"We can leave the tomb now."
On the sixtieth hour after falling into the underground tomb, Fu Qi said this to Qin Zhen before detonating their only means of communication with the outside world.
The silver watch exploded like a miniature bomb. Though its blast radius was small, its destructive power was extraordinary—shattering itself into pieces and leaving behind a charred, bowl-sized crater on the ground. If it had detonated on a person, it would’ve likely blown them in half.
Qin Zhen’s brain short-circuited again.
But it didn’t matter. She had already endured too many shocks lately and had witnessed firsthand just how unhinged Fu Qi could be. Her mental reboot lasted only a few seconds before she calmly turned to the culprit and asked, "Are you out of your mind?"
Only a madman would destroy their only hope of escaping the tomb.
And humanity must’ve lost its collective sanity too, designing something so dangerous and carrying it around like an ordinary accessory.
"It’s a specially modified watch communicator," Fu Qi explained under Qin Zhen’s scrutinizing gaze. "If it doesn’t detect the wearer’s biometric data for three seconds, it self-destructs. The stored information automatically transmits to linked devices, bypassing all restrictions."
Qin Zhen processed his words, then simply replied, "Oh."
At least he wasn’t insane.
…No wonder he’d asked earlier if she wanted to watch a movie… They should’ve used up the battery that way. What a waste…
Regret aside, Qin Zhen didn’t doubt Fu Qi’s explanation.
He had no reason to lie. After all, while zombies wouldn’t die trapped in a tomb, humans wouldn’t last long.
Briefly distracted, Qin Zhen soon retreated back into her thoughts—wondering about her origins, the identity of the "husband" she’d lived with for so long, and the neighbor lurking above them.
"If this is a prin—princess’s tomb, then between me and my ‘husband,’ who’s the princess?" Qin Zhen fixated on this question. "Probably me? I vaguely remember having some sort of princess title before."
"Your ‘husband’ is more likely the princess," Fu Qi answered.
"Why?"
"Because you lack a princess’s grace."
Qin Zhen scoffed, then turned and marched back to the main chamber to keep pondering the issue.
She wanted to be the princess. After claiming ownership of this tomb for so long, it’d be humiliating if it wasn’t hers. If she wasn’t the tomb’s rightful occupant, then who was she?
Fu Qi followed and asked to borrow her coffin for a nap.
Only then did Qin Zhen realize he hadn’t slept a wink since entering the tomb.
For a human to go over sixty hours without rest—and without showing any signs of irritability—was downright terrifying.
She lent him the coffin and sat outside, mulling over her identity. But Fu Qi slept for an unusually long time.
With the watch gone, Qin Zhen couldn’t track time, nor could she find any evidence confirming her ownership of the tomb. Eventually, she gave up.
Letting go of unsolvable problems was her strength. She had nothing to lose and couldn’t die anyway—no point obsessing over dead ends.
She was just bored. Bored out of her mind. The moment Fu Qi woke up, she rushed over to ask who the signal had been sent to.
Fu Qi didn’t answer directly. "Don’t worry. Even if I were in hell, they’d come for me."
Qin Zhen didn’t know if "they" were Fu Qi’s family or friends, but she clapped enthusiastically anyway. "You must share a very deep bond!"
Fu Qi considered his relationship with them and said, "Deep enough."
When she asked how long it’d take for them to arrive, he estimated within thirty hours—no more than sixty.
That was too long. Fu Qi hadn’t eaten in over sixty hours. If he went another stretch like that, Qin Zhen feared he might actually die.
With freedom so close, he couldn’t afford to.
"Maybe you could… eat my flesh?" Qin Zhen suggested. "Even though you’re always fake and insincere, we’ve suffered together, so I’ll sacrifice myself to help you survive this."
"Would you be okay?"
"I’ll be fine. I won’t die. Lose a chunk of flesh, and it’ll grow back fast."
This was true. Just the day before, she’d been impaled through the waist by a trap’s crossbow bolt, yet by the next day, the wound had vanished—only leaving a hole in her dark green combat suit.
Fu Qi had witnessed her incredible healing firsthand, but he still refused. "Wouldn’t it hurt?"
"No," Qin Zhen answered after a moment’s thought. "Just a little numb."
"I appreciate the offer," Fu Qi said, rejecting it with a solid reason. "Zombie meat isn’t healthy."
Zombies sometimes found humans utterly baffling. Staying up late was unhealthy too, yet people still did it. Now, when he was starving to death, he suddenly cared about health?
The rejected zombie huffed, "Then starve," and stomped off to the pool to wash her "husband."
Qin Zhen got mad at Fu Qi every three sentences, but her anger never lasted. After cleaning her "husband," she went right back to him.
Waiting was tedious and agonizing. With nothing else to do, the human and the zombie talked endlessly—mostly Qin Zhen asking about the outside world while Fu Qi answered.
He loved dry jokes and arguing, but he never dodged a question. Hypersonic planes, underwater theme parks, space travel—things zombies had only read about in sci-fi novels—were mundane parts of human life in his descriptions.
Qin Zhen was fascinated. "Expensive?"
Definitely expensive.
She pressed, "Is it easy to earn money?"
A pointless question. Everyone knew money was hard to come by without connections. For zombies, it was even harder—especially with her added disadvantage of being visibly different.
"Would my burial goods count as treasures?"
"No," Fu Qi stated bluntly. "They wouldn’t even buy a loaf of bread."
Thoroughly dismissed, the zombie bristled. "I count!"
"I’m a zombie! Immortal, don’t hop around, probably the Zombie King!" Qin Zhen argued fiercely. "Back in the day, rich humans fought over zombies to collect them!"
"You’re very knowledgeable."
"I’m not some Qing Dynasty zombie."
Fu Qi smirked. "You even know about the Qing Dynasty?"
Qin Zhen scowled. "I’ve been outside. I’m a highly educated Zombie King."
Fu Qi: "If you left, why’d you come back?"
"A powerful Taoist priest captured me."
Fu Qi, who had been lounging casually, suddenly straightened, his tone deliberately soft as he asked, "When? How? Which priest?"
"I don’t know," Qin Zhen admitted. "I’m guessing."
"…"
For the first time, Fu Qi was left speechless by her.
He’d long since realized this zombie had memory damage—she retained knowledge of human society but recalled nothing about herself. Her "husband," the priest, and other details were likely pieced together from human books and movies she’d encountered.
I just don’t know whether her memories of human society were formed after she became a zombie or if they were remnants from when she was still alive.
Fu Qi had long known this zombie wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, yet he had almost believed her nonsense. He could only blame it on the decline in physical and mental capacity caused by hunger.
"Fine," he conceded. "Should I call you ‘Your Majesty’ from now on?"
Qin Zhen waved her hand dismissively.
That wasn’t necessary.
"I’ve gone by names like Princess Liuli, Meng Li, Li Shang, Bing Wuying, Ling Feixi, Xi Ye… I’m a zombie with a story," she stammered, struggling with the overly elaborate names.
Qin Zhen felt it lacked impact, so she took a deep breath to gather momentum before continuing, "But now!"
She steadied her voice and declared loudly, "But now… you can call me ‘Baby’!"
"That doesn’t seem appropriate," Fu Qi replied flatly, though his gaze was complicated as he glanced at the skeleton beside the coffin and muttered, "Your husband is right there."
Qin Zhen: "..."
"I meant the valuable kind of ‘baby’! The treasure!"
"No problem then," Fu Qi said, accepting the name without further objection, though he tactfully added, "But just calling something ‘baby’ doesn’t actually make it valuable. You know that, right?"
Qin Zhen felt he was nitpicking. Why did he keep reminding her she was broke?
Annoyed, she left Fu Qi behind and went back to washing her "husband."
Time slipped away in their meaningless exchanges, leaving no trace except for the stubble darkening Fu Qi’s jaw.
The once-refined young man was steadily morphing into a rough-looking drifter, much to Qin Zhen’s frustration.
She asked him again, "Are you sure the message was sent? Will they really come?"
"Don’t worry," Fu Qi said, mentally calculating the time. "They’ll be here soon."
Qin Zhen: "Your death will come sooner!"
Fu Qi refused to eat her flesh to sustain himself, claiming it was unhealthy. If help didn’t arrive soon, he’d be a goner.
Maybe they should’ve just relied on the watch to slowly search for a signal. After all, the neighboring area had practically become a tourist attraction—sooner or later, someone might’ve picked it up.
"That was never an option," Fu Qi shattered her hopes. "That watch uses military-grade A-country communications. Civilians can’t intercept it."
Qin Zhen let out an "Oh," about to remark that "overly advanced tech isn’t great either—too many restrictions," when a realization struck her.
She froze, then slowly turned to Fu Qi, locking eyes with him as she enunciated each word, "So… from the start… we didn’t need… a signal?"
Fu Qi turned to face her, meeting her gaze calmly before replying with gentle patience, "I don’t understand. Baby, you’ll need to speak in complete sentences for me to follow."
"Liar!" Qin Zhen was furious.
She had just realized that the watch could send a distress signal the moment it self-destructed—meaning Fu Qi could’ve contacted the outside world from the very beginning. All that nonsense about scouting the terrain and searching for signals in the tomb was just a trick.
Her brain might’ve been rusty from disuse, but Fu Qi had outright treated her like she had no brain at all.
"Deceiver!"
After lying to her so much, how dare he still sleep in her coffin?
Qin Zhen immediately moved to drag the shameless tomb raider out, but just as she leaned over the coffin’s edge, Fu Qi suddenly looked up and said, "They’re here."
"Still lying!" Qin Zhen refused to believe him and was about to climb in when—BOOM!—a deafening explosion erupted above them, its force hundreds of times stronger than the watch’s blast.
She jerked her head up in shock, watching as the tomb’s stone ceiling trembled, dust cascading down.
"They’re here," Fu Qi said, meeting Qin Zhen’s gaze evenly. "Baby, do you want to settle the score with me first, or get out of here?"
"...Out!"
Survival came first!
Fu Qi leapt out of the coffin. "Then let’s go. By the way, Baby, are you really unkillable no matter what?"
Qin Zhen didn’t understand why he was asking.
She’d already told him she couldn’t die—he’d even seen her wounds heal completely.
Just as she was about to ask if hunger had addled his brain, another explosion rocked the tomb.
This one came from the opposite chamber, even more powerful, shaking the structure to its foundations.
"Your friends are… aggressive!"
Was this a rescue or an attempt to bury Fu Qi alive?
"They’re just a bunch of uncouth brutes," Fu Qi muttered before gripping Qin Zhen’s wrist and pressing, "Even if your heart or brain is pierced, you won’t die?"
As a zombie, Qin Zhen barely felt pain or temperature, but after so long without human contact, Fu Qi’s touch felt strangely warm—uncomfortably so.
She squirmed slightly, but with explosions still rattling the tomb and freedom so close, she prioritized answering him.
"No. Been impaled by traps before. Didn’t die. Just leaked air. Felt itchy."
"Good," Fu Qi said softly, his gaze steady on her amid the chaos. "But you should know, Baby, for humans, injuries like that are fatal."
