Chapter 6: Cooperation: He Deserved to Die

The words were barely out of his mouth before Ji Li regretted them, and he hurriedly lowered his head to apologize.

“I’m sorry, Sister, I didn’t mean anything by it. I just thought you were really impressive… Sorry, I’ll go now.”

The more Ji Li spoke, the more awkward he felt, and he was just about to step around the points scattered across the ground when a hoarse, breathy sound rose up.

“Delivery Guy?”

Ji Li froze mid-step and turned to look at the middle-aged woman. Only when he saw her wrinkled business suit did it click, and he flipped up the visor of his riot helmet.

“You’re the one in the high heels from yesterday…!”

The middle-aged woman nodded. She opened her mouth, then closed it again, pulled a phone from her pocket, typed out a message, and walked over to hold it out to Ji Li.

Ji Li didn’t take it; he just leaned in to look, his eyes instinctively darting to the top right corner first.

56%.

What kind of phone battery lasted this long?

What is with this phone’s battery? Ji Li grumbled inwardly as he read the woman’s message.

[Two-thirds of these zombies are yours.]

Ji Li froze for a moment, then hurriedly waved his hands. “No, no! You killed all these zombies, Sister. I can’t take them!”

The woman took back her phone and kept typing.

[If it weren’t for you, I’d be dead already. This is what you deserve. Besides, there’s something I want to discuss with you. We can talk about the details later—let’s dig out the cores first.]

Seeing that Ji Li still wanted to say something, the woman waved him off and pointed toward the campus.

Ji Li immediately understood.

There was still a group of Players inside the school. If they kept haggling and someone came over and saw this field of zombies, things would get complicated.

Ji Li didn’t refuse again. He took out his Folding Knife and slashed at the neck of the zombie at his feet.

The two of them divided the work like this, and before long, every Zombie Core had been dug out.

Ji Li cupped the Zombie Cores in his hands and tried to hand them to the middle-aged woman, but she shook her head and even grabbed a handful from her own pile to give him.

Ji Li quickly backed up two steps and refused. “Sister, really, you don’t need to. You were wronged by that Suit Guy too. By the way—where is he? I’d like to have a… little… chat with him.”

He squeezed the last three words out through gritted teeth, jaw clenched, a flicker of menace passing through his eyes.

At the mention of the Suit Guy, the woman’s expression changed, but she quickly calmed down and pointed toward the Gatehouse.

Seeing this, Ji Li shoved the cores into her hands, picked up his golf club, and stormed inside.

Two seconds later, he came rushing back out, face pale, words tumbling out incoherently. “He… his eyes… he… these zombies…”

The middle-aged woman was crouched on the ground counting Zombie Cores. Only after counting the last one did she look up at Ji Li, her voice faint as a mosquito’s buzz but steady and flat.

“I killed him.”

Ji Li’s eyes went wide, and he involuntarily took a step back.

The woman lowered her head expressionlessly, divided the pile of cores into two portions, picked up the noticeably smaller one, and stood up to face Ji Li.

“It was self-defense.”

At those words, Ji Li instantly recalled the image of the Suit Guy shoving the woman down yesterday. His expression shifted several times before he finally made up his mind and asked:

“Then… do you want me to help you move him out? That’s your Safe House, isn’t it?”

The woman froze, then started to laugh. Crow’s feet burst from the corners of her eyes with that smile, making Ji Li feel an odd pang of nostalgia.

Laughing, the woman shook her head, pointed at her own throat, then gestured for Ji Li to take the cores on the ground, and finally pointed outside the campus while making a typing motion.

Ji Li nodded quickly, pulled a stack of plastic bags from his backpack, handed one to the woman, and crouched down to start picking up cores.

The woman took the bag, packed the cores inside, wiped her hands casually on her clothes, took out her phone, and walked toward the gate while typing.

As Ji Li gathered the cores, he counted them—forty in total, no fewer than the woman had promised.

He stuffed the cores into the outer pocket of his backpack, wiped his hands clean with a wet wipe, gave the Gatehouse one last complicated look, and turned to walk out the school gate.

Outside, the woman stood by the wall a short distance away and waved her phone at Ji Li.

Ji Li walked over and, at her gesture, took the phone—and finally learned the full story of the Suit Guy’s death.

The woman’s name was Gao Lan. Before transmigrating, she had been a senior executive at a corporate group. Yesterday she hadn’t bumped into Ji Li on purpose—she’d lost her balance after the Suit Guy’s laptop bag slammed into her back.

After Ji Li saved her, she ran to the Gatehouse and knocked, but the Suit Guy ignored her completely. Only when she threatened to break the glass did he grudgingly open the door—and then refused to help Ji Li.

When Gao Lan tried to force the door open, he shoved her down.

After that, the two of them got into a fierce argument, which only stopped when the noise drew a few zombies.

[When the System popped up the Virtual Screen, I thought the quest was complete. But after the quest settlement, a new quest appeared, requiring us to bind a Safe House within ten minutes. The binding method: when the countdown ended, only one person could remain inside the Safe House.]

[There were zombies wandering outside the door. He didn’t want to die, and I’m no fool either. In the middle of the argument, he suddenly lunged at me and grabbed my throat, trying to strangle me.]

Ji Li looked up in shock. Gao Lan tugged at the corner of her mouth and pulled open her collar, revealing finger-shaped bruises, purple and dark, on her neck.

Gao Lan didn’t write what happened after, but Ji Li had already guessed.

Since the System issued the new quest only after the settlement, it meant they had already received their quest rewards, including the skill draw.

So when her life was threatened, Gao Lan had been forced to activate her skill and kill the Suit Guy.

“He didn’t die unjustly. Any judge in court would rule it self-defense. Sister, if we ever get the chance to go back, I’ll testify for you.” Ji Li handed the phone back to Gao Lan, utterly serious.

Gao Lan curled her lips into a faint smile and lowered her head to type.

[Thank you. I won’t hide it from you—my skill is related to sound, but it damages my throat, and I can only use it once a day. That’s why I want to cooperate with you. As a show of sincerity, I’ll share an important piece of information about the Game System.]

[Items in a Player’s System Backpack drop beside the Player’s corpse upon death.]

Ji Li’s eyes went wide and the words burst out of him. “Isn’t that just loot drops?!”

Gao Lan nodded and typed: [So—partners?]

Ji Li stared at the words on the phone, silent for a good while before speaking. “Sister, if I’m not mistaken, your skill attracts zombies, right?”

Learning that Gao Lan’s skill was sound-based, he finally understood what had happened to the vanished zombies.

She had lured them away.

“You can pull aggro AND kill. Partnering with me would be pure charity on your part. Sure, I saved you, but honestly, you saved me too—without you, I might still be surrounded by zombies right now…”

The more Ji Li said, the more guilty he felt. He dragged his backpack over and pulled out the Zombie Cores.

“Sister, I can’t take these cores. But I really, really want to latch onto your coattails, because my skill has zero attack power. If you’re still willing to take me along after hearing that, then from now on, for every Zombie Core we earn, I only keep a Daily Quest minimum, and any supplies we scavenge split nine-to-one in your favor.”

Ji Li had thought it through clearly. The office building really was a prime grinding spot, and if he could find suitable locks, he could grind down the zombies in the hallways bit by bit too.

The problem was, first, he couldn’t handle more than two zombies at once, and second, he couldn’t guarantee he’d find locks—while Players’ skills could genuinely kill people.

He couldn’t hold a resource point, so it was better to give up the lion’s share in exchange for safety.

Besides, he could Duplicate things—one-tenth of the supplies was more than enough.

Gao Lan froze for a moment, pushed the bag of cores back, and lowered her head to type.

[If you hadn’t saved me first, where would my saving you have come from? Besides, my skill can only be used once a day, and its effective range is very narrow.]

After typing this, Gao Lan gestured for Ji Li to look at the Gatehouse’s rickety window, then continued typing:

[If I hole up in one place, my Safe House can’t withstand many more hits. If I leave to hunt out there, I risk getting surrounded. I need someone to help me lure away the extra zombies. We divide the work—cores and supplies split fifty-fifty.]

“Twenty-eighty split,” Ji Li countered with a solemn face. “Sister, the Suit Guy backstabbed me, but because of that I found a supply point—that building over there. So shamelessly, I’m asking for an initial exploration fee. Any more and I’d be too embarrassed to take it.”

Seeing that Gao Lan was about to type again, he hurriedly lifted the plastic bag. “I’ll accept these cores, then. And there’s one more thing I’d like to ask of you, Sister.”

Ji Li paused, a little embarrassed as he asked, “Sister, could you teach me how to drive?”

Gao Lan looked at him and sighed.

[Fine. And since you keep calling me Sister, you’ll listen to me. Cores split seventy-thirty, supplies fifty-fifty. It’s settled—stop arguing with me. I need to hurry and put a Camouflage on my Safe House.]

“Camouflage?”

Looking at Ji Li’s naive little face, Gao Lan sighed again.

[Little Brother, we’re in the apocalypse. People like the Suit Guy are a dime a dozen. If someone finds out the Gatehouse is my Safe House and deliberately wrecks it, where am I supposed to cry? I need to make it look like the owner—the Suit Guy—was murdered and the place ransacked. That’s the only way to keep it safe.]

Reading this, cold sweat instantly broke out all over Ji Li.

The way his beat-up old car was arranged—wasn’t that practically a flashing sign telling everyone it was someone else’s Safe House?!

Seeing his face, Gao Lan understood everything. She typed: [Go tidy up your Safe House. I’ll come find you once I’m done here.]

“Okay. Sister, I’ll get going then.”

Ji Li ran a few steps, then suddenly ran back, pulled off his backpack, and handed it to Gao Lan.

“Sister, use this to carry things—see you in a bit!”

With that, he bolted. Gao Lan held the bag, watching his flustered retreating figure, and smiled helplessly.

Somehow, she was suddenly reminded of what it felt like to mentor a newbie back in the day.

But she had to admit, that sense of familiarity was comforting.

Gao Lan shouldered the backpack and walked into the Gatehouse. She glanced at the Suit Guy’s body on the floor and, without a word, started stripping his clothes.

Meanwhile, Ji Li sprinted back to the parking lot, restored his beat-up car to its original state in a few quick moves, carried all his supplies into the Gatehouse, then pressed the Window Breaker against the car window, hesitating over whether he could really go through with this.

He looked around at the cars with their shattered windows, recalled the state of Gao Lan’s Safe House window, gritted his teeth, and pressed down.

【Your Safe House has been attacked. Defense Value -66. Remaining Defense Value: 4/70. Please repair it as soon as possible.】

66 points of Defense Value?!

Ji Li froze on the spot, tears nearly springing from his eyes.

He should have asked Sister Lan BEFORE smashing the window!

What now? If his Safe House disappeared, even his heaven-defying skill couldn’t save him from death!

Panicked and frantic, Ji Li watched the Virtual Screen about to vanish. Reflexively, he read through its contents one more time—and his eyes landed on the last sentence.

Repair?

It could be repaired? How? Surely he wasn’t supposed to fix it himself… Wait!

The System Shop!