Offerings to the God of Wealth

Of course he had fought zombies, and he had killed quite a few of them.

"Any farther and we'll be outside the safe zone," Zhang Yi said, looking at a huge billboard advertising Yunshui animal feed up ahead. "We have to get six Corpse Crystals today, or you'll have to keep sleeping outside." He then briefly went over some basic things about the town, mainly the crystal exchange rates for food and water, along with rent for the space they occupied, and the entry and exit tax that required ordinary people to hand over one Corpse Crystal for every three trips out of town. He had only just paid that yesterday, so they did not have to worry about that expense for now.

"You have to pay extra to rent land and put up a shack. Since you're on your own, you can squeeze in with us for now." At that, Zhang Yi remembered his own shack, where he could not even straighten his back, and silently sighed.

"All right," Nan Shao answered readily. In the past, he would never have agreed to share a room with a complete stranger, but such considerations had long since ceased to matter, and he had no choice anyway. "Can we go somewhere first?"

Chapter 5: Offerings to the God of Wealth

The place Nan Shao meant was a public bathhouse. When Zhang Yi saw the prices painted in red on its glass door-ten yuan for a shower, twenty for a tub bath, fifty for a milk bath-his expression twisted for a moment. He could not for the life of him imagine what the other man had come here for. A bath?

"I killed the zombies inside." Nan Shao did not explain what he had come to do. After a word to Zhang Yi, he pushed open the glass door and went in first.

Only after making sure there were no zombies nearby did Zhang Yi follow.

The place was only two streets away from the little supermarket where Zhang Yi had found Nan Shao, and not far from the road out of the county town. Since it lay on the route everyone had to take between Wangyang Town and the county town, people passing through often cleared out the zombies nearby, leaving far fewer here than elsewhere. Ordinary people generally hunted zombies only around this area, not daring to venture deeper in. As for the bathhouse they were now in, there was so little worth taking that even ordinary people could not be bothered to waste time coming inside.

Two corpses lay on the floor, their heads smashed to pulp. Both were naked; they had clearly been bathing when the apocalypse began. Without so much as looking at them, Nan Shao bent down and fumbled beneath the cashier's counter for a while, then pulled out a palm-sized black velvet pouch and tossed it to Zhang Yi, who was keeping watch beside him.

"When I passed this place, I thought I saw an apple on the counter, so I came in. I didn't expect two zombies to be hiding inside," Nan Shao explained. So this was where he had been injured. Back then, Nan Wei had thrown away the compressed biscuits Nan Shao had given him and said he wanted fruit. But so much time had passed since the apocalypse that any fruit left should have more or less rotted away. Where was Nan Shao supposed to find any? Yet he had always granted Nan Wei's every request. He already felt useless for being unable to give Xiao Wei a comfortable, stable life; he could not fail to fulfill even this tiny wish as well. So, dragging his exhausted, hungry body along, he had ignored his friends' attempts to dissuade him and left the little supermarket where everyone was temporarily hiding to look for fruit alone. Perhaps he had been so fixated on it that he had spotted the apple lying on the cashier's counter in the bathhouse's outer area, partly covered by a book lying askew. At the time, he had actually caught only a fleeting glimpse from outside of a patch of dry green and red beneath the book. With the light refracting through the glass, it had been no more than a blur, yet for some reason he had felt certain it was an apple. It had turned out to be just what he wanted, but unfortunately, this was also where he had come to grief. While he was fighting the zombies that suddenly appeared, the black pouch he carried had fallen out and been kicked beneath the counter. After being bitten, his only thought had been to get the apple to Xiao Wei before the virus took hold. He had not thought of the pouch at all.

Zhang Yi squeezed the pouch and felt something hard inside. He tipped it out and discovered a pile of milky-white Corpse Crystals, roughly twenty at a glance. Though somewhat surprised, he kept his expression unchanged, poured the crystals back into the pouch, and put it away. Now, hearing Nan Shao mention the apple, he immediately searched the entire bathhouse from top to bottom. To his surprise, he actually found something.

On the side of the bathhouse facing away from the main entrance, a statue of the God of Wealth stood high overhead. Between its height and the crossbeam blocking it, hardly anyone would have noticed it. In front of the God of Wealth was a plate of five apples stacked together. Apart from being somewhat shriveled, they had not spoiled. There was also a plate of mung bean cakes, two unopened packets of Oreos, a thoroughly dried-out, hard braised chicken drumstick, half a bottle of Wuliangye liquor, and an unopened five-hundred-milliliter bottle of cola. Of the two empty glasses, one still carried a faint smell of liquor. The other had probably been intended for the cola, but whoever had made the offerings might have been held up by something else before they could pour it.

Zhang Yi tossed Nan Shao an apple and a packet of cookies, found a pack of tissues in the cashier's counter, and carefully wiped the dust off the mung bean cakes and chicken drumstick. Then, without ceremony, he swept everything remaining into a plastic bag. He also rummaged through the clothes lockers and found two clean sets of men's shirts and trousers, which he packed up to take along as well.

"Something's coming. A dozen or so." Apart from making him feel a little more alert, half a bran cake had done next to nothing for Nan Shao. As soon as he received the food, he tore open the cookies and started eating, but he had not let his guard down and had kept watching what was happening outside.

"Hide first." Zhang Yi motioned for Nan Shao to loop the chain around the glass doors from inside, while he put their packed supplies into a bathing cubicle and began dragging the corpses across the floor.

After locking the doors, Nan Shao did not dare lower the rolling shutter for fear the noise would attract those things' attention. He ran over and helped Zhang Yi move the two corpses to just outside the bathing cubicle's door. Zombies had poor eyesight, but they were very sensitive to sound and human scent, so most people who had survived this long knew how to hide themselves.

The two men slipped into the cubicle and gently pulled the door shut. As they listened to the dull, shuffling footsteps outside, like those of old people nearing death, both instinctively held their breath. Only when the sounds gradually faded away without anything banging against the bathhouse doors did they let out heavy sighs of relief. Two or three would have been manageable, but with so many arriving at once, even if they could kill them all, they could not possibly escape without injury. Avoiding a confrontation was naturally best.

"Let's go." They had made quite a haul, and Zhang Yi did not dare linger, afraid of running into other people who had come into town to hunt zombies and scavenge supplies.