The Walk-in Closet Safehouse CH18
Chapter 18: Official Notice
The commotion in the kitchen grew louder and louder until the thin frosted glass finally shattered. Only then did the group in the living room realize what was happening, turning their eyes toward the kitchen too late. It would have been better if they hadn't; looking over drained whatever remaining courage they had left.
A corpse suspended in mid-air lunged straight at them with hair disheveled and a hanging head. It was precisely Liu Yue—the woman who had done nothing but "poke a hole in a basket" since joining them.
The boss had ordered her gagged and locked inside the kitchen without so much as treating her wounds. Since her supplies hadn't been secured, a Healing Potion naturally couldn't be wasted on her. Then again, Li Shuo had never intended to let her join in the first place; she was merely a means to get to the supplies she spoke of.
In his eyes, someone with a poor physical constitution like Liu Yue simply meant consuming more Healing Potions to control her infection level, and those all cost gold coins. He only required high-combat, physically robust lackeys, or a pleasing "eye-candy vase". Unfortunately, Liu Yue didn't meet a single criterion. From the very moment she decided to sell out her two roommates and use their supplies to purchase her admission ticket into the Dawn Guild, her tragedy was already set in stone.
[Random Quest: Clear Building Monsters (Completed)]
[Reward Obtained: 5 Gold Coins]
Slipping away at the very last second, Cui Ye could hear the screams echoing down from the 30th floor—they were audible across several levels. If this had happened before the apocalypse, the group chat would likely be completely flooded with people cursing their ancestors through eighteen generations, and property management’s phones would have been rung off the hook. But right now, the chat was surprisingly quiet.
Everyone was huddled inside their rooms, wishing they could plug every single crack to block the moisture from spreading. Unfortunately, the relentless infection prompts let them know that all of this was completely futile. The nightly screams ringing out clawed at everyone's nerves, making sleep utterly impossible yet again.
Cui Ye was also forced to pull an all-nighter without shutting her eyes. This wasn't because of her former roommate who had already turned into a monster, and certainly not because she was frightened by the screaming—it was simply because she had to kill the water monsters attracted by the noise.
She hadn't expected that a bunch of thick-waisted, broad-shouldered grown men gathered together could emit such high-decibel screeches. This caused the water monsters, who were already active at night, to rapidly surface and swim in the direction of Building 11. The gathering monsters quickly jammed the narrow, submerged stairwells completely.
Every single water monster scrambled to head ashore to search for the noisy prey, but they got trapped inside the stairs, temporarily unable to budge. By the time Cui Ye arrived, only two water monsters had successfully made landfall—both bearing wounds from the scramble—which Cui Ye finished off with two clean slashes. The water monsters still trapped in the water went into an even greater frenzy upon seeing the prey right before their eyes; their struggling grew increasingly violent until they actually began cannibalizing each other right in front of her. Then, the unlocked daily quest popped up once more—
[High-tier Daily Quest: Kill Level 2 Water Monster (Pending Acceptance)]
Simultaneously, a green warning sign stamped itself right over the head of one of the water monsters. It was a fluorescent green, making it exceptionally eye-catching in the dead of night.
This water monster with green light sprouting over its head looked no different from the others, except it appeared far more vicious, continuously tearing into its surrounding kin and swallowing them in massive gulps.
The surrounding water monsters finally perceived the danger and fled frantically. Some blundered toward the stairs in their confusion and were "harvested" by Cui Ye, while others were a step too late and had their necks cleanly snapped by that Level 2 water monster.
Cui Ye watched as the water inside the stairwell was dyed entirely black. Broken limbs and severed segments were clearly not enough to satisfy the victor's appetite; it discarded the remains in its grasp and crawled toward the only remaining prey on the field. It wasn't until the creature fully emerged from the water that Cui Ye noticed its differences.
The first thing that caught her eye was its abnormally distended belly, skin-thin and packed tight with a filling she didn't care to imagine. More concerning, however, was that pair of meaty legs resembling a peeled bullfrog, thick with knotted muscle to support a gut large enough to hold a full-grown adult. If the creature hadn't been standing upright on two legs, she would have thought she was looking at a toad-spirit—the exceptionally ugly kind.
Cui Ye stared it down while backing up slowly. Fortunately, the creature didn't drop onto all fours and pull off a "Leaping Dragon to Heaven" move directly into her face. That chrysanthemum mouth rimmed with teeth merely opened a bit wider, and it didn't flick out a long, frog-like tongue.
However, a water monster that had ascended to Level 2 had clearly overcome its weakness of slow movement on land. After adapting for just a few steps, it accelerated rapidly and charged toward her, stretching out its still-withered arms to claw at her.
Cui Ye’s expression remained unchanged as she retreated toward the fourth floor. Just as the distance between them closed to less than two meters, a banana peel materialized out of thin air. The water monster stepped on it with pinpoint accuracy, instantly losing its balance and slamming heavily onto the ground.
The consequence of eating too much was an utter inability to control its center of gravity. It tumbled down the slick stairs exactly like a rolling bowling ball, sliding three meters down the staircase before stopping by clawing frantically at the walls and railings. However, if there was an absolute key to it maintaining its balance at all, it entirely depended on that tightly bound rope on its neck.
Its evolution was entirely to blame, solely reinforcing its stomach capacity and two legs without ever considering strengthening its neck. Cui Ye flicked her fingers, and the tightened cord uncoiled, snapping back into her hand. She gave the [Linen Necklace] in her grasp a somewhat disgusted shake. If possible, what she wanted to buy most right now was an "Instant Clean" item.
[Yellow Banana Peel: Single-use item. Throw it out and let some poor soul’s buttocks get intimately acquainted with the floor!]
The [Christmas Sock] seemed to favor banana peels exceptionally. Aside from the [Receiver] she had already deployed on a certain "Senior," Cui Ye had received three of these [Yellow Banana Peel] items.
For three days straight, she checked the Christmas sock first thing every morning. Without fail, her hand would plunge inside, only to brush against a sticky, half-dry lump of banana peel. She had every justification to suspect that the creator of the [Christmas Sock] was a monkey suffering from a severe banana addiction who simply stuffed the banana peels into her sock whenever it finished eating and couldn't find a trash can. Still, putting aside that clingy texture, the banana peels were incredibly effective.
[High-tier Daily Quest: Kill Level 2 Water Monster (Completed)]
[Reward Obtained: 15 Gold Coins]
[Slay Level 2 Water Monster. Gold Coins × 5]
Having worked a whole night of overtime, a faint smile finally emerged on Cui Ye’s face. One of these was worth more than ten ordinary ones; she decided then and there to never look down on banana peels ever again.
The water monster had the [M-Family High-End Luxury Vintage Linen Necklace] to thank for keeping its butt from "blooming into flowers", though a "blooming head" had been completely unavoidable.
Cui Ye walked over to find that although the creature's neck was snapped, its limbs were still twitching. Its dark grey claws gouging row after row of white marks into the concrete stairs. The sharpness had clearly leveled up. Fortunately, it was just a reflexive, unconscious reaction; with its neck broken, the water monster quickly lost all sensation, and its movements stopped completely after few seconds later.
She raised her already dulled boning knife and stabbed toward the water monster’s head with her usual force. The blade collided with the skull, emitting a sharp ping as the tip wedged into a fissure without completely piercing through.
Yanking it out, she stabbed down once more—holding the knife with both hands this time. The blade smoothly penetrated the skull but snapped clean in two. Using the broken shard of the blade, she pushed aside the water monster's sparse hair, and sure enough, she spotted a few reflective scales. The grey scales refracted a metallic sheen under the light; their hardness was significantly enhanced compared to those of a Level 1 water monster, and their distribution range was far wider.
Fortunately, Cui Ye’s strength had also increased, at least surpassing Wang Lei from the eight-person squad—a man whose bulk was directly proportional to his brute force, which already far exceeded that of an average adult male.
The discoveries made on this Level 2 water monster were exceptionally disadvantageous to ordinary players, yet the authorities hadn't announced the existence of these evolved creatures either. Cui Ye could actually understand the government's approach.
Since the arrival of the apocalypse, good news had rarely surfaced. Rather than announcing a higher-tier threat and driving more people into panic and despair, it was better to conceal it temporarily. At the very least, water monsters that had grown to Level 2 were still an absolute minority and wouldn't be encountered under ordinary circumstances. Meanwhile, those players who did know about them had already completed their primary and mid-tier daily quests—meaning they possessed at least some measure of combat capability and wouldn't be panicked to the point of helplessness.
Perhaps the government had already dispatched military units to carry out clearing operations across various locations. Whenever the official Survival Guide was updated, the interval never exceeded a single day. Every status update posted was watched by countless pairs of eyes, drawing from it the strength to continue holding on until the day the official rescue forces arrived.
Even though Cui Ye hadn't relied on anyone else since she was ten—and was already planning to buy a ticket to the next server of this game world—she still harbored a sliver of hope for the shelters promised by the authorities.
She wasn't the only one with such thoughts; everyone was waiting for the arrival of the rescue forces, and just like that, they waited until the tenth day of the apocalypse.
During this period, the death toll in Xingfu Community continued to climb, as disastrous news surfaced one after another within the community chat. Buildings 7 and 11 had the lowest casualties. By contrast, the adjacent residential buildings frequently degenerated into chaos—with residents plundering supplies, turning on each other over the division of food, or falling victim to water monsters breaking into the structures. Bloodshed and death were a daily occurrence.
Under the crushing pressure of survival, many were driven into a corner, and social order completely collapsed. Every residential building resembled an isolated island, with the residents inside establishing a brutal new order entirely of their own making. If Cui Ye hadn't left the members of the Dawn Guild severely wounded that night, the situation in Building 11 probably wouldn't have fared any better than the rest of the complex.
After all, she was only one person—unlike Building 7, which housed He Fangzhou’s squad of four. He Fangzhou had already established a preliminary deterrent within Xingfu Community, ensuring no one would easily cause trouble. Furthermore, her talent wasn't suited for direct attacks like his [Cryokinesis].
If Li Shuo's gang hadn't actively provoked her, she never would have taken action. Wasting three gold coins on an [Invisibility Potion] just to cripple their mobility simply offered too little payoff.
By this time, Cui Ye had already moved out of Grandma Zhao’s place and returned to her own apartment. However, given that her bedroom had been fouled by footprints and bloodstains, she simply moved into Wang Zhiqiu’s room instead.
The other party had decided to move in with Grandma Zhao, and the two had even teamed up over the past couple of days to farm monsters. Thanks to the little pills, they were spared a great deal of worry; if they got injured or started bleeding, it was nothing more than popping an extra pill to clear the debuff. Of course, one pill cost two gold coins—honest prices for all.
When the game notification popped up, Cui Ye was in the middle of testing out the [Bathroom] she had just purchased from the shop. It was an item that had freshly refreshed that very morning; she hadn't expected that entire functional rooms could actually be bought. She could finally make proper use of a toilet again—a massive relief, considering the water supply had completely cut off just yesterday, triggering yet another wave of widespread panic.
Fortunately, heaven never cuts off a person's path. Just as the game notification popped up, the official announcement updated once more.
[Ticket Office No. 612 Location Unlocked: Gongze University]
"Official Notice: The shelter has been completed. Citizens are requested to head to the nearest shelter immediately. The military will proceed to offer support according to the priority list below."
The nearest shelter to Xingfu Community was exactly Gongze University.
Chapter Notes:
The commotion in the kitchen grew louder and louder until the thin frosted glass finally shattered. Only then did the group in the living room realize what was happening, turning their eyes toward the kitchen too late. It would have been better if they hadn't; looking over drained whatever remaining courage they had left.
A corpse suspended in mid-air lunged straight at them with hair disheveled and a hanging head. It was precisely Liu Yue—the woman who had done nothing but "poke a hole in a basket" since joining them.
The boss had ordered her gagged and locked inside the kitchen without so much as treating her wounds. Since her supplies hadn't been secured, a Healing Potion naturally couldn't be wasted on her. Then again, Li Shuo had never intended to let her join in the first place; she was merely a means to get to the supplies she spoke of.
In his eyes, someone with a poor physical constitution like Liu Yue simply meant consuming more Healing Potions to control her infection level, and those all cost gold coins. He only required high-combat, physically robust lackeys, or a pleasing "eye-candy vase". Unfortunately, Liu Yue didn't meet a single criterion. From the very moment she decided to sell out her two roommates and use their supplies to purchase her admission ticket into the Dawn Guild, her tragedy was already set in stone.
[Random Quest: Clear Building Monsters (Completed)]
[Reward Obtained: 5 Gold Coins]
Slipping away at the very last second, Cui Ye could hear the screams echoing down from the 30th floor—they were audible across several levels. If this had happened before the apocalypse, the group chat would likely be completely flooded with people cursing their ancestors through eighteen generations, and property management’s phones would have been rung off the hook. But right now, the chat was surprisingly quiet.
Everyone was huddled inside their rooms, wishing they could plug every single crack to block the moisture from spreading. Unfortunately, the relentless infection prompts let them know that all of this was completely futile. The nightly screams ringing out clawed at everyone's nerves, making sleep utterly impossible yet again.
Cui Ye was also forced to pull an all-nighter without shutting her eyes. This wasn't because of her former roommate who had already turned into a monster, and certainly not because she was frightened by the screaming—it was simply because she had to kill the water monsters attracted by the noise.
She hadn't expected that a bunch of thick-waisted, broad-shouldered grown men gathered together could emit such high-decibel screeches. This caused the water monsters, who were already active at night, to rapidly surface and swim in the direction of Building 11. The gathering monsters quickly jammed the narrow, submerged stairwells completely.
Every single water monster scrambled to head ashore to search for the noisy prey, but they got trapped inside the stairs, temporarily unable to budge. By the time Cui Ye arrived, only two water monsters had successfully made landfall—both bearing wounds from the scramble—which Cui Ye finished off with two clean slashes. The water monsters still trapped in the water went into an even greater frenzy upon seeing the prey right before their eyes; their struggling grew increasingly violent until they actually began cannibalizing each other right in front of her. Then, the unlocked daily quest popped up once more—
[High-tier Daily Quest: Kill Level 2 Water Monster (Pending Acceptance)]
Simultaneously, a green warning sign stamped itself right over the head of one of the water monsters. It was a fluorescent green, making it exceptionally eye-catching in the dead of night.
This water monster with green light sprouting over its head looked no different from the others, except it appeared far more vicious, continuously tearing into its surrounding kin and swallowing them in massive gulps.
The surrounding water monsters finally perceived the danger and fled frantically. Some blundered toward the stairs in their confusion and were "harvested" by Cui Ye, while others were a step too late and had their necks cleanly snapped by that Level 2 water monster.
Cui Ye watched as the water inside the stairwell was dyed entirely black. Broken limbs and severed segments were clearly not enough to satisfy the victor's appetite; it discarded the remains in its grasp and crawled toward the only remaining prey on the field. It wasn't until the creature fully emerged from the water that Cui Ye noticed its differences.
The first thing that caught her eye was its abnormally distended belly, skin-thin and packed tight with a filling she didn't care to imagine. More concerning, however, was that pair of meaty legs resembling a peeled bullfrog, thick with knotted muscle to support a gut large enough to hold a full-grown adult. If the creature hadn't been standing upright on two legs, she would have thought she was looking at a toad-spirit—the exceptionally ugly kind.
Cui Ye stared it down while backing up slowly. Fortunately, the creature didn't drop onto all fours and pull off a "Leaping Dragon to Heaven" move directly into her face. That chrysanthemum mouth rimmed with teeth merely opened a bit wider, and it didn't flick out a long, frog-like tongue.
However, a water monster that had ascended to Level 2 had clearly overcome its weakness of slow movement on land. After adapting for just a few steps, it accelerated rapidly and charged toward her, stretching out its still-withered arms to claw at her.
Cui Ye’s expression remained unchanged as she retreated toward the fourth floor. Just as the distance between them closed to less than two meters, a banana peel materialized out of thin air. The water monster stepped on it with pinpoint accuracy, instantly losing its balance and slamming heavily onto the ground.
The consequence of eating too much was an utter inability to control its center of gravity. It tumbled down the slick stairs exactly like a rolling bowling ball, sliding three meters down the staircase before stopping by clawing frantically at the walls and railings. However, if there was an absolute key to it maintaining its balance at all, it entirely depended on that tightly bound rope on its neck.
Its evolution was entirely to blame, solely reinforcing its stomach capacity and two legs without ever considering strengthening its neck. Cui Ye flicked her fingers, and the tightened cord uncoiled, snapping back into her hand. She gave the [Linen Necklace] in her grasp a somewhat disgusted shake. If possible, what she wanted to buy most right now was an "Instant Clean" item.
[Yellow Banana Peel: Single-use item. Throw it out and let some poor soul’s buttocks get intimately acquainted with the floor!]
The [Christmas Sock] seemed to favor banana peels exceptionally. Aside from the [Receiver] she had already deployed on a certain "Senior," Cui Ye had received three of these [Yellow Banana Peel] items.
For three days straight, she checked the Christmas sock first thing every morning. Without fail, her hand would plunge inside, only to brush against a sticky, half-dry lump of banana peel. She had every justification to suspect that the creator of the [Christmas Sock] was a monkey suffering from a severe banana addiction who simply stuffed the banana peels into her sock whenever it finished eating and couldn't find a trash can. Still, putting aside that clingy texture, the banana peels were incredibly effective.
[High-tier Daily Quest: Kill Level 2 Water Monster (Completed)]
[Reward Obtained: 15 Gold Coins]
[Slay Level 2 Water Monster. Gold Coins × 5]
Having worked a whole night of overtime, a faint smile finally emerged on Cui Ye’s face. One of these was worth more than ten ordinary ones; she decided then and there to never look down on banana peels ever again.
The water monster had the [M-Family High-End Luxury Vintage Linen Necklace] to thank for keeping its butt from "blooming into flowers", though a "blooming head" had been completely unavoidable.
Cui Ye walked over to find that although the creature's neck was snapped, its limbs were still twitching. Its dark grey claws gouging row after row of white marks into the concrete stairs. The sharpness had clearly leveled up. Fortunately, it was just a reflexive, unconscious reaction; with its neck broken, the water monster quickly lost all sensation, and its movements stopped completely after few seconds later.
She raised her already dulled boning knife and stabbed toward the water monster’s head with her usual force. The blade collided with the skull, emitting a sharp ping as the tip wedged into a fissure without completely piercing through.
Yanking it out, she stabbed down once more—holding the knife with both hands this time. The blade smoothly penetrated the skull but snapped clean in two. Using the broken shard of the blade, she pushed aside the water monster's sparse hair, and sure enough, she spotted a few reflective scales. The grey scales refracted a metallic sheen under the light; their hardness was significantly enhanced compared to those of a Level 1 water monster, and their distribution range was far wider.
Fortunately, Cui Ye’s strength had also increased, at least surpassing Wang Lei from the eight-person squad—a man whose bulk was directly proportional to his brute force, which already far exceeded that of an average adult male.
The discoveries made on this Level 2 water monster were exceptionally disadvantageous to ordinary players, yet the authorities hadn't announced the existence of these evolved creatures either. Cui Ye could actually understand the government's approach.
Since the arrival of the apocalypse, good news had rarely surfaced. Rather than announcing a higher-tier threat and driving more people into panic and despair, it was better to conceal it temporarily. At the very least, water monsters that had grown to Level 2 were still an absolute minority and wouldn't be encountered under ordinary circumstances. Meanwhile, those players who did know about them had already completed their primary and mid-tier daily quests—meaning they possessed at least some measure of combat capability and wouldn't be panicked to the point of helplessness.
Perhaps the government had already dispatched military units to carry out clearing operations across various locations. Whenever the official Survival Guide was updated, the interval never exceeded a single day. Every status update posted was watched by countless pairs of eyes, drawing from it the strength to continue holding on until the day the official rescue forces arrived.
Even though Cui Ye hadn't relied on anyone else since she was ten—and was already planning to buy a ticket to the next server of this game world—she still harbored a sliver of hope for the shelters promised by the authorities.
She wasn't the only one with such thoughts; everyone was waiting for the arrival of the rescue forces, and just like that, they waited until the tenth day of the apocalypse.
During this period, the death toll in Xingfu Community continued to climb, as disastrous news surfaced one after another within the community chat. Buildings 7 and 11 had the lowest casualties. By contrast, the adjacent residential buildings frequently degenerated into chaos—with residents plundering supplies, turning on each other over the division of food, or falling victim to water monsters breaking into the structures. Bloodshed and death were a daily occurrence.
Under the crushing pressure of survival, many were driven into a corner, and social order completely collapsed. Every residential building resembled an isolated island, with the residents inside establishing a brutal new order entirely of their own making. If Cui Ye hadn't left the members of the Dawn Guild severely wounded that night, the situation in Building 11 probably wouldn't have fared any better than the rest of the complex.
After all, she was only one person—unlike Building 7, which housed He Fangzhou’s squad of four. He Fangzhou had already established a preliminary deterrent within Xingfu Community, ensuring no one would easily cause trouble. Furthermore, her talent wasn't suited for direct attacks like his [Cryokinesis].
If Li Shuo's gang hadn't actively provoked her, she never would have taken action. Wasting three gold coins on an [Invisibility Potion] just to cripple their mobility simply offered too little payoff.
By this time, Cui Ye had already moved out of Grandma Zhao’s place and returned to her own apartment. However, given that her bedroom had been fouled by footprints and bloodstains, she simply moved into Wang Zhiqiu’s room instead.
The other party had decided to move in with Grandma Zhao, and the two had even teamed up over the past couple of days to farm monsters. Thanks to the little pills, they were spared a great deal of worry; if they got injured or started bleeding, it was nothing more than popping an extra pill to clear the debuff. Of course, one pill cost two gold coins—honest prices for all.
When the game notification popped up, Cui Ye was in the middle of testing out the [Bathroom] she had just purchased from the shop. It was an item that had freshly refreshed that very morning; she hadn't expected that entire functional rooms could actually be bought. She could finally make proper use of a toilet again—a massive relief, considering the water supply had completely cut off just yesterday, triggering yet another wave of widespread panic.
Fortunately, heaven never cuts off a person's path. Just as the game notification popped up, the official announcement updated once more.
[Ticket Office No. 612 Location Unlocked: Gongze University]
"Official Notice: The shelter has been completed. Citizens are requested to head to the nearest shelter immediately. The military will proceed to offer support according to the priority list below."
The nearest shelter to Xingfu Community was exactly Gongze University.
Chapter Notes:
- "To poke a hole in a basket" 捅了篓子: A common northern phrase meaning to make a huge blunder, kick up a hornet's nest, or cause major trouble that others have to clean up.
- "eye-candy vase" 花瓶: In Chinese web novels, "flower vase" (花瓶)—often translated as "eye candy vase"—is a popular slang term used to describe a character who is incredibly beautiful but completely useless.
- "cursing their ancestors through eighteen generations" 问候祖宗十八代: In Chinese culture and C-novels, it represents the absolute highest level of rage, frustration, or hatred a person can express.
- "To have one's buttocks bloom into flowers" 屁股开花: A highly common humorous phrase meaning to get beaten, thrown, or dropped so hard on your backside that your skin splits wide open.
- "Heaven never cuts off a person's path" 天无绝人之路: A classic idiom used to express hope in dire situations, meaning there is always a way out or a silver lining when things look completely bleak.
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