had thrown his phone away in fear, she was standing beside Renier’s corpse. Her blood-covered hand pulled away from her ear, casually dropping the phone—now emitting distorted static—onto the ground.

Then, the woman lifted her head. Her face, speckled with blood, turned toward the direction of the hidden camera. Her eyes were icy, devoid of any normal human emotion, staring straight at the screen.

Slowly, she opened her mouth and formed several silent words toward the surveillance camera.

The lip-pierced man mimicked her movements, mouthing them out slowly. Very soon, he pieced together what she had said:

“I’ve… found… you…”

After she finished speaking, the woman curved her lips into a sweet smile. She turned around, the fluffy pom-poms on both sides of her knit hat swaying back and forth as she moved. While humming that eerie, unsettling nursery rhyme, she walked briskly toward the stairwell at the end of the corridor.

The lip-pierced man felt a chill run through his entire body from that single glance.

She had found them… That woman—she was not some “crazy person” at all, but a completely deranged serial killer! He was wrong—wrong, all wrong. They never should have chosen her as the target of their prank. While they hid behind the scenes, smug and convinced they controlled everything, the situation had already reversed. They were the ones on the chopping block now.

“Call the police! I’m calling the police! That woman is coming—she’s going to kill all of us!” the lip-pierced man shouted in breakdown as he rushed toward his phone, trying to unlock the screen and open the call function.

“No calling the police. Do you want all of us to be finished?”

Before his hand could even reach the phone, a force struck from behind, and his hand was brutally stomped to the floor.

“Listen. We’re on the 1st floor, she’s on the 18th. There’s no way she can find us in a short time. You’re just panicking and got fooled by that woman. She’s just a lunatic—a mentally ill psycho!”

Dr. J grabbed the lip-pierced man from behind and took his phone. Right in front of him, he removed the SIM card and snapped it in half. Only after ensuring there was no way to make an emergency call did he finally release him.

“I’ve already contacted a local gang. In half an hour, they’ll send people to deal with the bodies—and take care of that crazy woman while they’re at it. Until then, we just wait. Understand?”

The lip-pierced man stared at his dismantled phone, still somewhat dazed.

“Pull yourself together! Think about our account—you saw it, didn’t you? Just tonight alone, we gained 50,000 followers. Right after the stream ended, people already started contacting us about promotions… Leave the bodies to me. I have a way to make their deaths look like accidents. As long as we get past this hurdle, a bright future is waiting for us at the end…”

Dr. J kept talking on and on. His voice was hurried and hollow. Rather than trying to convince the lip-pierced man, it sounded more like he was using the words to steady himself.

Because he had been busy dealing with the issue of his companion trying to call the police, he hadn’t paid attention to the surveillance screens for a while.

In a moment no one noticed, Everly had already gone down to the 8th floor via the emergency stairwell.

The stairwell also used motion-activated lights. There were no windows inside, and the ceiling lamps were the only source of illumination. The dim yellow lights would only flicker on briefly when someone passed by, and quickly go out again after they left, plunging the corridor back into darkness.

Within the stairwell, the yellowish light stretched the shadows of a person long and thin from top to bottom.

Walking alone through the empty stairwell, her footsteps echoed off the walls and stairs, returning to her ears in a distorted rhythm, mixed with a faint, almost imperceptible hum. When the sound of her boots hitting the ground overlapped with the echo of her steps, it felt as if another invisible presence was following right behind her, mimicking every movement she made.

In such an environment, it was easy for anyone to feel suffocated and anxious after walking for too long.

What was even more unsettling was that every time Everly finished two flights of stairs and reached the next floor, the wall sign would clearly show “13th Floor.”

Hopkins Hospital’s inpatient building did not actually have a 13th floor.

Or rather, Western culture generally dislikes the number 13, and hospitals are especially sensitive to such taboos.

To avoid bad luck, Hopkins Hospital had simply renamed the would-be 13th floor as the 14th floor—just like how in some buildings in China, the 4th floor is skipped and they go straight to 5.

If there had been windows in the stairwell, it wouldn’t have mattered; she could have gauged her height from the outside view. But the entire stairwell was sealed shut, and the only way to tell which floor she was on was the label posted on each landing.

If someone accidentally wandered in and saw these signs, it would be very easy for them to become disoriented.

Everly, however, was fine. Aside from having to count her floors manually as she went down, she didn’t feel anything unusual.

Because all of this had been deliberately arranged by the livestream.

Earlier, in the mortuary, she had single-handedly “surrounded” the other side with her exceptional skills. After a fierce fight, she successfully knocked out four of them and captured the last remaining one—a young man named “Tom.”

From Tom, Everly not only learned their background, but also extracted their entire prank plan.

It turned out she had been pulled into a prank livestream. Moreover, before she had even taken the elevator earlier that night, the organizers had already begun warming up the stream—they sent a staff member to pose as a patient in the inpatient building, who spent several days in the fourth-floor common activity room telling “urban legends” about the hospital.

When Everly arrived, that staff member just happened to be telling a story about the impossible 13th floor. The same went for the later stories she heard from Misha—the burning psychiatric hospital, the reanimated corpse in the morgue, the bouncing red rubber ball in the corridor, the pregnant woman in a bloodstained gown—all of them had been fabricated by the streaming team.

The purpose of inventing these stories was simple: to plant a seed in the listeners’ minds. That way, when the chosen prank target went out at night and took the elevator, accidentally ended up in the basement level, and saw a body bag suddenly move, they would immediately recall the hospital legends they had heard during the day and automatically frame everything they saw as something terrifying.

As a side note, Everly also learned from Tom that she had not originally been the intended target of this prank. It was the livestream leader—someone nicknamed “Dr. J”—who had happened to encounter her and, on a whim, insisted on switching targets at the last moment.

“Then what about this Dr. J—what kind of person is he? Does he have a lot of authority in the team?” Everly pressed.

By then, Tom had already been stripped of his earpiece and was tied backward onto a body transport cart, completely unable to resist.

He stared fearfully at the folding knife pressed against his throat. Feeling the pain spreading through his body, he didn’t dare lie and sold out his teammate without the slightest hesitation:

“He’s the center of the whole team. All of us were hired by him with his money. Dr. J’s father is the actual owner of Hopkins Hospital, his mother’s family has been in politics for generations, and his uncle is supposedly a state legislator…”

After rattling off everything he knew about Dr. J, at Everly’s request, Tom went on to explain the script of the prank livestream.

Yes—there was a script, of course.

Although the unsuspecting “actors” who were dragged into it had no idea they were part of a malicious livestream, the production team would guide and manipulate their actions through various means to ensure the performance followed their planned storyline. Otherwise, if the “actors” panicked and ran off randomly, missing the preset scare points, the livestream would quickly become boring.

This was how they did it:

First, the team modified the elevator’s backend control logic to ensure it would transport the unlucky target down to the basement level.

On the basement floor, the corridor’s power supply had been cut by the production team. Only the motion-sensor lights in the elevator lobby and a single ceiling light at the far end of the left corridor were still working.

According to normal human behavior, if someone suddenly arrived on a basement floor filled with bodies, with the surroundings completely dark except for a lit corridor on the left, they would naturally head toward the only source of light.

No one expected that the newly selected “actor,” Everly, would turn out to be such a stubborn contrarian. She was basically Doraemon incarnate—she casually pulled out a custom-made high-powered flashlight and marched forward with it on, full of confidence, heading straight down the right-hand corridor.

Originally, there were no guards stationed at the right-side corridor’s security door. To prevent her from escaping via that stairwell, the team had no choice but to urgently move Tom and Edron over from the left-side passage to block that door, forcing her to turn around and head toward the lit left corridor to try her luck.

The team had actually set up quite a few jump scares along the left corridor. On her way toward the lit area, she would encounter strange footsteps, dark shadows darting across her feet, fluttering curtains, and various other minor scares.

These small scares were designed not only to deepen the sense of unease in the “actor’s” mind, but also to subtly herd them forward—making them too afraid to linger in the dark hallway and effectively driving them toward the lit area.

However, reality did not go according to plan.

Everly’s flashlight was simply too bright. The darting “shadow” was actually a remote-controlled toy mouse, and the fluttering curtains were blown by a fan. All of these setups would instantly give themselves away under strong light, so the livestream team only dared to play eerie sounds through speakers and didn’t dare activate the physical props, fearing they would ruin the effect.

Once the “actor” reached the lit area, it was time for Mike’s role—the reanimated pregnant corpse—to appear.

After encountering the pregnant ghost, the “actor” had three possible choices: run toward the security door, run toward the mortuary exit, or turn back.

If the actor chose option one, Tom and Edron hiding behind the security door would grab fake blood and splash it all over them, scaring them away.

Option two was also unworkable, because there were several staff members hidden inside the mortuary who would not allow the “actor” to open the door.

Therefore, no matter what initial choice was made, after running into dead ends, the “actor” would eventually be forced—under the pursuit of the “ghost” Mike—to turn around and flee into the pitch-black corridor.

By that point, the elevator system would already have completed its restart.

While being chased, the “actor,” passing through the elevator lobby, would see that the elevator doors were open and the lights inside were on.

The illuminated elevator would feel like a sudden shelter in the middle of a storm, undoubtedly drawing in the desperate “actor” with nowhere else to go.

Once inside, the “actor” could finally leave the eerie basement floor behind, and be escorted by the elevator into the next “map.”

<< TOC >>

The post Rules Ch.275 first appeared on A Wandering Potato.

“Alright, Aether has completed the operation.”

Cheng Qisheng opened the prompt beside the well.

[Facility Name: Water Well (Tier 1)]

[Function: Provides a source of clean water]

[Water Output: 150 billion liters/day (sufficient for 150 million people’s normal water use)]

[Service Life: 50 years (already used: 1 minute)]

Looking at the well’s description, Cheng Qisheng felt a mix of happiness and, at the same time, thought that money in any world really gets spent faster than it’s earned.

She had just been thinking she was extremely rich.

But after buying the air tower and the water well, the massive amount of crystals the residents had earned over these past few days instantly dropped to just three thousand.

These three thousand crystals were reserved as an emergency escape fund and couldn’t be touched.

If she wanted to spend more money next, she would have to wait for the residents to deliver newly earned crystals.

Cheng Qisheng felt as if money was like water flowing through her hands, leaving behind only a damp trace.

But after reporting the news to Blue Sea’s leadership and seeing their expressions of ecstatic relief, she became even more certain that the money had been well spent.

Skipping over the grateful expressions and the Blue Sea high-level officials who had once again begun their daily ritual of superstition—kowtowing to the sky and muttering all kinds of overly emotional prayers—Cheng Qisheng surveyed the entire Blue Sea.

Air and water, the most basic necessities for human survival, were now both available in the Blue Sea Safe City.

From this point on, Blue Sea could truly live without worries.

With sufficient air, residents would no longer face the risk of suffocation or death.

With a water source, those who returned from outside after fighting zombies could finally enjoy a satisfying hot shower using their accumulated points.

Food was not an immediate concern; existing reserves were still sufficient. Moreover, crystal hunters sent out had been returning with the coordinates of various grain warehouses—those nearby had already successfully transported food back, while those farther away would take more time.

Including Zilan University, the farmland in Miang’an City, and the cultivation zones within the safe city itself, Blue Sea would not be short on food for the time being.

However, if the goal was to provide a positive stimulus to the residents, all of this still wasn’t quite enough.

Cheng Qisheng’s gaze landed on a follower of Velvet Star.

At that moment, he was lying in ambush in the grass with a squad of crystal hunters, eyes gleaming as he stared ahead.

Through this follower’s perspective, Cheng Qisheng was able to obtain a bird’s-eye view of the scene.

Across the rolling grassland, herds of cattle and sheep were grazing leisurely. Suddenly, a pack of wolves burst out, causing the animals to scatter in panic.

The faster ones escaped disaster, while the slower ones became food for the wolves. After the pack dragged away their prey, the grassland fell quiet again.

In just half a year, this place already looked like a proper prairie.

A Velvet Star follower named Yun Yu stammered in Blue Sea’s language:

“See? I told you there were several large ranches here. Mianyan City has a vast territory and good environment—there are many livestock farms. There must be at least a hundred thousand cattle and sheep here combined.”

The team leader of the crystal hunters laughed heartily and patted him on the shoulder.

“Good, good! You’ve done well! It wasn’t a waste for us to go to so much trouble and travel all this way!”

One of the teammates licked his dry lips.

“With so many cattle and sheep still alive here, there must be a usable large water source. We can also replenish our water here before heading back.”

Not easy at all.

This remote corner was extremely difficult to find. Along the way, they had taken countless detours. Because there were few people and many zombies, they didn’t dare use any vehicles that might make noise for fear of attracting them.

They first rode bicycles, then continued on foot, sleeping only three to four hours a day on average.

This team, named the “Rush Rush Rush Squad,” had relied entirely on Yun Yu’s vague memory of the pasture’s location to make their way here over five days and five nights. Their heels were practically covered in blisters from walking.

In Mianyan City, there were almost no tall buildings that could be used as shelter. The farther west they went, the fewer high-rises there were.

Fortunately, the trees here were tall and sturdy. At night, everyone would light a campfire beneath them and then climb up into the branches to sleep.

The campfires attracted zombies, and every morning they woke up to find a pile of zombies below, clawing at the tree trunks.

If you rolled over slightly at night, you could practically fall straight into the zombies’ embrace. It was extremely “thrilling”.

Because they had already left the military drone coverage zone, there was no standard usable route anymore, and they had no idea where they could find food or water supplies along the way.

So this team could only scrimp and save the entire journey, drinking as little water as possible to avoid dying of thirst before they even arrived.

At this point, everyone had lost at least four to five pounds, but each of them looked unusually excited.

“Let’s send this ranch coordinate back! At least 2,000 points per person as a reward!”

Yun Yu nodded eagerly and happily opened his tactical watch.

“I’ll upload it to the intel trading system right now!”

But the moment he sent it, he froze.

The teammates were shocked.

“What’s wrong? Did someone beat us to it?”

“No… it’s not that.”

Yun Yu looked confused.

“It says it was purchased less than a second after I uploaded it, and the points reward has already been credited.”

The others also froze.

“Seriously? We’ve walked so far out here—there shouldn’t even be any network, right??”

All crystal hunters knew that even without a network connection, intel could still be uploaded.

But reward points normally only appeared after returning to the city.

Yet when they checked their tactical watches, their points had indeed increased—and not by 2,000, but by 4,000.

The group erupted into joy again.

4,000 points!! Worth it, totally worth it!! Even if they had to walk another ten days and nights, it would still be worth it!!

Had the AI network range expanded?

But the map was still only available offline.

In the end, the team leader made the decision:

“Forget it!! As long as we’ve got the points, that’s all that matters! Let’s find the water source first, refill, and then head back!”

After transferring points to all members of that team, Cheng Qisheng had already sketched the map they uploaded by hand and had Aether send it back to the safe city.

She had been paying close attention to this group that had confidently declared they were going to find large ranches.

And they really did find one.

Good, good.

Wasn’t this exactly the kind of “stimulation source” she needed?

Cheng Qisheng hesitated for a few seconds between two options—sending the military to directly harvest the ranch, or letting the residents go there themselves and handle it freely.

In the end, she chose the latter.

No particular reason—just as the creator god of Blue Sea, she had a feeling the residents would prefer doing it themselves.

Besides, since the cattle and sheep were meant for the residents anyway, she might as well leave it entirely to them. It would also save the trouble of transportation.

Cheng Qisheng closed her eyes and sank into her mental energy, updating the map of that region on all residents’ watches and phones.

—

The exploration team had just climbed onto another high-rise building and was scanning the horizon when their watches vibrated twice.

“Huh? Is there signal now?”

Wang Moning subconsciously opened her watch, and instantly her attention was drawn to the image of plump cattle and sturdy sheep.

So much meat.

Gulp—

That was another teammate swallowing hard beside her.

“Captain, do we go?”

Song Xi wiped his mouth and stared straight at the cattle.

“Go!”

—

Residents of the Withered Star Safe City were cautiously hiding around a corner, secretly watching a group of Blue Sea residents killing zombies.

After clearing the zombies, those Blue Sea residents actually just grabbed a damaged door and ripped it off its hinges with their bare hands.

The Withered Star residents all sucked in a sharp breath.

“The people of Blue Sea are way too vicious. No wonder the city lord told us to stay far away.”

“How could they not be vicious? Just look at what they eat… then look at what we eat.”

Yesterday, when they encountered Blue Sea, it was on the second floor of a building. At the time, they saw firelight and assumed it was their own safe city’s residents. Only after going upstairs did they realize it was Blue Sea people cooking over a fire.

What they were eating were rough grass cakes—so sparse and unfulfilling that even biting into them didn’t satisfy hunger. They could only break them into hot water and drink them as soup.

But the Blue Sea people? They were eating solid flour pancakes, along with eggs and ham sausages. The aroma drifted up the stairs and rushed straight into their noses.

Although it was only a fleeting glimpse (they ran away immediately after realizing they had run into Blue Sea people), that smell of ham and eggs lingered in their minds even now.

Still, Blue Sea people were genuinely tall and strong. No wonder they didn’t need bandages on their arms—just one look at a whole group of them, all tall with healthy complexions, and it was obvious they were Blue Sea residents.

The group whispered among themselves:

“After they finish clearing this building, let’s go in and see if we can scavenge anything useful.”

“Blue Sea must be incredibly wealthy. Last time I searched a place they had cleared, I even found a usable battery they left behind. I got lucky.”

“Of course they’re rich—they eat so well.”

Someone muttered quietly:

“Do you think Blue Sea accepts outsiders? Maybe we should defect to Blue Sea?”

“No idea, but with how strong they are, what would they even need short people like us for?”

“Yeah, true.”

As they were whispering, something suddenly felt off.

“Wait… why are they all checking their phones?”

“Why are they all standing up?”

“Why are they leaving?!!”

More than a dozen Blue Sea residents hurried off with their weapons, leaving the Withered Star residents behind in confusion.

“Uh… should we still go up and scavenge?”

“Scavenge my foot. They didn’t even finish clearing the zombies, and there are still some chasing behind them. Forget it, let’s go too. Now that the Blue Sea people are gone, this place is getting dangerous. We should move.”

The deputy captain in the Blue Sea team glanced back briefly.

The captain asked, “What is it?”

The deputy captain smiled. “Nothing. Those Withered Star residents who were following us have left.”

“Let them be. Right now the most important thing is to rush to the coordinates on the map. Beef! I want beef! Hot, juicy, delicious beef!”

—

A Blue Sea team, carrying full loads of nucleus crystals still stained with zombie blood, was returning to the safe city.

After lining up and entering the inner city, they were planning to take a bath, eat a proper meal, and then sleep for several days of well-deserved rest.

But their watches automatically displayed a map prompt—and photos of cattle and sheep.

The entire team froze.

“!”

Slurp—

Gulp—

No one even needed to discuss it. Just from the synchronized swallowing sounds alone, they exchanged a look and immediately, in perfect understanding, turned toward the supplies area.

Buy travel supplies—and line up again to leave the city!

Delicious beef!

Nourishing mutton!

Here we come!

—

The “Rush Rush Rush Squad” successfully tracked a herd of cattle and found a water source.

They filtered the water through gauze, boiled it pot by pot in small cooking pots, and only after filling all their canteens with drinkable water did the day finally end.

Looking at the map they had recorded, their next step was to return the same way.

They were too few in number, and their supplies were too limited. The grasslands stretched endlessly, and there were wolf packs—it wasn’t suitable to hunt and replenish energy on the spot.

The Rush Rush Rush Squad was not greedy. Although they were drooling over the large cattle and sheep, conditions didn’t allow it. Compared to taking risks to hunt, it was better to head back.

With 4,000 points in hand, they would still be able to eat well after returning.

So the team set off on their return journey. If nothing unexpected happened, they would travel day and night and reach home in five days.

But something unexpected still happened.

The next day, at sunset, the “Rush Rush Rush Squad” saw a massive Blue Sea force approaching head-on.

Not a military unit—but ordinary civilians.

Yet there were an extremely, extremely, extremely large number of them.

The wild grass that had once caused the team so much trouble along the road had all been cleared away.

The Rush Rush Rush Squad: “……”

They were stunned.

“What are so many of you doing here?”

One of the Blue Sea residents replied, “Hunting cattle and sheep, of course. Didn’t you receive the notice? There’s a huge herd here!”

The Rush Rush Rush Squad: “……This pasture was discovered by our team.”

They looked at the endless crowd.

“But you guys came way too fast, didn’t you?”

They hadn’t even returned to the city yet—and the hunting parties were already on the road.

The resident laughed loudly.

“Too many people, too little meat—we’ve got to move fast. You know how many people Blue Sea has.”

“We’re actually on the slow side. Some people even rented vehicles—they’ll probably catch up soon.”

After speaking, the resident patted his chest.

“Anyway, thanks for discovering the pasture. I’ve got to hurry ahead.”

The Rush Rush Rush Squad hurriedly returned the gesture.

No problem—they had also received the reward points.

But looking at the well-prepared waves of incoming teams, they started to wonder if they should just head back too.

“But… our food is almost gone.”

At that moment, a passing resident turned back.

“Out of food? Come buy from us! We’re ‘Everywhere-Is-A-Trade Team.’ When buying supplies outside, our prices are only one-fifth higher than official safe-city prices. Renting weapons is only one-third higher. We also sell quick-recovery white sugar and fine salt—guaranteed to keep you in peak combat condition.”

He handed them a handwritten flyer:

“Honest, practical! [Everywhere-Is-A-Trade Team]—the best choice for you!”

“This is our price list. Please take a look, but be careful not to damage the flyer—we still need it.”

Local resident Yun Yu: “???”

Why is there a trading caravan selling goods in the middle of nowhere in the wilderness??

<< _ >>

The post Safe City Ch.22.2 first appeared on A Wandering Potato.