Apocalypse Star House Hoarding-Chapter 48

Yu Xi had been out investigating the situation with the parasites for two days, leaving the hotel behind. In her view, the reason zombies could maintain their mobility without weakening was twofold: first, zombies were moving corpses, with bodily functions already damaged and controlled by an unknown virus that manipulated their motor nerves. Second, zombies craved blood and consumed human flesh, which, in a way, was a source of energy replenishment.
However, the situation with the parasitized individuals was different. After they lost their sanity and self-control, they became frenzied, only knowing how to fight. But from a physiological standpoint, they were still human, and humans needed food to maintain their mobility. Unlike zombies, they did not bite into human flesh, and unlike normal humans, they did not know how to cook or eat properly. So, how did they maintain their energy and avoid weakening?
Normal humans would die in three days without water, and their organs would begin to fail within about seven days without food, eventually leading to death in about a month. How long could these parasitized individuals last? Could she hypothesize that these parasitized individuals would automatically die within a month? Or would there be other changes?
Three days after the incubation period, chaos broke out inside the hotel. Her hearing covered several floors up and down. While she couldn’t deal with the chaos outside the hotel, she could manage the chaos within. Most of the people hiding in the hotel were employees who knew each other, so they stayed in rooms on nearby floors. The hotel had ample supplies, so there was no immediate shortage of food and water. They thought they were lucky. However, that day, several of them went berserk simultaneously, violently attacking their companions. Despite everyone’s efforts to intervene, they couldn’t stop them.
In the midst of the chaos, someone pushed open the door and shouted, “Move aside!” They saw a person in protective gear rush over with a fire extinguisher, spraying the berserk individuals until they were disoriented and unable to see anything. The person then took out a stun baton and knocked them out one by one.
“Find ropes. If there aren’t any, tear up the bed sheets and tie them up!” the person ordered. This time, everyone heard clearly; it was a cold female voice. Some were still in shock, while others, albeit with trembling legs, went to find ropes.
Following her instructions, they locked the three berserk individuals in separate windowless rooms with surveillance cameras. These were small suites within a larger game room, each equipped with clear-angle cameras.
Yu Xi asked the hotel staff to bring various unpackaged foods they couldn’t eat themselves: vegetables, raw meat, cakes, fruits, cooked rice, and prepared dishes. She divided these into three portions and placed them in cabinets in the rooms. The parasitized individuals couldn’t see the food immediately but would find it if they looked. She also placed a bucket of water beside each cabinet.
She then used the stun baton to knock the tied-up, now-awake parasitized individuals into unconsciousness again, untied them, and exited the rooms, locking and reinforcing the doors with wooden boards to ensure they couldn’t break out.
Yu Xi continuously observed the locked-up parasitized individuals. Upon waking, since they couldn’t see other parasitized individuals or living people, they didn’t become as agitated as before. Over a few days of observation, they neither escaped nor showed any desire to eat. One parasitized individual accidentally found the food in the cabinet, grabbed at it but didn’t eat it, and instead buried his head in the water bucket, drinking a lot.
She initially thought that if the parasitized individuals had acquired the characteristics of the parasites, they might start eating raw food. But they only drank water, ignoring both raw and cooked food.
Not eating? Yu Xi was puzzled. If that were the case, these parasitized individuals would die of organ failure within a month. Once they died, what would happen to the black parasites inside them? Would they leave and find new hosts, or die with the host?
However, regardless of the type of creature—human, animal, or these strange, unidentified parasites—the survival instinct was fundamental.
Just like their tendency to seek blood, it’s an instinct. But if they quickly die after being parasitized, then what is the purpose of the parasitism? Parasitizing and then letting the host die seems quite unreasonable to her.
One question remained unresolved, and soon another problem arose. A few days ago, another parasitized individual was locked in the kitchen on the fifth floor by the combined efforts of several people. They had gone there to fetch boxed water, only to find someone inside who, upon seeing them, brandished a kitchen knife and charged at them while shouting. In their panic, they quickly locked the kitchen door and barricaded it with heavy objects, trapping the parasitized individual inside.
Within two days, when they returned to the restaurant to fetch more water, they noticed a strange, foul smell. Ultimately, they determined the odor came from the kitchen. Too afraid to open the door, they went upstairs to find Yu Xi and ed the situation to her.
Yu Xi’s sense of smell was extremely keen. As soon as she stepped into the fifth-floor restaurant, she could already smell the nauseating stench, reminiscent of food waste left out for several days in the summer, making her head throb. She turned to the group and asked, “Is there surveillance in there?”
“Yes!” one of them exclaimed, slapping his forehead. “How could I forget in the heat of the moment?”
The kitchen, being a work area, naturally had surveillance cameras, so they went to the monitoring room and pulled up the footage from the fifth-floor restaurant kitchen. The lights seemed to be malfunctioning, flickering and making the footage unclear.
Yu Xi leaned in close to the screen, and with her superior eyesight, quickly saw the situation inside through the flickering lights. The parasitized individual lay motionless on the floor, as if asleep. Since he was lying behind a counter, only his upper body was visible.
Do parasitized individuals sleep? Yu Xi wondered. As she pondered this, the parasitized individual’s eyes suddenly opened; he wasn’t sleeping, just lying there as if… resting? Whether he was sleeping or resting, there was nothing visibly wrong with him in the footage, so why was there such a foul smell coming from inside?
“Is there anything else in the kitchen?” she asked the group. They all looked at one person, who worked in the kitchen and knew the layout better than the rest. He recalled that the fifth-floor restaurant was a seafood restaurant, and there was a small room next to the kitchen with many glass tanks containing live seafood and fish. However, that room had windows, which were shattered during the hailstorm, breaking some of the tanks and contaminating the seafood with parasite eggs.
Later, the hotel staff drained the water and piled up the contaminated seafood, intending to dispose of it, but a series of events happened before they could.
“So, could the stench be from the rotting seafood?” someone suggested.
Another person countered, “Can rotting seafood smell that bad?”
“Maybe if it’s been long enough?” Yu Xi pondered the smell she had just detected, feeling it didn’t quite match. But there seemed to be no other explanation.
She looked back at the screen, and the parasitized individual remained motionless on the ground. As she was about to look away, she noticed his stomach seemed to bulge slightly.
What was that? Yu Xi stared at the screen again. In the flickering footage, everything seemed normal, and the earlier sighting seemed like an illusion.
Over the next two days, she checked the surveillance several times. The parasitized individuals in the game rooms were still the same, occasionally sitting still or walking around, destroying things and cursing angrily when they heard noises, smashing tables and chairs against the walls. But it seemed they hadn’t eaten anything.
The foul smell in the fifth-floor kitchen persisted. The surveillance showed the parasitized individual had returned to normal, sometimes walking around, sitting, lying down, or even talking to himself, unlike the aggressive ones in the game rooms.
After two days of observation, Yu Xi was intrigued by the parasitized individual in the kitchen and decided to inspect the situation herself. The hotel employees turned pale at the news. It wasn’t that they doubted her ability; it was just that the stench was unbearable. Even with the door closed and barricaded, the smell was nauseating.
“You don’t need to open the door. Didn’t you say there’s a window in the small room next to the kitchen? I’ll go down from there,” she explained. Her plan was to secure a rope on the sixth floor and rappel down, using the window to observe from outside, just like an isolation room.
It was a good idea, but rappelling from the sixth floor required courage, something the average person might not have. Yu Xi, however, was unafraid. She had professional climbing gear in her Star House storage, disguised by her backpack. She secured the rope to the windowsill on the sixth floor, fastened herself, and put on climbing gloves to prevent her fingers from getting scraped.
She rappelled down from the sixth floor, only using the exterior wall for support once, and landed smoothly on the window ledge below, her feet just reaching the top of the window frame.
She looked down at the six windows lined up together. The three on the left were damaged to varying degrees, while the three on the right were intact. She immediately moved to the right side and descended further.
However, just as she was about to stabilize herself on the window ledge, one of the intact windows suddenly opened. A face popped out, waving at her with a grin, “Hello there, young lady!”
Yu Xi: …!!
If it weren’t for the slightly eerie red eyes, the black grime clinging to his mouth and teeth, and the stench that permeated through her N95 mask, she might have mistaken him for a normal middle-aged man.
But the kitchen had been locked for four days, with only one parasitized individual inside. Where did this “normal” person come from?
The more he smiled, the more chills ran down her spine. Her body’s reaction outpaced her mind, and she kicked him square in the shoulder, sending him back through the window.
When the middle-aged man got up, he still wore a smile, but now it was cold and sinister. He glared at her, chuckling darkly, then climbed onto the window ledge, one hand gripping the window, the other reaching for her.
Yu Xi immediately pushed off the window ledge, swinging herself away. When she landed, she was on the outer wall on the other side of the window.
The parasitized individual missed his grab and, in a fit of rage, lunged at her but seemed to forget he was on the window ledge. He plummeted from the fifth floor with a thud, hitting the concrete below. His limbs twitched a few times before he stopped moving altogether.
Dead?
Yu Xi hung there, looking down. He was indeed dead. This indicated that even after being parasitized, the body’s functions remained unchanged, and a fall from a great height could still kill.
She stared at the dead parasitized individual below, feeling uneasy. Despite the fact that all parasitized individuals lost their sanity and acted crazily, why did this one smile and greet her?
Was this an isolated case or a common occurrence?
Something was definitely off. Yu Xi felt she had overlooked something important. This nagging feeling made it impossible for her to stay at the hotel. She feared missing critical information and changes.
With twenty days left before her task was complete, she didn’t want to wait passively. Ultimately, she decided to pack up and leave the hotel.
Earlier, she had been accosted by parasitized individuals because she smelled the same stench she had encountered before while passing a residence. Before she could get closer, she stumbled upon several parasitized individuals fighting.
As soon as they saw her, they changed their target, shouting and attacking loudly, which attracted more parasitized individuals.
The area was full of dark, residential buildings, and she had no idea how many more parasitized individuals were lurking inside. To avoid attracting more, she retreated a block and began fighting the parasitized individuals following her.
What she hadn’t expected was to run into the young man from the subway again.
Even more shocking was that he turned out to be Lin Wu!?
So, Lin Wu was also a tasker?
Yu Xi looked at the other person, a hint of wariness rising in her eyes, and did not reach out to shake his hand. In a post-apocalyptic world, help from an ordinary person and help from a tasker were fundamentally different.
Ordinary people didn’t know her origins, and even if they harbored malice toward her, it would be limited to the scope of normal human behavior. However, a tasker wasn’t an ordinary person. She didn’t know what special tools or abilities the other person had, nor did she know the nature of his mission. She had always used her own face while traveling between worlds, but he could change his appearance, which was something she found concerning.
One was in the light, the other in the dark. It was hard to guard against.
Perhaps sensing her wariness, Lin Wu slowly retracted his hand, giving a somewhat self-deprecating smile. “Don’t worry, I mean no harm.”
“Sorry, it’s not about you personally, it’s just…” She was cautious about the identity of being a tasker.
“I understand. Some… interactions can indeed be life-and-death struggles.” Hence, every time they entered a mission, they would change their faces. This “identity mask” wasn’t expensive; it only cost 10 points to change one.
Typically, they would prepare one or two spares before entering a mission world. That’s why he had been so surprised when he saw Yu Xi on the subway and kept staring at her face. He didn’t understand why she hadn’t used an “identity mask” despite changing her age. Surely she wasn’t so frugal as to not spend 10 points on it?
Lin Wu wanted to express goodwill and exchange information, but now was not the right time for conversation.
The others had finished their deworming routine and, out of habit, began searching the second floor for any edible food or water. Since this was a beauty salon, they hadn’t expected much, nor had they checked beforehand. So, when someone broke open the lock on a cabinet under the reception counter and found a case of bottled water (24 bottles), over twenty packs of instant noodles, and a bunch of unopened spicy snacks, everyone was excited, gathering around and whispering in excitement.
“Are we going to share?”
“Of course we will!”
“Don’t give any to Glasses; it was all his fault! He almost got us all killed!”
“But if it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have moved places at night and found this food…”
“Shut up, you idiot.”
“I’m sorry, I’ll make sure to keep my mouth shut next time!”
“Stop arguing about Glasses. I’m starving; I didn’t eat enough dinner. I want cooked noodles!”
“Me too!”
“I have a camping pot with me…”
“Then what are we waiting for? Let’s cook noodles!”
“But I forgot to bring fuel…”
“Ugh…”
Lin Wu glanced at them, then took out a pack of solid alcohol blocks and a foldable alcohol stove from his backpack and handed them over. “I only have one pack, so share it.”
This was like a gift from heaven. The students were thrilled, their faces lighting up with joy.
Zhou Yun glanced at Yu Xi standing aside and enthusiastically asked, “Auntie, would you like to join us for some noodles? There’s plenty for everyone!”
Yu Xi, who appeared to be thirty: …
“Zhou Yun, you’re doomed. You just called her Auntie, and now she’ll be too upset to stay!”
“God, isn’t one idiot enough?”
“You’re the idiot!”
“She’s clearly a beautiful big sister. Sister, would you like to join us for noodles?”
…
Their optimistic demeanor made Yu Xi take a few more glances. She opened her backpack and similarly took out a pack of solid alcohol blocks and an alcohol stove (from her Star House storage). Just as she was about to hand them over, she suddenly sensed something.
“Did they just finish deworming?” Yu Xi turned to ask Lin Wu.
“Yes, the blood has drawn all the worms to the second floor. This area is now clean, and it’s safe to eat.”
Yu Xi frowned, her gaze sweeping over the group.
Among them, there was a fishy, damp smell.
She could even faintly detect the same stench she had smelled in the hotel’s fifth-floor kitchen.
It was faint and subtle, but it was there.
And it wasn’t coming from the bowls of blood, but from someone within this group.