CH 64.1

The scenery along the mountain road is slightly more beautiful and natural than the one on the highway, with heavy mountain ranges filled with green and lush forests that stretch for several kilometers.

According to the map, there’s a hot spring resort only ten kilometers away. Except for that section of the road that needs special attention, they can relax for the rest of the journey.

Hao Jian was still in a good mood to discuss with the system, “Unfortunately, Ding Gunian is too eager to take us that forced us to leave early, otherwise, I could have still explored his bottom line or deduced what kind of authority will be granted after upgrading to level 4.

System, “Shut up. I’m not your plug-in father anymore, so please let me retain a little dignity as a system plug-in, thank you!”

“Hey, your number is 2018, then that means, there are at least 2018 hosts, right? Maybe it’s still a few, after all, the population of Earth is more than seven billion.”

“Does the host thinks that the system is a street product that can be seen everywhere?!”

Hao Jian stopped her conversation with the system because Lian Ru Ning found that there were terraces and several private houses in front of them.

“Do you want to take a look?” Hao Jian asked.

Lian Ru Ning whispered in her ear, “I want to go to the toilet.”

Hao Jian thought back, from the time they left the rest stop until now, they had hardly used the bathroom. Although they didn’t drink a lot of water along the way and the rest of them could still hold it in until the next destination, but Lian Ru Ning’s situation is a little different. It’s her ‘second day’ where the waves could erupt at any time, it’s inevitable that she has to run to the toilet more often.

After talking to Shi Gong Dui and the others, the group cautiously approached the houses.

The tallest house was only two and a half stories. Only two were built with tiled walls while the rest are either portable panels or brick houses.

There are two or three acres of terraced fields not far from the house, but at this time, the terraced land is cracked and the crops are dry. Only weeds are still growing stubbornly.

It looked like no one lives here, but Shi Gong Dui still honked his horn. if there are zombies inside, they would come out upon hearing the noise, and if there are living people inside, the noise would’ve been alarmed by the sound of cars a long time ago. There’s no need for them to cover their ears.

“Is there anyone here? We would like to ask for directions.” Peng Mao walked to the door of the nearest brick house and knocked.

Although the roof of the brick house is covered with tiles, it didn’t look like it was leaking and the door had already been replaced with an iron one, making a loud clang when knocked.

“The door is unlocked.” Peng Mao found that the iron door was easily pushed open.

It wasn’t big inside, only about forty square feet, stacked with a lot of firewood, but otherwise, there’s nothing.

“What, it turned out to be a wood house!” Peng Mao was quite taken aback, thinking that he could pick up some supplies!

Hao Jian reminded, “There are people here.”

Peng Mao was alarmed, “How did you know and where are they?”

Hao Jian pointed towards the roof of the three-story building, “Hey, don’t lie there!”

Everyone looked up and saw a woman hiding sneakily on the roof of the building. Although it was impossible to see her appearance, she looked like a woman in her fifties from her hair.

When she saw the group spot her, she hastily shrank back again, pretending that she hadn’t been there.

“Ma’am, we were just passing by and wanted to ask for directions, we mean no harm!” Shi Gong Dui called out.

“Son of a bitch, Auntie! I’m only in my thirties!” The woman peaked out and cursed.

“. . .?!” The group was stunned by her rude remark, her deafening voice, and self-proclaimed age.

“Big sister, are you a programmer?” Peng Mao asked.

Shi Gong Dui glared at him, “Nonesense, female programmers in our line of work aren’t like this. At most, they’ll have little hair loss, dull completion, excessive melanin, acne. . . she is 80% a Ph.D. who’s working on a thesis all day long. If you overwork your brain and overthink and worry about needless things, you’ll get bald early!”

Lian Ru Ning shook her head, looked up, and asked, “Big sister, can I ask for directions?”

“I see, little sister, you’re a good person, so of course. Where do you want to go?”

“How do I get to Chengxiang City or Xiang City from here?”

“That’s a long way. . .”

Shi Gong Dui interrupted her by holding his nape, “Big sister, we’re having sore neck while having this conversation. Can you come down and let’s talk on equal footing?”

The woman glared at him and cursed at the top of her lungs, “How do I know if you’re good people? What if you trick me to go down and do bad things to me?”

“. . .” Madam, you’re quite confident in your appearance.

“We have three female college students here and have two big men. Although we look very capable of fighting, we’re good citizens, what can we do to you? Besides, I don’t believe you’re the only one living here. It’s us who should be worried about getting ourselves into the wolf’s den, right?!”

The woman cast a skeptical look, her eyes swept over them several times like a scanner before finally nodding, “Okay!”

After a while, the door opened and a dark-skinned teenager stuck his head out from behind the door. He looked left and right for a while before fully opening it, “Come in!”

“We’ll go in, you guys watch the car outside.” Hao Jian told Shi Gong Dui and Xin Ting.

“Okay, call out if something happens.” Shi Gong Dui patted Hao Jian, who took the bug and stuffed it into her pocket before going in with Lian Ru Ning and Peng Mao.

Inside the house, the woman they saw came downstairs. She was wearing a white T-shirt, black sweatpants, and a towel tied around her neck. It was the casual attire of those working on the fields.

However, her head has grown a lot of white hair, her face was haggard with dark circles under her eyes and obvious stains on her skin. Saying that she was in her fifties maybe a little exaggerated, but she still looked like someone in her forties.

Aside from the woman and the teenage boy just now, there’s a thin young girl and a pair of middle-aged peasant man and woman in the house.

It was an odd combination.

However, they soon figured out that they were actually a family. The middle-aged peasant couples were the parents and the teenager and the young girl were their children. The woman who looked to be in her forties was actually still 35 and was the couple’s sister.

The woman’s name is Huang Yueming, a native of Huangtian Town in Xiaochuan county, and this is their home.

Although there are no shops in front of the village, there were originally five or six families living in the area, but because of poverty and being underdeveloped, some people moved to a slightly more popular resort in the area to live in, while some went to Chengxiang city and bought a house.

her elder brother and sister-in-law didn’t want to move away because they couldn’t let go of the several acres of terraced rice fields, and their children were only 14 to 15 years old and boarding in Kanghe middle school in the hot spring village.

She originally contracted a boat for ‘Green Lake Leisure Resort’, the largest tourist attraction in Chengxiang to receive tourists on weekdays.

Later, when the outside world fell into a panic about an unknown epidemic, the government, which had long received the news, ordered the resort’s services to be shut down to avoid more people spreading the epidemic virus and flocking over the tourists, costing her job.

She followed a group of workers and businessmen who had also lost their jobs to a protest sit-in and was arrested. But after being locked up for a few days, the government didn’t seem to have time to pay attention to them and was released.

later on, the public became more and more uncontrollable and the zombies started appearing in the scenic spots and downtown areas. She realized what happened and tried to go home, but at that time, the traffic in various areas had already been paralyzed and was delayed for a few days. After several hardships, she finally came back two days ago.

The original underdeveloped situation of not being in the forefront of the village and being a farm area that grows potatoes became an asylum during the apocalypse. After she came back here, she encountered people who passed by, threatening them and trying to evict their families. It was only when the military appeared and chased those people away did they escaped a disaster.

Since then, they have been very wary of outsiders.

However, they aren’t professionals so they were easily spotted by Hao Jian as she was hiding on top of the building, observing her.