He Weiyou tossed and turned in bed until the early morning, but couldn't fall asleep. Until a beam of bright yellow car light shone in from the window, and at the same time, the sound of the engine running was heard.
He reacted for a few seconds and suddenly sat up: Is there someone else coming? !
The person on the next bed was curled up in the quilt. He Wei hesitated for a moment, but in the end he did not wake the other person up and tiptoed out of bed.
As the car lights outside the window directly pierced through the curtains, illuminating the room so that he could see clearly even at night, he was not as scared as he had been at the beginning. He slid all the way to the window of the room, opened the curtains, and looked down.
Sure enough, there was a car parked on the cement board of the house with the front lights on. Someone opened the door and got out. When passing by the front of the car, the player's bracelet on his wrist was outlined particularly clearly by the bright yellow light.
It's a player.
This realization came to my mind, like adding a steam engine to a manual boat on the water to turn it into an automatic boat.
He Weiyou heard the old man's footsteps downstairs and knew that the other party was going to open the door to welcome the new player. After hesitating for a long time, he finally opened the door quietly and walked down the stairs in the dark.
The house is surrounded by mountains on three sides. At night, some unknown species of birds are chirping in the woods, occasionally mixed with the sharp chirping of insects, which makes people feel tingling and numb when they fall on them.
After you descend the last step, you can turn around and see the vermilion lacquered gate.
He Weiyou stopped on the last step.
The vermilion lacquered door was tightly closed and never opened.
No one knocked on the door.
The car lights outside were still on, and the red candles on the portrait altar inside the door were also on.
The ventilation window just above the gate was filled with bright yellow, while the door was illuminated by the red light, making it look even brighter, as if it was oozing blood.
He Weiyou felt a gust of cool wind suddenly rushing into his clothes. He froze in place, his brain forgetting to react.
Then a cluster of flames suddenly lit up.
Someone above me asked, "Not sleeping?"
He Weiyou looked up blankly and saw Shi Yu holding a candle on the top step. His legs went weak and he almost fell to his knees.
The light of the candles moved from upstairs to downstairs.
After listening to his story, which contained no unexpected plots and was entirely based on his own imagination, Shi Yu looked up at the altar with lit red candles.
It is called a red candle, but in fact it is just a small light bulb with a red lampshade. It is a decoration placed in front of the portrait of the deceased in almost every household.
Before leaving the hospital, Shi Yu had noticed the date of this game world, which was 870 in the chronological calendar. The portraits on the altar now were the closest to 780.
He looked at it for a moment, then retracted his gaze: "Go back."
He Weiyu's tongue trembled as he asked, "Then, the people outside, are they..."
"Since you saw him wearing a player bracelet, he must be a human." Shi Yu said, "Maybe he felt that it was too late and would disturb the residents, or he might be scared like you when he saw the red light coming out of the ventilation window on the door, or it could be for some other reason. In the end, he decided not to knock or come in. It's not impossible for him to sleep in the car all night."
He Weiyou followed him back to the room, his palms full of sweat: "Then, will I..."
Shi Yu: “Probably not.”
He Weiyou swallowed his saliva: "Can you remove the word 'should'?"
Shi Yu was silent for three seconds: "It will be fine."
He Wei's heart fell back into his stomach, and he fell asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow.
※
The next day was a cloudy day.
Shi Yu's daily routine is not healthy. Not only does her side job cause her to have a reversed day and night schedule, but she also often has trouble falling asleep. When she first woke up, she didn't feel anything, but when she got up, she felt dizzy and her eyelids were very heavy.
The person in the next bed was gone.
He Weiyou was downstairs. Unlike the nervousness he had yesterday, he was now full of energy and chatting animatedly with the people in the hall.
The people in the hall were not the old lady who owned the house, but three other unfamiliar players.
He Weiyou was telling them about his heroic act of saving a beautiful girl yesterday: "…I was riding a mountain bike at the time, and he happened to be standing on the wall, so of course I saw him at a glance, after all, he was so handsome in the wind - Big Brother!!"
Shi Yu just happened to hear the phrase "waving in the wind" and glanced at him, then his eyes fell on the other two.
One of the three who looked like the leader stood up and said, "I greet you."
He Weiyou interrupted: "The three of them came last night, but they didn't dare to come in. They slept in the car all night and didn't knock on the door until dawn this morning."
The three of them came in as a team, and were still separated at first, but because they had special communication props, they contacted and gathered with each other as soon as the game started, and gathered under an office building.
Routine inquiries failed to yield any useful information until the evening, when monsters suddenly appeared on the street and bit people. Some of those bitten died, some mutated, and their numbers became a disaster in a very short time.
As for the trio, they were indeed caught off guard at first, but after a moment of panic, the apocalyptic art works they had seen in reality helped them to immediately understand the situation: they had encountered zombies. Even if they were not called zombies, they must be creatures of the same nature as zombies, and they immediately realized that the "patients" in the name of this game probably referred to these monsters that were biting humans everywhere.
Because of this, the three of them did not leave the scene like the other people. Instead, they were quite excited and went straight to fight and try to eliminate the group of monsters. It would be best if they could capture one or two monsters alive to study them.
As for the results…
"We underestimated the zombies. They were too strong, not afraid of pain or death, and their numbers were increasing." Yu Zhiyi explained awkwardly, "We found a car and drove away from there, only to find that the zombies were not only on that street, but also in other places."
A team member nearby added: "At that time, all the stores on the street were closed, and we couldn't find a place to hide. Da Zhu drove all the way, and when we found that there was a mountain road in front of us, there was no room to turn. Later, we thought that the mountain was just right and there must be no zombies, so we came up, parked the car on the flat ground outside the house, and slept in the car all night."
The yellow beam that suddenly came in through the window last night was the light from the car lights.
Shi Yu listened to the escape records of several people without commenting. He looked up and called out, "Grandma."
Several people were all shocked.
The old man appeared at the door connecting the living room and the kitchen at some point. He was still dressed the same as last night, wearing a flowered jacket and a gray woolen hat. "How was your sleep tonight? Were you cold?"
Shi Yu: “Not bad.”
The old man said, "The noodles will be ready soon, wait a little longer and have breakfast."
"good."
Shi Yu followed the old man into the kitchen.
The remaining few people looked at each other, and the team member who was added earlier asked first: "Is there a problem?"
Yu Zhiyi: "It's impossible for an old person of this age to walk without making any sound. Didn't you hear her coming?"
The team members shook their heads.
Yu Zhiyi concluded: "Then it can't be an ordinary person."
He Wei had always had an inexplicable fear of the old lady, even though she had been very kind from beginning to end. He had always been wavering between the retribution of watching horror movies and the player's intuition. Now that more people agreed with him, the needle of the scale instantly tilted towards the latter, and he nodded desperately: "I have always thought she is weird!"
Another team member named "Da Zhu" whispered, "Could it be a ghost?"
The last word is lip-synced.
Yu Zhiyi did not have an answer, but just said: "The name of this game is patients."
Several people's minds suddenly became clear.
Yes, no matter whether the owner of this house is a human or a ghost, it has nothing to do with their mission, and they couldn't have stayed here in the first place.
Shi Yu sat on a small stool in front of the kang in the kitchen, adding firewood from time to time.
Because of the fire in the kitchen, the overall temperature was much higher than that in the hall. He stretched his hand to the fire, and his palm was burned hot.
The old man stood in front of the stove: "Don't put your hands so close to the fire."
Shi Yu withdrew his hand.
The old man stir-fried the side dishes first, then added water and waited for it to boil: "When my son was young, he also liked to sit on a bench and warm himself by the fire. He would stay here in the winter. Later, sparks splashed on his hand and he had to go to the hospital for stitches. Fortunately, there is no scar, otherwise he would have difficulty going to work in the hospital."
"He's a doctor?"
"Yes, they said they were here to save the dying and heal the wounded." The old man's face was covered with wrinkles. "Unfortunately, I was too busy with work and haven't been back for many years. It's been more than ten years now, right?"
The old man was very skilled in cooking, but his movements were a bit stiff, as if his limbs were not coordinated. It took him nearly half an hour before the noodle soup was ready.
The people in the hall were originally fine, but after what happened in the morning, they were a little hesitant. Finally, He Weiyou looked at Shi Yu for help and whispered, "Can we eat?"
Shi Yu swallowed a mouthful of warm food and raised his head: "Why not?"
He Wei finally understood. He turned around and said, "No problem. Come and eat."
The team members really didn't understand what he had realized: "Really?"
Yu Zhiyi followed him and started to eat: "Don't forget that there are people watching you the whole time, so you can't do it yourself."
He Weiyou nodded vigorously, slurping noodles while praising: "My teammates are really reliable. We are still discussing whether there are any problems here, but he has already thought of going to the kitchen to monitor them."
Shi Yu did not comment on his self-proclaimed "teammate". The heat made his face flushed. He took the bowl into the kitchen and saw the old man washing a large iron pot.
The old man asked, "Is it delicious?"
Shi Yu: “Yeah.”
"My son likes the noodles I cook the most." The old man looked at him and narrowed his eyes slightly. "Why is your face so red?"
"It's hot." Shi Yu said, "Do you have a telephone or a radio?"
The old man's attention was diverted by his words: "There is a radio in my room. I will get it for you later."
"...Jiangshan City and its neighboring counties have issued a city lockdown notice, and the number of infected people is estimated to be more than 2,000, and the number is still rising."
Shi Yu adjusted the channel and turned up the volume a little bit.
When the others heard the noise, they all gathered around and pricked up their ears, wishing they could absorb everything on the broadcast into their brains.
"Pay attention to the symptoms of people infected with the new TG7788 virus. The face usually rots. The longer the infection lasts, the more serious the rot is. They have no clear self-awareness, cannot control their own actions, and have no sense of pain, but their sense of smell is nearly thirty times that of ordinary humans. They have normal vision and hearing. The average strength of their olfactory muscles is between 80 and 100 kilograms, and the upper limit is unknown. The average bite force is between 120 and 250 kilograms, comparable to that of a maned wolf, and the upper limit is unknown. Their speed is no different from that of an ordinary healthy adult male, and the upper limit is unknown.
"When infected people find living people, they will behave like wild animals and prey on them. Most of the infected people's immune systems will collapse and die. A few people's blood will be infected by the virus and mutate into new infected people. The latter usually complete the mutation within 30 minutes. However, according to current discoveries, the highest mutation speed of infected people is recorded within 30 seconds, and the lowest record is as long as 280 minutes. Experts suspect that there will be infected people with mutation speeds exceeding this range in the future.
"The infected person's immune system is extremely strong, and common bacteria and viruses can be cleared by immune cells within minutes of entering the body. Currently, the only known way to kill an infected person is to attack the head, causing severe damage to the head or severing the connection between the head and the body; in addition, because the infected person is highly active and has a rapid metabolism, the body requires a lot of energy. If they do not eat for a long time, they may become cannibalistic due to hunger.
"Please take precautions. If necessary, remember to cover your exposed skin when you go out to find food. It is best to bring sharp weapons. The physical strength of the infected is not much different from that of normal people. They are not invulnerable to swords and guns. There is no need to panic when you meet them. Apart from this, please stay indoors as much as possible. Letting the infected starve and consume each other is also a good idea..."
He Weiyou listened to the last sentence and said, "Does this mean that we can do nothing and wait for them to kill each other until only the last one is left before we show up to finish them off?"
Others were also a little surprised: "If that's the case, then don't we just have to wait a few days and kill the last zombie to complete the mission?"
"By the way, is our mission this time really related to zombies?"
"Didn't the broadcast call zombies infected? Doesn't that imply that they are patients? The mission is to degenerate, so doesn't that mean we have to kill zombies?"
"But why is killing zombies considered regression?"
"Can you use your brain? The strength and teeth of zombies are obviously much stronger than those of ordinary humans. Isn't that what is usually written in novels? A certain Frankenstein was researching viruses for human evolution, but it went wrong and leaked, infecting people and mutating them into zombies. Since humans turning into zombies is evolution, then degeneration must be to get rid of zombies."
"But humans turning into zombies is evolution... then shouldn't degeneration be zombies turning into humans?"
"That's the Frankenstein who caused all this. He developed an antidote. The zombies can be transformed back by injecting it. All we have to do is find the raw materials, escort the vaccine, and inject the zombies."
"But how do we inject so many zombies one by one?"
"That means artificial rainfall, injecting pesticides into the river, or waiting for them to kill each other until only one is left and then we go up and poke them with a needle."
The team member named Da Zhu exclaimed: "Xiao Mao, I didn't realize you have such a high IQ before."
Xiao Mao stared: "What do you mean I didn't see it before?"
He Weiyou was listening with great interest and couldn't help but tug at his teammate's sleeve: "Shi Yu, what do you think?"
"Not very good."
"So how much do you think he was right about what he just said?"
"Not much."
He Weiyou was stunned: "What's wrong?" He thought the logic was very reasonable!
"We are going to kill zombies this time, isn't that right?" The basic direction can't be wrong, right?
"It's true that the official agencies call the infected people infected, but how do you know that they are definitely evolving?"
Shi Yu looked at him and said, "Spiritually, human evolution has been about becoming less and less primitive, and more and more self-control and self-restraint. The infected will prey on living people, letting their appetite control their bodies, and their language and external communication systems are approaching nothingness. Physically, the infected are not much stronger than humans, they have no sense of pain and a rapid metabolism, they will not hide when they encounter danger, and their average lifespan is definitely not longer than that of normal humans. Shouldn't they be more like degeneration no matter how you look at it?"
Xiao Mao, who was standing nearby, heard his voice and couldn't help but come over: "Frankenstein was developing the zombie virus when it was half-finished and it was accidentally leaked. So while his strength increased, his thinking ability decreased, and that's why someone was needed to solve it."
"Let's not talk about whether Frankenstein really exists or not. Let's talk about the virus. If it really exists in a research institute, how did it leak out?"
Shi Yu said calmly, "He was taken away by someone with malicious intent to take revenge on society. Wouldn't the precautions and protection around the research site have discovered this? The first infected person escaped after being infected. The average mutation time is thirty minutes. The police and the army won't look for him. Would these professionally trained people be unable to deal with a human whose physique is only similar to that of an ordinary person? If the container is directly broken and released into the environment, the virus can only exist for a very short time in the atmosphere before dying. Even if it is lucky enough to attach to human skin, it may not be able to break through the human immune system defense line. How can it enter the blood and spread?"
Da Zhu was stunned: "Then, the vaccine..."
Shi Yu was silent for a while: "Have you ever seen a virus vaccine that only takes a few days to develop?"
Xiao Mao unwillingly interrupted: "What if the virus has already existed in the world of this game? What if the time we entered the game happened to be when the virus outbreak had been going on for many years and the vaccine was successfully developed?"
Shi Yu: "...So those few hours when you first entered the game and were safe and sound were all fake?"
Xiao Mao swore that he heard the other person's concern about his IQ in his words.
[Help, I thought the main plot of this game was very clear, but after hearing what Master Meiren said, I am confused again.]
[…Who isn’t?]
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