Chapter 225 : Chapter 225 Luck
Fortunately, no more accidents occurred over the next two days, but Qi Zhimu's injuries did not improve; in fact, they worsened.
The things he had experienced since entering the Memory-Substance World—even an iron man would have likely collapsed long ago.
His current injuries could be described as dying without exaggeration. With almost no medical conditions available, he could only endure through sheer willpower.
The military finally sent a signal: armed vessels were heading to the designated port to rendezvous.
Since the armed squad lacked the conditions to penetrate deep into Grizzly City, they had to reach the port on their own to evacuate.
The armed squad carried limited supplies and could wait for six days at most.
Time was tight; Qi Zhimu had to set out despite his injuries.
Dead people are sometimes more useful than the living.
Isabella and the others' corpses were tied with ropes and dangled at a height where the large swarm of zombies could almost reach them, yet always fell just short.
The allure of the bloody scent was immediate.
The horde of corpses that had been tightly surrounding the staff apartment building quickly gathered toward the bait, clearing a relatively safe evacuation space.
Qi Zhimu and the other three quietly slid down from the second floor along the reinforced ropes, sneaking toward the parking lot while avoiding wandering straggler zombies.
The car belonging to the Protagonist of Disorder was there; hopefully, it hadn't been destroyed.
Upon reaching the edge of the parking lot, the group discovered a skeleton gnawed to the bone near the wreckage of a spaceship.
Shredded fragments of a uniform were scattered around.
When facing zombies seeking lives, as long as you run fast enough, the unlucky one is the person behind you.
If one gave the person behind a little "help," the safety margin for the one in front could increase exponentially.
Combined with the screams from a few days ago and Isabella's ruthless style, the owner of this skeleton was likely backstabbed by a companion before death.
"First, go to the Grizzly City Police Station Branch five kilometers away. We need some weapons to clear the path and for self-defense."
Following the plot of the original work, Qi Zhimu drafted a high-safety evacuation plan in advance.
The proportion of people turning into zombies at that police station branch was very high; it fell within a few days, and the survivors had no choice but to run.
"Okay!"
The Protagonist of Disorder slammed on the gas, and the car quickly sped out of the parking lot, leaving the zombies that had gathered at the noise far behind.
According to the settings of disorder, zombies in the early stages of the mutation were generally very weak.
Unless being bitten or scratched was equivalent to death, a zombie transformed from an adult usually couldn't overpower a human of the same size, winning only through numbers and the lethal virus.
With an open-book exam, even if one doesn't get a perfect score, at least they won't struggle with how to solve the problems.
Qi Zhimu and the others successfully reached the police station branch, cleared out some zombies, and entered the armory to scavenge a large quantity of firearms.
Relying on these weapons and knowledge of the plot, the group spent two days reaching the evacuation port and boarded the evacuation vessel.
Due to the deviation in the protagonist's destiny, he who should have died survived, and thus the evacuation slots changed to four.
It wasn't until this moment that Qi Zhimu told Herta that he was right.
They were indeed in the world of disorder, but it wasn't the movie; it was the original novel.
Therefore, the protagonist not dying didn't count as breaking the setting.
After seeing the island appearing in the distance, Qi Zhimu and Herta seamlessly transitioned into the Subspace of Fog City in the Memory-Substance World.
"Phew..."
Herta let out the breath she had been holding for a long time.
Qi Zhimu without magic... what kind of injuries would he suffer when facing the Death God's missions and pursuit?
Recalling the Death God's methods, she dared not think further.
This time, the mission executors weren't just her, but also Qi Zhimu.
To Herta's surprise, this experience could only be considered a close call; the frightening part was almost entirely from witnessing the Death God's murder scenes.
Except for the process being more realistic due to the lack of magic, the logic was basically the same.
The biggest difference lay with the last victim, Darlene from the swimming pool.
Magician Qi Zhimu's experience was to drain the water from the pool, cutting off the possibility of a water ghost appearing at the source.
Meanwhile, Original Human Qi Zhimu ignored the mission and let the Death God kill the target.
He keenly sensed the trap in the mission prompts and focused on the mobile phones that had been distributed.
According to his analysis, the role played by the phones in this mission was not worth mentioning at all.
The teammates were all useless dead weight, but putting that aside for now.
The main thing was that while the phones could only be used for communication and didn't even have numbers, there was a positioning icon in the signal bar.
The phones had a positioning function that the mission executors couldn't use, so... thinking about who it was actually for was terrifying.
Thinking of this, Qi Zhimu decisively threw the mission-issued phone into the middle of the main road and waited in the dark.
Soon, all his speculations were perfectly confirmed.
The death god incarnation drifted out from the darkness, ignoring physical constraints, and went straight for the discarded phone without even glancing toward where Qi Zhimu and Herta were hiding.
The two of them thus walked out of Fog City without further incident.
The next world was a vast, endless ocean.
They boarded that vessel and set sail in solitude.
Herta drifted above the sea like a ghost, watching her past self and Qi Zhimu pass through the thick fog and encounter a powerful octopus monster.
Here, it did not have the power Lotes had when fighting Magician Qi Zhimu; both its size and destructive power were far inferior, and its name wasn't even Lotes.
But the problem was, Qi Zhimu was also just a mortal who had stepped onto the path of abundance.
When the massive shadow beneath the sea approached, he lacked the ability to ride the wind.
The Giant Octopus wrapped several tentacles around the vessel, dragging both ship and crew into the deep sea.
Qi Zhimu didn't blindly swim upward; instead, he proactively swam out of the cabin to face the Giant Octopus in a life-and-death struggle.
The difference in size was vast. He found an opportunity to swim into the Giant Octopus's mouth with the current, going deep into its body to destroy key tissues from within, finally killing it.
He won this desperate battle, but he also broke several ribs.
By the time he cut open the corpse and found Herta, she had already fallen unconscious from drowning.
The ship was destroyed; even if he brought her to the surface, it seemed like a dead end.
Fortunately, providence favored Qi Zhimu.
When they surfaced, the two lifebuoys from the vessel happened to be nearby.
Unable to perform conventional first aid in the sea, Qi Zhimu could only squeeze out the last trace of the Power of Abundance in his body to keep Herta alive.
With one arm tightly hooked onto Herta's lifebuoy, he relied entirely on kicking his legs to swim laboriously toward the coordinates provided by the locator.
He had already lost his left arm, and dragging her with one hand in the sea was extremely inefficient.
If it were the sea area Magician Qi Zhimu had flown over, at this speed, he wouldn't be able to leave even if he swam for a year.
Watching all this, Herta's pupils trembled violently.
Only by witnessing a mortal face unspeakable danger firsthand can one understand that sense of insignificance and powerless despair.
She didn't have this experience, but that didn't stop her endless worry for Qi Zhimu.
Injured like this, with the ship destroyed—just how did he lead her out alive?
As time passed, the answer surfaced.
However long it took Magician Qi Zhimu to leave the Ocean World, it took Original Human Qi Zhimu the same amount of time.