Chapter 6: Wu Heng, You’ve Been Infected
“Did your dad hit you again?” Xie Chongyi asked abruptly, staring at the bruised and reddened half of Wu Heng’s face.
“How do you always know?” Wu Heng tried to cover his face but couldn’t find anything to use. He remained crouched, back to Xie Chongyi, wiping the blood from a fruit knife onto the shop owner’s clothes.
Xie Chongyi casually picked up two packets of vegetable seeds and glanced at them. “I know everything about our classmates’ family situations. Yours is no exception.”
The boy had always been a loner at school—silent, head bowed, never making eye contact. His homework was half-hearted, and he never participated in any school events.
If Xie Chongyi weren’t the class president, he thought, he might have graduated without ever knowing Wu Heng even existed. But before graduation could come, he unexpectedly caught a glimpse of another side of him.
“I’m not one to meddle,” Xie Chongyi said, tilting his head slightly. His narrow eyes appeared indifferent, but beneath the surface, they were like countless hands trying to peel away the boy’s skin.
Wu Heng said nothing—he had suddenly caught a scent in the air, rich and overpowering, rushing straight to his head and soul. The world before him turned into a kaleidoscope of reds and greens. His mouth filled with saliva so quickly he had to gulp it down in big swallows.
He turned around, staring dazedly at Xie Chongyi.
Xie Chongyi had been watching him all along. When their eyes met, he narrowed his gaze, a flicker of suspicion flashing through it. Before Wu Heng could lose control, Xie Chongyi snatched the knife from his hand. The blade lifted Wu Heng’s chin.
The cold steel and razor-sharp edge snapped Wu Heng out of his dizzying daze in an instant.
With a twist of his wrist, the blade pressed directly against Wu Heng’s throat.
“You’ve been infected, Wu Heng,” Xie Chongyi said darkly.
He lowered his gaze to Wu Heng’s lifeless face—remarkably, even at a moment like this, there was no sign of emotion in his eyes.
Wu Heng averted his gaze. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” The boy’s reaction added a strange touch of humor to the already tense atmosphere. Xie Chongyi let the knife slide slightly downward, its edge now lightly resting on Wu Heng’s slender, prominent Adam’s apple.
“Mm…” Wu Heng tilted his neck back with effort, clearly unsure of how he was supposed to react. His eyelashes fluttered twice as he looked at Xie Chongyi with an innocence that didn’t seem to comprehend danger. He even asked softly, “Did I scare you just now?”
Xie Chongyi laughed, just a faint lift at the corner of his mouth, while his eyes remained calm and unreadable. “You did. You planning to pay for that with your life?”
Wu Heng’s eyes widened in disbelief, like a cat caught by the throat—round and startled.
But Xie Chongyi no longer saw Wu Heng as a cat.
“Don’t do this…” Wu Heng’s lashes trembled, his voice frail and pleading.
Only then did Xie Chongyi notice how long and thick Wu Heng’s eyelashes were, perfectly straight.
In that brief, unguarded moment—not even enough to be called a distraction—Wu Heng seized the opportunity. He grabbed Xie Chongyi’s wrist and twisted it sharply downward. The fruit knife slipped from Xie’s hand. Wu Heng’s fingers found the handle instantly—gripped it—and swung the blade in a flash across Xie Chongyi’s neck.
But for all Wu Heng’s ruthlessness and cunning, his attack looked like child’s play in Xie Chongyi’s eyes.
With a swift, slicing palm strike, Xie Chongyi hit Wu Heng’s arm. Wu Heng felt as though a blade had slashed straight across his muscle.
Before he could even process the pain, Xie Chongyi grabbed him by the throat. In the same motion, the knife returned to Xie Chongyi’s hand—its tip now pressed directly between Wu Heng’s brows.
Xie Chongyi crouched between Wu Heng’s legs, pushing the blade forward. A droplet of blood welled up from the pale skin between Wu Heng’s eyebrows. He gasped for breath, furrowing his brows, but there was nowhere to retreat.
“Wu Heng, I didn’t plan on killing you. After all, I am your class monitor,” Xie Chongyi said from above, his voice calm and composed, without the slightest trace of menace. His hand gripped the slender, soft neck in front of him, but the gesture seemed more like toying than threatening—graceful, gentle, yet cruel in a way that felt almost untouchable.
Wu Heng lowered his eyes in silence. The moment he was overpowered, his demeanor shifted entirely. Gone was the defiance—he became passive, almost inviting mistreatment, like a doll with its strings cut.
But Xie Chongyi already knew how cunning and changeable he could be. Wu Heng couldn’t deceive him before, and now, with his tricks exposed, he had no chance of manipulating his way out. As Wu Heng quietly contemplated how to make Xie Chongyi let him go, footsteps echoed from outside.
“What are you doing?!”
A shout rang from the front of the store.
Lin Mengzhi had arrived at the perfect moment. He only saw his childhood friend with a knife pressed to his forehead—and without hesitation, charged forward. Xie Chongyi sidestepped with ease, and Lin Mengzhi nearly stumbled straight to the floor.
“A’Heng, are you okay?” Lin Mengzhi turned back, reaching to help Wu Heng up—only to see the body on the floor, its head smashed into an unrecognizable pulp. His face went ghostly pale.
Wu Heng calmly picked up the knife Xie Chongyi had discarded. “It was a zombie,” he explained.
It was Lin Mengzhi’s first time seeing, in real life, what the internet had only described in words. And the real thing hit far harder than anything he’d imagined.
“Why are there zombies here too?” he asked, panicked, his eyes scanning the room as if danger might leap out at any second.
Wu Heng wiped a fresh smear of blood from his face with his sleeve. He glanced at Lin Mengzhi, then introduced Xie Chongyi: “Xie Chongyi, our class monitor. I tried to bite someone just now, that’s why he did what he did.”
Lin Mengzhi latched onto one phrase—“I tried to bite someone.”
His throat went dry. He couldn’t even bring himself to speak.
“Lin Mengzhi, my childhood friend,” Wu Heng said, calm—too calm, like someone no longer quite alive.
“Take care of yourself.”
Xie Chongyi’s voice had returned to its usual cold detachment. He tugged his cap low over his eyes and walked out of the shop without looking back.
Watching his tall figure disappear completely, Lin Mengzhi took a few steps after him before hesitating and turning back. “Wait—how was he so calm? Way calmer than me. Does he… know something too? Like you?”
“Mm. Probably,” Wu Heng replied, then crooked a finger at him. “Mengzhi, come here.”
He shouldn’t have called him by name. That single word made Lin Mengzhi freeze. “What for? You trying to eat me or something?”
Wu Heng shook his head.
Still, Lin Mengzhi only crept over in tiny, reluctant steps. At their feet, the shop owner’s body—already infected and mutated—looked barely better than a dried-up corpse. Black-red, foul-smelling blood slowly pooled beneath the back of the skull, reeking of rot.
Wu Heng handed the knife to Lin Mengzhi. “Mengzhi, if I fully turn—finish me. Just like I did to this zombie. And remember: the only way to kill one is to destroy the head.”
“…I—I can’t.” Lin Mengzhi licked his lips, his whole face etched with refusal.
Wu Heng didn’t have the patience to put on some tearful, tragic act. He simply shoved the fruit knife into Lin Mengzhi’s hands and turned away, scanning the store. “Take everything we planned to buy. Leave the right amount of money behind.”
With that, Wu Heng began moving through the shop, calm and focused. He found two empty cardboard boxes, glanced over the shelf prices, and began sweeping entire rows into them.
Seeing that Wu Heng was still so methodical, Lin Mengzhi took a deep breath and got into rhythm beside him. The vegetable seed selection wasn’t massive, so Wu Heng tossed in a dozen or so packets of flower seeds too—just for the hell of it, since they didn’t take up much space.
They packed five boxes of seeds, taped them shut, and loaded them onto the back of the store’s delivery truck. Wu Heng dropped two thousand yuan on the checkout counter, turned off the lights, and—together with Lin Mengzhi—pulled down the store’s rolling shutter door as they left.
“Leaving that… that zombie just lying there—are you sure that’s okay? What if the police show up tomorrow?”
Lin Mengzhi was sweating nervously. The world around them still seemed to be functioning normally, yet everything inside him was in chaos.
“We just dealt with a huge problem. Honestly, they should be giving us a commendation banner,” Wu Heng replied weakly, walking with his head down, his voice flat.
“What do you mean?”
Wu Heng looked at him. “If we hadn’t been there tonight, and the shop owner got out—what do you think would’ve happened next?”
Images—scattered, violent, bloody—flashed through Lin Mengzhi’s mind, despite his best efforts to block them out.
“A’Heng… I’m scared,” he admitted quietly.
He was taller than Wu Heng, stronger, more outgoing. Ever since they were kids, he had always been the one protecting Wu Heng. But now, faced with real life-and-death stakes, his mind had gone completely blank.
Wu Heng wasn’t good at comforting people. Still, he gave it some serious thought, then said sincerely, “Don’t be.”
In the early hours of the morning, the fully packed delivery truck rolled into Wu Heng’s residential complex. By then, all the lights in the building were out and the residents fast asleep. Lin Mengzhi pleaded with the unloading crew over and over to keep quiet. While silence was impossible, they at least met Wu Heng’s only condition: don’t wake anyone up.
But Grandma Lin was another story.
Though her eyes were blind, her ears were sharp. She didn’t know what was going on, but the unfamiliar noise made her anxious. She paced back and forth in the living room, restless.
“Out of the way,” Lin Mengzhi muttered, lifting her straight into the couch so she’d stop wandering underfoot.
Then Wu Heng’s voice came from beside her.
“Grandma,” he said softly, “something’s happened outside. It might affect things like food and supplies, so Mengzhi and I went ahead and stocked up—just in case.”
The two middle-aged men unloading the goods happened to overhear what Wu Heng had just said. They exchanged a glance and gave a helpless smile.
Once they were inside the apartment, one of them remarked, “My daughter’s been doing the same thing these past two days—buying up all sorts of stuff. Spent all her savings, and even asked us for more.”
“Kids these days. Hear one rumor and think the sky’s falling.”
They didn’t notice when Wu Heng appeared behind them. His voice was calm, but carried a chilling undertone.
“Could you keep it down a little? I’d rather my grandma didn’t hear.”
By the time the unloading was done, it was past four in the morning. Wu Heng and Lin Mengzhi collapsed onto the sofa, too exhausted to speak.
“Good thing my place is big… and good thing my parents are dead,” Lin Mengzhi muttered, wiping sweat from his face. “Even the master bedroom’s now packed with supplies.”
“…”
The master bedroom—the largest room in the house—was now completely filled with food and daily necessities. Even the wardrobe and nightstands had been used for storage.
The overflow was moved into Lin Mengzhi’s room. At this point, only a narrow path remained from the door to the bed, and even the bed itself was one-third covered in goods.
“Doesn’t your place have space too? A’Heng, let’s move the rest to your apartment. That way your family can access it easily too,” Lin Mengzhi said, thinking his suggestion quite thoughtful. He smiled, satisfied with himself.
Wu Heng sipped from his water cup and shook his head gently. “No.”
Lin Mengzhi blinked. The smile vanished from his face.
“…Got it. If it really comes to that—if everyone’s starving—then screw them. I won’t give them a single grain of rice.”
Wu Heng gave him a faint smile. His fingers absently rubbed along the edge of the cup, but his eyes drifted toward the balcony.
Lin Mengzhi’s home still had the old-style balcony: glass panels with metal security bars. Wu Heng paused, then said, “Tomorrow, get someone to seal off the balcony.”
Lin Mengzhi was too tired to ask why. He simply nodded. “Okay.”
Seeing how exhausted Lin Mengzhi was—his eyelids barely able to stay open—Wu Heng stood up and said, “Go wash up and get some sleep. You take the bedroom, I’ll sleep on the sofa.”
“No way…” Lin Mengzhi’s eyes fluttered open.
“I still need to plan what we’re doing tomorrow,” Wu Heng replied, clearly trying to send him off.
After Lin Mengzhi returned to his room, Wu Heng left only a small desk lamp lit in the living room. Wrapped in a thin blanket, he sat cross-legged on the sofa, jotting down the next day’s shopping list: everyday medications, toiletries, warm clothing, gas, diesel, weapons.
The list filled several pages—too many things to buy, and many of them weren’t cheap. He and Lin Mengzhi didn’t have nearly enough money.
The dim blue-white glow of his phone screen lit up Wu Heng’s eyes, as deep and unreadable as wells. Between credit limits and online loans, neither of them had any viable options. Even if they did, the maximum they’d get was a few thousand yuan, maybe even just a few hundred—not nearly enough to matter.
Wu Heng needed money. A lot of money. A ridiculous, unimaginable amount.
He took a deep breath and looked up at the wall across from him. The screen’s glow cast an upward light on his face—his neck so thin you could see the veins beneath the pale skin, while his soft, docile features threw shadows that didn’t belong on someone so gentle.
When the world finally began to fall apart, money might become worthless. And when that time came, if he wanted something—he could just take it.
