Ling Jiujiu was very nervous and also very scared.
Lu Chen untied his hands and feet, then bound them together again before picking him up and flipping him over.
He had just checked the front—smooth and bare, without any bite marks.
People don’t turn into zombies for no reason; there should be bite marks on his body.
Based on the bite marks, one could roughly determine when he was bitten.
But after thoroughly examining Ling Jiujiu’s back from top to bottom, Lu Chen found no trace of any bite wounds.
Actually, the absence of bite marks wasn’t particularly strange.
If a person’s eyes or mouth came into contact with zombie flesh or blood, they could also become infected.
Moreover, they all carried latent viruses within their bodies.
As long as a person was alive, they wouldn’t easily undergo zombification unless infected.
But once a person died, whether from unnatural causes or natural death, they would turn into a zombie.
Lu Chen removed the wooden stick from Ling Jiujiu’s mouth and asked:
“When did you undergo zombification? How did it happen?”
Ling Jiujiu thought carefully for a moment but regretfully shook his head.
He straightened his tongue and said, “I don’t know. When I woke up, I was already like this.”
A month ago, Ling Jiujiu opened his eyes to complete darkness.
After removing the black hood covering his head, he found himself in a forest.
A few people were wandering slowly around him.
Ling Jiujiu thought these people were rather indifferent—seeing him with something over his head, they didn’t offer to help or even stop to take a look.
He went over and greeted a disheveled woman with tangled hair.
The disheveled woman was very arrogant, not even glancing at him, completely ignoring his presence as she walked straight past him.
He then ran to greet a limping man.
The man didn’t ignore him; he stopped and looked back at him.
That one glance nearly scared Ling Jiujiu out of his wits.
One of the man’s eyeballs hung loosely outside its socket, swaying left and right as he moved. Blood stained his mouth and chest, and the knee bone of his limping leg was exposed, white bone connected to muscle and tendon, making a grinding sound with each step.
The man had a terrible temper, growling fiercely at him twice, and Ling Jiujiu was so frightened he collapsed onto the ground.
However, the man didn’t seem particularly interested in threatening him. After staring at him for a while, he soon turned and limped away.
After nervously exploring the area, Ling Jiujiu realized he was different from them.
These people were bizarre—either terrifying in appearance or with terrible tempers.
They couldn’t speak, only growled at people, and seemed rather brainless and foolish.
In short, he couldn’t find out who he was, nor where he came from or where he was going.
The only thing he remembered was the name Ling Jiujiu.
After wandering in the forest for most of the day, he began to feel a bit hungry.
The “spare ribs” around him didn’t seem like the type to carry food.
Perhaps because they were missing limbs or had broken bones, he also noticed that the others moved quite slowly, unlike him who could run and jump with such vitality.
So he left the group to search for food on his own.
After walking only a short while, he found a small river.
The water in the river was very clean. He washed his face and stared blankly at his reflection in the water, increasingly feeling that he was different from them.
He was wearing striped clothing, which was intact and relatively clean.
With crimson eyes and pearly teeth, his skin was pale and cold, but once cleaned up, he still had a handsome face.
His hunger grew increasingly unbearable. Spotting a few small fish swimming in the river, he rolled up his pant legs and waded into the water, intending to catch one to satisfy his hunger.
Just then, a loud noise echoed from the distance, startling the few remaining fish into scattering and disappearing in an instant.
Ling Jiujiu was furious. Gulping down several mouthfuls of river water, he decided to investigate the source of the sound.
However, as he was about to step out of the river, he heard a low, buzzing hum from the distant woods.
Several more loud booms erupted from deep within the forest.
He emerged from the river, shaking the water off his shoes, and noticed that the people who had been walking slowly earlier had stopped and turned in unison toward the direction of the noise.
After a few more loud bangs, they charged toward the sound as if injected with adrenaline.
Ling Jiujiu stared in amazement, astonished by their hidden speed.
But even with their adrenaline rush, they were still missing limbs and couldn’t outrun Ling Jiujiu, who had all his body parts intact.
Ling Jiujiu was the first to reach the source of the continuous loud noises. Looking around, he spotted a group of people.
These people looked much better than the ones he had encountered earlier. Their clothes were clean, they had all their limbs, and they appeared more intelligent.
Ling Jiujiu wanted to jump out and greet them.
But a nearby man with a crooked nose and a twisted grin moved faster than him, charging toward them with great enthusiasm.
“Bang!”
The enthusiastic man, before even getting within three meters of the group, was shot in the head and fell to the ground, motionless.
He was likely dead.
Ling Jiujiu was stunned by this sudden turn of events. Reacting quickly, he hid behind a tree and silently retreated.
After taking a few steps, he glanced back and saw that the large group of limbless individuals had already caught up.
He warned them of the danger ahead and urged them not to approach, but none of these fools listened, rushing forward one after another.
Gunshots echoed incessantly in his ears, smoke filled the air, and blood splattered everywhere.
The fools followed in the footsteps of the enthusiastic man.
Ling Jiujiu ran back while trying to persuade the fools, but not a single one listened to him.
In desperation, he grabbed a screaming little girl who was running wildly, but she knocked him off balance with a staggering force.
The little girl’s strength was astonishing, sending him tumbling down the hillside.
He didn’t know how much time had passed when he woke up again, finding himself half-submerged in the river and half lying on the shore.
It seemed he had fallen into the river and been washed here.
During his unconsciousness, Ling Jiujiu had a long, long dream.
In the dream, a man whose face he couldn’t see clearly told him that the outside world was dangerous and that humans hunted zombies.
Someone else chattered in his ear, saying he was different from others—he was a zombie.
Ling Jiujiu wandered for a few more days, experiencing several gunfights and narrowly escaping the pursuit of one carload of people after another. Finally, he gained a rough understanding of the world.
The most common creatures in this world were humans and zombies.
Zombies and humans were natural enemies.
Zombies instinctively bit and devoured humans, and those bitten would soon turn into mindless zombies.
Most humans avoided zombies to survive, while a smaller, stronger group actively hunted them.
In short, humans and zombies cannot coexist peacefully—either one side lives, or both perish.
During these days of solitary wandering, Ling Jiujiu also discovered that wherever there are humans, there are zombies, and wherever there are zombies, there are humans.
And in the eyes of humans, he is just a zombie.
Although he can understand human speech, humans never give him a chance to speak—they only want to kill him.
Just as the man in his dream had said, for him, humans are even more terrifying than zombies.
He doesn’t want to harm humans, nor does he want his head blown off.
So he avoided both humans and zombies and found a small wooden cabin in the woods near the river.
At the time, there was also a female zombie inside the cabin.
He lured the female zombie outside, used firewood to tie together a crude raft, placed her on it, and let her drift away with the river.
Then he claimed the cabin for himself.