The car drove further and further off the beaten path, quickly leaving the city outskirts and arriving at the countryside.
At this point, there were still many cars in the area.
Yun Qingyue’s vehicle was among them. Because there were so many cars, her RV didn’t stand out.
Yun Qingyue noticed the car to her right held a family of three. The child was clutching a can of powdered milk. She guessed these people had probably realized the zombie apocalypse might really be happening.
Once the zombie virus appeared, high-rise buildings in the city were the most dangerous places. So, these people were taking their families and heading straight out of town.
As the cars drove along the road, everyone was very taciturn. No one honked their horn. There were no conflicts.
Yun Qingyue soon lost interest in the other people. She needed to focus on the car that was potentially carrying her colleague.
After passing the suburbs, the target car headed straight for a rural road.
Yun Qingyue stopped. She parked the RV in a gravel yard next to the rural road.
The RV wasn’t convenient for the rural road; with few other cars on it, she’d be way too conspicuous driving it up there.
Thankfully, when she rented the RV, she had already considered that she wouldn’t be able to take it everywhere, so she also had a simple, fast mountain bike.
She hung a small body camera around her neck, got on the mountain bike, and started up the rural road.
It was all uphill. When working, Yun Qingyue was very diligent and barely felt tired, furiously pedaling upwards.
After Zhong Xianming got on the rural road, he didn’t drive far. Going too far up would enter a village; there were people there, and if they saw him, it would be troublesome.
He wasn’t wrong; there were indeed people living in the village further up.
Right now, in the village not far up the hill from him, a dog was gnawing on a bone. The dog’s movements were becoming increasingly ferocious. Inside a room, an old person living alone was startled awake.
Zhong Xianming roughly surveyed the location, decided it was suitable, and stopped.
Thus, Yun Qingyue quickly spotted his car at a bend on the uphill slope.
That wore her out. Thankfully, he’d been driving very slowly on the rural road.
She didn’t continue forward. Instead, she hid her mountain bike and then concealed herself in the bushes.
Through the bushes, she saw a dark figure being dragged out of the trunk. Then, the dark figure was thrown down the slope below. The person who had driven there got back in the car and sped away.
At that moment, the apocalypse was imminent. Black clouds loomed overhead, a chilly wind gusted. Combined with the distant scene… the scene was a bit horrifying. The apocalypse hadn’t even started, and someone was already practicing murder and dumping the body?
She waited a good while, making sure no one was coming back, before coming out. She walked to the spot where that man had been and looked down. An incredibly beautiful face suddenly appeared before her. In the night, mixed with the shadows of the trees, the face looked almost dead, startling her badly.
What kind of workplace environment was this harsh? The first thing she saw was her colleague being dumped like a corpse!
If her colleague was dead, was she supposed to shoulder this project alone? Was she supposed to become the Zombie King then?
Yun Qingyue carefully climbed down the slope from the side. She checked for breath—he was still alive. For a moment, she’d thought her partner was gone entirely.
In the desolate wilderness, only she and the person before her remained. The person was still unconscious, his face pale, like a corpse.
After she dragged him out, the moonlight fell upon him, and Yun Qingyue felt a moment of dazed distraction.
So good-looking.
Every bad memory instantly surged into Yun Qingyue’s mind.
Rich second-generation, plus looking like this.
She couldn’t imagine how easy his life must have been.
And being the colleague of this type of person was probably the most miserable fate in the world, constantly cleaning up his messes.
Within two days, the filter of this good-looking exterior would shatter.
And she couldn’t even complain to others, because if she did, people would say: “He’s so incredibly handsome, can’t just looking at him twice make all your anger disappear?”
Yun Qingyue remembered her past encounters with handsome, rich-second-generation male colleagues. Those were just regular handsome guys, nowhere near the level of the one before her.
She felt like she had PTSD.
Calm down, calm down. Don’t rely on past experiences, don’t stereotype. Maybe someone wealthy and good-looking could also be a competent, hard-working colleague.
She calmed herself for a moment, then looked down at the colleague lying on the ground. In this environment, with the silence, she felt like a killer dealing with a corpse.
To make the work environment feel a little more human, and so she could drag the person more normally rather than like moving a corpse under the dark night sky, she started some perfunctory chatter: “My name is Yun Qingyue. I saved you. From now on, I’m your worthless benefactor.”
Only the wind answered her. But hearing her own voice, she felt a little less scared.
So, she talked to herself while dragging the person up to the road.
Once on the road, she realized another problem.
How was she supposed to bring this person back to the RV? She’d only brought a mountain bike up the hill; there was no way to bring a comatose person down.
She pondered, looking to see if she could find any tools nearby, like a bag.
As she was searching, she heard the sound of an animal running behind her.
Yun Qingyue didn’t know what it was, but the sound became clearer and clearer. Yun Qingyue quickly pulled out a knife strapped to her calf.
Although the System had guaranteed her that the maximum damage she’d suffer in this world was getting bitten by a zombie at the end, she still strapped a knife to her calf, just in case.
The “just in case” quickly appeared on the other side of the road. It was a dog.
The dog stopped and growled heavily in her direction.
Yun Qingyue’s heart pounded with fear.
Please don’t be a zombie dog! Please, absolutely do not be a zombie dog!
In the next second, the dog moved forward, revealing its red eyes.
Alright, it was a zombie dog.
“System! System! Get me out! I’m about to die!”
No response. Not a single response.
“Come out! System! You said you wouldn’t let me die!”
No activity.
As expected, even this high-tech world was a huge, improvised mess. Even high-tech wasn’t reliable. The only thing she could rely on was herself.
Yun Qingyue grit her teeth. She had to fight. At this moment, she could only fight; she couldn’t run away.
Holding the knife, she lunged forward. The zombie dog first froze, then turned and ran.
Yun Qingyue was stunned.
She looked at the knife in her hand. Did she just scare off a zombie dog like that? Yun Qingyue couldn’t express the admiration she felt for herself.
She turned her head and saw her colleague sitting up on the ground, dead leaves still stuck on his head.
A pair of pitch-black eyes stared straight at her. In the moonlight, the gaze was eerie and distant.
Yun Qingyue looked at herself, holding a knife, having just scared off a zombie dog. Then she looked at her colleague, sitting on the ground.
Awesome her and her useless, pretty colleague.
Forget it, waking up was a good thing. Her demands for colleagues were already very low.
“You’re awake.” Yun Qingyue didn’t sheathe the knife, fearing the zombie dog might come back. Holding the knife, she walked to her colleague’s side and noticed he seemed to be struggling to stand.
His leg was probably injured as well.
“What’s your name? Do you remember what happened to you?”
Yun Qingyue seemed to be asking casually, but she was still watching him closely.
His expression remained detached. No fear, no anger.
This person was a bit abnormal.
He had woken up to find himself in the middle of nowhere, a strange woman holding a long knife, first chasing after a dog, then walking back with the knife.
She recalled that her work partner had been feverish and comatose in the villa, completely unaware of what his so-called friends had done.
So now, he could piece together everything before him to fill in the blanks.
This picture-writing exercise would result in: “He, a rich and handsome person, was abducted to the wilderness by a knife-wielding woman.”
Yun Qingyue glanced at his leg and mentally added another line: “And to prevent him from escaping, she broke his leg.”
But clearly, the other party showed no sign of fear. He was even in a state of indifference toward the current situation.
The calm and detachment he displayed made Yun Qingyue feel something was off.
So, Yun Qingyue repeated herself once more: “Do you remember what happened to you?”
The man felt the pain radiating from his body. Pain wasn’t the main issue; the trouble was the excess of drugs in his system.
He looked at the young woman before him. She appeared to be around twenty, her eyes carrying wariness, but a harmless, gentle aura suffused her entire being. Even though she tried hard to look fierce, it couldn’t cover up her inherent nature.
This was the opposite of the people he had met before. In the past, in The Laboratory, he always encountered utterly malicious people who tried their hardest to put on a gentle facade.
He naturally remembered his name: No. 59.
“I don’t know why I am here.”
The person before him said, “Hello. Right now, I have a piece of good news and a piece of bad news. Which would you like to hear first?”
“The bad news.”
“The apocalypse has begun, and someone dumped your body out in the countryside.”
“The good news?”
“I witnessed the dumping, and so I saved you.”
As she spoke, Yun Qingyue took out her phone: “I know that story sounds ridiculous, so I have a video recording here.”
Leaving a paper trail. That was Yun Qingyue’s principle. Without leaving a trail, work might as well have not happened.
The other party looked at her first, then at the phone, and finally said, “I believe you.”
Nah, Yun Qingyue still had to show him.
So, the two of them watched Yun Qingyue’s rescue video together in the cold wind.
“Thank you for saving me.”
His voice was slightly hoarse. When he was unconscious, Yun Qingyue only thought he was good-looking. Now that he was awake, the sense of detachment he exuded actually overshadowed his appearance.
“A great favor needs no thanks,” Yun Qingyue said.
No. 59 looked at this person, trying to discern any resemblance to the people from the illegal lab. The way she acted, she must know his situation; surely someone from inside had leaked the information.
“What do you want?”
Yun Qingyue said, “Now, with the apocalypse here, you’re crippled and alone, and I’m one person. Clearly, we’re both part of the vulnerable groups. So, I want to form an alliance with you.” She felt she was unilaterally aiding the weak.
Regardless of anything else, Yun Qingyue forcibly pushed the project’s progress.
No. 59 couldn’t understand the meaning behind her words. In what way were two people vulnerable?
Yun Qingyue had no idea what the person beside her was thinking. Her work experience told her that this moment was the best time to establish the foundation for their future interactions.
She continued: “Why aren’t you saying anything? You don’t want to come with me?”
No. 59 shook his head. The drugs in his system hadn’t fully metabolized yet, and his self-healing ability was suppressed. Once someone found him, he’d face the predicament of being dissected and studied again.
As for the woman before him, her appearance was equally strange, but his intuition told him she harbored no malice.
“Your leg is injured now, but I don’t mind. Let’s form a small team, you and me. Our goal is to stay alive.”
“First, we need to establish clear boundaries,” Yun Qingyue said with a stern face, very seriously.
When she came here, Yun Qingyue had already thought about this. This private work wasn’t just for the money; she also needed to learn some skills.
Like leadership ability.
The highest official position she’d held in her student days was “window monitor” in elementary school. During her years of working, she was always a minor player. She took the blame constantly but never got a chance to develop.
Now that she was here, she decided to train her leadership ability.
Yun Qingyue continued: “I saved you. You still need to recover from your injuries later. So, from today on, in this small team we’re forming, I am the captain. You listen to me.”
Aiding the weak was fine, but she must be given the status and respect she deserved.
It was only fair. Whoever cleans up the mess gets the decision-making power.
No. 59 looked at this woman. So, her goal was to train him into some kind of obedient weapon?
No need to sugarcoat it at all? Just say it outright?
No. 59 was angry enough to laugh.
But Yun Qingyue wasn’t thinking that far ahead. She was mainly afraid he hadn’t yet accepted the reality of the apocalypse and would cause her trouble after they went down the mountain. So, she laid down the rules clearly in advance.