Apocalypse: I Can See Health Bars
Chapter 29: Concealment Crystal and Equipment

Chapter 29: Chapter 29: Concealment Crystal and Equipment

The corpse in the bedroom lay on the floor, just as it had been left.

Lin Fan didn’t immediately enter the bedroom, which reeked of blood. Instead, he walked over to the cabinet by the door.

Most people kept their keys and other essential items for going out here.

He searched it carefully and, sure enough, besides some miscellaneous items like lighters and loose change, Lin Fan found two sets of door keys, a car key, and an employee ID card.

The card had a photo of a young woman on it, with her name and position written below.

’Tianshui Road Gas Station? Manager?’

Tianshui Road was the major north-south road at the end of the small street below Lin Fan’s building.

Lin Fan remembered the gas station was just a short distance around the corner. The employee card had a magnetic strip, which might be useful for opening doors.

As for the car key with a five-diamond logo, figuring out which car it belonged to was simple.

He walked to the living room window and pressed the lock button, pointing it downward.

On the side of the road, a silver van with "Haul-it-All" printed on its side let out a BEEP and flashed its lights.

A group of zombies was drawn by the sound. However, since it only beeped once, they couldn’t pinpoint the source. They began to disperse along the road, searching each car one by one for potential prey.

’So this is the van that was always blocking my shop’s entrance!’

Lin Fan’s eyes widened as he stared at his old nemesis.

They always parked haphazardly without leaving a phone number. His entrance had been blocked several times, and he could never find the owner.

Any sympathy he might have had for the young couple vanished into thin air.

’Alright, I’ll take the van as compensation for my emotional distress...’

Muttering to himself, he stuffed the keys and the employee card into his pocket.

A small van like this was perfect for the current world.

It was versatile, easy to drive, and could carry both cargo and people.

In the city, especially in an old residential complex like Lin Fan’s, there were hardly any pickup trucks. A van was the most practical choice.

After another quick search turned up no other useful supplies, Lin Fan turned his attention back to the task at hand.

His previous gear was caked in blood and gore. Su Qing had rinsed it with water while he was unconscious, but it hadn’t dried yet.

Lin Fan rummaged through his bag, pulled out a disposable hazmat suit, and put it on.

After putting on gloves, a mask, and goggles, he tightened the cuffs of his sleeves. Lin Fan then crouched down and began to carefully examine the corpse.

The body of the pale banshee-like zombie.

After just one night, a layer of ashen decay had appeared on its skin, and its body looked more shriveled than the day before.

Perhaps because it had mutated from a corpse to begin with, its body began to decompose with incredible speed after its second "death."

Its body was also somewhat twisted and deformed, and the plaster-statue-like beauty it once possessed was completely gone.

Lin Fan didn’t rush to pull the steel pipe out of its gaping maw. Instead, he went to the bedside and gently brushed his fingers over the Blade embedded in the bed frame.

With a mere thought, he recalled it into his inventory, leaving only a deep gash in the wooden bed frame.

He then retrieved it from his inventory, and the Blade appeared back in his hand.

’Loot drops from zombies are so convenient...’

Lin Fan thought to himself. It even saved him the effort of pulling it out.

Holding the Blade, he braced his feet on the monster’s shoulders and began to cut downwards from its mouth, following the line of the steel pipe.

The banshee-zombie’s body was already very soft, and after a night of decay, even its bones had become brittle.

The Blade met almost no resistance, like a hot knife through a rotten, overripe melon, letting out a sickening SQUELCH that set his teeth on edge.

No blood gushed out, only a viscous, blackish-brown pus that oozed out slowly like crude oil.

When it occasionally hit a bone that hadn’t yet softened, the feedback from the Blade wasn’t the vibration of cutting through something hard, but the crisp snap of a dry twig breaking.

He didn’t even need the bone saw he had prepared. He sliced the entire front of the banshee-zombie open.

There were no distinct organs. Most of the tissue was in a semi-liquid, chaotic, connective state. It was unclear if it was originally like this or if it had rotted into this condition.

The tip of the spear he had stabbed it with was still not visible. With his full strength, he had managed to pierce the monster’s entire upper body and drive the spear into the cabinet beneath the banshee-zombie.

Lin Fan had to get up, grab the steel pipe from the floor, and use both hands to jab it into the back panel of the nightstand, prying with all his might.

He just wanted to see what this monster’s weak point really was.

’This...’

After laboriously prying open the side panel of the cabinet, Lin Fan realized he had been completely wrong.

The scene inside the cabinet was completely different from the dissected upper body...

Human leg bones were overlapping with shoulder blades, kidneys and liver were fused into a single mass. Organs were piled up, flesh and bone merged. It was as if a human had been compressed to the extreme.

It wasn’t so much that the banshee-zombie was hiding in the nightstand, but rather that it was "growing" out of it.

The square nightstand was like its "flowerpot," and its upper body was the "flower" that had grown from it. It was just that the "flower" hadn’t fully bloomed before Lin Fan had burst in and uprooted it.

Cutting away the messy flesh and tossing it aside, Lin Fan finally unearthed the tip of the spear.

It was lodged in a round, bony structure that had several indentations, looking as though it was formed from fused human skulls. Grayish-white brain matter was oozing from the crack the spear had made.

Its head was actually inside its body...

The weak point was still the head, but its location had changed.

This discovery finally cleared up Lin Fan’s confusion.

He casually pried the spear upwards, and several of the monster’s bones snapped audibly.

’Huh?’

As Lin Fan pulled the spear out, a transparent, fingernail-sized "glass bead" fell out of the crack and landed in the gore.

If Lin Fan hadn’t had sharp eyes, he would have missed it.

Fighting back his disgust, he reached into a clump of organs, picked up the small transparent sphere, and placed it in his palm to examine it. A string of characters appeared before his eyes!

[Stealth Crystal]

Below it was a dense block of text:

[Energy Level: Incompletely Crystallized - Damaged (Remaining Energy: 822)]

[Quality: Common (Incomplete structure, cannot be fused)]

[Equippable]

[Stealth: Equipping this item erases your presence from all observers. Consumes the crystal’s own energy while active. (Degree of erasure depends on the crystal’s energy level and quality.)]

(Damaged-grade crystals will naturally lose energy over time.)

’What the hell is this?’

Lin Fan stared in shock at the Crystal Stone in his palm,

’A crystal?’

’Mutated Zombies have crystals inside them?’

Seeing the word "Equippable" in the crystal’s description, Lin Fan merely had the thought to "equip" it, and the Crystal Stone in his hand vanished without a trace.

Then, next to the inventory icon below his health bar, a gem icon appeared. In the bottom-right corner of the icon was a small string of numbers: [822].

The moment he equipped the crystal, Lin Fan felt as if he had been sealed inside a giant, transparent plastic bag.

Although he couldn’t see or touch it, the "film" felt like it had temporarily "carved" him out of the current dimension of reality.

To test the ability’s effect, Lin Fan immediately walked out of the room, just in time to see Su Qing carrying things down from the sixth floor.

Normally, Su Qing would have greeted him the moment she saw him come out.

But this time was different. It was as if she couldn’t see Lin Fan standing at the top of the stairs at all. Carrying a bag, she walked straight down toward the fourth floor without a glance.