Chapter 41.1: “You think you can just leave… without paying?”
Wu Heng lowered his eyes. “I’m a dead horse…”
The male doctor standing not far away spoke up, “Don’t say the word dead. It’s unlucky.”
Wu Heng looked at him with a quiet, eerie gaze. “You’re already dead.”
“Nonsense.” The male doctor shyly pulled his lips into a smile, then suddenly turned to face the window. “I solemnly swear: At the moment I enter the sacred hall of medicine, I pledge myself to the service of humanity. I vow to devote my life to medicine, to love my motherland, to be loyal to the people, to uphold medical ethics, respect my teachers, and observe discipline.
I will study diligently and tirelessly, strive for excellence, and seek well-rounded development. I resolve to do all I can to eliminate human suffering, to aid health in its perfection, to preserve the sanctity and honor of medical practice, to heal the wounded and rescue the dying, never shunning hardship, and to pursue my calling with perseverance—for the development of our nation’s medical and health endeavors, and for the physical and mental well-being of humankind!”
Wu Heng and Xie Chongyi were both stunned. X was so shocked it forgot to close its beak.
After a long moment, X shouted, “Idiot!”
Wu Heng got down from the bed. “We need to go.”
X turned its head to glance at the young man, then chose to perch on Xie Chongyi’s shoulder. “GO!”
“You haven’t paid yet!” The male doctor’s earlier passion from swearing to the moon abruptly vanished.
Supporting Wu Heng by the arm, Xie Chongyi played along with the zombie’s act. “Where do we pay?”
“Go out the door, turn right, and you can pay at any of the three windows on your left,” said the doctor.
“Thanks,” Xie Chongyi replied, helping Wu Heng out the door.
Behind them, a group of zombies stared blankly at the backs of the two men and the bird.
“I can walk by myself.” Once outside, Wu Heng pulled his arm free from Xie Chongyi’s grasp. “Let’s go find the others now.”
Outside, zombies wandered aimlessly everywhere. The entire city had been nearly razed to the ground—
but many people had made it out alive.
But then again—where in this world could truly be safe?
The number of zombies inside and outside the hospital had grown significantly since their arrival. Those outside were converging toward the main entrance, while those inside were steadily flooding down to the first floor.
Wu Heng’s blade cut through the ones lunging at him cleanly and efficiently, but the gauze around his palm was soon stained red again with fresh blood.
When Xie Chongyi struck, it was devastating—whole clusters of zombies’ heads burst open, blood mist sprayed across his shoulder, and their bodies, still frozen for a split second, toppled like felled wheat stalks.
Wu Heng panted, “Spatial ability’s this powerful?”
Xie Chongyi pulled him to his side and flung the bird that had been perching on his shoulder into the air. “Depends on who’s using it.”
X, startled by the swarm of zombies, fluttered around frantically before suddenly remembering it wasn’t some useless thing. It whipped around, its two golden-hook claws sinking into the faces of two zombies. With a sharp shhk, it yanked them out—each claw clutching a transparent energy core. Then, sneaking a glance at Wu Heng’s turned back, it quietly shoved both cores into its own beak.
“You think you can just leave… without paying?”
A voice drifted slowly from the darkness behind them. The male doctor in the white coat emerged, still holding a pair of surgical forceps in one hand and a bottle of disinfectant in the other. He walked slowly, a dense crowd of zombies packed close behind him.
Stepping into the moonlight, he said, “What I hate most are patients like you. Do you have any idea that if every one of you did this, our entire department’s salary would go up in smoke?”
Xie Chongyi pulled Wu Heng behind him protectively. “Aren’t you supposed to be an angel in white?”
“Don’t try moral coercion on me.” The doctor snapped the surgical forceps with a chilling clack, clack. “The two of you—one stays, one goes.”
Wu Heng stared at the back of Xie Chongyi’s head. “Class Monitor…”
Xie Chongyi cast Wu Heng a sidelong glance, calm and steady—of course he wouldn’t leave him behind.
“Why don’t… you stay, and I’ll go,” Wu Heng said hesitantly.
“……”
Xie Chongyi withdrew his gaze. Outside the hospital, the horde of zombies had grown denser and denser, their shadowy, swaying heads stretching endlessly into the distance.
He let out a quiet laugh. “When you agreed to treat my friend earlier, it was just to stall for time. You knew that you and the zombies in this hospital couldn’t possibly defeat us—you needed reinforcements.”
At that, irritation flickered briefly in the doctor’s single visible eye.
“Saving lives is something I truly believe in,” he said coldly. “Please don’t insult my personal conviction.”
“But it’s also true that I need food. Only when I’m full can I keep working—keep saving more people.”
The surgical forceps twirled once around his finger before the tip came to rest, pointing directly at Xie Chongyi. “You’re strong. As a meal, you’d be a fine contribution to the medical community. We need talents like you.”
X let out a nervous “Caw!”
Xie Chongyi grabbed it and tossed it into Wu Heng’s arms. “Take care of him,” he said softly—and the moment those words fell, the boy’s figure vanished completely from sight.
Almost simultaneously, the group of zombies behind Wu Heng let out guttural roars and lunged toward him.
X shrieked a piercing cry, its body suddenly swelling in size. Wu Heng couldn’t hold onto such a massive bird and had to let go.
Its head slammed against the corridor ceiling; one wing wrapped protectively around the boy while the other swept out with tremendous force, slicing through more than a dozen zombies in a single motion.
The male doctor, believing the strongest one had fled, fixed his gaze on the enormous gray bird with a crimson tail. Raising his forceps toward it, he declared, “You’re quite plump. Why don’t you contribute to the glorious cause of medicine as well?”
X crushed two zombie skulls in one swipe of its claws, then turned its head, staring at the doctor in utter disbelief.
But by then, the man had leapt to the very back of the zombie horde. A swirl of black mist rose among the dead, coalescing into a faintly human silhouette—before slowly dissolving again.
Hordes of zombies swarmed toward the massive bird radiating the scent of raw flesh.
The male doctor’s pale, decayed eyes darted restlessly as he clicked his surgical forceps together again and again, calm and patient—waiting for the feast that would soon fill his belly.
But suddenly, the fingers gripping the forceps froze—then clenched tight.
That black mist had, at some point, gathered right in front of him. The first thing he saw were a pair of crimson, icy eyes. From top to bottom, the mist outlined the figure of a young man as it slowly dissipated.
Shhk—
Xie Chongyi drove his knife straight into the doctor’s abdomen. But the doctor’s abdominal cavity was… empty.
The man looked down, growling in a guttural rasp, “So strong, yet so ignorant—you kill zombies by striking the head.”
As soon as he spoke, his mouth gaped wide, his exposed gums snapping forward, ready to bite into Xie Chongyi’s throat.
But midway through the lunge, his movements froze. The greed on his face—the hunger for flesh—shifted into sudden panic. “The forceps—my forceps—!”
Xie Chongyi was holding them.
“I’ve lost my forceps… it’s like a soldier losing his gun,” the doctor muttered, bewildered and desperate, reaching helplessly toward the young man. “Give them back to me—please.”
Crack!
The surgical forceps snapped in Xie Chongyi’s hand—one of the clamps broken clean off, leaving only one side intact.
“Raaah—!” The doctor roared, trying to snatch them back.
Xie Chongyi pulled his knife free and twirled the broken forceps around his finger, his tone calm and cutting. “Don’t say such disgusting things.”
“I can give them back to you,” he continued evenly, “but you’ll have to do something for me first.”
He tossed the forceps at the doctor’s feet. The doctor instantly scooped them up with trembling hands.
He stopped controlling the zombies. The horde’s frenzy began to fade—still attacking, but slower now, easier to deal with than before.
The male doctor struggled to suppress his hunger. “What do you want me to do?”
Xie Chongyi casually crushed the heads of two zombies with his hand. “You’ll know when the time comes.”
A sense of foreboding welled up in the doctor’s chest.
In truth, ever since the moment he’d locked eyes with those two men and the bird, he’d felt something was off. A clone could be dealt with, and enough zombies could eventually wear their opponents down—but a body that could physically disassemble and reappear elsewhere? He couldn’t begin to imagine what kind of ability that was, or how to fight against it.
—
Nearly a hundred kilometers from Hanzhou City, deep beside a highway, a dense forest was suddenly flattened by a violent tremor.
The ground split open into wide, gaping cracks that had yet to close. Wind howled from within them, and aboveground, it seemed as though all living creatures had vanished.
A few battered high school students sat slumped against half of a broken Land Rover, all wearing the same vacant expression.
Their faces showed neither confusion nor fear—they seemed numb, unable to react to anything happening around them.
Not far away, Xue Shen was bent over a wheelchair that looked completely wrecked, hammering and adjusting parts as sweat dripped from the tip of his nose. Beside him, Xue Qi stood blankly, watching.
“Brother?” Xue Qi leaned against a tree. “This must be a test from God… damn it…”
“Does your leg hurt?” Xue Shen asked, looking up.
Xue Qi shook his head. “Do you think Old Xie and Wu Heng will come back? If they don’t, what’ll we do?”
“They’ll come back. Don’t worry.” Xue Shen wasn’t concerned about that. He glanced toward the dense, shadowy forest behind them. “Instead of worrying about whether they’ll make it back, you should be thinking about whether we’ll still be safe when they do.”
“……”
Lin Mengzhi stared blankly at the brothers not far away. He’d never been particularly bright—and now, dazed and half-delirious, he couldn’t think at all.
“Brother’s been gone for so long…” Wu Zhi’s eyes were swollen red as she sniffled beside them. “Brother Mengzhi, let’s just die.”
Lin Mengzhi leaned his head back against the cold, hard car body, unable to speak.
“I’m hungry, Brother Mengzhi.”
Lin Mengzhi opened his eyes. “Then you can starve to death.”
Wu Zhi whispered timidly, “Can I die full instead?”
Lin Mengzhi turned to look at their supplies—barely a twentieth of what they’d started with.
The stockpile they’d brought from the city had been partly devoured by the swarm of stick insects, partly destroyed in the earlier earthquake. What little remained was scavenged from the ruins not long ago, and even half of that wasn’t food.
“Wu Zhi,” Lin Mengzhi said, looking at the small, gray-faced girl with uncharacteristic seriousness, “if A’Heng doesn’t make it back… then from now on, I’ll be your brother. I swear you’ll never go hungry—not even once. I’ll buy you pretty dresses too.”
Wu Zhi blinked, and tears welled up again, carving two clean trails down her dirt-streaked cheeks.
After a long while, she choked out, “I can go hungry. I don’t want pretty dresses. I just want my brother.”
In the still, heavy air, only Wu Zhi’s sobs could be heard. She was the youngest of them, and her fear and crying were understandable. Her tears might as well have been for everyone—crying on their behalf.
But in truth, the others weren’t much older than she was. The oldest among them, Shen Ping’an, was a nineteen-year-old repeater. Of the rest, nearly a third were still minors.
Even Du Yaoyuan—who usually couldn’t stand anyone whining or crying—was now deathly silent. He didn’t lean against the car like the others. He lay on the ground, gripping a few bullets in his hand, eyes vacant, staring blankly up at the sky.
The moon above was unusually bright. Raindrops, soft as gauze, fell gently onto their faces. The sky looked peaceful and tender—
but the world below it was cold, and mercilessly cruel.
Everything humanity owned—everything except humanity itself—was destroyed in an instant, leaving nothing behind.
A faint rustling broke the silence.
“Rustle, rustle.”
The sound came from the dense bushes behind them.
Already on edge, everyone tensed up immediately, springing to their feet like startled animals.
“Eh? Why’s there a car tire here?” came a voice from behind the bushes.
“Maybe the earthquake brought it over,” another replied.
After the ambush at the gas station, no one dared to trust strangers anymore. Even hearing human voices did nothing to ease their nerves—if anything, their expressions only grew sharper, more defensive.
The first to crawl out from the thicket was a young man carrying a cello on his back. Without looking ahead, he turned around to help the person behind him. A woman reached for his hand, crouched, and pushed her way through the prickly branches—but before she could straighten up, she froze.
“Shen She, there are people…”
The young man with the cello finally turned to look forward.
In the moonlight stood several figures—disheveled, battered, but radiating an unmistakable, bone-deep killing intent. Their long shadows stretched neatly across the ground, lined up like a row of blades suspended over the newcomers’ heads, ready to come crashing down at any second.
“Shen She!!!” Xue Qi suddenly recognized him. Leaning against a tree, he waved his arm vigorously, his face lighting up with excitement. “Shen She, it’s me—Xue Qi!! What are you doing here?!”
The boy’s eyes widened in disbelief at the familiar voice. He looked toward the source of the sound, as if doubting his own sight.
—
Compared to the joy of two old friends meeting outside the city walls, the atmosphere within the city was far darker and heavier.
Wu Heng lay draped across the zombie doctor’s back, while Xie Chongyi walked ahead. X flew in front, clearing the way—its wings sweeping low across the ground, slicing through any zombies within ten meters in a single motion.
“We need a vehicle,” the zombie doctor said solemnly. “I admit that sometimes doctors do need to carry patients, but keeping one on your back indefinitely is highly unreasonable. This constitutes exploitation of medical personnel.”
Wu Heng rested his chin against the doctor’s foul-smelling shoulder. “I’m about to slip off.”
The zombie doctor immediately hitched him up higher.
Xie Chongyi also agreed—they needed a car.
Technically, that gray bird could have been an option, but expecting it to carry three people was unrealistic. Besides, no one could guarantee it wouldn’t crash mid-flight from the weight and turn into a grounded chicken.