Chapter 4: The Little Sapling and the Little Yezi

The fat man’s words, paired with his terrified tone, sent a fresh shiver down Mu Yufeng’s spine. Having just awakened, she was utterly ignorant of this new world. The two of them were barely enough to fill the bellies of a few zombies; if something out there struck terror into a horde like that, then…

“What are they afraid of?” Mu Yufeng swallowed hard, her entire frame tense.

The fat man assumed a solemn expression and said deadpan, “No idea.”

Mu Yufeng was speechless.

“Aside from a high-caliber round to the skull, I don’t know what scares them. Even if a modified Type 59 tank rolled up, their pea brains wouldn’t know enough to run. Unless…”

“Unless what?!” she pressed anxiously.

“Unless whatever is out there triggers their deepest animal instincts to fear.”

The moment the words left his mouth, a faint rustling arose from the darkness ahead. It sounded like something scraping against the snow, but distinctly different from the insect swarm back at the research center.

“Low to the ground,” the fat man analyzed. “Did the virus jump to amphibians?”

The thing moved slowly, with a rhythmic cadence. Judging by the sound, Mu Yufeng deduced that it had short legs and smooth soles. What amphibian fit that description?

Short legs? Smooth soles?

An absurd theory suddenly struck her.

As the footsteps drew closer, the fat man’s nerves stretched to the breaking point. The moment an elongated shadow stretched across the snow under the moonlight, it tripped his survival wire. Letting out a strangled yell, he spun around to flee, only for Mu Yufeng to grab him by the wrist.

“Wait!” she shouted.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?!” the fat man roared. “Even the zombies couldn’t fight that thing! We’re just serving ourselves up on a platter! If you want to die, go ahead, but this Fatty wants to live!”

“Just wait a second!” Mu Yufeng held on with all her might.

The shadow resolved into a silhouette, followed by the creature itself. A tiny figure barely reaching an adult’s shin waddled forward on short legs. Loosely draped over its body was the familiar pale-yellow hibernation suit, its excessive length trailing behind and leaving a winding furrow in the snow.

The little creature came to a halt before Mu Yufeng. Tilting her tiny face upward, moonlight pooled in her obsidian pupils. From head to toe, she was dripping with thick, black blood.

She parted her lips in a grin, revealing a few tiny, sharp teeth.

The fat man could take no more. Leaping backward with a yelp, he leveled his cleaver and pointed a trembling finger at the creature. “Whose cursed brat is this?!”

As if understanding his accusation, the creature reached out a slender hand and lightly tugged at Mu Yufeng’s hem. Her lips parted and closed, as though she were trying to say something.

Yet the fat man was making so much racket that Mu Yufeng could hear nothing else.

Sweat slicked Mu Yufeng’s palm against the crowbar. She stared unblinkingly at the child, every nerve wound tight, ready to spring back at the first sign of hostility.

If her memory served her right, the child was noticeably larger than when they had parted. She could now walk with steady balance.

Mu Yufeng drew a slow breath. In the grip of surging adrenaline, her mind sharpened. Replaying the sequence of events since picking up the child, she realized that this creature had never displayed the slightest aggression toward her.

She was not human; that much was certain, or Mu Yufeng would never have fled the cabin the second she could move. Yet looking at the situation now, a bold hypothesis formed: those zombies had been running in terror from this knee-high little monster.

Though she did not understand the underlying biology, the brutal law of the jungle never lied. Perhaps this creature possessed a bloodline that naturally suppressed the infected?

If she was docile toward humans, could she serve as a protective talisman?

Swallowing nervously, Mu Yufeng decided to take a dangerous gamble.

Keeping the crowbar firmly gripped in her right hand, she slowly extended her left, shifting her weight so she could sprint away at any moment. Inch by inch, her hand drifted closer until it hovered over the creature’s head.

Her fingers brushed against the newly sprouted hair on the crown of the child’s scalp. Coated in sticky, congealed blood, the texture was unpleasant, yet remarkably soft underneath.

The creature leaned into her palm, nuzzling affectionately without baring her teeth, appearing utterly content.

Beside them, the fat man gaped in disbelief. “Holy shit… is that your kid? You scared the living hell out of me!”

“Yeah,” Mu Yufeng replied slowly, keeping her back to him. “She’s mine.”

Under the faint moonlight, the child’s face was caked in grime and gore, obscuring the unnatural dark veins beneath. The fat man spent a few seconds processing the revelation, but only a few.

After all, in a world where zombies roamed the earth, a survivor dragging along a creepy child who looked like she belonged in a horror film was hardly out of the ordinary.

Watching the touching scene of maternal devotion, the fat man edged closer. Fearing he might notice the child’s inhuman traits, Mu Yufeng instinctively shifted to block his view, causing him to halt in surprise.

The fat man gave a dry laugh, rubbing the back of his neck. “A little girl, huh? Shy around strangers.”

“Yes. She’s timid and frightened of people she doesn’t know,” Mu Yufeng lied smoothly.

“I just wanted to see what she’s wearing,” the fat man muttered defensively.

“Her clothes tore, so I wrapped her in mine. I scavenged this coat off the side of the road. Is there a problem?” Mu Yufeng raised her voice, feigning righteous indignation.

The moment she brought up her clothes, the fat man narrowed his eyes in the moonlight, studying the tattered bundle she wore. The longer he looked, the more familiar it seemed.

“Those clothes…” the fat man asked suspiciously, “where exactly did you scavenge them?”

Mu Yufeng froze.

Shortly thereafter, the group trudged back to where it had all begun. Mu Yufeng’s mind was reeling; the snowy cabin had never been a gift from God. It was the fat man’s home.

With the flair of a magician, the fat man pried up a floorboard, hauled a large iron pot from the cellar below, and filled it with snow to boil over a fire. Generously, he offered hot water so Mu Yufeng and the child could wash up.

After a night of relentless torment, dawn was finally breaking on the horizon. Mu Yufeng banished the fat man down into the cellar, then lifted the little creature into the basin to scrub away the gore. Once clean, she bundled her back into the oversized hibernation suit.

By the time she finished, Mu Yufeng was exhausted, slumping in the cabin doorway to stare blankly at the lightening sky. The fat man climbed out of the cellar, now clean and refreshed, clutching two vintage military ration tins to his chest. Glancing between Mu Yufeng and the cans, he finally gritted his teeth and reluctantly parted with one, passing it to her.

Taking the tin, Mu Yufeng inspected it skeptically, searching for an expiration date in the morning light. She could not find a single legible character.

“Don’t bother looking. God only knows if that antique is from the last century or the one before that,” the fat man said, using his cleaver to pry the lid open. Stabbing a chunk of processed meat with the tip, he shoved it into his mouth, speaking around his chew. “These things are finite—eat one, and that’s one less in the world. If you weren’t pretty, I wouldn’t have shared. If you don’t want it, give it back.”

Watching his ravenous display, Mu Yufeng tried her best to forget what that blade had been hacking into moments earlier. Having gone without food or water since waking up, her stomach burned with hunger. She reasoned that as long as the seal had held, canned goods could last indefinitely; seeing the fat man eat with such relish meant it was probably safe.

Having convinced herself, she used his blade to slice open the tin. As the first mouthful of rich, greasy meat hit her stomach, the reality of waking up in an apocalyptic wasteland finally settled in.

She needed calories. She needed to survive. Everything else could wait.

The fat man devoured his ration like a whirlwind, then eyed the remaining meat in Mu Yufeng’s hands, swallowing heavily. Forcing himself to look away, he turned back inside to gulp down a mouthful of water.

The little creature huddled quietly in the corner, showing zero interest in human food.

Mu Yufeng stepped back inside. Once the silence stretched between two strangers, the atmosphere grew awkwardly tense. She decided to break it.

“Did you disinfect that blade?” she asked.

The fat man sputtered, spewing water across the floor before descending into a violent coughing fit. He whirled around, glaring at her. “Did you do that on purpose?!”

Mu Yufeng offered an innocent shrug.

Finally catching his breath, the fat man launched into an incoherent tirade, the core premise being that a little dirt never killed anyone.

“Listen here! You only get infected if a zombie bites or scratches you until you bleed! Anything else washes off! We’re dancing on the edge of a blade out here—nobody has time for your fancy table manners!” he hollered.

He paused, his expression shifting. “Wait a second… where the hell are you from? You act like you don’t know a damn thing about the world. And wandering around with a kid?”

His demeanor grew sharp, his eyes narrowing as he scrutinized her. Mu Yufeng had no idea how to explain herself; if she told him she was an ancient human from two centuries ago, he would probably plant that cleaver in her skull.

She could not even confirm how many years had passed beyond the logbook’s date.

Her hesitation deepened his suspicion. He set the water can aside, his hand subtly drifting toward the cleaver at his belt.

“I came from the east. I got separated from my family,” Mu Yufeng said quietly. Recalling that the research center lay east of the cabin, it was not technically a lie.

The fat man shifted his gaze to the creature.

Mu Yufeng instinctively covered for her: “This is my little sister. Her name is Little Yezi.”

Intuition warned her that honesty would be fatal. She could not explain the creature’s docility, and if the paranoid man realized she was harboring a monster, he would turn on them instantly. He was twice her size and armed with a heavy blade; she had to keep him pacified.

“Little Yezi?” the fat man mulled over the name.

It had been the first name to cross Mu Yufeng’s mind, and the moment it left her lips, she understood whose memory had inspired it.

“If she’s Little Yezi, then what are you called?” The fat man tipped his chin toward her, grinning playfully. “Little Flower?”

Mu Yufeng hesitated for a fraction of a second, then answered softly, “My name is Mu Yufeng.”

“Ah, so you’re Little Sapling.” The fat man resumed his boisterous smile, casually sitting down as the hostility evaporated into thin air.

[T/N]: “Yezi” means “Leaf.” The fat man baited her with “Little Flower” to see if she was inventing fake matching names (Flower & Leaf). Instead, she gave her real name (which sounds like “Tree” and “Maple”), so he jokingly called her “Little Sapling” (Tree & Leaf).

Back when Mu Yufeng had developed the AI that You Ye jokingly named Damie, she had set an ambitious goal to grant it autonomous cognition. To that end, she had extensively studied human psychology and conversational logic. The fat man’s sudden question had been a trap. Had she tried to conceal her identity by playing along with “Little Flower,” she would have walked straight into his snare, proving that everything she said was a fabricated lie.

Beneath that jovial, laughing demeanor lay an astonishingly keen mind. Had she slipped up just now, he would have drawn his blade without hesitation.

Her partial truth had dissolved his immediate suspicion. By unspoken agreement, neither brought up the tension from moments ago, and the fat man warmly motioned for her to take a seat.

“My older brother protected me too well in the past,” Mu Yufeng manufactured an excuse for her ignorance. “Now, I truly don’t know what to do.”

The fat man nodded in agreement. “Looking at those spindly arms and legs of yours, you’re clearly no fighter.”

“So what now? What do you plan to do?” he asked.

Mu Yufeng looked at him, shaking her head with a furrowed brow. In truth, she was utterly lost.

The fat man gazed out the window, his expression growing distant. In his rugged, scruffy features, Mu Yufeng glimpsed a touch of melancholy.

“These days, trying to survive on your own is suicide. I’m going to find a Shelter.” When he spoke the word, his face radiated longing.

A Shelter.

It was the first piece of good news Mu Yufeng had received since waking up. In her mind, the concept shone with the light of human civilization and sanctuary. Since reviving, aside from this unreliable fat man and the enigmatic creature, she had not encountered a single human soul. Completely blind to the past two centuries of devastation, she desperately needed to find people to answer her questions.

Moreover, she prayed the Shelter had doctors. The bizarre illness that had left both her and You Ye helpless two hundred years ago still lay dormant within her body. Mu Yufeng instinctively rested a palm against her forehead, feeling the steady, rhythmic pulse of the vessels beneath her fingertips—like wild spring blossoms blooming quietly at the foot of an active volcano.