Published: January 31, 2025
The pickup truck rented from the car rental agency was now overturned on its side, the body completely deformed as if it had been hit by a tank.
The villa's main door had been corroded by mutated cockroaches, leaving a large hole, but that door was now gone, replaced by a gaping opening, with wood chips and rubble scattered both inside and outside.
Even with Ye Zhongming’s ten years of survival experience in the apocalypse, he couldn't determine what had broken in.
"Stay here."
He whispered this to a few women before quietly entering the villa.
As he reached the entrance, he caught a strange smell—somewhat fishy, but not very pronounced. Scanning the ground, he noticed an unusual phenomenon.
It appeared as if the villa's main door had been blasted off.
Explosives? Ye Zhongming quickly dismissed this thought.
If it had been explosives that blew this place open, how could the nearby campus not have heard anything? Explosives wouldn’t be silent. And even if it had made a sound he hadn’t heard, something with that kind of explosive power could only belong to a military force. But why would the military attack such an ordinary villa? There was no motive; even if there was a roulette inside, they could just walk in without needing to blow open a broken door.
If it wasn't explosives, then what was it?
Entering the villa, the once magnificent hall seemed to have been ransacked, with chaos everywhere. Ye Zhongming listened carefully but detected no abnormalities and warily made his way to the kitchen.
The roulette was still there; even a nine-star expert couldn’t destroy it. It would stand tall even after the city was destroyed.
However, the basement door was gone, another result of that bizarre explosion, and inside, the future nine-star expert Mu Xinfey had vanished without a trace.
Ye Zhongming looked around the basement and found two points of suspicion: one was that the mutated cockroaches he had asked Mu Xinfey to roast before he left were still there, neatly arranged on a plate, indicating that she had been waiting for his return but something unexpected must have happened. The second point was that the safe in the basement, which Ye Zhongming hadn’t paid much attention to, was now open and empty.
After searching for a while without any further discoveries, Ye Zhongming couldn’t help but feel perplexed. Had the future nine-star expert truly vanished just like that?
Was it because his arrival had altered her fate, or was she always destined to follow a path he couldn't interfere with?
Grabbing the medicines he had left behind, Ye Zhongming exited the villa. The three women looked at him with questioning expressions, and he didn’t feel like explaining, simply shaking his head and saying, “Let’s go next door.”
Next door, of course, wasn’t the school but a heavy truck team on the other side.
If there was any reliable means of transportation in the apocalypse, aside from the rewards from the roulette, it was heavy trucks.
They not only had sturdy exteriors and strong power but could also adapt to harsh terrains, and when maintained properly, they weren’t as delicate as cars or off-road vehicles—making them very suitable for the apocalypse.
The yard of the heavy truck team was quiet, a stark contrast to the chaos outside, giving the women a bit of reassurance.
Three heavy trucks were parked in the yard, with the other spaces empty, likely because the other vehicles were not at home at the time.
Ye Zhongming surveyed the surroundings and discovered seven or eight ordinary zombies in the guardhouse and dormitory. He didn’t deal with them himself but instead called the three women over.
“You want me to kill them?”
Park Soo-young shook her head vigorously, her face pale, clearly unwilling to do so.
Ye Zhongming glanced at the other two women: “What about you?”
“I’ll go!” Surprisingly, it was Liang Chuyin who spoke first.
“Whether I want to or not, I have to face these things sooner or later, right?”
This statement made Ye Zhongming regard her with newfound respect; he hadn’t expected this internet celebrity to think so deeply.