Yang Zhang armed himself with the pitchfork he had found in the shed. Because it had a long-range and could hold off those zombies, it was his most effective weapon. At least for now.

Like this, Yang Zhang and Chestnut strode through the forest happily. The forest was a lot safer than the city or anywhere with humans in it.

Because there wasn't much in the forest except for lush trees and animals, as long as it wasn't a tiger or, even worse, a mutated tiger, then Yang Zhang did not need to worry.

"Besides, I have you, Chestnut!"

"Squeak!"

Yang Zhang walked past that territorial tree from yesterday and saw that his luggage was still there. He still wanted to get it back, even though at least half of his belongings must have been destroyed at this point.

But he still thought that for sure he could save his phone. He needed that phone for documentation and… uh… his file full of downloaded porn, hehe.

But he knew that he would have to find a way to do it without alerting the tree, or he wouldn't be able to get his luggage back.

He stood at a safe distance and then grabbed a nearby stick. He threw it into the tree's territory, but there was no response. Then he looked at Chestnut on his shoulder and smirked.

"Chestnut, can you help me?"

"Squeak?"

Yang Zhang carefully grabbed Chestnut and placed the squirrel near the tree's territory. Chestnut tilted its head curiously.

"Go on, Chestnut. Try to walk inside," Yang Zhang said. He was confident in Chestnut's agility. If that tree started swinging its vine again, he was sure Chestnut could dodge it.

Chestnut didn't seem to understand the assignment. It just entered the tree territory and then started collecting chestnuts, putting them inside its mouth, and then zapping them to make roasted chestnuts.

"Right, so the tree is not hostile to plants or animals. It's only hostile to humans!"

Yang Zhang already knew that putting a Brain Bead in the same soil as a plant would give it consciousness, while letting an animal eat a Mana Bead would result in the animal acquiring an ability.

"But what would happen if an animal eats a Brain Bead, or I plant a Mana Bead in the soil?" Yang Zhang wondered.

The more he thought about it, the more curious he got. He wasn't sure if he could get another Mana Bead, though, since it originated inside the brain of a human ability user.

But he could collect lots and lots of Brain beads!

Yang Zhang had set his goal and then called Chestnut, "Chestnut, come here! We're going now!"

"Squeak!" Chestnut grabbed a few more chestnuts and roasted them as it returned to Yang Zhang and gave some of them to its master.

"This is our breakfast, right? Hehe, thanks, little guy!" Yang Zhang accepted the food happily. He put Chestnut on his shoulder again and set off. "Alright, Chestnut, we can do this together! Let's find some Brain Beads and experiment. Maybe we can create a living plant that can grab my luggage!"

"Squeak!"

**

They arrived at the outer part of the forest that was connected to an empty road. The road had been deserted for a year already, so, unfortunately, there weren't any cars around, or if there were any, they had crashed or been ransacked. Any usable cars had already been taken by humans to their base.

In this apocalypse world, survival was the most important. People had returned to the primitive way of surviving, so nobody took jewelry, money, or gold.

Instead, people started trading food and ammo.

Yang Zhang thought there would be zombies on the road, but he didn't find any. It must've been because he was on the other side of the forest.

He was actually somewhat lost and he didn't know how to return to the path leading to his old shelter. He also forgot to mark the path, so he was utterly lost.

"Well, at least I already marked the path back to that territorial tree. Besides, I have you. You can guide us back to the tree, right, Chestnut?"

"Squeak?"

…

Somehow, he doubted that Chestnut knew the way, either, "Oh well, here goes nothing, I guess."

Yang Zhang and Chestnut continued walking until they saw a small gas station. There wasn't anything to find, though, not even abandoned cars.

Thinking that there might be some supplies that he could scavenge, snacks and water at least, he walked over to the mini-mart.

But when he entered the empty and dark mini-mart, he found nothing. All the aisles were empty, except for a few. A group of ability users must have reached this place first and taken all the food.

"Aish, they really left me with nothing," Yang Zhang started scavenging around, trying to find anything usable, or at least something he could eat for lunch.

It was too dark to see much, but he found a light bulb and then gave it to Chestnut, "Little guy, hold this."

"Squeak!"

Chestnut held the lightbulb, and it lit up brightly, giving Yang Zhang a better look inside the mini-mart.

"Hehe, who needs a flashlight when you have an electric squirrel by your side?"

Yang Zhang only stopped searching once he managed to find a few untouched snacks in the corner.

"Hehe, at least we can eat chips today, Chestnut!" Yang Zhang said as he took the snacks.

There were too many snacks to carry without using a bag of some kind, but as he thought about how to solve the problem he was distracted by the feeling of a cold drop of something wet landing on his head. Thinking it was a broken pipe, he ignored it.

But when a drip landed on his hand, and he realized that it was sticky. He slowly tilted his head up and saw a female zombie peeking back at him from a big hole in the ceiling.

The zombie's mouth was opening and drooling continuously at the sight of a human. In a flash, it jumped from the ceiling to attack Yang Zhang.

"RAARRGHH!"

"HOLY FUCK!"