Chapter 10: Mountain of Corpses: You Dig, I Drag.

At six the next morning, the Daily Quest popped up right on schedule.

Ji Li blearily glanced at it—and the next second, shot upright from his folding bed.

【Daily Quest Issued: Zombie Cores】

【Requirement: Submit at least ten Zombie Cores to the Game System】

【Quest Reward: One day’s supplies, 10 Points per core, unlock the Player Trading System】

【Failure Penalty: Deduct 10% of Safe House Defense Value cap】

The Player Trading System!

Ji Li scrambled into his clothes and rushed out the door to pound on the room across the hall.

“Sister Lan! Sister Lan!”

The door opened, and Gao Lan greeted him with a smile. “Little Ji, good morning.”

“Morning, Sister Lan… you can talk again!”

“I could talk yesterday too. I just avoid speaking to protect my throat.” Gao Lan shook her head helplessly. “You’re here about the Player Trading System, right? I saw it. And it reminded me—there’s another possibility.”

“You mean… Players who arrived here before us?” Ji Li’s mind spun, and he caught her meaning at once.

“Yes. Honestly, I should have thought of it sooner. If the Game can abduct us, why not others? If other Players once operated here, the uneven zombie distribution makes sense too.”

“I guess that’s true…” …right?

Ji Li’s eyes went slightly blank. Something still felt off.

“Anyway, we’ll talk details later. Go wash up and eat. Let’s meet at the fire door at… seven thirty. The sooner we clear the stairwell zombies, the sooner we can go upstairs and scavenge.”

Hearing this, Ji Li could only set aside his doubts for now, agreed, and returned to his own room.

The two had already agreed to split supplies evenly and consume their own shares. All the back-and-forth yesterday after killing the zombies was because Gao Lan insisted on returning the food and water she’d eaten, while Ji Li refused to accept it no matter what.

Back in his room, Ji Li picked up the wet wipes to pull one out—and out of the corner of his eye, caught sight of Eno standing asleep at the Charging Dock. The nagging feeling from before suddenly snapped into focus.

Even if Players had been here before, that wouldn’t conflict with the Natives clearing zombies, would it?

And yet the result was: zombies not cleared, supplies not scavenged.

Or… did Veteran Players mainly chase Points and simply not need these near-expiry leftovers?

Ji Li looked out the window at the dimming dawn light and let out a long breath. By the light of his phone’s flashlight, he pulled out a wet wipe, wiped his face, then his hands, then laid it flat on the desk to dry for use as a rag.

Personal hygiene done, he took the remaining five packs of instant noodles from his bracelet, duplicated them, and put them back, then brought out the snacks he’d scavenged yesterday.

After a few wafer biscuits and a sachet of sesame paste, Ji Li tossed a piece of gum into his mouth, grabbed Eno and his tools, left the room, and walked to the end of the right-hand corridor.

The layout mirrored the left side: restrooms across from the fire door, and the stairwell full of wandering zombies.

Standing before the fire door, Ji Li took out the dozen-plus charging cables he’d found in the cars, knotted two together, and tied the ends to the fire door’s handle to restrict how far it could open.

Locking the door with charging cables was Gao Lan’s idea.

Ji Li’s original plan for clearing the stairwell had followed the same logic as clearing the offices—use narrow gaps to control zombie numbers, then pick them off one by one.

But he’d been fixated on the sturdiness of locks, completely overlooking the possibility of substitutes. Only after Gao Lan pointed it out did he realize charging cables could replace locks entirely.

And not just cables—the power strips found in the offices worked too.

So by the time Gao Lan arrived, Ji Li had already tied a dozen-plus charging cables and two power strips to the door handle, the dense rows of wire forming a fence-like barrier.

Gao Lan nodded at the sight and gave instructions. “My skill produces two effects when used. First, it summons all nearby zombies—coverage looks to be about one kilometer. Second, it ruptures the internal organs of any living creature within roughly two meters directly in front of me, including eyeballs and brains. So you MUST hide behind the wall, as far away as possible.”

Ji Li had only one thought upon hearing this—tears of envy flowing upstream.

That was insane! A pure monster-slaying weapon!

Swallowing his envy, Ji Li asked, “Can’t the two effects be separated?”

Gao Lan sighed. “I’m still figuring that out. I hope I find the trick soon, or the strain on my vocal cords is too much.”

“Is it very loud?”

“No. The sound I produce is outside human hearing range. But just in case, better to take precautions.”

Ji Li thought for a moment, made a “wait” gesture to Gao Lan, ran back to his room, pulled a sheet-metal cabinet from his bracelet, found the Bluetooth earphones and power bank, then stuffed the cabinet back in.

After charging the earphones with the power bank, Ji Li returned to the fire door, opened the charging case, took out his phone, and tried to connect.

Connection failed—the phone couldn’t find any Bluetooth signal at all.

Ji Li stared at the blinking indicator light on the case, thought for a moment, then pulled out Eno and tried issuing a command.

“Eno, connect to the Bluetooth earphones.”

Eno: [••]ゝ

Eno: [••]···

Eno: [••]!

The exclamation mark beside the bean eyes vanished, and dead center at the top of the screen appeared a somewhat unfamiliar symbol: ⊿.

A few curved lines rose above the triangle, making it look as though Eno had put on a hairpin, bangs perking up accordingly.

Eno: [••]ﾉ

It’s… it’s THIS cute?!

Watching the little robot greet him with perked-up hair, Ji Li barely suppressed the urge brought on by cuteness aggression and put on the Bluetooth earphones.

The instant he pulled the earpiece from its case, Eno’s hairpin lines shifted from blue to red, and the sharp angle beneath the hairpin tinged faintly red too.

The moment Ji Li put the earphone on, a mechanical female voice sounded in his ear.

[Battery low. Please charge.]

Ignoring the prompt, Ji Li gave Eno the singing command. Listening to the beeping in his ear, he nodded to Gao Lan and braced his hand against the right panel of the fire door.

Gao Lan nodded, braced the left panel, and raised her fist.

One… two… three!

The moment the third finger went up, both pushed together. The fire door’s hold-open device engaged, and the metal door swung open smoothly.

At the same time, Ji Li bellowed down the stairwell: “Listen up, you bastards—your grandpa’s here!”

Gao Lan: “…”

His clear adolescent voice rang through the corridor. Before the words even finished, a zombie lunged forward—only to be caught mid-torso by the dozen-plus cables across the doorway.

A human would try to tear the cables down, or step back and climb over. But an instinct-driven zombie wouldn’t. It would only keep charging forward, trying to snap whatever blocked it.

Seeing the cables successfully stop the first zombie, Ji Li and Gao Lan immediately let go. The fire door’s hold-open device rebounded, the door swung shut, trapping that zombie between the panels and the cables.

But it was only temporary. Soon more and more zombies surged in, clawing at the first zombie’s body, trying to crawl through the door gap, using their bodies to force open the heavy iron door, howling madly at Ji Li and Gao Lan.

As the gap—less than fifty centimeters—packed solid with zombies and a second one climbed onto the first’s back, Ji Li ducked into the restroom without a word, and Gao Lan drew a deep breath, opening her mouth toward the gap.

The Silent Scream spread out. Ji Li felt as if something had shaken his brain, and his apocalypse-hardened stomach suddenly rebelled, churning violently.

He held it, held it—and finally couldn’t. Bracing on the washbasin, he vomited up his entire breakfast. When he raised his head, he nearly collapsed to the floor.

Once the sudden dizziness passed, he staggered out of the restroom to find Gao Lan swinging a golf club, smashing zombie skulls with all her might.

At the door gap, the earlier zombies were already dead, hanging limp in the opening. The fire door’s observation window had shattered, but with the wire mesh and the small opening, the zombies couldn’t climb through there.

However, because the corpses hung on the cables, the door couldn’t close, and countless zombies were pressing forward one after another, trying to squeeze in.

They wouldn’t pull the corpses away to clear the path—they only pushed forward and climbed, so the corpses were either yanked down during the climbing and piled up inside the door, or shoved through the gap to fall outside, likewise piling up.

Exactly as Ji Li and Gao Lan had predicted.

The zombie corpses would become natural obstacles, capping their numbers. Even if the cables snapped, there’d be no fear of zombies flooding in.

Relieved, Ji Li walked over, picked up the other golf club, and joined Gao Lan in a game of whack-a-mole.

An hour passed, and Gao Lan retreated to the back, leaning against the wall to drink water and rest.

An hour and a half passed, and Ji Li withdrew too. The two leaned against opposite walls of the corridor, watching from a distance the small mountain formed of piled corpses and the zombies struggling frantically within it.

Gao Lan seemed about to say something; her lips moved for a while, but no sound came. She took out her phone instead, typed, and waved the screen at Ji Li across from her.

Ji Li leaned over, took one look—and abruptly turned his head and dry-heaved. Gao Lan jumped in alarm, hurried over, and hoarsely asked while supporting him: “What’s wrong? Where does it hurt? Do you need to sleep for a bit?”

Ji Li waved her off, removed the long-dead Bluetooth earphones, and smiled at her. “I’m fine, Sister Lan, just a little dizzy… Actually it already passed, I just got flashed by the phone again and… it’ll pass in a minute.”

How could Gao Lan not know why he was dizzy? Plainly put, it was the shockwave from being hit by the sound at close range.

Full of self-reproach, she hurried into the nearest office, carried out a chair, and made Ji Li sit and rest while she went back to killing zombies.

Ji Li didn’t refuse. Sitting in the chair, he let out a long breath and stared at the fire door, silently calculating the frequency of zombies climbing over the corpse mountain at the gap.

About one every two minutes.

Hmm… if a few more got smashed and hung in the gap, he could probably stretch it to four, even five minutes… Sister Lan, NICE!

Watching, Ji Li suddenly laughed and murmured:

“Two days ago I was still delivering takeout…”

After two seconds of sentimentality, the young man slapped his thigh, grabbed his golf club, and stood up.

Moping was useless. Just grind!

Ji Li and Gao Lan alternated rests, working from morning until three or four in the afternoon, only stopping when the corpses had blocked the fire door completely solid.

Ji Li leaned on his club and listened for a while to the sounds from the corpse pile.

“Seems like it stopped.”

Gao Lan nodded and typed: [The nearest zombies are at the stairwell corner. They probably can’t climb up anymore.]

Ji Li gave her a thumbs-up and set down his golf club. “Let’s go. You dig, I drag.”

Gao Lan nodded, took out her fruit knife, and the two walked to the corpse mountain—one digging out Zombie Cores, the other dragging away the finished corpses.

As they moved a body, a phone suddenly slid out of a zombie’s pocket. Ji Li stared at it, and as if struck by a thought, wiped his hands on the zombie’s clothes and took out his power bank.

A few minutes later, the phone powered on—and as expected, no signal.

But Ji Li hadn’t charged the phone to get online.

He tapped open the unfamiliar icons one by one, examining cached content and scrolling through chat logs—and the more he read, the tighter his brow furrowed.