Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The sun was scorching, and a peculiar smell of gasoline, ash, and rubber wafted up from the streets.

Xue Ling lay among a pile of zombies with blown-out brains. Her unsanitary zombie peers emitted a stench that drifted into her nose.

But she remained motionless, as if she were truly dead.

At this moment, Xue Ling’s stronger emotion wasn’t the fear of her life being threatened, but embarrassment.

At an unexpected time and place, she had run into her ex-boyfriend, whom she hadn’t seen for three years… She really wanted to escape!

In the split second just now, without much thought, her instinct was to drop and play dead, just to avoid facing him.

As the saying goes, the last person you want to meet when you’re at your lowest is your ex-boyfriend.

When she broke up with that damned man, she had wanted to chop him up and eat him with sauce.

She had imagined a future where she would become a rich woman, while Wen Jiuzhe would be reduced to working as a gigolo, unrecognizable to her.

Who would have thought that reality would be so far from her imagination?

At this moment, she lay among a pile of zombies, disheveled and looking like trash, while Wen Jiuzhe, looking like a proper human, sat in a car killing zombies. He probably hadn’t recognized her.

If she had hesitated a bit longer before lying down, she might have been shot dead by Wen Jiuzhe by now.

Frustrated and anxious, Xue Ling could only pray that Wen Jiuzhe really hadn’t recognized her.

She prayed that they would leave the street soon so she could quietly escape while they cleaned up the zombie corpses.

She would go somewhere else, and never come back here again.

In the chaos of her thoughts, the motorcade had already approached. Xue Ling heard someone exclaim in surprise, “Cousin, what are you doing?”

Then there were footsteps, heading straight towards her.

Xue Ling: “……”

She really didn’t want to admit that she could tell these were Wen Jiuzhe’s footsteps.

The footsteps stopped beside her.

He was silent for a while, as if staring at her.

Why? Did he find her familiar? Had he recognized her?

With her face down, Xue Ling felt her body tense up even more from the tension.

She had been a zombie for three years, her heartbeat long gone, but at this moment, she felt as if her heart was pounding violently.

A hand suddenly touched the back of her head.

Wen Jiuzhe’s palm was wide, his fingers long. With one hand, he could cover her entire back head.

That hand fiddled with her messy hair, and Xue Ling’s fingers twitched unnaturally in response.

The man squatted next to her in silence for a moment, then chuckled to himself as if talking to himself, “I didn’t even hit you, why did you fall?”

Xue Ling slowly blinked, grateful that zombies didn’t cry.

She didn’t know why hearing this man’s voice suddenly made her want to cry so much.

Wen Jiuzhe, Wen Jiuzhe, Wen Jiuzhe, you damned bastard!

Suddenly, she lunged like a real mindless zombie, trying to bite the man next to her.

Any zombie attacking a human looked ferocious, and Xue Ling was no exception.

Although she took care of herself and didn’t expose herself to the elements or squeeze into filthy places like other mindless zombies, and occasionally bathed in the rain, it only made her look slightly better than the others.

Her skin was slightly blue and stiff like other zombies, her eyes a hazy dark red, and her mouth filled with zombie fangs.

I must look terrifying, Xue Ling thought.

She pounced on Wen Jiuzhe, thinking that being seen like this by him was worse than death.

“Ah! Cousin!”

“Oh my god, Wen, be careful!”

Several people screamed behind him as they saw the zombie lunge.

Xue Ling thought she was going to die here today, but before she died, she would make sure to scare Wen Jiuzhe so much that he’d crawl on the ground in panic!

That way, she could close her eyes without regret.

Zombies didn’t have the best eyesight, and with her emotions clouding her vision, she was halfway through her attack when someone grabbed her wrist.

Before she could react, her hands were twisted behind her back and firmly held.

Wen Jiuzhe was very strong, and his hands were scorching hot. Xue Ling couldn’t break free, and for a moment considered trying to twist her head to bite the person behind her, but eventually gave up.

She couldn’t be bothered with such a futile effort.

After the initial embarrassment passed, she let go of her inhibitions, reaching a new level of enlightenment.

Now she was just a zombie, knowing nothing! If they had the ability, they could just kill her!

Seeing that Wen Jiuzhe had subdued the suddenly attacking zombie, Dai Ying ran over with a suppressed gun from the car, his heart still pounding from the scare, and said:

"Cousin, what's going on?"

"We were handling zombies just fine in the car, but you suddenly jumped off the roof without saying a word.

You casually threw the suppressed gun out the window to him and went straight into the zombie crowd.

"I was scared to death just now, cousin, didn't you react in time?"

As Dai Ying spoke, it dawned on him. He looked at the zombie his cousin was holding and then at his cousin's expression.

"Cousin, is this zombie someone you know?"

Otherwise, normally, you would have taken care of it without hesitation. Why are you just controlling it instead of finishing it off?

The short knife capable of slicing a zombie's neck was still tucked in his waist, showing no sign of being drawn.

"Hmm." Wen Jiuzhe simply took Xue Ling back to the motorcade.

Everyone else in the motorcade was watching them, and the team leader, Mi Ge, seemed like he wanted to say something but stopped short.

Dai Ying noticed their gazes and wanted to say something to comfort them, but he didn't dare to open his mouth when he saw his cousin's calm expression.

"Don't just stand there, go drive." Wen Jiuzhe said.

He opened the car door and threw Xue Ling onto the seat, then got in himself. Seeing this, Dai Ying quickly pulled open the driver's door and continued driving.

This car belonged to Wen Jiuzhe. Usually, Dai Ying was in charge of driving, while Wen Jiuzhe would sit in the back seat with his arms crossed, resting, or sit on the roof to clear out zombies.

Having a zombie in the car would make any normal person tense, and although his cousin looked normal, he also seemed off. Dai Ying drove absentmindedly, frequently glancing back.

Xue Ling didn't expect things to turn out this way. Remembering her zombie identity, she symbolically roared a couple of times in the car and struggled at first but was pressed down again.

Wen Jiuzhe held her arms behind her back with one hand, put on a leather glove with the other, and covered her open mouth, pulling her onto his lap.

She was pressed into his arms, her back tightly against his chest. Xue Ling even forgot to act like a rebellious zombie.

Ah... You? Me? This?

Wen Jiuzhe was always very warm. Xue Ling felt that the palm he pressed against her face was scorching hot. She twisted her head to break free, only to be pushed back harder.

She felt him lean forward, his head resting against her neck, forming an intimate, complete embrace.

He leaned on her shoulder and softly exhaled a long breath. Was it a sigh?

This kind of embrace used to happen often, but they seemed to have broken up. Most importantly, she was a zombie now!

She. Was. A. Zombie!

The ex-boyfriend was more abnormal than zombies, which was scarier. Haven't seen him for a few years, had he gone mad?

But thinking about it, Wen Jiuzhe had never been a very normal guy.

Feeling the heat from Wen Jiuzhe, Xue Ling wanted to move away when she suddenly noticed a dog's head popping up from the front seat.

The large golden retriever in the passenger seat was watching the two in the back seat just like its owner.

Dai Ying's expression was a mix of terror and embarrassment, as if he was acting out Xue Ling's shock.

But the big dog was different. Its dark, moist dog eyes looked at Xue Ling, its tongue slightly sticking out, not finding anything wrong with the scene.

Dai Ying remembered his dog. Pufu was very smart. It would give a warning bark when encountering zombies and had once protected him during a zombie attack, a brave dog that wasn't afraid of zombies.

Dai Ying wanted to calm Pufu down, to stop it from barking at the zombie in the car.

But after looking at the two in the back seat for a while, Pufu only barked twice. This wasn't the hostile bark it usually gave when seeing zombies.

And its big tail was sweeping back and forth on the seat like a feather duster.

This was the kind of reaction it had when meeting someone familiar.

Pufu's behavior reminded Dai Ying, and he suddenly remembered something. He took another careful look at the zombie his cousin was holding immobile in the back seat.

This might be cousin's girlfriend from before!

It had been several years. He was only fourteen or fifteen at the time and couldn't remember clearly.

It was when his cousin was attending college near his home and would often come over to help walk the dog. His cousin had said his girlfriend loved dogs and wanted to bring Pufu over to play with her.

He had only met this girlfriend twice... Wasn't it her?

He remembered this sister was from Yuzhou like him. How did she end up in the faraway Anxi City?

The Xue Ling in the back seat didn't notice her younger cousin's expression. When she saw the golden retriever's head, she instinctively leaned back.

It was a dog! A very familiar dog!

She remembered this dog because it had chased her for half a month, scaring her into running for her life every day, leaving some psychological shadows.

That was about four years ago.

Not long after she and Wen Jiuzhe had confirmed their relationship, she couldn't remember why she wanted to exercise and invited Wen Jiuzhe to go night running.

Exercise was harder to stick with than studying. She was out of breath after running just one street and wanted to give up the next day, dragging her feet and refusing to go out.

Wen Jiuzhe had smiled and said he'd find a way to motivate her, coaxing her out the door.

They hadn't been running for long on the street when a large golden retriever appeared out of nowhere, barking fiercely at her.

Xue Ling hadn't been afraid of dogs before, but when such a large and fierce dog ran towards her, barking non-stop, her first reaction was to run.

She ran ahead, with the dog chasing after her. Wen Jiuzhe ran in front of her, sometimes even running backward, without any intention of helping her.

He only occasionally reminded her, "The dog is catching up; it's going to bite your butt!"

She could only curse at him while running for her life, discovering a superhuman will to survive under the pursuit of the dog.

Exhausted, she returned home, and Wen Jiuzhe caught her fist, comforting her that encountering such a fierce dog was an accident, and they would take a different route for a slow jog the next day.

However, on the alternative route, they once again encountered the fierce Golden Retriever.

At the moment their eyes met, the Golden Retriever began to chase her.

……

For half a month, Xue Ling was chased by dogs from time to time, until she finally discovered that the big dog belonged to Wen Jiuzhe's cousin. Every night, he took the dog out to chase her.

Both the man and the dog were excellent actors, playing their parts so convincingly that if she hadn't seen him feeding the Golden Retriever and praising it for doing a good job, she would have remained in the dark.

Even after all this time, thinking about it made Xue Ling grind her teeth, her fists itching to punch Wen Jiuzhe's ever-smiling face.

Are you even human? Ah? Are you even human?!

No good comes from men who are always smiling!

Xue Ling twisted her face as she squeezed backward. Wen Jiuzhe, holding her, suddenly smiled.

"Even as a zombie, you're still afraid?"