Chapter 17

"According to your medical records, this was only your second instance."

"Yes."

"You were really lucky."

Seeing that Lin Deng could pick up on what she meant, Su Cheng knew she must know something about gene locks. "Doctor Lin, could you tell me a few things about gene locks?"

"Information about gene locks isn't particularly secret. There's no harm in telling you."

There was none of the bargaining or refusal Su Cheng had anticipated. Lin Deng agreed readily.

"Gene locks have three stages. Each stage you unlock enhances your five senses and also grants you a special ability."

"As far as I know, these abilities include enhanced strength, speed, agility, mental power, and so on..."

"Which kind do you have?"

Su Cheng said, "Self-healing."

Lin Deng raised her chin slightly. "A good skill."

"Then how do you upgrade your gene lock?"

The corner of Lin Deng's mouth tugged upward. "Do you think I'd know the answer to that?"

Su Cheng gave her a sincere smile, deliberately flattering her. "You look like you know a lot, Doctor Lin!"

Lin Deng showed no further emotion at the flattery and continued calmly, "As far as I know, the opportunity to unlock the first-stage gene lock comes when you're on the verge of death. It requires an extremely strong will to survive, along with a little chance and luck."

"Only 40% of the people in each district's apartments can unlock the first-stage gene lock. Even fewer unlock the second- or third-stage gene lock, so there are too few examples to establish the conditions."

Lin Deng paused. "Unlocking your gene lock in your second instance makes you one of the strong-willed ones."

Su Cheng didn't let the compliment go to her head. Her eyes curved as she smiled. "Thank you for telling me all this, Doctor Lin."

Lin Deng nodded. "If you're truly grateful, you can share your experiences with me if you unlock the second and third stages."

Su Cheng agreed. She also hoped she could unlock the higher stages as soon as possible. "Let's hope your words bring me luck."

Lin Deng wasn't in the habit of exchanging pleasantries. She glanced at her watch and said flatly, "Time's up."

As her voice fell, Su Cheng's vision went black.

In the blink of an eye, Su Cheng was back in her apartment.

The supplies she had brought back from the instance were piled on the floor.

The calendar on the television read: Year 00, Month 00, Day 11.

[Ding-dong~ The Smart Bag has changed forms to match the environment]

The pocket on Su Cheng's pants disappeared, and a white bag appeared on the sofa. This white bag was the original form it had taken when Su Cheng first bought it.

The information on the black wristband updated:

Name: Su Cheng

Identity: Resident of Unit 1206, Apartment No. 1167, Street X, District E

Points: 300 (nontransferable)

Constitution: Gene lock first stage

Skill: Self-Healing [Enhances cellular repair activity to rapidly heal wounds]

"If it weren't for the gene lock, I wouldn't even have known the wristband's information could update..."

Su Cheng took a clean set of clothes from the supplies on the floor and headed to the bathroom. Being wet all over after the medicinal bath felt very uncomfortable.

The water from the showerhead washed the remaining green medicinal bathwater off her hands and feet as steam filled the air...

After blow-drying her hair, Su Cheng put the supplies on the floor away in suitable places.

She put the medicine and food together with her previous supplies in the drawers above and below the desk and in the cabinets.

She hung all the clothes in the wardrobe, finally filling out its empty interior. Miscellaneous items like the small fan and flashlight also went into the wardrobe for now, alongside the toilet paper.

As for the dagger, kitchen knife, chainsaw, scissors... Su Cheng thought it over. Since they were all clean, there was no need to dump them in the bathroom. She might as well leave them on the desktop.

Once she finished tidying up, Su Cheng lay on the sofa and opened her phone.

There was an unread message from the owner in the apartment group chat.

Monday

[Group owner]: The owners of Units 1211 and 1210 privately traded items. As punishment, each has been deducted 300 points and issued one yellow card.

Wednesday

[Group owner]: The owners of Units 1235 and 1237 have perished after failing to complete their instance missions. The vacant apartments will be bound to new owners.

Banning private trades within the apartments effectively cut off the residents' means of helping one another.

Residents couldn't survive on handouts. Everyone could only rely on themselves and brave the instances to stay alive. The apartments really stopped at nothing to force people into instances.

Su Cheng opened the apartment group chat without the group owner, which had 99+ unread messages.

Only after scrolling up did she realize the messages had reached 99+ mainly because newcomers had arrived, and the earlier batch who had already entered instances were answering their questions.

Su Cheng skimmed through them but found no useful information.

Su Cheng opened her private chat with Yan Yu. The status beneath her name showed she was offline.

Su Cheng left a message: Did your special instance go all right this time?

Then all she could do was wait for her to come online and reply.

"I only have 300 points, but I can still check out the supermarket... and run an experiment while I'm at it."

Su Cheng sprang upright, slung the white Smart Bag over her shoulder, and walked over to the desk to pick up the dagger that hadn't been soaked in cinnabar.

"A dagger still feels more useful..."

Su Cheng picked up the dagger, put it in the Smart Bag, and opened the door to leave.

Author's note:

None

Chapter 17

There weren't many people in the supermarket at the moment, just two or three scattered around. Two of them were wearing bathrobes.

With no one checking out, the cashier, Tang Su, was leafing through a thick book.

Su Cheng didn't take a basket. She headed straight for the yellow-tagged shelves in the food section, her gaze locking onto the red and green nutrient solutions.

[Nutrient solution: Concentrated effective food components in standard proportions. Extremely nutritious and filling. On sale! Only 30 points]

Su Cheng chose a strawberry-flavored nutrient solution, then went to the weapons section to see if there were any discounted weapons she could snap up for a bargain.

She had enough ordinary physical weapons in stock, so she only needed to look at the supermarket-exclusive weapons on the yellow-tagged shelves.

Su Cheng only looked at sale items. Full-price items were completely beyond her means, while discounted ones offered a sliver of possibility.

The Storage Cards that had previously been on sale were back to their original price of 300 points.

After searching through the shelves, she finally chose an item resembling a compass.

[Soul-Pointing Needle: When a supernatural creature approaches, the long needle will point toward the supernatural presence. However, it may give an incorrect reading. On sale! Only 150 points.]

Su Cheng took the Soul-Pointing Needle off the shelf. That was right-she intended to enter a special instance next.

Her brush with death in the tsunami instance had changed Su Cheng's mindset. The danger and rewards of ordinary instances were completely disproportionate. She had nearly lost her life in an instance worth 300 points.

If she had to face extreme danger either way, why not take a chance on a special instance with higher rewards?

She had rested enough in the tsunami instance, and her body was in far better condition than when she had left the zombie instance. Besides, she had already unlocked the first-stage gene lock... so why not give it a try?

The generous points from completing a special instance could quickly free Su Cheng from her current tight circumstances in these early stages and allow her to grow stronger faster.

Su Cheng tightened her grip slightly on the Soul-Pointing Needle's box and smiled self-mockingly.

She had always thought she was someone who liked to take everything slowly, someone content as long as she could scrape by alive. She hadn't expected that she was actually ambitious...

Ambitious enough to risk danger for high rewards.

Su Cheng took the nutrient solution and Soul-Pointing Needle to the counter to check out.

Tang Su put down her book and picked up the items to scan them.

Su Cheng's sharp eyes caught sight of the page lying open in the book. It was an illustration in gloomy colors, with a bizarre composite animal at a point of a six-pointed star...

"Please let me scan your wristband."

Su Cheng looked away and raised her hand for Tang Su to scan her wristband. Her gaze fell on Tang Su's heart-shaped hair clip. A shy, sweet girl reading a gloomy, bizarre book made for quite a contrast.

Tang Su smiled, the dimples beside her lips faintly appearing. "All done. Please take your purchases."

"Thank you."

The wristband's balance updated: 120.

Carrying her purchases outside the supermarket, Su Cheng took the dagger out of her bag, pulled off its sheath, and cut a three-centimeter wound across the back of her left hand without so much as blinking.

The dagger was extremely sharp. With only a little force, Su Cheng cut through her skin. Blood seeped from the wound, but she didn't even frown, as though she couldn't feel the pain.

A person's pain threshold really could be raised through experience.

Su Cheng checked the time on her wristband, wiped the dagger twice on her clothes, sheathed it, and put it away. With her right hand, she flipped open the nutrient solution's cap and drank it in one gulp.

Its sweet-and-sour flavor was very close to strawberry, a little like the strawberry milk she used to drink. Though there were only ten milliliters, drinking it left her stomach heavy as though she had eaten a feast. She actually felt nine-tenths full.

After one minute, the wound on the back of her hand stopped bleeding at a rate visible to the naked eye.

After two minutes, the wound began to itch and scab over.

At five minutes, only a scar remained on the back of her hand.

"Several times faster than before. It really is related to energy intake. At the previous rate, a wound like this would've taken at least a few hours to disappear completely..."

This also showed that the supermarket-exclusive nutrient solution truly was a high-energy, highly nutritious food.

With her hypothesis confirmed, Su Cheng's lips curled up in pleasure.

She turned and went back into the supermarket, choosing two strawberry-flavored and two watermelon-flavored nutrient solutions, spending exactly her remaining 120 points.

If her points hadn't been limited, Su Cheng would have liked to buy a few more bottles.

As Su Cheng checked out with four tubes of nutrient solution in her arms, a man who was also about to check out noticed her.

Seeing her buy so many, he headed toward the food section with a puzzled expression, perhaps thinking the nutrient solution had some hidden effect he didn't know about...

Other people might buy nutrient solution to replenish nutrients their bodies lacked or simply for a convenient way to fill their stomachs.

But for Su Cheng, her healing speed was tied to her energy intake, making nutrient solution something quite important-the equivalent of fuel and nitrous for her self-healing ability.

After Su Cheng returned to her room, the scar on the back of her hand had already faded.

At the same time, however, she had gone from nine-tenths full to seven-tenths full, shifting from having absolutely no appetite to being able to eat again.