Sickly Girl Doesn’t Die in Zombie Simulator 200

Chapter 200: One Person, One City

“Thud—Shing—Thud—”

The desiccated corpses, brittle as bark, peeled off piece by piece, revealing the interconnected muscles beneath. These muscles seemed to be stitched together from different creatures, each a different color. The brain worms Lin Jiayao controlled were burrowing through these muscles, delving into the deepest parts.

Soon, the trembling Flesh Pillar Zombie stilled. It waved the muscle-tendrils on its body, gathering the fallen corpse husks and plastering them back onto its surface. It continued repairing itself, seemingly unconcerned with the brain worms now inside it.

“What’s wrong with it?” Lin Xiwan asked, puzzled. “It suddenly stopped attacking…”

From Lin Xiwan’s perspective, she only saw a few black and white patterned insects burrow into the creature, after which the tree seemed to completely forget who had attacked it.

Like a monster in a video game losing aggro and wandering back to its original position.

“I don’t know what this is…” Lin Jiayao shook her head. “I just extracted part of its consciousness. It can’t think anymore.”

“Simply put, it’s become an idiot.”

Under their watchful gazes, the massive Flesh Pillar Tree, having finished its repairs, rooted itself to the spot.

If they didn’t attack it again, it probably wouldn’t bother with them anymore.

“Oh…” Lin Xiwan let out a small sound of understanding, not dwelling on how her sister had accomplished this.

Actually, Lin Jiayao was still puzzled by the creature before them.

She hadn’t found its brain, only a blood crystal at its core, sustaining its life.

Creatures like the Corn Cob, the Human-Headed Hive Queen, or the Monkey Infant Zombie from Shenfeng Mountain, no matter how bizarre, still showed signs of what they had evolved from.

But this Flesh Pillar Tree, covered in dried corpses and lacking a distinct body, puzzled Lin Jiayao.

It looked like a pure blood crystal creation, a monster formed by blood crystals coalescing, with mental power even weaker than an ordinary Biter. Just a slight drain of its mental power turned it into a mindless, non-combative creature.

It was similar to the living weapon near the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, except that weapon was far stronger than this Flesh Pillar Tree.

Blood crystals couldn’t create things on their own. These things must have been deliberately created by some blood crystal being.

Lin Jiayao left the zombie alone for now, keeping the brain worms parasitizing it. She wanted to explore deeper and see if she could find any answers.

If she couldn’t find any conclusions, she would just cut down all these Flesh Pillar Trees and extract their Blood Crystals—they didn’t provide much mental power anyway.

“Sister, be careful, there might be a fight later.”

“Okay.”

After giving her sister a heads-up, Lin Jiayao controlled the Building-Tree Guardian to bypass the Flesh Pillar Tree and continue deeper into Wangxi City.

Fortunately, there weren’t any vines entwined between the buildings in Wangxi, allowing sunlight to shine directly onto the roads. Except for the shadows cast by the buildings, everything was clearly visible.

With the Building-Tree Guardian, the scattered, wrecked cars on the road posed no obstacle.

“Crack—”

Suddenly, a faint, crisp sound came from the distance. Lin Jiayao, with Bone Spike Lurker activated, and Lin Xiwan almost simultaneously looked towards the source of the sound.

Lin Jiayao blinked, her pupils instantly turning black, the scarlet irises emitting a faint glow.

Through the sound and images transmitted by Blood Crystal Vision and Bone Spike Lurker, Lin Jiayao roughly understood what had made the sound.

A slightly larger yellow “orange” was slowly splitting open its wrinkled skin, revealing an eyeball and white, like a longan fruit, looking in their direction.

It was intentional.

“Yao, something’s watching us.”

Lin Xiwan, with her sharp eyesight and hearing, also clearly sensed what had made the sound and quickly warned her sister.

“Yes.” Lin Jiayao responded softly.

This method of actively observing without attacking reminded Lin Jiayao of when she used the green bugs for reconnaissance.

This was definitely controlled by an intelligent creature, very likely a human.

A high-level Awakened?

Before the other party could react, Lin Jiayao controlled the Building-Tree Guardian and quickly rushed towards the open “eyeball.”

The eyeball didn’t seem to realize it had been discovered. It remained open, blending in with its surroundings, showing no signs of anything unusual.

If it weren’t for the sound it made when it opened, Lin Jiayao might have missed it entirely.

“Thump—thump—thump—”

The Building-Tree Guardian stopped beside the eyeball hanging from the window of a nearby building, moved forward a few steps, and adjusted its position so that Lin Jiayao could just reach it.

Then, Lin Xiwan saw her sister reach out, seemingly wanting to pluck the disgusting, fruit-like eyeball.

“I’ll do it…” Lin Xiwan thought her sister just wanted to destroy the creepy thing, figuring she should handle it herself to avoid getting her sister’s hands dirty.

But unexpectedly, her sister simply extended her hand, a bone spur emerging from her fingertip, and lightly scratched the fruit-like eyeball.

Pinkish-white eyeball fluid flowed from the wound onto the bone spur. Then, Lin Xiwan saw her sister stick out her tongue and lightly lick the bone spur.

“Holy…” Lin Xiwan almost cursed.

That was fluid from a zombie! Essentially zombie blood and bodily fluids! How could her sister stomach that?!

“Yao!” Lin Xiwan quickly moved to her sister’s side and pinched her mouth shut.

But it was too late. She hadn’t dared to use much force, and her reaction was too slow to stop her sister from swallowing.

Lin Jiayao gently shook her head, freeing herself from her sister’s grip, licked her lips, and said:

“Sister, I found someone, C-rank.”

Lin Jiayao had just tentatively used [Hemophagy], and unexpectedly, there really was the blood of an Awakened inside this eyeball.

Now, countless directional blood mist chains appeared in Lin Jiayao’s vision.

These blood mist chains, some thick, some thin, some solid, some faint, connected to almost every larger eyeball fruit on every street corner, like surveillance cameras monitoring the entire street.

And among them, the thickest blood line connected to a location further away.

That was the location of the Awakened.

“Huh? What did you find?” Lin Xiwan’s attention wasn’t on her sister’s words at all.

She quickly moved to a box of water placed nearby, tore open the cardboard, took out a bottle of mineral water, unscrewed the cap, and held it to her sister’s mouth.

“Open your mouth.”

“Rinse.”

“Spit it out.”

“Open your mouth, ah—”

After making her sister rinse her mouth and checking that there were no foreign objects, mental problems, or strange smells, she finally relaxed.

It was hard not to worry.

That was zombie flesh and blood! Who knew how many strange bacteria and viruses it contained, and the blood crystals inside were even more likely to cause loss of control and infection.

Lin Jiayao couldn’t do anything about it and obediently rinsed her mouth as her sister instructed, letting her sister check her mouth for any sores or wounds.

After all, eating zombies, even drinking zombie blood, was a bit hard to accept in the apocalypse. But there was no other way, the Hemophagy ability required ingesting some blood.

After the blood was analyzed by Hemophagy, it would be devoured by the mycelium spreading in Lin Jiayao’s mouth and throat, and wouldn’t reach her stomach at all.

But the location had been marked. Unless the other party had A4’s movement speed or could fly, they wouldn’t escape Lin Jiayao’s tracking.

And the other party was only C-rank. Lin Jiayao wasn’t very worried that the Awakened would run far.

There was also the possibility of it being a camp, which would be a good opportunity to learn about the basic zombie situation in this city.

To be honest, Lin Jiayao really didn’t want to encounter this situation.

If it was really a camp, and they had also cleared out quite a few zombies, then Lin Jiayao would have to go further south to find other cities that might still have a large number of zombies.

“Sister, I tasted the aura of an Awakened, it’s very likely a camp. I’m going to check it out.”

Lin Jiayao told her sister her thoughts, and her sister just nodded without saying anything.

But this time, her sister stayed very close to Lin Jiayao, as if she wanted to stop Lin Jiayao from putting anything strange into her mouth at any time.

Seeing her sister’s nervous look, Lin Jiayao silently took note and decided to change her method of devouring blood next time.

Next time, if she wanted to devour something, she would just hold it in her hand, open a crack in her palm, and let the mycelium swallow it, without putting it in her mouth.

In fact, Lin Jiayao really didn’t taste anything special in the blood just now, only a very faint metallic taste, as if it had been diluted many times.

“Thump, thump, thump—”

Lin Jiayao controlled the Building-Tree Guardian and quickly ran towards the place connected by the blood line in her eyes.

Now she wasn’t very afraid of firearms. Let alone bullets, even an RPG, her sister could probably withstand it directly. Even if she didn’t, she could blow it up before it hit – she had the reaction speed.

The Building-Tree Guardian’s running speed increased, and its direction was very clear.

“Crack—”
“Rip—”

As the Building-Tree Guardian got closer to the target, the fruit eyeballs between the buildings stopped pretending and opened their eyes one after another, their eyeballs following the Building-Tree Guardian’s steps.

“Crack, crack—”

The Flesh Pillar Trees behind them uprooted themselves, but before they could even move, the Building-Tree Guardian had already run far away with its four long legs.

They were both like trees, but their movement speed was much slower than the Building-Tree Guardian’s.

Although the revival of those fleshy pillars looked quite impressive, Lin Jiayao could see that there were still many “orange trees” in other areas that were not activated.

It seemed that the person’s ability couldn’t control such a large area.

Just as the Building-Tree Guardian ran about three thousand meters towards the destination, Lin Jiayao could smell the stronger scent of blood.

She looked up at the residential building in front of her and quickly locked onto a blood crystal inside the building with Blood Crystal Vision.

On the third floor, it was a human.

Only one Awakened?

“Thump, thump, thump…”

The Building-Tree Guardian slowed down and slowly approached the window on the third floor.

The height of the Building-Tree Guardian was just right for them to see what was inside the house.

Lin Jiayao slowly turned off Blood Crystal Vision, sat on top of the Building-Tree Guardian, and looked inside the house.

The balcony of this house was not sealed with metal sheets, nor were there any metal welded pipes, and even the security bars were broken in several places. It looked no different from other houses in the apocalypse.

But looking inside, she could clearly see that the inside was cleaned spotlessly, and some things covered with black cloth were neatly piled up, seemingly supplies.

And in the center of the house, visible through the balcony, a person was lying there, her long hair covering her face. After sensing the shadow covering the ground, she shouted loudly:

“Don’t kill me! Let’s talk!”

“Bang, bang, bang—”

After shouting, the woman kneeling on the ground kowtowed three times, stunning Lin Jiayao and Lin Xiwan.

The two sisters looked at each other, and Lin Xiwan slowly pointed at herself. Lin Jiayao nodded, and then Lin Xiwan looked inside the window again and asked:

“Uh… hello, we mean no harm…”

She had seen people with a strong will to survive, but she had never seen someone surrender so quickly.

After a moment of silence, Lin Xiwan said again: “Hello?”

Hearing the greeting again, the long-haired woman lying on the ground slowly raised her head, looked at the two sisters outside the window, her eyes still filled with fear.

“Are you… not from the Voodoo Cult?” The long-haired woman asked tremblingly.

For a moment, Lin Jiayao and Lin Xiwan seemed to feel a sense of time travel, and Lin Xiwan almost blurted out, “Beijing’s bid for the Olympics was successful.” (TN: A meme about outdated information)

After snapping out of her daze, Lin Xiwan slowly said:

“…The Voodoo Cult was destroyed two weeks ago. There’s no Voodoo Cult anymore.”

After speaking, Lin Xiwan couldn’t help but ask: “Haven’t you listened to the radio for a long time?”

Generally speaking, in the apocalypse, survivors living alone or without relatives would not easily discard radios that could receive signals.

Some people with good hands-on skills could even make their own radios.

This was to be able to hear other people’s voices in the apocalypse, to know that there were still humans active in other places, so as not to lose hope for the future.

It was a kind of spiritual support.

But looking at the woman in front of her, it seemed that she had listened to the radio before and knew about the existence of the Voodoo Cult, but she hadn’t listened to the radio for a long time recently, so she didn’t know about the recent events.

“Then you… are you from other cities?” The woman got up, approached the two with some excitement, and a smile gradually appeared on her face. “Can you take me with you? It’s too dangerous here…”

Looking at the approaching woman, Lin Xiwan and Lin Jiayao both narrowed their eyes slightly, their expressions synchronized as if connected to the vascular network.

Too deliberate…

A nearly deserted city, an Awakened survivor who had survived here for who knows how long, even with plenty of supplies, would she really think that the place she lived was dangerous and trust two outsiders with unknown backgrounds?

“Thump, thump, thump—”

Lin Jiayao controlled the Building-Tree Guardian to take a few steps back, keeping a distance from the Awakened in front of her.

At the same time, Lin Jiayao activated Bone Spike Lurker and Blood Crystal Vision, quickly scanning the surroundings.