There are three residential areas on the new B University campus, and the East District is the farthest from where they were. To get there, they had to cross more than half the campus.
Just as Ruan Ning and the others were hurrying toward the East District, an even greater storm was brewing over there.
In the vast residential area, not a single person could be seen. It felt eerily empty.
Even stranger, the trees here were growing far better than in other places—better even than before the apocalypse. Their branches were lush and full, and the greenery formed deep shade.
Especially the locust tree in the pavilion at the centre of the residential area. It was far larger than the locust trees that normally grew for several or even over ten years. It looked vibrant and flourishing, completely out of place with the desolate, bleak surroundings.
From time to time, movement flickered through the grass around it, causing faint rustling and trembling.
At this moment, in a dorm room on the third floor of Dormitory 3-A—
Two dust-covered boys collapsed weakly onto the beds, utterly drained, gasping for breath several times.
“Jingyang, are we really just going to wait here for death?” One of them thought of the zombies crowding the hallway and sealing off the floor below so tightly that there was no escape, and his face filled with grief. “But I’m only eighteen this year. I just finished the gaokao, finally got out from under my parents’ control, and made it to university. I haven’t even had enough of my free life yet. I really don’t want to die.”
“How did the apocalypse even happen? And fine, even if it had to happen, why did it break out while we were at school? Great. If the zombies don’t eat us, the two of us are just going to starve to death instead…”
Jiang Jingyang kept his eyes closed as he listened to the boy on the neighbouring bed ramble on. He reached up to wipe the sweat from his forehead and reminded him, “Xi Chen, not only are we out of food, we’re almost out of water too. If you want to live a little longer, then from now on, talk less, save your strength, and think about how we’re supposed to get out of this hellhole.”
The dorm room they were in was a standard six-person room, with bunk beds and desks underneath. Each room had only two desks and no private bathroom. To keep the door from giving way if zombies tried to break in, Jiang Jingyang and Xi Chen had used one of the desks to barricade the entrance as soon as they came in.
Now, only the two of them were left in the entire dorm building.
Actually, before this, many other students had also been trapped in the building with them. For a whole month, aside from going out to gather supplies, everyone had hidden inside the dorm. During that time, they had thoroughly stripped the entire building of every place where food might have been hidden. That was exactly why there was now nothing edible left anywhere in the dorm.
And the last bit of food the two of them had been carrying had been eaten the night before, when hunger had made their vision swim. For them now, there were only two choices: either stay in the dorm and wait to starve to death, or go out and eventually be bitten to death by zombies once they ran out of strength.
“Jiang Jingyang, you’re getting more and more cold-hearted. I’m already this miserable, and you still won’t even let me talk a bit more to ease my sorrow,” Xi Chen said, then sighed. “Once I’m dead, I won’t even get the chance to talk anymore. I might as well say everything I want while I still have the strength.”
Jiang Jingyang: “…”
Over the past month, Jiang Jingyang had long since gotten used to Xi Chen’s nonstop chatter. He had come to see clearly that the person beside him was simply the type who felt miserable if he didn’t talk.
In fact, before the apocalypse, Jiang Jingyang and Xi Chen had not really known each other. They had not even properly met face-to-face. Jiang Jingyang had only heard his name from others—he had been a fairly well-known person among the first-year students. But the two of them had only truly gotten to know each other after the apocalypse began.
Xi Chen talked a little too much and could sometimes be irritating, but fortunately, he had a good heart and had helped Jiang Jingyang many times. On top of that, his abilities were just as formidable as his chattiness. Once Jiang Jingyang gradually got used to him, he stopped minding how much he talked.
“No. Don’t think so pessimistically. We’re not at the point of absolute despair yet. We’re not going to die that easily.” Jiang Jingyang looked at the window that had been sealed shut with wooden strips and tape, his gaze lowering as he said, “If it really comes to it, I’ll go lure the zombies away, and you can take the chance to run. Between the two of us, at least one person has to get out of this hellhole. We can’t both fall here.”
“If one day you do manage to leave the school and happen to run into my family, just pass them a message for me.” When speaking of his family, Jiang Jingyang unconsciously touched the watch on his right wrist. His expression softened with warmth. He had been wearing it these past few days. It was also the thing that had given him a reason to keep trying to live.
When they had nothing to do while hiding in the dorm, Xi Chen had heard Jiang Jingyang talk about his family before, and he knew how strongly Jiang Jingyang wanted to survive and find his parents and older brother.
So when he heard him say this, he turned sharply to look over from the next bed and gritted his teeth. “No. How can you be the one to lure the zombies away? If the two of us leave, we leave together. No one gets left behind. Don’t forget, once we get out, we still have to settle accounts with those people. I can’t beat them by myself. And think about your family—if they found out you died, how heartbroken would they be? Could you really bear that?!”
At the thought of what had happened three days earlier, anger flashed uncontrollably across Xi Chen’s face, and he almost ground his teeth to pieces.
Originally, three days ago, he and Jiang Jingyang had had a chance to escape this man-eating hellhole. Who knew that after a small mishap, not only had they failed to get out, they had also been injured, and even the backpack carrying their food and supplies had been taken away by others.
Why were there so many ungrateful, backstabbing people in this world?!
Xi Chen and Jiang Jingyang had been among the earliest people in the dorm building—and even in the entire residential area—to awaken abilities. At the start, if it had not been for them, some of the people in the residential area probably would already have become zombie food. The same had been true three days ago. If the two of them had not stayed behind to cover the others’ retreat, would that group really have been able to escape the East District so smoothly?
But what had their kindness and trust earned them in the end? Nothing at all. Not only had they received not a shred of gratitude, they had even been stabbed in the back by the very people they helped.
The original plan had been that the two of them would stay behind to cover the rear, while the others, before leaving the residential area, would create a loud disturbance somewhere else to draw the zombies away. Then Jiang Jingyang and Xi Chen would use the opportunity to shake off the zombies, join up with them, and leave together. But those ingrates had abandoned them there to hold the line while they themselves ran off without a trace, and they had completely forgotten about the promised distraction.
And so the two of them had missed that golden chance to leave this hellhole while the zombie’s guard had been at its weakest. Now the zombies were even stronger, and escaping had become exponentially harder.
When Xi Chen complained about what happened three days ago, Jiang Jingyang fell silent for a moment and did not respond.
What that group had done had also completely disappointed and chilled Jiang Jingyang’s heart. If he could do it over again, he would never again make this kind of sacrifice of himself for others, because… those people were not worth it.
Just as the two of them lay on the beds resting and conserving their strength, a dull knocking sound came from the windowsill. Neither Jiang Jingyang nor Xi Chen even bothered to look up. Neither of them paid any attention to it—they were already used to it.
They were on the third floor. Ever since that wood-type zombie had appeared, this kind of noise had been happening every so often every day.
Earlier, one of the rooms upstairs had not been sealed tightly enough. The window glass had been shattered by whatever was outside, allowing plant vines to slip in through the broken opening. As a result, everyone in that dorm room had their blood sucked dry by the vines in a very short time, turning into mummified corpses.
If someone had not happened to pass by that dorm room at the time and seen what was happening, and if everyone had not worked together to shut that invaded room and seal it tightly, then this entire dorm building would have been overrun by those vines, which had an extremely strong ability to reproduce. No one would have escaped death.
After the battle before they came into this dorm room, and with neither of them having replenished their energy for a long time, the two boys on the beds were utterly exhausted in both body and mind. Before long, even Xi Chen no longer had the strength to talk, and he finally fell quiet.
What they did not see was that, on the tightly sealed window, a crack had somehow appeared at some point—and it was slowly widening.
Meanwhile—
The members of the Morning Light Squad killed many zombies along the way before finally reaching the East District.
By now, the time when the midday sun was at its strongest had already passed.
Perhaps because there was less sunlight, the East District of the residential area felt noticeably gloomier than anywhere else in B University. Even though the trees here were far greener and more luxuriant than elsewhere, that did nothing to dispel the oppressive atmosphere. On the contrary, it only made people feel even more uneasy.
The reason their group had managed to get here so quickly was that they had taken the shortest route. Naturally, that meant there was no shortage of zombies along the way. Several times, things had been extremely dangerous, and they had nearly run head-on into zombie hordes.
It was not as though they had not encountered survivors from B University on the way. One team of more than ten people, seeing that the Morning Light Squad were unfamiliar faces and clearly strong fighters, insisted on following them and demanded that they take them out of the school. No matter how much they refused, it was useless. But as soon as they heard that the squad was heading to the East District of the residential area, they gave up the idea at once and fled as quickly as if avoiding a plague.
Before they had even entered the residential area, everyone’s attention was drawn to that enormous locust tree.
It was not that they wanted to notice it—it was simply too conspicuous in itself.
All the way from S City to B City, they had never seen a plant growing this well. Everywhere else, plants were either drooping lifelessly or had already lost all their leaves.
The plants here, however, were completely different. Though not all of them were as excessively lush as the locust tree standing in the middle, none of them showed any sign of withering. They looked exactly as they had before the apocalypse.
And that just so happened to be the most abnormal thing about this place.
Whenever something was abnormal, there was always something strange behind it. Every time they encountered something like this, the situation behind it was never simple. And this time, even setting aside the short-haired girl from the first cafeteria who had kept urging them not to come to the East District, even the students they met on the road had all reacted to the mention of the East District as though facing a great enemy, wanting nothing more than to stay as far away as possible. That only further proved from the side that this place was far more dangerous than it appeared on the surface.
Since they were here to look for Jiang Jingyang, Ruan Ning and the others had of course tried asking people what exactly had happened in the East District. But among those people who reacted as though facing a great disaster, most had only heard things from others. None of them could clearly explain what the danger in the East District actually was.
In the end, it was one boy who, seeing that they were determined to go there no matter what—and because their arrival had indirectly saved his life, leaving him grateful—finally told them everything he knew.
Even so, this boy himself had never gone to the East District after the apocalypse. The information came from a former teammate of his, also a classmate, who had escaped from there before dying.
Even so, the information the boy provided was still a great help to Ruan Ning and the others, who were unfamiliar with B University.
“Young Master Gu, do you want me to burn all this stuff down in one go?” Xie Fei glanced at the vines on the ground, the fireball in his hand already eager to move.
The moment they stepped into the residential area, the green vines seemed to sense the movement of living creatures and began creeping toward them without a sound.
Gu Yicheng said, “Don’t rush. No need to waste your ability yet. Your power will have a bigger use later.”
Gu Yicheng used his blade to chop off a vine that had almost extended to his feet. A green liquid mixed with reddish-brown juice seeped out from the cut.
So these were the blood-sucking vines?
It seemed that the danger level at B University really did far exceed that of anywhere else in B City.
First, there was the third-tier zombie they had encountered in the cafeteria that morning, one that had still retained a trace of human consciousness. And now there was another third-tier wood-type zombie, along with its companion blood-sucking vines spread all across the residential area.
And what they had encountered so far was only one part of this enormous campus.
No wonder so many people had been trapped inside the school and unable to escape. No wonder the rescue team sent from Base No. 3 half a month ago had given up on the mission so quickly.
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