Mu Shan knew the Main God System was no good, but she had not expected it to be this vicious.
The next second after she made out the text, she leaped forward and tumbled into an empty shop by the roadside.
The remaining four shivered in fear at the street corner.
The fat guy forced himself to buck up: “It’s fine, Brother Huang. I may be support, but I have control skills!”
As he spoke, he began to moonwalk. Breakdancing at a time like this looked awkward and bizarre.
“As long as I breakdance continuously for 30 seconds, I can trigger the ‘Dance Pose Shocks the Field’ effect. I can hold four or five zombies in place at once…”
The fat guy’s words cut off abruptly.
His body remained in the moonwalking pose, even taking two steps forward, but his head fell to the ground.
The head rolled a few times across the pavement with a gurgle, its face—smeared with blood and rain—frozen in a shocked expression from the moment of death.
The next second, “Ahhhh—!” The woman’s shrill scream pierced the sky.
In the dark little shop, Mu Shan crouched utterly still.
She gripped the fire axe tightly with both hands and listened intently to every sound outside.
Screams, dull thuds, rain, footsteps.
It all blended into chaos.
Mu Shan kept her eyes downcast. Her heart pounded at its limit, as if it would leap from her throat at any moment.
Extreme tension made her body tremble uncontrollably. She could only stay crouched to keep from collapsing.
【Remaining instance survival time: 00:03 (Locked)】
She thought she finally understood what the system meant by locking the time.
In the final three seconds of life, what would a person do?
Mu Shan had only just found clothes she could wear and eaten a hot meal. She had not even upgraded the safe house yet…
Why three seconds?
Because in the face of absolute power during a life-or-death crisis, running 10 meters more or less made no difference.
First second, it appeared before you;
Second second, it tore open your chest;
Third second, you exhaled your last breath.
【Player encounters mutant zombie for the first time. Please strive to survive.】
The system prompt appeared before all players in the current scene.
Of course, the dead could not see it.
The ‘veteran player’ yellow-hair stared in shock toward a certain direction, frozen in place. His eyeballs still trembled slightly, but they were soon flooded with blood.
Yellow-hair dangled in midair, limbs and head hanging limp, only his waist held in a huge maw that crunched through his ribs with “crunch crunch” sounds. His belly gaped open, and his half-soft organs spilled out in a dripping mess.
This monster could no longer be called a zombie. It had almost no human skin or hair; red muscle and fat layers were exposed directly, with pulsing blood vessels. Its gaping mouth was filled with densely packed teeth, and the tongue it spat out stretched over a meter long.
Its limbs had grown enormously, losing all trace of human fingers. The thick claws resembled those of some dinosaur, capable of gutting a person with one swipe.
The monster’s only weakness was its lack of eyes; the original sockets were covered by two thick layers of scar tissue.
Across the way, the woman who hid in the shadows of a building with her hand over her mouth felt like vomiting. She did not dare make the slightest sound.
That rookie newbie had no idea where he had hidden. The fat guy and yellow-hair died one after another, each more gruesome than the last.
Only the patter of rain surrounded them, coldly lashing the dead silent city.
The mutant zombie quietly munched on human flesh. With no vision, it was especially sensitive to sound and kept its ear cocked for any noise around it.
If a bird flew overhead, it would stop immediately.
The woman sobbed, but she bit her lip to stifle any noise. Her body only twitched faintly, with muffled whimpers in her throat.
She covered her eyes with both hands and kept telling herself inwardly to stay calm, stay calm. As long as she stayed quiet, she would not die.
There were already two adult male corpses outside—enough to sate the monster. She was safe. She had to be safe…
She had no idea how long she hypnotized herself like this when she suddenly felt the surroundings grow exceptionally still. Even the sounds of the monster chewing yellow-hair had stopped.
She looked up. In the middle of the road lay a pool of blood, with yellow-hair’s headless, bisected corpse sprawled miserably.
And the monster was gone.
The woman blanked for a moment, then her pupils contracted sharply.
She was clearly under the eaves, yet “raindrops” dripped onto her cheek one by one.
She looked up. A long tongue dangled from above, swaying left and right.
Mu Shan heard another brief scream erupt.
But this one ended especially quickly, and the world fell silent once more.
Her legs had gone numb from squatting, but she still did not dare move.
This shop had once been a bookstore. The air was thick with the musty smell of decaying paper. Mu Shan’s breathing grew labored, and her body felt unwell, but her mind remained relatively clear.
Were the people outside all dead, or had they hidden?
The Main God System would not set up an inescapable death game for players.
The zombie instance was dangerous, but they had a safe house; the zombie tide that morning had offered no chance of victory, but they had been close to cover and could have escaped by running hard.
The mutant zombie was terrifying, but they had started with five people. It had not been a solo fight.
“Patter-patter—”
On the road outside the shop, footsteps splashing through rainwater rang out especially clearly in the silence.
Mu Shan tensed up fiercely. The fingers gripping the axe turned nearly white from the pressure.
She widened her dry eyes and strained to peer through the gray glass door. Rain lashed it, creating a misty haze, but she saw a figure stumbling from the distance. The figure hesitated at the entrance, then stepped inside.
Not the monster. It was that young newbie.
Mu Shan stared at him like she had seen a ghost. She watched the man huddle trembling behind a bookshelf, hugging his knees and shaking all over, chilled to the bone.
Mu Shan could not fathom it. This man did not look strong or brave at all. How had he evaded a monster with such keen hearing to make it here?
And out of so many empty shops, how had he happened to pick her hiding spot?
Coincidence…?
Zhang Haiyang was scared out of his wits.
He had originally thought he had entered some movie set for an apocalypse flick, but it turned out he had been selected by the “Disappearance.”
One human, two, three—successively gutted right before his eyes.
The woman’s terrified face as she died in front of him lingered in his mind, impossible to shake.
The ten billion “disappeared” people—had they all experienced a world like this?!
Nausea surged in Zhang Haiyang’s throat. He felt like he would vomit.
All around was dead quiet, so silent a pin could be heard dropping.
Zhang Haiyang hugged his head and hypnotized himself for the hundredth time that this was all fake, that he knew nothing.
Until a zombie with pallid skin appeared out of thin air before his eyes!
“Grr—” The zombie’s upturned eyeballs bulged outward, devoid of any sign of life. It caught the scent of a human and slowly twisted its head around.
Their faces nearly touched.
Zhang Haiyang’s scream was muffled in his own throat. He trembled violently, tears streaming down his face.
Until he saw several lines of text floating in midair.
【A frail zombie (summoned by player [Collector])
Retains carnivorous instincts
But will not actively attack the human faction
The essential companion for players at home or traveling】
Zhang Haiyang wiped his tears, then stared in shock. The zombie clearly saw him but merely circled mechanically in the center of the room, never coming to bite his neck.
And its movements were stiff, like a programmed machine.
‘Summoned by Collector’… Zhang Haiyang was sure he did not know the Collector and had no idea what had happened.
But he knew he had to stay quiet now, or he would surely die.