Free from the constraints of work, Lu Yao was extremely efficient.

He wiped down the whiteboard and began listing the first, second, third, and fourth things he needed to do. Then, over the next few days, he checked them off one by one. 

On the third day, the whiteboard’s location changed as well. 

He took Qin Ye to see their new apartment. 

It was a spacious, open-concept apartment three kilometers from their old place, with a bright, airy layout and large floor-to-ceiling windows. It took them nearly half a day just to board up the windows with wooden planks. 

The owner of the house was the boss of Hongda Company.

Among the few properties Lu Yao had shortlisted, this one proved to be the most suitable after an on-site inspection.

Before leaving the office, Lu Yao had taken a spare key from the filing cabinet in his boss’s office, and now it had come in handy. 5 There were quite a few supplies in the new apartment.

The rice was already infested with bugs.

Lu Yao offered his insightful take on this: “Since this thing is born in rice, grows in rice, and dies in rice, then it is rice!” 

Qin Ye was deeply impressed by this.

Another large portion consisted of gift boxes people had sent during holidays and special occasions.

Cured meats, sea cucumbers, bird’s nest, health supplements, mooncake gift boxes, and regional specialties. The packaging was all glittering gold. Qin Ye swallowed hard: “Boss, that looks really good!”

Five minutes later, the two sat at the dining table, chewing expressionlessly.

The awful red bean paste mooncakes were sickeningly sweet. The fishy-smelling jelly stuck to the back of their throats.

“Each one is worse than the last,” Qin Ye concluded through gritted teeth. “They’re even worse than compressed biscuits.”

“Better to have something bad than nothing at all. These mooncakes are high in sugar and fat—that’s actually pretty good,” Lu Yao said, grimacing as he ate another lotus seed paste mooncake.

Whether in the apocalypse or not, the value of these gift boxes was far less than their price. But the true luxury of the apocalypse was warmth.

Now, that warmth had naturally settled on the edge of the table. 

The twilight light streamed in through the cracks in the wooden planks, casting a glow on the sides of their faces. Lu Yao raised his wine glass, which was one-third full of vintage red wine.

“Cheers.”

“Cheers, boss!” Qin Ye said excitedly. He’d never tasted such expensive red wine before!

But the very next second, he nearly spat it out. It was so… awful!

Just like the other luxury items here, it was absolutely awful!

━━ 🐈‍⬛ ━━

Before his wounds had fully healed, Lu Yao used himself as bait to trap more than thirty zombies in the company’s paint warehouse. How could he get the zombies to attack each other?

Lu Yao’s first thought was to use fresh flesh and blood.

“How are we supposed to get fresh flesh and blood?” Lu Yao yawned as he lay on the luxurious sofa. “Actually, the easiest way is to just take it from ourselves.”

Qin Ye let out a bloodcurdling scream: “Big, big, big boss! I’m a man of honor—don’t do this to me!”

Lu Yao seemed not to hear Qin Ye’s scream and continued to mutter to himself, “I wonder which part of a human zombies like best. I wonder if hemorrhoids count, or something…” 

Qin Ye：“……”

Lu Yao reassured him, “Don’t worry, I’ll figure something out. After all, humans are the backbone of civilization—I wouldn’t do something like that to you.”

The System’s weekly White Wheel of Fortune actually contains living creatures.

After all, since there are already Turkestan cockroaches, it’s perfectly normal for a few live chickens to show up.

So far, the White Wheel has yielded three live chickens, two lambs, and a pair of rabbits. But Lu Yao hasn’t won any yet.

This week’s White Wheel arrived as scheduled.

The standard supplies included water purification tablets, a flashlight, bandages, and flint, along with three Cherry Valley ducks.

Lu Yao made a wish: “Give me a Cherry Valley duck.”

The pointer spun around and finally came to a steady stop on an anesthetic dart.

“It’s still not too bad. Although the priority of stun rounds has dropped somewhat now.”

Ordinary zombies posed an increasingly minor threat to Lu Yao; after all, he still had six Qingming green rice balls that could ward off the low-level zombie virus.

Moreover, the effects of tranquilizer rounds on V-tier zombies were limited. “I’ll just wait for next week’s prize draw,” Lu Yao thought.

But plans don’t always go as expected.

Lu Yao discovered that, before he even had a chance to act, the thirty-plus zombies locked in the company’s paint warehouse had started attacking each other after just four days.

Inside the paint warehouse, shelves lined the walls, stacked with rows of colorful paint buckets. On the second-floor maintenance walkway, the steel grating emitted an unsettling creak with every step.

Lu Yao and Qin Ye stood in the sweltering upwind area, wearing thick masks as they peered through the railing at the terrifying scene below. On the third day, the warehouse was still relatively quiet; most of the zombies were pacing in place, occasionally letting out a howl into the void.

Early on the fourth day, commotion broke out. No one knew who struck first, but the first zombie, its face torn open, let out a roar; the second struck back, and then a third lunged forward.

Tearing, tripping, biting, and thrashing on the ground—several paint buckets were knocked over in the fray, and blue, red, and yellow paint flowed across the floor, seeping through the cracks in the concrete and spreading in all directions.

The smell grew even more pungent.

Lu Yao raised his phone and snapped a bunch of photos.

Qin Ye leaned in and asked, “Boss, are you going to post on Moments again? What’s the caption this time? ‘Another day full of energy’?”

Lu Yao shook his head: “I already used that caption last time when I took a bunch of photos of zombies jumping around. Reusing the same caption would make it seem like I’ve run out of ideas. So…”

Lu Yao applied a food filter to make the colors in the warehouse pop even more. 

Caption:

“Surround yourself with rainbows, get hit head-on by color—even in the apocalypse, you need a dopamine-fueled color palette! Set your life to high-saturation mode, and let the colors devour all your worries!” 

Clearly, Lu Yao’s approach to writing WeChat Moments had evolved over this period—from initially struggling to squeeze out every single character to now writing with divine inspiration, his ideas flowing like a flood, and he’s fully come to appreciate the joy of posting positive updates on his Moments. 

Send, cached. 

Qin Ye: “……”

This really leaves me speechless no matter how many times I see it!!!

“What the hell does ‘color eats away at worries’ even mean? We’re about to get eaten by zombies ourselves…” Qin Ye ranted wildly in his head, then clamped his hand over his mouth.

Clearly, he was afraid that if he said something stupid, Lu Yao would start improvising on the spot and go even more off the rails.

The sight of the zombies below attacking each other was so terrifying that Qin Ye looked away.

Lu Yao, on the other hand, didn’t seem to mind. He studied the zombies intently and soon noticed that two of them were exceptionally powerful.

“There’s some good news and some bad news,” Lu Yao said.

Qin Ye asked, “Good news, what is it?”

Lu Yao replied, “The zombie mutation is simpler than I thought.”

Qin Ye asked, “What’s the bad news?”

Lu Yao: “The zombie mutation is simpler than I thought.”

Qin Ye was taken aback.

He heard Lu Yao say slowly, “The good news is for us; the bad news is for all of humanity.”

Qin Ye fell silent.

He no longer looked away, but together with Lu Yao, gazed down at the brutal and terrifying scene below.

━━ 🐈‍⬛ ━━

Three kilometers away.

A young man with silver highlights walked into the cramped rental apartment, surveying the signs of life inside.

The room was sparsely furnished; a half-folded origami crane lay on the windowsill, dust settling on its wings. The living room floor was covered with plastic sheeting, on which fragments of zombies lay scattered haphazardly.

This was the place where Lu Yao had once lived for two years. 

The young man’s finger swept over the zombie’s remains; the pad of his finger picked up some dried fluid. He raised it to his nose and sniffed lightly, his bright amber eyes narrowing slightly in the light.

“I’ve found the target zombie, but it looks even more pitiful than Brother Wen’s baked apple pie.”

As he bent down, the metal accessories on his body jingled incessantly. 

“There are at least two survivors. One of them was injured after fighting a V-class zombie. They aren’t ability-users, so we can rule out the possibility that they possess combat-type abilities.”

“They’re still alive despite their injuries, haven’t turned into zombies, and have even managed to make it to safety…” 

“They seem to be hiding quite a few secrets.”

Jiang Xingrui walked up to the whiteboard, looked at the marked locations, and smiled, narrowing his eyes.

“The objective has been changed to searching for survivors,” he concluded the recording. “Reporter: Jiang Xingrui.”

He stood up, sunlight falling on the side of his face, his straight nose and the unbridled recklessness of youth in the depths of his eyes. 3 He looked at the folded origami cranes on the windowsill, then smiled.

“Quite the leisurely touch.”

The paint warehouse was vast, with the second-floor maintenance platform supported by several columns.

After the two mutated zombies had gradually eliminated all their competitors in the warehouse, they began to turn their attention to Lu Yao and Qin Ye on the second floor. One of them could jump exceptionally high.

For the first time, Qin Ye’s calves trembled with fear at its leap. Just as its claws were about to hook the railing, it grabbed a bucket mid-air, producing a teeth-grinding sound as the two clashed and tumbled into a heap.

The other one didn’t jump; instead, it circled around to the base of a column and began shaking it.

The steel column first hummed, then actually began to move.

The second-floor maintenance platform shook slightly in response, and the grating beneath their feet creaked faintly.

Lu Yao glanced over and concluded this wasn’t the first time they’d done this—there were quite a few scratch marks on the column.

“Let’s go.” With a single glance, the two of them crouched low and slipped out of the warehouse through the second-floor door.

For the rest of the day, they didn’t go back into the warehouse.

The next day at noon, they arrived in front of the warehouse.

“It’s time,” Lu Yao said.

Qin Ye was raring to go: “Should we storm in and hack them to death?”

Lu Yao gave Qin Ye a look as if he were an idiot: “Then they’d be posting on WeChat Moments, taking pictures of our bones and saying, ‘True love and good food are not to be missed.” 

Qin Ye scratched his head. “Will the zombies become smarter after eating us—or even post on WeChat Moments?”

Lu Yao chuckled: “The point is, we can’t beat those two.”

“Well… could we use paint and set it on fire?” Qin Ye had a sudden brainwave. 

Lu Yao: “That’s exactly why I chose this warehouse.”

Qin Ye, full of enthusiasm: “So should I go over there and light the fire?”

Lu Yao grabbed Qin Ye, who had already taken half a step forward, and pulled him back. “Lighting it on fire right away? Are you trying to get yourself killed? Go steal a car battery instead.” 

Qin Ye: “Uh, boss, aren’t you telling a really tasteless joke right now?”

Lu Yao: “What’s that supposed to mean? Stealing an e-scooter to support me—what kind of sleazy joke is that?”

“Another old joke.” Qin Ye scratched his head and went to look for an e-scooter. 

There were still plenty of electric scooters scattered around the big city. Qin Ye quickly picked one in good condition with a battery that still had some charge left, and, ignoring the scooter’s alarm, hurriedly removed the battery.

Then, before the alarm could attract any zombies, he made a quick getaway. 

Setup begins.

He placed the battery in front of the warehouse’s main entrance and secured it with bricks to prevent it from rolling around in case of an explosion.

He ran one copper wire from each of the battery’s positive and negative terminals, stripped the insulation with pliers, and secured the leads firmly at the connection points. He wrapped the leads with strips of cloth soaked in gasoline.

Run them along the ground a good distance away, then extend them all the way behind their cover.

“Do you know why you can’t push an electric scooter into the stairwell to charge it?” Lu Yao asked.

Qin Ye wasn’t actually stupid: “ Is it because it might explode?”

Lu Yao laughed: “That’s right.”

Lu Yao had Qin Ye light the fuse with a lighter—he couldn’t do it himself, after all, as that would violate public decency.

Then the two of them started running away.

If the fabric strip burns down to the exposed wire, the high temperature will melt the wire, and a short circuit between the positive and negative terminals will cause an electric spark.

“Whether it’s a lead-acid battery or a lithium-ion battery, there is a risk of thermal runaway during charging.

This is especially true for lithium-ion batteries, as the internal electrolyte is a flammable liquid; abnormal voltages during charging can potentially cause circuit short-circuits, fires, or explosions—”

“Boom—!!!”

No sooner had he finished speaking than an explosion rang out.

“Just like that,” Lu Yao flashed a genuinely joyful smile.

Why was he so happy?

Blowing up his former company—how could he not be happy?