“There are about twenty or thirty zombies gathered on the first floor right now. From the looks of it, they’re all unevolved ordinary zombies. I plan to use them for some practice. Do you want to join me?”
Lu Zhi held a fish-slicing knife over forty centimeters long she had taken from the restaurant kitchen. The blade itself was over thirty centimeters long and five centimeters wide, with a sharp, tapered tip and a gleaming edge that looked incredibly keen.
Yun Ai, still burying her head in a lettuce-wrapped rice ball, froze mid-chew. She looked up at Lu Zhi with disbelief, taking a moment to react before asking, “That many? How could we possibly practice on them?”
Lu Zhi casually twirled the knife in her hand, practicing her dexterity with light, easy movements. “There are lots of alarm clocks on the shelves. I’ll set them for different times and place them around the mall. The ringing will split those things up first, and then we’ll kill them slowly.”
Her voice was flat and calm as she said the words “kill them slowly,” as if she wasn’t facing twenty or thirty beast-like zombies but merely planning a casual shopping trip or a meal.
Yun Ai pressed her lips together, her expression a knot of conflict. When she tried to speak again, she choked on the food she hadn’t yet swallowed.
“I won’t force you.” Lu Zhi looked at her, her gaze so calm it held no emotion. “I told you before I’d help you get food supplies. When I was going up and down the stairs yesterday, I saw several snack vending machines in this mall. Once I deal with the zombies, I’ll help you break those open. After that, if you still insist on looking for Wang Jing, we’ll part ways.”
Lu Zhi lowered her eyes to look at Yun Ai, who was growing increasingly uneasy. Having eaten her fill and slept soundly, the young lady’s complexion looked much better than yesterday. Now, a faint blush from coughing colored her cheeks.
She paused, then continued, “So, you don’t need to consider my feelings for any of your decisions. Just follow your heart.”
“I…” Yun Ai looked a bit flustered, biting her lip with her small teeth. She thought for a long moment before tentatively asking, “Th-then, after we split up, if you go to the Capital alone, which way will you take?”
“No matter which way I go, I won’t let you follow me.”
Lu Zhi’s words were brutally direct.
Yun Ai froze, her clear, dark, bright eyes looking up at Lu Zhi. But Lu Zhi’s expression didn’t change in the slightest, remaining so calm and unperturbed it was hard to accept.
“Oh, I… I see…” Yun Ai tried hard to curve her lips, attempting to feign nonchalance and understanding. But a massive wave of grievance inexplicably surged from the bottom of her heart. She pressed her lips tight, trying desperately to hold it in, but failed. As she hurriedly lowered her head, large tears began to patter onto her sleeves.
Lu Zhi frowned slightly and casually pulled a tissue from an opened pack nearby, handing it over.
Yun Ai took it but didn’t wipe her face. She just held it motionless, her slender, soft fingers turning slightly white from the force. After a long moment, she forced a difficult, strained voice from her throat: “S-sorry, I’m not… blaming you. I’m just naturally a crybaby… You… you don’t need to mind me…”
Lu Zhi was silent for a moment, then pulled another tissue. She crouched down, lifted the young lady’s chin, and wiped her tears.
Yun Ai wept like rain on pear blossoms, her eyes red-rimmed. Her dark, glistening, tearful eyes looked at Lu Zhi, whose expression remained as unmoving as a mountain. After a long while, she stammered out, her voice small and cautious: “If… if I dare to kill zombies, could you take me with you?”
Lu Zhi didn’t speak.
Yun Ai sniffled, her small nose red. Sobbing, she threw out another pitiful bargaining chip: “I can also g-grow vegetables… sweet potatoes, roasted sweet potatoes…”
“I’ll work hard to practice my Psionic Power, really. Sis— no, Lu Zhen.” Yun Ai clutched the hem of Lu Zhi’s clothes, like a small animal about to be abandoned. “Lu Zhen, will you take me with you?”
Lu Zhi looked at her, then reached out with slender fingers to wipe the clear tears from her delicate cheek. Her voice held a question: “We’ve only known each other for three days, Yun Ai. Why have you changed your mind and decided you want to follow me?”
“Because…” Yun Ai hesitated, her expression dazed. For a moment, she couldn’t articulate the reason.
Lu Zhi wasn’t intent on interrogating her and didn’t press for an answer. She quickly stood up, her expression indifferent. “First, decide whether you’re coming down with me to kill zombies.”
Hearing this, Yun Ai wiped her tears and looked down at her weapon: a Damascus steel boning knife she had taken from the barbecue restaurant kitchen on the fifth floor yesterday. It had a long, wooden-toned handle and a thin, fine blade, the kind of steel knife sharp enough to split a hair. She had been holding it with constant trepidation, always worried about cutting something or nicking herself.
After speaking, Lu Zhi didn’t wait for a reaction. She turned, grabbed a dozen alarm clocks from the shelf, efficiently tore off the packaging, and installed batteries. She set all the alarms to maximum volume and longest duration, then tied them together in pairs with string, setting them for ten, thirteen, sixteen, etc., at intervals of three or more minutes apart.
She only needed her weapons and a mask; she didn’t need many other preparations. Once she had these things ready, she walked straight out. Even when Yun Ai followed, clutching her knife, Lu Zhi didn’t give her a single extra glance.
Just like she had hung the loudspeakers before, Lu Zhi tied the alarm clocks to various railings around the entire second floor of the mall. Tough strings secured the little gadgets, suspending them mid-air from the corners of iron brackets. After setting everything up, they didn’t go far, hiding in a blind corner of the second-floor corridor near the escalator.
After waiting a while, the alarms started going off one after another. The zombies that had been clustered in the eastern zone of the first floor swarmed into action, instantly scrambling to find the sources of the sound. Chaotic, thumping footsteps and excited low growls echoed in the previously silent space, like wild beasts let out of their cages.
Lu Zhi glanced sideways. Beside her, a chain of prominent goosebumps had risen all the way up to Yun Ai’s neck. Both of them were heavily sprayed with perfume and wore disposable masks to prevent blood splatter, but they still couldn’t block the dizzyingly thick, cloying fragrance.
Seeming to sense the gaze, Yun Ai looked up to meet Lu Zhi’s eyes. Her pupils were dark and bright, her eyelids thin and delicate. Her thick, long lashes trembled fiercely, like fragile cicada wings braving the coming autumn.
Lu Zhi looked at her for a moment, then suddenly reached out and tucked a few soft strands of hair that had fallen onto Yun Ai’s face behind her small, fair ear. After a beat, she said quietly, “Don’t force yourself on your first time. If you really can’t handle it, just hide behind me.”
“…Okay.”
Lu Zhi turned her head. The last alarm clock, the one near the escalator, finally rang.
Ahead of the corner was a pillar of black glass-like stone. Lu Zhi could just see the situation downstairs reflected in it. She waited until the heavy footsteps drew close and finally stopped not far below before stepping out of the shadows.
Back in the clothing store, Lu Zhi had studied the entire fire safety floor plan of the mall and knew it was a closed, circular building. Their position was exactly at a turning point, ensuring the last ringing alarm would pull a portion of the zombies their way without being visible from other areas.
The movement of human figures was clearly something these things detected even more keenly than sound.
The moment Lu Zhi stepped out of the visual blind spot, the six or seven bizarre-looking zombies downstairs snapped their heads up, faces covered in rotting flesh dripping with yellow mucus. Many had exposed, blood-red and blackened gums, their fish-like, rolled-back eyes staring at Lu Zhi with an almost tangible focus.
It was hard to imagine that such ramshackle human bodies, seemingly long decayed by the summer heat, could have such acute reactions. In less than a second, these things bared their fangs, roared, and swarmed up the escalator in a chaotic rush.
Instead of retreating, Lu Zhi advanced. She met the frontmost zombie, a wild-eyed creature with a massive bloody hole in its chest, with a head-on kick. Then, with a flick of her wrist, a sharp, gleaming blade drove downwards, straight through the zombie’s eye. Black, sludge-like blood sprayed out. Lu Zhi twisted her body aside, wrenched the blade out, and slashed horizontally at another zombie’s neck.
The narrow escalator didn’t allow all the zombies to come up side-by-side. Lu Zhi also didn’t need to go downstairs; she just had to stand at the top and handle two zombies’ impact at a time.
Lu Zhi raised her hand and hacked across the face of a male zombie turning towards her, half its face rotted away. She then quickly twisted and turned, dodging the glinting claws of another male zombie that followed.
This zombie was a middle-aged man with glasses, his lower body almost completely severed from his upper half, intestines and organs dragging a trail behind him from his waist. Tripped by the corpses, he sprawled onto the stairs but still stubbornly flailed his arms at Lu Zhi.
Without blinking, Lu Zhi plunged the long knife tip into its gaping, snapping mouth.
As the last zombie fell, Lu Zhi pulled the knife out. Thick, viscous blood ran down the blade and onto her fair hand.
Lu Zhi frowned slightly. A faint ripple of water shimmered in the air, quickly washing the bloodstains from her fingers and the blade.
Aside from dealing with the two tied-up zombies when she first awoke in this world, this was Lu Zhi’s first time really fighting these creatures.
It was manageable. They were indeed faster and stronger than an average, healthy adult male gone mad, but not the soul-shaking, terrifying combat prowess Lu Zhen’s memories portrayed.
Lu Zhi looked back. Yun Ai was practically stupefied.
“First, come over and search through these things’ heads,” Lu Zhi said.
“Oh… oh!” Yun Ai reacted half a beat late, quickly jogging over and crouching down. Holding her boning knife, she began awkwardly searching among the messy pile of corpses at the top of the escalator.
Lu Zhi didn’t rush her, quietly standing by for a long moment.
Under her watch, Yun Ai had no choice but to earnestly crack open the skulls of these things. In the end, besides getting her hands covered in blood and brain matter and breaking out in a cold sweat, she found nothing.
Lu Zhi wasn’t disappointed. She never expected the zombies here to produce those transparent stones called Psionic Cores. In the story, after all, only those who were in the first wave of transformation could produce them. They had enough genetic potential to evolve, like Espers, but their bodies couldn’t withstand it, so they failed and became zombies.
Here in the mall, most were ordinary people who survived the first wave’s attack. Having no Psionic Cores was only to be expected.
Lu Zhi beckoned Yun Ai over while condensing water in the air, meticulously cleaning the young lady up.
