Chapter 24: Folding: “Are Players the Same?”

The girl’s expression made Ji Li’s heart ache.

He deliberately walked a little farther off to give Gao Lan space to comfort the girl, and went over to Boss Chen’s group instead.

There were five people in total: besides Boss Chen, Skinny Monkey, and Qin Xiaoxiao, whom he’d already met, there were two more—a tall girl, and a man with glasses whom she and Skinny Monkey were holding up between them.

Ji Li was puzzled. “Didn’t you say you had four companions locked up?”

The moment he said it, the air froze. The tall girl’s eyes reddened, and Skinny Monkey and the bespectacled man lowered their heads in silence. In the end, it was Boss Chen who sighed and answered:

“He… died. He had heart disease, and his health was already weak… It’s all my fault. I should have talked him out of it more.”

Boss Chen’s face was full of self-reproach. Ji Li didn’t know how to comfort him, so he could only take out the Space Bracelets to change the subject.

“My condolences… uh, Sister Lan said these wristbands and the supplies and cores inside are for you. How you divide them is up to you.”

“How could we!” Boss Chen snapped out of his self-recrimination instantly and hurriedly refused. “You saved all of us. These rightfully belong to you.”

“We can’t use all this,” Ji Li said, pressing the wristbands into Boss Chen’s hands. “Besides, it’s dangerous out there. Sister Lan and I hope we can cooperate, so consider this our show of sincerity.”

Clutching the wristbands, Boss Chen’s eyes widened in shock. “You mean… the monsters Brother Xiong and the others talked about—they’re real?”

Ji Li nodded gravely. “They’re real. Sister Lan and I saw them with our own eyes.”

The blood drained from Boss Chen’s face. The tall girl and Glasses Guy were utterly confused, and the former asked, “What exactly is out there?”

“Let’s find somewhere first.” Gao Lan and the girl came over, and she reminded everyone in a hoarse voice that this was no place to talk.

Boss Chen came to his senses and quickly said, “I’ll lead the way.”

The group of ten—including Yang Haoran and Yu Shen, whose thigh was still bleeding—moved into a classroom and sat down. Boss Chen spoke first:

“Let me introduce myself. I’m Chen Jianxin. My skill is generating a Shield at a designated location—max four square meters, lasts ten minutes.”

Then he pointed at Skinny Monkey. “This is Jiang Bing, nickname Skinny Monkey. He’s the one who sent you the Paper Note. He can designate an intended target and transmit a paper note no larger than 18 square centimeters.”

“Intended target?” Ji Li asked curiously.

“It means defining a range,” Skinny Monkey said, scratching the back of his head sheepishly. “Like: male, weighs two hundred jin, wearing floral shorts… that kind of thing. For the note I sent you, I only defined one condition—the skill would find someone whose abilities attract zombies.”

The more Ji Li listened, the wider his eyes grew.

This… was a textbook Concept-Type Skill!

“Can this skill of yours be upgraded?” Ji Li couldn’t help asking.

Skinny Monkey nodded. “It can, but the System doesn’t specify how.”

…Damn. That familiar feeling.

Ji Li deflated. Chen Jianxin continued introducing the others: “She’s Lu Zihan, skill: Electronics Repair. This is Zhang Luyao, skill: Never Miss.”

Zhang Luyao added, “As long as it’s an object I can lift, and the target is within my line of sight.”

Ji Li raised his eyebrows slightly and exchanged a glance with Gao Lan.

Line of sight—that could mean very far away. As the saying goes, the mountain may be visible but the horse dies before reaching it; a distance that could kill a horse was still visible to the naked eye.

“His name is Shen Shuyan, skill: Piercing. He risked assassinating Chen Zhixiong but got controlled by Liu Jin, and Chen Zhixiong broke his lumbar spine… that ungrateful bastard!” Chen Jianxin cursed viciously, his gaze sliding toward Qin Xiaoxiao.

The girl shrank into her chair, head hanging low. From this angle, all you could see were her lips, bitten bloody.

Chen Jianxin sighed. “That’s… Qin Xiaoxiao. You already know her skill. She can use X-Ray Vision on basically any building in her line of sight, but it only lasts so long, and using it too much makes her eyes blur. Same with Yang Haoran—listen too long and his ears ring. As for Yu Shen…”

Chen Jianxin looked at Yu Shen, pale from blood loss, his expression serious. “His skill is supposedly Map Reveal, but my personal guess is that it senses terrain within a certain range around him. You’d have to ask him about the exact range.”

Everyone’s eyes converged on Yu Shen. He shivered under the attention and mumbled timidly, “Fifty kilometers. Once a day.”

“Centered on you? A fifty-kilometer radius, or diameter?” Ji Li pressed.

Yu Shen hadn’t expected such a detailed question. He glanced at Ji Li. “…Fifty-kilometer diameter.”

Ji Li nodded and gestured to Gao Lan. “She’s Gao Lan, I’m Ji Li. You already know our skills—I can expand item space, and she has Sonic Attack. But her skill puts a heavy strain on the throat, and the side effect is it attracts zombies. We can’t yet confirm whether it works on the Black Tide too.”

At the words “Black Tide,” Chen Jianxin hurriedly asked, “The Black Tide you mention—that’s the monster?”

Ji Li grunted an affirmative, took out his phone, and opened a photo. “This is the Xiajia Town intersection that Sister Lan and I took. We didn’t dare get too close, so just get a rough idea.”

In the photo, at the end of the sealed expressway, the grey road had been completely swallowed by black. The distance was too great to make out details—only the endlessly undulating surface of that black mass was faintly visible.

“To describe it specifically: the Black Tide is a monster made of Folded Zombies. They gather together into a dense yet loose structure, move as one, and wander everywhere.”

“Folding?” Zhang Luyao looked confused.

“Like this.” Before Ji Li could answer, Yu Shen bent at the waist and spread his arms.

Perhaps to make amends, or perhaps to submit his letter of allegiance, Yu Shen poured out everything he knew about the Black Tide.

“Zombies—including people caught by the Black Tide—are forcibly folded at the waist, direction random. After folding, everyone’s waists touch one another as they cluster together, a bit like a swarm of ants.”

“When the Black Tide moves together, these arms and legs coordinate. In narrow spaces, they split into individuals and crawl in on all fours. Once caught and bitten through the skin, the folding begins—and you stay fully conscious the whole time you’re being folded.”

Chen Jianxin shot to his feet. “Does it work on Players too?”

Yu Shen licked his lips nervously. “Players… too.”

Chen Jianxin slumped back into his seat, muttering, “It happens to players too… No wonder… no wonder Zhou Ren said dying at their hands at least meant dying clean and quick…”

“Anything else? Have you figured out how the Black Tide senses its prey?”

Seeing that Ji Li hadn’t asked how he knew players stayed conscious while being folded, Yu Shen quietly relaxed and answered quickly, “Mainly hearing, then ground vibrations and heat.”

Ji Li frowned. “Heat? How did you figure that out?”

Yu Shen’s eyes darted away, and he licked his lips again. “Well… when we were surrounded by the Black Tide in He’an City, to lure them away, I… Brother Xiong made Molotov Cocktails… and burned other players’ bases…”

“You beasts!”

“Are you even human?!”

Yu Shen shrank his head and said nothing. Zhang Luyao, amid her anger, suddenly had a realization. “No wonder Zhou Ren kept going on about ‘appreciating’ me! He wanted to use my skill to set fires and lure the Black Tide!”

“It’s not that simple, is it?” Ji Li crossed his arms and looked coldly at Yu Shen. “If heat alone could lure the Black Tide away, why didn’t you burn some other building?”

Yu Shen’s head sank even lower.

The cruelty of human nature was on full display in this moment. For a while, no one spoke, and the classroom fell silent.

After a while, Gao Lan took out her phone, typed a message, and held it up to Yu Shen.

[So heat plus sound attracts the Black Tide more than vibration plus sound?]

Yu Shen read it and shook his head, his voice faint as a mosquito’s whine. “Heat and sound alone won’t do it. You need all three…”

“So the Black Tide’s primary means of detecting prey is still sound and vibration, with heat just icing on the cake?”

Seeing Yu Shen nod, Ji Li said thoughtfully, “Which means, if we can find speakers, explosives, and batteries, we can avoid getting surrounded by the Black Tide.”

“Right! Batteries power the speakers, speakers make sound, explosives release heat and cause collapses!” Chen Jianxin clapped his hands, eyes shining.

“There were speakers in that auditorium earlier!” Skinny Monkey raised his hand.

“Batteries can be pulled from cars—just not sure how hard they are to remove…” Zhang Luyao said, her voice trailing off hesitantly.

Everyone knew cars had batteries, but whether they could actually be extracted was another matter.

Just then, Yang Haoran suddenly spoke up. “I’m a mechanic…”

Seeing everyone turn to look, the big man, over 1.8 meters tall, flinched and stammered, “I can remove batteries… and wire circuits too…”

“Then all that’s left is the explosives. I know white sugar can make gunpowder, but I don’t know the exact method. Does anyone here know?”

Ji Li looked around hopefully. When no one answered, he wasn’t surprised, and murmured, “The System Shop does sell them, just a bit pricey…”

“I can make them.”

A slightly hoarse voice spoke up. Ji Li looked up to see that the speaker was Shen Shuyan.

His lumbar spine was broken; he couldn’t stay upright in a seated position and had to be strapped to the chair with clothing, which made him look a whole head shorter.

That undignified posture made his expression gloomy, and with everyone staring at him, his face grew even darker. Only after a good while did he say slowly:

“…Making it requires potassium nitrate, sulfur, and charcoal. The nitrate and sulfur should be findable in the school lab. The charcoal can be homemade.”

“Excellent! Then we start preparing tomorrow! If we prepare in advance, we won’t have to worry about when the Black Tide shows up.” Ji Li made the call.

No one objected. They discussed the time and place to meet the next day, who would go clear zombies, and who would search for the lab and make charcoal.

Afterward, Ji Li and Gao Lan left first, leaving Chen Jianxin’s group to distribute the wristbands and supplies.

Chen Jianxin first gave everyone ten cores to complete their Daily Quests, then took out all the supplies and remaining cores and said to Qin Xiaoxiao, Yang Haoran, and Yu Shen:

“Given your track records, these supplies and wristbands won’t be shared with you. Starting tomorrow, same rules as before—supplies and cores split evenly, with Gao Lan and Ji Li getting an extra share. Any objections?”

The others shook their heads in unison. Yang Haoran shook his head and waved his hands along with them, Qin Xiaoxiao kept her head down, and only Yu Shen looked unwilling—though he didn’t dare show it.

After upgrading the nine wristbands into five spaces of roughly equal size and distributing them, along with the supplies and cores, Lu Zihan was collecting the supplies and cores with her wristband when she suddenly gave a soft laugh.

“After all that running around, the space more than tripled. How ironic.”

Zhang Luyao put an arm around her shoulder and said nothing, but Shen Shuyan frowned at Chen Jianxin. “Boss Chen, let’s swap. I’m a cripple—I have no use for that much space.”

“Don’t say that!” Chen Jianxin glared at him and pushed the wristband back. “Did you forget the Main Quest reward? The Basic Medical Card that heals all mechanical injuries! Once we have that, you’ll recover!”

Shen Shuyan’s lips trembled, his knuckles whitening around the wristband. “Really?”

“Really truly! A card that sells for ten thousand Points—how could that be fake?”

“Exactly! Little Shen, chin up! As long as Brother’s here, I’ll carry you if I have to!”

“Spare me, Brother Monkey. With that scrawny frame of yours, you’ll break your own bones.”

“Alright, enough joking. Everyone’s Safe House is still intact, right? Go check on things and get some rest. Everyone’s been through hell lately. As for you three…”

Chen Jianxin turned to Yang Haoran and the other two, thought for a moment, and said, “Come with me.”

Yang Haoran stood up quickly, Yu Shen shuffled along behind, and Qin Xiaoxiao watched as Zhang Luyao and Skinny Monkey helped Shen Shuyan up with Lu Zihan assisting. She bit her lower lip, and only after everyone had left the classroom did she drag her feet along at the very back.

Meanwhile, Ji Li and Gao Lan were happily dividing up cores.