Originally, she had planned to take a short nap. However, due to staying up all night and being injured, the double - fold exhaustion made her fall into a deep dream as soon as she closed her eyes.
This time, she dreamt of a world of white.
"Where is this?"
In the dream, Lin Qingqing called out loudly, but no one answered her. Everything around was a shade of gray - white, with nothing else in sight.
She tentatively walked in different directions, but still found nothing. This vast white space seemed to have no end.
Just as she was feeling lost, a bright light suddenly appeared ahead. It was a straight beam of light shooting up into the sky, and its brilliant glow stood out prominently in the gray - white space.
That beam of light seemed to be a marker or a signal. Without hesitation, Lin Qingqing ran towards the direction of the light beam. When she got closer, she could clearly see what was inside the beam.
It was a straight chain, three times as thick as her. The two ends were connected between the sky and the earth. Standing beneath the chain, she was as tiny as if she were looking at a tall tower. Even just the first section was taller than her entire body.
She looked up and counted. This chain reaching up to the sky had a total of nine sections from bottom to top.
Except for the first section, which was in a "lit" state, the above eight sections were all in a hazy, gray state.
There was a node between each section. These eight nodes were like locks, or rather, barriers that blocked the light from traveling upward.
And the last section extended directly into the boundless sky, with no end in sight.
"What on earth is this?"
Lin Qingqing instinctively reached out to touch it. By the time she realized what she was doing, her hand was already on the chain.This "lit" section of the chain was a transparent ice - blue color, feeling icy cold to the touch and giving off wisps of cold air. After she touched it, the chain trembled slightly as if it had come to life.
"It seems to like me."
As if affirming her thought, the chain rubbed against her palm.
"Can it sense my thoughts?"
It moved again...
"Are you actually inside my body?"
This time, the chain trembled even more vigorously, as if very happy that she could figure it out.
Lin Qingqing was startled by her own thought and involuntarily took two steps back.
The first dream had allowed her to awaken her superpower. Could this dream also hold some significance?
Lin Qingqing calmed down and carefully examined this magical chain with its own consciousness.
The entire chain was actually composed of two parallel parts that were connected and coiled around each other as they ascended.
Suddenly, she felt that the pattern of this chain was extremely familiar.
"This coiled structure is like, like..."
That's right, it was like the double - helix structure of DNA. Looking closely, they were almost identical, just this one was magnified countless timesShe stretched out her hand again. The familiar icy - cold touch was exactly the same as that of her ice - knife and ice - blades. In a flash of inspiration, Lin Qingqing thought, "Could this be my DNA gene chain?"
She had an intuition that her guess was right.
"If this is a hint from the dream, then what is it trying to tell me?"
Looking closely, the node at the top of the first - section chain was also in a "lit" state, and this state had started to climb over the node towards the second - section chain.
"If this chain represents my superpower, does the 'lit' first section and the first node mean that I've now advanced from the first order to the second order? There are a total of nine sections of the chain. Does it mean that there are nine orders of superpowers in total, and I've just reached the second order?" Lin Qingqing made a bold speculation.
"What's above the ninth order?"
She raised her head and looked at the section representing the ninth order at the top of the chain. The end point was hidden in a layer of gray - white clouds.
Lin Qingqing stared at the clouds above her head, always feeling that there should be something more above them.
Just as she was thinking about whether to climb up the chain to find out, her body suddenly fell from the air.
With the collapse of the dream, Lin Qingqing opened her eyes.
By this time, it was already broad daylight. She didn't have time to think about the situation in the dream and quickly climbed down the tree..When she reached the outer wall of the farmhouse, Lin Qingqing realized that the fire on the three - story building had somehow gone out. There were charred marks everywhere, and quite a few zombies were wandering around in the front yard, but there was not a single living person left.
"Could it be that Captain Xiao and the others have already left? No way!"
Realizing that she was the only one left here, Lin Qingqing was a bit stunned.
At this moment, the zombie closest to her sensed the presence of a living person and shambled towards her.
Lin Qingqing looked at the naked zombie with disgust and remotely condensed two ice blades, which "stabbed" into the zombie's eye sockets with a "poof" sound.
The sound of the falling corpse attracted the attention of two more zombies. Lin Qingqing turned her head, frowned, and said, "Why are they naked again?"
Moreover, not just these three, but about half of the remaining zombies, including those on the ground, were completely naked.
"Did they go streaking before they died?"
Lin Qingqing was amused by her own thought. After dispatching two more zombies, a small tag on the wrist of one zombie caught her attention.
"What's this? Peony Garden Hot Spring Villa, No. 1026."
She recognized the writing on the tag. The number at the back should be the number of a room or a storage cabinet.Oh! Peony Garden Hot Spring Villa! These zombies must have come from the hot spring villa! Lin Qingqing remembered that when Xiao Lu reported the situation yesterday, he had mentioned that there was indeed a hot spring villa not far from here.
It seemed that these zombies had crawled out of the hot spring pools. No wonder they were naked!
Lin Qingqing looked at these zombies still wandering around the farmhouse and thought, since they were all lured out of the hot spring villa by Zhou Mang, wouldn't it be a good time for me to go to the villa now?
Truly, when God closes a door, he opens a window. Lin Qingqing put on her backpack, checked the direction, and then walked towards the direction where the zombies had come from.
There was no one on the road. She was the only one walking on the wide road.
Occasionally, she would come across one or two lost zombies, all of which she dealt with effortlessly. Adding the ones she had killed before, she had obtained six crystal nuclei. Unfortunately, they were all of the basic five - element attributes, without a single special one.
Lin Qingqing couldn't help but sigh in her heart: Mutated - attribute crystal nuclei are indeed hard to come by. Fortunately, I have the meditation technique!
"I wonder how Captain Xiao and the others are. They won't think I'm dead, will they?"
This was quite a tricky situation. She didn't know the way to Rongcheng Base.
"However, it doesn't seem necessary for me to go to Rongcheng Base. Captain Xiao and the others need to take on missions at the base to exchange for potions. I don't need potions myself, and I don't have a team to do missions with."
Lin Qingqing instinctively ruled out the idea of joining a team. In her opinion, staying with a few strangers all the time was not as free as being alone.
Moreover, she was already a second - order superpower user. Whether it was killing zombies or finding supplies, she could do it on her own without anyone's assistance.
"If that's the case, then is there any point in going to Rongcheng Base?"Lin Qingqing was a bit lost. Since the end of the world, she had been constantly striving for survival and power. But now that she had power and survival no longer seemed to be a problem, what else was there for her to aim for?
She walked and thought all the way. The five - kilometer journey gave her enough time to recall her previous experiences several times.
At this moment, she thought of the chain in her dream again. She stopped, looked up at the clouds in the sky, as if there really was a chain reaching up to the sky there.
What was at the end of the chain? Was there another world above those clouds?
"I really want to go up and take a look!"
Lin Qingqing blinked, and such an impulse suddenly welled up in her heart.
"If you want to see it, then go and take a look. Go to the clouds at the end of that chain!"