Moonlight poured through the gaps between the trees, falling upon the two zombies.
Li Dong looked silently at Li Qiu, who kept moving closer to him. His eyeballs rolled downward, exposing most of the whites of his eyes. He was watching his own kind do something strange.
Li Qiu held one of Li Dong’s arms and rolled the sleeves up layer by layer.
First came the black suit jacket on the outside, then the close-fitting shirt beneath it, until that straight and slender arm was fully exposed.
Li Qiu had completely fallen into her appetite. To her, what stood before her now was not a zombie at all, but a butter bun with its packaging torn open.
She opened her mouth and bit down without the slightest hesitation.
Her sharp teeth pierced Li Dong’s tough zombie flesh, like a person dying of thirst finally drinking sweet water. She quickened the speed of her chewing, like a lion on the African savanna tearing apart a fragile antelope.
Li Dong still watched her quietly, offering no resistance, as if the body being torn apart did not belong to him.
The piece of meat in her mouth was only chewed a few times before Li Qiu swallowed it. But that was merely an appetizer, and another bite followed. Before long, one spot on the arm had been gnawed down to the bone.
If one looked carefully, there were black spots clinging to the white bones, giving off a foul stench like garbage that had been left under the blazing summer sun for several days.
Perhaps the sound of her chewing was too loud and had once again affected Li Dong’s judgment. He seemed to sense the presence of a human again.
Li Dong’s figure swayed in the darkness. He moved his neck, and the rotten bone connecting his neck and shoulder creaked noisily.
A growl emerged from his throat, sounding particularly terrifying in the dim and peaceful night.
His mouth also stretched wider and wider, revealing his fishy-smelling teeth, sticky saliva, and black tongue.
He reached out with his other hand and grabbed the sleeve of Li Qiu’s hoodie. The breath he exhaled brushed against her forehead. He was only an extremely tiny distance away from delicious food. One more step and he could have it. Yet that enchanting human scent slipped away from him once again.
In front of him was still this strange member of his own kind.
The foul odor belonging to another zombie made Li Dong bare his teeth. A look of disgust appeared on his wrinkled, shriveled face.
Li Qiu suddenly felt as if she had been dreaming. In the dream, she had jumped off a cliff, and the thrill of plummeting from a great height made her wake with a start.
The scene before her gradually shifted from blurry to clear.
She saw that she was holding Li Dong’s left arm in her hands, and there was still a piece of meat in her mouth that she had not finished chewing.
Meanwhile, Li Dong’s right hand was gripping her wrist, and his face was almost pressed against hers. There was even a disgusted expression on that dead zombie face.
If someone happened to pass by at this moment, they would definitely think these were two lovers who had turned into zombies, otherwise why would they still be so intimate after becoming zombies?
Li Qiu shook off Li Dong’s hand and stepped back several paces to put some distance between them, while silently swallowing the piece of meat in her mouth. Although it was a little stuck between her teeth, it really tasted pretty good. The meat was neither dry nor tough. So this was the taste of a strong young zombie around thirty years old? Li Qiu could not help thinking.
Then she reached out and touched her stomach, where the hunger had lessened, and sighed. “Dong, this is getting a little too intimate.”
Li Dong stood there with his eyes wide open, completely unable to understand what Li Qiu meant.
Li Qiu’s gaze fell upon Li Dong’s arm, where the bone was exposed, and she knew that it was all her handiwork.
She suddenly fell silent as well, her awareness gradually returning as she remembered everything she had done.
At first, when she brought Li Dong along with her, she had only thought of using him as a shield so that she could escape when danger appeared.
She had never imagined that Li Dong could also serve as emergency rations.
And these emergency rations had a strong awareness of their role as food, simply standing there and letting her eat him. If she had not suddenly regained her senses, Li Dong would probably have been eaten clean by now.
Li Qiu was no longer that hungry, but she did not feel particularly happy. She discovered that her bottom line regarding eating had been broken again and again within just two days.
It had started with eating zombie corpses to recover her sanity, then wanting to find human food. Human food was not filling, so she could only swallow her tears and eat 178 zombie corpses. And now, she had become so desperate with hunger that she was gnawing on a living zombie.
The time between being full and becoming hungry again was so short. Those 178 zombie corpses had only allowed her to barely last for about twelve hours.
By the sixth hour after eating her fill, around noon, she had begun to feel hungry, though only slightly, and it had been completely tolerable. By the afternoon, she had been so hungry that she ate rotten fish to fill her stomach. Then, at dusk, she had consumed too much physical strength while cycling. After night fell, the enormous hunger had pierced through every inch of her flesh and blood, making it difficult for her to remain clear-headed and impossible to make judgments with her own consciousness.
Human evolution was to become increasingly powerful ability users and adapt to the changes in the world.
As for the direction of evolution for a fake zombie like her, it was probably to become a real zombie.
Perhaps in the future she would grow hungry faster and faster, requiring more and more meat to become full. Otherwise, she would either starve to death or become completely unable to stay conscious.
Sooner or later, I’m afraid I’ll end up eating living people, Li Qiu thought.
A wave of sadness rose in her heart. No wonder cultivation novels did not allow humans and demons to be together. No one knew what consequences mixed blood would bring.
She simply could not imagine finding her parents and best friend at her hungriest, then slowly eating their delighted selves…
So she had to break this terrible habit starting now.
“It wouldn’t matter if I were a complete zombie, but unfortunately, I’m not. Stop following me.” Li Qiu said to Li Dong, “The road ahead is wide, and we’ll each go our separate ways. If you get beaten to death someday, then for the sake of us having been companions, I won’t eat you.”
Li Dong did not understand the dejection in Li Qiu’s words. His attention had already been attracted by a bird’s nest in the treetop.
The large bird had already returned to its nest and was feeding the chicks with insects it had painstakingly found. The chicks stretched out their strange pointed beaks and let out noisy cries. Along the outer edges of their beaks had grown a circle of spikes that their parents did not possess, stabbing the large bird and causing it to flap its wings in pain.
For things that were not fresh humans, Li Dong’s attention usually lasted less than a minute.
But when he lowered his head to look again, that strange member of his own kind had already walked farther and farther away.
She was about four or five large banyan trees away from him and was nearly out of sight.
Li Dong gave her a cold glance, then withdrew his gaze and wandered off in another direction. He wanted to search for fresh human flesh.
She was alone again…
Li Qiu thought as she walked.
There was another benefit to becoming a zombie, she now possessed excellent night vision like a cat.
As she walked through the forest, her vision was completely unobstructed, no different from daytime.
But strange sounds kept coming from all around the woods. They came in waves and were always enough to make her shudder.
Li Qiu decisively picked up a banyan branch from the ground and held it in her left hand, while her right hand carried that heavy wrench.
With these two items, she was no longer afraid of whatever danger might appear. The branch could be thrown to create a diversion and make enemies unable to determine her direction, while the wrench could deal a fatal blow to enemies that approached.
Li Qiu swung the wrench a few times and found it increasingly comfortable to use.
However, she soon lowered her hand again. Exercise consumed too much energy. Although zombies generally did not feel sleepy or tired, Li Qiu did. And becoming tired would also cause her stomach to become hungry again. Before finding suitable new food, she had to take it easy.
With the idea of conserving her body’s energy, Li Qiu stopped to rest every few hundred meters.
This forest had grown very densely, and the thick banyan roots made the perfect stools.
Li Qiu sat on a tree root, straightened her back, and surveyed her surroundings.
She had been walking for so long without reaching the edge of the forest that she could not help suspecting that she had gone the wrong way again.
“Heavens, I’m already calling you Grandpa, can’t you help me?!” Li Qiu said while using the branch to draw circles on the ground.
There had been a character called Black Marshal in an animated series she had watched as a child. It was a purple eggshell from the Ancient Weird World and loved nothing more than drawing circles in corners to curse people.
Right now, she also wanted to curse the heavens.
She gnashed her teeth and cursed loudly.
Less than ten seconds after cursing, Li Qiu immediately changed her tune and rattled off a long speech. “I’ve never skipped school since I was little, I even took exams when I had a fever. I respect teachers and honor the elderly, I give up my seat whenever I see old grandmothers. I often stay home watching environmental documentaries and never act like an internet troll. I even donate to disaster areas and disabled children when I have nothing to do, and sometimes I recite scriptures and eat vegetarian meals, so you still have to bless me.”
Although Confucianism had the saying, “The Master did not speak of strange phenomena, feats of strength, disorder, or spirits,” the sages had not advocated worshiping ghosts and gods, not disbelieving in them.
Li Qiu closed her eyes and silently recited in her heart, If gods really exist, then show me a path!
Originally, Li Qiu had only been afraid in her heart, which was why she kept talking nonsense and fooling around. But when she opened her eyes, a gust of wind brushed past the tip of her nose.
The breeze passed through the gaps in the forest and carried with it a strong smell of blood.
A zombie’s sensitivity to the scent of blood was about five times greater than a human’s.
It’s the smell of blood, Li Qiu determined at once. She just did not know whether it was zombie blood or animal blood. She could not help swallowing. Since there was the smell of blood, did that mean there was food?
She did not even need to find the direction herself. Her body reacted faster than her brain and quickly carried her toward the source of the scent.
As Li Qiu walked farther and farther in that direction, she could feel the banyan forest gradually becoming sparse, and she could not help quickening her pace. The fragrance of a grand feast had already entered her nose. She was impatient and unbearably hungry. The things in her hands no longer seemed like a branch and a wrench, but rather a knife and fork…
Then she saw a lake.
The gently rippling lake water shimmered under the moonlight, quiet and carrying a hint of dreaminess.
And the source of the bloody smell was hidden among the golden reeds along the lakeshore.
Within the reeds, Fang Qi raised her knife and cut off a piece of flesh from her elbow.
A wad of clothing was stuffed into her mouth, preventing even the slightest cry of pain from escaping.
Although she did not know whether this could delay her transformation into a zombie, there was no other solution at the moment. She could only take things one step at a time.
Fang Qi threw away the piece of flesh she had cut off, then picked up a tourniquet and struggled to secure it around herself. Large drops of sweat rolled down her forehead, soaking her coat.
The only thing worth being thankful for now was that Zhao Siyuan and the others had not discovered anything unusual about her. The camp had rules against spending the night outside because it was unsafe, so they should have already returned.
She still had a chance.
Just as Fang Qi was about to leave, she suddenly heard a familiar voice.
Chen Mi’s voice was always soft, lively, and cheerful. “Brother Zhao, she’s really here.”
The hand holding Fang Qi’s knife trembled slightly as she looked forward with a cold expression.
From Zhao Siyuan to Chen Mi, then to Su Zhihai and Shen Yucheng, not a single one of them was missing.
Li Qiu had originally been squatting in the grass, drooling over the piece of meat that Fang Qi had cut off. Upon hearing the voices, she immediately perked up. Building a good relationship with the heavens really worked, huh? Not only had she miraculously picked up a meal, but she could even watch a show while eating?
Li Qiu let the swaying reeds conceal her body and silently watched everything happening by the lakeside.