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Start of Outbreak

When Xiaoyun knocked on the door of a house, Nami was the one who answered it.

"Brother Xiaoyun, you are finally back." Nami excitedly rushed over to hug Xiaoyun.

Xiaoyun gently patted Nami's head as he dragged the suitcase into the house.

As soon as he walked inside, Leyan and Yueyue were sitting on the sofa, and the TV was still playing the announcement from earlier.

"Excuse me, Miss Leyan, the city is in a lockdown right now... Can I stay here for a few days? I'll pay the rent."

"You can live in the office room any time you want, and you don't have to pay the rent."

Leyan's face blushed, realizing she had just invited a man who she had only known for a single night. But she knew it was better for the family to have an extra hand in the time of a crisis.

More importantly, deep inside, she couldn't bring herself to refuse Xiaoyun's request after what happened between them.

"Nami, when did you know Xiaoyun so well? You even call him brother all of a sudden."

Leyan curiously asked as he headed upstairs with his suitcase to the office room.

"He's older than me, so I should call him brother, right?" Nami answered back with an innocent face.

"Hmm... sure."

Leyan felt Nami was hiding something but couldn't put her finger on it. But before she could ask, something else quickly grabbed her attention.

"Ah!"

Yueyue suddenly screamed as she dropped her phone onto the sofa. She looked so scared that she couldn't even pick it up.

"Yueyue, why are you screaming?" Nami asked out of curiosity as she walked over to the sofa.

After picking up the phone and looking at it, Nami abruptly screamed as well before dropping it onto the sofa.

"What the hell is going on?"

Leyan got sick of their screams and decided to check her phone herself. But as she looked, she almost had the same reaction.

It was a video of several people dismembered by hundreds of 'people,' with blood and their insides all over the floor.

"Don't look at these things. You will only scare yourself."

Leyan quickly closed the video before handing the phone back to Yueyue as she sat down on the sofa.

"It's like the zombie in those movies," Nami whispered, still looking a little traumatized by the video.

"Yeah, are they even people? Their bodies look so rotten, and their eyes are all bloody red. "

Yueyue replied in a low voice, looking just as traumatized as Nami. But Leyan didn't seem to be fazed by it, as if she had seen worse before.

"It's not that bad... You two have to train your mental fortitude if you want to live through this crisis."

"What are you guys talking about?"

Xiaoyun curiously asked as he finally came back downstairs after putting his suitcase in the office room.

"Mom, can I show it to him?" Yueyue said, handing the phone over to Leyan for her to decide.

Leyan hesitated for a second but turned the phone back on and re-opened the video.

After watching the whole video, Xiaoyun wasn't really too shocked as he had already seen a video from his roommate earlier.

"From the background, is that Hong Kong?" Xiaoyun asked as he noticed the signature building in the distance.

As soon as he mentioned it, everyone in the living room immediately got terrified.

"It might just be a building in America or something. There are so many skyscrapers out there."

Leyan tried to calm the two down, but it barely did anything. Instead, their faces now looked even more afraid.

"Where's Yuqi?" Xiaoyun curiously asked.

"Yuqi? She went to work and usually comes back home by now... Oh shit! I'll call her now."

Leyan immediately pulled out her phone, all four of them waiting as they waited for the phone to be picked up.

"Hello? Mom?"

"Hey Yuqi, are you off work?"

"Yeah, I'm off work. I'm on the road now... There's a mile-long traffic jam and a car accident ahead, though.

It looks like several police officers are standing there investigating... Wow, what the hell?

Someone in the car just jumped the police! That can't be right... What the hell is happening?"

Yuqi's voice sounded extremely confused as the situation on the other side began to unfold before her eyes.

"Get out of the car! Don't wait inside the car! That person must be a zombie." Leyan yelled.

"Zombie? What are you talking about?" Yuqi asked, her voice not realizing the urgency of the situation.

"Just get out of the car now! Run to a nearby place to hide!" Nami yelled out this time.

"Okay, okay, I'm running now."

Yuqi finally realized something was going wrong horribly, with constant horns beeping in the background.

Suddenly, a gunshot sound came out from the phone.

"The police fired! Holy shit! Why are there so many people on the street? They are all rushing towards the police."

"Ignore them. Just keep running," Yueyue yelled out this time.

"Okay, I am running as fast as——"

The call ended abruptly as Yuqi hung up the call from her side, leaving all four of them on the sofa concerned.

"Yuqi is in trouble... What should I do...."

Leyan rubbed her temple, looking extremely stressed as she didn't know what to do in this situation.

"Why don't I go outside and look for her?" Xiaoyun suggested.

"No, we don't even know where Yuqi is. How can you find her in such a big city?"

Nami immediately argued back, leaving the situation back to square one.

"How about we drive around to find her?" Yueyue suggested.

"It's a traffic jam out there, and a car is way too loud to attract all kinds of attention."

Leyan argued as she rejected the proposal, leaving the three of them to sit in silence as all they could do now was wait.

A few minutes later, Leyan's phone finally rang again.

"Hey Yuqi, are you okay?"

"I'm fine. I'm at the clothing store in Ping'an Mall... I'm hiding in the changing room right now.

There seem to be a few security guards with red eyes outside... Mom, what should I do?"

The three could hear the fear in Yuqi's voice as a quiet growling sound came out from the other side.

"Just wait there, okay Qiqi? Mom is thinking of an idea." Leyan replied without a second thought to calm Yuqi down.

"Okay... I'm safe here, for now. Oh, something is walking past."

The phone call once again ended abruptly as Yuqi hung up, causing the four of them to be even more nervous.

"Miss Leyan, give me Yuqi's phone number. I will go to the mall and save her."

Xiaoyun asked in a determined tone, not giving her any room to negotiate. But she still hesitated for a second.

After realizing she had no other way to save her daughter, she reluctantly gave him Yuqi's phone number.

"I am going with you." Yueyue chimed in.

"No, you should stay with Mo——Miss Leyan. They need your protection."

Xiaoyun quickly changed his words at the last second as the word mom almost slipped out of his mouth.

"He is right. He should go alone. We two can't do anything if a single zombie came here." Nami added.

Yueyue looked a little disappointed but accepted the decision in the end.

---

When Xiaoyun was just about to leave, Leyan suddenly pulled him into the garage.

Inside the garage, there are a lot of household tools and an SUV.

"Take this baseball bat. My husband left it behind when he played baseball with her daughter in the past."

Xiaoyun gladly accepted the baseball bat, and to his surprise, it happened to have a perfect grip on his hand.

"I should get going now. Thanks, Miss Leyan."

Just as he turned around, Leyan suddenly walked forward and pulled his sleeve.

"Wait, can you help me find some... morning-after pills? Yueyue has been following me all morning, and I couldn't..."

Leyan's face turned blushing red as she couldn't finish her sentence.

"Um, I will try my best to get it on the way there..."

Xiaoyun lowered his head out of shame as he still couldn't process his relationship with Leyan.

After a short, awkward silence, Leyan decided to change the mood.

"Okay, let me open the door for you."

She quickly moved in front of Xiaoyun to open the garage's side door, revealing a relatively windy day outside.

"Thank you."

Just as Xiaoyun walked past her, she suddenly pulled him over again before kissing him right on the lips.

"I don't know how our family can repay you... If you really want, you can use my body as much as you want when you come back safely."

Leyan's face was blushed red as she looked down in embarrassment at what she had just said out loud.

But she felt a little relieved inside after saying it, almost as if she had finally dropped the heavy luggage on her back for all these years.

"Miss Leyan, you don't need to do that... I'm saving Miss Yuqi because she's my sis——she doesn't deserve to die at such a young age."

Seeing Leyan's admiring face toward him, Xiaoyun quickly walks out of the garage door.

He realizes he might have made the misunderstanding even worse, but any further explanation will only make it worse.

"Be careful!"

Leyan waved as Xiaoyun didn't turn around this time and disappeared into the horizon.

"Why is my heart beating faster and faster? Am I in love with him?"

She wondered as she closed the garage door and walked towards the living room door.

Her mind still felt a little conflicted, but she knew there was nothing valuable she could offer him in a time of crisis like this.

"I'm sorry, honey, but my body is the only payment I have for him... I have to trap him for our family's sake."

---

As Xiaoyun walked toward the city center, there was not a single zombie on the road.

Instead, most of the zombies were locked inside their cars and couldn't escape. Hearing the zombies banging on car doors was starting to make him a little nervous.

After walking closer and closer to the city center, he could see a road accident that blocked the whole street.

Hundreds of zombies were standing at the center of the car accident, causing him to turn around and take the other route.

A few minutes later...

He finally came across several corpses whose heads had been shot, all of them wearing just everyday clothes.

"Their head is their weakness... Why is it always head?" Xiaoyun thought to himself as he continued walking.

In the distance, he could finally see a shopping mall—the same one that Yuqi had mentioned over the phone.

But before he arrived at the front entrance, he came across the dead body of a policeman whose head was shot.

Seeing the bullet wound from the chin rather than a bullet wound at the forehead, it was clear what action the police took.

"Thank you for your service... Sorry about this."

Xiaoyun quickly searched the body and found a gun. More importantly, there was still a single bullet left.

With everything searched, he finally walked over to the entrance of the mall.

Unfortunately, a zombie was standing right in the middle, with no other way around it.

"These are not people, but zombies. You killed them to help them escape from their nightmare."

Xiaoyun began to justify his actions as he slowly approached the zombie from behind, raising his baseball into the air.

With a swing with all his strength, a bone crack sound could be heard as it landed directly against the zombie's skull.

The baseball bat had completely crushed the zombie's brain, with blood flying everywhere.

"That was way too much force... I should hit it a little lighter."

Xiaoyun reflected as he looked down at his clothes, which were now tainted with zombie blood.

After walking further into the mall, he sees two zombies eating something on the floor.

Upon closer inspection, it was two zombies eating a disfigured female body.

A sudden gag forced him to turn around and walk back to the front entrance, holding down the urge to vomit.

With a few minutes passing, the feeling of vomiting disappeared. He slowly walked back to his spot earlier.

His eyes were filled with determination, with zero sense of guilt for the zombie killing earlier.

"They are beasts, not humans. Nobody is sick enough to eat their kind. They are not Human."

Xiaoyun thought to himself as he slowly approached the zombie. He once again raised his baseball bat and aimed.

The first zombie was crushed with a bang, but the other zombies turned around and looked toward Xiaoyun.

Within milliseconds, the other zombie immediately lunged towards him, forcing him to shove the bat in reaction.

But the shove only made the zombie go back a few steps, giving the zombie an easy time to lunge towards him again.

This time, it was so close that Xiaoyun couldn't even shove. Without even thinking, he instinctively rolled to the side.

It barely dodged the zombie's pounce.

The zombies rushed forward yet again, but this time, after the lunges from earlier, they were much further away.

Xiaoyun used the precious time to read his baseball bat, waiting for the zombie to arrive just in time.

"Shit."

With a crack sound, the zombie's brain was crushed into pieces as he hit it perfectly on the head.

But once again, all of the blood from the zombie's brain flew all over the place, with some of them landing on his jacket.

He couldn't care less as he began to start hyperventilating, catching his breath from all the fighting.

After taking a deep breath and sitting on the floor, he took out his cell phone and called.

"Hello? This Yuqi?"

"Who are you?" Yuqi said in a low voice.

"I'm Xiaoyun, the person you met in the morning. I'm on the first floor of Ping'an shopping mall right now.

I'm here to bring you back home. Where are you at right now?"

A short silence appeared, but she finally responded to it.

"I'm on the second floor... I was too busy running, but I only know that the store sells clothes for mountaineering and camping."

"Okay, I will be there soon."

After hanging up the phone, he quickly got up from the floor and started walking toward the stairs.

"Just a few zombies. I can deal with this."

With careful movement, Xiaoyun lured the lone zombies out by throwing trash towards his trap and dealt with them one by one.

"My skills are getting better and better." Xiaoyun thought to himself.

Having cleared the entire staircase and the nearby area, he slowly crawled up the stairs and peeked through the gap.

This time, groups of zombies were standing together on the second floor, all of them wearing security uniforms.

"Oh boy, this is going to be troublesome..." Xiaoyun murmured as he realized his old plan wouldn't work on them.

Suddenly, he thought of an idea.

"Hey, you! Come over if you want a piece of this!"

Xiaoyun yells out loud this time, just enough for the zombie to hear it as he quickly runs back downstairs.

As the zombies began rushing towards him, he was already at the bottom with the baseball bat.

The moment the zombies reached the stairs, they all lunged downward, only to trip on the long stairs as they fell like dominoes.

With their heads completely exposed on the floor, he quickly swung the bat as fast as possible before the zombies could get back up.

"Man, how the hell can zombies be this stupid? They can't even walk up the stairs."

After finally reaching the clothes section on the 2nd floor, he quickly looked through the store one by one.

But the ones he walked past did not have an outdoor section for clothes. So he went back to the stairs and started searching the other side.

Within a few steps, he finally found a store selling outdoor equipment.

"Of course, it's on the other side. What was I thinking? She has to be close to the stairs."

After entering inside, Xiaoyun cleared all the corners and couldn't find any zombies or anyone else.

He began to search the changing rooms one by one until he reached the last one.

To his surprise, it opened on its own.

"Finally, I found you." Xiaoyun sighed as he saw a frightened Yuqi in front of him.

"You y-y-you are human? Who are you? Whose blood is that?"

Yuqi stuttered several times, unable to make a cohesive sentence, as the blood on his clothes made her too scared to talk normally.

"Yeah? Me? Of course, I am human. Do you think zombies can talk?"

Looking down, Xiaoyun quickly realized the scale of the zombie's matter on his body looked extremely disgusting.

Not to mention, some of them even got on his face and his hands, with an awful smell that now started to make him want to throw up.

"This blood is all from zombies killed. Don't worry... Sorry about the smell. There is not much I can do right now." 

Yuqi finally realized it was Xiaoyun from the morning as he attempted to wipe his face with the clean shirt inside his jacket.

"I am so sorry. I didn't realize you were Xiaoyun. Thank you so much for saving me."

Yuqi bowed down in apology, realizing how rude she had been when he had worked all the way to come here to save her.

"It's fine. Let's go home before it gets dark."

Xiaoyun started humming and looked the other way as he could see a little bit of cleavage when she bowed down.

As he looked the other way, he quickly noticed the items in the outdoor specialty store.

Without a second thought, he quickly took the hiking bag and began to pack as many clothes as possible.

"Well, this windbreaker jacket is practical, and these pants, man, these clothes are so stylish."

Yuqi watched as Xiaoyun walked over to the counter after packing the backpack full.

"Well, I'm going to pay now... Wait, why am I paying? Oh my god, I'm so stupid."

Just as he expected, when he turned around, Yuqi was covering her mouth with her hand, trying her best to hold in her laughter.

"Hey, let's go. Don't just stand there. We have to get back before it's dark."

Xiaoyun repeated the same line as he turned around to avoid the embarrassment.

---

When the two of them got to the stairs, Yuqi couldn't help but vomit all over the 2nd-floor entrance.

After waiting a few minutes, Yuqi stopped vomiting and recovered a little as she wiped her mouth.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. I'm just not getting used to it."

The two continued forward, walking all the way to the entrance of the mall.

As he peeked around the corner of the mall, he saw that all the zombies trapped inside the cars had broken free.

Dozens of them are standing still on the road, wondering aimlessly as the sun begins to set on the horizon.

After calculating all the possible routes and methods, he only came up with a single solution for this.

"Just copy what I do, okay?"

Yuqi watched as Xiaoyun bent over and started crawling on the road on his knee, hiding behind the bushes.

After crawling a few steps, Xiaoyun looked back to check.

To his surprise, Yuqi managed to endure his method, crawling below the bush right behind him.

After crawling for almost twenty minutes at a snail's pace, the two of them had finally made it out of the danger zone.

"Thank god it's only the first day... Anyway, there is still a forty-minute walk from here," Xiaoyun whispered.

Yuqi let out a sigh, but she didn't complain out loud as the two of them started heading back to their home on foot.

Just as the two of them walked around for five minutes, a car sound suddenly appeared from the road behind them.

Turning around, they quickly noticed a giant Hummer H2 pushing all the cars on the road to the side as it drove past them.

More importantly, it was followed by a massive horde of zombies chasing after them.

"What the fuck! We need to get the hell out of here."

Without thinking, Xiaoyun grabbed Yuqi's hand and immediately rushed to a small hotel nearby whose door was still open.

After getting inside the building, he quickly turned the doorknobs one by one, but all the rooms on the first floor were locked.

The two of them quickly rushed upstairs to the second floor, where they saw a suite with the door still open.

Xiaoyun pushed Yuqi inside, then closed the door and pulled the lock all within seconds.

They could hear the loud growling sound down the stairs as they sat down on the floor in exhaustion.

"I think we are safe..." Xiaoyun commented, with Yuqi nodding in agreement.

After catching their breath for a minute, the two stood back up.

"Let's check out the window first."

Yuqi nodded in agreement again. Neither of them noticed their hands were still held together as they walked towards the window.

Looking outside the window, they could see the whole street was full of zombies wandering on the road.

"We can only wait for tomorrow. Maybe the zombies will be gone." Xiaoyun murmured as the two of them sat down on the sofa.

Yuqi suddenly turned red as she got back up from the sofa, which confused Xiaoyun until she spoke up.

"Uh, I need to go to the restroom... Can you let go for a second?"

"Sorry about that. I didn't mean to——"

"It's fine... It was an emergency."

As the two of them separated, Yuqi got up from the sofa and walked toward the restroom.

But she stood still right before the bathroom door, not going inside.

"This door is broken?" Yuqi murmured as she tried to turn the doorknob, only for it to be jammed.

Suddenly, the restroom door was slammed from the inside as if the noise from the doorknob had triggered something.

"Shit, it might be the original owner that mutated into a zombie. I'll take care of it."

Xiaoyun quickly picked up the bat and walked over to the bathroom. Meanwhile, Yuqi quickly ran back and hid behind the sofa.

"It's definitely a zombie."

He could immediately recognize the growling sound from the inside as he tried to turn the jammed doorknob.

With the loud noise coming from the restroom, Xiaoyun kicked the door open to prevent the sound from attracting too much attention.

"This door is so rubbish! Shit!"

To his surprise, the kick went right through the door and popped right in, with his leg getting stuck inside as he tried to pull it back.

By the time he pulled his leg back, there was already blood bleeding out with a bite mark.

"You fucking zombie! Fuck you!"

Xiaoyun yelled in anger as he realized he had been bitten. Out of pure rage, he slammed his entire body onto the door.

The door hinges instantly popped, forcing the door to collapse on top of the zombie.

After several hard stomps on the door, he flipped the door over, only to see the zombie's head had squeezed into mush.

"Shit... what a fucking garbage door," Xiaoyun muttered as he stepped back outside the hallway.

As his leg became harder and harder to stand still, he slowly laid down on the floor and rolled up his pants.

The bite mark was deep into his flesh, with blood rapidly flowing out of the wound.

At the same time, Yuqi had come out of hiding, her face in shock as soon as she noticed the wound on his leg.

"I'll find something to bandage you."

Yuqi quickly searched the entire house for clothes to be ripped into bandages, but she came back empty-handed.

With no other options, Yuqi had to make a decision.

"Don't look okay?" Yuqi nervously asked as she began taking off her slim suit.

Xiaoyun was instantly stunned by her beauty as she took off her shirt next, revealing her voluptuous chest being held together by a black bra.

"If I remember correctly, Mom said to bandage someone, you should wrap twice around the injury to hold the end in place.

Then work from the inside to the outside of the limb, winding the bandage in spiraling turns."

As she began bandaging the wound, Xiaoyun couldn't help but stare at the cleavage that Yuqi showed every time her arm moved.

"What the hell am I doing looking at my sister like this... but I am fucking dead anyway. Why do I care?" 

It didn't take much convincing for Xiaoyun to keep staring at Yuqi's cleavage as her arms started to move wider and wider.

After finishing bandaging Xiaoyun, she finally got back up with her shirt that had been ripped to pieces.

"It's white..."

Xiaoyun accidentally spoke his mind out loud as he looked under Yuqi's hip skirt.

Her face immediately started to red, but she didn't stop him, nor did she move at all.

However, it didn't take long for him to snap back to reality, his rationality and shame taking over as he looked the other way.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to look——"

"It's okay, I don't mind it... You can turn around now." 

As Xiaoyun turned back around, she was now wearing her slim black coat without a shirt inside, with her black bra being fully visible.

"Let me help you to the sofa..."

Yuqi said softly as she bent down and supported him back up, her face not minding a single bit by his perverted action from earlier.

Oops, I was a bit late. But it's never too late to edit and improve my book. Man, reading back makes me feel depressed about how bad my grammar was.

I'm still proud of the plot itself. But the execution just needs a lot of improvement.

Edited as of 12/15/24

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