A Knockoff Phone and History
The howls outside drew closer and closer. Three zombies dragged their stiff bodies slowly toward the entrance of the house.
Rotting flesh hung from their bones, swaying slightly as they moved. A powerful stench of blood and decay poured into the house through the broken windows and ruined walls, unbearably pungent.
Xu Qing suppressed his fear and nausea and instantly pressed himself into the shadows against the wall, holding his breath.
The three zombies lingered at the entrance for a while, their cloudy eyes scanning their surroundings blankly as they searched by instinct for signs of living people.
Only after finding nothing for some time did they drag their feet and slowly wander toward the other side of the street, their howls gradually fading into the distance.
Once he confirmed that the danger had passed for the moment, Xu Qing slowly breathed a sigh of relief. A layer of cold sweat had already broken out across his back.
After a brief rest, he wasted no more time and cautiously resumed searching the dilapidated house.
Treading over rubble and dust, he carefully searched every corner, his gaze sweeping over rotten furniture, scattered belongings, and piles of debris.
Before long, a black object in a gap between collapsed bricks in a corner caught his attention.
What was this?
Xu Qing hurried over, bent down, and brushed aside the dust and broken bricks covering it.
It was a smartphone. Its body had not suffered much damage, but its screen was covered in a dense spiderweb of cracks.
"Huh?! A phone?"
He hurriedly picked it up.
His fingertips wiped the thick dust from the phone, and he distinctly felt its cold, hard surface.
Hopefully it still worked!
Xu Qing had only intended to give it a try as he casually held down the power button on its side.
The next second, something unexpected happened.
The pitch-black screen suddenly lit up faintly!
Although the screen was badly cracked, the image flickered and blurred, and large black patches covered it, that faint but unmistakable light really did come on.
"Holy shit! It actually turned on?!"
Xu Qing's eyes widened slightly, his heart filled with shock and surprise.
He had thought the phone was long since completely ruined. He had never expected it to boot up normally.
The screen flickered and jumped, accompanied by a startup jingle,
Love singing and dancing, love playing basketball~
Kunkun Phone~
The pretty ones have Guoguo, we have Kunkun~
Along with a familiar BGM~
What the hell was this?
A moment later, a blurry system interface barely managed to appear on the damaged screen.
But the touchscreen had completely stopped working. Most of the display was damaged and black, leaving only a small portion where the contents were barely legible.
The corner of Xu Qing's mouth could not help twitching.
If he was right, this thing was probably a knockoff!
Whatever~ A knockoff would have to do!
There was no signal and no internet. The status bar was blank, with only a tiny remaining-charge icon flickering faintly in the corner.
Xu Qing stopped dwelling on it and hurriedly stared at the damaged screen, trying to examine its contents and find clues about the outbreak of the apocalypse.
But just as the interface lit up, the lock screen popped up.
A six-digit passcode screen stood squarely in his way.
After all that effort had yielded nothing, the frustration he had been suppressing surged into his heart.
Every attempt proved futile. Being stopped dead by a lock-screen passcode made Xu Qing's temper flare.
"What a piece of junk!"
Overcome with anger, he swung his hand and smashed the phone hard against the concrete floor.
"Bang!"
With a sharp crack, the knockoff phone that had barely been usable shattered into pieces. Its screen broke completely, and components flew across the floor, turning it into a thoroughly useless heap of scrap.
Xu Qing looked at the wreckage scattered across the floor, exhaled a stale breath, and gave up completely.
There was nothing he could do. He could only keep looking for other clues.
He turned and continued exploring deeper into the house.
Soon, he noticed a relatively intact room tucked away at the end of the hallway. Its door was only slightly warped rather than completely collapsed and destroyed, setting it apart from the other rooms that had been wrecked beyond recognition.
Xu Qing's eyes lit up. He stepped forward, gathered his strength, and kicked the door hard.
"Clang!"
The door swung open at the impact.
The moment he stepped inside, Xu Qing was slightly surprised.
It was actually a gaming room.
The room's layout was much tidier. A desktop computer sat in the center, with a matching gaming desk and chair standing quietly in place, though a thick layer of dust had long since settled over them after so much time without use.
Unfortunately, there was no telling how many years the entire town had been without water and electricity. Even with a computer, he could not use it.
He turned to examine the rest of the room.
The walls were relatively intact, with several posters of celebrities, games, and anime he had never seen before pasted on them.
Xu Qing did not linger over them. His gaze soon settled on the bookshelf in the corner.
The bookshelf was relatively well preserved, with quite a few books arranged neatly on it, most covered in a thin layer of dust.
He reached out and slowly ran his fingers along row after row of spines before finally pulling out a thick textbook.
A large title stood out clearly on the cover-"Modern History of Dragon Country."
Xu Qing raised his brows slightly, his curiosity stirred. He casually opened the book and lowered his head to read it carefully.
Xu Qing soon closed the book, having skimmed its contents.
Taken as a whole, the modern history of Dragon Country in this parallel world differed little from the history he knew from his previous life. Its general course was essentially the same.
Only at the historical juncture of the Ming Dynasty had a completely different turn of events occurred.
According to the book, the Ming Dynasty, whose national fortunes had already withered and which had stood on the brink of collapse, had not fallen.
At the desperate moment when the dynasty was toppling, a man named Zhang Yuan had emerged out of nowhere and turned back the raging tide, leading the tottering Ming Dynasty to rise again, reshaping the mountains and rivers and prolonging the dynasty's lifeline.
Reading this account, Xu Qing could not help feeling surprised. He even wondered whether this fellow named Zhang Yuan might also have been a transmigrator.
His approach to affairs, the course of his rise, and his methods of overturning the heavens to snatch victory from defeat all carried something strange and ahead of its time that did not belong to that era.
For example, this fellow had also introduced the steam engine, trains, and industrialization.
Dragon Country in this world had even called him the Da Ming Sage King Heavenly Emperor Dragon Master.
Unfortunately, after he quickly flipped through the entire textbook, he found that it recorded only historical transitions and the rise and fall of dynasties from ancient times to the present. From beginning to end, there was no mention of the apocalypse or a zombie catastrophe, much less any explanation of the true reason this world had become a wasteland.
Xu Qing closed the book, unable to help feeling somewhat disappointed.
But soon, he found a map of Dragon Country tucked into a gap in the bookshelf, bringing a glimmer back to his eyes.
The map was laminated in a thin plastic film. Although it was dusty and its edges and corners were slightly worn, it was largely well preserved.
Xu Qing brushed the loose dust from its surface and spread the map across the dust-covered gaming desk.
He bent over to examine it carefully, identifying its cities and territories against the historical accounts he had read in the book.
The territory of Dragon Country in this parallel world had roughly the same outline as he remembered, but many place names and regional divisions had changed.
One thing, however, came as a very pleasant surprise to Xu Qing: the distribution of terrain, mountains, and rivers in this world was actually the same as in his original world.