The Trembling World

Chapter 139 - Starvation

TL: xDh20, LifeisaJourney

ED: NoriPixel

“So, what is your world like? Is it only one main island with six satellite-like islands surrounding it? Were there further expeditions going beyond to places not explored yet?” Liu Gan asked Zhou MingLiang. There were a lot of things he didn't understand about this world, so this was a good opportunity to find out more.

“No, we are part of large country. Once we cross this vast ocean, there are more countries. However, after the catastrophe, many of the networks shut down. We are at NinJing city, but we don't know what the conditions are like at the main city. Therefore it's pointless to wonder about countries that are even further away.” Zhou MingLiang answered Liu Gan.

“On this planet, are oceans a large portion of it? How many countries in total?” Liu Gan continued asking.

“Yes, around 95% of it are covered by an ocean. Only a small portion of it is landmass. There's around a hundred countries. It's all separated by the ocean. Our country, Cathay Country, is considered quite large. There are some countries that are even smaller than NinJing City.” Zhou MingLiang added.

[TL: Cathay Country is the old name for northern China, back in the medieval ages.]

“On your planet, does everyone speak the same language we are speaking right now?” Liu Gan asked after thinking for a little while.

“There are different spoken languages! There are people of gold colored hair with blue eyes, as well as very dark skinned people. They both speak different languages than us. Even in our surroundings, there are people who are of the same color but speak different languages than us.” Zhou MingLiang shook his head.

The players had become very confused after they heard what Zhou MingLiang said, and it was reflected within their expressions. This world seemed to be quite similar to their own, but there were actually quite a lot of differences.

Liu Gan didn’t speak afterwards. The interaction between the players and the survivors intensified. The survivors started questioning the players about their world. Thus, they chatted about the games they played, novels they read, songs they sang, competitions they watched, artists they like. They chatted about everything. Between this cultural exchange, it was confirmed that both world had their differences and similarities.

For example, many of the more famous songs that have been heard in the real world had also existed here, in this world. The composers and artists were different, however.

“When you were at the hospital with over hundreds of survivors, where did you find food to eat?” Han GuangMing suddenly asked after the chatter had begun to die down.

“Yes, after these couple of days, we didn’t see any of you guys come out from the hospital?” Wang DeCheng continued questioning the survivors.

The survivors from the base in the hospital had two reasons for attacking the supermarket. The first reason was that Tiger Lord had kidnapped the female survivors from there. The other reason was that they had no food, so they had to steal food from the supermarket.

During this period of time, they had caught a trespassing player, but they didn’t use this player for hostage exchange for the women who were caught by Tiger Lord. Instead, they wanted to exchange with Tiger Lord a fifty kilogram bag of rice. Needless to say, Tiger Lord hadn’t cared about the player’s safety. He ambushed the exchange site and slit the hostage player’s throat on the spot.

When they had to quickly depart, the hospital had many elderly and sick people escaping. The numbers were close to a few hundred. It didn’t seem like there were disorder amongst the people. It couldn’t have gotten to the point where people had started eating each other, could it?

“If I told you guys that aside from eating tree barks and grassroot, we also ate zombie meat, would you believe me?” After a long silence, HuJun finally replied to Wang DeCheng’s question.

“You ate zombie meat!?” The players shouted after hearing HuJun’s reply. Many players were shocked and frightened. Those players felt a feeling of regurgitation that resounded from deep within their stomachs.

[TL: I’m so done. This took me a week to digest before I came back to translate some more.]

“We had a biochemist in the hospital and he was very knowledgeable. After the supermarket was dominated by the players, he found a place where he could secretly investigate the properties of zombie meat when we couldn’t scavenge anymore food. This was all because he was famished.

“According to his investigation, the zombie meat doesn’t follow the traditional definition of rotting meat. It was only modified by a virus to become poisoned flesh, and the proteins within it haven’t been denatured. Although you can’t eat it raw, that would definitely infect you. But after heat processing the meat at high temperatures, it is possible to kill the virus within the meat.”

“Purely processing the meat through high temperatures kill the virus within it, but it wouldn’t clear out the virus-produced toxins. The toxins are deadly, so eating a few pieces could potentially be fatal. This biochemist used his knowledge to perform experiments on it. He immersed it in medicinal drugs, then extracted its liquid, then distilled it. This allowed the toxins to separate from the meat. Then…” HuJun didn’t continue further.

To survive, they had to go beyond the bottomline of what it had meant to be human. To fight against the famished feeling, they could only resort to this method.

“How does the processed zombie meat taste?” asked a chubby player to HuJun.

“Very disgusting to eat, even after processing it, there was a heavy flavor of medicine. Only when under extreme hunger did they resort to this option. The process of treating the zombie meat wasn’t that simple, and there were hundreds of people. As such, the processed zombie meat could only be reserved for the very important individuals. The remaining elderly and sickly were only able to obtain small portions. It was just enough so that they wouldn’t starve to death…” HuJun continued in a whisper.

The players didn’t continue asking. Under this cruel reality, they really had to go all out for them to survive.

As they were on this topic, the survivors viewed the players with hate, although they didn’t bring it up. There were so much food in the supermarket that, even when they were escaping, the players still had an abundance. Meanwhile, over a hundred survivors in the hospital were starving to the point where they accepted the twisted logic of eating zombie meat.

HuJun didn’t say it aloud… but during the trial period, the biochemist had needed people to test out the questionable products, so he offered them to the elderly and sick. However, the source of the meat had not been disclosed to them. In the early stages of the trial period, as much as seven or eight people had died.

What a truly sorrow story.

After a moment of silence, Zhou MingLiang changed the topic to divert people’s attention. Others also played along to deliberately change the topic, and no one mentioned the processed zombie meat.

While the players and survivors were chatting in the concave pits, the steel pillar didn’t slant any further down. Aside from the huge crack from earlier, there weren't any additional cracks or collapses. The nodes connecting the suspension cable and the bridge deck didn’t come loose.

The flames on the burning cars on the bridge deck were also being extinguished slowly. The thousands of zombies that had rushed up to it all burned to death. There was a clear path onto the other side of the bridge.

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