003 Not Unfamiliar in Theory (Seize the Investment Opportunity—Invest, Invest, Invest!)

"It's not..."

Zheng Xinyu grabbed Zhang Su's arm, her eyes filled with tears as she shook her head. "Brother Su, this isn't a dream. It's real, it's really happening!"

Gulp.

Zhang Su swallowed hard. Feeling Zheng Xinyu's cold, trembling hands, he knew he was wide awake.

Bang.

Just as the two were reeling from the shock, a noise came from the hallway—it sounded like someone had slammed the emergency exit door shut. Before they could react, their own front door was hammered heavily.

Bang! Bang! Bang-bang!

The heavy, chaotic thumping echoed in their ears, making their scalps tingle.

"Brother Su, what do we do..."

Zheng Xinyu, usually fair-skinned, had lost all color in her face. Her eyes were wide with terror; she was afraid that the monsters from the garden below were the ones pounding on the door.

"Shh!"

Zhang Su steadied himself, patted Zheng Xinyu's hand as she gripped him, and signaled for her to stay quiet. Then, he crept toward the entrance.

Zheng Xinyu obeyed, remaining perfectly still with her fists clenched against her chest, her eyes fixed on his back. Amidst the relentless pounding, Zhang Su suppressed his mounting anxiety and slowly pressed himself against the door.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to move forward in spite of it.

Bang, bang, bang!

The knocking continued unabated.

Zhang Su gently placed his palm against the door. He could clearly feel the force of the blows; while not enough to break the door down, they were strong enough to make the doorframe vibrate slightly.

The peephole—a standard feature of any apartment door.

Zhang Su leaned in to peer through it. He really didn't want to, as he had no idea what he would be facing, but for both emotional and logical reasons, he had to.

For one, he was the owner of this apartment—the "perverted landlord" who Zheng Xinyu claimed had installed spy cameras... Furthermore, as a man, he couldn't just let a girl face this alone.

"I need to see what kind of monster you are!"

Zhang Su steeled his heart, adjusted his focus, and instantly saw what was outside.

A man stood before the door—or rather, what used to be a man.

His skin was a sickly cyan-gray, his face smeared with blood. One corner of his mouth was torn, making his mouth look grotesquely wide, like the Joker from a movie—except the Joker didn't have bits of flesh in his mouth or blood dripping from his chin.

His beige T-shirt was stained dark red with blood. His right hand held a severed arm, while his left hand moved with rigid, mechanical motions, slamming against the door again and again with slow, heavy, and powerful force.

Awoo, awoo...

A low, mindless growl seeped through the door. It was chilling, piercing straight through to Zhang Su's soul.

"A zombie..."

Connecting this to the scene he had witnessed in the garden below, Zhang Su quickly reached his conclusion.

Zombie-themed movies and games were among his favorites. Theoretically, he wasn't a stranger to such creatures—he had taken down plenty of them in games just eight or nine hours ago.

Perhaps because the transformation had happened recently, the zombie outside didn't look as rotted or disemboweled as those in the movies. Even so, encountering such a monster in the real world caused Zhang Su’s prefrontal cortex and hypothalamus to go into a brief state of atrophy. He couldn't snap out of it, even forgetting the urge to vomit.

Fear isn't exclusive to women. When faced with something beyond comprehension, especially unknown dangers, anyone would feel terror. Zhang Su was no exception; his muscular arms trembled slightly from the sheer dread.

Just as Zhang Su stood frozen at the peephole, he felt someone gently pat his back. He snapped back to reality. At the same moment, the man outside stopped knocking. The world went deathly quiet.

Through the peephole, Zhang Su saw the zombie man wandering aimlessly, looking around. Finding no target, it began to pace near the door, dragging a trail of blood behind it. It was terrifying. Even the well-sealed door couldn't block out the thick, metallic scent of blood.

Zhang Su turned and signaled for Zheng Xinyu to move. Together, they quietly retreated from the door and returned to the bay window.

"Ugh..."

Only then did Zhang Su feel his stomach churn. His dinner from the night before began to rebel. He sat down on the floor, his mouth watering as he swallowed repeatedly. Cold sweat broke out on his forehead, and the smell of blood lingered in his nostrils, refusing to fade—though he found, strangely, that he wasn't entirely repulsed by it.

"Brother Su, what... what was outside?"

Zheng Xinyu knelt beside him and asked in a whisper. She hesitantly reached out to brush his forehead, her fingers running through his short hair. She didn't know what he had seen; she was curious, but she lacked the courage to look for herself.

Feeling her attempt to comfort him, Zhang Su let out a long breath and whispered back, "It’s Brother Li from the Urban Planning Bureau on the ninth floor. Xinyu, you know about zombies, right? Brother Li has turned into one..."

At the end of his sentence, he turned to look at her, his expression grave.

"Zombies? I understand..."

Zheng Xinyu pulled her hand back and clasped it to her chest. She wasn't as shocked as he had expected; the thought had crossed her mind earlier, but she hadn't dared to believe that something so fantastical could happen in reality.

It was like suddenly seeing every car on the street transform into a Transformer—it was simply unbelievable!

Zhang Su recalled how Zheng Xinyu had frantically pounded on his bedroom door earlier and realized she had a decent capacity for adaptation. A quarter of an hour had passed, and she was no longer losing her composure. Perhaps this seemingly delicate girl wasn't just someone who knew how to act cute in front of a camera.

"Is... is it because I was too loud earlier, that I attracted Li, um... the zombie?" Zheng Xinyu asked, her voice filled with self-reproach as she remembered the noise she had made trying to wake him up.

"Probably," Zhang Su nodded slowly. He didn't blame her. He patted her shoulder gently and said, "It's not too late to know now. Just be careful from here on out."

"Wh-what do we do now?"

Zheng Xinyu was indeed less panicked than before, but she was still lost, having no idea what to do. With severed limbs scattered below and a zombie blocking their door, it felt as though the sky had collapsed.

"Hoo... looking at the situation, it’s a zombie sickness—let's call it the zombie virus. The zombie virus has broken out. Right, we need to check if there’s any news about this online!"

After the initial shock, Zhang Su was gradually cooling down. The goosebumps on his arms were subsiding, and his fear was being pushed into a corner by his reason.

"Right, right! I'll go get my phone!"

Zheng Xinyu nodded heavily, relieved to have someone giving her directions. If she were left alone, she truly wouldn't know what to do. Remembering the zombie’s sensitivity to sound, she walked on tiptoes, moving with extreme care.

While Zheng Xinyu went to get the phone, Zhang Su leaned out to look at the residential complex again. Careful observation revealed more of the situation.

To the front-left, the east side of Building 8 was engulfed in flames. The fire stretched from the seventh or eighth floor upward, curling into various shapes in the wind—a sight even more fearsome than the zombies themselves.

The tragedy wasn't limited to the garden between Buildings 3 and 4. The surrounding paths were also covered in blood and remains. Trash cans were overturned, garbage was scattered everywhere, and the landscaping bushes were crushed—the signs of a struggle were unmistakable.

A quick count showed at least twenty zombies roaming about. Most absurdly, one zombie, despite having lost both its legs, was still slowly crawling along the ground, dragging a long streak of blood behind it—a tenacity that was almost moving.

It was hard to imagine the scale of the massacre that had occurred. If not for the complex's design, which separated pedestrians from vehicles, the number of corpses on the ground would likely have been several times higher!

As his gaze shifted, Zhang Su saw that a section of the perimeter wall facing the street had been smashed open. Several cars were propped at odd angles against a pile of rubble, their hoods severely deformed. There were plenty of wrecked cars on the street as well, though not enough to block traffic. But at this moment, no vehicles were passing by—only zombies, wandering everywhere.