Ch 182: Guide to Running a Shop in Another World II

The Dream Fulfillment System plotted the most time-efficient route for Lu Yao: five minutes to deliver the name cards to Ping’an Community and another two minutes to reach the target clinic.

While the Willing Network could also provide optimal route guidance, Lu Yao relied on her Dream Fulfillment System instead.

Jiang Yifei had provided a detailed address, allowing Lu Yao to find their building, unit, and floor with ease. She knocked on the door, and it opened within seconds, as if they had been waiting right behind it.

Jiang Yifei greeted her enthusiastically and pulled her into the room. Inside were four people: Jiang Yifei, Zhou Mingyang, Song Xu, and Tang Anqi.

Lu Yao greeted them briefly and pulled a bundle of business cards, neatly tied with a rubber band and placed in a kraft envelope, from her bag. “Ten business cards. The first one is at a 50% discount, the remaining nine are full price, plus a delivery fee of 0.2 grams of gold. The total comes to 4 grams of gold.”

Jiang Yifei handed over her gold bracelet. Lu Yao pulled out the gold-ingesting Pixiu from her bag. The Pixiu clamped onto one end of the bracelet, “biting” off a small section and swallowing it down with a crisp snap.

Lu Yao handed back the remaining bracelet to Jiang Yifei. “Done.”

Jiang Yifei marveled, “This payment device is just too adorable.”

Zhou Mingyang, skeptical, asked, “Are you sure it just took exactly 4 grams of gold?”

Lu Yao nodded. “If there’s nothing else, I’ll take my leave.”

Tang Anqi called out, “Lu Yao, we’d like to buy a few business cards too.”

Lu Yao replied, “Sure.”

Tang Anqi didn’t have much gold, so she purchased five cards for a total of 1.8 grams of gold.

After leaving the apartment, the Dream Fulfillment System alerted Lu Yao, “Someone upstairs is peeking down, watching you.”

Lu Yao stepped back into the room and asked the group, “Is this community densely populated?”

Tang Anqi, who had been living in Ping’an Community longer, answered, “At first, there weren’t many people. Recently, some have started moving in. The buildings aren’t in great condition, and there’s no gate or security, so it doesn’t feel very safe overall. But the population is still pretty sparse.”

Lu Yao nodded. “I’d like to ask for your help with something.”

Tang Anqi blinked, thought for a moment, and agreed.

Lu Yao pulled two stacks of flyers for the errand shop from her bag. “I’d like you to distribute these flyers in this community. The reward is one business card.”

Tang Anqi accepted the flyers but refused the name card. “It’s just a small task, not worth such a valuable reward. This community isn’t that big; it shouldn’t take more than an hour to hand them all out.”

Lu Yao, reluctant to owe anyone a favor, thought for a moment. “The world isn’t the same as before. Just going out can be dangerous, so I can’t let you do this for free. How about this: if you ever visit Guanyin Road, drop by my shop, and I’ll give you two boxes of supplies.”

Song Xu clapped his hands. “That’s great.”

Jiang Yifei and Zhou Mingyang also agreed. They had just purchased business cards and didn’t feel a pressing need for more, but supplies were always welcome—there was no such thing as having too much food or necessities.

This also confirmed their impression that Lu Yao wasn’t short on resources. The various situations they had encountered with her suddenly made perfect sense.

After spending a few extra minutes in Ping’an Community, Lu Yao went downstairs to find her scooter. She noticed the front tire seemed to have shifted slightly.

The Dream Fulfillment System commented, “That’s right. While you were upstairs, someone tried to steal the scooter but couldn’t move it.”

Lu Yao glanced back at the residential building, crouched to remove the sticker engraved with a protective magic array, and rode off. “When society collapses, even an electric scooter becomes a hot commodity.”

Dream Fulfillment System: “Your scooter is new and parked on the street; naturally, it attracts attention.”

Lu Yao: “Now that you mention it, I haven’t seen anyone driving a car or riding a scooter around.”

Dream Fulfillment System: “Most parts of the city are without power, so scooters like yours struggle with battery life. Cars and motorcycles face similar issues. Plus, not everyone has the means to protect their vehicles. They’re too easy to steal.”

Lu Yao: “But without keys, they can’t drive it away, and even if they steal it, there’s no way to cash it in.”

Dream Fulfillment System: “…Then it’s probably just a simple case of petty malice.”

…

Ping’an Road No. 198: City People’s Hospital, Third Clinic

Zhang Shulan was locked in an abandoned examination room on the right side of the first-floor lobby. Her hands were tied behind her back, her hair disheveled after losing her hair tie during a failed escape attempt. Her cheeks were swollen from repeated slaps.

With great effort, Zhang Shulan propped herself up using her forehead against the floor, her heart full of terror and despair.

She had come to the clinic to find medicine but unexpectedly fell into the hands of “sheep traders”—human traffickers.

Her family had been eating poorly. Sometimes, to save a single piece of solid alcohol for heating, leftover meals were eaten cold. While adults could endure, children couldn’t. Since last night, Lin Shanshan, her young child, had been suffering from diarrhea and developed a fever by midnight.

Desperate, Zhang Shulan had searched her home thoroughly, feeding Lin Shanshan whatever medications seemed suitable. But by morning, the fever hadn’t subsided, and her child was barely conscious. Seeing no other option, she decided to risk venturing out for medicine.

Guanyin Road had once been filled with competing chain pharmacies, but when the zombie virus outbreak began, they became ground zero for chaos.

In the early days, pharmacies made massive profits selling supplies like alcohol, disinfectant, antibiotics, and bandages—even though none of these could effectively treat zombie bites. Crowds overwhelmed the stores, fighting over what little there was.

When the virus spread further, turning more victims into zombies, cities began to fall. Pharmacies were ransacked, their shelves overturned, and goods trampled into rubble by endless waves of zombies. Now, not even scraps could be found.

Faced with this harsh reality, Zhang Shulan set her sights on the city clinic. Unlike small pharmacies, it was a proper medical facility, likely to have better medicines—maybe even fever reducers.

She never expected that human predators would use this exact logic to their advantage, lying in wait near the clinic for lone and vulnerable targets to appear.

These traffickers primarily targeted women and children. Before the outbreak, such people were mostly found in remote, underdeveloped rural areas. But after the zombie apocalypse, they began brazenly roaming city ruins, preying on the helpless.

Their methods and morals had grown even darker, as if these men were demons unleashed from hell, unburdened by the need to mask their filth and depravity. Women they captured were taken to large survivor settlements and forced to earn supplies by servicing men who could pay.

The first time Zhang Shulan was caught, she managed to break free. With no safe place to run, she dashed into the clinic, fleeing up the stairs.

But the clinic, once a sanctuary for the sick, had become a zombie-infested trap. Many bedridden patients had succumbed to the virus, turning into the very monsters now wandering its halls.

Caught between zombies upstairs and pursuers downstairs, Zhang Shulan panicked and hid in an abandoned consultation room. There, she discovered a pen inside a desk drawer. She pulled out a business card she had carried with her, placing a desperate order.

Although she was in a panic, her mind remained sharp. Afraid the errand runner might reject a “rescue” request, she simply wrote “fetch medicine” on the card, leaving out any mention of her dire circumstances.

To buy time, she hid the card on her person and continued darting between floors, evading both zombies and her pursuers—until they finally cornered her. After a brutal beating, she was locked in the examination room.

Zhang Shulan propped herself up using her knees, struggling to move toward the corner of the room in search of a spot to gain some leverage. Fear consumed her during her earlier escape attempt—her only thought had been to find someone who could save her.

After the beating she endured, compounded by the humiliation of being groped under the guise of a “search,” Zhang Shulan could clearly envision the horrific fate that awaited her. Suddenly, regret gnawed at her—regret for writing that order on the business card.

She feared the one coming to her rescue might be Lu Yao, the young woman who had saved her once before. Zhang Shulan worried that this gang would target her as well.

Zhang Shulan had watched from her building as a violent fight unfolded outside the courier shop. The boy had been fiercer in battle, but the young woman, while capable, had seemed gentler and less physically imposing. If Lu Yao came, Zhang Shulan feared she wouldn’t be able to fend off these beasts and would suffer humiliation as a result.

She deeply regretted not being more thoughtful when placing the order. Instead of calling for someone to rescue her, she should have asked the courier to check on her sick daughter back at home.

But regrets were meaningless now. Zhang Shulan’s only wish was to tear up the card, hoping it might stop the courier from coming.

In the corner of the room, another girl—no older than her early twenties—sat with her hands bound, curled up and staring blankly ahead with empty, hollow eyes.

Zhang Shulan’s own hands and feet were tightly bound, making it nearly impossible to retrieve the card she had hidden in a small, stitched pocket inside her coat.

Panting, she glanced toward the girl. “Can you… help me?”

The girl, leaning against the wall, remained motionless. Her dark, vacant eyes showed no sign of recognition; she neither responded nor moved.

Zhang Shulan painfully inched closer on her knees, the rough floor scraping her skin raw. She wanted to persuade the girl to assist her, but the girl seemed utterly indifferent to her pleas and movements.

At that moment, the familiar hum of a scooter’s engine reached Zhang Shulan’s ears. Her heart sank, and panic gripped her. It felt as though the air had been sucked out of her lungs.

She had no options left. Her only hope was that the one coming to her rescue was the dark-clothed boy.

…

From a distance, Lu Yao spotted a battered white van parked at the clinic’s main door. She stopped her scooter far down the road and stayed put, carefully assessing the situation.

Dream Fulfillment System: “There are two men inside the van—one in the front passenger seat and one in the back. Two more are crouched near the clinic entrance, and another two are inside the main lobby.”

Lu Yao: “What’s this? An ambush?”

Dream Fulfillment System: “The first room to the right of the lobby contains two women. Both are bound and unable to move.”

Lu Yao: “So they’re not targeting me specifically but anyone who comes here looking for medicine. I see what they’re up to.”

Dream Fulfillment System: “I’ve seen this kind of scum in the world of Polaris. People like them get thrown into horror games for unending torment.”

Lu Yao dismounted her scooter, securing it carefully. Her air rifle had already been stored in her personal warehouse—unsuitable for public use here. Instead, she pulled two short swords from the cloth bag strapped to her back.

Wielding a sword in each hand, she prepared herself.

Dream Fulfillment System: “This errand is for picking up medicine.”

Lu Yao: “I know. But how can I get the medicine without clearing these obstacles first?”

Dream Fulfillment System: “…Do you really have the guts to deal with them?”

Lu Yao: “Are you doubting my resolve?”

Dream Fulfillment System: “You hesitated for days before cutting down zombies, even training in a virtual simulation first.”

Lu Yao: “I didn’t hesitate when it came to zombies. And compared to them, these beasts are easier to handle.”

🛍️🛍️🛍️🛍️🛍️

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