Chapter 43
by LhaoziChapter 43: Naive Kindness
Qin Xi hadn’t expected that after she finished speaking, Bai Hanyue would actually start contemplating it seriously.
Just as Qin Xi was pondering whether Bai Hanyue could truly be that much of a naive Holy Mother, Bai Hanyue shook her head:
“Forget it after all. Maybe he’s actually safer inside his room. Besides, it’s been several days since zombies appeared, yet he’s still shouting and screaming like that—he doesn’t look like a smart person either!”
Not being smart meant he couldn’t be a teammate.
Hearing her finished explanation, Qin Xi raised an eyebrow in slight surprise, not having expected Bai Hanyue to consider so much.
She gave a faint reply: “That’s right.”
She then waited for Li Zekai and Lin Xin to jump into the hospital through the window frame as well.
Leaning out of the window frame, Qin Xi stored the assault speedboat away. The instant she straightened her body, she raised her eyes toward the opposite building, meeting the man’s resentful glare.
She offered no reaction whatsoever, standing up as her figure vanished inside the window frame.
She could understand this sort of resentment—in a moment of crisis, a slim ray of hope had finally appeared, only for it to turn out to be false.
Yet she truly couldn’t care for him either.
Community hospitals originally received very few patients to begin with, and even fewer during the night.
The corridors were dead quiet. This floor was the second floor, housing fewer than twelve rooms in total, hung with departmental signs such as Internal Medicine, Surgery, Gynecology, and Traditional Chinese Medicine.
In addition, it was equipped with a B-ultrasound room, an operating room, and a TCM physical therapy room.
As before, several people followed behind Qin Xi, meticulously searching through every single room.
Qin Xi collected and stowed away all the machinery inside the B-ultrasound room, along with physical therapy equipment such as acupuncture needles, cupping jars, moxa sticks, and baking lamps inside the physical therapy room.
She figured that just in case, they might prove useful in the future.
As for the instruments inside the operating room, she stored them away as well.
Unfortunately, the surgeries a community hospital could perform were mostly minor operations like stitching small wounds, so the instruments were quite limited.
Finishing these collections, she began inspecting the consultation rooms one by one.
There wasn’t much usable material inside the consultation rooms, so Qin Xi took nothing.
Bai Hanyue and Lin Xin, on the other hand, found several boxes of anti-inflammatory drugs and medications for lowering the “three highs” [1] inside the drawers of a few doctor desks.
Qin Xi glanced over them, expressing to the two that whoever found these medicines could keep them.
Hearing this, Bai Hanyue and Lin Xin felt somewhat embarrassed, yet they didn’t argue.
After all, the quantity of medicine was indeed quite small.
The rooms on the left side of the second floor were essentially cleared out.
The group crossed the open area above the stairwell, walking over to the right side to continue searching the rooms on the other side.
The first room was Pediatric Outpatient. Qin Xi wandered around inside; failing to find medicines, she found a jar of fruit candies instead.
Picking it up for a look, she shook her head.
The candy jar was wrapped in candy paper rather than being sealed air-tight. Though an outer candy jar held it shut tightly, gray water stains could still be seen clinging to some of the candy wrappers inside.
She certainly couldn’t eat it, but…
Qin Xi bounced the candy jar in her hand. Just as she was about to store it away, a large hand suddenly reached over, taking the candy jar away.
Qin Song looked down at the candy jar with knit brows, his voice carrying a bit of admonition amidst his confusion:
“These candies are already dirty. Didn’t we buy plenty of candy? We don’t need this one!”
With those words, he made to toss the candy jar back onto the desk.
Seeing this, Qin Xi quickly let out an “Ah,” taking the candy jar back while shaking her head at him:
“Hey, don’t throw it away. Although we can’t eat it, we can give it to Bai Hanyue and the others so they can trade it for supplies once we reach a base down the line.
How expensive is sugar during the apocalypse? Getting a little sewage on it is nothing, not to mention many inside aren’t dirty at all.”
Qin Song froze upon listening. His line of sight rested on the girl’s serious, slightly naive face; after a long moment, he shook his head in helplessness.
His girl—even after experiencing such betrayal in their past life, and no matter how cold and ruthless she acted after rebirth—was still kindhearted in reality.
At times, her kindness was even somewhat naive.
“Alright!”
He opened his mouth, just about to tell Qin Xi to store it away and move on to the next room, when a young man’s loud shout suddenly erupted from outside the door:
“AH!! HOLY CRAP!!”
Immediately following, frantic footsteps and the sound of a Standard Machete swinging echoed out!
Both froze for a second, hurriedly running out of the outpatient room, only to see Lin Xin pinned firmly to the floor by a zombie outside the door.
Bai Hanyue and Li Zekai were just about to help out, when right behind Bai Hanyue, a dripping wet zombie that had just rounded the stairs spotted Bai Hanyue’s back, opening its wide mouth to lunge straight toward her back!
Qin Xi hurriedly raised her Standard Machete and charged right toward Bai Hanyue.
Bai Hanyue had originally been sprinting in Lin Xin’s direction, but upon raising her head, she saw Qin Xi charging at her with a raised blade.
Startled, her entire body tensed up out of reflex; just as she was about to raise her hands to block, Qin Xi’s blade shifted angle, slashing viciously past her back!
Following that, a sharp crunch echoed almost right beside her ear, and a splash of fluid of unknown composition splattered across her face.
Her entire body went numb. Turning her head to look, she discovered that another zombie had appeared behind her at some unknown point.
Its skull had already been split open by Qin Xi’s single slash, collapsing to the floor!
Qin Xi bent her waist, digging a Tier-1 crystal core out from the zombie’s head.
The crystal core was a cyan-gray color, which happened to be usable by her spatial supernatural ability!
She stored it into her space in pleasant surprise; this was the first spatial-element crystal core she had found.
Bai Hanyue reached into her pants pocket, pulling out a paper towel she had stashed in her pocket when coming down the mountain.
She wiped the wet substance off her face with the tissue, trying hard to force herself not to think about what it actually was, yet she still couldn’t hold back a dry heave.
As she heaved, she cast a glance at Qin Xi and Qin Song—who were wearing masks and wind-proof goggles—finally understanding why these two kept themselves wrapped up so tightly even while indoors!
Meanwhile, on the other side, the zombie pressing down on Lin Xin was resolved by Li Zekai with a single slash.
He dug a light-blue crystal core out from the zombie’s head.
“Light blue?”
Looking at the crystal core in surprise, an idea struck him, and he suddenly handed the crystal core over to Lin Xin:
“I don’t have a supernatural ability yet—you try absorbing it.”
Right as his words fell, Lin Xin had just scrambled up from the floor, seeing the tiny crystal core shoved right before his eyes.
He froze for a second before looking at Li Zekai:
“Brother Kai, this is a crystal core you carved out.”
Li Zekai didn’t mind:
“Ah, this doesn’t matter! I haven’t awakened yet, and whether I can awaken in the future is still an unknown. It’s better to let you upgrade faster so you can protect us—it also means the three of us will drag Brother Qin and Qin Xi down a bit less.”
Hearing him put it like that, Lin Xin couldn’t say anything more.
At this point, Qin Song spoke up from the side as well:
“Light blue matches your ice supernatural ability perfectly!”
With that, Lin Xin finally stopped fussing. Putting the crystal core into his coat pocket, he nodded to Li Zekai:
“Then I won’t stand on ceremony. If you awaken in the future, I’ll help you find crystal cores!”
Listening to him, Li Zekai smiled and nodded.
On the other side, Qin Xi pulled a bottle of water out of her space and handed it to Bai Hanyue. Bai Hanyue rinsed her mouth, capped the bottle, and said to Qin Xi apologetically:
“Sorry, Sister Qin, I really couldn’t hold it in. I’ll just listen to you from now on!”
In fact, when they set out, Qin Xi had handed masks to all three of them, but only Li Zekai wore his.
She and Lin Xin both felt suffocated by it and took them off halfway, planning to put them back on when there were many zombies, not expecting the zombies to appear so unexpectedly.
She took another sip of water, planning to put the mask back on obediently.
Right at that moment, however, a series of wet, slapping footsteps—splat, splat—suddenly echoed up from the stairs below!
Footnotes
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Three Highs (三高 – sān gāo): A common Chinese health term referring to the trio of high blood pressure (hypertension), high blood sugar (hyperglycemia/diabetes), and high blood lipids (hyperlipidemia).
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