After finally shaking off the pursuing zombies, Xie Lingruo and her group discovered—unluckily—that they had strayed from their planned route.
With no other choice, they found an abandoned courtyard-style house (siheyuan) to temporarily stay in, so they could re-plan their route and have some lunch while they were at it.
Before entering, Xie Lingruo carefully knocked on the door. After getting no response, she opened it—only to be greeted by a zombie lunging at her. What a stroke of bad luck.
Thankfully, due to her recent combat training, she reacted quickly. With a swift step back, she dodged the bite from the elderly zombie.
After successfully evading the attack, Xie Lingruo immediately pulled out her machete and struck the zombie down in one clean motion. Thanks to her training in the past few days, she could now handle four or five zombies by force alone.
What she didn't know was that, just now, Xie Father and Xie Lingfeng had been scared half to death. Their daughter/sister was really way too bold! The two men mentally noted that they needed to lecture her later—she couldn't keep being this reckless. Impulsiveness is the devil.
After Xie Lingfeng drove the SUV into the courtyard, the three of them cautiously searched the premises. Fortunately, there was only that one zombie—no other undead or survivors were present.
This discovery made them quite happy, as it meant they could finally relax a bit. Right now, zombies didn't have any crystal cores, so fighting them yielded no material gain. Only after the coming "Red Rain" would zombie heads start generating crystals.
Still, they didn't come away empty-handed—they found two bags of rice, a small pack of flour, and some potatoes and sweet potatoes in the kitchen. The leafy greens had all wilted and were inedible.
Xie Lingruo naturally didn't let this haul go to waste. Even though she had plenty of supplies in her space, with three people eating every day—especially her and her big eater of a brother—she couldn't just rely on what she already had. She needed to restock whenever she could.
Because they had just gone through a high-stress escape, Xie Lingruo brought out instant noodles, sausages, and bottled water, and asked Xie Father to prepare a quick lunch.
As for the specifics of her space ability—like how large it was or its ability to preserve freshness—Xie Lingruo never told anyone. Her space was highly unusual. If Xie Father or Xie Lingfeng ever got caught by a spiritual-type ability user and spilled the truth, it would spell disaster.
If people learned that she didn't even have a space ability yet possessed such a miraculous space, she would be sliced up in a lab before she even knew it.
So, Xie Lingruo decided never to reveal everything—not just for her own safety, but to protect her family as well.
Meanwhile, Lin Yiyi and Zhang Wenbin had already eaten through all the food in their small rented apartment. They had once believed that their powers would let them thrive in this apocalypse...
But reality gave them a harsh slap in the face.
Because their abilities were too low-level, they could only use them 2–3 times before running out of energy, making survival extremely difficult.
They even considered joining other survivor teams, but one group's senior member recognized them and knew all about their dirty history, so they were rejected outright.
That team had strict requirements and wouldn't take in morally corrupt people, leaving Lin Yiyi and Zhang Wenbin to struggle on their own—surviving on the barest scraps.
Worse still, they eventually ran into a gang of thugs, and among them was someone who recognized the pair as the ones who had hoarded supplies using their former positions.
And then the irony began.
Those thugs thought bringing Lin Yiyi and Zhang Wenbin into their group would lead them to the stash of supplies. But no matter how much they questioned them, the two knew absolutely nothing.
That completely infuriated the gang. They decided to take the two captive, hoping they could still be of use in eventually locating the supplies.
Of course, they wouldn't feed them for free.
At the same time, Lin Yiyi, playing the role of a "pure and delicate little flower," caught the eye of the gang leader, who was clearly interested in her—for all the wrong reasons.