Chapter 11 Sweeping Through the Snack Street

On the tenth day of the apocalypse, the blood-red sky remained, and the atmosphere of despair weighed heavily on everyone's hearts.

Ruan Ning, hidden in the shadows of an office building, calmly observed the street. Compared to the previous few days, there were significantly more "people" on the street—not zombies, but living people.

These faces were mostly pale with hunger and extreme fear. They hunched over, their eyes scanning every corner warily, their movements as slow and gentle as possible, like frightened mice, avoiding the rotting figures wandering aimlessly through the streets.

Their target was clear—small supermarkets and street-front shops that had not yet been completely looted and had relatively few zombies.

Ruan Ning saw a gaunt man clutching a sharpened steel bar tightly in his hand. He moved quickly along the wall, spotted a zombie with its back to him, and suddenly rushed into the door of a convenience store. Soon, the sounds of rummaging and fighting came from inside, along with short roars and screams.

On the other side, three young people who looked like college students, two men and one woman, worked together to lure away two zombies with noise, and then quickly slipped into a nearby snack shop.

Several physically fit women, armed with kitchen knives or sticks and with fierce eyes, formed a makeshift team and carefully cleared away the scattered zombies at the entrance of a small fresh food supermarket, trying to open a passage.

“The grain reserves are exhausted…” Ruan Ning knew in his heart.

Ten days have passed since the apocalypse began. With no electricity or water, the meager supplies at home have long since been depleted. The instinct for survival has overcome the fear of zombies, forcing these survivors to leave their relatively safe havens and venture into this perilous wasteland, fighting for their lives for the next bite of food.

This is an even more brutal selection process. Not only do they have to face the omnipresent zombies, but they also have to guard against their own kind who might suddenly turn on them in order to compete for limited resources.

Ruan Ning looked at the figures rushing about, struggling on the brink of life and death, her eyes showing neither pity nor mockery, only a cold calm. In her past life, she had been one of them, willing to risk her life for half a piece of moldy bread.

In this life, she possessed enough resources to temporarily transcend the struggles of the lowest rungs of society. But she knew that this chaos and strife would only intensify until a new order or even greater chaos descended.

She had no interest in competing with these people for scattered, possibly expired, food. Her goal was to hunt more efficiently, obtain crystal cores, and find certain specific individuals.

Just as she was about to leave to practice her abilities in a more remote place with more zombies, her gaze inadvertently swept across the street corner and she saw several men roughly pushing an old man who had just found a few bags of biscuits to the ground and snatching away his meager haul. The old man's desperate cries were interrupted by their impatient kicks and shoves.

The law of the jungle, where the strong prey on the weak, is being rapidly established in this wasteland.

Ruan Ning's eyes turned slightly cold, but she ultimately made no move. This wasn't an isolated case, and she couldn't control everyone. Everyone had to learn to survive or die on their own in the apocalypse.

She turned silently, as if blending into the shadows, and crept towards the area where the zombie growls were more concentrated—in the opposite direction from the crowd scrambling for food.

Her path is different from theirs. Her battlefield is far more dangerous. But only in this way can she accumulate strength more quickly to achieve the true purpose of her return.

Ruan Ning chose a snack street in the commercial district. Before the apocalypse, this street was a relatively prosperous street, with shops selling everything from food and drinks to daily necessities, home appliances, and pharmacies. It was a very complete street, so there were also many zombies.

As Ruan Ning approached the food street, the zombies smelled the fresh flesh and slowly surged towards her.

Ruan Ning used the shops along the street as a base to lure the zombies over and kill them. When he couldn't kill them all, he would hide inside the shops and loot some of their contents.

These shops are small, but they have a lot of stock due to the high customer traffic. Because of this high traffic, they've become a zombie hotspot; with current human capabilities, there's no way humans would come here to collect such items.

There are too many zombies. No one would be as foolish as Ruan Ning to run to a place like this. If these goods are not collected before the zombies evolve, they will become worthless once the zombies evolve and high-level zombies appear to guard this place.

This is also why Ruan Ning doesn't go to supermarkets where it's easier to collect supplies. You have to leave some space for ordinary people to survive. Since you have the ability, why not go further away and take away things that no one can collect?

The blood-red sunset made the food street even more eerie; the once fragrant road was now filled only with an overwhelming stench of blood and decay. Beneath the crooked signs, broken tables and chairs and rotting remains were mixed together, creating a hellish scene.

Ruan Ning leaned against the smashed counter of a milk tea shop, her chest rising and falling slightly. Her bangs were soaked with sweat and clung to her skin. An afternoon of intense hunting had almost completely depleted her recently advanced water-based superpowers, and her arms were sore and numb from continuous slashing.

Beneath her feet lay the corpses of seven or eight zombies she had just cleared away, their filthy blood slowly spreading. She skillfully used her dagger to search through them, but unfortunately, she only found a dim, level 1 crystal core.

"The efficiency is still too low." Ruan Ning put away the crystal core, feeling the emptiness in her meridians and her tired body, and decided to stop today's operation.

Before coming, she made thorough preparations. She hid the SUV, which had been simply reinforced, in a relatively secluded abandoned repair shop at the end of the food street, avoiding the traffic congestion on the main road and any potential trouble.

She needed to regain her strength as soon as possible before driving back to her apartment. The city at night was several times more dangerous than during the day.

She took out water diluted with spiritual spring water from her spatial storage and drank it quickly in small sips. The cool liquid, carrying a faint energy, flowed into her body, slowly nourishing her parched meridians and tired muscles. She then took out some high-energy compressed food, chewing silently while her ears alertly picked up any sounds from her surroundings.

The food street fell silent for the time being, save for the occasional howl of zombies and the sound of unexplained impacts in the distance. The last rays of the setting sun shone through the broken window, casting flickering light and shadow on her filthy face.

She closed her eyes, resting while mentally reviewing the afternoon's battle. The water arrow condensed slightly faster than yesterday, but her precise control over the energy still needed improvement; sometimes, in pursuit of power, she wasted energy.

The combination of close combat and superpowers also requires more practice to develop muscle memory.

After resting for about twenty minutes, I felt that my strength had been mostly restored. Although my superpowers had only recovered to about 30 or 40%, it was enough to deal with any unexpected situations on the way back.

Ruan Ning stood up and stretched her stiff limbs. Instead of taking the route she had come by, she took a more secluded alleyway, one that might have fewer zombies, and made her way towards the car hiding place.

With extremely light footsteps, his figure darted swiftly among the broken walls and ruins, like a ghost blending into the twilight.

She had to get back to the car that would take her to the temporary safe point before it got completely dark.

Nighttime belongs to more dangerous predators. She doesn't want to confront them directly yet.