Chapter 25: Safe House: “I Just Thought of Something…”

After leaving the classroom, Ji Li and Gao Lan found a cleared teaching building to settle into, then turned on their phone flashlights in the pitch-black corridor and took out the wristband dedicated to holding Zombie Cores.

Heart pounding with excitement, Ji Li tapped rapidly in the air with trembling hands, and soon a pile of cores appeared on the floor tiles. The translucent deep-red crystals gleamed in the light like pomegranate seeds.

“There’s got to be at least two thousand here. No wonder he bought a dedicated wristband just to hold them,” Ji Li murmured, eyes gleaming at the pile.

Gao Lan forced her gaze away from the cores and typed with her head down: [Don’t waste time counting all these. Split them while submitting quests—it’ll take a while.]

“Okay, here!”

Ji Li pulled up the quest interface, crouched down, and began distributing the cores ten at a time.

Gao Lan crouched beside him, one hand holding up the phone for light, the other stuffing cores into the quest submission window.

When he handed the last core to Gao Lan, Ji Li stared at his soaring Points, practically bubbling with delight.

“No wonder apocalypse novels all love writing about robbery and backstabbing… Doing quests honestly doesn’t hold a candle to robbery for making money!”

Gao Lan gave him an amused look, picked up the core-filled wristband, and shook it.

Ji Li understood her meaning at once and nodded. “Of course, Sister. I don’t need this one anyway.”

Gao Lan tucked that one-cubic-meter wristband into her own for upgrading, while Ji Li basked in the thrill of overnight riches, savoring the ease of strolling around with a fortune in his pocket as he browsed the System Shop.

15,321 Points—enough to buy a Safe House Reinforcement Card or a Safe House Camouflage Card!

His gaze wandered between the two ten-thousand-Point item cards, then suddenly stopped.

Safe House… Safe House?!

“Sister Lan, I just thought of something…” Ji Li murmured, his expression turning grim.

Gao Lan was deliberating whether to buy a Safe House Repair Card now or wait until the Main Quest settlement day. Hearing him, she hummed an acknowledgment from her throat while still browsing the System Shop.

“Hm?”

“If the Black Tide comes, what happens to your Safe House? Isn’t its Defense Value down to just one point?” Ji Li slowly turned to look at Gao Lan.

“Or, worse—if the school gets overrun by the Black Tide, and the Main Quest ends and we have to leave this place, but you’re not inside your Safe House… what then?”

Gao Lan looked puzzled. “Do you have to… be inside?”

Ji Li hesitated. “I can’t say for sure… but in every apocalypse novel, the Safe House is extremely important to players. Some even have settings where if the Safe House is destroyed, the owner dies with it.”

Gao Lan frowned and took out her phone: [But that’s not actually the case. Even Wang Guan and Sun Ling never finished the newbie quest, and they’re alive and well.]

“True, I won’t deny that.” But Ji Li’s worry didn’t ease at her words; his expression only grew more grave. “But even if the Safe House is just an item—when the Main Quest is complete and we leave this world, will the Game be kind enough to pick up items that aren’t in a player’s possession?”

“And if the Safe House really were optional, why would the very first quest be related to it? Why go to the trouble of setting so many conditions restricting how players obtain a Safe House?”

Gao Lan’s face changed slightly—she too was remembering that quest called Bind Safe House, which in reality restricted players from sharing Safe Houses and even pushed them to turn on each other.

She thought for a long while, then typed: [You’ve reminded me of something—Safe House Traits. I can roughly guess what yours is. That kind of trait is low-key, and its future development is easy to imagine.]

[But mine is different. The Gatehouse’s trait is Visitor Log. Everyone who passes in front of the Gatehouse leaves a record. Right now it can only record numbers of people, but I suspect that after upgrading, it could record faces, gender, even personal information. If that guess is right, this trait will be hugely useful in the apocalypse.]

Thanks to this trait, Gao Lan had actually already known when Chen Zhixiong’s group entered the school—though she only knew seven people had come, with no other details.

Once her Safe House upgraded, she could learn Chen Zhixiong’s group’s faces through the trait alone, without Ji Li risking himself.

Hearing about someone else’s Safe House trait for the first time, Ji Li was green with envy.

It was essentially a free, upgradeable surveillance system that could directly pull up visitor records—far more useful than just mobility.

Swallowing his tears of envy, Ji Li said seriously, “Also, since the Game is called Apocalypse Survival, it surely won’t end after just one zombie apocalypse. When we enter a new apocalypse, the Safe House might play a huge role—otherwise why call it a Safe House?”

Gao Lan nodded. [You’re right. After we meet up with Chen Jianxin and the others tomorrow, let’s ask about their Safe Houses first, then discuss what to do.]

“Tomorrow… isn’t that a bit late?” Ji Li said hesitantly. “The Black Tide has been confirmed at Xiajia Town. What if they follow the expressway…”

Gao Lan pondered a moment, then shook her head. [They won’t. At the Black Tide’s speed, if they were really heading this way, they’d have arrived long ago. Besides, that stretch of expressway near Xiajia Town has no sound barriers, only guardrails—it won’t restrict the Black Tide’s direction of movement.]

A long stretch of Cheng’an City’s Out-of-City Expressway was fully enclosed with sound barriers, sealing the highway completely, only switching to guardrails near Xiajia Town.

Without barriers, the Black Tide would wander aimlessly. It might come to Cheng’an City, but it was more likely to be drawn by ambient noise over the guardrails into the nearby farmland.

Hearing this, Ji Li finally relaxed. After exchanging goodnights with Gao Lan, he headed up to the rooftop.

Under the hazy starlight, Ji Li took the instant-noodle box out of his wristband and dug out the four wristbands hidden inside.

Then he took out the Safe House and Eno, freeing up two empty wristbands for duplication, yielding eight 64-cubic-meter wristbands.

He then used those to upgrade his original wristbands, ultimately producing three 8x8x3 wristbands with a volume of 192 cubic meters.

In the end, Ji Li owned five wristbands: one 192-cubic-meter wristband for supplies, two 64-cubic-meter ones filled with gasoline, and two empty 192-cubic-meter ones.

Browsing his Supply Wristband with its massively expanded space, Ji Li muttered quietly, “Still a bit small… I’ll do another round tomorrow.”

After storing the gasoline wristbands, noodle box, and Safe House back into the Supply Wristband and pocketing the two empty ones, Ji Li crouched down and poked at Eno, who was stretching one leg left and lifting one foot right.

“Looks like… no change?”

Eno: [¬¬]

Eno trotted away on its little legs from the poking finger, continuing to stretch and lift.

Ji Li: “?” Poked again.

Eno: [￣￣]

This time it simply turned around.

“…Oh ho? Are you mad at me?” Ji Li raised an eyebrow, picked up the little robot’s square head, and forcibly turned it around.

Eno: [⊙⊙]

Eno: [◺◿]╬

“Blaming me for locking you up?”

Eno: [◺◿] Beep beep!

“Then… blaming me for not bringing you along?”

Eno: [◺◿]!

Eno: [••]

Eno: [☍º]

“Don’t cry…” Helpless, Ji Li picked up the robot and cradled it in his palm, studying the strikingly vivid little expressions on its display in the dim starlight.

“I was just afraid you’d get lost if we ran into danger! Come on, stop crying. From now on I’ll take you everywhere, okay?”

Eno: [☍º]づ

Ji Li: “…Fine. Pinky promise.”

He held up his little finger and hooked a cyber-pinky-promise with Eno. He felt both touched at being cared about, and ridiculous for taking a toy this seriously.

It was no wonder he’d worried something might happen to Eno—the thing’s reactions were just too human. It was easy to forget it was merely a desktop companion robot whose main function was providing emotional value to its owner.

“Code and sensors aren’t living things. What on earth am I worrying about…”

He poked Eno’s big square head and received a nuzzle in return. Ji Li chuckled softly, pocketed the robot, and headed back downstairs.

The next day, everyone except Zhang Luyao, who went to the lab to search for potassium nitrate and sulfur, and Shen Shuyan, who guided Lu Zihan in making charcoal, gathered at the statue in the small plaza.

The moment they met up, Gao Lan got straight to the point with Chen Jianxin: “Brother Chen, which of you have Safe Houses? What state are they in now?”

Chen Jianxin’s expression stiffened, his gaze flicking to Skinny Monkey and Qin Xiaoxiao. “Well…”

Gao Lan couldn’t be bothered to dance around with him. She repeated what Ji Li had said the night before, then finished: “I’m not trying to pry into where your Safe Houses are, and I can’t guarantee Little Ji’s guess is correct. I just want to discuss with the Safe House owners whether to stay or go—because my Safe House is also in this school.”

Chen Jianxin had clearly never considered the question of what happens to the Safe House when the Main Quest ends. Learning that they might leave and lose their Safe Houses, he grew anxious at once.

“We stay, of course! All of us have Safe Houses, all in the school!”

“Everyone has one?!”

Gao Lan’s eyes widened in surprise—but the exclamation didn’t come from her. It came from Yu Shen.

His face somewhat pale, he stared at Chen Jianxin’s group in disbelief. “I remember there were eight of you… how could everyone have a Safe House?”

Skinny Monkey scoffed. “Why not? We’re not like you lot!”

Watching Yu Shen’s face cycle between green and white, Ji Li asked, “You don’t have a Safe House?”

Yu Shen was silent a moment. “…No. When the Game required binding a Safe House, someone smashed the glass.”

At those words, Yang Haoran shrank his head and quietly hid behind the others.

Ji Li didn’t notice his reaction and kept pressing Yu Shen. “Your whole group has no Safe Houses?”

“Not exactly. Brother Xiong and Brother Zhou had them, but after encountering the Black Tide, they gave up on them.”

Ji Li nodded and looked at Chen Jianxin. “Uncle Chen, let’s not rush this. Since all of you have Safe Houses, there’s basically no disagreement. Let’s stick to the original plan and discuss it properly when we meet up tonight.”

Chen Jianxin thought for a moment and nodded. “Alright. Then let’s go clear zombies—there’s only one place left anyway.”

With that, he led everyone around an artificial lake to a building complex made up of several annexes.

“This is the school’s administrative office building. It’s mostly individual offices inside. The corridors have no zombies, but there are many rooms and few zombies per room, so clearing it is troublesome.”

More annexes meant more corridors and staircases, all interconnected in every direction, so zombies could easily slip away through the hallways. Clearing it meant opening doors one by one—more time spent, far lower efficiency. No wonder it had been left for last.

They were all Veteran Players with over ten days of survival in the apocalypse. The seven of them split into three simple groups, each taking a floor, with Yu Shen attached to Ji Li and Gao Lan’s group as extra combat power.

It wasn’t a slight against Gao Lan’s combat ability—rather, the administrative building’s situation didn’t call for her skill, and it also placed the most unstable element next to the most dangerous person, making him easy to monitor.

They worked until the sun set in the west, the administrative building was cleared, and everyone gradually gathered beneath the statue.