In the end, Ji Li couldn’t bring himself to cross that mental line. He didn’t take a single pot or pan from the kitchen—every last one went to Gao Lan.
Gao Lan wasn’t polite about it either. She didn’t even spare the spice rack, packing everything up, and even bought a Space Bracelet upgrade specifically to haul it all.
Originally, she’d offered Ji Li fifty cores for the wristband that had been used to hold zombie corpses, but Ji Li talked her out of it—since they might need to move more bodies later, better to keep one item for one purpose.
Watching her give up, Ji Li quietly breathed a sigh of relief, marked that wristband and set it aside, then headed up to the third floor with Gao Lan.
The third floor had the same layout as the second—offices lining both sides of the corridor. The difference was that more than half the rooms held neither people nor zombies. Clearly, when the apocalypse broke out, most of the people here hadn’t been at their desks.
“Looks like finding car keys is going to be hard,” Gao Lan sighed, hands on her hips.
Ji Li was puzzled. “Didn’t we find a few car keys on the second floor? Shouldn’t those be enough?”
He hadn’t realized how important car keys were at first; only after Gao Lan arrived, when the two of them worked together to clear the second floor, did they search deliberately—and found three keys in the end.
“Enough, yes, but the cars might not be suitable. Big vehicles guzzle gas, electric ones can’t go far. When you can’t make the call yourself, the more options the better.”
Ji Li nodded and pointed his Golf Club at the rooms with zombies. “Those rooms should have some, then. Get to work?”
“Let’s go.”
They dispatched the zombies locked in the rooms the same way as before, then turned the third floor upside down. Nothing else special turned up, though they unexpectedly came away with five more car keys and sixteen Zombie Cores.
They stowed the keys and, without resting, headed straight for the fourth floor.
Surprisingly, unlike the second and third floors, the fourth had been completely transformed from traditional private offices into modern cubicles.
Aside from a few pillars, the whole floor was wide open, so no zombies had lingered there. It just looked far messier than the floors below—desks and chairs knocked every which way, and here and there among them a smear of blackened red, like eerie flowers blooming amid the ruins.
“Now this is way more vivid than a zombie movie,” Gao Lan said, walking over to an overturned desk and casually picking up a shattered laptop beside it.
“Like a herd of elephants stampeded through the office…” Ji Li muttered, picking a backpack up off the floor. “Sis, still want to look for car keys?”
“Look. You can never have too many. And keep an eye out for these, too.” Gao Lan held up what was in her hand. Ji Li looked closer—it was a cup of bubble tea.
Gao Lan pulled out the straw and waved it at him. “Find a few more and connect them end to end, seal the joints with tape, and you’ve got yourself a fuel siphon.”
Ji Li gave her a thumbs-up. “Genius, Sis. Coffee and milk tea are bare necessities for us wage slaves—there’s an unlimited supply of these things!”
And with that he darted off, weaving between the cubicles, and in no time had collected more than a dozen straws.
He carried his haul back to Gao Lan, excited. “I’ll wash them and hang them up to dry—they’ll be ready by tomorrow!”
Gao Lan caught his arm. “Calm down. Finish searching first.”
Ji Li laughed sheepishly, found an empty bubble tea cup, and dropped all the straws inside. “I just want to get to the city faster.”
Gao Lan nodded and pointed at the other workstations. “Go on, then. Make sure you flip through the documents—see if there’s a paper map. Don’t count on the computers; without the internet they’re just paperweights.”
“Okay.”
Working together, the two finished searching the entire fourth floor before darkness swallowed everything. The haul was mostly Food and Water and instant coffee, plus some clothes, shoes, and nap pillows and blankets.
“Don’t move anything yet. Let’s finish the floors above first,” Gao Lan instructed.
Ji Li grunted in agreement, and together they bundled everything in blankets, left it on a desk, and went downstairs to rest.
Back in his room, after washing up, Ji Li eyed the bag of cores and finally decided to submit part of them to buy a 【Safe House Repair Card】.
He hadn’t used his daily Duplication charges yet—perfect chance to test whether he could copy item-type objects.
He submitted 26 cores and pulled up the System Shop, purchasing one 【Safe House Repair Card】.
His Points plummeted to 1, and a bronze-colored card appeared in his backpack.
He took it out for a look. The card was about the size of an ID card, with a texture somewhere between metal and plastic—extremely thin, almost translucent.
Decorative lines like circuit traces ran across its surface, all converging at the center into a single line of text:
Safe House Repair Card.
Ji Li held the card between two fingers, spun it around his fingertip a few times, then reached out his other hand, gripped two corners of the card, and said in a low voice:
“Duplication.”
Blue light surged from his fingertips, sweeping across the card’s surface, and under Ji Li’s excited gaze, it sketched out an identical shape in the air in front of the card.
It worked!
Ji Li snatched the falling copy out of the air, cheeks flushed with excitement.
Items could be copied too!
Did that mean the Safe House modules could also—no, no, no, don’t get ahead of yourself. Lower your expectations and you’ll never be disappointed!
After a few deep breaths to tamp down the surging emotions, Ji Li turned around, dug out a box, put both cards inside, and held the box in his hands, whispering:
“Duplication.”
No response.
Huh? Ji Li’s jaw dropped. He took the cards out of the box, tried a different container—same result.
He cycled through several ways of holding them, all failures. Refusing to accept defeat, he simply gripped one card in each hand and tried to copy them both.
Still nothing.
Ji Li pressed his lips together, set one card down, and held the other with both hands.
“Duplication.”
A third card took shape and dropped onto the desk. Eno walked out of its Charging Dock, looked at the two cards on the desk, then at the one in Ji Li’s hand, and let out a burst of mechanical beeps.
Eno: [••]？
“Don’t look at me, I have no idea either…” Ji Li sat down and picked up the three identical cards. “It even let me exploit a bug copying instant noodles before—why won’t it work with items? I wonder if the Space Bracelet is the same…”
He turned the three cards over and over for a good while but couldn’t figure out where the problem lay. In the end he could only chalk it up to skill restrictions he hadn’t fully mapped out, and slid the cards into his wristband.
“Whatever. It just means I can’t mass-produce them.” Reaching out to pat Eno’s big head, Ji Li comforted himself quickly enough.
One way or another, he already held a massive advantage. From now on, a thousand-Point Repair Card was no different to him from rice or instant noodles—just stockpiled supplies, on hand whenever needed, no repurchase necessary.
Not only that—the ten-thousand-Point 【Safe House Reinforcement Card】, the hundred-thousand-Point 【Safe House Location Reset Card】, and items like the 【Safe House Camouflage Card】 and 【Safe House Redecoration Card】—he could buy each of them once and enjoy them for life!
The System Shop was, to him, a wholesale supplier!
And his skill was only LV1 right now. Once it leveled up, the number of duplications would surely increase, and these restrictions would no longer be obstacles.
He just didn’t know what the leveling conditions were—no hints whatsoever so far.
Ji Li opened his skill interface, stared at it for a while, then closed it in defeat, patted Eno, wished it good night, and lay down on the bed.
Tomorrow, once they finished searching this building, map or no map, they would leave and look for a nearby city.
The Space Bracelet had been duplicated twice already and now held 32 cubic meters—room enough for anything they found. The problem was, if they just left, what about his Safe House?
Leave it sitting there? It wasn’t impossible, but it felt uneasy somehow… Wait. Hold on!
Ji Li sat bolt upright, staring at the wristband on his left wrist as a sudden realization struck him—
32 cubic meters was more than enough to fit a B-Class Car!
At that thought, sleep was impossible. He threw on his clothes and sneaked out of his room, creeping toward the parking lot.
On the second floor, in Office 208 facing the parking lot, Gao Lan stood behind the window watching Ji Li scamper down the steps like an overexcited puppy. She took a thoughtful sip of water, then silently drew the curtain closed.
See no evil. It’s a good thing the kid has some schemes of his own—it’s just that his schemes aren’t deep enough yet.
She’d told him plainly that she was sensitive to sound and perfect for keeping watch. How did this silly boy forget?
Shaking her head, Gao Lan walked over to the recliner, lay down fully clothed, and resolved to remind Ji Li when she got the chance.
In the apocalypse, you can never be too careful around other people!
Completely unaware that his movements had long been exposed, Ji Li ran all the way to the Safe House.
He took a Repair Card out of his wristband and summoned the Safe House interface. Just as he was about to place the card down, his hand paused—and he stuffed the card back into his pocket.
First, test whether the Safe House could actually fit inside the Space Bracelet.
He opened the Space Bracelet and pressed it against the rearview mirror, watching the entire car vanish into blue light. He threw his hands up in excitement, as if countless bullet comments were streaming past behind him.
OHHHHHHHHHHH!
Now he could take his Safe House wherever he wanted!
It took Ji Li a good while to calm down. He took the Safe House back out, retrieved the Repair Card, pulled up the Safe House interface, and placed the card on the sedan’s floor plan.
The moment the card touched the blueprint, it vanished into it like rice poured into a slot. At the same time, a beam of blue light appeared over the sedan, sweeping slowly across the whole vehicle like an X-ray scan, and a new pop-up appeared before Ji Li.
【Repairing Safe House, please wait…】
About a minute later, the blue light faded and a new window popped up.
【Safe House repaired. Current Defense Value: 70/70】
The window vanished. The B-Class Car before him had been restored to pristine condition. If he hadn’t opened the door and seen the shattered glass on the floor mats and seats, Ji Li would have doubted the car had ever been wrecked at all.
After cleaning out the broken glass, Ji Li stored the Safe House and headed back with a light step.
A few steps in, something felt off, and he muttered to himself, “Wait, that’s not right. The Mobility Trait was supposed to mean the Safe House carries me, not me carrying the Safe House around, right?”
…Whatever, whatever. Who carries whom, what’s the difference?
Besides, a Safe House that its owner can carry along anywhere—isn’t that a form of “mobility” too? It fits the trait perfectly. Flawless!
Ji Li nodded to himself and strode up the steps.
Sleep, sleep. Tomorrow, more scavenging. The day after, they set out for the great unknown!
