To keep herself safe and avoid being found, Qin Zhen couldn’t return to any place she had visited before or seek out anyone she knew. In the end, all she had left was herself.
She couldn’t find a tomb for the moment and had no idea where to go. With no destination in mind, she simply followed the wind.
But the wind never blew in a fixed direction. Sometimes she headed south, sometimes east, all the while remembering the kiss Fu Qi had given her. Her heart felt pleasantly itchy.
Later, distracted, she stepped into empty space and fell into a river, where she spent an entire day soaking in the water.
Qin Zhen decided that living underwater wasn’t so bad, either. Humans would never think to look for her there—until she saw several corpses underwater, their bodies pale and bloated from being soaked…
She decided it was better to return to shore.
Back on land, she idly rummaged through her backpack and discovered that falling into the water had ruined the sugar, broken her little fan, and rendered some of her cosmetics unusable. The unfinished novel Fu Qi had given her special permission to bring along, as well as her grudge book, had also been soaked through.
It was a devastating blow!
This was all Fu Qi’s fault!
Qin Zhen was sad for a while before changing course and heading into the city.
Fu Qi had said that as long as she could keep herself safe, she could do whatever she wanted.
Once in the city, she found a cosmetics shop and replenished her makeup. She had originally planned to find a gold shop and buy some gold to cheer herself up, but when she passed a bookstore, she found herself unable to move on. She turned inside and began reading novels.
There wasn’t a living person in the shopping mall. Only zombies shuffled around, kicking their feet as they wandered.
With no one to disturb her, Qin Zhen read very seriously.
In the past, she had never been picky about books. She read whatever fell into her hands—adventure and mystery, supernatural horror, stories of love and hatred. But now, she only enjoyed romance novels.
Love and all those complicated feelings… How did humans manage to have so many of them?
She complained inwardly as she read. Whenever she reached a scene where the protagonists kissed, her toes curled against the floor. She would close the book, chase away the zombies circling nearby, then sneakily open it again like a thief.
As she read, she began to sense that something was wrong. In other people’s kisses, the heroine’s mouth was always described as fragrant and sweet. But when Fu Qi had kissed her, it seemed that her entire mouth and face had been covered in foundation…
Had Fu Qi eaten a mouthful of foundation?
Did foundation taste good?
After much hesitation, Qin Zhen dabbed a little foundation onto her finger and tentatively tasted it.
“Bleh, bleh, bleh!”
She spat out the strange cosmetic powder, thinking that Fu Qi was truly perverted!
Qin Zhen spent half a day lost in thought over Fu Qi’s perversity. When she slowly came back to herself, she let out a sigh and resumed reading.
She spent days and nights reading dozens of romance novels. Then, one day, she happened to pick up an adventure novel and became engrossed in it. From then on, she began deliberately seeking out adventure stories and read more than a dozen of them. One day, when she came across a love story woven into one of the novels, she thought of Fu Qi again.
Qin Zhen calculated how much time had passed. Afraid that she might forget Fu Qi, she put down the novel, found some paper and a pen, and wrote Fu Qi’s name down.
She also wanted to record the fact that Fu Qi had kissed her, but she felt embarrassed. Fidgeting shyly, she began drawing a simple sketch. As she drew, her heart seemed to fill with air, leaving her light and buoyant.
Qin Zhen didn’t know how much time had passed, nor when Fu Qi would come looking for her.
He had said that people from various countries were searching for her. The difficulties he had to face must be immense. What if he couldn’t survive long enough to find her?
Qin Zhen propped up her head and thought for a while. Then she dragged over a table and chair and carefully drew, stroke by stroke, everything related to Fu Qi.
She drew their first meeting in the tomb, when Fu Qi had tricked her into coming closer and forced her into a corner. She drew Fu Qi kicking her coffin and apologizing to her. She drew the tomb collapsing, Fu Qi helping her gather up her husband’s bones, and taking her away through the underground river…
Qin Zhen was drawing so intently that she somehow attracted a zombie.
The zombie circled her twice, then reached out with its filthy hand to grab the pen sliding across the page. Qin Zhen jumped in fright and used her peachwood sword to give the zombie a thorough beating. When she returned to her drawing, she discovered that the gel pen must have been knocked against something. Ink had spilled out, leaving a dark smear across her chest.
She tugged at her clothes to examine it and suddenly remembered the “DF” Fu Qi had written on her chest with his finger when they parted.
What had he been doing?
Qin Zhen didn’t understand. Dipping her finger into the still-wet ink, she repeated Fu Qi’s action on her own chest. As the broken, uneven letters “DF” appeared on her skin, a vague fragment of memory surfaced in her mind.
She had seen that symbol before.
Qin Zhen thought and thought. Finally, she pulled over her sketchbook and, following her instincts, drew a rough self-portrait. Then she was certain: she had indeed seen that symbol before, on the faded, tattered striped shirt she had been wearing…
Oh, right. It had probably been a hospital gown.
Life underground had been too dull and too long. Her clothes had gradually rotted into rags, and the embroidery on them had fallen away. Being able to wrap herself in the remnants and barely cover her body had been more than enough. Who would have remembered such a tiny detail?
Her former self had really been pitiful.
Feeling sorry for the person she had once been, Qin Zhen shook her head and continued drawing her little comic.
But as she drew, she stopped again.
Memory was a strange thing. Sometimes, no matter how hard one racked one’s brain, the answer remained out of reach. Then, when an unexpected trigger struck a crucial point, memories would surge back like a flood.
At that moment, every hidden truth shed its disguise, and all the details she had overlooked appeared before her one by one.
Qin Zhen remembered that Fu Qi had said the people from Country A had been the first to search everywhere within their borders. He had investigated their purpose and been driven into her tomb by them. So how had it changed from that point onward, with the people from Country A chasing him instead?
The answer was simple: he had found the “DF” symbol in her tomb.
He had used the symbol to uncover the purpose of the people from Country A—and that had drawn their pursuit.
No wonder he had never explicitly told her how he had found the clue.
Qin Zhen suddenly understood. No wonder Fu Qi had searched every inch of her tomb, even inspecting her coffin.
After marveling at this realization, she was about to continue drawing when she lowered her head and saw that her comic book was open to the page where Fu Qi had helped her bury her husband’s bones.
Qin Zhen understood once again. He hadn’t been burying her husband’s remains at all. He had been burying her ragged clothes.
She frowned and continued piecing together her memories. She remembered that when Fu Qi had asked Xu Feng about the “DF” symbol, he had deliberately asked for her opinion and encouraged her to participate in the discussion…
Every time they encountered people from Country A, Fu Qi had deliberately sent her away…
She hadn’t noticed it at the time, but now that she thought about it, every detail had been there all along.
So Fu Qi had understood everything from the very beginning. No wonder he had said, “It’s not that I know everything. It’s that you know nothing.”
He had deceived her again.
What a scheming, sinister man!
Qin Zhen suddenly understood the whole chain of events: the people from Country A, DF, Haien Charity Hospital, the zombies…
Fu Qi had said there were some things he didn’t know how to explain to her. So this was what he had meant.
Qin Zhen felt that she ought to be excited, angry, heartbroken, and resentful, but she couldn’t summon any of those emotions.
Perhaps it was because, by this point, Fu Qi had taken all the responsibility upon himself. As long as she kept herself safe and avoided being discovered, she could claim to be completely uninvolved.
Maybe it was because she had already become a jiangshi and no longer had any memories from before, so she could not feel the emotions she ought to have felt.
Qin Zhen thought about this new discovery for a while. In the end, she realized that whether she figured it out or not, she had no power to change anything, and she did not even know how she was supposed to react. After struggling with it for a moment, she simply decided to stop thinking about it.
There was only one question left: What had Fu Qi been thinking when she took Qin Zhen out of the tomb?
Qin Zhen had plenty of guesses.
Could Fu Qi have harbored ill intentions and tricked her out of the tomb so she could use her for experiments?
Could Fu Qi actually have been a pervert who loved fresh thrills, and had wanted to start a cross-species romance with her from the moment she laid eyes on her?
Could Fu Qi simply have been too hungry to endure it any longer, and wanted to leave the tomb to find something to eat?
…
Qin Zhen pondered in silence for a while, then muttered, “Fu… Fu Xiangxiang, you… you’re a goddamn b-bastard!”
The moment the words left her mouth, she realized just how badly she stuttered. She had not spoken in far too long.
If a person went too long without speaking, they could develop aphasia.
What if she ever happened to run into Ya and the others again? They were no longer illiterate, while her stutter had only gotten worse. How much would they laugh at her?
Qin Zhen decided to seek refuge with some wandering survivors.
She gathered her emotions, stuffed a backpack full of novels, made herself filthy, disguised herself as a zombie, and set off once more.
Wandering survivors mostly lived in remote places that were easy to hide in, rich in crops, and close to water sources. There were bound to be zombies roaming nearby. Qin Zhen now had experience, and on the sixteenth day of her search, she successfully found a group of wanderers’ hideout.
Unfortunately, she was disguised as a zombie at the time. Several of the wanderers bound her with ropes and snatched away her backpack.
The next day, Qin Zhen applied some of the spare foundation she carried and went to look for them disguised as a human.
The bad news was that the wanderers were extremely wary and refused to take her in.
The good news was that the things in her backpack were worthless garbage to them, so they had thrown everything out.
Qin Zhen angrily picked up her precious belongings and cursed, “Damn Fu… Fu Xiangxiang!”
After cursing her out, she changed direction and continued onward.
Later, she avoided the base and searched for a long while. From time to time, she encountered human teams carrying equipment. Some were Chinese, others foreign, and they looked as though they had joined forces to search for her.
Compared with stuttering, freedom was obviously more important.
Sensing danger, Qin Zhen hurriedly pretended to be dead alongside a group of other zombies. After that, she no longer dared to wander in the wilderness. She returned to the city and squeezed in among the zombie hordes once more.
This time, she went to a major city and planned to settle in a university.
The university was just as she had imagined. It had a library where she could entertain herself and a lake where she could wash her clothes.
Unfortunately, the zombie virus had broken out during summer vacation. Most of the dormitory buildings were empty. After searching around, Qin Zhen finally moved into a graduate dormitory. There were plenty of zombies inside, along with all kinds of clothes and cosmetics.
Every now and then, Qin Zhen would put on some makeup, dress in clean clothes, sling a pretty purse over her shoulder, and pretend to be a hardworking college student heading to the library to study. She would leave at sunrise and return at sunset.
“I-I’m back!” Qin Zhen greeted the dormitory matron zombie downstairs as usual one evening.
The matron’s vacant eyes swept over her before she swayed off to one side.
“No manners,” Qin Zhen muttered.
She turned and headed inside. Just as she was about to go upstairs, the corner of her eye suddenly caught a flash of bright yellow at the entrance of the neighboring dormitory building.
She focused on it and saw a yellow safety helmet perched on someone’s head as its wearer made their way through the mass of zombies and into the dormitory.
Qin Zhen had only ever seen one Yellow Helmet before: the girl with the terrible singing voice whom she had met on the day she and Fu Qi parted ways.
She had even left the girl a canister of zombie repellent.
She had not expected the girl to still be alive. Otherwise, that zombie repellent would have gone to waste.
Qin Zhen sighed and continued toward her own building. After taking two steps, however, she turned around and resolutely headed toward the building Yellow Helmet had entered.
Their meeting had been fate. She was going to kill her.
The sun was sinking in the west. There was no light in the stairwell, only zombie silhouettes drifting about like ghosts. The atmosphere was dark and frighteningly silent.
But Qin Zhen was not afraid. Her footsteps went tap-tap-tap as she searched floor by floor, and she eventually found Yellow Helmet in the hallway on the third floor.
Yellow Helmet had stopped in front of a dorm room. Perhaps she had heard the commotion Qin Zhen was making. She lifted her head, then began swaying forward with the zombies beside her.
The light was too dim for Qin Zhen to make out her features. Even if she had been able to, it would not have helped. Qin Zhen could not remember what the Yellow Helmet from before had looked like anyway.
But it did not matter. She would kill her first and worry about the rest later.
Qin Zhen reached back and drew an arrow from the quiver sticking out of her backpack. She weighed it in her hand, then put it back.
The arrows from the archery range were not sharp enough. They were only good for looking cool; they could not kill zombies.
Qin Zhen decided it would be better to lure Yellow Helmet into a room first, then push her out of a window and let her fall to her death.
As luck would have it, Yellow Helmet turned ahead and walked into a dorm room with its door open.
Qin Zhen hurried after her. When she was only two steps from the entrance, the wooden door that had been standing open suddenly slammed toward her.
Having spent so long surviving the apocalypse alongside Fu Qi, Qin Zhen had seen far too many unexpected situations. She reacted quickly, stepping forward to block the door and shove it inward with all her strength.
She had no idea what was happening inside, but some force was pushing back against her.
A jiangshi could not possibly lose to a zombie. Bracing one foot against the door, Qin Zhen used every ounce of strength she had.
Under her efforts, the gap widened inch by inch. Victory was within reach. Qin Zhen was preparing to push the door open in one final burst when the force on the other side suddenly vanished.
The door flew open with a bang. Qin Zhen could not stop herself in time and stumbled forward into the room.
There were several objects piled inside, probably things that had previously been used to barricade the door. Qin Zhen fell onto them. Just as she regained her footing, she felt a rush of wind behind her head.
She turned and saw a figure wearing a safety helmet raising a chair high above her head and bringing it down toward Qin Zhen.
“You—you—you—” Qin Zhen stammered in shock, unable to form a complete sentence.
Zombies did not use tools!
Yellow Helmet seemed startled as well. The chair tilted in midair and fell to the side with a loud crash.
“You’re not a zombie?!” she cried.
Qin Zhen shouted in equal disbelief, “You’re n-not a z-zombie?!”
“I’m not!”
“Neither am I!”
Yellow Helmet said, “If you’re not one, then why were you following me?”
Qin Zhen replied, “I came to k-kill you.”
“Huh?” Yellow Helmet was both astonished and confused. She demanded loudly, “Why are you trying to kill me? Do we have some kind of grudge?”
Qin Zhen said, “Didn’t you say yourself that if you ever ran into a Yellow Helmet z-zombie, someone should help you k-kill it quickly?”
Yellow Helmet finally remembered that, two months earlier, when she had been trapped on the roof and thought she was about to die, she really had said something like that.
She let out an “Ah!” Then she recognized Qin Zhen and said, “So it’s you, Little Stutterer.”
“…”
Qin Zhen felt her throat tighten. She patted the bow and arrows strapped to her back, raised her voice, and declared with great dignity, “I have a n-name. I’m called C-Coldlight Girl.”
“What the heck?”
“Coldlight Girl!”
Yellow Helmet: “…More like Middle-School-Chuunibyou Girl!”
Just then, several zombies that had heard the noise began pouring into the room.
Yellow Helmet’s expression froze in terror. She quickly put on a vacant, mindless look and began swaying along with the zombies.
Qin Zhen asked in confusion, “W-What are you doing?”
Yellow Helmet shot her a sidelong glance and said quickly in a low voice, “I used zombie repellent. I’m disguising myself as a zombie.”
Qin Zhen: “……”
She had been the one to imitate the zombies’ movements first. Could she really blame Yellow Helmet for mistaking her for one and trying to kill her?
Qin Zhen grabbed a zombie and shoved it outside. “Just act n-normally. You don’t have to imitate them!”
“You used repellent too?” Yellow Helmet asked. Then she looked annoyed. “Right, of course you did. This is the one you gave me, after all.”
She had come up with the explanation herself, so Qin Zhen simply accepted it.
It was clearly Yellow Helmet’s first time using zombie repellent. She was being extremely cautious, and only gradually grew bolder after seeing Qin Zhen’s example.
“When we were in that small county last time, I was planning to use this. But then a bunch of vehicles came charging out of nowhere—guns, cannons, the whole works. They blew up a lot of zombies, and most of the rest followed those vehicles away. I took advantage of the chaos and escaped with the other people who’d been trapped there.”
After recounting what had happened that day, Yellow Helmet asked, “How did you get on those people’s bad side?”
Qin Zhen said, “Uh… They were b-bad people!”
It had nothing much to do with Yellow Helmet, and she wasn’t particularly interested anyway. Since Qin Zhen said they were bad people, Yellow Helmet believed her.
She returned to the dormitory corridor and began searching as she walked, introducing herself as she did so. She said that breaking into Linxiang with those people last time had been an accident, and that she had actually been wandering around alone for the past few years.
The reason she had come to this university was to find her only relative.
“My older sister was doing her graduate studies here,” she said. “I told her to choose a school closer to home because this place was too far away, but she wouldn’t listen… It was so far that it took me more than three years to get here!”
After finally making the journey, she hadn’t been able to get inside. She had wandered around in circles, and if Qin Zhen hadn’t given her a vial of zombie repellent last time, she would probably still be roaming outside the city.
“What about you?” Yellow Helmet asked Qin Zhen.
Qin Zhen said, “I-I’m looking for someone too.”
“Who?”
“Uh…” Qin Zhen couldn’t answer. After hesitating, she said solemnly, “Someone.”
“Your boyfriend?”
“…Yeah.”
“You probably won’t find him,” Yellow Helmet said. “It’s been five years. Even if he’s still alive, he would’ve left long ago.”
In the apocalypse, ordinary people had no means of communication. Separated from their loved ones across vast distances, they had no way of knowing whether their family was alive or dead.
Qin Zhen asked, “Then why are you still l-looking?”
“Because I’m still alive.” Yellow Helmet’s voice was distant, tinged with sadness and helplessness. “When you’re alive, you have to have something to hold on to, right?”
Qin Zhen thought she was right. She had something to hold on to as well. When she had been in the grave, she had dreamed of getting out and going online. Now that she was wandering outside, she dreamed of Fu Qi coming to find her.
Thinking of Fu Qi reminded her of the daily ritual she never failed to perform. She muttered softly, “Fu Xiangxiang is a jerk.”
“What?” Yellow Helmet asked.
“Nothing.” Qin Zhen brushed it off.
The two of them had encountered each other before, and now that they had reunited with similar goals, they joined forces to search.
Yellow Helmet found her sister’s dormitory first. It had long since been abandoned, leaving behind nothing but a thick layer of dust. She searched through her sister’s desk, found her student ID and national ID card, and stuffed them into her pocket. Then she turned and asked Qin Zhen whether she had searched the men’s dormitory.
Qin Zhen said she had, but hadn’t found anything.
“Then there’s nothing we can do.”
Worried that the zombie repellent was about to wear off, Yellow Helmet prepared to leave and asked Qin Zhen whether she wanted to come along.
Qin Zhen touched the foundation in her backpack, uncertain whether she should agree.
They had only just made it out of the dormitory building when a rumbling sound came from the sky. Qin Zhen looked up and saw a plane fly low overhead, scattering loose sheets of paper like snowflakes.
She instinctively reached out and caught one. It was covered entirely in English, which she couldn’t read.
Yellow Helmet caught one too. After scanning it, she said, “A wanted poster? Looking for someone named Qin Zhen…”
Qin Zhen immediately tensed. Her gaze shifted as she began searching for a route to escape.
But the next second, Yellow Helmet coldly tossed the poster aside. “What age are we living in? They’re still putting up wanted posters? And in our country, using their bird language?”
She was furious. As she spoke, she raised her middle finger toward the hazy sky and cursed, “Idiots!”
Qin Zhen: “……?”
What a good girl!
She decided to leave with Yellow Helmet.
She would take Yellow Helmet on as her little sister and protect her from then on!
Whether she would actually protect her was a matter for the future. In any case, Qin Zhen left with Yellow Helmet that day.
The university town was remote. Not far ahead were fields and villages. Yellow Helmet had spent a long time circling this area and had carved out a cramped little shelter for herself there, where she temporarily took Qin Zhen in.
Qin Zhen liked being around humans, but she wasn’t used to sleeping. Back when she had been in the library, she would stay up with the lights on and read novels. Now that she couldn’t do that, her mind was a mess. One moment she was thinking about DF and Haiyin Hospital, and the next she was thinking about that kiss from Fu Qi.
The more she thought about it, the more jumbled her mind became. In the end, she simply stopped thinking. She counted the days on her fingers, worried she might have gotten the date wrong, and wanted to write it down in her little notebook. But when she rolled over, the rustling sound woke Yellow Helmet.
“What are you doing?” Yellow Helmet asked sleepily.
“J-Just thinking.”
“What’s there to think about?” Yellow Helmet put herself in Qin Zhen’s shoes and assumed she was tossing and turning because she hadn’t found her boyfriend. “The people you’re meant to find will eventually be found. If you can’t find them, there’s no point worrying either.”
Qin Zhen thought that made sense. But she really couldn’t sleep, and she wanted someone to talk to.
Fu Qi had always kept her company before bed.
“Have you ever k-kissed a man?” Qin Zhen finally couldn’t resist and whispered her secret to Yellow Helmet.
“I’ve dated three people,” Yellow Helmet replied.
Qin Zhen thought to herself that she had asked about kissing, not dating.
So she clarified, “But have you ever k-kissed one?”
“I’ve even slept with one.” Yellow Helmet suddenly sighed, her voice filled with sorrow. “Now that you mention it, I suddenly miss my ex-boyfriend… He was incredibly handsome, sweet-tempered, and a wonderful cook.”
Qin Zhen thought that Fu Qi was handsome too. His mouth was annoying, but he had a good temper. She didn’t know whether he could cook—he hadn’t exactly had the opportunity—but he could learn later.
After comparing the two in her mind, she asked curiously, “If he was so great, why did he become your e-ex-boyfriend?”
Yellow Helmet let out a mournful sigh. “I had no choice. He was no good.”
Qin Zhen didn’t understand. “No good at what?”
“Sex.” Yellow Helmet sounded deeply regretful. “I tried hard to convince myself to accept it, but then I thought about how young I still am. If I stayed with him, I’d have to live like a widow for decades. Just thinking about it was despairing. In the end, I had to grit my teeth and break up with him.”
Qin Zhen had originally wanted to share that heart-fluttering kiss, but after two sentences from Yellow Helmet, the conversation had shot straight into the stratosphere. In an instant, Qin Zhen felt that her own tiny bit of experience was too embarrassing to mention.
She gloomily touched her lips in the darkness and fell silent.
But Yellow Helmet’s interest had already been piqued. “It’s been five years since the apocalypse, and you still came looking for your boyfriend. Your relationship must be wonderful. You two must be very compatible in bed too, right?”
Qin Zhen stammered a few times before saying, “H-He has pectoral and abdominal muscles. They’re nice to touch.”
“The pecs and abs are pretty impressive, but that’s all just surface-level. When it comes to whether a man can really perform, you have to test the real thing to know.”
Qin Zhen: “…”
What did she mean, “test the real thing”? That brief, passionate kiss was already the most intimate thing they could do.
They couldn’t actually go all the way—there was a species barrier between them.
Yellow Helmet’s gossip-loving spirit was already ablaze. She pressed on with a few more questions, then, seeing that Qin Zhen wasn’t answering, said, “Why are you being so coy? What era are we living in? You’re not still ashamed to talk about sex, are you?”
“…”
It was obviously you humans who were vulgar. The moment sex came up, you got all excited!
But Qin Zhen was determined to become the big sister here. She absolutely couldn’t let her little follower look down on her.
Lowering her voice, she shamelessly said, “He’s… very good.”
“Nice,” Yellow Helmet praised. “Great body, and he can make his partner feel good too… Ah, just talking about it is making me want a man.”
Qin Zhen fell silent.
She was thinking about men too.
Damn Fu Xiangxiang. She had deliberately teased Qin Zhen right before they parted, leaving her unable to stop thinking about her and driving her crazy too.
Damn Fu Xiangxiang. She had lied to Qin Zhen about so many things and still hadn’t explained herself.
Damn Fu Xiangxiang. So much time had passed, and she still hadn’t found Qin Zhen… If she didn’t show up soon, Qin Zhen was never going to put in a good word for her again!
