High-Speed Rail

It was time for her daily Prophet session again.

Ye Zhao rubbed her hands together, clasped them in prayer, and bowed. "Gods and Buddhas of all heavens, bless me. Game, please bless me too. I hope everything goes safely and smoothly from here on out. Thank you, thank you."

[Prophet Skill activated. Current Prophet Level: 1. Skill duration: 10s.]

An airplane circled overhead.

The sky was gray and hazy, and the air was thick with the smell of dust.

More than a dozen people in radiation suits stood amid the ruins. Some kept watch, some took photographs, some talked, and some collected samples from the site...

Everything proceeded in an orderly fashion.

Until, from some unknown corner of the ruins, a red-eyed rat emerged. Its black fur was ulcerated and festering, yet that did nothing to diminish its agility or ferocity. It squeaked, then shot toward a man bent over collecting something like a cannonball!

"Ah!"

With a cry, more than a dozen red-eyed rats burrowed out from the ruins and began attacking everyone at the scene!

The place instantly descended into chaos, gunfire mixing with screams...

System:

[Prophet Skill duration ended.]

The [Prophet] Skill turned gray.

[CD: 24h]

When Ye Zhao opened her eyes, she could not help but shudder.

What was with those rats? They had not died? They were far too tenacious. Had they escaped disaster because they had been too deep underground? And they looked different from the rats she had seen before. Had they evolved?

She had originally planned to make her escape under cover of darkness, but now she was afraid she could not wait any longer. She did not dare keep waiting either. What if those rats ran up and started throwing their weight around right on her face while she waited?

Life was far too bitter. Ye Zhao quickly unwrapped a milk candy and popped it into her mouth.

She got out of the car and stuffed everything into her space. With empty hands and light gear, she made a grass wreath and placed it atop her head before sneaking toward the wire-mesh wall.

She was not far from the exit. At her speed, she arrived in just ten minutes. She scrambled up a large tree in a few moves, took out her binoculars, and saw dozens of vehicles blocking the outside of the wire fence, with quite a few people standing around.

Some wanted to go to City X, while others had simply come to watch the excitement.

After observing for a long while, Ye Zhao concluded that running straight through would not work. Her speed was not so fast that she could vanish from the naked eye. There was no way she would go unnoticed.

She could only circle around from the mountain, then blow up the wire fence with a grenade, just like before!

Everything proceeded according to the evolution. The only problem was that the moment she threw the grenade, her nose started bleeding. She could only pinch her nose shut and sprint at full speed. It affected her performance somewhat, but fortunately, she made it out safely in the end.

The soldiers on guard nearby heard the commotion and immediately gave chase. The onlookers outside also panicked, looking around in all directions and asking each other what had happened.

Especially the sniper stationed high up on watch—he could only see an afterimage flash past at incredible speed. Even his sniper rifle could not lock onto the target.

In less than two seconds, that black figure completely vanished from before his eyes. So fast!

"...What the hell was that? Why was it running so fast??"

"I couldn't even tell whether that thing was human or a ghost!"

"Where's the surveillance footage? Did it capture what just happened?"

"..."

The surveillance footage was retrieved quickly. It had captured something, but the video only showed a black figure. With the other party also wearing a mask, all they could make out was that she was a woman with a ponytail. Everything else was blurry.

"Pursue her! At all costs, we must find this person!"

"If the X Virus spreads outside, we'll be sinners against all humanity!"

Of course, Ye Zhao knew she was not infected.

She ran ten kilometers in one breath. After confirming no one was chasing her, she ducked into a corner, created a sedan, and got inside. She wiped away the damn nosebleed, changed into a blue-and-white plaid dress and a clean pair of shoes, then let down her long hair and braided it into two plaits.

Another large clump of hair fell out. Ye Zhao frowned in distress. If this kept up, she was afraid she would be bald in another couple of days.

But compared to those who had died, she was still alive. Bald was bald.

Sure enough, there was no limit to how low a person's bottom line could go.

Ye Zhao drove onto the road. There were clearly more vehicles now, and the presence of living people rushed toward her. She soon reached the nearest county town. It was lively and peaceful there. If she did not know too much, she might even have wanted to hide out there for the last few days.

After all, there were fewer people in a county town, and it was easier to flee from. It was the perfect place to lie low.

But those rats looked too terrifying. Ordinary houses could not withstand rat attacks at all. She was even more afraid that another nuclear deterrent strike might come. Her instincts told her that the farther away she got, the better.

Of course, running away required money, even if she would not starve to death.

Ye Zhao found a gold shop, parked by the roadside, and went in for a look around.

She Scanned all the gold, silver, jade, and jewelry inside. No matter the size, each only required 1 point.

Ye Zhao spent 1 point to create a 500-gram gold bar, found a secondhand gold-buying shop, and exchanged it for two hundred thousand in cash.

She put the cash into her backpack, got back in the car, and continued on her way.

She did not dare take the highway. After all, she had no driver's license. If she got checked, she would be hauled off to the station. She took the old roads instead. Before dark, Ye Zhao finally arrived in City Y. She abandoned the car, hailed a taxi, and went to the high-speed rail station. She planned to take the high-speed rail to City B.

Planes were faster, but she did not have the nerve. If anything happened on a plane, there would be nowhere to run.

The reason Ye Zhao had chosen City B as her destination this time was because City B housed Xia Kingdom's largest military base. It had plenty of firepower. If the zombie virus fully erupted, that place should be the safest.

The powerful military system made Ye Zhao feel at ease.

She bought a business-class seat. There were only a few people in the carriage, which reassured Ye Zhao somewhat, but she still did not dare sleep. As long as there were people around her, she could not stop herself from staying on edge.

Partway through the trip, she went to the restroom. With her sharp ears, she heard quite a few people coughing in the carriage. Though they appeared to be ordinary coughs, it still gave her a bad feeling.

After returning to her seat, Ye Zhao was sleepy and exhausted. The aftereffects of the nuclear radiation left her head muddled, but she did not dare sleep at all. She scrolled through the news for a while, then heard the two boys seated beside her discussing City X. "Something definitely happened in City X. Otherwise, the military would never have sealed it off!"

"The strangest thing is that there have barely been any IP addresses from City X online these past few days!"

"One finally showed up, but the account got banned. She did not even say much. There was just an automatic reply telling people to stockpile supplies, and then the account was immediately banned! Why is what happened in City X getting weirder and weirder?"

"Anyway, I already called my mom and told her to buy more food to keep at home. I also bought two boxes of compressed biscuits."

"..."

Ye Zhao glanced at them. "Two boxes aren't enough."

The two of them: ?

They looked at Ye Zhao in confusion and found that the girl in black was wearing a hat and mask, wrapped up tightly from head to toe. Only her exposed eyes were slightly red.

"Do you know something? Do you know what happened in City X?"

Ye Zhao shook her head and said no more.

The two still wanted to ask more, but suddenly heard a piercing scream from the carriage behind them. They jumped in fright and turned around.

Ye Zhao's eyes flew open. In the blink of an eye, she was already at the door of Carriage No. 2. Sure enough, she saw one person pinning another to the floor in the aisle and gnawing on them. Everyone around them was screaming. Two tall men stood up, and with two bangs of gunfire, the two people on the floor instantly collapsed and fell silent.

"Ah!!"

"Murder!"

Screams rose one after another.

Ye Zhao instead breathed a sigh of relief. Just do not turn this into a train of death.

She glanced at the two men who had fired. They did not look surprised and handled the situation with practiced ease. They likely knew the inside story.

People immediately came to drag away the two corpses. Passengers crowded into other carriages and the corridors, while staff disinfected the scene of the incident.

Even so, no one dared enter that carriage anymore.

Ye Zhao returned to her carriage. Judging from the current situation, the zombie virus had not disappeared with the nuclear explosion at all.

After quite a while, the two boys returned, their faces pale. They had clearly been badly shaken.

"Just hearing those people describe it sounds terrifying. Suddenly attacking people, biting them, eating them—it was exactly like zombies!"

"They were zombies, definitely zombies!"

"Does this count as close contact for us? Could we get infected?"

"Probably not? Didn't they say the zombie virus can only spread through bites?... They won't lock us up, will they??"

When Ye Zhao heard the words "lock us up," her heart sank halfway. If they were locked up, would that not be the same as entering the headquarters of the zombie reserve force? What was the difference between going there and courting death? Would not this whole journey have been for nothing?

That would not do!

If they really planned to quarantine them, Ye Zhao intended to run the moment she got off the high-speed rail.

This trash game had made her run more in these few days than she had in her previous life!

The two boys talked for a long time without reaching any conclusion, then came over to ask Ye Zhao what she had meant by saying two boxes were not enough.

Ye Zhao said, "Just like what you saw."

"So you've seen this happen before?" The two looked even worse. Ye Zhao gave a quiet hum. "City X is already gone, and it still couldn't stop the virus from spreading."

The two sat there blankly for a long while, dumbfounded by the news. City X was gone? What did it mean for City X to be gone?

"...Could the rumors online be true? No way!!"

Ye Zhao glanced at him. She neither confirmed nor denied it, but it was no different from admitting it.

She did not care what they thought. Her whole body felt awful now, and she was too lazy to say more. She closed her eyes to rest.

At midnight, the high-speed rail Ye Zhao was on finally arrived in City B.

Fortunately, the quarantine she had worried about did not happen. They only underwent full-body disinfection when leaving the station. She made it out of the high-speed rail station without incident, found a nearby hotel, and checked into a luxury suite on the top floor. She put down one hundred thousand at the front desk. The security and service there were first-rate, so it should hold up for a few days.

Over the course of the day, Ye Zhao had created another ten Attribute Pages with Constitution +1. Her Constitution had now reached 24 points.

Her hair loss and nosebleeds had eased significantly, and the red spots on her arms had stopped spreading. Her condition had stabilized somewhat.

Only after taking a hot shower, eating the cooked food delivered to her room by room service, and lying down on the soft bed did Ye Zhao's tightly wound nerves loosen a little. She finally felt alive again.

God knew how nervous she had been along the way, terrified that she would suddenly die if she was not careful.

Lying in bed now, she fiddled with her phone, wanting to check the latest news, but she was too exhausted to resist the overwhelming drowsiness. Soon, she fell asleep.