A blond zombie named Adam led the way, guiding Huai Si to a place known for farming humans. It was said that another small pack of zombies occasionally leaped in to hunt them.
Along the way, the little zombie stared eagerly at Huai Si. Seeming to hesitate for a long time, he shuffled close to Huai Si, looking up with his ashen, round face. At the edge of his eye, a white maggot head poked out of a ragged wound, matching his large eyes in a way that felt like a third eyeball fixed entirely on Huai Si.
“Le… Leader…” The little zombie tugged at the corner of Huai Si’s clothes, stuttering as he called out to him.
Huai Si stopped in his tracks and looked down at him.
“My… mine…” The little zombie gazed at him with longing.
Huai Si squatted down to the little zombie’s height, bringing them level with one another.
The little zombie’s eyes followed him, full of yearning. Huai Si, however, looked directly at the rotting, maggot-infested ragged wound beneath the corner of his eye. A pale white maggot was just poking its head out. Huai Si pinched the white maggot’s head with two fair, slender fingers and pulled it straight out with a firm tug. It wasn’t as short as it looked on the surface; it seemed to snake and curl several times deep inside the rotting flesh. Pulling out the very end of the worm even caught slightly, requiring a gentle twist of skill so as not to snap it.
In life, Huai Si had actually been slightly neat-handed. His clothes were always kept clean and tidy, rarely marred by any dirt. After becoming a zombie, he still held that preference, but circumstances didn’t allow him to maintain it; he was often stained with gore from his zombie instincts. Gradually, that preference faded quite a bit. He could now even pluck maggots out of the little zombie’s face without changing expression. He had cleared out plenty of maggots for the little zombie before, but perhaps due to the nature of zombie flesh, new ones would inexplicably crawl right back out again.
“You want a name? What kind of name do you want?” Huai Si examined the rotting flesh inside the wound, feeling it was mostly clean now. He patted the little zombie’s head, gently guiding him to think.
Instead, the little zombie slowly said, “I… I also… want…”
“The… the same…”
“You want to be called Adam too?” Huai Si teased him. Yet Adam, off to one side, immediately turned his head sharply upon hearing his new name spoken by Huai Si, looking like a little dog standing by at attention.
The little zombie panicked. “N… no!”
Seeing that teasing the little zombie only made him unable to speak properly, Huai Si dropped the joke and said, “I originally thought you were still young, and that it would be better for you to pick your own name once your consciousness grew a bit more. But you really need a name now.”
He was also pleased that the little zombie had taken the initiative to ask for a name; the awakening of independent consciousness and the birth of an individual name were crucial parts of that process.
“Xiguang… How does that sound?” Even though he had already thought of the name long ago, Huai Si still habitually asked for his opinion.
The dawn light visible in the future.
Naturally, the little zombie couldn’t understand it, but a wave of joyful energy clearly radiated from his whole body. He was simply thrilled that he had a name of his own.
Xiguang even ran over to Adam and spun around clumsily, looking extremely happy and proud. For once, Adam didn’t coax him as he usually did; he glanced at him twice, his sapphire-blue eyes flashing with a hint of petulance, before shifting his gaze back to Huai Si and asking, “Should we keep going?”
Huai Si was slightly surprised that Adam was actually able to speak a complete sentence now, even if it was just a short one.
Worried about Liao Muqing’s situation, Huai Si nodded. Without further delay, he picked up his pace, moving swiftly as he followed Adam’s route.
The garage where Huai Si had established his zombie stronghold was a fair distance from the shelter. Back then, he had wanted to stay far away to keep that bespectacled man from finding him, but walking back now made the distance feel exceptionally long.
Yet as he followed the route led by Adam, watching the familiar paths, the shock in Huai Si’s heart grew heavier. His pace became almost as fast as flying; the ordinary zombies could barely keep up and were soon left far behind, even with Adam trying his best to match Huai Si’s stride.
Just as he had guessed, the place Adam brought him to was all too familiar. He had spent his youth here. The place the zombies had described as a human-farming pen right in front of him was none other than Shelter Eight.
When the sight of the shelter came into view, Huai Si stopped. It wasn’t out of any reluctance to return to a familiar place, but because he was completely stunned by the scene before him.
The high prison walls, built to be the best defense against zombies, now had a breach on one side. The wall was ragged and torn, as if it had been struck by something, leaving that section looking precarious and on the verge of collapse compared to the rest. The most striking and impactful image greeting his eyes was that numerous zombies were actually standing outside the wall. Counting closely, there were over a dozen of them, glaring covetously at the shelter as if they viewed it as a container storing humans.
Each of the dozen zombies was covered in rotting wounds and patches of dead flesh, all standing together in a cluster. Bizarrely, they surrounded a corner of the wall just like humans, thronging around something and celebrating as if they were jubilant.
Huai Si’s expression turned stern. He darted forward rapidly. As he drew close to the group of zombies, he heard the sharp, heartbreaking shrieks of human agony cutting through the air. Huai Si immediately charged forward. When a zombie tried to block his path in front, he waved his hand and swatted it flying, finally catching sight of the gruesome scene hidden among the horde.
He saw that the center of the zombie pack was occupied by an exceptionally massive zombie. Even while crouching, his frame looked enormous, with shoulders nearly twice as broad as Huai Si’s. He was likely robustly built in life, and his arms and chest bulged with sinewy muscles. At that moment, his hands were casually gripping a man’s neck. The muscles in his upper arms swelled like a pair of mallets. The man’s neck was held by his hand like a kite string; his cervical vertebrae were already snapped, leaving his neck and body looking like two disconnected parts. He looked precisely like a lab mouse with its neck wrung, eyes protruding and bloodshot. Without spinal nerves to command them, the muscles throughout his limbs had lost all tension, dangling limply like cotton.
The upper half of this zombie’s face was mangled and torn, with one eye nearly hanging out, but the mouth on the lower half of his face was split wide, stretched forcibly toward both cheeks, giving him an expression full of malice and bestial bloodlust. Huai Si could tell at a glance that this zombie was sentient. However, unlike the feeling Adam gave off, this zombie possessed an extremely dangerous wildness and strength. Judging by the reactions of the surrounding zombies, they all crowded around this muscular zombie without daring to step forward, simply staring eagerly while awaiting his commands.
The muscular zombie held the man’s neck in one hand and even shook it a few times, just like a person holding a chicken’s head before slaughtering and bleeding it. The next moment, he used his other hand to grab the man’s shoulder, exerting force with both hands. The neck was instantly torn clean apart, and blood gushed out. Even the spinal column was pulled right out. The muscular zombie immediately widened his jaw and leaned in to chew on that segment of spine. The sound of bones being crunched echoed out: crunch, crunch. The bones were easily pulverized inside the sharp zombie maw, sending mouthfuls of bloody fluid spilling over.
Huai Si froze for a moment. Of course he had seen zombies gnawing on humans before some were quite savage but he had rarely seen such a unique way of eating. It could almost be considered a form of human torture. The surrounding zombies grew entirely excited at the sight, showing that this wasn’t their first time hunting and feeding on humans like this. After the muscular zombie devoured the man, the other zombies gradually grew restless, one after another preparing to leap into the now-ruined shelter to hunt more humans.
Just then, as the muscular zombie was voraciously chewing the flesh and bone marrow of the human in his hand, he suddenly raised his head and looked at Huai Si. To say he was looking wasn’t entirely accurate, but Huai Si definitely had the sensation of being watched. In an instant, the muscular zombie went on high alert, resembling a beast with every hair bristling on end. His muscles tightened instantly, ready to pounce and tear Huai Si apart at any second.
The muscular zombie sensed an aura of absolute dominance radiating from the zombie standing before him. Yet, having already awakened his consciousness, possessing plenty of food in his hands, and acting as the leader of these zombies, he faced Huai Si’s arrival with a conflict of instincts: while he perceived the superior rank, his innate zombie greed and wildness made him unwilling to surrender his tribute of food to a superior, nor was he willing to submit easily.
Huai Si watched as the human head dropped to the ground. The familiar face was one he recognized.
It was said that this man had once been a small boss who made a fortune, but in reality, he was very stingy and always loved hoarding things. People often called him “Old Fa,” mostly as a joke, and gradually, people forgot what his full name even was. Huai Si remembered eating candy given by him in the past. It was something he had begrudgingly fished out because the candy had already melted into a soft, sticky mess clinging to the wrapper. That was why he brought it out to coax him, telling him to call him “uncle.” But Huai Si felt nothing toward it; the moment he saw that gooey candy, he lost his appetite.
That sticky candy had melted into a puddle, just like the flesh and blood flowing from the human’s body at this moment yet he suddenly felt a pang of hunger.
Suddenly, the muscular zombie lunged fiercely toward him. An ordinary zombie or human certainly wouldn’t have been able to withstand it, but Huai Si knew his combat style inside and out. He didn’t rely on his eyes; rather, it was a perception an inexplicable intuition where every single movement of his opponent was laid bare in his mind, letting him know precisely what the muscular zombie intended to do.
He easily dodged the muscular zombie’s attack. As a zombie, his physical strength was far greater than it had been when he was human, but he still wasn’t sure he could take a punch like that head-on. With that single lunge, the muscular zombie possessed enough force to smash a crater into the ground.
There was no help for it. In truth, Huai Si hadn’t used “Blood Thorn” or let himself get injured in a very long time.
But he had no other choice right now. He opened his mouth and bit down hard on his forearm. Blood surged out, and obeying his intent, the blood lashed out to attack the muscular zombie!
It was a battle that was neither easy nor tragic, simply because only the muscular zombie dared to attack Huai Si; the rest of the zombies didn’t dare step forward at all. The muscular zombie’s neck was severed by the blood blade, his head rolled off, and his crystal core fell out.
The other zombies instantly prostrated themselves on the ground, cautiously radiating a submissive aura to show their absolute surrender to Huai Si.
It was then that Huai Si noticed another human corpse lying amid the circle of zombies. Huai Si walked over. The man’s eyes were still wide open, filled with agony, yet he still breathed with ragged gasps, his limbs completely paralyzed.
Just like the human from a moment ago, his cervical vertebrae had been twisted, turning him into a complete cripple with only the most basic vital signs to show he was still alive. In the apocalypse, this state was far more agonizing than death.
He looked up at Huai Si, his eyes brimming with tears not out of fear, but filled with a plea.
Huai Si suddenly recalled his time with the extermination squad. Back then, they had already brought Xie Shouhan back. When they went out to hunt zombies, they ran into a group of refugees fleeing a shelter. The zombies that time were a bit tricky, and they couldn’t spare the effort to protect so many people. Quite a few refugees had been bitten. Everyone knew full well that anyone who was bitten would sooner or later turn into a zombie. Before he even had time to think about the next step, those people were all killed.
He had looked back at Xie Shouhan. There was no emotion on that face, as if he hadn’t just thrown a killing blow a moment before.
Just like always.
Back then, he had been afraid that Xie Shouhan would grow accustomed to slaughter, especially regarding humans, and he only remembered to remind him.
Had he forgotten whether that calm exterior hid the same kind of torment he was feeling right now?
Actually, how could there be no inner turmoil? The feeling of taking someone’s life with your own hands no matter the reason, even if only a little bit had to hurt. Back then, Xie Shouhan had taken the initiative to shoulder the burden of killing, burying all the sins of murder beneath a tranquil facade.
In the dead of night, did he ever think back to the scene where he killed with his own hands?
Those pleading eyes grew still. Huai Si withdrew his hand, his fingers trembling slightly as he closed those eyes.
By now, Xie Shouhan should have gone to the esper organization just like the plot in his mind, right? He must be doing all right.
The lagging zombies from earlier caught up at some point, joining the dozen others to form a circle around Huai Si. The wound on Huai Si’s hand was still dripping blood onto the ground. Enticed by the scent, the zombies repeatedly flopped onto the ground, lapping up Huai Si’s dripping blood.
That blood drove the zombies to lap at it uncontrollably, yet out of fear for Huai Si, they didn’t dare get too close, always maintaining a short distance. To the zombies, Huai Si’s blood was like poppy. Adam’s sapphire-blue eyes grew dazed, and in a hazy trance, he knelt flat on the ground as usual, crawling over to Huai Si’s side. Having spent a long time together in daily life, Huai Si held no special guard against Adam. At that moment, he was staring blankly at the newly deceased human. Adam’s sapphire eyes fixed intently on Huai Si, while the tip of his tongue reached out to catch the blood dripping from Huai Si’s hand in mid-air. The droplet fell right onto his pale tongue, rolled into his mouth, and then his tongue slid out again, the tip dyed a bright crimson. He licked his lips with a bizarre, bewitching allure.
Yet Huai Si remained entirely unaware.
Huai Si looked at the battered, ruined shelter before him. Evidently, the inspection team from the main base had already left, but living in this shelter was definitely out of the question anymore.
That meant finding a new place to resettle these people. Even though he had been warned by Liao Muqing, and even though Huai Si himself had struggled with it for a long time, seeing this scene finally made up his mind.
Before Xie Shouhan killed him, he had to find Liao Muqing and the people from the shelter and bring them to a branch base for reception so that he could die in peace.