Chapter 52

[Are these locals or players?]

[Long live my fellow fishing enthusiasts!]

[Damn, why didn't I think of coming to the apocalypse to fish? There must be tons of fish here!]

[Goodness, this guy is fully geared up, except he didn't bring a fishing platform. Probably too heavy to carry, otherwise fishing right in the middle of the river would be amazing.]

WW looked completely shocked. At this moment, the angler also noticed her and glanced at the dagger in her hand, initially panicking for a second.

Remembering that he had a divine body protection, he then spoke up, "You scared the life out of me."

The angler's name was Hou Hongcai. He was forty-three years old, and his greatest hobby in life was fishing.

The moment he saw the apocalyptic tourism livestream, he thought it was an absolute paradise for fishing.

After all, most humans stayed safely inside the bases, leaving only zombies outside, and zombies definitely did not eat fish.

Wouldn't the fish in the rivers be overflowing to the point of a disaster?

Hou Hongcai had signed up immediately. As for the so-called battle royale?

He had zero interest in that.

However, he would still need to kill one zombie eventually, just so he could bring the fish back with him.

Of course, if the fish in this river had all mutated, then he wouldn't bring any back; he couldn't possibly go around causing trouble for his own world.

Hou Hongcai had it all planned out. Ever since he dropped in, he had been searching for a water source all the way, and just as he finally found this place and settled down for a bit, someone showed up.

"Where did you come from?" he asked WW, looking at her. "If you're heading to the town, just walk straight ahead for about a thousand meters and you'll see the highway."

He didn't even have to guess to know that this person was definitely a tourist like him; after all, people living in the apocalypse certainly didn't have skin this fair and tender.

WW steadied herself against a tree with one hand. "Mister, why on earth are you fishing in a place like this?"

Hou Hongcai chuckled. "Because there's nobody here, obviously."

"Are you interested in fishing too? Let me tell you, in a place like this, I can catch something in under ten minutes!"

[Are the fish in this river even clean?]

[Is he going to fish up a zombie instead?!]

[Hey, looks like something's biting! Quick, let's see what it is!]

[WW is stunned. There are fishing enthusiasts out here in the middle of nowhere. Anglers are truly everywhere.]

[Angler: I know a place where there's nobody around. Serial killer: I know a place where there's nobody around.]

[Hahahaha!]

"It's biting!" WW watched from the side as the older man calmly lifted his rod.

A moment later, his brow furrowed deeply. He pulled up the fishing rod only to find that the hook at the end had completely vanished.

"The fish in this apocalypse..." Hou Hongcai gave an awkward chuckle, "...are a bit aggressive, huh."

WW rubbed her nose. "So what now? Do you have another fishing rod?"

Hou Hongcai sneered. With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the ruined rod onto the grass. "Don't worry!"

"I still have the legendary miraculous fishing rod!"

"You must have heard of the legend of the miraculous fishing rod, right?"

WW's eyes lit up. "I know, it's the rod sold by that vendor! I even bought some of her products, I just didn't bring them with me."

Hou Hongcai wagged his index finger. "Nonono, this miraculous fishing rod wasn't sold by that internet-famous vendor, but rather by a mysterious man to us."

"In our fishing community, we have given him the highest and most supreme title."

WW tilted her head. "What is it?"

"The God Who Saves the Skunked!" Hou Hongcai spread his arms wide, looked up at the sun in the distance, and took a deep breath.

"Because of it, countless anglers who always came home empty-handed have been saved. Because of it, children will never have to worry about not having fish to eat. Because of it, we shall walk with immense pride!"

WW: !!!

[Alright, alright, great advertisement. May I ask where these are sold?]

[To be honest, that miraculous fishing rod is probably sold by the vendor herself. Don't forget, the vendor looked completely different the last time she set up her stall. I suspect she knows disguise arts.]

[This naming convention: miraculous glasses, miraculous fishing rod—confirmed beyond a doubt, it's the vendor.]

[Hey, do you think if a zombie blew into the flute of happiness, it would feel happy too?]

[Good idea, though I doubt any streamer brought the flute of happiness with them. WW certainly didn't.]

"Little sis, just wait and watch, big brother will catch one for you to see right now!" Hou Hongcai bent down and picked up the canvas case of the fishing rod.

He slowly unzipped it, revealing a bright pink fishing rod that was truly dazzling.

"It's not that I like pink," Hou Hongcai said with an embarrassed smile. "It's just that they only had pink left when I went to buy it."

"Come, come, sit here and rest for a bit," he stepped aside, gesturing for WW to sit on the folding stool.

Hou Hongcai rolled up his sleeves, held the rod in one hand, and cast it straight into the river without even baiting the hook.

Scarcely ten seconds later, he watched the bobber twitching and declared, "Here it comes!"

WW and everyone in the livestream chat watched with their own eyes as he effortlessly hoisted up a...

Dark cyan fish.

The fish was about half a meter long, with sharp, long spikes growing out of its tail in chaotic, branch-like patterns. Its fins were splayed out like a duck's webbed feet, yet the surface of those fins was covered in snake-like patterns.

The fish's eyes were lifeless and dull.

Hou Hongcai: "Haha! What a fine fish, what a fine fish!"

Paying no mind to how terrifying the fish looked, he reeled it in. The moment the fish came close, it snapped its jaw open to reveal shark-like teeth and took a vicious bite out of his arm.

*Crack.* Its teeth instantly shattered and fell out.

Hou Hongcai hoisted the fish with one hand and tossed it onto the grass, then whipped out his phone and snapped photos rapidly.

[It's over, I can't even imagine how many anglers are going to be envious of him catching a zombie fish.]

[To be honest, I usually never use the miraculous fishing rod. Even though it guarantees a catch every single time, it lacks the true thrill of fishing. Alright, I admit it's because I don't even own a miraculous fishing rod hahahaha!]

[This fish looks so cool!]

[Damn! He's actually the first person to catch a zombie fish.]

[Can they open up more slots please? I've already got my fishing rod ready.]

"Pretty cool, right?" Hou Hongcai laughed after finishing his photos.

WW looked at the ferocious-looking creature. "Cool!"

The fish was indeed cool, though it inflicted a slight amount of mental corruption, but nothing major.

As a woman who played plenty of horror games on a regular basis, she wasn't even fazed by jump scares right in her face.

"Mister, take your time fishing," WW pulled out her phone to snap a couple of photos as well, then said, "I'll be on my way now."

She still needed to hurry up and kill some zombies; the person currently ranked first had already slain over six hundred zombies.

That person was a monster surpassing even the zombies themselves.

Hou Hongcai was in high spirits now. "Safe travels!"

Haha, coming to the apocalypse really was the best choice he ever made—no need to eat, no need to drink, and he could fish twenty-four hours a day.

As WW walked ahead, Wu Ran calculated that it would still take a little while to walk the remaining thousand-plus meters, so she switched over to check out Liu Jing's livestream for a moment.

At that moment, she wished she had a few extra pairs of eyes; there were simply too many livestreams for her to keep up with all of them.

Deep within the continuous mountain ranges, the only sound in the silence was the accidental rustling of branches brushed by Yu Jingshan.

He had been walking for several hours, but the eerie part was that he hadn't encountered a single zombie yet.

Not even mutated plants were in sight.

"Family, I'm feeling a bit cold," Yu Jingshan said, rubbing the back of his neck.

It wasn't just talk; there genuinely seemed to be nothing at all deep inside these mountains, and even the trees had a gloomy, dark-green hue that carried a chill with it.

[Getting strong Silent Hill vibes.]

[Liu Jing has been walking for hours now, and we haven't even heard a single bird chirp or insect hum.]

[I'm terrified the streamer is suddenly going to scream at the top of his lungs.]

[How about we just fly away? Don't hang around here. The streamer hasn't even encountered a single zombie yet; at this rate, he won't be able to bring anything back.]

[How can a place like this not even have mutated plants? I'm starting to suspect the streamer was dropped into a completely different world.]

[Streamer, why don't you yell out, "Is anyone there?" and see if anyone responds.]

Only after reading the chat barrage did Yu Jingshan feel the chill down his spine ease up slightly, though his back still felt ice-cold.

It didn't make sense. He was clearly wearing a temperature-control wristband, and wasn't this mode supposed to maintain a constant, stable warmth?

He could only conclude that this chill was radiating straight from the depths of his heart.

Yu Jingshan was just about to summon his bamboo dragonfly to fly away when he suddenly froze. "Did any of you hear the sound of a xiao flute?"

He perked up his ears to listen. The flute music sounded very far away, yet strangely close at the same time. The tune had an eerie quality to it, with a rhythm beating like a drum.

It sounded almost like the heavy heartbeat and breathing of some monstrous entity.

Bizarre—how could a flute possibly produce such a strange sound?

[Nope, didn't hear a thing!]

[I turned my volume all the way up and still heard nothing.]

[Streamer, please don't scare us. I'm standing right in the sunlight, I'm not afraid!]

[Damn! Chat barrage protection!]

Yu Jingshan's skin was crawling too, but he still wanted to go check it out. "Family, the sound is coming from up ahead. Let's go see what's going on."

The bamboo dragonfly carried him up and flew toward the direction of the flute music, yet the music kept shifting between near and far, making it hard for him to pinpoint the exact direction.

Until he spotted a village nestled against the mountains, consisting of around a hundred households.

The settlement had been so well hidden deep within the mountains that he hadn't spotted it earlier.

Yu Jingshan flew closer. "There actually seem to be people here."

[And there's smoke rising from chimneys?]

[Why aren't there any people outside?]

[Streamer, don't be reckless! Where there are people in the apocalypse, there's definitely trouble!]

[Not necessarily trouble, right? I figure it might just be because these mountains are so remote that there might not even be any zombies here.]

As Yu Jingshan flew closer, he finally noticed several people outside the village staring at him, along with a young girl holding a xiao flute.

The girl wore a blue-and-black ethnic minority outfit, her glossy hair styled into a braid resting beside her ear.

She looked at Yu Jingshan with the flute in hand, her eyes as bright and lively as a deer in the forest.

Seeing them washing clothes and going about their business made Yu Jingshan feel a lot less tense. He slowly flew down and said, "Hello there, I got lost in the mountains."

"Sorry to disturb you, but could you tell me which way to go and how much further I need to walk to reach a city?"