Chapter 5: Charging Cash
But things did not happen as Zhang Zhiyin had expected.
Hearing the uproar, Ah Lan came over. She asked with a pair of raised eyebrows, “What happened?”
You Huo who was originally behaving with an unbearable insolence towards Zhang Zhiyin immediately assumed an obedient attitude: “No, Sister Lan, nothing happened.”
This was a totally different impression of Boss Yu Huo in Zhang Zhiyin’s mind. Zhang Zhiyin looked at You Huo hesitantly and briefly told Ah Lan what happened.
This was not any big issue and Ah Lan quickly ordered Zhang Zhiyin to give Yu Huo another bowl of porridge. Now it was still in the earlier stage of the apocalypse, so food was not as scarce as in the later stage. Ordinary people could rely on the relief to fill up their stomachs at this time.
After distributing the food, Zhang Zhiyin said casually, “That man just now was so fierce. I thought he would hit me.”
Sister Lan smiled and shook her head. “He dared not.”
Zhang Zhiyin was a little puzzled. In the current development of the game scenario, Boss You Huo was powerful, aggressive and was courting hatred in all ways. However, because of the indistinct support from Dr. Y behind this powerful fire ability, many people were made helpless. What was there he didn’t dare to do?
The next few days he was so bored that he began to observe Yu Huo secretly. He soon discovered that the crux of the problem was that – the current Yu Huo was just an ordinary person who had not awaken any powers. In contrast, Sister Lan was a well-known water ability powerhouse in Lihua Shopping Mall.
Zhang Zhiyin didn’t know what Yu Huo did before the apocalypse, but now the current him knew how to set his dish based on the person. He treated the ability users honestly and respectfully. When he learned that Zhang Zhiyin also had an ability, his attitude towards him grew respectful.
It was a world of difference from his image of a public enemy that was the Boss’s underling.
Zhang Zhiyin was faintly appalled.
When playing the game, everything was set; the identity background of all the characters was set, and the plot progression schedule and time nodes were controlled by the game company.
Even in the game world, time and space inverted and overlapped — according to the game plot, in the eyes of the players who left M City after completing the novice task, the city should have been a dead city captured by zombies; but for the newer players who just entered the game, their time was still set at the beginning of the apocalypse where M City had not yet been captured, and they still have to complete a series of tasks in the Lihua Shopping Mall. All players were in the same game, but the information conveyed by the game plot was quite different.
But now, he was in a complete and integrated world, set at the beginning of the apocalypse. Mini Boss Yu Huo hadn’t awakened his ability yet and was ridiculed and getting eye rolls from the people here. The survivors of Lihua District in M City were seeking temporary shelter and waiting for further rescue in the small safe area centered on Lihua Mall. They were completely unaware that this area would become a forbidden zone in a month time.
It also meant that he was now living in a single linear timeline reality. Destruction was really destruction; it wouldn’t just be words and pictures conveyed by the game plot. Death and destruction would be completely irreversible.
This was not a game. Zhang Zhiyin watched Brother Fei and his team cremate the bodies of their companions who were attacked outside and looked up at the gray sky. For the first time, he realized that these people weren’t dead data that could be backed up. Everyone would die, other than his inexplicable existence, and death could not be reversed.
Zhang Zhiyin was a very easy-going person. His parents divorced when he was very young. He followed his mother and later had little contact with his father. His mother married again and went abroad, leaving himself to his Grandma and Grandpa. She would only send money back every year.
He’d never seen his own parents ever since primary school, but his grandparents spoiled him so much they always said to him, “Zhiyin only need to live healthily and happily. Don’t worry about anything else. They do what they want and we do what we want.”
For so many years, no matter what happened to Zhang Zhiyin, the first thing was to ensure that his health was in good condition and would have no issues, followed by trying to make his life as comfortable as possible. He had not much ambition, nor had he ever put too much pressure on himself to start a family and a career. He was living at ease and he did not think about having a house or girlfriend.
Dajia and Dayi often looked at him and sighed, “Zhiyin, you should grow some awareness. If you go on like this, your little sister Yin Lin will run away.”
Three years ago, when he graduated from university, both of his grandparents left him. For the first time in more than ten years, his mother returned home and stuffed him with a bankbook of more than 100,000 yuan inside and then she left. Zhang Zhiyin didn’t look at the specific number, nor did he refuse. All he did was put it together with what remained from his grandparents and silently kept it away. It was never touched since then.
Apart from some of his caring friends, Zhang Zhiyin wasn’t particularly anxious to go back to the real world, nor was he anxious about his strange situation.
Just like that, he spent nearly a month here. He helped out by doing some chores every day, and when he was free, he stood on the roof overlooking the zombies in the distance, honing his chicken rib precision ability, or brushing the Item Store. From the store, he learned that the ratio of the time flow velocity here to that in the real world was unpredictable and impossible to grasp.
On this day, Uncle Yun gathered together the backbone of the ability users and ordinary people and announced a piece of news—they were evacuating M City.
According to the observation that occurred in the course of nearly ten days, they realized there were more and more zombies outside the safety zone, and their strength was gradually increasing. Brother Fei’s team was often exhausted from dealing with them. Looking at their present strength, it was just a matter of time until the fall of the safety zone. The reason for not releasing this news previously in fear of causing panic. Now that the arrow was fitted to the string, they must prepare immediately.
When Zhang Zhiyin heard the news, his body immediately stiffened. He recalled the pain of those zombies scratching him to death from that time. The supermarket guarded by the mini Boss was the only way available for their evacuation route. And the road there was full of zombies!
In the evening, the worried Zhang Zhiyin kept brushing the store, trying to buy some life-saving things with his remaining nineteen dollars and thirty-seven cents. After viewing everything, he found that only fireworks and affection-gaining items could be bought.
Would buying a box of love chocolate to brush the zombie mini boss make him leave one side of the net open and have his little brothers let him pass?
It was no big deal to die again. In the end, Zhang Zhiyin gave up treatment and went to sleep. Before falling asleep, the last thought he had was “The resurrection point better not be bound to M City because I didn’t open a new map”.
As a result, Zhang Zhiyin was happy when he opened his eyes the next day. He lay on his big bed, not on the floor of Lihua Shopping Mall.
He grinned and laughed, then rushed out of bed at the first chance he got. He pounced into the study and turned on the computer. He quickly logged in to and charged his account with one thousand yuan.
Looking at the prompt, Zhang Zhiyin was satisfied.
Because he was still at the abandoned laboratory, the Boss was still standing sideways in front of him without expression.
Zhang Zhiyin thought that since he had so much money in his account now, how could he not express it to the boss? He opened the Item Store quickly and looked at the rows of affection gaining items, but then he hesitated.
What should he give?
Footnotes:
- Chicken rib: Things of little value
- Arrow that was fitted to the string: No turning back
- When MC mentioned about giving treatment, it’s referring to giving up treating his boss complex… see comments below !