A Game Account Carries The Entire Apocalyptic City - Chapter 2

At that moment, Qi Li stopped breathing and froze completely.

She gave herself a moment, afraid that what she was seeing might be a hallucination.

Only after she cautiously blinked and opened her eyes again, finding that the image on the phone still showed her own home, did she dare start operating the phone.

Right now, she was viewing her home entirely from a first-person perspective.

In the living room were the windows nailed shut with old sheet metal and iron plates, the table with its lamp turned on, Grandmother’s woven bamboo basket, and several scavenged crowbars leaning against the wall.

When she entered the bathroom, one of the ceiling tiles had fallen off, exposing a rubber water pipe leaking inside. A red plastic bucket sat directly underneath it.

The three bedrooms had three beds. Although everything was old and there was no new renovation or fresh paint anywhere, at least all of them were kept neat and tidy.

In the kitchen, the emptiness hit her immediately. There was no food or seasoning left out anywhere, and the pots and pans had been washed spotlessly clean and left sitting on the stove, as though they had been neglected for a long time.

Everything here was exactly the same as Qi Li’s home.

Except there was no sign of her family.

Qi Li tapped several different places on the screen.

She then discovered that many things around the house could be inspected for descriptions.

[·Wall: A reinforced-concrete structure built 20 years ago.]

She tapped the kitchen cabinet. When she opened one of the doors, the remaining bottles of seasoning were indeed inside.

[·Soybean Oil: A seasoning used to enhance the flavor of food, but there’s not much left. Don’t ask when it expired. It’s been so long that even the oil itself has forgotten.]

Back in the living room, Qi Li opened a metal box inside the coffee table drawer and saw something familiar again!

[·Service Certificate: Name: Qi Li. Proof that after turning eighteen, she participated in Grayfield labor and completed the full three-month service period.]

Qi Li then checked the dressing table and took out the copper box.

[·Copper Jewelry Box: A mostly useless box. You could also use it to smash a zombie’s head.]

More importantly, there wasn’t a single crystal coin inside.

Everything, inside and out, matched the situation at home perfectly!

Qi Li was stunned. She hurriedly switched maps and went downstairs.

Inside the residential complex, she could even see the pool of blood and human remains from last night.

But there wasn’t a single living person in sight.

Qi Li had absolutely no experience playing games.

The infected had already been ravaging the city since she was five years old.

Entertainment in the apocalypse had grown more barren with each passing year.

Then again, this game didn’t even have a tutorial, so it was partly at fault too.

Qi Li spent a long time staring through the screen at the inside and outside of her home, but she still had no idea what she could actually do.

Just as she was growing dazed, even lost and helpless, a moneybag icon with a dollar sign in the upper-right corner of the screen began to glow.

Qi Li’s attention was drawn to it, and she tapped it.

[Shop: A place capable of helping you solve every problem you encounter during the game. You just need to leave behind a little money.]

The warning bell suddenly rang, making her jump like a startled bird.

Coming back to her senses, she looked around and copied another student who was secretly using their phone, slipping hers between two books inside the desk compartment.

After the math teacher entered the classroom and had been teaching for several minutes,

Qi Li, who had never experienced high school life before, seemed to awaken some instinct buried in her genes.

She nudged her deskmate’s arm and whispered a request:

“Can you keep an eye on the teacher for me? I want to use my phone for a bit.”

As it turned out, everyone’s reactions were more or less the same when they wanted to secretly use their phones in class.

Her deskmate loyally agreed.

Without anyone teaching her, Qi Li instinctively found a concealed position and hid her phone inside her textbook while using it.

She had no attention left for the lesson. The products in the shop were astonishing her.

[New Player Gift Pack (6 yuan): After purchase, choose one of three options to receive: Food Pack / Medical Pack / Weapon Pack.]
[60 Sun Points (6 yuan): Receive 60 Sun Points immediately after purchase; 300 Sun Points (30 yuan): Receive 300 Sun Points immediately after purchase… 12,800 Sun Points (1,280 yuan): Receive 12,800 Sun Points immediately after purchase.]
[Boiled Egg (10 Sun Points): A nutritious food rich in protein. The king of value for money!]
[Canned Fruit (60 Sun Points): Available in mandarin orange and yellow peach flavors. Rich in vitamins.]
[Clean Canned Luncheon Meat (100 Sun Points): Made from clean pork, with a pleasant taste. Definitely not mutated meat.]
……
[Antibiotic Injection (500 Sun Points): A powerful antibiotic. One injection can cure ordinary wound infections and the high fever caused by infection.]
[A-Antidote (1,980 Sun Points): This medicine is effective during the early stage after the infected virus enters the body and can eliminate the infection.]
……

Unbelievable. You could even buy fresh meat and fruit here?

Qi Li only wanted to know whether, if she bought these things, they would be delivered to her family back in the apocalypse.

If that was the case, then she admitted she’d been a little too impatient when she’d first transmigrated. It was fine if she couldn’t go back for lunch.

Better to believe it might be real than dismiss it outright. With software this incredible, Qi Li absolutely had to try it.

The things in this shop required her to spend money, right?

And so, during the remainder of the math class, Qi Li figured out her financial situation.

She was apparently an orphan from a welfare home. The welfare home’s all-in-one card in her schoolbag, her orphan certificate, the welfare home’s WeChat group on her phone, and the various chat histories all helped her understand her social identity.

She also figured out where her living expenses came from.

They came from an orphan allowance of 2,300 yuan per month, but all the money was deposited directly into the welfare home’s account. Part of it was loaded onto her welfare-home card, part onto her school campus card, while the remainder was managed by the welfare institution’s staff whenever necessary expenses arose and saved until she turned eighteen, when she would finally be allowed to withdraw it herself.

So the amount of cash Qi Li currently had available was—

9 yuan and 36 cents.

It had come from red packets she’d grabbed in the class group chat.

“……”
Things seemed a little rough.

Whenever Qi Li ran into trouble, she habitually bit her lower lip, just as she was doing now.

She discovered that in the Walled City and Survivors app, the recharge amount couldn’t be customized. There were only fixed options: 6, 30, 98, 198, 298, 488, 648, and 1,298 yuan.

So out of the 9.36 yuan she had right now, only 6 yuan was actually usable.

What was there to wait for?

Without further delay, Qi Li immediately bought the “New Player Gift Pack.”

Even if it was a scam, she didn’t care about losing money from this world.

The only thing she cared about was whether the “Medical Pack” she’d chosen from the New Player Gift Pack had now been delivered to her home.

For the rest of the time, Qi Li sank into processing the fact that she’d transmigrated and quietly thinking everything over.

Before she knew it, the class ended.

After the math teacher left, her deskmate nudged Qi Li’s shoulder.

She exclaimed, “You’re so lucky! The teacher didn’t look over here even once the entire class!”

Qi Li gave her a perfunctory smile.

She put away her textbook, kept her phone on her, stood up from her seat, and said, “I’m going to walk around.”

After observing things over the course of two class breaks,

Qi Li finally realized how strict the high school she attended was.

Students weren’t allowed to enter and leave through the school gate whenever they wanted. The gate guards watched students in uniform like hawks, and even teachers passing by would remind her, “Don’t wander so far away. Class is about to start. Do you have PE next period? If not, hurry back.”

Qi Li returned late to the classroom for the second lesson and was even ordered by the teacher to stand at the back of the classroom for ten minutes before being allowed back to her seat.

At the time, nearly every student’s expression during class had been tense and silent with fear.

Qi Li understood.

Everything here revolved around one rule—

Studying was the most important task in the world.

Qi Li didn’t know what would happen if she skipped class or dropped out.

But thinking about it, she was only a high school student now, with no status, no authority, and no money.

If she ended up being placed under stricter supervision, it would only make things worse.

So she decided not to dance on the edge of the red line.

When the final class of the afternoon finally ended,

Qi Li, being broke and completely unfamiliar with the place, was worrying over what to do when she suddenly heard an opportunity!

Several classmates had gathered together discussing what to eat for dinner, but they thought the cafeteria food was terrible, so they were asking around to see if anyone had a leave slip and could go outside today. They wanted someone to buy food from off campus.

When Qi Li heard that all they wanted was for “someone going outside the school to bring back some food,” she immediately took the job.

They didn’t even ask how she planned to get out. They only asked when she could come back. Hungry. Food.

Qi Li promised she’d return within half an hour. The leader of the group took out his phone and transferred the money to her, including the promised 5-yuan errand fee.

By then, Qi Li had already slipped away with her phone and reached the back gate.

She had observed during the breaks that although the school’s main entrance was blocked by an electric metal fence and three security guards sat chatting and keeping watch inside the guard booth,

the back gate had only one security guard.

That meant there were brief gaps when nobody seamlessly covered his post.

Qi Li waited for a while behind the corner of a wall.

Sure enough, right around dinnertime, after the guard finished eating inside the booth, he came out alone carrying his stainless-steel meal bowl and went to the sink beside it to wash his dishes.

Qi Li broke into a run without hesitation.

She dashed straight out through the unlocked back gate without looking back!

In truth, sneaking out of the school wasn’t difficult in practice. What students found hardest to overcome was their own fear. They all felt that if they were caught violating school rules, the consequences would be more than they could bear.

But Qi Li wasn’t really a high school student anymore.

Experience was accumulated by moving forward!

Sneaking out through a back gate carried absolutely no psychological burden for her.

Following her classmates’ instructions, she bought fried potatoes and cold noodles from a fried-skewer stall outside the school, then went to a fast-food restaurant at the intersection to buy fried chicken cutlets, and finally bought two hand-grabbed pancakes from a pushcart, each with added sausage and pork tenderloin.

As Qi Li carried all this food in her hands, she couldn’t stop herself from swallowing repeatedly and sneaking several extra looks at it.

It smelled so good. No wonder those students all wanted to “break out of prison” to buy it.

She wondered what it tasted like……

What kind of noodles were cold noodles?

When the hand-grabbed pancakes were being made, Qi Li personally watched them crack an egg onto each one, add vegetables, tomatoes, and a fragrant piece of processed meat, then wrap everything inside a single pancake.

She couldn’t even imagine how delicious it must be.

Although Qi Li’s heart was filled with indescribable anticipation and envy, and she desperately wanted to taste these foods she’d never eaten before,

for the sake of her reputation as an errand runner, she wasn’t going to steal a bite.

Business came first. Earning more money was her greatest priority.

Getting back into the school was easy. As long as she didn’t act guilty, she could simply walk openly through the main gate.

Qi Li ran back to the classroom and delivered the food to her classmates.

Seeing that there was still some time before evening self-study began,

she took her campus card out of her schoolbag and ran all the way toward the cafeteria!