Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Wen Jiuzhe drove out of the boundaries of Anxi City and finally found a spot in the suburbs to rest.

Driving for long periods made him tired, so he washed his face by a clear ditch to refresh himself. Feeling sticky, he took off his T-shirt and threw it into the water to use as a towel, wiping the sweat from his neck and chest.

The weather was still quite hot, and he had been sweating in the car.

As he wiped himself down, he planned the next leg of their journey in his mind.

He had learned from Wen Xiang that her sister, Wen Yi, had left the Wen family at the beginning of the apocalypse and gone to Andong City.

Wen Yi had studied and worked in Andong City, where she even found a boyfriend. It was very possible she was still there.

Andong City was right next to Yu City, and when Wen Jiuzhe had been operating around Yu City, he had heard that there was also a base in Andong City.

So he planned to take Xue Ling to that base in Andong City to see if they could find Wen Yi and obtain the "Tai Sui" from her.

But Wen Jiuzhe knew deep down that this hope was slim.

After so much time, Wen Yi might not even be alive, and even if she was, the Tai Sui she had taken might no longer be with her.

If he was lucky enough that Wen Yi still had the Tai Sui, it was also uncertain whether it would even be useful for Xue Ling now.

Nothing was certain.

Wen Jiuzhe didn’t want to tell Xue Ling about this so soon.

He knew better than anyone how agonizing it was to search with hope only to be disappointed repeatedly. It was better not to have hope from the start.

Water dripped from Wen Jiuzhe's wet hair, some falling from his chin onto his broad chest, others sliding down his neck into his back.

His smoothly defined muscles were marked with various old scars, making him appear especially tough and dangerous.

Amid the sound of rushing water, Wen Jiuzhe caught the sound of footsteps behind him. He was wringing out his T-shirt and turned to look.

Xue Ling carried her writing board, casually strolling over, her eyes fixed on his waist.

There was a particularly long scar on Wen Jiuzhe's waist.

Xue Ling had wanted to ask last time, but she had been pretending to be a zombified amnesiac then, so she couldn’t ask and had to pretend she hadn’t seen it.

"You want to wash too?" Wen Jiuzhe asked with a smile, raising his hand to wipe his neck.

Xue Ling shook her head and slowly raised her writing board.

It read, "Waist, wound," followed by a question mark.

Wen Jiuzhe glanced at his old wound on his waist and laughed, "Oh, this? I got cut in a fight."

Then he added with a teasing tone, "My intestines fell out at the time."

Xue Ling's stiff zombie face slowly crinkled as she imagined the horrifying scene, and she reached out to touch the scar on his waist.

Her hand was cold, without any warmth, colder even than the water in the ditch.

Wen Jiuzhe grabbed her hand. Speaking of scars, there was something he wanted to ask too.

Letting go of his T-shirt, Wen Jiuzhe suddenly pressed Xue Ling down to sit on a large stone and lifted her skirt.

Startled by his action, Xue Ling jumped up in fright, her face pale as she ran outward, clutching her skirt, the writing board slipping from her hand.

She ran a distance away, her eyes full of fear.

Wen Jiuzhe: "..."

Seeing that Wen Jiuzhe didn’t move, she slowly approached him like she was approaching a dangerous creature, crouching low to pick up the writing board and running away again. From a safe distance, she quickly wrote a few words and held it up for him to see.

"No! It will infect!"

She swiftly erased it and wrote again: "Calm down!"

Her writing speed was almost as fast as a normal person's.

What did she think he was going to do? Wen Jiuzhe felt both amused and exasperated. In Xue Ling's eyes, he seemed like a madman.

"I wasn't going to do anything. I just wanted to ask about those wounds on you," Wen Jiuzhe said, "Come here."

Holding the board, Xue Ling was half-doubtful. If it were anyone else, she wouldn’t be so suspicious, but Wen Jiuzhe had acted too recklessly.

He could sleep hugging a zombie without a care and even kiss her cheek. What if he really would do something crazy like that? Given his unconventional mental state, it wasn’t impossible!

The medicine she brought, he refused to take. It truly worried the zombie.

Finally tricking her over, Wen Jiuzhe lifted her skirt and pointed to the spot on her thigh where a piece of flesh was missing. "How did you get this wound?"

He had noticed several wounds on her when he helped bathe her before. On zombies, damaged areas were sunken, neither bleeding nor scabbing, just dry and tight on the surface.

As he cleaned those wounds, he had wanted to ask Xue Ling when these wounds had appeared.

But zombies were unaware, and even if he asked, she wouldn’t have answered. So he remained silent, pretending everything was fine, dressing her after cleaning and covering those wounds.

"This wound, was a piece of flesh scraped off?" Wen Jiuzhe gently wiped the area, "Was it done by zombies, or humans?"

He guessed wrong; it was neither.

Xue Ling didn’t know how to respond, a faint sense of embarrassment welling up in her.

She was a zombie after all. Ordinary falls and hits wouldn’t kill or hurt her, so she had become a little reckless for a while, wanting to try and play with everything she saw.

Once, while walking by the roadside, she spotted a discarded motorcycle. The vehicle looked incredibly cool, and the key was even left in the ignition.

She thought to herself, "I never got to ride this kind of motorcycle when I was alive, so I might as well experience it now that I'm dead!"

Since she wasn't in the mood to walk anyway, she decided to take the motorcycle for a ride.

But she overestimated her abilities. In her excitement, she ended up crashing the cool motorcycle to pieces, and even scraped a chunk of flesh off her own leg.

Seeing the pained expression on Wen Jiuzhe's face, along with the faint hint of anger as if he was about to seek revenge on someone, Xue Ling didn't dare tell the truth.

Because of Xue Ling's silence, Wen Jiuzhe touched the other wound on her shoulder again.

"This one, was it caused by a bullet? Do you remember who shot you?"

She did remember, but the guy had been dead for a long time.

Xue Ling felt increasingly awkward. When she first became a zombie, she loved to join in on the excitement. Whenever the zombies sensed human presence, they would gather around, and she would join them out of boredom to see what was happening.

The guy trapped inside the car was big and burly, but he was crying uncontrollably, his gun trembling in his hands.

The gun wasn't very good, and he didn't seem to know how to use it well, possibly out of fear, randomly shooting outside the window.

Xue Ling was unlucky that time. She was on the outer edge, peeking inside, standing on a rock to get a better view, when a stray bullet hit her.

Apart from her, none of the real zombies were hurt.

"When you were hit, were you scared?" Wen Jiuzhe asked in a low voice.

Xue Ling: "..."

To be honest, it was the guy who shot her who was more scared. She was just frustrated.

She ran to the side and tried to remove the bullet from her shoulder, and when she returned, the guy had already panicked and killed himself with the gun.

After such incidents happened multiple times, Xue Ling stopped joining the excitement when she sensed human presence.

Now that Wen Jiuzhe asked, how could she answer without disrespecting his emotional sensitivity about the wounds?

"Not wanting to say anything, is it because... it brings back painful memories?"

It did bring back memories, but not the kind of pain he imagined.

Xue Ling wanted to escape, she raised a sign: "Explaining is troublesome."

It was indeed troublesome to explain.

"Alright, I won't ask anymore." Wen Jiuzhe had obviously filled in the blanks with his own assumptions, his thumb rubbing the bullet hole on her shoulder.

There was already a red scar there, and now with the new hole, it looked even uglier.

Wen Jiuzhe stared at it, and Xue Ling remembered how, during their most intimate moments, he would often kiss that spot on her shoulder.

That red scar on her shoulder was from when she was very young.

It was before her mother divorced her father. Her mother had to work every day, while her father, despite not working, frequently went out to play cards with others.

Once, her mother had to go on a business trip for a day and asked her father to take care of her. Instead, he stayed out all night playing cards and forgot about her.

She was young and left alone at home, hungry and thirsty. When she tried to pour herself some water, she accidentally knocked the hot water off the table, scalding her shoulder.

It wasn't until the next day when her mother came home and discovered it, that she was taken to the hospital, leaving behind the scar.

This incident was one of the triggers for her parents' divorce. She still remembered crying in pain in the hospital while her parents argued outside.

"As a woman, it's your responsibility to take care of the child. Which man would take care of a kid? And now you have the nerve to blame me?"

"I told you to quit your job and stay home to watch the child, but you refused. How much can you even earn from working that it's worth more than losing at cards?"

"Enough, I'm too lazy to argue with you. It's just a burn, not a big deal, yet you keep nagging..."

For a long time, the wound on her shoulder was extremely painful.

As her parents fought, filed for divorce, and her mother moved and found a new job... her wound also kept reopening and took a long time to heal.

Being a zombie had its perks. Whether a large chunk of flesh was scraped off or a bullet hit her body, she wouldn't feel any pain, though it did look uglier.

During their most intimate moments, Wen Jiuzhe had asked about the old scar on her shoulder.

At the time, she didn't have any speech difficulties, but she hadn't given him a detailed explanation, only saying it was a burn from hot water when she was young.

In fact, Wen Jiuzhe had far more scars on his body than she did. She felt embarrassed to say anything that might sound like she was trying to gain sympathy.

Wen Jiuzhe had responded by kissing her scar at the time, just like now—

Xue Ling: "!"

She scrambled away from Wen Jiuzhe, pulling her clothes back into place and quickly raised a sign: "I thought you said you'd just look!"

"Control your mouth!"

Wen Jiuzhe: "...No."

He stood up, deliberately narrowing his eyes and spreading his arms, striding forward: "Here I come."

Xue Ling panicked and ran, only to be caught by Wen Jiuzhe, holding up her board and screaming: "Aaaaah!"

Wen Jiuzhe couldn't help but burst out laughing, his face buried in her shoulder, shaking with laughter.

Xue Ling raised her plastic writing board and banged it against his head repeatedly.

By the time Wen Jiuzhe put the still-damp T-shirt back on and returned to the car, he no longer seemed troubled by Xue Ling's wounds.

A secret: Sometimes, when Wen Jiuzhe noticed Xue Ling was upset, he would deliberately try to cheer her up.

This was a skill Xue Ling possessed as well.