Apocalypse Star House Hoarding-Chapter 46

When she first entered the apocalyptic world, because the character in the world looked, had the same body type, age, and even many details identical to herself, Yu Xi initially felt that the apocalyptic world might be a real one. However, when that world ended, the Star House system told her that after she left, the character in the world would continue to live according to their established trajectory. This unscientific fact made her believe it couldn’t be a real world.
Later, she encountered an eighteen-year-old version of herself and Yu parents, who resembled her biological parents, and now herself with a thirty-year-old appearance. Additionally, whether it was the first world or the three years in the zombie apocalypse, she never had her period even once…
All of these led her to believe this might just be a virtual world because only a virtual world could have so many inexplicable phenomena. Reflecting back, the appearance of the Star House in her apartment stairwell was itself an inexplicable event.
But does that mean the Star House isn’t real? The Star House is real, the cold, neutral voice in her mind is real, the items she brought back from the apocalyptic world are real, and Lou Rui, the task executor, is also real…
So… at this moment, is the world she is in also real?
And why has she come to these worlds to complete so-called tasks?
【Host, please focus on the current task.】
The Star House system returned to its indifferent tone, much like the warning sound whenever she touched a certain boundary.
Now, unlike the beginning, Yu Xi had to heed such warnings, recalling the reason she had prematurely activated the apocalyptic world task this time.
The time will come when she will uncover all the mysteries.
The three-day incubation period passed quickly.
During these three days, Yu Xi stayed in the hotel suite without going out. She had done everything she could; her personal power was too insignificant to contend with the entire apocalyptic catastrophe.
Her only goal now was to ensure her survival until thirty days were up, complete the task, and leave the world.
After the water supply was cut off, the hotel started to fall into chaos. Most of the guests who came to the hotel were not from Hai Ru City. Knowing that the hailstorm had only ravaged coastal cities, the few guests quickly packed up and left.
Once the guests were gone, the hotel staff held out for another half day. Many who had homes in the city took leave and went home, and soon, no one asked for leave anymore. Some staff took hotel supplies and left, while others hoarded supplies and hid in the upstairs rooms.
Yu Xi cleaned her room several times a day, using the two magical items, the [Instant Cleanser] and the Star House storage, to ensure no insects were in the room or on herself.
Without detecting the smell of blood, the insects were generally inactive. As long as she had no wounds, these insects were almost harmless to her.
Having seen them multiple times, Yu Xi had developed an immunity, with her disgust greatly reduced. Her daily routine included a few hours of physical training and trying different foods.
These days, she had been eating takeout cooked food, partly because she had no energy to cook and partly because cooking was risky and could cause injuries, so she decided against it.
For breakfast, she usually had light beef noodles, bone broth dumplings, or preserved egg and lean meat congee with soup dumplings, egg pancakes, fried dough sticks, and pan-fried buns.
Needing strength training, she had rice for lunch, sometimes paired with Sichuan dishes like mouth-watering chicken, spicy blood curd, and hot and sour shredded potatoes, and sometimes Cantonese-style claypot rice with double sausages.
The claypot rice she ordered was known for its honey sauce. The aluminum takeout box kept the food warm as if it had just come out of the oven.
Pouring the sauce over, the thin slices of sausage and bacon, bright green vegetables, and white fragrant rice mixed together, each bite savory and juicy.
In the evening, she usually drank soup, paired with seafood. Besides Chinese-style soups, she also stocked up on a lot of Korean-style oxtail noodle soup, kimchi tofu clam soup, and spicy beef soup. She didn’t dare eat raw seafood for the time being, so she mostly chose already cooked dishes, such as scallion stir-fried clams, XO stir-fried squid tentacles, steamed grouper, and oyster scrambled eggs.
Desserts were also a must; she mostly consumed various milk teas but occasionally indulged in snowballs, mousse cakes, or supplemented her diet with some fruit for vitamins. These three meals a day were the only times when she could temporarily forget the world she was in and be free of any distractions.
In her heart, she vaguely felt that these quiet and safe, enclosed days would soon come to an end.
Things outside weren’t great, but initially, they weren’t too bad either. At first, due to a series of emergency measures and aid from other cities, protective suits, flamethrowers, food, water, and medicine were delivered in large quantities, timely arming and assisting some of the populace.
At the same time, it was no longer possible to conceal the fact that the bugs could parasitize human bodies. Besides the batch of patients isolated in hospitals, those who had suffered minor injuries on the day of the hail showed emotional problems.
Emergency and police hotlines were overwhelmed, and both hospitals and police stations were severely understaffed.
Actually, dealing with people who were parasitized and having episodes wasn’t too difficult. Besides using methods like electric shocks to stun them, sedatives were also an effective way to calm them down. If nothing else worked, binding their hands and feet and covering their eyes and mouths could be a last resort. When those parasitized and having episodes couldn’t see or hear anything for a while, their aggression would diminish until they were stimulated again.
This situation was very similar to dealing with mentally ill patients who had lost their sanity.
However, people with mental illnesses were very few, and there were enough human and medicinal resources to care for and treat them. But now, a hailstorm with insect eggs instantly increased the number of parasitized people.
A hundred people could guard and treat ten mental patients, but what if a hundred normal people had to deal with fifty parasitized and active patients? A hundred against a hundred? Or a hundred against two hundred?
Although most of the insect eggs from the hailstorm were eliminated through various efforts, many black bugs still hatched. They existed in every corner of the city: in grass, building crevices, water, clothing, and even hair…
Because the bugs were so tiny, even if they were stuck to clothes, shoes, or pants, they were unnoticeable. The populace couldn’t guard against them effectively, and the only thing they could do was try not to get injured.
Many women, terrified, went to pharmacies to buy medications containing contraceptives to delay their periods.
On the evening of the third day, all news stations began broadcasting known symptoms, reactions, and countermeasures for black worm parasitism.
The three-day water cut, rationing, and lockdown had already thrown people’s lives into panic, and now Hai Ru City’s social order was officially collapsing.
Ports, train stations, airports, and private car routes out of the city were already choked with people trying to escape, making them impassable.
The congestion not only caused chaos but also resulted in injuries. Around injured people, a vacuum zone would instantly form as everyone knew what it meant. Even if the person wasn’t parasitized yet, in others’ eyes, they were already sentenced to death.
There were too many people, and most of them appeared normal before the parasites took over. New cases of parasitism kept surfacing, leading to frenzied attacks and new waves of chaos. Whenever someone got injured again, it marked the beginning of another despairing episode.
Eventually, the lockdown was broken because most people were still normal. However, to enter other cities, people had to undergo thorough inspections, shave off all body hair, clean thoroughly, check for wounds, and then be quarantined for five days.
But these people, who thought they had escaped danger, didn’t realize that five days later, when they crossed the safety threshold into what they believed to be a safe city, moved into their assigned residences, and tried to have a decent meal and a good night’s sleep, they would once again find familiar black bugs around them. Despair spread.
There were no truly safe cities; every place would fall, the only difference being the timing of the fall.
Within Hai Ru City, some people slashed their fingers open, running outdoors in a frenzy, intending to be parasitized and end it all; some stormed into supermarkets, grabbing bottled water and packaged food; others set their homes on fire, choosing to perish alongside the bugs…
Several days later, the hospitals fell too. Not just the patients injured on the day of the hail, but anyone with a wound had gradually gotten infected over these days, including many healthcare workers.
There were too many who succumbed to the parasitism, and too few who remained normal. Many died from the violent attacks of the parasitized, even if they themselves were not parasitized.
In a previously well-secured building, a middle-aged man refused to board the evacuation helicopter waiting on the rooftop. He sealed his office door, placed a prepared letter on the desk, and took out a gun from the safe.
When the man in the combat suit and his team managed to break into the office, the person inside was already lifeless.
The people following him were dumbstruck. They watched as the man in the combat suit picked up the letter from the desk, asking anxiously, “Boss, what do we do now? Should we leave?”
“Those who want to leave can head to the rooftop now; you might still catch the helicopter.”
After that, half the team, driven by the desire to survive, ran out of the office and rushed upstairs.
About seven or eight people remained, all of whom were his most loyal and fearless brothers.
“Aren’t you leaving?” the man in the combat suit frowned.
“Boss, where could we possibly go? Is there any place safe in these times?”
“A few inland cities are still safe for now.”
“If we leave, what about you?”
“I’m staying to save people. As many as I can. I’d rather die fighting than running.”
“We’re staying too. If we can save even one, it’s worth it. We’ve had enough. From now on, we’ll only follow our conscience,” one of them said with a laugh, turning to search the office for anything useful.
If Yu Xi were here, she would recognize this person as the one she had knocked out on her first night in this world, the first person who had sneaked into her residence.
xxx
Hai Ru City was entering its most chaotic and darkest phase.
Such situations were happening in every coastal city in this world.
But no matter how dark the corners, small sparks of hope still burned.
As long as these sparks remained, hope endured.
In the afternoon, on a street littered with various trash and burning fires, a small group of people appeared.
Leading the group was a young man around twenty years old, holding an iron rod. With a backpack on his back, his delicate features were set in a cold, vigilant expression as he surveyed the surroundings.
Behind him, there were seventeen or eighteen people. They weren’t wearing protective suits—resources were scarce—but they were all dressed in uniform white clothing.
It was hard to tell where they had cobbled together their outfits from. They wore white jackets, white pants, and white shoes of various fabrics from top to bottom. Some even carried white backpacks, which, upon closer inspection, were intentionally painted white.
Most of them were young, wielding sticks, steel pipes, and other makeshift weapons. Some were helping each other walk, and there were a few middle-aged men and women in the group, likely the parents of the young ones. Their formation was organized, with those holding weapons leading and guarding the rear, young people in the middle, and the elderly and girls protected at the very center.
They meticulously checked each store, seemingly looking for a suitable place to rest. Their vigilance was not only due to the parasitized and already frenzied people but also the still-healthy ones.
Most of them were students from the same school, living nearby in a school district. After the incident, they returned home together. Some of their parents had been injured in the hailstorm and were isolated from the start. Others had gone berserk at home, tied up by their families in a room.
As Hai Ru City descended into chaos, they could stay at home, but the living needed food and water. Under such circumstances, only bottled water and packaged food were safe. They made a plan and decided to take their families and leave, settling wherever they could find food and water.
Soon, they found an upward staircase in a supermarket with overturned shelves. Upstairs was a warehouse, mostly emptied but still scattered with items on the floor. More importantly, the warehouse had a locked door, a flat floor, ample space, and intact windows overlooking the street.
Upon entering the supermarket, they divided tasks. Some gathered all the packaged food and water from the first floor and the warehouse, placing them in a cardboard box. Others took down their backpacks, pulling out several aluminum bowls, which were then carefully held by others.
The delicate-looking boy who had been leading the group gently set down his backpack, pulling out a bag of red liquid. It was a blood bag taken from a hospital storage room, and he had chosen the 100ml small blood bags for convenience. He deftly opened the blood bag and distributed the blood into seven or eight aluminum bowls.
The blood quantity was minimal, with each bowl containing just a little at the bottom. This was to control the blood volume and its range of effect, and also to ensure it wouldn’t spill easily. The boy took the empty blood bag outside the shop, using a lighter to burn it completely, then sprayed his hands with a small bottle of alcohol to remove any lingering blood scent.
The others took the bowls to the second floor, placing two at the entrance and the rest in the four corners of the warehouse. Then, everyone went upstairs, leaving the door open, and gathered in the middle of the warehouse as if performing a ritual. They stood in line, arms outstretched and eyes closed.