​​“RAARRGHH!”

“HOLY FUCK!”

The female zombie lunged from the ceiling, directly attacking Yang Zhang. 

Yang Zhang reacted quickly and thrust the pitchfork upward, piercing the zombie's neck, but the zombie felt no pain, so it didn’t stop her.

In the end, the weight of the female zombie caused Yang Zhang to stagger, and he fell to the ground. Fortunately, he was still clenching his pitchfork, the sharp end of which had pierced the zombie's neck, keeping her from reaching Yang Zhang. 

But he was just an average human, and this zombie was feral and powerful. 

“Raarrghh! RAAARGH!” The female zombie tried to reach Yang Zheng’s face with her hands to no avail, but her strength wasn’t reduced at all by the pitchfork in her neck. In fact, she just got stronger and angrier. 

Realizing that he couldn’t hold out much longer, he yelled at the squirrel, “Chestnut! Discharge now!”

“Squeak!”

Chestnut dropped the lightbulb and then jumped at the head of the zombie. It started charging electricity in its body, intending to blow up the zombie’s head like it did yesterday.

In horror, Yang Zhang realized that in this position, his face would get splattered by disgusting rotting zombie flesh, so the moment Chestnut started charging the electricity to shock the zombie, Yang Zhang exerted all his strength to get up and push the zombie away. 

“HYAAAHHH!” Yang Zhang screamed out of desperation, not wanting to end up covered in zombie goo. He finally regained his footing and pushed the zombie back until it fell to the ground. 

At the same time, Chestnut had finished storing enough electricity in its body. It jumped onto the zombie and zapped!

BZZZZTTTT!

BOOM!

The zombie’s head exploded into pieces thanks to Chestnut's high voltage discharge. With its body covered in the zombie’s dark blood and rotting flesh, Chestnut searched through the remains from the exploded head and retrieved the Brain Bead.

Chestnut returned to Yang Zhang with Brain Bead in its cheek pouch and spat it out into Yang Zhang’s palm, “Squeak!”

“Huff… thank you, Chestnut,” Yang Zhang pocketed the Brain Bead. He wanted to experiment with it on something later.

After experiencing that life-threatening event just now, Yang Zhang needed to catch his breath. He might be immune to Z-20 Virus, but if he got bitten, he could still contract common infections like tetanus disease, and those would be difficult for him to treat.

Chestnut picked up the lightbulb from the ground and bit it again, becoming the only light source in the dim mini market. 

Finally, Yang Zhang got a good look at the zombie. Though Chestnut’s discharge had blown up her head, Yang Zhang was able to determine that it was a young woman, possibly in her early twenties, and from the look of the uniform, she was a clerk at this mini-mart.

He looked up at the hole in the ceiling. Now with proper lighting, he could see a room in the attic. It was big enough for a person to live in, or at least hide for a while.

Yang Zhang wanted to investigate and thought there must be a way to get up there. He didn’t think he could just jump from the aisle to the attic after all. 

He searched the female zombie’s body for a key and found it in her chest pocket. 

“Alright, so it’s true, there is a way to go up.”

Yang Zhang decided to drop the snacks and went up to check the attic first. 

Yang Zhang and Chestnut went to the staff door near the cash register and saw that it hadn’t been destroyed. In fact, it looked as if it hadn’t been touched all this time.

“Huh? Weird, how could those ability users not destroy and plunder everything like they used to?” Yang Zhang frowned. 

He might have never followed the group of ability users when they were on the hunt for supplies. Still, from the stories he heard when he was in the base, the group had to fight not only the zombies but other groups of ability users on the hunt for supplies as well.

It was quite a ticking bomb because, unlike Yang Zhang and the rest of the humans immune to the virus, those ability users could get infected by eating mutated plants and animals, so they had to get to any food supplies before the other groups. 

The base also started to keep all the plants and livestock that hadn’t been mutated and started a small farm to support the ability users. In contrast, the humans only got to eat randomly mutated cows or pigs the group found in the wild and brought to the base. At least, they always brought those who hadn't been too terribly mutated, unlike that catfish with legs.

That was why he was quite unsure of what was happening here.

With his curiosity getting to him, he used the key to unlock the door.

The place was dark, as expected, but with the help of Chestnut’s lightbulb, he could see everything in the staff room and the warehouse of this mini market. 

It was all empty, no food or anything else, but there was a long wooden staircase leading to the attic!

His prediction seemed to be correct. That female zombie must have lived in the attic before she died.

After climbing the wooden stairs leading to the attic, he found that it had been transformed into a room with a bed, emergency lighting in the form of a flashlight, and food that was probably taken from the mini-market below. So many cans of food had been eaten clean.

There was even a small stove that used oil as fuel. There was also a window in the attic, so whoever lived here could check outside. It was such a strategic hiding spot that nobody would expect someone to live here.

“Did that clerk live here? But, of course, she was a zombie. A zombie couldn’t  do this, right?” Yang Zhang pondered. But a long skirt and a shirt were hanging on the wall, so that zombie had definitely lived here. 

“So, the one who cleaned up the food in the mini-market below is a zombie, not a group of ability users?”

Yang Zhang was confused. There was no way a zombie could do all this. 

That was… until Chestnut pointed at a diary on the bed.