When Fu Qi had agreed to help find the children, he had already said that, as the only woman on the team, Qin Zhen would be the main force behind this mission.
The zombie naturally had no objections.
She followed the four girls into the cellar. It was damp and smelled unpleasant. After Ya pulled the hemp rope, the heavy door slammed shut with a loud snap, plunging the cellar into darkness.
Qin Zhen couldn’t see a thing and didn’t dare move. The girls, clearly familiar with the cellar, quickly gathered in one spot.
After a brief rustling, someone said from the darkness, “He’s really amazing!”
“What good is being amazing? He’s not a good person. The more capable someone like that is, the more frightening he becomes.”
“Exactly. If we’d known, we should’ve tied him up too.”
Qin Zhen guessed they must have been watching what was happening outside through some means. “Where are you? Bring me over too.”
The moment her voice rang out, the cellar fell silent.
About two seconds later, there was another snap, and a small flame appeared in the darkness. Soon, a mud-plastered stove was lit, and the cellar filled with light.
The four girls were huddled around a low table, watching her warily.
Qin Zhen sensibly raised both hands. “I just wanted to see how Sweetie is doing.”
“Sweetie? You mean that man who was with you?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“A grown man with a name like that can’t possibly be a decent person!”
Qin Zhen wholeheartedly agreed. “That’s right!”
The girl speaking to Qin Zhen was ten years old. As soon as Qin Zhen finished, Ya cut in, “Don’t tell her too much. She’s not a good person either.”
After silencing the little girl, Ya turned to the long-haired girl and her voice grew stern. “I told you a long time ago that you weren’t to go outside except to look for necessities. And yet you took them to see a kite… They’re still young, but what about you? How old are you? Don’t you have any sense of responsibility?”
The long-haired girl looked embarrassed. She defended herself in a low voice, “They’d never seen one before. They insisted on going…”
“And because they wanted to go, you took them?”
The long-haired girl was left speechless.
The two little girls were visibly uncomfortable and tried to defend her. “It wasn’t Li’s fault. We—”
“How united you all are.” Ya’s voice suddenly rose sharply. “Yes, she’s good to you and agrees to everything you ask. Only I’m meddlesome and cold-hearted. I’m the bad guy.”
“That’s not what we—”
“Don’t bother explaining!” Ya was clearly the leader among them, and she had quite the temper. With a cold laugh, she said, “I don’t care what you want to do, but I still have to live here. I don’t want to be disturbed, so could you please use your brains before doing anything in the future? Or do you not have any brains?”
That was a truly vicious thing to say.
Li, the long-haired girl, and the two little girls all fell silent, too afraid to speak.
Ya looked furious. She turned her sharp words back on Li. “I have no objection to you trying to be a good person, but deal with the trouble you cause yourself. Don’t drag me into it!”
Perhaps those words had struck a nerve. Li suddenly stood up and headed for the exit. The two little girls panicked and hurriedly grabbed hold of her.
The zombie, who had somehow provoked an internal conflict and was now witnessing someone else’s argument firsthand, felt extremely awkward.
Their mission was to find the children and persuade them to return to the base. So why did it feel as though she had driven a wedge between them?
Li was only fourteen or fifteen. If she impulsively went outside to kill zombies and got bitten, Qin Zhen would be guilty of a serious crime.
Qin Zhen happened to be standing beneath the cellar entrance, so she quickly spread her arms to block the way. “It’s not a big deal. Don’t fight, don’t—”
She had meant well, but Li, who had been scolded until she could barely raise her head, suddenly attacked her. Grabbing Qin Zhen by the arm, she slammed her against the mud wall of the cellar.
The two little girls following her went wild as well, each wrapping both arms around one of the zombie’s legs.
Qin Zhen still wanted to persuade them not to act rashly and to get along as sisters. The words had just reached the tip of her tongue when Ya came over and efficiently wound several loops of rope around her, tying her up.
“…”
Qin Zhen understood.
“Again with this trick?” she cried, shocked and heartbroken. “Is a diversion really that effective?”
She had gone out of her way to mediate their quarrel. Who would have thought they had only been putting on an act to trick her?
It made her look like a complete idiot!
“Haha!” The youngest girl clapped happily, revealing a missing front tooth.
Li raised her head as well. Like Ya, she wore a relieved smile. “We couldn’t help it. That Fragrant Man is so capable. He jumped onto the roof in just a few moves. Since you’re his accomplice, you must be pretty capable too. We wouldn’t feel safe if we didn’t tie you up.”
The zombie felt aggrieved. “If he’s so capable, why didn’t you tie him up?”
“If he dares come back, we’ll tie both of you up.” Ya’s expression had softened somewhat, but her tone remained fierce. “You’d better stay put. If you try anything funny, we’ll kill you!”
“Kill you!”
“We’ll feed you to the zombies!”
The two little girls mimicked her threats.
The zombie was very upset—not because she had been threatened, nor because she had been shamefully tied up by several little girls, but because she prided herself on her acting skills and yet hadn’t noticed at all that these girls had been putting on an act to deceive her!
That made twice now!
Their acting was so natural and layered—far better than hers!
The zombie suffered a devastating blow and took quite some time to recover.
Once she had pulled herself together, her sense of responsibility returned, and the zombie began surveying the cellar.
The cellar was quite spacious, with an entrance at both the front and the back. The interior had been divided into several sections.
There was a kitchen area stocked with pots, bowls, and utensils. Beside it stood buckets and water jars of various sizes, all filled with water, along with piles of dried grass and branches. A rest area was partitioned off by a curtain, and the girls had all disappeared inside. There was a great deal of rustling, though Qin Zhen had no idea what they were doing. Farther in was another corner screened by a bamboo blind, which was probably the sanitation area.
There were also ropes strung across the cellar, with a few scattered pieces of clothing hanging from them.
The place showed abundant signs of habitation. The girls had probably been hiding here for a long time.
They lived underground just as she did, yet their acting was better than hers, and their living conditions were better too…
As a zombie, was she really inferior to humans even when it came to establishing a home underground?
Qin Zhen was sighing over this when several elderly coughs suddenly came from the rest area.
She had been tied up and thrown onto a pile of dried grass. She craned her neck to look but couldn’t see anything. Curious, she asked, “Is someone sick?”
The curtain was swept aside. Qin Zhen vaguely saw someone lying inside, but before she could get a clear look, the curtain fell shut again.
Ya came out, her face cold and severe. “It’s none of your business. If you don’t want to die, ask fewer questions!”
“I was just going to tell you that the base has medicine.”
Ya let out a cold laugh. “So what?”
Qin Zhen thought about it and understood. Fu Qi had told her that the base used to be chaotic, and resources had all gone to the upper echelons. Children like these, who were of little use, along with the elderly woman lying sick inside, perhaps, had no right to receive medicine. They were treated no better than livestock.
Qin Zhen remembered that survivors living outside had always been deeply hostile toward the base.
She changed her wording. “The Fragrant Man outside has medicine.”
Ya froze and turned to look at her companions.
The girls’ faces all revealed excitement and anticipation that they could barely contain.
A moment later, Ya nodded and walked over to the low table. She peered at a tube-shaped object and asked, “When is Fragrant Man coming back?”
How was Qin Zhen supposed to know? She said, “He’ll come back for me eventually. Write a note and stick it outside the cellar—outside, I mean. Once he sees it, he’ll bring the medicine.”
The girls exchanged glances, then began rummaging around the cellar. After searching for quite a while, they said, “There’s no paper or pen.”
“I have some!” Qin Zhen shouted.
Her shoulder bag contained not only candy, foundation, a pen, and her grudge journal, but also several hair clips.
She couldn’t compete with them when it came to acting or tombs, but when it came to school supplies, she finally had one area where she came out on top.
Ya came over and searched her shoulder bag. She left everything else alone for the moment, taking out only the pen and tearing off a sheet of paper before beginning to write.
After writing a few strokes, she stopped and whispered something to her companions.
Qin Zhen couldn’t hear what she said. She only saw the girls look at one another in confusion. Ya scratched her head, then continued writing in the dim light.
Once they finished, they were about to send the note out when Qin Zhen called, “Wait! Let me see how you wrote it.”
They refused to show her, so she said, “I’m an adult. I know more than you do. What if you write down the wrong medicine and kill her?”
Ya hesitated, then handed the note to her.
The light was far too dim. Qin Zhen narrowed her eyes and struggled to make out the words. All she could see was:
“Bring fever medishine, or we’ll klll her!”
“…”
The zombie let out a snort of laughter. “You’re illiterate!”
Ya’s face flushed. Embarrassed and angry, she snapped, “You’re the illiterate one!”
Qin Zhen had always been corrected by Fu Qi whenever she used the wrong word. At last, it was her turn to mock someone else. Overjoyed, she smugly said, “I didn’t write it in pinyin… A big illiterate leading a bunch of little illiterates, and you’re still using pinyin at your age? Shame on you!”
“You—you!”
Mocked until her face burned, Ya ripped the note threatening Fu Qi into pieces with two sharp swishes.
Beside her, the youngest girl—the one with the missing front tooth—looked utterly baffled. She tugged on Li’s sleeve and asked, “What does ‘illiterate’ mean?”
Li: “…”
Unable to bring herself to answer, she silently covered the little girl’s mouth.
The group of illiterate girls was either embarrassed or confused. Only the zombie was delighted. “If you’re illiterate, how do you know the tactic of feinting in the east and attacking in the west?”
She had used it twice, and both times it had worked.
It was clearly a compliment, but Ya grew even more furious. “Shut up!”
When had the zombie ever achieved victory in the realm of education?
She giggled happily. “You’re illiterate, and now you’re getting defensive.”
The teenage girl was so enraged that her face turned blue, then white. She picked up a branch and was about to hit Qin Zhen with it.
Qin Zhen hurriedly said, “All right, all right, I won’t say anything else. I’m sorry!”
Ya refused to listen and insisted on hitting her, but Li held her back.
The zombie had no taste for being abused, so she quickly added, “If the fever is serious, she should also take some anti-inflammatory and antiviral medicine. If she has any external wounds, disinfect them too… Let go of me and let me go over there. I’ll help you write the threatening letter… Her cough sounds very, very congested. If we wait any longer, she might die.”
That last sentence finally had an effect. All three girls began urging Ya to stop.
Qin Zhen finally saw the person behind the curtain: an elderly woman with graying hair. It was hard to tell her exact age, but she seemed to be around the same age as Academician Jiang.
The old woman’s face was flushed with an unhealthy red, and she was shivering faintly. She was already half-conscious.
The girls had probably prepared themselves for the possibility that she would die, because they had tied her to a wooden bed.
Qin Zhen gave her a rough examination, then held out her hands for Ya to untie her. She sat down at the low table and, under the watchful eyes of the four girls, composedly and solemnly wrote out a threatening letter aimed at herself, stroke by careful stroke.
Once she finished, they tied her up again. Ya then slipped the letter through a crack in the cellar.
After that, because the zombie had annoyed her, Ya ordered that no one was to speak to Qin Zhen until Fu Qi delivered the medicine.
Qin Zhen was not allowed to say anything either. Otherwise, they would gag her.
The zombie was forcibly silenced. Worse still, she did not need to sleep. With nothing to do late at night, she was so bored that she nearly waited until the girls fell asleep and sneaked back to Fu Qi to get the medicine herself.
But the girls had no idea that she did not need sleep.
In the quiet of the night, perhaps thinking everyone else was asleep, the little girl with the missing tooth whispered, “Big sis, what’s ‘east-east west-west’?”
Li asked sleepily, “What ‘east-east west-west’?”
“The thing the bad person said.”
Li was not as energetic as the child. She merely told her not to listen to bad people, then drifted off to sleep.
The eight-year-old’s curiosity was as strong as ever. Since she had not gotten an answer, she muttered to herself and tossed and turned.
After waiting a while and deciding that everyone else was asleep, Qin Zhen secretly corrected her. “It’s ‘feint in the east and attack in the west.’”
The firelight in the cellar had already gone out. In the darkness, the little girl fell silent for a moment, as if turning over. Then her voice came from the other side.
“What does ‘feint in the east and attack in the west’ mean?”
“It means making a disturbance in the east to draw someone’s attention, then launching an attack from the west,” the zombie whispered furtively, like a thief. “Just like how you tricked me and Fragrant Man today.”
It was rare for her to meet someone even less educated than herself, so the zombie began showing off. “It’s one of the Thirty-Six Stratagems.”
The little girl asked again, “What are the Thirty-Six Stratagems?”
“They’re thirty-six very clever methods.”
“Who came up with them?”
Qin Zhen’s mind stalled. Remembering the Thirty-Six Stratagems was already impressive enough for her. How was she supposed to know who had come up with them?
But this was the first time she had ever met someone less knowledgeable than herself.
The other person was only seven or eight years old and probably had not even graduated from kindergarten. Qin Zhen was an ancient zombie. How embarrassing would it be to be stumped by a child?
The zombie thought for a while, then made something up. “Zhuge Liang.”
“Who’s Zhuge Liang?”
The little girl’s questions came one after another without end.
“Zhuge Liang is… is…”
Which of the Four Great Classics was he from?
The zombie desperately racked her brain, but she simply could not remember the title of the work. In the end, she said, “…Uh, he’s a Taoist priest from Journey to the West. He’s incredibly powerful!”
“Journey—”
“You’re talking nonsense!”
The little girl was about to continue when Ya cut her off.
“Zhuge Liang isn’t from Journey to the West, and he isn’t a Taoist priest!”
Ya had probably received the equivalent of a fourth- or fifth-grade education, and she exposed the zombie’s nonsense on the spot.
Qin Zhen’s face grew hot. Lacking confidence, she muttered, “If he isn’t, then he isn’t. Why are you shouting so loudly?”
Ya already had a terrible impression of her. She turned to the little girl and said, “Don’t talk to her anymore. She can’t even tell the Four Great Classics apart. She’s either a liar or an idiot!”
Qin Zhen was displeased. “You’re the idiot! You haven’t even finished elementary school, and you don’t even know basic addition and subtraction!”
Ya had indeed never finished elementary school, but she was a teenage girl in the prime of youth and cared deeply about her dignity. Unable to argue back, she could only huff angrily.
At that moment, the little girl interrupted. “I know addition and subtraction.”
“Then I’ll quiz you.” Qin Zhen liked talking to easily deceived children, so she asked, “What’s three plus five?”
The girl with the missing tooth answered, “Eight!”
“Oh, look at you, being clever!” Qin Zhen praised her generously and continued, “What’s twenty-seven plus six?”
The little girl grunted a few times before answering, “Twenty-one?”
Qin Zhen: “…”
Sure enough, the government had made the right decision. Children really ought to go to school.
Ya, who had been ignored, couldn’t stand the zombie’s attitude and spoke up again. “Picking on a kid. You’ve got no shame!”
Qin Zhen refused to back down. “A kid who doesn’t go to school is the one with no shame!”
“You’re talking nonsense! I’ve been to school!”
“Then can you speak English? At your age, you should be in high school already!”
Ya couldn’t speak English and was rendered speechless once again.
The zombie felt that her eloquence was improving by leaps and bounds. Just as she was basking in her triumph, the little girl asked, “What’s English?”
Qin Zhen replied, “It’s the language foreigners speak.”
“How do you say it?”
The question caught Qin Zhen off guard. Without thinking, the first English word that came to mind was the phrase she had heard most often since leaving the tomb—but it was extremely vulgar and not something suitable to say in front of a child.
As she racked her brains for something else, Ya noticed her embarrassment and hurriedly seized the opportunity to mock her. “Ha! You don’t know either!”
The zombie panicked. “Who says I don’t?”
“Then say something!”
“Fuck,” the zombie said without the slightest blush. “Fuck. Understand, you illiterate?”
“This…” Ya was puzzled.
The pronunciation sounded familiar to her, but five years of struggling through the apocalypse had drained all her energy into merely surviving. She had forgotten how to write many Chinese characters, let alone the dirty words that had been strictly forbidden when she was in elementary school.
The gap-toothed little girl was too young to feel any shame about being illiterate. She asked innocently, “What does ‘fuck’ mean?”
“Ahem…” Qin Zhen said guiltily, “It means hello. It’s another way of saying hello.”
Afraid the girl would ask more questions, Qin Zhen quickly steered the conversation back to the important matter. “See? If you don’t go to school in the base, you won’t know anything. You’ll grow up stupid. What will you do once the zombies are wiped out and society returns to normal?”
She singled out Ya in particular. “Especially you and Li. By then you’ll be in your twenties, and you’ll still have to squeeze into elementary school with toddlers who’ve only just been weaned. Won’t that be embarrassing?”
Ya fell silent.
The underground cellar remained quiet for a while. Then Li’s voice drifted up from the darkness. “What does that have to do with me…? I haven’t even said anything…”
That didn’t matter. Anyone who refused to go to school in the base had to be scolded along with the rest.
After Li spoke, the ten-year-old girl, who had remained silent until then, asked, “Does the base have a school?”
“Of course it does!” Qin Zhen replied confidently.
She had never been there herself, but if Fu Qi said there was one, then there had to be.
Qin Zhen repeated what Fu Qi had told her. “The zombie virus broke out too suddenly, and society fell into chaos. Everyone went through many, many terrible things. But now most bases are under government control and have stabilized. Every base has a school. All the children are supported by the government, and everyone lives and studies together, just like before the apocalypse.”
The darkness of night often stirred the softest parts of people’s hearts and made them think too much. After Qin Zhen finished speaking, silence fell over the cellar once again.
After an unknown amount of time, the ten-year-old girl asked, “Children can go in, but what about the elderly?”
Qin Zhen hadn’t known there was an old person here, and Fu Qi had never told her how the elderly were accommodated. She made a guess of her own. “They can go too! But once they enter the base, they’ll have to work. They’ll have to wash vegetables and dishes!”
The conversation had been going rather well, so Qin Zhen didn’t know why Ya suddenly let out a cold laugh.
“Stop lying. You’re all the same! You claim you’re taking in the elderly and children, but in reality, you just think we’re easy to bully. You trick us into going inside so you can enslave us and use us as bait to lure zombies. I’ve seen this kind of act plenty of times!”
“Who would use you to lure zombies?” Qin Zhen retorted. “You haven’t bathed in ages. You stink to high heaven. If I wanted to lure zombies, I’d use Sweetie…”
Ya was furious. She seemed to roll over before issuing an order. “Everyone go to sleep. No one is allowed to talk to her anymore!”
The four girls slept together. The gap-toothed little girl still tried to say something afterward, but Ya slapped her once, and she obediently quieted down. There was no further sound from the cellar for the rest of the night.
The cellar was completely sealed off from the outside world, without a trace of light. Apart from the soft snores of the girls and the old woman’s occasional cough, there wasn’t a sound.
Qin Zhen spent the entire night inside. On the one hand, the place felt strangely familiar and comforting; on the other, she found herself unaccustomed to it.
The space underground felt empty, cold, and desolate. It was nothing like being held in Fu Qi’s arms, where she was warm and cozy… It was as if she was no longer someone’s precious treasure, but a discarded object casually thrown into the darkness.
Qin Zhen began to miss Fu Qi.
Sigh…
Just as she was feeling gloomy, the iron hatch above the cellar boomed. Someone outside pulled it open a narrow crack.
A shaft of harsh light poured in, accompanied by a familiar voice.
“Dawn’s here, ladies. Are you all awake?”
Originally, Qin Zhen had been the only one awake. The commotion roused everyone else except the unconscious old woman.
Ya was the fastest to react. In the blink of an eye, she had pressed a knife against Qin Zhen’s neck and said fiercely, “Don’t move! I’m asking you—did you bring the medicine?”
“I did.” Fu Qi’s voice came from outside, along with the rustling of a plastic bag. He seemed to be checking the supplies one by one.
“Disinfectant, anti-inflammatory medicine, fever reducers, cough medicine…”
The little girl below asked, “What are fever reducers?”
Qin Zhen: “…”
“Shh—” Ya motioned for her to be quiet and continued listening to Fu Qi.
“…I brought everything. I also brought a surgical knife and some gauze. If any of you have external injuries, remember to disinfect them first, then cut away the rotten flesh,” Fu Qi said.
Ya replied, “Put the medicine by the cellar door, then move to the southwest corner of the yard!”
“Fine,” Fu Qi said. “But first, let our Qin Qin say something so I know she’s safe.”
“All right.” Ya lowered her head and moved the knife away from Qin Zhen’s neck.
Fu Qi called down from above, “Sweetheart, are you all right?”
Qin Zhen called back from below, “Get lost!”
He had made fun of her handwriting. How annoying!
Fu Qi chuckled. “You sound full of energy. Good.”
“You’ve spoken to her. Now move back!” Ya shouted.
After yelling, she turned to look at Li. Li was squinting at the tube-shaped object that resembled a telescope and extended down from above the cellar. Only after Li nodded did Ya cautiously move the chain securing the hatch.
She was extremely careful, loosening it by less than twenty centimeters. As soon as she saw the bag of medicine, she quickly reached out and yanked it inside, then slammed the hatch shut.
She had just carried the medicine down the ladder when the cellar door was pulled open another crack. The girls, who were rushing to clean the old woman’s wounds, were all startled.
“It’s very dark in there, isn’t it?” Fu Qi said gently. “I don’t mean any harm. I just thought leaving the hatch open a little would let in some light and fresh air, which would be better for your health… And it would also let me talk to our Sweetie.”
The cellar had been locked from the inside by Ya. Fu Qi could barely lift it enough to leave a gap as thick as his index finger—there was absolutely no way he could get in.
Considering that if Fu Qi really insisted on doing so, they had no way to stop him, Ya thought it over and decided not to object. To the two little girls, she said, “Go keep an eye on that bad woman. If she dares touch the lock, stab her with your knives!”
The two little girls nodded vigorously. Holding their knives, they took up positions on either side of the bound Qin Zhen.
Fu Qi had heard that too. He said, “Baby, why are they still calling you a bad woman? Didn’t you introduce yourself?”
Qin Zhen said, “I don’t want to talk to you!”
“After not seeing me for one night, is that really how you’re going to treat me? Didn’t you miss me even a little?”
“No!”
“But I missed you,” Fu Qi said. “I came by once before dawn, just in case they bullied you.”
How could a zombie possibly be bullied by a few little girls?!
Qin Zhen was angry. “I’m not talking to you anymore!”
And true to her word, she ignored him. Not only that, but she was going to write this grudge down in her notebook later—along with the fact that Fu Xiangxiang had laughed at her again. Once she got out, she would make him pay.
Fu Qi said a few more things to her, but when he received no reply, he asked, “Is that gap-toothed lady who bit my arm yesterday here?”
The gap-toothed one was the youngest girl, who was eight. It was probably the first time anyone had addressed her so formally, and she blinked in confusion.
“I’m here.”
As soon as she finished speaking, the ten-year-old girl beside her smacked her. She must have remembered Ya’s instructions, because she hurriedly put on a fierce expression and corrected herself.
“What do you want?!”
“Hello, ma’am. I only wanted to ask whether my baby had been mistreated. There’s no need to be so fierce, is there?”
Fu Qi was extremely polite, and his tone was very gentle, making the little girl feel a little embarrassed.
She scratched her face and said nothing.
Fu Qi continued, “At least say hello before getting fierce with me, won’t you? We mustn’t abandon the traditional virtues of Chinese civilization.”
The gap-toothed little girl began to hesitate.
Children really were easy to fool. That was what Qin Zhen thought—until she saw the little girl lift her face and politely say to Fu Qi outside, “Fuck.”
“...What?” Fu Qi’s tone turned hesitant. “What did you say?”
The gap-toothed girl repeated seriously, “I said, fuck.”
Qin Zhen: “...”
...Were children really this quick to learn?
Then what would happen when she entered the base later...
The zombie closed her eyes, wishing she could stab to death her past self—the idiot who had insisted on challenging Ya yesterday!
