A Game Account Carries The Entire Apocalyptic City - Chapter 5

The space beside the bed was cramped.

Qi Ning was also sitting with her legs drawn up in front of the wardrobe, her toes facing Qi Li’s.

Seeing Qi Li remain silent for a long time with a grave expression, she lightly rested her fingers on Qi Li’s wrist.

“Sister, what are you thinking about?”

Qi Li looked at her and said softly,

“For Xing’s wound to recover, she can’t just eat the emergency food we have at home. It doesn’t have enough nutrition. Our backup medicine isn’t that good either. I want to buy her erythromycin and absorbable sutures.”

She didn’t want Qi Xing to keep having her wound cleaned and her stitches removed over and over. It was too painful and exhausting.

Qi Ning asked, “When can you go to that other world again?”

Qi Li answered, “Ten tomorrow morning.”

Qi Ning asked again, “Sister, can you buy those things over there?”

Given the current situation in their residential complex, going against the danger and risking a trip outside was not a wise choice.

The remorse Qi Ning had felt yesterday after mistakenly believing Qi Li had been killed had carved a deep scar into her heart.

Even now, the thought still left her shaken.

She hoped Qi Li could safely bring supplies back.

Qi Li lowered her eyes toward the floor.

Her voice was calm and orderly, as though she’d gone over these words countless times in her mind.

“Ning, listen to me. I think we have three options right now.”

“First, I can’t guarantee that the money I earn in the other world will definitely be enough to buy medicine. If that’s the case, once the infected have remained in the community for seven days, the community volunteer team will go out and help everyone purchase supplies. Then we’ll have to ask them to buy wound medicine for us.”

That was the worst option, because it meant placing all their hopes in someone else’s hands.

“Second, if I earn enough money, I’ll buy food and medicine and bring them home. We’ll stay inside and get Qi Xing’s leg healed first.”

“What’s the third?” Qi Ning already thought the second option sounded good enough.

“Third, I use money from the other world to buy weapons and equipment, then come back and kill the zombies so it’s safe for us to go outside. We can also exchange the zombies’ crystals for crystal coins and use those coins to go out and buy supplies.”

Qi Ning was instantly shocked speechless for a moment.

Kill infected?

Had she heard that right?

One mistake and they could become infected or die.

Truthfully, when the thought had first crossed Qi Li’s mind, even she had thought she’d gone crazy and become outrageously bold.

Give her a little dye and she’d open a whole dye shop. She had only just gotten the chance to buy weapons, yet she’d already started thinking about killing infected.

But only then could she gain the freedom to move around outside.

She even asked Qi Ning, “What do you think we should do?”

Qi Ning thought about it.

“Sister, if you can buy food and medicine and bring them back, then we won’t need to go outside. We’ll just get through this crisis first. If you want to kill zombies, then I’ll go with you.”

No matter what Qi Li chose, Qi Ning supported her.

Qi Li was troubled. She rested her chin on her knees, unsure what to do in the dim light.

She couldn’t freely travel back and forth between the two worlds, and she couldn’t guarantee she’d earn money in the other world quickly enough.

If Qi Xing suddenly developed another acute symptom, the cycle required to go back to the other world and buy medicine would be too long.

There was no choice that was both safe and timely, no perfect solution that covered both sides.

“I haven’t figured out which option is best either……” Qi Li said with her eyes closed.

Qi Ning understood.

“Any of them is fine, Sister. The only thing you can’t do is put yourself in danger alone. If something happens, you have to take me with you.”

Just then, a new message appeared in the family group chat.

Qi Li tapped it open, then braced herself against the floor and slowly stood. “Got it. I’ll think about it some more. I’m going upstairs with Mom to trade for food first.”

They lived on the fifth floor. Their neighbor on the sixth floor had access to a seventh-floor terrace, where he usually grew some simple coarse grains, so his family’s food supplies ran out more slowly.

Mom had privately contacted the upstairs neighbor to buy some rice and meat, and he’d only just agreed to the transaction.

He had also taken pity on them after hearing that Qi Xing had barely survived and needed extra nutrition.

Qi Li and Mom quietly went upstairs. The door opened just a crack.

The night was dark and still, the hallway dim, danger pressing heavily against the air.

Neither side dared make too much noise, and they carefully completed the transaction.

At the market price of five crystal coins, they brought home a small bag of rice and a strip of lean meat, both rare goods in the apocalypse.

Cooked into meat porridge, it would be enough for Qi Xing alone to eat for two days.

Another restless night passed.

By this morning, the community had already been in a high-risk state for five days.

Every community’s self-governing system had a volunteer team, and they wouldn’t simply leave everyone trapped until hunger drove them desperate.

After residents had been unable to leave their homes for seven days, the volunteer team would take responsibility for going out to purchase supplies and delivering them door to door.

However, they would only distribute supplies necessary to maintain basic vital functions, along with essential medicine for the sick and injured.

The family still had ten crystal coins left. Those now had to be saved until the eighth day, when they might need to pay the volunteer team.

That morning, before Qi Li transmigrated, she instructed her family,

“If I manage to buy supplies, I’ll come back on the evening of the seventh day. If I’m delayed, that means I don’t have the medicine Qi Xing needs, so ask the volunteer team to buy it for you.”

Mom nodded. “Okay. Remember to eat more over there.”

Qi Li said, “I’m going.”

The next second, she returned to the classroom in the other world.

—It was actually still Chinese class. She stood blankly beside her seat while the Chinese teacher looked at her expectantly, and the same classical poetry analysis question was still displayed on the PPT.

The entire class was silent.

The clock on the wall showed ten in the morning.

So time in this world didn’t move while she was back home.

Now she had to answer this difficult question: What technique had the poet used in this line, and what were they trying to express?

In truth, Qi Li didn’t even know which line the teacher had asked about. She’d been distracted far too badly.

Fortunately, her deskmate and several students in front of and behind her covered their mouths and quietly fed her the answer.

“Metonymy, repetition, homesickness…… homesickness……”

Qi Li managed to muddle through.

She sat back down.

Out of the corner of her eye, she glanced at the time on her phone’s lock screen.

Thursday, 10:05 a.m.

She had to get money and buy supplies before Saturday night.

This time, she had two and a half days in total.

Qi Li spent two entire classes thinking it over.

At noon, she returned to the dormitory, plugged in her phone to charge, and continued searching online for guides on finding part-time work.

Once school ended Friday afternoon, Qi Li could openly walk out through the school gate. That was when boarding students were released for the weekend.

But she didn’t plan to wait that long.

Time was money.

She couldn’t waste tonight either.

Qi Li stared at her phone, thoughts racing.

This time, she wasn’t going to be as constrained as she had been during her first transmigration.

That afternoon, she used blue cardstock as a backing, cut the photo out of her campus pass, stuck it onto the blue cardstock, and slipped it back into the ID holder.

Every evening after school, day students leaving for home wore their passes around their necks as they walked out through the gate.

Their passes had blue backgrounds.

Boarding students had red backgrounds.

The colors were obviously different and easy to distinguish in a crowd. That was what the security guards used to decide whom to let out.

The counterfeit blue-background pass Qi Li had cobbled together by hand actually looked very different from a genuine day-student pass.

Anyone who paid even a little attention would immediately see something was wrong.

But she was betting on the crowd at dismissal being so dense that the guards wouldn’t notice.

Around dinnertime that afternoon,

she returned to the dormitory and piled things on her bed to make a fake person, draping her pajamas over it, turning it toward the wall, and covering it with a blanket.

Hopefully, it could fool the dorm supervisor if there happened to be a room inspection.

If she got caught, there was nothing she could do. She’d heard that the first time someone snuck out of school, they only received a warning.

Before taking action, Qi Li had thoroughly asked around about every detail.

Finally, evening self-study ended. It was already nine at night.

Qi Li blended into the large crowd of day students and calmly walked out through the school gate.

Hehe. It worked.

She quickly took off her school uniform, revealing the casual T-shirt underneath, then ran all the way to the commercial street nearby.

At 9:20 p.m., Qi Li met up with the person she’d contacted online.

The unemployed photographer rented out old equipment. She was holding the camera and tripod package Qi Li wanted to rent. It was the cheapest package available: 60 yuan for eight hours.

After Qi Li used money she’d borrowed from her deskmate to pay her, she turned and strode forward. “Let’s go.”

As agreed in advance, Qi Li also wanted the additional service of having the photographer “follow and film her for a few minutes” and “help her set up the equipment.”

Qi Li went to the area where late-night food was sold.

When she saw a barbecue restaurant doing good business, she walked straight inside.

“Hello, is the owner here? I’d like to speak with the owner.”

A photographer was following behind her, filming her. No one knew what she was doing, which made the whole thing look rather mysterious.

One of the employees glanced over, then hurried inside to call the owner out to deal with it.

Qi Li got straight to the point with the barbecue restaurant owner. “Boss, business is really good here. Do you have enough staff? I’m looking for a part-time job. Could I work here for two nights?”

The owner looked Qi Li up and down, confused and slightly wary. “What kind of part-time work do you want to do?”

Qi Li: “I can prep ingredients, do miscellaneous kitchen work, or carry dishes. Anything’s fine.”

After hearing that, the owner shook his head, feeling that the whole thing seemed unreliable.

Then he noticed the person filming behind her and worried that they might be livestreaming something. So he politely replied, “Sorry, we’re not short on staff right now.”

Qi Li calmly nodded. “Alright, Boss. Hope business keeps booming.”

She turned to leave and said to the photographer, “Let’s try the next place.”

She had barely taken two steps outside when the owner suddenly changed his mind, ran out, and stopped her.

“Miss, wait. If you’re just looking for two days of part-time work, you can try working here for two nights. It just so happens I can let my wife go home and rest for two days. You can help prep ingredients in the kitchen.”

The owner had thought it over and suddenly felt something wasn’t right.

Recently, the internet had been full of trending discussions about “avoiding unhygienic barbecue restaurants.”

There were all kinds of exposé videos showing moldy vegetables and meat crawling with maggots.

This young girl had suddenly shown up with a photographer asking for a part-time job in the kitchen. Maybe she wanted to secretly investigate food hygiene. Everything he’d said and done just now had been captured on camera. If he flatly refused to let her into the kitchen, people might accuse him of feeling guilty because there was actually something wrong.

His kitchen and ingredients were perfectly clean.

And what if tonight’s video ended up being posted online? He might as well use the opportunity to advertise his restaurant.

Even if it got no attention, it didn’t matter. He could treat it as hiring someone so his wife could rest for two days. If his wife was happy, then he still came out ahead.

The owner brought Qi Li into the kitchen and explained how the ingredients were handled.

The more he watched this complete novice ask about every little detail, the more she looked like some kind of civilian investigator!

And just like that, Qi Li got herself a night shift from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., paying 150 yuan per day.

For some people, simply finding a job that could support themselves already required endless calculation and giving everything they had.

Late at night,

the photographer left, and the owner went outside to drink with customers. Qi Li stayed alone in the kitchen washing and preparing vegetables.

When her shift ended at six in the morning, she didn’t dare waste even a second and sprinted back toward the school gate.

She hurriedly bought all the breakfast orders that her boarding classmates had placed with her yesterday, earning another eight yuan.

……

She had no idea how she made it through to the third class of the morning.

Qi Li’s head kept dipping toward her desk as her consciousness drifted hazily, and she thought—

If this body weren’t underage, if she weren’t an orphan still attending school, and if this world’s laws and public welfare system weren’t so healthy and complete, stacking every possible BUFF against her, she really wouldn’t have to struggle this badly just to earn a little money.

She was actually a very hardworking and adaptable person.

Seeing her so exhausted she looked half-dead, Zhang Ying stacked her own books along the edge of Qi Li’s desk to help block the teacher’s view.

She secretly asked, “Why do you look this wiped out? Did you go save the world last night?”

Half-dead, Qi Li replied, “Yeah…… saving the world… is really hard……”