Chapter 110: Contribution Points That Drive People to Death
“Mahayana Stage? Never heard of it,” Ye Du scratched his head. Normally, you wouldn’t let your guard down like this in a zombie-infested wasteland. A moment’s carelessness could mean death.
People wanted to kill zombies for their brain cores, but zombies were just as eager to kill Enhancers and devour their flesh.
But somehow, when Ye Du was around Jiang Li, he always relaxed without meaning to.
After chatting with Jiang Li for this long, Ye Wu had already noticed that this big shot clearly knew nothing about zombies. Connecting that with what he had said earlier and the old-fashioned clothes he wore, a bold and absurd idea came to her.
“Are… are you from another world?” she asked, stammering. But the moment the words came out, she realized she was prying into the big shot’s privacy and had overstepped.
“Yeah,” Jiang Li didn’t bother hiding it. “Came here to look for a fast little thing.”
“You guys power up using brain cores?” Jiang Li asked again. “I can see you’re about to break through.”
Ye Wu understood what he meant. Without waiting for him to finish, she took out the Third-Level zombie brain core on her own.
Absorbing a brain core should be done somewhere safe—and there was no place safer than by Jiang Li’s side.
She pressed the brain core to her forehead, closed her eyes, and focused on sensing its power.
Threads of energy drifted from the core, slowly and gently nourishing her body. Ye Wu felt a surge of power like never before. Her blood pumped faster, cells divided rapidly, and her metabolism spiked.
Jiang Li watched the whole process clearly. The spiritual energy in the brain core was about equal to that of a Golden Core Stage cultivator. But during the absorption, most of the energy diffused into the air—only a small fraction actually entered her body.
This method of absorption meant Ye Wu could only advance from late First-Level to mid Second-Level.
“This how you guys normally absorb?” Jiang Li turned to ask Ye Du. “No more efficient method?”
Ye Du replied like it was a matter of course, “This is already the fastest method we’ve come up with after several improvements.”
When he saw Ye Wu getting ready to absorb a Second-Level brain core, Jiang Li stopped her.
“Your body’s like a balloon about to burst. If you absorb even a bit more power—doesn’t matter if it’s from a Second-Level or even a First-Level brain core—you’ll die. What you need to do now isn’t absorb more, it’s to get used to your body.”
Ye Wu had never absorbed that much power before. She and her brother had always relied on potions modeled after brain cores to grow stronger. She’d never even absorbed a Second-Level core before, let alone a Third-Level one.
She’d never heard of anyone exploding from absorbing too much, but she trusted Jiang Li. A big shot like him had no reason to lie.
“You guys never trained on your own?” Jiang Li asked after hearing that they either relied on brain-core-based potions or just directly absorbed brain cores.
“Train?”
“Yeah, like absorbing the energy in the air.”
“That’s absolutely not okay!” Ye Wu jumped in shock. She thought Jiang Li was about to tell her to do exactly that and rushed to explain.
“Everyone knows there’s energy in the air, but no one dares absorb it. The energy is mixed with the zombie virus. If you absorb too much, you’ll turn into a zombie.”
“Anyone still alive now probably has some level of resistance. Normal breathing won’t turn you, but absorbing energy from the air? That’s a straight-up death wish.”
“You can’t separate the virus from the energy?” Jiang Li had already noticed the spiritual energy here was incredibly filthy—but to him, that wasn’t a big deal.
He reached out, and the surrounding spiritual energy gathered in his palm, condensing into liquid. It should have been blue, but it was pitch black.
With a single thought, the blackness separated from the spirit liquid. The liquid returned to its original vibrant blue state.
“Like this.”
Ye Du’s eyes went wide in disbelief as he watched.
Jiang Li motioned for him to absorb it. Ye Du never imagined such luck would fall on him. After absorbing the purified spirit liquid, he immediately became a peak First-Level Enhancer.
On the way to Zone 3, Jiang Li chatted a lot with the siblings—mostly about cultivation.
He came to a firm conclusion: this world’s cultivation system was completely different from the one in the Nine Provinces.
In the Nine Provinces, cultivation followed the natural order—understanding the Heavenly Dao, aligning body and spirit, then slowly absorbing spiritual energy to improve the body.
But in this zombie-infested world, their method was crude and forceful. No comprehension, no insights—just raw absorption. As a result, they couldn’t use any Daoist techniques or divine abilities. Second-Level Enhancers couldn’t even perform the Foundation Establishment skill of internal inspection. Third-Level ones couldn’t unify blood and Qi like in the Golden Core Stage.
Worse yet, their method damaged their foundation, reducing their lifespan instead of increasing it. Most wouldn’t live past fifty.
Jiang Li had figured that part out himself. This world had only been cultivating for ten years, so no one had died of old age yet.
Still, he understood. Here, just staying alive was already hard enough. Who had the luxury of worrying about their cultivation foundation when they might be eaten by zombies tomorrow?
“We’re here.”
Ye Wu brought Jiang Li to the outskirts of Zone 3. Outside the city walls were many pale, skinny people—mostly elderly. They sat in tents, eyes filled with despair and death.
“What is this…” Jiang Li frowned. Zone 3 was supposed to be relatively safe, with no zombies around most of the time. But according to Ye Wu, the city still faced zombie hordes now and then. How were these people outside the walls still alive?
Ye Wu sighed and explained, “Even if you don’t eat or drink, just living inside the city costs contribution points. If you can’t pay, you get kicked out. The lucky ones live a little longer. The unlucky ones… end up facing a zombie tide.”
Ye Du said bitterly, “Contribution points are the common currency across all Five Zones. Those greedy corporate tycoons are obsessed with them. They force everyone to pay, or else. That’s why we have to go out there and risk our lives!”
“Little bro!” Ye Wu quickly pulled him back. Speaking badly about the corporations outside the walls of Zone 3? Did he have a death wish?
“Why don’t these people have contribution points? How do you even earn them?”
“Killing zombies and selling their brain cores, working for the corporations, doing research, scavenging useful items from the ruins, doing odd jobs… all that can get you contribution points. The ones kicked out are mostly the elderly or disabled who got hurt exploring. Inside the city, they have to take on hard labor, working 18-hour shifts just to barely scrape by—just enough to eat and stay in the city.”
“But if anything goes wrong—like missing a few days of work—their contribution balance goes negative. Then they get kicked out.”
“Those bastard corporations! They set food prices way too high. None of the other zones are like this. I heard food in Zone 1 costs only one-twentieth of what it does here!” Ye Du couldn’t help but curse again. “Those leeches suck people dry! So many people don’t die to zombies—they get driven to death by them!”