Chapter 5: The Terrifying Truth

Zhang Su shook his head and said firmly, “I’m not scaring you!”

In a standard prefecture-level city, such a terrifying event would surely bring helicopters and troops, not to mention ambulances and police cars stacked three layers deep—but now it’s eerily silent. What else could it be if not the entire city being compromised?

Exhaling smoke, Zhang Su’s nerves settled slightly, and he whispered to Zheng Xinyu beside him, “Rescue is an external force—we must never place our hope for survival on the unknown!”

Before his parents divorced, Zhang Su lived a comfortable life, but after their separation, he drifted far from home, enduring countless hardships; relying on others is worse than relying on yourself—that was the first lesson of society, and it cost him dearly.

Zheng Xinyu wiped away tears; Zhang Su’s words—“We must never place our hope for survival on the unknown!”—shocked her into clarity. She sniffled softly, eyes reddened, and asked, “Then what should we do?”

Zhang Su gave Zheng Xinyu an encouraging look and said, “I believe the most important thing right now is figuring out why those people turned into zombies—identifying the source of infection and its transmission route!”

Zheng Xinyu nodded vigorously in agreement, her fingers twisting a dent into her loose T-shirt as she trembled, “I’ve… seen it in TV dramas—getting bitten by a zombie causes infection.”

Realizing she’d just said something obvious, Zheng Xinyu hurried to add, “I—I don’t think air spreads it, or we wouldn’t have survived. With such a massive outbreak, it’s probably the water!”

It was a very reasonable and obvious conclusion, but Zhang Su didn’t immediately agree. He asked carefully, “If the water is contaminated, I took a shower last night—why wasn’t I infected?”

“This… maybe you have to drink it directly? You wouldn’t deliberately drink tap water while showering, would you?”

Zheng Xinyu asked, puzzled.

Zhang Su nodded. “Definitely not… Come to think of it, we don’t even drink tap water normally!”

As a convenience store owner, Zhang Su always bought bottled water to boost sales, and he’d coaxed and tricked Zheng Xinyu into drinking bottled water and soda every day too…

“Wait!” Zhang Su suddenly said, serious. “You boiled snail rice noodles last night…”

“I used purified water too…”

Zheng Xinyu patted her chest, trembling with relief.

“I see…” Zhang Su frowned slightly. “Alright, regardless of whether it’s true or not, we’ll treat water as the transmission route for now.”

This was a hard truth to accept—if water became the transmission route, survival would become vastly harder.

“Under these circumstances…”

Duddududu…

Zhang Su was about to speak when Zheng Xinyu’s tightly gripped phone suddenly rang with a string of alerts!

“We have network!”

Zhang Su reacted instantly, snatching up his own phone from the bed—but when he lit the screen, the signal was still the same pathetic state…

“Hehe…” Zheng Xinyu forced out a strained, awkward smile. “Brother Su, we’re on different carriers. If I got signal back, yours should come soon too!”

Zhang Su ignored what he couldn’t change, tossed his phone aside again, and urged Zheng Xinyu, “Check what messages there are!”

Without Zhang Su’s reminder, Zheng Xinyu had already opened her phone. She didn’t check the news first—she opened WeChat, hoping to find messages from her parents.

Like Zhang Su, Zheng Xinyu wasn’t from Qincheng—she came from a small southern city.

She’d once attended a third-rate university in Qincheng but dropped out; her parents didn’t know, and neither did they know she made a living as a livestreamer.

She quickly scanned her top contacts—her parents were silent, their chat history frozen two days ago. She didn’t know if that was good or bad, so she sent a “Are you there?” emoji, then opened a short-video app.

Nowadays, news spreads through short videos, not websites—far faster, truly showcasing the advantages of 5G.

But the short-video app, once quick to load, now lagged terribly—whether from poor network or server issues, it was painfully slow.

After buffering for over ten seconds, the first video finally played.

On screen, bold text appeared without sound, creating a solemn, storm-before-the-surge atmosphere.

“Unknown virus outbreaks across multiple regions of the Heavenly Dynasty. Infected individuals lose reason and attack living beings indiscriminately. All citizens must immediately take cover—immediately take cover—immediately take cover!”

The words “immediately take cover” glowed bright red, glaringly prominent.

Both stared at the video’s uploader—it was an official media account. They fell silent.

“Multiple regions…”

Zhang Su exhaled smoke, a chill spreading through him—this event was worse than he’d feared.

Zheng Xinyu said nothing. She tried to open the comment section showing 380,000 comments, but it kept spinning endlessly, refusing to load. Frustrated, she swiped to the second video.

The comment section remained inaccessible, but the second video played smoothly—it was uploaded by a personal user.

The camera showed no one filming, only a shaky view of zombies chasing crowds—blood spraying, limbs flying, screams echoing everywhere—scenes of horrific brutality rivaling blockbuster special effects.

When a zombie lunged toward the lens, the video cut off.

The entire scene was chaotic, but since the platform hosted the video, the filmer likely survived—or perhaps sacrificed their life to record this precious moment.

“Posted at eight… Check if this person uploaded more videos!”

Zhang Su said anxiously.

Zheng Xinyu clicked the uploader’s profile. After buffering for about ten seconds, her heart sank. “No more… He’s from Anhui Province. Where’s Anhui?”

While watching the video, she’d also checked the user’s IP.

“A thousand miles away,” Zhang Su replied coldly.

Qincheng lies in northern China, near the northeast, while Anhui is in central China—over a thousand miles apart, confirming the official media’s claim of “multiple regions.”

“A thousand miles apart, yet the zombie virus erupted on the same day, even the same time? This is insane.”

Zhang Su felt his mouth dry and bitter.

Zhang Su felt his lips dry and his mouth bitter.

Zheng Xinyu suddenly froze, then frantically opened her contacts to call her parents—but only a busy tone answered. She looked at her phone—her signal was completely gone.

“Oh god, I don’t know what happened to my parents, waaaah.”

Thinking of her parents back home, alive or dead, Zheng Xinyu’s tears finally fell, soaking into her oversized T-shirt in dark, spreading stains.

Zhang Su thought of his own parents who’d abandoned him, shrugged, and said, “Xinyu, don’t think too much yet. Whether your parents are safe or not, you must stay alive first to find out. Check what messages WeChat just sent you.”

Zhang Su thought of his parents who had found him an inconvenience and abandoned custody, and snorted: “Xinyu, don’t think too much yet. No matter whether your parents are safe, you must first ensure your own safety to find out anything. Check what messages you just got on WeChat.”

Zheng Xinyu couldn’t stop crying. Sniffling, she picked up her phone, tears blurring her vision. She wiped her eyes hard, opened her collapsed WeChat groups—she hadn’t checked messages in ages, and dozens of groups had thousands of unread messages each.

Zheng Xinyu’s tears wouldn’t stop; she sniffled, picked up her phone, her vision blurred by tears, wiped her face hard, and opened the collapsed WeChat groups. Since she hadn’t looked at group messages in a long time, many groups had four-digit message counts.

The more she looked, the more she broke down. Her online social circle was vast—beauty, dropshipping, group buys, gaming—over a hundred groups. Netizens from all over the country described their own local horrors—none were spared.

Not looking was better—once she did, Zheng Xinyu collapsed further. Her online social circle was vast: makeup, proxy purchasing, group buying, gaming—hundreds of groups, and netizens from all over the country were describing the horrors in their own regions, none spared!

Zheng Xinyu opened a group and pointed at the speakers. “This group’s all international dropshipping livestreamers—Europe, America, Australia, Africa—all have zombie outbreaks. Everything’s collapsed…”

As she spoke, she tried to open a video—but the network was dead. Only a frozen frame remained: a blonde woman, mouth dripping blood, wildly lunging at the camera.

Morning update, evening update—thank you, dear readers.

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