Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Wen Jiuzhe was advancing with a clear purpose. He was familiar with Anxi City, and whenever he encountered an impassable road that was too congested to clear or had already collapsed, he was always quick to find an alternative route.

However, there were some places that couldn’t be bypassed.

A few streets away, seeing the words "Anxi Wenkang Hospital" on a distant building ahead, Wen Jiuzhe, who was driving, said, "We're almost there."

Is he going to the hospital? Xue Ling wondered.

But as everyone knows, hospitals are the places with the most zombies.

In the early days of the zombie outbreak, most of the symptomatic people gathered at the hospitals, causing congestion both inside the hospitals and on the streets outside, making them impassable.

Even now, three years into the apocalypse, there are countless zombies in the hospitals.

The zombies outside might be lured away by various noises, but those trapped inside the hospitals, in various wards, are still innumerable.

It would be difficult for a single person to enter alone, and even a squad of a hundred people might not be able to enter and leave safely.

Xue Ling had seen a team storm another hospital elsewhere, and none of them made it out.

What is Wen Jiuzhe going to do at the hospital?

Wen Jiuzhe parked the car at a distance from the hospital, at a street corner, and took out a large box from the trunk. He skillfully assembled something.

Xue Ling strolled over for a look. It resembled a sniper rifle but was bulkier.

After assembling the large weapon, Wen Jiuzhe loaded a fist-sized special "bullet."

Then he hoisted it over his shoulder, climbed onto the roof of the car, found a suitable angle, and knelt down, aiming at a mall building near Anxi Wenkang Hospital.

Whoosh! A corner of the mall building collapsed with a huge noise.

Xue Ling had heard this noise before. The day before she met Wen Jiuzhe, she had heard the same sound. So, it was him.

Wen Jiuzhe fired just one shot and observed with a telescope for a while.

He jumped down from the car, quickly disassembled the gun, put it back, and said to Xue Ling, who was wandering nearby, "Alright, let's go."

The zombies in the street to the left of the hospital were attracted by the loud noise and gradually moved to another street. Seizing this opportunity, Wen Jiuzhe drove past.

On the way, when he encountered a few scattered zombies that hadn’t completely left, he simply knocked them down with the car and ran over them.

The car hit something hard and uneven, causing a severe jolt. Xue Ling was tightly strapped in by two seatbelts and wasn’t thrown up.

Wen Jiuzhe braced himself with one hand on the roof of the car and steered with the other, pinning himself to the driver's seat as he sped through the street.

The car passed by Anxi Wenkang Hospital and continued down a street lined with plane trees.

So, he wasn’t going to the hospital. Where was he heading? Xue Ling wondered.

After driving for a while, Xue Ling saw a grove of cypresses. Among the dark green cypresses stood stone gravestones.

It was a cemetery.

Wen Jiuzhe parked nearby, took his gun, and carried a backpack.

There were very few zombies in the cemetery. After dealing with the zombies that had been attracted, Wen Jiuzhe let Xue Ling out of the car.

"Come on, follow me and don’t wander off."

Wen Jiuzhe led her past the neat gravestones but didn’t stop at any of them as Xue Ling had imagined. Instead, he went to a corner of the cemetery.

There, a pine tree and a cypress tree grew together, their canopies touching. The flat ground beneath was covered with pine needles and cypress seeds.

A squirrel, hearing their movement, quickly scurried up the tree trunk.

"This is it," Wen Jiuzhe said, sitting cross-legged under the tree and sweeping the ground with his hand.

"I buried my mother here. I brought you along since we were passing by."

Xue Ling: “…………”

Fortunately, I’m a zombie now and don’t need to react.

Otherwise, she really wouldn’t know how to handle this situation.

Wen Jiuzhe didn’t expect any comfort from the zombified Xue Ling either.

And he seemed calm, as if he didn’t need any comfort.

He turned his head to look into the distance. From here, he could still see the inpatient building of Anxi Wenkang Hospital.

There were dozens of ward windows facing this cemetery.

The hospital was funded by the Wen family, and his mother had been treated there for eight years.

Wen Jiuzhe and his mother lived in the neighboring Gulan City when he was young, and their life was extremely difficult.

His mother had a heart condition and couldn’t exert herself, so she couldn’t hold a job for long and often needed medication. Sometimes, she was so severe that she couldn’t even get out of bed.

From a very young age, Wen Jiuzhe knew how to get medicine for his mother and do household chores. Despite his young age, he had always played the role of a protector.

After being brought back to the Wen family at the age of twelve and having his name changed, his mother was admitted to this family-funded hospital for long-term treatment.

The hospital’s director was the uncle of his cousin, Wen Xuan.

So no matter how much Wen Xuan provoked or deliberately bullied him, he couldn’t fight back.

Wen Xuan smugly told him that if he didn't behave, his mother would suffer.

The Wen family controlled his mother, and indirectly, they controlled him.

His mother always cried and said that her illness was a burden to him, but whenever he suggested taking her away, she would shake her head desperately, refusing to agree.

She believed that since they had been recognized by the Wen family, he should stay with the Wen family for a better future. Otherwise, it would be harder for him to manage while taking care of her outside.

She always advised him to endure it, saying that when he grew up and gained the Patriarch Wen's approval, everything would be fine.

She wasn't unaware of the injuries that often appeared on his body, but when they lived outside before, Wen Jiuze used to fight with street kids too, and he would also get hurt.

No matter what, the Wen family was wealthy and powerful. Being a child of the Wen family was still better than living in a broken-down building and being called a wild child.

Sometimes, Wen Jiuze thought his mother's stubborn insistence was foolish, just like when she was deceived by that promiscuous and irresponsible man from the Wen family and still believed that man truly loved her.

Insisting on giving birth to him and not completing her studies was also an unwise decision.

If she hadn't damaged her health giving birth to him, with her good looks and better health, she would have lived a better life.

But whenever he brought this up, his mother would say, "You are my child. How could I regret giving birth to you? I just regret not being able to provide you with a better life. I don't know how long I can live with this illness. As long as I see you succeed and live well in the future, I can die in peace."

Wen Jiuze's life in the Wen family was like his mother's illness, barely surviving.

From anger and resentment to numbly enduring each day, like a seed dormant under frozen soil, waiting for rebirth or his mother's death.

Under his indifference and calmness lay a volcano that could erupt at any time.

"Wen Jiuze, if, I mean if, several years later, we are still together, would you want to marry me?"

One day, Xue Ling asked him casually as if it didn't matter.

She didn't know that there was anticipation glimmering in her eyes when she asked this.

Wen Jiuze felt that he hadn't treated her well, but she still wanted to include him in her future.

He was happy, but also not happy.

"What will marriage bring you?" he said with a lazy smile, "It will bring you a terrible man."

The hot-tempered Xue Ling frowned, asking if he was asking for a beating again, and kicked him angrily before storming off.

Watching her leave, Wen Jiuze suddenly didn't want to wait anymore. He didn't want to continue following the Wen family's arrangements.

When he returned to the Wen family in Anxi City from Yushi City, his grandfather, Patriarch Wen, "died suddenly" during that time, throwing the Wen family into chaos.

Everything had been going smoothly, but the zombie outbreak disrupted his plans.

The apocalypse came suddenly, and he decisively abandoned the Wen family's arrangements, planning to first take his mother away amidst the chaos.

But the zombie outbreak spread too quickly, and the first place to fall was the hospital.

It was like a hell, sealed off immediately, with no one daring to enter.

After trying everything to get into Anxi Wenkang Hospital, he saw his mother's corpse in her ward.

Whether lucky or unlucky, she hadn't been infected by the zombie virus but had died of a heart attack.

In the chaos of the hospital, she had been frightened and suffered a sudden onset of her illness, but no doctor was available to save her, so she quietly died in her ward.

He took his mother's body away, watched it burn to ash, and finally buried her here.

Because when he used to visit her, she would smile and point to this cemetery, telling him that if she died, she wanted to be buried here, close to the hospital for convenience.

It was too chaotic back then; he didn't have time to grieve, buried his mother, and rushed back to Yushi City to find Xue Ling.

Planes and high-speed trains were suspended, so he drove back. The roads were dangerous, causing delays.

When he returned to Yushi City, he couldn't find her.

He kept searching around Yushi City for a long time, and just when he had lost hope, he saw the person he was looking for in Anxi City.

Why was she in Anxi City?

Now, Xue Ling could no longer give him answers, and Wen Jiuze didn't want to think about it.

Maybe she had come looking for him.

Their last meeting had not been pleasant. What mood had she been in when she came looking for him?

Had she come during the most chaotic time? Not finding him, had she been scared? What had she experienced to become a zombie?

The two people he most wanted to protect and care for were both dead, one buried under the soil beneath him, the other beside him.

Wen Jiuze suddenly felt like laughing, cursing silently, damn it, this cursed life really knew how to toy with him.

He had been sitting under a tree, but gradually lay down, stretching his legs, carelessly resting his head on the pine needles, and closing his eyes.

Xue Ling pretended to wander nearby, seeing him quiet for a while, and cautiously approached, only to find that he had actually fallen asleep.

Was he pretending to sleep? Xue Ling leaned in, opened her mouth wide by his neck, and waited, but Wen Jiuze didn't move.

His breathing was steady, his sleeping face expressionless.

He was really asleep.

Xue Ling was speechless. How could he fall asleep like this, right here?

A zombie was right beside him, and he wasn't afraid of being chewed on at all.

And in this open-air setting, there could still be other zombies around!

Xue Ling thought of this and turned her head, only to see a zombie coming towards them, drawn by the smell.

Xue Ling glared back at the sleeping Wen Jiuzhe, then walked towards the zombie.

She moved with a speed and fluidity that was absent when she was in front of Wen Jiuzhe, quicker than the zombie ahead of her. She threw a punch that knocked the swaying zombie's head to the side, then kicked hard at its knee.

Moments later, Xue Ling, cursing under her breath, dragged the fallen zombie to behind a tombstone so that Wen Jiuzhe wouldn't discover it.

When Wen Jiuzhe woke up, he squinted because of the light filtering through the gaps in the pine trees and raised his hand to shield his forehead. He thought to himself, "I wasn't bitten, after all."

There was no sound around. He got up and saw Xue Ling still wandering nearby.

"Why didn't they come to bite me? Is it because they have no appetite for food that doesn't move?"

After his nap, he felt hungry.

Wen Jiuzhe walked over and sat on the step next to Xue Ling.

He opened his backpack and pulled out a can of meat, a can of oranges, a self-heating noodle pack, and a plainly wrapped bread.

He had been to many places, large and small bases, where food was always the primary concern. Different bases produced different kinds of convenient food for bartering supplies.

The most preservable compressed biscuits were the most widely circulated and cheaper, while other tastier cans and bread were more expensive.

Wen Jiuzhe opened the can and brought it to Xue Ling's face. "Do you want some?"

Xue Ling discreetly took an extra whiff of the long-lost food aroma.

It had been a long time since she had human food. Her mind was salivating, but her body had no reaction to it.

Seeing no response from Xue Ling, Wen Jiuzhe ate it himself.

He opened the self-heating noodles, poured water in, waited for a while, mixed it well, and offered it to Xue Ling to smell.

"Does it smell good? Do you want to eat it?"

Xue Ling: "It smells good, but I don't want to eat it."

Wen Jiuzhe took it back and ate the noodles too.

Noticing Xue Ling's lifeless red eyes on the bread, he said, "Do you want to eat the bread?"

He shoved the bread into Xue Ling's hands to see her reaction.

Xue Ling, holding the bread: She didn't want to eat the bread, but if she remembered correctly, this guy couldn't eat bread; it would give him a rash.

In the postapocalyptic world, food was precious, and it shouldn't be wasted.

After a moment of hesitation, she let go, dropping the bread back into Wen Jiuzhe's lap.

"Well, if you won't eat the bread, I'll eat it myself." Wen Jiuzhe finished the bread in a few bites, sighed, and rubbed the back of her head.

"Why won't you eat anything? Aren't you hungry?"

Of course, she was hungry; it was probably like missing two meals, a burning sensation in her stomach, but it wasn't enough to make her lose control and eat people.

And after so long, being hungry became a habit.

That's why she liked lying in one place without moving because it made her feel less hungry.