Ch 188: Guide to Running a Shop in Another World II

Qiu Yu, unfazed by Harold’s annoyance, turned around and called the two clients over to settle payment, confirming their request: “So, you need us to help the four of you, along with your luggage, move out of this complex?”

Tang Anqi replied, “Yes, we’re relocating, and the destination for the second errand is Guanyin Road.”

Si Jin perked up. “That’s really close to our shop.”

Jiang Yifei had been observing Harold, Si Jin, and Qiu Yu’s eyes. Ignoring their unusual hair colors, their eye colors—bright red, deep blue—were rare and striking, giving them a mysterious appearance. Although they didn’t look like people from the Golden Kingdom, they spoke without any noticeable accent.

Hearing Si Jin’s voice, Jiang Yifei instinctively chimed in, “Yes, we want to move somewhere closer to the courier shop.”

Harold walked into the room to assess their luggage, finding it lighter than expected.

Two suitcases, four large backpacks, and three cardboard boxes tied together with transparent tape.

Zhou Mingyang rushed to explain, “We can carry the backpacks ourselves. We just need you to help with the suitcases and boxes.”

Harold glanced at his frail frame with undisguised disdain. “Later, you’ll follow Qiu Yu and Si Jin. I’ll carry the stuff. Qiu Yu’s the girl with black hair; the blondie is Si Jin.”

Si Jin, hearing the comment, immediately bristled. “Who are you calling blondie?!”

Harold ignored him.

As the senior, Harold naturally took the lead in assigning tasks.

“Qiu Yu, with her wide-range weapon, will lead to clear the path. The clients stay in the middle, and Si Jin will bring up the rear to fend off any zombies coming too close again.”

The luggage wasn’t heavy but bulky. Without tools, it was impossible to carry everything in one trip.

Harold had no intention of making two trips. He wrapped the four backpacks together with a bedsheet, subtly secured them with magic, slung them onto his back, grabbed a suitcase in one hand and the boxes in the other, and followed Si Jin.

He wasn’t afraid of being bitten by zombies. Any undead foolish enough to approach would be sent flying with a single kick.

As they prepared to descend, Song Xu and Zhou Mingyang hesitated. The thought of rushing into a horde of zombies with no protective gear made their scalps tingle.

Qiu Yu overheard their murmuring, walked over, and casually placed an arm around Tang Anqi and Jiang Yifei’s shoulders. “Don’t worry, I won’t let you get bitten. We’ll be out of here in just a few minutes.”

Song Xu and Zhou Mingyang felt increasingly dubious. The entire courtyard below was teeming with zombies; escaping unscathed seemed impossible, let alone within a few minutes, as she claimed.

Harold finished securing the packages and noticed the group still frozen in place. Irritated, he snapped, “Let’s go. Once this job’s done, we still have to head to Jinbo Road to hand out flyers.”

At the second-floor staircase, a few zombies immediately started wailing at the sight of the group, their hoarse cries grating and chilling.

Qiu Yu moved swiftly, her needle-sharp sword piercing one zombie’s forehead with precision before skewering the rest like candied hawthorns, clearing the staircase in one go.

With a flick of her wrist, the skewered zombies tumbled from the second-floor balcony to the ground below.

The four college students, trembling a moment ago, were now stunned into silence.

What kind of speed and strength is this?

The staircase below the second floor was densely packed with zombies. Looking down, their round heads resembled fried, unpeeled potatoes.

Qiu Yu’s blade spun like a buzz saw—quick and silent. By the time she moved past, it took several seconds for the zombies’ heads to topple off their decayed bodies one by one.

Qiu Yu’s clean-up was so efficient that Si Jin and Harold, following behind, found no fun in the job at all.

The clients, who were initially trembling with fear while descending the stairs, gradually felt reassured, and by this point, they were practically numb to the situation.

Was it something wrong with them? Or were these couriers just that extraordinary?

Was this even clearing zombies? It felt more like sweeping trash off the streets.

As the group neared the entrance of the Ping’an residential complex, about five meters away from escaping the zombie horde, voices suddenly called out from the building behind them.

“Help us! Please, save us!”

“There are residents in Unit 2 on the seventh floor! Don’t leave, help us!”

“Building B, Unit 3, we’re still here! Save us, the zombies are about to reach the third floor!”

From behind, Harold said matter-of-factly, “Let’s get the clients to safety first.”

Neither Si Jin nor Qiu Yu paid attention to the cries for help, focusing instead on escorting Tang Anqi and her three friends safely through the zombie-infested area to their parked e-bikes.

By then, the people calling for help upstairs had started hurling insults, their words turning vile and harsh.

The university students frowned, annoyed at the unnecessary rudeness. How could people be so thoughtless?

Even if they didn’t understand the couriers’ intentions, they should at least recognize how effortlessly they had just navigated the zombie horde. The streets below were teeming with zombies, yet walking between two errand runners had felt as casual as a stroll down the road.

Now wasn’t the time to hurl abuse—they should be humbly pleading for help, given the current state of the world.

By now, Tang Anqi and her friends had pieced together what was happening. The couriers had been capable of clearing out the zombies earlier but had deliberately chosen to locate their clients first. Their abilities were indisputable, but they clearly weren’t naïve or overly compassionate saviors.

Realizing this, the students felt oddly reassured.

While Harold’s team was on their errand, Lu Yao’s team had just finished sweeping the Jintai Royal Gardens and was now heading back to Wanxin City to locate the camping equipment store mentioned by the clients.

At the heart of Wanxin City was Wanxin Plaza, surrounded by towering malls, small street shops, two subway entrances, and several bus stops.

As a bustling commercial hub with heavy foot traffic and numerous transit points, it had been a high-risk zone when the outbreak hit, leading to significant casualties and a large population of wandering zombies.

Lu Yao, Tina, and Zhao Ye returned to Wanxin Plaza via the pedestrian avenue, but something felt off.

Earlier that morning, when they had circled the area on their e-bikes, the plaza had been teeming with zombies. Yet now, within just an hour or two, it seemed a group had passed through and cleared out the zombies.

Corpses of the undead littered the plaza, attracting carrion birds that fed on the rotting flesh. As Lu Yao walked along the eaves of a nearby shop, some birds, clutching intestines in their beaks, fluffed their neck feathers in a menacing display.

Zhao Ye bared his teeth at the birds, making them squawk in fright and scatter, dropping chunks of rotting meat they didn’t dare retrieve.

The little sparrows perched on Zhao Ye’s shoulders tilted their heads, watching curiously. They clearly enjoyed the show.

The sparrows of the internet café had all modeled their humanoid forms after a sketch Lu Yao had drawn of an anthropomorphized sparrow. While their features bore some similarities, their individual appearances and temperaments varied.

Zhao Ye’s humanoid form was that of a small youth with chestnut short hair, round dark eyes, symmetrical black moles under his eyes, and a height barely reaching Lu Yao’s ear.

Unquestionably, Zhao Ye earned his role as the leader of his sparrow gang by being the boldest and cheekiest of the bunch. Like Xiong An’an, he excelled at playing cute to adults while secretly being mischievous and sharp. Scaring off a few witless scavenger birds? A piece of cake.

The scout sparrows returned one after another, chirping to Zhao Ye in rapid succession. After a short exchange, Zhao Ye informed Lu Yao that they had located the camping equipment store.

Lu Yao vaguely remembered glimpsing a sign for such a shop earlier during their first visit but hadn’t paid it much attention.

Thanks to the sparrows’ swift reconnaissance, they had their location pinpointed in minutes. As “scouting chickens,” the little sparrows were impressively efficient.

Unlike Lu Yao, who had the Dream Fulfillment System to assist her, Zhao Ye truly relied on his flock of sparrows. They were indispensable to him.

The little sparrows led the way, with the three following behind.

Zhao Ye exchanged a few more chirps with his little followers before turning to Lu Yao and Tina. “They said the store is crowded with people, but our mission target wasn’t spotted.”

Tina glanced around. “These roadside shops are completely empty, not a single soul in sight.”

Lu Yao explained, “Those people might share the same goals as our clients’ relatives. In a city, life is inseparable from utilities like water, electricity, and gas. Without these, cooking and daily routines become very difficult. Modern cities have long abandoned primitive solutions like firewood, wells, and oil lamps. When urban infrastructure collapses, people are forced to revert to primitive survival methods. Items sold in outdoor camping gear stores—like portable stoves, solid alcohol, and solar-powered outdoor lights—were once niche but are now incredibly practical.”

Tina and Zhao Ye’s understanding of modern cities was limited to what they had gleaned from comics and the internet. While not entirely unfamiliar, they still found many things novel and fascinating.

Gaosheng City, however, was far from a functioning modern metropolis. It was more like a ruin of human civilization left behind after being ravaged by a strange and cruel virus.

The sparrows landed in front of a glittering high-rise building. The side of the building displayed a massive poster of a celebrity adorned with opulent gold jewelry, perfectly matching the building’s name: Golden Tower. The name was as blunt as it was ostentatious.

The first five floors of the building were dedicated to gold jewelry stores, but Lu Yao’s team’s destination was the sixth floor.

A signboard at the entrance listed the shops on the sixth floor: outdoor camping gear, adventure equipment, and small stores selling bags, knives, and leather goods.

The elevators were out of service, so they had to either take the stairs or climb the now-motionless escalators in the mall.

The Dream Fulfillment System noted, “The escape stairwells are packed with zombies, likely people who tried to flee but didn’t make it—crammed in there like sardines.”

The mental image made Lu Yao grimace. “We’ll take the mall escalators.”

The system chimed in, “With Tina and Zhao Ye around, you don’t need to overexert yourself. Training the employees’ abilities is part of a store owner’s responsibilities.”

Lu Yao mused that the system must have recently taken a course on high-EQ communication; even slacking off was now dressed up in polished rhetoric.

The mall appeared to have been cleared. As Lu Yao’s team entered through the main entrance, they didn’t encounter a single zombie.

However, behind the counters and on the floor lay a few headless corpses. The surrounding splatter of bodily fluids hadn’t yet dried, and the stench was overpowering.

Some of the display cases on the first and second floors showed signs of forced entry, with several of the cases shattered. Surprisingly, many cases still held more than half their gold jewelry. Dust had settled on the velvet-lined displays, indicating that the damage wasn’t recent. Gold, it seemed, had already begun losing its value in this world.

Nowadays, people passed through this vast golden emporium without a second glance at its exquisite metal treasures, heading straight upstairs to scavenge survival supplies.

Tina and Zhao Ye, however, lingered over the dazzling display of jewelry, their eyes filled with curiosity.

Tina stopped in front of a display case, unable to tear her gaze from a stunning, intricately crafted gold necklace.

Zhao Ye, standing beside her, carefully chose his words. “Do you like any of these?”

Tina casually pointed at several pieces. “They’re designs I’ve never seen before.”

For dragons from the Alexander Continent and the little sparrow demons of the Floating World, the jewelry here truly offered novel and rare designs.

They were just admiring it, without any ulterior motives.

Tina suggested that the next time they crafted jewelry, they should mention these innovative styles to their artisans—it would surely astonish them.

Suddenly, the Dream Fulfillment System chimed in, “You… don’t feel like a little ‘zero-cost shopping’ spree?”

Lu Yao frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“I mean, no one’s watching right now,” the system pressed. “Even if you took a few pieces, no one would complain. A handful of these would be worth months of running errands.”

Lu Yao’s tone turned suspicious. “Are you testing me?”

“No… just making conversation,” the system backtracked quickly. “You love money and gold so much, doesn’t this tempt you even a little?”

Lu Yao sighed. “Wealth is tempting, sure. But I’m not lacking it. It’s this world’s people who’ve lost their rules—not me.”

The system muttered, “Feels like you’ve become even colder than before in the past few months.”

Lu Yao waved it off. “An illusion, an illusion.”

…

The lower floors had been cleared, and as they climbed to the fifth floor, they only encountered two or three zombies. Dressed as store clerks, they were trapped behind a row of glass cabinets, aimlessly circling the same spot. Lu Yao chose to ignore them.

When they reached the escalator to the sixth floor, a piercing howl echoed from above. A bloodied figure tumbled down from the upper floor, crashing onto the ground below, lifeless.

The situation upstairs looked grim. Lu Yao immediately quickened her pace.

As Lu Yao’s group climbed toward the sixth floor, Zhao Ye’s little sparrow scouts suddenly began chirping frantically.

She turned her head in alarm. The “corpse” that had just fallen and seemed dead was now slowly rising. Its blank eyes stared into nothingness.

The figure sat motionless for a few seconds before sluggishly getting up and shambling aimlessly around the mall.

Its face bore a gaping wound, still oozing blood, with a large chunk of flesh bitten away.

Lu Yao’s brows furrowed. Wasn’t this transformation a little too fast?

In movies, zombies typically took hours to fully transform after being bitten. Could this person have been infected long before falling?

Her gaze snapped back to the stairs. Just a few more steps to the sixth floor.

What exactly was happening up there?

🛍️🛍️🛍️🛍️🛍️

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