"Hahh... hahh..."
Shen Feng leaned against the tiger's corpse, panting heavily. He tightly gripped the shotgun in his hands, with a few more shells in his pocket.
He had already reloaded the gun and, after familiarizing himself with its mechanism, had mastered the basics of loading, disabling the safety, and so on.
Only by clutching the weapon tightly could he feel any sense of security.
After catching his breath for a while longer, his tense nerves began to relax, and strength gradually returned to his aching legs. Shen Feng stood up, shut the door, and hoisted the heavy shotgun to begin exploring the police station.
A colony of bats had taken up residence in the gloomy building, and startled by the earlier gunshot, they were now flying in and out.
Aside from them, and various insects, there were no other large animals to be found.
This made sense; it was a tiger's territory, after all, which naturally deterred other animals.
There were still quite a few petrified figures in uniform inside the building. Shen Feng maneuvered around them and found the armory in the basement.
The armory door was sealed shut, but with a shotgun in hand, this was hardly a challenge for Shen Feng.
Shen Feng pressed the muzzle to the lock and blew it apart with a single blast. The scene inside the storeroom made his eyes light up.
The world before the Petrification Disease outbreak had clearly been in turmoil, as the police had significantly increased their firepower.
Rows of handguns and submachine guns lined the gun racks, along with case after case of ammunition, and even hand grenades.
In total, the armory contained thirty to forty handguns, five submachine guns, two shotguns, and five hand grenades, as well as some tear gas launchers and net guns.
There was also a good supply of bulletproof vests, riot shields, batons, and other equipment.
Walking into the armory and running his hand over the firearms and ammunition, Shen Feng felt a profound sense of security wash over him.
With these powerful weapons, he would be the King of Beasts in this urban jungle!
Faced with the fruits of human civilization, what beast could possibly stand a chance?
He couldn't help but feel grateful for all the first-person shooters he'd played and all the action movies he'd watched.
It was thanks to the experience from those works of fiction that he had any idea how to use these weapons at all.
After a bit of practice, Shen Feng quickly got the hang of it. He then put on a police stab-proof vest and a backpack and began to arm himself.
Two police handguns, a submachine gun, a shotgun, four grenades hanging from his belt, plus a massive amount of ammunition, packed until he couldn't carry any more.
In addition to food and daily necessities, his backpack was also stuffed with ammunition.
After the tiger attack, he had developed an insatiable craving for firepower.
All told, the gear weighed dozens of pounds, and Shen Feng struggled to walk.
But he didn't leave any of it behind.
He figured he would have to stay fully armed in the days to come, so he needed to get used to the weight as soon as possible.
Fully armed, Shen Feng went to the massive, floor-to-ceiling windows in the second-floor lobby. He set up a pot he'd found in the station's kitchen over a pile of firewood and started a fire to cook.
He took out a can of braised beef—expired, but not yet bulging—and two packets of dehydrated vegetables, tossing them into the pot to make a soup.
Shen Feng also cut off half of the remaining venison, tore it into chunks, and threw it in as well.
The aroma of the stew quickly filled the air. Shen Feng pulled a palm-sized compressed biscuit from his bag, smashed it with his gun butt, and added the pieces to the pot.
The ladle was huge, probably meant for a large communal cookpot, but Shen Feng paid it no mind, slowly stirring the contents of his own pot.
The compressed biscuit, who knew how many years old, slowly dissolved, turning the mixture into a thick porridge.
The aromas of the aged canned beef and the fresh venison mingled, creating an enticing fragrance.
The dried vegetables, which had nearly turned to powder, sprang back to life in the hot water, swelling and floating to the surface in a medley of colors. It looked and smelled surprisingly appealing.
Although the ingredients smelled fine, Shen Feng let it cook a while longer, just to be safe.
Once the food had thickened into a rich stew, Shen Feng took the pot off the fire and set it down in front of the floor-to-ceiling window.
He then sat cross-legged on the floor, with two guns placed beside him. Holding the large ladle and looking out at the view, he scooped up some of the stew, blew on it a couple of times, and began to eat.
"SLURP..." Shen Feng took a sip of the stew. It tasted alright. The aroma was rich, and the texture was a bit like a savory meat congee.
It wasn't exactly delicious, but it was hot, salty, and fragrant—a luxury under the circumstances.
Shen Feng let out a satisfied sigh. The tension that had gripped him finally, completely dissolved.
It was dusk. The setting sun bled across the sky, painting the clouds in shades of gold and red. Looking out the window, the entire urban jungle was gilded in a dreamy, crimson-gold light.
The petrified figures in the courtyards and on the streets seemed to come alive in that light, as if bringing the dead city back to life with them.
He was still overcome by a sense of dreamlike unreality.
This time yesterday, he had just finished class and was getting ready for his part-time job at a barbecue stand. Today, he was in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by the Petrification Disease, sitting in a dilapidated building eating a stew made from compressed biscuits and expired canned beef.
Thinking about it, the written language here was Chinese, the society's level of development was almost identical to his home world's, and even the newspapers referred to this planet as Earth.
So, this wasn't a different world in the same Cosmos. It was the Earth of a Parallel Cosmos—an Earth that had already suffered its apocalypse!
'Who developed the True Apocalypse Game?'
'Why was I chosen as a player?'
'What do these missions mean?'
'And most importantly, can I ever go back?'
'Where am I even supposed to find my mission objectives?'
Shen Feng's mind was a fog of questions. According to the game's description of the Petrification Disease, he should have been infected from the very first minute he arrived in this world.
And looking at the five missions the game had given him, they were all fundamentally related to research on the Petrification Disease.
'Then the place I need to go must be this world's primary research institution for the Petrification Disease.'
'My objectives must be there.'
'To find out where that is, I'll need to look through information and records from around the time the Petrification Disease apocalypse started.'
Wait a minute...
A flash of inspiration struck Shen Feng. He suddenly recalled a headline from the newspaper he'd seen at the newsstand:
"...According to Professor Chen of the National Academy of Sciences, the latest vaccine is nearing completion..."
'The National Academy of Sciences!'
'Could that be my destination?'
'It's a shame the power is out,' he thought. 'Otherwise, I could use a computer to look up more information about the Petrification Disease.'
The sky turned completely dark. Night fell, and the urban jungle was swiftly plunged into a darkness so total it was like a black void.
All was deathly silent, making every small sound incredibly distinct.
Shen Feng added a few more sticks to the fire, then glanced outside again and suddenly froze.
In the distance, shrouded in darkness, a light had appeared in a window at the top of a tall building!
'Is someone else alive?!'
'Did someone survive the Petrification Disease?!'
Just then, a sound of footsteps came from the darkness outside—rapid, heavy, and deeply unsettling.
A dark figure darted in from outside the courtyard and stopped below, seeming to look up at Shen Feng.
Shen Feng leaped to his feet, grabbed a burning piece of wood from the fire, and hurled it out the window.
The flickering firelight revealed a humanoid creature on all fours.
Its raw, red muscle tissue and blood vessels were exposed, as if it had been flayed, like a diagram from a biology class.
On its skinless, blood-red face, exposed eyeballs were locked onto Shen Feng!
And on that face, it seemed to be smiling!
Shen Feng raised his shotgun.