Days in the Infinite

Living in a steel house wasn't exactly comfortable, so the energetic Li Ke woke up early. While the two women were still indulging in their beds, he decided to take care of some personal needs.

There was no helping it—being this physically strong had its downsides.

Moving carefully, he got up, closed the door, washed up, and then wandered towards the female merchant's room, intending to enjoy her company again. She really was incredibly satisfying.

But before he could reach his destination, a sudden gust of sand-laden wind swept through the area, forcing him to squint his eyes. The gritty sensation jolted his groggy mind into wakefulness.

"A sandstorm?"

That was his first thought in his still-drowsy state. But then, as if suddenly realizing something, his expression changed, and he immediately looked towards the other side of the canyon that Tsunade and Lady Kiri had excavated.

The next moment, all of his previous desires vanished, replaced by an intense chill running down his spine—because he saw them.

Zombies.

An endless sea of zombies.

They staggered along the distant cliffs, moving in a continuous flow toward a single direction. Their numbers had not decreased in the slightest since the last time.

And this time, with his enhanced eyesight, he could see even farther.

Stretching endlessly into the horizon, they marched in an unbroken line, one after another, never stopping.

He looked around in all directions. The vast, desolate wilderness was teeming with zombies, without exception.

Above, the dim moon cast a sickly yellow glow, and the swirling dust in the air gave the sky the appearance of eternal twilight.

Li Ke's mouth hung slightly open. Even as the wind carried grains of sand into his mouth, he didn't react. He simply stared, motionless, at the swarm of undead.

Today...

Wasn't today supposed to be the sixth day?!

Li Ke mentally summoned his system's interface and fixed his gaze on the blood-red number six displayed there.

After a moment, he silently accepted reality.

Without a word, he turned and walked towards the merchant's room—not to do anything untoward, but to retrieve all the steel frames and purchase the last seven grenades she had in stock. After securing the merchant's door, he returned to their steel house.

By the time he arrived, Lady Kiri and Tsunade had just finished getting dressed and were about to step out to wash up. Li Ke, however, blocked their way and directed their attention outside.

Lady Kiri's jaw dropped, while Tsunade's face turned pale as she sank to the ground.

There were too many.

Far too many.

They had expected waves of zombies when Li Ke mentioned a "corpse tide," but they had never imagined anything this overwhelming.

"These zombies..."

Lady Kiri swallowed hard, her hands trembling slightly. Now, she finally understood why Li Ke had been so adamant about traps and fire attacks.

With a horde of this scale, she could never hope to shoot them all down with her revolver!

"Where are they all coming from? And didn't you say they wouldn't appear until the seventh day?"

She lowered her voice instinctively. Even though she knew they wouldn't be detected as long as they didn't shout, she still couldn't help but suppress her voice.

"How should I know..."

Li Ke absentmindedly patted his pockets, instinctively searching for a cigarette. He was unsettled. There was still so much left to prepare... so much he had to do...

"Calm down, Li Ke. We're here."

Tsunade, still pale, spoke up. Since they were still at a considerable distance from the horde, she had regained some strength.

"And given what you've described, along with what we're seeing... there's no way we can fight them off head-on. You two should cover the windows with something—I need to rest for a bit. After that, we'll seal the door."

Taking a deep breath, Li Ke immediately followed her instructions, blocking off the window in front of Tsunade.

Some time passed before Tsunade recovered enough strength to materialize steel blocks and completely seal off the main entrance, leaving no chance for the zombies to break through.

Inside the steel house, an eerie silence settled over them.

Li Ke and Lady Kiri remained glued to the window, watching the undead outside, while Tsunade sat by the bed, staring at the barricaded door as if expecting a blood-soaked monster to burst through at any moment.

The oppressive silence made every passing second feel agonizing.

No one wanted to engage in an unnecessary battle—not Li Ke, not Lady Kiri.

"If we fire our guns now, they'll swarm us all at once, right?"

Lady Kiri absentmindedly polished her pipe gun and revolver—the revolver that Li Ke had given her. When she first received it, she had been excited. It was a significant upgrade, something that would allow her to fully unleash her combat potential.

But looking at the situation now, a revolver was far less practical than a machine gun.

"Give me two more machine guns. I want to see if there's anything I can improve after materializing them."

Li Ke didn't respond. Silently, he crafted two more pipe guns and handed them over.

Lady Kiri took them without hesitation, materialized them for inspection, then closed her eyes in frustration.

There was nothing she could modify. In fact, the materialized versions were even worse than the system-generated ones.

At least the system-created guns didn't jam, break apart, or suffer from erratic bullet trajectories. Once materialized, these pipe guns would almost certainly fall apart, and their accuracy was a joke—there wasn't even proper rifling in the barrels. Precision shooting was out of the question.

With no other options, Lady Kiri set the guns aside, deciding she would experiment later to see if switching between materialized and system-generated weapons mid-combat could be effective—materializing for shooting, system mode for reloading... or maybe the other way around.

She couldn't test it under real battle conditions yet, but she was certain of one thing: her own speed-loading technique with a revolver was much faster than the system's automated reload.

She could reload her revolver in an instant—less than 0.4 seconds.

For Li Ke, though, the system's reload was obviously faster.

As he watched her expression, Li Ke immediately understood that trying to modify the weapons was pointless.

With a sigh, he turned his attention back to the slow-moving zombie horde outside and the sky, where a crimson glow had begun to spread across the moon.

If he remembered correctly...

The moon wasn't supposed to turn red this quickly.

Taking a deep breath, Li Ke felt a chill creep into his bones.

If the blood moon advanced earlier with each cycle, and if the speed of its transformation kept increasing...

Would the seventh blood moon last an entire day?

The thought sent a shiver through him. His hands unconsciously clenched into fists as he stared at the reddening moon, watching the time inch closer to noon.

And by the time noon arrived...

Half of the moon had already turned red!

The zombies had also become noticeably faster and more agile.

Li Ke fell into a long silence.

This time, the process was three hours ahead of schedule.

With a bitter chuckle, he couldn't help but mutter to himself:

"Why is it that only the worst premonitions always come true?"