Shocked, I'm the Favorites in the Survival Game - chapter 8

Pulling down the rolling shutter would make a noise, so she no longer dared to move.

Because of the gap left at the door, the two of them now spoke and acted with extreme caution.

It was dark outside.

The powerless town was plunged into pitch-black darkness.

The night wind blew in through the doorway, carrying a rotten, fishy smell. The surroundings were eerily quiet, with only the occasional howl of zombies to be heard.

Chu Yian sat beside Lu Qingyuan, keeping watch through the night-exhausted, sleepy, and afraid.

She worried that more zombies would gather outside,

and feared that zombies might crawl in through the crack in the door.

This fear kept her in a dazed yet alert state until a piercing scream from somewhere in the town jolted her fully awake.

The scream provoked the zombies outside into howling, and a flurry of footsteps ran off into the distance.

In just half a minute, the screaming stopped. The town returned to its previous silence, and the fate of the person who screamed was self-evident.

Terror, fear, despair.

Chu Yian pressed her arm to her mouth and bit down hard, tears streaming down her face. Nighttime was when emotions were most likely to collapse; she was so scared, so afraid that she too would be bitten to death by the zombies outside.

“It’s your turn to rest.”

Just as she was breaking down, a voice beside her suddenly spoke.

Hearing this voice, Chu Yian could no longer hold back. “Teacher Lu.”

“Mm.”

“Can I lean on you for a bit?”

Lu Qingyuan sat beside her, his gaze calm and unruffled. He seemed not to understand Chu Yian’s gesture, showing no empathy at all.

Seeing that he didn’t reply, Chu Yian still thickened her skin and inched closer bit by bit.

She rested her head on his arm, tears and snot falling silently. Even in such a moment of sorrow, she choked back sobs and whispered, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.”

Lu Qingyuan, who had been about to pull his arm away, paused. “It’s fine.”

His voice was utterly calm.

##

On the third day of the game, Chu Yian woke from a nightmare.

She turned on her phone; it was just six in the morning. Though she’d only slept four hours, she was now wide awake.

With power outages everywhere, Chu Yian had only used her phone to listen to the radio and during Lu Qingyuan’s surgery; the rest of the time, she kept it in power-saving mode. Now, her phone still had sixty-eight percent battery.

The breakdown she felt last night had completely vanished. Chu Yian put on her headphones and turned on the radio function on her phone again.

[Hello, listeners. This is District 11 Radio.]

[A global viral disaster is currently unfolding…]

[…]

[Please note: Fulun County in City X is the only Safe Rescue Zone in District 11.]

The broadcast from the radio was unchanged, and it helped Chu Yian pull herself together again.

She noticed Lu Qingyuan looking over, so she placed one of the earbuds by his ear. The two of them listened to the radio broadcast again before Chu Yian switched her phone back to power-saving mode.

“Do you feel re-energized?”

“It’s alright.” Lu Qingyuan averted his gaze indifferently and lowered his head to change the dressing on his wound.

Chu Yian had already experienced Teacher Lu’s coldness yesterday, so she didn’t mind. She stood up to stretch, then lay down again to peer outside. The screams from last night seemed to have drawn the nearby zombies away; outside was once again empty.

“Teacher Lu, there are no more zombies outside. Let’s get ready.”

A few minutes later, the two of them went out one after the other.

The street, trampled by hordes of zombies the previous day, was even more battered now. There wasn’t a single undamaged vehicle in sight.
They had already lowered their expectations from high-chassis, high-performance SUVs to any functioning two-wheeled vehicle, but still hadn’t found a single usable ride.

“Let’s go.”

Lu Qingyuan had given up on searching for a working vehicle on the street. Compared to the town, there were probably more abandoned vehicles left on the highway.

“Wait! I know where we can find a car.”

Chu Yian suddenly raised her finger, her eyes gleaming with a light called intelligence.

“Where?”

“At a place that sells cars, of course.”

It wasn’t easy to find a 4S dealership in a small town, but there were definitely shops selling electric scooters and electric tricycles.

Relying on her years of experience living in small towns, Chu Yian quickly located a vehicle shop. It was clear that zombies had visited here too-the vehicles displayed outside had been trampled beyond recognition, but those inside were perfectly intact.

Among them, a brand-new X-Leng Bread Truck stood out conspicuously.

Of course, the three zombies outside the shop, roaring at them, were just as conspicuous.

Their black, rigid muscles bulged high, and upon seeing two living humans, they lunged at them with incredible speed.

Use the handgun?

Chu Yian’s first instinct was this, but reason stopped her.

No. If she fired, the sound would attract all the zombies hiding nearby.

As she hesitated, Lu Qingyuan’s voice came from beside her, “Charge through.”

Charge-charge through?

Chu Yian’s body reacted before her mind. She grabbed Lu Qingyuan’s arm, threw it over her shoulder, and sprinted madly toward the bread truck.

But the three zombies were even faster than her.

In the blink of an eye, the nearest zombie had leapt to within four or five meters of Chu Yian, baring its teeth and claws as it lunged at her.

With her life hanging by a thread, did it even matter how loud the gunshot was?

Chu Yian decisively drew her handgun and fired two shots at the charging zombie-both missed. The zombie’s mouth opened impossibly wide, the rotten flesh on its face split all the way to its ear, and it lunged to bite the hand holding her gun.

The distance was so close that Chu Yian could see its exposed fangs and smell its putrid pus.

Her mind went blank; she felt death was near.

A gunshot rang out. The zombie’s head was pierced through the mouth by a bullet.

At that moment, Lu Qingyuan, having just dealt with the zombie on the right, raised the handgun he’d grabbed from the vehicles and used up the last bullet.

Roars echoed up and down the street.

More zombies were awakened by the gunfire, bursting out of houses and onto the street, all charging toward the source of the sound.

“Go, now!”

Lu Qingyuan’s voice rang in her ear. Chu Yian gripped his arm tightly, quickened her pace, and dragged him onto the bread truck. The zombies followed close behind, slamming into the truck door without any sense of pain.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The once pristine vehicle shell was instantly covered in dents.

“Drive!”

“I’m driving!”

Chu Yian stared at the various controls on the bread truck and began starting the vehicle as her instructor had taught her…

Lu Qingyuan frowned tightly at her. “Are you crushing ants?”

Chu Yian floored the clutch, clutching the steering wheel and shouting, “This is my fastest speed! I haven’t learned the third module yet!”

She had no idea how she’d ended up in the driver’s seat-she was panicked and desperate.

Why was Chu Yian in the driver’s seat? Because Lu Qingyuan had deliberately let her!

His leg was injured and inconvenient, so he had purposely pushed Chu Yian into the driver’s seat. Who could have guessed her driving skills had so much room for improvement… so, so much.