Ch 96: My Multiverse Supermarket

Lin Xiaole didn’t rush to grab supplies after exchanging the coral for points—she wanted to discuss things with her companions first.

Fang Qin and Qi Jiayu didn’t trade anything valuable either.

Cautiously, they peeked out from the supermarket entrance, scanning the area. Seeing no new zombies around, they returned to the raft.

“Let’s talk this through,” Qi Jiayu said.

“We don’t know what island this is, or who that supermarket owner really is,” Fang Qin replied. “We can’t make any quick judgments.”

There were too many islands on this planet. Even if they knew the coordinates, they wouldn’t know the name of the island—let alone who ruled it.

After the collapse of social order, countless factions had taken advantage of the chaos to seize islands and crown themselves kings.

And within each island, power struggles were constant.

Leaders changed as often as a dishcloth.

For the sake of survival, most island rulers now holed up in heavily guarded homes, rarely stepping outside.

From this, Qi Jiayu concluded that the supermarket owner was probably not one of those rulers.

Even if she was, this island must be unclaimed by any major armed group.

That thought gave them some relief.

“We’ll buy a few supplies first, then scout the island,” Qi Jiayu said.

They would never spend the night on a raft—because the sea had its own zombies.

People called them “drowned corpses.”

Drowned corpses were terrifyingly strong in the water. They could swim tirelessly, floating and moving twenty-four hours a day.

For humans, there was no refuge: land was haunted by zombies, the sea by drowned corpses.

Fortunately, they rarely left the water.

Researchers believed that their buoyant mutation allowed them to stay afloat, but made it impossible for them to walk or crawl on land.

“They can’t come ashore,” Lin Xiaole said, “so if this island isn’t too big, we could clear out the zombies and make it our shelter.”

At that, all three women showed a flicker of longing.

After five years of wandering through a ruined world, the idea of a safe haven was almost too beautiful to imagine.

But they knew it was just that—a fantasy.

Uninhabited islands had no zombies because they also had no resources.

Living there would mean constant voyages to other islands for supplies—and to trade, they needed money.

To earn money, they had to go where the people were.

And the islands with people were also full of viruses… and human threats.

It was a vicious cycle.

Still, Lin Xiaole was young—and the supermarket’s appearance stirred a fragile hope in her heart.

Qi Jiayu and Fang Qin, however, remained wary.

The whole situation didn’t add up.

The supermarket’s cleanliness, the relaxed demeanor of the owner and her security guard—none of it fit the bleak reality of this world.

And any store with this much stock would have been seized by an island lord long ago.

So either this was truly an uninhabited island… or the owner herself was the island’s master.

But that only raised another question—where did all these supplies come from?

After five years of apocalypse, how could there still be so many goods in pristine packaging?

The three conferred quietly and decided that Qi Jiayu and Fang Qin would explore the surroundings while Lin Xiaole stayed behind to learn more about the supermarket and its mysterious owner.

*

Zhou Li wasn’t at all surprised to see Lin Xiaole return.

After all, she’d traded coral for supermarket credits—leaving without buying anything would’ve been a waste.

Lin Xiaole re-entered the store, moving carefully.

Pretending to browse for supplies, she wandered the aisles, hoping to pick up clues.

But as she walked, her mind drifted.

At fourteen years old, it had been five years since the world fell apart.

Back then, she was just a bright, carefree nine-year-old girl.

She’d had a happy family.

Every weekend, her parents would take her shopping at the supermarket.

They were well-off, so they always went to big ones—vast, gleaming stores full of light.

Her parents would set her in the shopping cart, and she would point, and they would push her wherever she wanted.

They’d weave through the aisles, surrounded by colors, lights, and endless choices, picking whatever caught their eyes.

Then, one day, the shelves went bare. The store collapsed.

And the next moment—her parents who had just been fighting over groceries became part of the wandering horde inside the supermarket.

Tears welled in Lin Xiaole’s eyes and spilled down her cheeks, silently soaking her face.

Pulled from her memories, Lin Xiaole blinked herself back into the present.

She gathered an armful of instant meals, dropped them off at the checkout counter, then hurried off to grab more.

Zhou Li called out to her, “No need to keep running back and forth. There are vending machines outside—you can pick everything you want there all at once.”

Lin Xiaole was slightly surprised. “I thought those only sold drinks and snacks.”

Because of that assumption, though she had noticed the two machines outside before, she hadn’t really looked at them. Original translation at HololoNovels dot com. Now, Zhou Li’s comment sparked her curiosity, and she went out to investigate.

As soon as her membership was detected, the machine spoke: “Hello, I’m Xiao Wan. Please choose the items you need.”

Startled, Lin Xiaole looked around nervously, worried that the voice would attract zombies.

An Fengxuan chuckled. “Don’t worry. I’m keeping watch out here.”

Lin Xiaole thanked her and, at the same time, discreetly sized up the skilled security guard.

An Fengxuan said, “No need to sneak glances—you can look openly. I’m not shy.”

Lin Xiaole: …

After a moment, An Fengxuan asked, “So, what did you figure out?”

After some thought, Lin Xiaole replied seriously, “That I can’t beat you.”

An Fengxuan burst out laughing.

Even Zhou Li, inside the supermarket, couldn’t help letting out a quiet “pfft.”

Lin Xiaole looked helplessly at the still-grinning guard. “Aren’t you worried about attracting zombies?”

With skills like hers, and that air of constant vigilance, it was strange to see her so relaxed now. It didn’t fit at all.

An Fengxuan said, “Not worried.”

She not only had combat skills, but also special tools. As long as the air or seawater didn’t carry the zombie virus, she had nothing to fear.

Compared to abhorrents, zombies were easier to handle.

Lin Xiaole said nothing.

That confidence of hers was almost unnerving.

But soon her focus was drawn back to the vending machine.

While she was happily absorbed in the joy of shopping, Qi Jiayu and Fang Qin returned.

Seeing Lin Xiaole, their usual lookout, happily browsing like a mouse fallen into a grain sack, both were momentarily speechless.

“Ahem!”

Startled, Lin Xiaole turned to see them and immediately snapped out of her daze. “You’re back already?”

Qi Jiayu said, “The island isn’t very big.”

Using her equipment, she’d measured it at just over 9,000 square meters.

The terrain rose in the northwest and sloped down to the southeast, with the highest point only twelve meters above sea level.

In the center stood three buildings.

They had explored them and discovered they were part of an artificial island control center.

Lin Xiaole wasn’t unfamiliar with the term “artificial island.”

As the name suggested, they were manmade islands.

But this world’s artificial islands weren’t the fixed, reclaimed landmasses common in the past.

Because zombies roamed the land and drowned corpses haunted the sea, scientists had built mobile artificial islands—self-contained floating bases designed to mimic natural environments.

These islands prevented drowned corpses from climbing ashore, and since they were built directly on the sea surface, they also stopped land zombies from invading.

They could even move—sailing through the ocean like ships.

As for why people didn’t just use ships instead?

Because drowned corpses attacked ships. Best case, they damaged the hull; worst case, they capsized it.

But an artificial island, built like a massive iceberg, had a deep enough base that drowned corpses couldn’t reach it.

Their mutated bodies couldn’t withstand deep-sea pressure.

Thus, these floating islands offered relative safety while maintaining the look and livability of a natural one.

This particular island even had underground facilities.

Qi Jiayu estimated that there was likely a shelter below.

But since the island seemed abandoned, its inhabitants must have sealed off every passage between the surface and the underground.

The zombies An Fengxuan had shot earlier were probably the last remaining surface workers who’d been infected while sealing the island.

Though Qi Jiayu and Fang Qin had their suspicions, they didn’t dare touch the control systems—for fear of opening the way for any underground zombies to emerge.

“Looks like this island isn’t safe either,” Lin Xiaole said, frowning.

Qi Jiayu quietly asked, “Did you find out anything about the supermarket?”

Lin Xiaole froze. In her shopping spree, she’d completely forgotten her mission.

Fang Qin took one look at her guilty face and sighed. “Let me handle it.”

*

Zhou Li, meanwhile, was questioning her system about the island.

The system hadn’t planned to answer, but after overhearing the trio’s discussion, it relayed their findings to Zhou Li.

Learning that there might be zombies beneath the island, Zhou Li couldn’t help rubbing the soles of her shoes nervously.

“Well, that’s unsettling.”

In movies, this was exactly the moment when the protagonists accidentally pressed a button—and hordes of zombies burst out from underground.

Luckily, remembering that she had the system’s protection gave her some peace of mind.

“Still,” she mused, “a mobile artificial island? If I could restart it, wouldn’t that mean I could go anywhere?”

“Those systems still work?” she asked.

The system replied, “You could ask them.”

Zhou Li: …

If she asked, they’d probably go tinkering around—
and end up opening the sealed tunnels.

Yeah… maybe she wasn’t that curious after all.

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