Pa! Pa!

"Ughh…" Yang Zhang woke up once he felt a vine slapping his cheek plenty of times. He opened his eyes and saw Little Ivy, Chestnut, and Lt. Spicy Wing staring at him with worried eyes.

Yang Zhang got up dazedly and found himself still in the cave. But the sun was rising, and the bonfire had died hours earlier.

"What happened?" Yang Zhang asked his pets.

"Vii, Vii, Viii!"

"I fainted after the ghost entered the bear's body?!" Yang Zhang's eyes quickly darted at the bear in front of the cave. The bear had switched position from the last time Yang Zhang moved it, and the eyes of the bear had turned white, which shouldn't happen because the bear's eyes were pure black the last time he saw it.

Yang Zhang got alert instantly, "I—Is that true? The ghost from yesterday—"

"Chirp!"

"Squeak! Squeak!"

Chestnut and Lt. Spicy Wing also told the same thing. The ghost entered the bear's body and scared Yang Zhang until he fainted. Then the bear dropped like a puppet whose string had been cut.

"Squeak!"

"And the white mist flew to the sky?" Yang Zhang heard the story from Chestnut.

Honestly, as outrageous as it sounded, Yang Zhang saw it with his own eyes, how the white mist entered the bear corpse and scared him until he fainted.

Yang Zhang swallowed his saliva hardly and then got up quickly from the ground.

"Alright, gang, let's just go now. We still have to go to the east. We can't waste our time here."

"Chirp?"

"Scared? Who's scared?!" Yang Zhang challenged Spicy Wing, who asked if Yang Zhang was scared.

But when he saw the bear again, he shuddered all around his body and rushed out of the cave.

"O—Okay, let's leave now! Time to go for another adventure!"

"Squeak!"

"Chirp!"

"Viii!"

Little Ivy stretched her new vines and started swinging from one branch to another.

Little did they know, there was a white mist floating on top of the cave when they left. The white mist entered the bear's body, and the corpse reanimated once more, with white mist coming from its nose and a pair of shining white eyes.

**

Yang Zhang stopped for a drink in the river nearby and had another four-eyed grilled fish for breakfast, while Chestnut and Spicy Wing ate fruits they found around.

After washing his face, Yang Zhang continued swinging for almost three hours.

"Vii…"

Yang Zhang realized that Little Ivy was getting tired after swinging nonstop, so Yang Zhang commanded, "Go up! Let's see if we can find anything!"

Little Ivy propelled Yang Zhang to the tallest tree she could find. Yang Zhang stood on a branch and squinted to look around the forest, hoping that he could finally find a sign of life anywhere in here.

He was hopeless when he saw nothing around him. Again, he was left with disappointment.

Until he suddenly heard a loud sound echoed around the quiet forest.

BANG! BANG!

"Waaah!" Yang Zhang hugged the tree trunk as he was shocked by the loud gunshot. He looked around to spot the sound source and found a puff of smoke coming from the northeast of his current spot.

He didn't know what happened, nor did he know what was waiting for him if he approached that spot.

But it was a lot better than swinging around like a lost guy for the whole day. He also didn't want to return empty-handed to his hut after a long trip.

"Let's go there, Ivy!"

"Vii!"

Yang Zhang swung towards the direction of the smoke but stopped when he almost reached the spot.

He told his pets to hide inside his body because he didn't want them to get noticed, and those new people might start asking questions that Yang Zhang couldn't answer.

Yang Zhang sneakily hid behind a tree and peeked. He saw three men holding real guns in their hands. They looked like a regular human, but of course, no one could determine whether they were just humans with immunity or ability users. Because even the ability users usually had guns for further protection.

'But there is no way humans with immunity like me can run around freely in open space, with guns as well!' Yang Zhang thought.

The government always saw them, the normal human with immunity, as a fragile species treated as lab rats. Because the future of the Z-20 vaccine was with them.

But, the government had been unsuccessful in creating the vaccine even after one year since the outbreak, and now the normal humans were just a burden.

'They must be ability users,' Yang Zhang concluded. He decided to keep peeking and listening attentively to their conversation.

"Idiot, don't waste your bullet like that! It's hard to get weapons!"

"Hey, I wasn't wasting it! I'm trying to shoot that wild boar with rainbow stripes! We can eat that if we could shoot it death!"

"And you missed!"

"Well, it's still a good try, right?"

"You two, stop wasting our time with your fight. We need to keep hunting," an old man in his 50s warned the two young men in this group of three. "Let's just keep going."

The two young men glared at each other but decided to follow the old man deeper into the forest.

Yang Zhang decided to follow them sneakily, but the moment he stepped once, he accidentally stepped on a branch and—

Crack.

The old man turned his head towards Yang Zhang's direction and fired a shot.

BANG!

"Wha!"

Yang Zhang quickly ducked to avoid the shotgun.

"Who's there!?" The old man asked with a loud voice. He cocked his gun again and rushed towards Yang Zhang's direction.

"Fuck!" Yang Zhang got up and turned away. He was ready to run but was stunned when the old man fired the second shot from behind.

BANG!

Yang Zhang was shocked the hot bullet almost brushed his ear before hitting the tree in front of him.

"Stay on the spot before I blow your head off!"