Zombies had dulled senses of pain, but their sense of touch remained. Qin Zhen often felt an itch in her brain. Fu Qi used to say she had Schrödinger’s sense of touch; now he said she was deliberately making trouble for people.
Whatever the truth was, after having her soles kneaded thoroughly, Qin Zhen felt much better.
She gave the foot-massage master a glowing review and said she would come back to him in the future.
The master washed his hands and said, “No, no, I’m done with this line of work. Tomorrow I’m changing careers and selling stinky tofu.”
Qin Zhen didn’t mind that he was implying her feet smelled. Touched, she continued, “Sweetie, you’re a good, good captain.”
Fu Qi said, “Although I am, in fact, a good captain, please don’t put it that way. You’re scaring me.”
Qin Zhen still wanted to talk, but Fu Qi stopped her. “Your captain’s heart is exhausted, sweetheart. Do me a favor and keep your mouth shut for a little while so your good captain can get some rest.”
The zombie had almost forgotten that humans needed to sleep. She nodded repeatedly and fell silent, letting Fu Qi go to bed. She herself used her phone’s light and continued reading her CEO romance novel at the foot of the bed.
Early the next morning, just as dawn broke, someone came looking for Fu Qi, insisting on seeing him.
Fu Qi said they were from the government. They had come to find him as soon as he arrived at the base, but he had been focused on Qin Zhen’s desensitization treatment and never gone to meet them. He had only relayed messages through Xu Feng. Now that they had sent someone to urge him in person, either there was news about that symbol, or something unexpected had happened.
Since the matter involved the higher-ups, Qin Zhen, as the base’s newest team member, couldn’t follow him too closely. Fu Qi asked whether she wanted to wait at the government office or stay with the Fan brothers.
The latter was absolutely impossible. Qin Zhen was afraid that the moment she saw Fan Kong, she wouldn’t be able to control herself and would start bouncing around.
The former wouldn’t do either. That was a place filled with government officials, where the yang energy and righteous aura were far too strong. Zombies were afraid of that.
She had mixed up her facts again, forgetting that she was a zombie, not a ghost.
In the end, Qin Zhen chose to pretend she was unwell and stay alone in her room reading novels.
Fu Qi agreed. Before leaving, he told the two Fan brothers that she was sleeping and that they were not to disturb her.
The brothers’ lodgings were cramped. As soon as daylight came, all kinds of sounds emerged: people haggling over trades, whispering gossip, hammering metal, carving, and hawking their wares. The noise came through the wooden partition and poured into Qin Zhen’s ears. It was loud, but strangely reassuring.
It took Qin Zhen a while to remember that this was what people called “the warmth of everyday life.”
For some reason, the surroundings made the zombie feel at ease. She lay on her stomach, swinging her feet as she slowly lost herself in her novel amid the clamorous noise. She had no idea how much time had passed when, suddenly, there was a loud bang. Someone had slammed into the wooden wall, making it shake violently.
Qin Zhen awoke with a start and realized that the sounds outside had changed at some point.
“Oh my God, help!”
“Stop yelling and grab a weapon, you idiot!”
“Grab what? The patrol team is gone! We don’t have guns or ammunition—we can’t beat them!”
Amid the panicked shouts were cries of pain, the sounds of objects falling, and heavy collisions. Qin Zhen’s mind was still filled with the dramatic plot of her novel, and it took a moment to process what was happening. Then came several loud clatters from outside the door, followed by the sound of someone falling.
“Sister Night! Don’t sleep! Run! Through the window—oh, damn it!”
The shout was cut short, ending in a terrified scream.
Fan Kong usually didn’t say much, but whenever something involved his specialty, he became a little overdramatic. His voice was also clear and bright, quite different from his talkative brother Fan Xu’s. Qin Zhen recognized him immediately.
There was danger.
Qin Zhen climbed out of bed and hurried to open the door.
She had previously barred it because she was afraid the Fan brothers might come in to check on her. Now, when she suddenly opened it, Fan Kong came tumbling in with his back against the door, just as Fan Xu had the first time Qin Zhen met him.
“Ow!” Fan Kong rolled across the floor. Three zombies covered in blood came roaring in behind him, lunging straight at Qin Zhen.
Qin Zhen immediately tried to shut the door, but the wooden door was flimsy, and the three zombies were charging too hard. With a bang, the door shattered beneath their impact.
The zombies came straight at her.
Qin Zhen wasn’t afraid of zombies. She just thought their mouths, dripping with blood, were disgusting. If any of it got on her, wouldn’t people think she ate humans too?
But if she dodged, Fan Kong would be trapped inside the wooden room with the zombies and probably wouldn’t survive.
At that moment, Fan Kong got to his feet behind her. What he saw was a zombie lunging at Qin Zhen with its mouth wide open. His pupils contracted. He threw the weapon in his hand and shouted, “Sister Night, watch out!”
Qin Zhen had no time to think. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Fan Kong throw something long toward her. She caught it by reflex and swung it hard, knocking the lead zombie off its feet.
The second zombie rushed in right behind it, only to be sent flying when she kicked it with all her strength. The last one was even easier. Qin Zhen casually struck it across the neck, and it toppled onto the table where Fan Kong kept his talismans. In an instant, it was buried beneath a flurry of yellow paper charms.
One of the yellow talismans fluttered through the air toward Qin Zhen. She jumped in fright and instinctively raised the weapon in her hand to slash at it.
The talisman was knocked aside, but she also got a clear look at what she was holding.
It was a peachwood sword carved with a coiling dragon. Its blade was densely covered in Taoist inscriptions meant to exorcise evil.
“…”
Qin Zhen’s scalp went numb, and she nearly screamed.
She instinctively tried to throw away the peachwood sword and retreat, but the first zombie she had knocked down had gotten back up and was lunging fiercely toward her—and toward Fan Kong behind her.
Qin Zhen had no choice. Gritting her teeth, she continued swinging the peachwood sword. Every zombie that came at her was knocked flat. She stood guard in the doorway like a door god until gunshots rang out from outside.
Firearms were far more effective than cold weapons. Before long, the zombies had all been eliminated.
Once the danger had passed, the source of the incident was quickly discovered. An elderly man in one of the wooden houses had died suddenly during the night and turned into a zombie. His family hadn’t realized what had happened, and when they opened the door that morning, he bit them.
One infection became two, two became four, and in the blink of an eye, more than a dozen zombies had appeared inside the base.
It had been early morning, just as the patrol teams were about to change shifts. They had been caught off guard, which was what had led to the disaster.
Accidents happened all the time, and the people in the base were used to them.
Once the chaos had been brought under control, those with serious injuries were escorted by the patrol team to the medical center. Those with minor injuries went home to bandage themselves. The rest either cleaned up the streets or repaired their damaged houses and stalls. Everyone had their own tasks, and before long, everything was proceeding in an orderly fashion.
Only Qin Zhen was in a panic.
Fu Qi was away that day, and Fan Xu had gone to work at the base’s vegetable cultivation center and had not yet returned. That left only Fan Kong and Qin Zhen in the disorderly wooden house.
Qin Zhen was extremely nervous. Worse still, the arm-length peachwood sword was still clutched in her hand.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to put it down. The sword seemed to possess some kind of magic, clinging stubbornly to her right hand so that she couldn’t release it.
“Thank you.” This was also the first time Fan Kong had been alone with Qin Zhen, and he was a little uncomfortable. He struggled to find something to talk about.
“You—you’re welcome!” Qin Zhen hurriedly replied.
Her panicked tone made Fan Kong glance sideways at her. The moment Qin Zhen noticed him looking, she grew tense. Like a primary school student called on by the teacher, she unconsciously straightened her back.
Fan Kong glanced at her again and explained, “I was worried you weren’t feeling well, so I originally planned to warn you about the zombies and tell you to escape through the window. I never expected you to be the one saving me.”
Qin Zhen said, “Th-thank you?”
For some reason, the air grew a little awkward. After a while, Fan Kong continued, “You’ve saved the two of us twice now. I truly don’t know how to repay you. Miss Ye, is there anything you want?”
Qin Zhen didn’t want anything at the moment. She only wanted him to stay farther away from her.
The zombie dared not say that aloud. After struggling with it for a while, she finally asked haltingly, “C-can I take off my shoes?”
Fan Kong was puzzled, but since he was willing to grant his savior any request, he said, “Of course.”
So when Fu Qi received the message and hurried back, what he saw was a zombie sitting on a little stool, gripping a peachwood sword in her right hand while awkwardly scratching the sole of her foot with her left.
She was afraid her sock would slip off and reveal her skin, so every time she scratched, she had to pull the sock back up. It kept her very busy.
Meanwhile, Fan Kong was tidying up the room, which had been thrown into disarray. Every so often, he shot her a strange look.
When she saw Fu Qi, the corners of the zombie’s mouth twitched. She stiffly extended her right hand toward him.
Fu Qi was initially startled to see the peachwood sword in her hand, but when he saw her expression, he immediately burst out laughing.
He stepped forward to take the sword, but Qin Zhen refused to let go. Fu Qi applied a little force and pried her fingers open before finally managing to retrieve it.
He had clearly noticed that fear had made her fingers stiff, yet he still pretended to be considerate and asked, “Is the sword any good?”
Qin Zhen shot him a vicious glare.
Fan Kong, standing nearby, neither saw her expression nor heard her answer. Instead, he spoke for her. “The wooden sword is blunt and can’t kill zombies, but Sister Night used it very well. She knocked one zombie flying with every swing and wasn’t afraid at all.”
He hesitated briefly, then offered Qin Zhen what he considered the highest praise he could give. “Sister Night is extremely skilled with a peachwood sword. If you didn’t know better, you’d think she was a genuine Taoist priest from Longhu Mountain.”
The zombie immediately shuddered.
Fu Qi laughed again.
Only then did Fan Xu finally hear about what had happened and return. From a distance, he began shouting his brother’s name at the top of his lungs. When Fan Kong heard him, he put down the things in his hands and went out to find his brother.
With the Little Taoist gone, Qin Zhen instantly returned to normal. She jabbed Fu Qi with her elbow and said sternly, “Why are you still laughing? So many, people, died!”
“Why can’t I laugh?” Fu Qi said. “Things like this happen every day. No one can stop them, and everyone’s used to it. At most, everything will return to normal within two hours.”
In fact, he had already told Qin Zhen this before.
The most frightening thing about the apocalypse wasn’t the zombies, but the virus that caused humans to turn into zombies. At the time, Qin Zhen hadn’t understood it very clearly. Now that she had witnessed it with her own eyes, she finally understood why Fu Qi had said that.
Perhaps because she had recently come into contact with so many humans, Qin Zhen felt a little sorry for them. But there was nothing she could do. All she could do was look solemnly at Fu Qi and say, “If one day, you also turn, into a zombie, I’ll take you to an underground, tomb and seal you as my gr-grand, general!”
Fu Qi said, “Thank you for not sealing me as your foot-massage master.”
“……”
The two had only spoken a few more sentences when Fan Xu learned what had happened and rushed in to thank Qin Zhen again. Once that chatterbox got started, no one else had a chance to speak.
Just as Fu Qi had said, incidents like this happened all the time. The people at the base were already accustomed to them, and normal life soon resumed.
After this incident, Qin Zhen was still afraid of talismans, peachwood swords, and the like. But once she had made a breakthrough, she could make another. That put Fu Qi considerably more at ease.
“We’re leaving,” Fu Qi said. “There’s a new mission.”
Qin Zhen had officially joined Fu Qi’s special operations team. This was her first mission after joining, and she immediately perked up. “What mission?”
“Do you remember the researcher who went to the neighboring base for an exchange?”
“The one who can reset the biometric information on watches?” The internet-addicted zombie remembered this matter very clearly.
“Mm.” Fu Qi said, “On the way back, the team encountered zombies. In the chaos, Academician Jiang was ‘rescued’ by people from the Dayu Base. Dayu replied yesterday, saying that Academician Jiang was living there very well and had no intention of returning.”
Academician Jiang was one of the few remaining giants in the scientific community. Years ago, when a new type of infectious virus broke out, her team had developed a vaccine to combat it. After the zombie outbreak, she had also been the first to propose that a virus was responsible.
She was an invaluable talent in the post-apocalyptic world.
Setting aside the question of whether a scientific researcher devoted to her country would voluntarily join a private organization, her granddaughter worked in the government offices of Dawn Base. How could Academician Jiang possibly abandon her only relative and remain in an unfamiliar base?
The claim that she “had no intention of returning” was clearly a lie.
The Dayu Base that had “rescued” her had been built by a private organization. They had even named it after what was believed to be one of the earliest dynasties in history, Yu. Their intentions were obvious. However, because they had genuinely taken in quite a few people and hadn’t openly acted like tyrants the way some bases had during the early days of the apocalypse, the government had never intervened.
It was highly likely that Academician Jiang had been abducted. But since the other side’s explanation was so polite, the authorities had no grounds to make trouble. They were also afraid that Academician Jiang might be harmed, so they planned to send a private team over to investigate.
Fu Qi had been chosen not only because of his reputation, but also because of the symbol Xu Feng had been unable to find any clues about.
“Academician Jiang is sixty-eight this year and has seen a great deal. Over the past several decades, she’s had at least some knowledge of most of the hospitals across the country.”
Fu Qi was certain that the symbol represented a hospital or sanatorium. The fact that nothing could be found online could only mean that someone had deliberately hidden it.
Traces on the internet could be erased. Traces in the human mind could not.
Fu Qi had decided to find Academician Jiang and ask her about it.
On the day they departed, Fu Qi took Qin Zhen to the treatment center to find Xu Feng. The zombie reluctantly said goodbye to her beloved watch, while Fu Qi quietly made off with a backpack full of supplies.
The Fan brothers claimed they were too poor to give them any supplies, so they could only personally see the pair to the base entrance.
“Don’t die,” Qin Zhen instructed them.
After that, taking advantage of the fact that she had just saved Fan Kong’s life and was about to leave, Qin Zhen gripped Fu Qi’s sleeve tightly and spoke to him voluntarily for the first time.
“From now on, don’t call other people, ‘vile creatures.’ It’s rude!”
He especially shouldn’t call zombies that. It sounded awful!
Fan Kong froze for a moment, not understanding what she meant, but nodded and said okay.
They waved goodbye and set off.
Fu Qi was still driving. As Qin Zhen looked back at the figures by the base entrance growing increasingly blurry, she felt relieved to be getting away from the Taoist priest—but, unexpectedly, she also felt a little sad.
When she told Fu Qi this, he asked her in return, “Are you reluctant to leave the people, or are you reluctant to give up the feeling of being a big shot?”
Qin Zhen thought about it carefully before answering hesitantly, “Maybe I’m reluc-tant to give up the feeling, of being a big shot.”
“How heartless. All your little followers’ hard work preparing a farewell gift has gone to waste.”
Qin Zhen said, “Huh?”
The Fan brothers had prepared a farewell gift for Qin Zhen. They simply hadn’t given it to her in person, instead secretly hiding it in the back seat of the car.
Fu Qi had noticed it long ago, but he hadn’t exposed them.
The moment Qin Zhen heard that, she hurriedly crawled from the passenger seat into the back. Sure enough, there were two small black bags hidden underneath.
When she opened one, she found it packed full of phones. Each one even had a note carefully attached, labeling whether it contained movies, novels, music, and so on.
Qin Zhen was deeply touched. She asked, “Why didn’t he give them to me in person?”
“Maybe because playing on your phone isn’t considered proper work, so he felt embarrassed,” Fu Qi said.
Especially after learning that the two of them had gotten an entire backpack of supplies from Xu Feng.
In the eyes of normal people, disposable phones that could only provide brief entertainment were nowhere near as valuable as supplies that could save lives.
“How could that be!” Qin Zhen loudly defended her little brother. “This is my spiritual food!”
After putting away the spiritual food her little brother had given her, Qin Zhen looked at the next package.
The next small bag was from Fan Kong. What could a Taoist possibly give her?
Qin Zhen already had an idea, so she was especially careful when opening it. Even so, she was still startled when she saw what was inside. Fan Kong had actually given her both his Taoist certificate and the deed to his temple.
Qin Zhen’s zombie soul nearly flew out of her body. She quickly closed the bag, shoved it under the seat, and swore she would never take it out again.
After looking at all the gifts, she couldn’t be bothered to return to the passenger seat. She pulled out her phone and asked Fu Qi to find her a movie.
Fu Qi refused. “You’re a zombie with a legitimate identity and an official mission now. You should be studying the map and making plans. You can’t spend all your time thinking about entertainment.”
All of that required using her brain, and Qin Zhen didn’t want to do it.
“As your captain, I order you to do so.”
“Then I quit!”
“You’re only saying that now, after I’ve finished massaging your feet?”
“Yes!” Qin Zhen declared righteously.
Fu Qi was always setting her up. She had suffered so many losses because of him—what was wrong with playing a little prank on him?
Since she said she was done, she took off her shoes and curled up on the back seat. Unable to play on her phone, she decided to play with a Rubik’s Cube instead.
Who could have guessed that just as she finished one side, the vehicle would suddenly make a sharp turn? Qin Zhen nearly tumbled off the seat. She had just started to sit up when, with a clatter, a stick-shaped object fell from the side of the seat as the car lurched.
It landed squarely on Qin Zhen’s head.
“Ow!”
She cried out and casually picked up the object, bringing it in front of her.
The information on the note reached her brain before she fully registered the object itself. Qin Zhen saw the words “For you. Wishing you safety” and only then realized that she was holding Fan Kong’s peachwood sword.
Her voice trembled with fright. She flung the sword away with a yelp and scrambled toward the front seat, abandoning both her phone and the Rubik’s Cube.
Fu Qi saw everything in the rearview mirror. The corners of his mouth curved up.
“Who told you to hold on to someone else’s peachwood sword and refuse to let go that day?”
He had probably misunderstood her intentions.
Still shaken, Qin Zhen huddled in the seat and comforted herself, reminding herself that her heart did not beat and therefore could not be pounding.
Fu Qi watched her from the corner of his eye and added, “Your little brother gave it to you, so take it with you. If other people see you using a peachwood sword as a weapon, they’ll never imagine that you’re a zombie. It’s the perfect disguise.”
Qin Zhen said, “Shut up!”
“You can’t be so rude to your captain, Sweetie.”
Qin Zhen was still shaken by the peachwood sword and had no intention of speaking to Fu Qi again. But when she heard that, she suddenly thought of something. She turned to look at him and said, “From now on, don’t call me ‘Sweetie.’ Call me by my name.”
Fu Qi turned the steering wheel without looking away from the road. “That would be so formal.”
“Formal or not, you still have to call me by my name.”
Qin Zhen never wanted anyone to call her “Sister Night” or “Miss Ye” again. Those forms of address were utterly inexplicable. Besides, they were now captain and team member, so they ought to maintain a proper professional attitude.
“Fine,” Fu Qi agreed. Then he thought for a moment. “What was your name again… Night Snow-Ice Consort?”
“…Consort your head!”
“‘Consort your head’? I could’ve sworn your name had four characters.”
Qin Zhen turned around, intending to smack him with the peachwood sword, but calmed down when she saw the exorcising inscriptions on it. She huffed angrily. “You can’t remember it, but you insist on, on remembering a four-character name.”
She had clearly told him several three-character names as well.
“We humans like challenging ourselves,” Fu Qi said.
“You just can’t remember!”
Qin Zhen suspected that the reason he called himself Fu Qi was because he could only remember simple two-character names.
Not wanting to acquire any more bizarre forms of address, Qin Zhen stewed for a while before deciding to tell Fu Qi her real name.
“My name is…”
She opened her mouth to speak, but that name had been sealed away for too long—so long that even Qin Zhen herself found it unfamiliar. When the words reached the tip of her tongue, she suddenly felt embarrassed and couldn’t bring herself to say them.
She paused, then patted Fu Qi and asked him to stop the car.
Fu Qi did as she asked. Once the car had stopped, she said, “I’ll write it, just, just once. If you can’t remember it, I won’t, won’t tell you again.”
After Fu Qi nodded, Qin Zhen removed her glove and took his hand. With her cold index finger, she began writing stroke by stroke across his warm palm.
She was completely focused. She didn’t even notice the strands of hair falling over her face.
Fu Qi was just as attentive. Even when the zombies outside caught up with them and drooled at him through the window, he paid them no attention. He concentrated solely on Qin Zhen’s moving fingertip, carefully distinguishing each stroke.
When she finished, Qin Zhen curled up her index finger, feeling inexplicably shy.
She peeked at Fu Qi from beneath her lashes twice before pursing her lips and saying softly, “I’m done.”
Fu Qi nodded. He closed his hand around hers, which still held the lingering coolness of her touch, and looked straight into Qin Zhen’s nervous eyes. Then he carefully read the characters aloud, one by one:
“Qin—Zhi—Qin.”
“…Qin Zhen!”
Qin Zhen nearly choked to death.
“I’m sorry. I misunderstood.”
Fu Qi apologized quickly and sincerely, but Qin Zhen still wanted to smack him!
She had only just managed to swallow her anger when Fu Qi started the car again. After driving a short distance, he suddenly said, “Are you sure it’s Qin Zhen, and not Qin Zhi-Qin?”
Qin Zhen glared at him viciously.
Fu Qi said earnestly, “Don’t be angry. I was just wondering—your memory is damaged, so how do you still know your name?”
Considering that this doubt was fairly reasonable, Qin Zhen swallowed her irritation and explained, “It’s, it’s carved inside the coffin.”
Her name was carved into the inner wall of the coffin. Whenever she lay down inside it and opened her eyes, she could see her name. There was no way she could forget it.
Fu Qi said, “Oh,” and then asked, “Did your husband sleep in that coffin too?”
“…”
Qin Zhen froze.
That was true. The coffin did not belong exclusively to her. So how could she be certain that the name carved inside was hers?
What if it belonged to her “husband”?
The zombie went blank. For a long while, she remained completely motionless.
Seeing her system crash like that, Fu Qi felt like laughing. After he finished, he pulled over once more, leaned toward her, and pinched her chin, gently rocking it from side to side.
“Sweetie, wake up.”
Qin Zhen was still staring blankly, so he laughed again and said, “I was only teasing you. Qin Zhen is your name.”
The zombie came back to life, but she was still deeply shaken. She looked dispirited.
“But, but…”
“No buts. Qin Zhen is your name.” Fu Qi rocked her chin again and said, “The characters carved inside the coffin are written in the same handwriting as yours. They’re both ‘Zhi Qin.’”
Qin Zhen still looked lost.
This was the aftereffect of not having used her brain for far too long—she simply hadn’t processed it yet.
Fu Qi let her take her time while he tried to get back on the road. But when he raised his hand, he found it covered in foundation. As he searched for something to wipe it off with, the dazed zombie beside him finally moved.
“Figured it out?” Unable to find anything to clean his hand with, Fu Qi simply smeared the foundation back onto Qin Zhen’s face as he spoke. “You believe everything people tell you. You’ll get terribly deceived if you keep that up. You need to learn to think for yourself.”
Qin Zhen didn’t want to think. She wanted to hit him.
She had finally realized that Fu Qi had been inside her coffin—and had stayed there for quite a while. That was why he had known her name from the very beginning.
As for “Qin Zhiqin,” the name of her husband, he had just been taking advantage of the fact that she couldn’t be bothered to think and fooling her all along.
What a bastard!
The zombie’s anger surged. She tossed all thoughts of the Taoist magic artifacts that could restrain zombies out of her mind, turned around, grabbed a weapon from the back seat, and swung it at Fu Qi.
“…Sweetie? Wait, that’s a peachwood sword. Aren’t you afraid anymore?”
She was afraid, but Qin Zhen declared, “Today, I-I’ll uphold justice on behalf of Heaven and ex-exterminate you, you vile beast!”
