Chapter 26: Three story building
It was pitch dark on the street. Even though there were street lamps lined up along the road, there was no electricity to power them. After the moonlight faded off, what could be seen gradually became lesser and lesser. Humans rely on their sight most of the time. Therefore, when they are submerged into an environment where their vision is impaired, fear and anxiety will arise. Worried that the darkness would be hiding something dangerous and descend upon them when they are at their weakest.
The night wind was getting stronger. The howling wind created sounds that resonated beside their ears and caused them to feel the chill. They felt unease as if they could hear noises right behind them. However, the thing that was colder than what they felt on the skin was the desperation felt in their hearts. The cold and lonely feeling that there was no hope for them in this Trembling World, and the helplessness of being lost at a foreign place. The uncertainty of whether this was all a dream or if they could wake up from this nightmare the next day. In fact, there might not even be a next day if they didn’t survive now.
LuLu and Pan Hua only had vision of two to three metres away from them. Just enough to let them see each other and Liu Gan who was in front of them. If Liu Gan was to secretly increase his pace by a bit, then he would disappear completely from their field of sight. This lead LuLu to feel a little bit frantic, as Liu Gan was currently her life buoy. So she took out her cellphone to use as a source of light, but the moment it lit up the road, Liu Gan turned back to shout at her to turn it off.
In this darkness, any type of bright light was very noticeable. It was very easy to attract zombies over, and if there were too many zombies, or a colossal zombie got attracted, then Liu Gan might have to abandoned them both to escape.
Liu Gan could tell that Pan Hua and LuLu’s true nature was rather kind, and their thinking was straightforward and simple. With them as his squad, at night he could relax a bit more. In this world, being able to recover with sleep was very important to countering exhaustion. With these two, he could rely on them as watchguards, so there was no need to sacrifice them.
Considering that it was now pitch black, and it might suddenly rain, then it would be dangerous for them. Liu Gan decided that it would be wise to find a nearby location to rest for the night. With his vision stronger, he could still see within 10 meters or so even in this darkness. Any further, and it would be impossible.
Walking forward a few meters, Liu Gan arrived at a slanted alley, with a nearby three story building.
This three story building has a storefront on the first floor, and judging from the shop sign it should be a hardware store. The front of the store had a metal grate over it. It looked undamaged from the outside so it was safe to infer that the inside could be safe. The building’s 3rd floor had a balcony, and up above it were some women’s undergarments drying. It looked like someone was living here, so there should be a bed and furniture inside.
This building was near a fork in the road, and the field of sight that it had was wide. If anything happened, it was easy to choose a direction to escape. Liu Gan didn’t have many choices because he must find a suitable location before it rains, and this was his best option.
The first floor had that gate that was impossible to break into easily, so without anymore options, Liu Gan had to think of a way to climb in. He wanted to wandered to the back of the building to inspect.
“Boss…” Pan Hua wanted to suggest something to Liu Gan, but Liu Gan suddenly lifted his finger to his mouth. The universal symbol of be quiet. Pan Hua immediately recognized it and stopped midway. Liu Gan arched his back as if he was warming up for battle.
Because of the sound of the wind hissing loudly, Pan Hua and LuLu couldn’t hear any other noise, so they had no idea what was about to happen. They only saw Liu Gan’s expression of preparing to enter battle, so they became more alarmed and froze in place. They didn’t even move so it wouldn’t create any unnecessary noise.
If a battle was about to go down, no matter if it was against zombies or ill-intentioned players, them two were deadweights, so by keeping their actions minimal they wouldn’t give Liu Gan any inconvenience.
Liu Gan carefully placed down the carton of water that was in his hand, and also silently placed his backpack down on the floor. Then, he proceeded to head towards to the back of the building.
Pan Hua and LuLu still don’t know what happened, they can only guess that there was danger nearby. With their faces pale, they could only stand silently waiting for Liu Gan to return. It must be a dangerous situation inside because Liu Gan was very careful when he was entering the area.
Liu Gan had definitely heard a noise, even though the gusts of wind were creating a lot of noise. Liu Gan’s sense of hearing was able to tell that there was something going on behind the back of the building. If he was correct, there were zombies gnawing on food, and so for safety’s sake, Liu Gan decided to go scout ahead to find out.
Liu Gan walked lightly as he turned the building corner. Now the sound was more clear, and there was a heavy stench of fume that floated over along with the wind. It was as Liu Gan had said earlier. Behind the building were a few zombies crouching on the floor eating something, with their stomachs all bloated.
In this dimly lit area, only Liu Gan could sense their presence clearly. If it was Pan Hua or LuLu in this situation with their two to three meters of vision distance, it would be very dangerous for them. It was a good thing that Liu Gan had gone ahead to scout without them.
This scene couldn’t help but trigger Liu Gan’s memory of a previously played horror game. In that game, it had the monitor so that the brightness could be adjusted easily if someone had preset the functions. There were many times that the area outside the radius of the flashlight was pitch black, and players without the lighting preset died to ambushes by more experienced players.
Of course, this was one of the joys of playing games. If a player couldn’t withstand the surprised ambushes, they could set the monitor brightness to the highest. That way, no matter what comes toward the player, they will always be ready because they could see partial images of it.
For those types of horror games, when the brightness of the surroundings was increased, the difficulty would be reduced by a very large extent. This was exactly what Liu Gan was experiencing after getting a boost in power from leveling. Even though the clouds had obscured the moon, Liu Gan was able to see a radius of ten plus metres around him. Hence, the probability of him failing to detect an ambush was quite low.
Moving slightly forward to observe, Liu Gan was able to do a headcount and confirmed that there were 5 zombies. One of the zombies was holding a head with long hair and eating the brain. Even though the facial features likes the nose, eyes and mouth were already gone, it was quite obvious that the head had belonged to a female human.
Another zombie was biting on a leg which was missing 4 of its toes, with only the big toe still intact. The toenail had coloured nail polish on and looking at the size of the leg, it was definitely a girl’s. The remaining three zombies were eating the innards and some viscous, sticky looking thing.