The Abused Heroine Stops Pretending [Quick Transmigration] - Chapter 75.2

Tang Jing stopped in her tracks, showing no intention of going further.

Chen Chang halted as well, and the group behind him followed suit.

After days of travel, with poor food, restless sleep, and no chance to bathe, everyone looked haggard and disheveled. Even those with severe germaphobia had lost their fastidiousness during the escape.

“Aren’t you planning to go there?” Chen Chang seemed to guess her hesitation but still felt regret for her. Without military protection, survival would only get harder.

In just these few days, they had already suffered greatly, even encountering a group of desperate fugitives. If they hadn’t hidden quickly, they might not have made it out alive.

In this apocalyptic world, many lived day by day, ready to do anything to survive. It wasn’t surprising if those desperate people targeted them, a disaster indeed. With zombies ahead and hostile humans behind, it was truly a case of “between the devil and the deep blue sea.”

“You go ahead.” Tang Jing shielded her senior behind her. If the military at the refuge spotted a zombie among them, they might eliminate it under the guise of protection.

“Then this is where we part ways.” Chen Chang didn’t press further. With her help, their journey had been relatively smooth.

But all gatherings must end. They would meet again someday.

“Take her with you too,” Tang Jing said.

The “her” referred to Zhou Tiantian. That night, she had promised to get her safely to the refuge. Now that they’d arrived, it was time to fulfill that promise.

[System: Warning! Warning! According to the main storyline, the host must stay with Zhou Tiantian and travel together to the S City Safe Base.]

As soon as the system’s voice faded, Zhou Tiantian spoke up, “I’m not going. I want to stay with you.”

When Lou Jing suggested she go with Chen Chang to the refuge, Zhou Tiantian’s intuition told her it wasn’t safe just like the shelter at the school playground. Only by staying with Lou Jing did she feel secure.

If not for the system’s warning, Tang Jing would have refused. But this was an unchangeable main plotline, no amount of points could alter it. So she had no choice but to agree to keep her along.

“Alright then, stay safe on your journey. I hope we can meet again someday,” Chen Chang said before leading the others toward the shelter.

Tang Jing didn’t linger. With her senior strapped to her waist, she carried the little zombie in one hand and a long blade in the other, heading down a different path.

The firewood axe had broken on the third day, and she had since replaced it with the current long blade.

“Where are we going now?” Now that they had cleared the air, Zhou Tiantian no longer called her “Ah Jing” in that overly familiar tone. She either avoided using a name altogether or simply said “hey.”

“To the city, to see if we can find a car,” Tang Jing replied.

The nearest small town wasn’t too far from the national highway. Compared to the city center, it was relatively safer, with a smaller population.

If they wanted to reach S City, walking the entire way was completely unrealistic they needed a vehicle.

They had come across several cars along the way, but most had either crashed during the initial outbreak or exploded, rendering them useless.

Now, their only option was to take the risk and search the town.

“That’s way too dangerous,” Zhou Tiantian objected. Without Chen Chang and the others, the only capable fighter left in their group was Lou Jing. She didn’t believe the other woman could protect her amidst so many zombies.

“You don’t have to come. Find a place to hide if you want,” Tang Jing said without slowing her pace.

“No way.” Zhou Tiantian would rather stick with her than hide alone. Besides, there was no guarantee Tang Jing would come back for her later.

Trusting someone’s character was one thing, but betting her life on it? She wasn’t willing to take that gamble.

“I’m going with you,” Zhou Tiantian declared.

Tang Jing hadn’t expected her to actually hide anyway, so she didn’t argue and kept walking.

The fog had thinned considerably, making their surroundings clearer. Overturned and wrecked cars, half-eaten corpses, and bloodstains where bodies should have been these grotesque scenes, suddenly appearing in what was once a peaceful world, were enough to drive anyone to despair.

But they had to keep living, even if it meant surviving by the skin of their teeth.

After days of viral infection, rampant looting, and unchecked violence, the city had fallen into an eerie silence. The closer they got to the town, the more corpses and abandoned vehicles littered the roads.

Yet none of the cars were usable either completely wrecked or trapped in ways that made them impossible to move.

“Should we really go in there? It’s too dangerous,” Zhou Tiantian whispered, her face pale. She clung tightly to Tang Jing’s clothes, her eyes darting nervously, afraid a zombie might leap out from the roadside bushes at any moment.

But perhaps because they were still close to the military-guarded shelter, most of the zombies had already been dealt with. Though they saw plenty of bodies along the way, not a single moving zombie crossed their path.

That was good news but also an unpredictable time bomb. If they never saw any zombies, they might let their guard down, and that was when one could suddenly appear. That would be the deadliest mistake.

Over the past few days, Tang Jing had been observing the little zombie, trying to figure out how it evolved. But with Chen Chang and the others around, she couldn’t be too obvious about it.

Now that there were only her and Zhou Tiantian as normal humans in the team, she no longer had any reservations. She set the little zombie down, untied the rope around its wrist and the tape over its mouth, while also fastening a rope around its waist just like with the senior, she had it tied to her own waist.

Because of Xu Yushu’s presence nearby, the little zombie didn’t dare approach them, so it turned its attention to the corpses instead.

Every time Tang Jing saw the little zombie trying to eat a corpse, she would stop it.

She had a way to help the senior level up, but not by consuming corpses.

After stopping it over a dozen times in a row, the little zombie plunged its claws into the skull of one corpse, dug out a crystal, and before Tang Jing could get a closer look, it tossed the crystal into its mouth and swallowed it.

“Ew, what is it eating?” Zhou Tiantian was so disgusted that she took a step back behind Tang Jing, her face twisted in revulsion.

Tang Jing seemed lost in thought.

She wasn’t sure if it was because of triggering plot-related events, but even though she had experienced this world once before, many crucial pieces of information remained frustratingly out of reach until they were triggered, at which point the corresponding knowledge would unfold in her mind.

It was as if those memories had been locked away in her brain, only accessible at specific moments.

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