Chapter 159: Otaku
He Wen Bin saw Zhang Xiao Qiang disappear right in front of him in an instant and a handgun suddenly flew up right in front of him. He recognized it as Zhang Xiao Qiang’s handgun and immediately panicked, he did not know what happened in front, two steps ahead was a large hole spanning 5m in diameter with very long sides. The only way to get across the large hole was to use the small protruding floor which was less than 50cm against the wall. The large hole was extremely deep to the point that even the torchlight beam could not reveal the depth of the hole. He Wen Bin did not know if Zhang Xiao Qiang was dead or alive, but Three decided to send people down. If Zhang Xiao Qiang was alive, they had to see him, if he was dead, they had to see the body. Zhang Xiao Qiang had always been the one leading and taking the point, he was always the first to bear the danger, allowing the Combat Team and Three to be completely convinced of his abilities, now that they were in a foreign environment, none of them dared to harbor any ill intentions.
Three got two men to stand by the side of the hole and shout endlessly while he brought the rest to search into the storeroom from before, anything that resembled a rope would be taken, anything that could be burnt were also taken. All the wooden planks around were ripped apart and burnt, lighting the space above the pitch black hole up. After everyone verified that there was another entrance to a passageway, they ignored it and focused on pulling Zhang Xiao Qiang up.
Many wires were tired around a member of the Combat Team, who then held onto the line and stood at the slope and slowly descended. He shone the torchlight all around, aside from his smooth path of descent, the rest of the slope had extremely strange formations, some of the surfaces were as perfect as though a blade had sliced through, some were as vertical as spears and some resembled the peak of mountains. Seeing the sharp edges, many people felt the skin on their head turn numb, if they had fallen onto the sharp edges, having an intact corpse would be the best scenario, it was possible that one might be cut into pieces from a fall. The member prayed that Zhang Xiao Qiang would be a completely intact corpse, otherwise he would have a difficult time pulling all of him up!
Witnessing the scene before him, he almost let go of the torch in his hand, the bottom was a triangular hollow ground piled with large and small rocks, the large ones were the size of trucks littered all around with the small ones the size of tables. There were even smaller ones that were not visible, all of which were blocked by the dense mass of zombie bodies all over. There was no lack of D-type Zombies or S-type Zombies. On an incline 2m above the zombies, Boss Zhang Xiao Qiang had stopped himself by stepping on his sword that had been stabbed into the ground with his upper body leaning on the slope. Zhang Xiao Qiang seemed to be grabbing onto something with his hands, supporting himself from falling into the zombie horde with the occasional S-type Zombies jumping up with the intent of biting Zhang Xiao Qiang to feed the other zombies, but their size were shorter and with the high inclination of the slope, they were not even able to reach Zhang Xiao Qiang’s feet and fell again and again.
One of his hand was grabbing onto a groove in the slope tightly, he only knew that he could not give up in that dangerous position, his current position was extremely terrible mostly because he couldn’t see anything. He already knew what was beneath him, previously after entering the cave, they never found any zombie corpses or human-related bones, but there were things below still moving, which meant that the people before them had used this naturally formed terrain to lure the zombies into the hole. Only a few of the zombies had died inside the hole, so the rest were unable to move much until Zhang Xiao Qiang fell in like them. The very first thing that Zhang Xiao Qiang had stepped on was a zombie’s head, upon thinking that he had almost fallen into a zombie nest, his back immediately broke out in cold sweat. He was not afraid of falling into a zombie nest, but afraid because he could not see anything. His blindness caused the zombies’ largest disadvantage to become their greatest advantage and Zhang Xiao Qiang’s strongest reliance had become useless.
He could only wait quietly, he knew that Three would not give him up and hoped for Three to send someone down. But he did not have the intentions to rely on Three to send someone down, he had always relied on himself to get out off and survive from all sorts of situations and predicaments. At that moment, he could only persevere, if he did not, he would have to retrieve the 3 hand grenades from his bag and explode along with the zombies, he would kill as many as he could. That was his thoughts until a ray of light shone by his side.
The men above all struggled to pull Zhang Xiao Qiang up. After reaching the top, he disregarded his image and sat on the ground while unscrewing a military water bottle, gulping down the content joyously. The man who went down to save him started to brag to his comrades about how he saw the zombies below and how dangerous it was. Zhang Xiao Qiang carefully sized him up.
He was not old and looked to be around 24 to 25 years of age. He was slightly taller than Zhang Xiao Qiang at about 170cm and was scrawny, looking as though he weighed only 50kg. The military uniform he had on was obviously too big for him, even when he held onto a weapon, he looked extremely sloppy. He was unlike the others who looked extremely fitting in their uniforms. He had a thick black framed spectacles with a rope that fastened it to the back of his head. He had an average look and could even be said that he looked nerdy, the kind that would get bullied by others. No one would have ever thought that he had actually fought for his life and was able to survive till where he was, where even when he was chosen to go down the slope, he was not dispirited, he was a flexible young man.
“What’s your name?” Zhang Xiao Qiang had some impression from the spectacles, he remembered that when He Wen Bing, Lu Ren Yi, and the others escaped into the small courtyard, he was one of the few charging in with him. Although he looked extremely nerdy, his performance was far more manly than the more masculine men who appeared to look ferocious.
When he saw Zhang Xiao Qiang ask for his name, he immediately became more open. He did not dare to look Zhang Xiao Qiang in the eyes, but lowered his head and spoke: “I’m called Otaku….”
“Otak? Otaku? ….” He spoke too softly, causing Zhang Xiao Qiang to not hear him.
“I-I mean, my last name’s Wang, I’m called Wang Chong, I used to enjoy going on the Internet in the past, so people called me the Internet Geek….” It might have been Zhang Xiao Qiang’s assertive form of questioning that stirred him as he started to babble non-stop….
Wang Chong was 9 years younger than Zhang Xiao Qiang, born in the year 1987 with a normal family where his parents were unimportant figures like the majority of the ordinary folks who lived simple lives. His family was neither living badly or well off, Wang Chong naturally grew up rather ordinarily, his parents were normal citizens but towards Wang Chong, their teachings were rather minimal and carefree, they allowed him to live and experience his own life but not create or provoke trouble outside. Upon listening to his parents’ advise, the ordinary Wang Chong became gentle, disliked quarrels and was more of a coward and had a slight self-inferior complex.
Under other people’s scrutiny, Wang Chong was used to being a coward and be self-abased all the way until graduation when he worked part-time, where he had a lucky break and assisted and gained the favor of a big boss. The big boss bought goods from his business, signing a 2 million dollars cheque for the transaction, where he would consolidate all the finished products for the boss. Just like that, he earned a commission of 200 thousand. At the following New Year festival, he kept the cold hard cash into a bag and boarded a coach to rush home. The day that he regained his confidence from struggling at work was the day the virus broke out, while he was sleeping on the bus home. Upon thinking about his parents that he had not met for a year, upon thinking about his younger sister that had started college, upon thinking about his loving grandmother’s kind smile and upon thinking about his past love of 4 years ago, he smiled. He had planned to use his hard-earned money and courage to find her, look at her, regardless of the consequence, to seek back the love. Regardless if it failed or it succeeded, only through it could he become a real man, face life, enjoy life, to create life.
After that, he experienced all sorts of danger and difficulties and finally escaped from the vicinity of J City, he was the only one who escaped out of the large hotel, and after joining up with Brother Long, he settled the unyielding emotions from his heart and became a real man, and was able to survive.