Frank's Temptation

Free food... That's a joke! In these apocalyptic times, who would still fall for such a lowly trick? Searching the convenience store was just a side task, unfortunately yielding no useful resources.

Henry exited the convenience store and turned his attention to the nearby Starlight Building. **[This building was just completed, there are no zombies, but also no resources...]** Perfect, this is the place!

Henry walked up to the entrance of Starlight Building. The main door was locked with a chain. Looking through the window, he could see the clean marble floors and some construction materials stacked alongside. It indeed had been completed not long ago.

Henry pulled out his katana and struck down at the chain lock. With a clatter, the chain fell to the ground. Pushing the door open, a strong smell of fresh paint wafted out. With the citywide power outage, the elevators were definitely out of service. He could only enter the emergency staircase and swiftly ran up the stairs.

Climbing 45 floors, including passing through a firebreak layer, Henry didn't even need to rest. By the time he reached the rooftop, he was only slightly out of breath.

He approached the edge of the rooftop, looking down over nearly half of the North River area. There were four bridges connecting North River to South River, two of which had already collapsed. Two remained intact. One of them, about two kilometers from the Starlight Building, was the Glorious Bridge.

One side of this bridge had collapsed, but the main structure was still intact, jammed with cars. The road was densely packed with zombies. From his high vantage point, he could see two or three Crawlers swiftly jumping from one car roof to another.

From a distance, it looked like several oddly-shaped monkeys were wreaking havoc aimlessly. Occasionally, zombies roamed without purpose, accidentally slipping into the water from the collapsed sections...

About 100 meters away, there was another bridge, Yongyu Bridge. Judging by its design, it seemed to be an older construction, with an antiquated style. Because the bridge was narrow, it had been converted into a one-way passage. There were almost no cars blocked on it, nor were there any zombies.

Henry took out his AMR sniper rifle and attached the scope. He could see many bloodstains on the road surface. There should have been zombies here, but they had been killed by passing survivors. The bodies had been harvested, so only patches of blood remained on the ground. This meant that someone had crossed this bridge into South River!

Henry followed the bridge and the trail of bloodstains... Soon, at a hot spring hotel, he spotted traces of people. On the second-floor balcony, two lookouts were seated, each with a katana at their waist. Next to the hot spring hotel was a love hotel. Henry remembered clearly. When he had slain Minako and others, he had collected a room card from this very love hotel on their persons. It seemed they were indeed hiding here!

Ha, found you! A smile appeared on Henry's lips. Storage ring fragments, here I come!

One hour ago...

In the regional chat channel...

Frank was live streaming himself eating ramen, topped with several slices of meat and mushrooms.

As he slurped his noodles voraciously, Frank boasted confidently:

"I told you there was free food in North River, and you didn't believe me! I just wanted to prove with facts that here we have plenty of food and water, and safe shelters too! After I finish eating, I'll send you a video of the shelter I recorded in North River!"

South River and North River are two distinct regions. The regional chat channel only works within the same area. Once in North River, you can only chat in the North River chat channel. That's why Frank had to carry his ramen to South River to be able to stream live. Otherwise, he would have had to transport videos to South River by recording them.

"My God, real ramen, and it's hot... I haven't had anything warm to eat in days, eating biscuits every day is such a pain!"

"You're munching on biscuits? Lucky you, I've been on dog food, and I haven't complained!"

"Envious you get dog food, at least there's some meat in that!"

"But really, once you get to North River, is there actually hot food available without needing to give anything in return?"

Seeing someone tempted, Frank waved his hand and said, "It's all about sticking together here, strength in numbers!"

"Of course, there's a need to contribute, but you don't have to fight zombies. Just help with sweeping the floor, washing dishes, stuff like that!"

"It's just doing what you can, after all, they give you food, and it wouldn't be right doing nothing in return, right?"

With these words, the chat channel suddenly became even busier.

"What? Just sweeping and washing dishes? That sounds too easy!"

"These chores are just the regular things we'd do at home anyway, it hardly counts as work!"

"Yeah, I joined a camp with my own people, and the workload is huge. Every day I have to practice chopping off dummy heads for five hours, and later we still have to gather food. If you hoard food, you get beaten up... it's too tough!"

"I also need to go out and fight zombies. Just yesterday, a friend who joined the camp with me got half his face bitten off by a zombie right in front of me..."

"Not having to kill zombies and still getting food... it feels a bit unreal!"

"It might be possible to go... but will they treat us as one of their own?"

"Yeah, isn't it too risky to just go over like that? We don't even have friends there!"

Seeing these responses, Frank knew many were tempted. He quickly added:

"Don't worry, everyone. It's the apocalypse now, what else is there to divide us?"

"What matters is all of us survivors sticking together to overcome difficulties!"

"If we don't even have that bit of awareness, how can we achieve anything big? How can we possibly survive the apocalypse?"

"We're not in the old world anymore. Let's all drop our prejudices and unite as humankind!"

"Anyone wanting to join the North River camp can DM me, and those who can make it come to the bridge to meet up!"

"Those who can't make it, DM me your location, and someone will come to pick you up!"

"I'm currently near the bridge, in a restaurant. It's very safe around here!"

In the chat channel, many people remained rational, and some even advised others not to be fooled. Nevertheless, the temptation was too strong for some, who began to DM Frank. Some even started to leave their current camps and secretly headed towards the bridge!