Chapter 11: Memory

It was five-thirty in the morning. Under normal circumstances, the horizon should have been brightening, but it remained pitch black outside the windows of Building 6.

There was still some time left before the twenty-four-hour limit, but it wasn’t exactly plenty.

Xia Mi felt that there wasn’t even enough time to play her game properly.

Fortunately, with the promise from Shield, Xia Mi could focus on the game without distractions.

She decided to give herself an hour to play, using the game to test her theories.

“Sister Li, keep an eye on these people for me. Don’t let them disturb me,” Xia Mi said.

Sister Li nodded.

Xia Mi smiled and added, “I’m not worried about them hurting me. I’m just worried that I’ll get too absorbed in the game. If someone gets close to me, I might accidentally hack off a body part they can’t grow back.”

As she spoke, Xia Mi slammed her axe into the floor. The sharp blade cut through the corridor floor, sinking deep into the concrete and standing upright beside her.

The restless mutated humans couldn’t help but clutch themselves in fear.

“I’m doing this for everyone’s sake,” Xia Mi said.

The mutated humans nodded repeatedly.

Having intimidated them, Xia Mi sat down in front of the elevator, propped up her machine gun, and aimed it at the elevator doors.

The elevator doors and the stairwell were right next to each other. Sitting there, Xia Mi could cover both entrances, preventing any mutated humans from the lower floors from rushing up.

The mutated humans acted on their own will, their desires magnified infinitely. Building 6 was now a miniature jungle, and there was no guarantee that some wouldn’t come looking to satisfy animalistic urges like bloodlust, lust, or hunger.

They might try to sneak up to the eleventh floor, so Xia Mi couldn’t just guard against those already on her level.

Xia Mi placed her laptop on the machine gun, finding an angle to keep it balanced so she could instantly move her hands from the keyboard to the trigger if necessary.

With a machine gun in front and a giant axe behind, Xia Mi sat on her small stool and started the game.

Her last save point was after obtaining the weapons on the Rooftop. After “Xiao Mi” put on the Protective Suit, she began her killing spree.

Xia Mi intended to do everything in the game that she couldn’t do in reality.

“Xiao Mi” followed Xia Mi’s real-world actions, teaming up with Sister Li to take over the eleventh floor.

But then, instead of treating the residents of the eleventh floor with kindness and friendship like Xia Mi had, “Xiao Mi” swung her axe and slaughtered every single NPC.

“Xiao Mi” also used the mutated parts from the bodies on the eleventh floor to fill her magazines, continuing her massacre through the other floors with infinite ammo.

If she killed all the mutated humans, she wouldn’t have to worry about the “Zhuo” parasitizing them.

In the game, the mutated humans were just clusters of pixels. “Xiao Mi” used her weapons to eliminate one pixelated mass after another without any psychological burden.

Xia Mi had played single-player games like Resident Evil before, where one person with a gun wipes out entire villas, castles, and labs full of zombies. Now that she was playing Hani Apartments like Resident Evil, her clearing speed was incredibly fast.

In Resident Evil, you could still get scratched by zombies, but in Hani Apartments, “Xiao Mi” had the Protective Suit and was completely invulnerable.

The pace in the game was much faster than in reality. With the help of weapons and armor, “Xiao Mi” killed every mutated human in the entire building in just half an hour of real time.

However, the game didn’t end just because “Xiao Mi” had killed everyone. “Xiao Mi” stood alone in the empty corridor, unable to find an enemy.

This confirmed Xia Mi’s suspicion: the cunning “Zhuo” was watching her and wouldn’t show itself easily.

Even if she repeated her tactics from the eleventh floor and inspected the entire building, she wouldn’t find the “Zhuo.”

“Xiao Mi” didn’t stop. Next, she had to deal with the insects.

As a resident of the apartments, Xia Mi knew that tenants could go to the management office to collect insecticide.

This old building had too many bugs. Logically, the property management should have hired professionals for pest control regularly, but that was too expensive, and the management wouldn’t bother with such a thankless task.

However, since the residents paid their management fees, they had demanded pest control. In response, the management placed boxes of insecticide in each building’s office for residents to take as needed.

Xia Mi had once taken a bag herself, mixed it with water, and sprayed it in the corners. The cockroaches had vanished quickly.

But a month later, they had returned, and Xia Mi hadn’t bothered to go back for more.

“Xiao Mi” ran to the first-floor management office and, sure enough, found a large box of dusty insecticide. From the paper that had dropped with her weapons, she obtained a diagram of the drainage pipes for every room in the complex.

That paper represented the power of the team behind Liao Tianhua. With their big data support, obtaining a plumbing map was easy.

Following the prompts, “Xiao Mi” poured insecticide into the main drainage pipes of every floor.

After finishing that, “Xiao Mi” still had time to pour a little insecticide into the drains of every individual room.

It was a time-consuming task, but fortunately, the game thoughtfully provided an acceleration mode that could be turned up to ten times speed. Thus, Xia Mi finished the tedious task in less than twenty minutes.

She waited until six o’clock in the evening in game time, but there was still no notification that the mission was complete.

Xia Mi thought for a moment, then simply controlled “Xiao Mi” to take off the Protective Suit and stand in the seventh-floor corridor completely unprotected.

This was a hint she had taken from that mosquito.

The size of that mosquito had been abnormal. After Liao Tianhua’s explanation, Xia Mi knew it was a mosquito that had been mutated or even parasitized by the “Zhuo.”

Interestingly, that mosquito had come to Xia Mi’s room to try and suck her blood the very moment the “Zhuo” Domain appeared.

Xia Mi suspected she was the most special person in the building, and the “Zhuo” wanted to eat her more than anyone else.

She wasn’t being narcissistic; she had good reasons for this suspicion.

First, there was the existence of Hani Apartments. The game was clearly a replica of this building and could predict future events to a certain extent. Since Xia Mi was currently the only one who had the game, it was hard not to suspect it was a power belonging to her.

Beyond that, Xia Mi had realized something else. At ten o’clock last night, the entire building had been covered by the Domain and the internet had been cut off. Yet, she had downloaded Hani Apartments after ten o’clock. There was clearly no internet then, so how had she downloaded the game?

Second, after the Otaku from 702 entered her room, he actually managed to open his game.

At the time, she had broken the Otaku’s blade, and he had been throwing a fit, convinced it was ruined. Knowing her room was Qing and unaffected by the Zhuo, Xia Mi had let him use her computer to check his in-game equipment. After entering 703, the Otaku claimed the blade in his account was still intact.

Back then, Xia Mi had been fighting off three corrupted monsters alone, armed only with an outdoor Mountain-Splitting Axe her boyfriend had given her, a tool that cost maybe two hundred yuan on Taobao¹, or even less on Pinduoduo². In the heat of such a desperate battle, Xia Mi had been so overwhelmed that she forgot her room had no internet connection.

So, what network did that Otaku use to log into his game?

Could it be that the internet actually functioned within the Qing zones?

But when Xia Mi realized the world outside was pitch black, she had tried to connect with her phone and found nothing.

Therefore, Xia Mi suspected that while her three neighbors were in 703, they could connect to the network from 702, or perhaps even a signal within 703, but she herself could not.

If this deduction was correct, it meant that Xia Mi had been a primary target of the Zhuo from the very beginning.

Yet, even under such focused attention from the Zhuo, she had managed to kill the mosquito in time, download Hani Apartments without a network, contact Liao Tianhua via text, and carve out a small spatial rift on the Rooftop.

The third point: “Xiao Mi” had killed every corrupted person in Building 6, yet the Zhuo from the game still hadn’t appeared.

The goal of the Zhuo was to feed; it constructed this Domain to consume the emotional capacities of the residents. It had hibernated for a year to build this nest, so it was undoubtedly determined to claim its prey.

So why did it stand by and watch “Xiao Mi” destroy the food it had spent a year carefully preparing without lifting a finger to stop her?

There was only one answer: there was a more delicious meal tempting it, making it willing to endure and wait quietly for the right moment.

Xia Mi’s memory returned to the very start of the incident. When she first noticed the anomalies in the building, someone had knocked on her door. She hadn’t opened it, and the person had eventually left.

Who was knocking?

Initially, Xia Mi thought it was the Mother from 704 looking for Xiao Pi. But thinking back now, the Mother from 704 was a woman who loved to talk and vent her grievances. If it had been her at the door, why hadn’t she said anything?

Based on her later behavior, she should have asked directly, “Is my Xiao Pi in your place?”

Xia Mi concluded that the person who knocked at the beginning was not the Mother from 704.

Then who was it?

Could it have been the Zhuo itself, trying to trick her into opening the door before she realized anything was wrong?

Seeing that she had no intention of opening up, the Zhuo realized she was alert and decided to try another way, which was why it left.

If the above speculations were correct, then as the time limit approached, would “Xiao Mi” removing her protective gear lure the Zhuo out?

Xia Mi decided to verify this ending in the game.

Initially, nothing changed when “Xiao Mi” took off her Protective Suit.

At 8:00 PM game time, “Xiao Mi” saw the words “Purification Operation preparing to commence” appear on the white paper. This indicated that Liao Tianhua and the others had decided to destroy the building, eliminating any possibility of survivors walking out.

“Xiao Mi” waited calmly. At 9:00 PM game time, the Zhuo finally lost its patience.

On the game interface, a massive cluster of pixels crawled out from the drainage pipes, completely enveloping “Xiao Mi.”

“Xiao Mi” detonated her only grenade, purifying the Zhuo.

The screen went black, but a small white dot remained in the center, seemingly suggesting that “Xiao Mi” wasn’t dead.

Xia Mi waited patiently for a moment. The screen flickered twice, like a person slowly opening their eyes.

It was “Xiao Mi” opening her eyes.

What met her gaze wasn’t Liao Tianhua and his team, but a beam of white light hitting her face, much like the light over an operating table.

Several lines of text appeared on the screen.

[Before her consciousness faded, “Xiao Mi” heard this conversation.]

[XXX: Another failure. This was the most stable and controllable experimental subject. I even prepared a fully formed nest for her to grow in. How did it still fail?]

[XX: All existing experimental subjects have been destroyed. Arrange for a new batch to be cultivated.]

[XXX: It took over twenty years for this batch to grow. By the time another batch matures, I don’t know if I’ll still be alive to see it.]

[XX: Don’t worry. There has been a new breakthrough in the research. We can conduct experiments on adults now. This time, we won’t have to wait so long.]

After the dialogue ended, another line appeared on the screen.

[You failed to stop Project Queen Bee and were artificially destroyed. Before you died, a memory inexplicably surfaced in your mind.]

The game interface shifted, playing a video clip.

It was a view from below the apartment building, very similar to the perspective Xia Mi had when looking down from the window of 703.

A man in a suit, carrying an exquisite silver-white briefcase, walked into the building.

He carried an air of elite sophistication that was completely out of place in this building.

Xia Mi stared at the computer. She remembered this.

It was two months ago, the day she first moved in. She had been doing a deep clean.

While wiping the windows, she had glanced down and seen this man entering Building 6.

At the time, Xia Mi felt the man didn’t fit Building 6 at all.

But the thought had been fleeting. He was just someone she had seen in passing, and he hadn’t left much of an impression.

Until now, in the game, at the final moment before “Xiao Mi” died, this image had instinctively surfaced in her mind.

Amidst her confusion, Xia Mi didn’t forget to use her phone to snap a photo of the computer screen, clearly capturing the man’s face behind his sunglasses, and sent it to Liao Tianhua.

Xia Mi: [Investigate this person. He is definitely connected to the Zhuo in Building 6.]

Then, Xia Mi subconsciously touched her helmet.

She had been wearing the helmet the entire time she played the game. Shield clearly had the ability to monitor the Domain, so had Shield seen everything in the game just now?

As if sensing Xia Mi’s suspicion, that elegant handwriting appeared within the helmet once more: [You needn’t worry. Everyone has their secrets; you have yours, and I have mine.

You hold one of my secrets, and I hold one of yours. We’re even. This way, we can both rest easy, can’t we?]

Translator’s Notes