Ye Zhao avoided the crowds all the way back to her hotel. At the entrance, she ran into two police officers. They flashed their badges and made a point of checking her ID. "You came from City Y?"
Ye Zhao nodded.
"City Y is very close to City X. You came from there?"
"Yeah."
"Did you post this on Douyin, too?" One of the officers took out his phone and showed Ye Zhao a screenshot. He had to use a screenshot because the post she'd made had already been taken down.
Ye Zhao glanced at it. "I posted it."
The officer said, "You don't have any evidence, so why post something like this? Do you have any proof? Or a video of anything? Show us."
Ye Zhao turned on her phone and called 110. "Hello, police station? There are two people here pretending to be police officers..."
The two officers' eyes widened in shock. They hurried to stop her. "Wait, wait, wait! We were just joking with you! We just finished performing in a play, and these are costumes! We're students from B University. We have student IDs. We're not con artists!"
"Don't call the police! We can talk this out. It's mainly because of my buddy here—his girlfriend goes to X University! He's been heartbroken for days!"
"Yeah, my girlfriend's been out of contact for days, and I'm worried about her! That's why I tracked your IP. I didn't mean to offend you."
Ye Zhao: Heh.
When she'd used her Scan skill on the guns holstered at their waists, it had identified them as [lighters].
Otherwise, she might have been fooled.
The two quickly explained what had happened. They really had come looking for Ye Zhao because they wanted to find their girlfriends. They'd pretended to be police officers on the spur of the moment because they were worried she wouldn't tell the truth.
The two knew a bit about hacking, which was how they'd traced her through the internet and found her.
Ye Zhao looked at their student IDs. They seemed real.
"What's going on in City X? Miss, did you really escape from City X?"
"Is the zombie virus real? Is the world really ending? ...Big sis, you're so beautiful. You wouldn't be laying the groundwork to become an internet celebrity, would you?"
Ye Zhao looked at him and said just two words: "My condolences."
"...What do you mean?" the guy looking for his girlfriend asked. "Why are you offering condolences? You don't even know my girlfriend's name. She's Ling Xing, a sophomore in the English department at X University. I even have a picture of her. Maybe you've seen her?"
Ye Zhao said, "On the second day of the X Virus outbreak, City X was reduced to rubble by a nuclear bomb."
The two fake cops: ?
They stared at Ye Zhao in horror, their expressions screaming, "What the hell are you talking about?" They'd seen plenty of news online, but they'd never heard anything this terrifying. Sure, City X had fallen and been locked down, and things weren't looking good—but reduced to rubble in a nuclear blast?
It was like some outlandish tall tale, a terrifying joke on a global scale. City X had a population of over ten million!
The guy looking for his girlfriend shook his head over and over. "Impossible. If there'd been a nuclear blast, how could you have escaped?"
Ye Zhao said, "Sorry, that's my business. Do I have to explain?"
She didn't care whether they believed her, and she had no evidence to convince them. She could take off her hat and show them the radiation-induced bald patch on her head, but on second thought, she decided against it. She wanted to save face.
Ye Zhao left, leaving the two fake cops standing there in a daze.
The two young men watched the girl walk away, then exchanged a glance. For a moment, neither knew what to say. The guy looking for his girlfriend finally asked, "Do you think she was telling the truth?"
"...I don't think she was lying?"
"If she wasn't lying, why hasn't she exposed this online? City X is gone, and so many people died! Shouldn't the heartless government have to answer for it?"
"I don't know." He really had no idea what Ye Zhao was thinking. "But if this gets out, it'll cause a huge uproar. The government would lose its credibility, and society would descend into chaos. In peacetime, that'd be bad enough..."
If the zombie virus broke out again, people would no longer trust a government that had lost its credibility, and survival would only become harder.
Thinking of what might happen in the future, he couldn't help shivering.
"Bro, I've got a bad feeling about this. Let's hurry home and stock up on some compressed biscuits!"
"No way. This is too horrible. Is my girlfriend really dead?"
"Hey, stop thinking about that for now. Let's get home first. Don't forget, you're your parents' only child! They're counting on you to protect them!"
Ye Zhao wheeled her suitcase back to her room and sorted through her things. She put most of them in her Personal Space, leaving just a few items in the fridge as a cover. She washed the apples and carrots, too, then put them away.
She had enough food, but she was short on water. Ye Zhao filled the bathtub to keep some in reserve, then opened a delivery app and ordered three cases of bottled water and three cases of milk.
These supplies would be enough for the next few days. Ye Zhao finally felt a little more at ease.
The next day passed fairly peacefully. Ye Zhao sat by the window, put on the most popular idol drama in this world, and kept an eye on the street below while munching on a carrot. A doctor on Baidu had said that carrots helped the body get rid of radioactive substances, so she needed to eat more.
The fifth day since entering the game.
When Ye Zhao woke up, she turned on her phone and opened Weibo to check the trending topics. #Red Rats in Town A Go on a Rampage and Eat People#, #Cannibalism Reported in County S#, #Zombies Appear at City W Bus Station#, #Chaos at C City Airport#...
Every one of the trending topics had the word "Explosive" next to it.
Ye Zhao was instantly wide awake.
She clicked through them one by one. Each trending topic had plenty of videos, clearly showing rats attacking people or people eating one another. There were so many videos and photos, and the incidents covered such a wide area: Town A, County S, City W, C City...and many, many more.
This time, the truth about the world could no longer be hidden. It was laid bare for everyone to see.
Faced with a world in chaos, the government finally held a press conference and revealed the existence of the zombie virus.
"We are deeply saddened by this crisis!"
"...Although we did everything in our power to stop it, we were unable to prevent the X Virus from spreading."
"...Governments around the world have established a vaccine research institute. We have brought together the world's top scientists, and we will do everything in our power to develop a zombie vaccine!"
"...Please don't despair or give up. Let's work together to protect our homes, weather this crisis, and defeat the virus!"
After the emotional appeals, they announced the basic facts about zombies: only attacks to the head could kill them for good, and anyone scratched by one faced a high chance of infection. Asymptomatic carriers also existed, so everyone needed to be careful.
Finally, the government announced three Safe Bases.
One of them was in City B.
Ye Zhao had definitely made the right choice.
"Please believe that humanity will ultimately win this battle!"