Chapter 6: Praise from Zhang Jie

He shot the zombie through the head and spat out a curse.

She turned to Qian Gu. “Gu, what in the world is going on here?”

“Cough, cough, cough!”

Qian Gu suddenly broke into a fit of coughing and waved his hand in a hurry. “Hold on—change the way you address me. Call me Qian, or my full name, either one. Just not that shorthand.”

Good heavens.

This fierce woman really was terrifying.

One moment she had nearly made him rinse his mouth with zombie brains, and the next she was saddling him with a nickname heavy enough to crush a man.

Call him “Gu”?

The character might be different, but the sound was the same.

He did not have the fate to bear that.

“Hm?”

Lian naturally had no idea what Qian Gu was thinking. She pointed at the corpse sprawled on the ground. “Qian, so what exactly is going on?”

“My memory is still a little hazy, but I have a vague impression.”

Qian Gu tossed aside the metal rod and rubbed his temples. “I have a relative who works as a researcher inside Umbrella. According to him, there was a bioweapon experiment being conducted here.”

“A bioweapon experiment?”

“Yes.”

Qian Gu nodded. “You saw it yourself. These things... yes, that is the only way to call them now. They can no longer be called human. They are bioweapons.

“As far as I know, if they injure someone, they can infect them with a virus, and in the end that person becomes like this.”

“Infection? A virus?”

It had to be said: Americans had broad hearts and a deep faith in conspiracy theories.

After all, this was a nation where flat-earth ideas were widespread and moon-landing conspiracies had first taken root. Distrust of the government and corporations ran bone-deep, and after watching too many science-fiction blockbusters on top of that, Lian was already half convinced by Qian Gu’s words. With the evidence he had just given, she believed even more of it.

“Where are the captain and the others?”

“They... should be com—”

Thud, thud, thud!

Urgent footsteps came from behind Qian Gu. Turning around, he saw that the mercenary squad and Zheng Zha’s group had already arrived.

“What happened here?”

Matthew Addison spoke first, his eyes falling on the corpse. “You shot him?”

“Captain! He’s gone mad!”

Lian said loudly, “Take a close look for yourself!”

The mercenary captain walked over to the body and crouched down. With a tactical-gloved finger, he smeared some of the blood on the corpse’s chest. The stain was not fresh and bright; it had gone dark and had already become semi-dried and viscous. It was definitely not blood that had only just flowed out from the body.

He already had a bad feeling.

“We’re leaving the Hive at once!”

“Wasn’t our order to secure the mainboard for the Red Queen here and wait for reinforcements?”

Matthew Addison shook his head with a bitter smile. “There aren’t any reinforcements anymore... Prepare to move out!”

By then, Qian Gu had successfully regrouped with Zheng Zha and the others.

“Brave newcomer.”

Zhang Jie held a cigarette between his teeth and looked at Qian Gu with a laugh. “You really are the best, boldest newcomer I’ve ever seen.”

“Fortune favors the bold, and the timid starve.”

Qian Gu gave a shy smile. “I’m only trying to survive.”

“You really do love making your own decisions.”

Zhan Lan touched her forehead. “You hid one possibility when you talked about that deduction earlier, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

Qian Gu did not deny it. There was no need to hide it anymore anyway.

“Huh?”

Zheng Zha looked puzzled. “What did Qian Gu hide?”

“The restriction.”

Zhan Lan chuckled. “The one-hundred-meter distance limit did not end just now. It was lifted only after Matthew Addison stepped into the laser corridor—in other words, at the point where the original story had him die.

“Main... that being, clearly did not set that restriction in stone.”

“Ah!”

Zheng Zha was startled. His brain had not yet degenerated entirely into muscle; he understood at once. “So you did that on purpose!”

“I was ninety percent certain.”

Qian Gu reached out and patted Zheng Zha and Mu Gang on the shoulders. “That was enough.”

That was a lie.

In truth, it had been a fifty-percent deduction-based guess, with an additional forty percent coming from the inertia of the plot. Mu Gang had been an accident.

“You brat!”

Mu Gang was somewhat annoyed, though only for a moment. “You clever people all talk in circles.”

They were alive, after all.

His thoughts were strangely straightforward: if they survived, that was good enough. As for being deceived or anything else, none of that seemed like a big deal.

“Speaking of which, you two should have gained something extra, right?”

Qian Gu shifted the topic and looked at the two men who had just returned in glory from the laser corridor. “I’m D.”

“I’m C.”

That was Mu Gang.

“I’m B.”

That was Zheng Zha.

A C-rank horror side story, and a B-rank horror side story.

Qian Gu grinned. “Interesting.”

The danger level of the same laser passage was roughly the same, yet one was C and the other B. That was interesting.

In other words, besides completion difficulty, there were other factors affecting it?

What could they be?

“What are you three muttering about now?” Zhan Lan touched her forehead, still not following. “I’m lost.”

Opportunity!

Qian Gu’s expression did not change. He lifted a hand and lightly tapped his knuckles against his forehead. In a calm voice, he said, “Brother Zhang Jie, you should have some things you haven’t told us yet, right?”

“Oh?”

Zhang Jie smiled. Taking a deep drag, he burned the half cigarette down to a glowing ash and flicked it away, exhaling a thick cloud of smoke. His voice turned faintly drowsy, as though he had slipped into some long-vanished memory.

“I said it before—you’re the best newcomer I’ve ever seen. Not a single newcomer has ever managed to get this far, including me.

“Resident Evil One isn’t a very difficult horror film. So long as you keep a clear head and have a bit of decent physical ability, you can get through it. Since the mission never mentioned it, I didn’t bring it up either. I never expected that you’d actually manage to obtain it.”

Zhan Lan turned her face and looked at Zhang Jie.

Li Xiaoyi opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it, then opened it again. In the end, no words came out at all.

He suddenly felt that he might be a little unnecessary now.

“Horror side story?”

Qian Gu was the first to break the riddle.

“Yes.”

Zhang Jie nodded heavily. He stubbed out the cigarette, then took out another, lit it, and inhaled deeply. He seemed to sink into a long memory, and there was a hint of drunken distance in his words.

“That was my first horror film, Nightmare on Elm Street One. The scar on my face was left by the demon in that dream.

“Killing Freddy, that demon, could not only earn 5,000 reward points, but also a B-rank horror side story. That was the first time I ever saw a side story, and the only time.”

Zhan Lan asked, “A side story? What is it used for?”

“The Main God Space is capable of anything.”

Zhang Jie paused. “Magic and legendary items, like spell scrolls, talismans, even medicinal pills; and future-tech items, like invisibility cloaks, enhancement serums, even bloodlines and cultivation methods. It seems there is nothing you can imagine that the Main God cannot provide.

“But all of that, aside from reward points, also requires side stories.”