The meeting was soon over as the plan was finalized, and the special forces began getting ready for battle. Yin Mei, of course, had nothing to do with this so she was dismissed. Yin Mei looked back to her side, but Ming Wei had already disappeared. "What the f*ck, he comes and goes like the wind! Practically magic," she said while shaking her head. She guessed that he was eager to find out if his sister really had healing abilities that could heal the zombie virus.
Well, even if she said it could heal the zombie virus, actually this wasn't exactly true... But, well, it would still be a key in curing the virus, so Yin Mei didn't care about those meaningless details. Before Yin Mei left, she was stopped by the commander and awarded quite a bit, so she left in a good mood. Quickly exited the building, she spotted Ri En's noticeable fire red hair near the entrance. It looked that he had been waiting for her.
"Yo! You were waiting for me?" She said, popping out from behind him and startling him.
He jumped a little, but then calmed down when he saw who she was. "Yeah, is everything going to be okay?" He asked, but seeing her calm expression, was a little reassured. He the recalled the indifference on her face when she abandoned the rest of the group to die... okay, maybe a little less reassured. He felt that even if the world ended, she would still have that expression of calm. Wait, maybe that wasn't such a good phrase, since the world had technically already ended.
"Yep. They're sending out the special forces group," Yin Mei said, interrupting Ri En's train of thought.
"Oh, that's a relief," he said, sighing.
Yin Mei nodded. "No need to worry, everything will be fine." She said it with such conviction that Ri En couldn't help but believe her, just a little. "How about coming over to my house for dinner? We have fresh vegetables. And I'm also a great cook." She said.
The thing she was worried about was that she was unable to watch him and his sister 24/7. She felt that if her eyes left him even for a moment, some other horrible thing would happen, rendering him dead and her efforts useless. Because of that, she decided to first invite him to dinner and talk later.
Ri En was a little tempted, but felt bad. This was fresh vegetables after all! They were quite expensive. Not only that, but he still had his younger sister waiting for him at home... "No, I still have my sister waiting for me." He said, declining the invitation.
"Oh? You have a little sister? Then you should bring her too." Yin Mei looked at him with such an expression that Ri En found it hard to refuse. In the end, he relented and agreed. After all, the prospect of fresh cooked food was too difficult to ignore.
Yin Mei told him her address and they parted ways as Ri En went to go get his sister and Yin Mei returned back home.
"Welcome back!" An Yu said, her expression one of excitement as Yin Mei greeted the others, Qin Shuang running up, looking like he wanted to hug her, but in the end stopped himself and instead just tugged on her sleeve. So cute! Yin Mei felt this kid was just too adorable and hugged him, patting his head as she let go. "Guess what happened today?" An Yu said, as Yin Mei was intending to go take a shower.
"Eh? What?" She studied An Yu, who was clearly extremely excited. "You awaken your ability or something?"
An Yu's expression immediately turned disappointed. "What, it's no fun if you guess it that easily." She said, sighing.
"What ability?" Yin Mei asked, walking over and leaning her arms on the sofa where An Yu was seated. The others were also gathered around the coffee table, and it looked like they had been playing a board game to kill the time.
"Echolocation," An Yu said, with a blank face.
"What? Echolocation?" Yin Mei stared at her.
An Yu snorted. "Sorry for having such a weird ability. But better than nothing, right?" She said, clearly miffed by Yin Mei's blatant staring.
"No, no, it's a pretty interesting ability. It'll be useful for any night battles." Yin Mei replied. Echolocation, this really was a unique and interesting ability. Actually, depending on whether or not An Yu was able to evolve it properly, it could become rather useful. The most important thing was that it would be useful in battling specific types of zombies that liked dark places.
An Yu shrugged. "You're just comforting me aren't you? Anyways, unlike with your ability, we can't gain many benefits with mine." She complained slightly, and the other two girls began to comfort her as well.
Yin Mei extracted herself from the group, moving away to take a quick shower. When she was done, she went into the kitchen and put on an apron, beginning to cook. They had quite a lot of ingredients as they had stocked up for the week. Not only that, but they were five people and though four of them were girls, they still ate quite a bit combined. Since two more were going to come over, in the end, Yin Mei cooked quite a lot.
Ri En and his sister lived on the other side of town, so Yin Mei was already halfway through finishing her cooking when he arrived, knocking on the door. "Are we expecting someone?" Ruo Bi said, going to the door.
"Yep! I invited two kids over," Yin Mei replied loudly from where she was. Opening the door, the girls saw a young boy and girl, who looked uncannily similar aside from gender. The girl, Ri Yi, was wearing a dress and had long hair, so it wasn't hard to tell them apart, but their faces looked the same that if she cut her hair and wore male clothes, they would probably look identical.
"Oh my, dragon and phoenix twins! How cute!" Ruo Bi exclaimed, drawing the attention of Mu Shan and An Yu, who also began to fangirl over them, much to the two's embarrassment. Though, from the expressions, they looked like this was a common occurrence, at least before the apocalypse.
Yin Mei continued cooking as the others entertained the two, and finally finished half an hour later, laying down the last dish onto the table, which was packed to the brim. She looked at it, thinking that the table was probably too small to fit seven people. In the end, she could only move things to the coffee table, which the others helped clean up.
Though crowding around the coffee table was also hard, because there was a sofa and a recliner chair as well, it was easier than the dining table. Though the result was that they would have to hold their bowls in their hands while eating.
When Yin Mei finally finished and took off her apron, Qin Shuang hugged her from behind, peeking around her to glare at Ri En and Ri Yi. Yin Mei didn't have the sensitivity required to notice Qin Shuang's feelings, so only pat his head as she scooped out rice into bowls for everyone, handing them out one by one. She actually cooked this rice with the water from her ability, so it was especially delicious and nourishing when compared to normal white rice. It practically glistened. That being said, since her cooking skills were still in the realm of humans, the rest of the food, though looking delicious, were also normal (there was no outrageous shining food like in anime or manga).
Yin Mei felt it was a pity that her skill, though master level, could not overcome human limitations. Well, that was obvious though! Hahaha, after all, if she could cook shining, mystical, immortality granting food in a modern day world without magic, that would simply be too strange, right?
Yin Mei guessed that her ability adjusted itself to what was considered master level in that world. But, she wouldn't be sure without experimenting more. She was already astonished by the way recipes would just pop into her head, or how her body would move like it had been possessed by the god of cooking, so she could only say - "D*mn, anything is possible these days."
When Ri En and Ri Yi tasted the food, they proceeded to cry, like all others who had tasted her food before them. The others comforted them, while Yin Mei sneakily took a look at the progress of the special forces in clearing on the zombie horde with the system.
She suddenly stood up, surprising the rest of the group. She blinked, realizing her surroundings again. "You guys go ahead and keep eating, I have something that I need to take care of."
Yin Mei quickly exited the apartment room, her face pale as she closed the door behind her. "F*******ckkk," she thought to herself, kneeling and clutching her head as she stared at the holographic screen. Currently displayed on it was an image of Lei Han as he crazily went on a crazy massacre, each move of his bringing down blue lightning and turning all the mobs into fried zombies.
Admittedly, she might have totally forgotten about this existence known as the male lead until now. It couldn't be helped, Lei Han's existence was just too weak these past few months, and he hadn't made an appearance at all.
But that was right! Lei Han would use this opportunity to battle against the horde of zombies and quickly level himself up. Not only would it give him a pretty high standing in B City... Yin Mei stared depressingly as she watched the zombies die off, dropping like flies. All those energy stones! Godd*mmit! Was that even a rank 2 zombie she spotted there? It was indeed a rank 2 zombie!
Ah, ah, it was no good. Yin Mei felt that she had to quickly get rid of this fly before he became a problem. Her eyes were dark as she exuded a murderous aura. "When is a good time to get rid of him?" She muttered, quickly going through the information. While Yin Mei was thinking, a couple of people came up the stairwell, staring and whispering at her. It was at this time that she noticed she was still sitting outside her apartment door.
Slightly embarrassed, she stood up and went back inside, putting away her thoughts as she returned to the coffee table to chat with the others.
Yin Mei had already begun to calm down. She had already started to take care of Ming Yu. As for Lei Han, although he would surely have a growth spurt with this, his growth was limited to proportion with the growth of zombies. Human evolution relied on a zombie's energy cores. No matter what, Lei Han could not overcome the barrier blocking evolution without the help of the energy cores. As a result, there was a limit to just how strong he could get in the early days of the apocalypse, where currently rank 2 zombies were still rare, let alone rank 3 zombies.
She just hoped that Lei Han was no different from the previous two male leads she had encountered, in that their survivability was on the lower side for being lead characters.
First, no matter what, she would need to break the zombie emperor out.
Three days later, Yin Mei once again stood in front of Ming Wei, a bright smile on his face in contrast to the latter, who appeared thoroughly unamused.
"What are you doing here?" He asked, his voice clearly showing his annoyance.
"I'm interviewing for the position of personal chef! What a relief when I heard from the commander that you were intending on finding someone for such a position, I was just thinking that I should retire from a dangerous job like zombie killing." Yin Mei said happily. Because she had been so prompt in reporting the zombie horde the other day, and also perhaps because the commander liked her appearance (in his words, she reminded him of his granddaughter), she had formed a connection with him and had been chatting him up the past couple of days.
Ming Wei had his head in his hands, feeling a headache coming on. Honestly, he didn't think he liked dealing with this person. Granted, she had given him what could potentially be very useful information, but thinking of the expression she had on while she was talking to him... He could tell, she was similar to that person...
In the end, Ming Wei wasn't the type of person to drive off someone because he didn't like them. Although Ming Wei was certainly a cold-hearted b*stard that could torture a human in all sorts of ways for the sake of his experiment, he had a skewed sense of morals that he rigidly stuck too.
Yin Mei cooked him a single meal, and he was immediately defeated.
What could he say, his one weakness was his desire for good food.