Let Me Go
Ming Zhen hated this feeling very much.
She was no longer human. She should not have any feelings at all.
She could not let people discover her situation too quickly. Otherwise, she would not be able to stay here, and then there would be no fresh flesh and blood for her to eat.
Wu Zhenfei quickly lowered his head to look at what had rolled to his feet. Even wrapped in leaves, it was clearly a human head. What was more, this was a head Wu Zhenfei recognized.
Just a few days ago, Jiaojiao had still been fawning over him.
Now, those eyes of hers, which had always deliberately pretended to be pitiful, were wrapped in a mess of hair like wild grass, staring at him in death without closing.
Wu Zhenfei was so shocked that he stepped back. The next instant, he suddenly looked toward the strange black-robed woman standing not far away.
The black-robed woman had clearly realized that she had been exposed. She quickly ran toward him.
Among the strength-type mutants, Wu Zhenfei trained the hardest. He had soon surpassed many people in the base. Every time they went out to collect supplies, he was always at the front. Among the ability users, he was very well-liked.
He believed that with his current ability, even if he encountered several zombies outside at once, he would not be unable to fight. So when the black-robed woman ran toward him, he only mobilized the muscles of his entire body, stepped back, and prepared to face his opponent. He wanted to personally capture this murderer.
But Wu Zhenfei misjudged one thing.
This black-robed woman was not an ordinary murderer.
The lighting was not very clear, so he had not seen the bite marks on the side of Jiaojiao’s head. This black-robed woman, no matter how much she looked like a person, was an out-and-out zombie.
And she was the kind who, after being bitten and rapidly zombifying halfway, had mistakenly swallowed an ability user’s crystal core.
A third-level zombie.
The strength of a third-level zombie was naturally not something a mutated ability user could handle.
Ming Zhen rushed toward Wu Zhenfei at an astonishing speed. Just as she was about to reach him, both her feet suddenly kicked off the ground. She flew into the air, knees bent forward, and crashed directly into Wu Zhenfei’s chest.
The force was so great that Wu Zhenfei did not even have the chance to take a few steps back to buffer the impact. He fell straight backward onto the ground. The back of his head hit the brick and stone floor with a bang, and he instantly passed out.
It was already past ten at night. Most people had returned to their rooms to rest. Wu Zhenfei had only come back at this time because he had been doing extra training for himself, which was why he happened to run into Ming Zhen.
The people on routine patrol had indeed gone to Ming Zhen’s room. But Ming Zhen had always refused to speak to anyone, to the point that people once suspected she was mute. She had also never gone out. The patrol did not open her door, assuming she was inside. They had been careless.
Wu Zhenfei suffered a violent blow to the head and instantly lost consciousness.
Ming Zhen had just eaten almost an entire person. Her stomach was swollen beyond reason. Yet she was unbelievably agile. After knocking Wu Zhenfei down, she landed lightly on the ground, slowly walked to his side, picked up Jiaojiao’s head, and wrapped it back into her clothes.
But she did not leave immediately. Instead, she stood beside Wu Zhenfei and lowered her head to look at him unconscious on the ground.
She hesitated.
Ming Zhen touched her own chest. It still felt very uncomfortable. Since realizing she had become a zombie, she had almost never felt this kind of emotion. No one could bring her this feeling.
Only this person lying unconscious on the ground.
Ming Zhen’s eyes turned grey-white. She stared closely at Wu Zhenfei on the ground. After thinking for a while, she lowered her head, grabbed one of his feet, and dragged him toward her room.
He had already seen Jiaojiao’s head. She could not just let him go. If he woke up, he would definitely expose her.
And Ming Zhen had just thought: this person made her feel so uncomfortable. If she ate him, then there would be no one in this world who could make her uncomfortable anymore.
Ming Zhen dragged Wu Zhenfei all the way back to her house. She even knew to dig some soil from the yard and use a broom to cover up the bloodstains along the way. Once the blood had been absorbed by the soil, she swept everything clean again.
By the time she finished all this, it was late at night.
She searched the room and found no rope, so she had to roll Wu Zhenfei up in a quilt. Then she tied the outside tightly with a bedsheet. Only then did she sit by the edge of her kang.
Ming Zhen did not sleep.
She could not feel sleepiness, could not feel fatigue, could not feel pain…
Oh. Now she could feel something.
She again pressed her hand over the place where her heart had already stopped beating and looked at Wu Zhenfei on the ground, buried in the quilt with only his face exposed.
Should she just eat him now?
Forget it. She was already a little full.
Ming Zhen watched Wu Zhenfei like this for the entire night. Before dawn the next day, she dragged him into the kitchen and stuffed him under the cupboard, together with Jiaojiao’s head.
One missing Jiaojiao in the base might not cause any major waves. Usually, she was truly disliked. No one liked her. Everyone would think she had disappeared to slack off somewhere.
But when morning training came and one ability user was missing from the base, that was a serious matter.
Jun Yueyue had always known that Wu Zhenfei trained especially hard. When everyone else finished training and rested, he would add extra exercises for himself.
So when she did not see him in the morning, Jun Yueyue thought he must have trained too late at night and failed to get up in the morning.
But by noon, Wu Zhenfei was still absent. She began to feel a little puzzled.
Was he sick?
Jun Yueyue sent someone to Wu Zhenfei’s residence to look for him. But the person quickly returned and said Wu Zhenfei was not home.
The only way out of the resort was the drawbridge. All other places had already been reinforced by Li Li. Normally speaking, no one would privately leave the base, because compared to the safety inside, going outside alone was hell mode.
As long as someone was inside the base, they were absolutely safe.
So when Wu Zhenfei was not found at noon, Jun Yueyue did not pay too much attention. After all, he was a grown man. In a world this crazy, occasionally not wanting to train, occasionally disappearing on his own, was not that difficult to understand.
But by evening, when Jun Yueyue and Fang Anyu were too lazy to cook and went together to the collective canteen to eat, she still did not see Wu Zhenfei. Only then did she begin to feel suspicious.
Even if he was in a bad mood, or had run off somewhere alone to train, surely he would not skip meals?
After dinner, several ability users who were relatively familiar with Wu Zhenfei began searching the base for him. Li Li also broadcast through the loudspeaker, telling Wu Zhenfei to return quickly if he heard it.
What Jun Yueyue feared was not anything else, but that Wu Zhenfei, eager to upgrade, had run outside by himself to catch zombies and take crystal cores. That was an extremely foolish thing to do. Besides, they had not yet reached the point where they could upgrade. Rashly upgrading would be very dangerous.
But as time passed, Wu Zhenfei remained nowhere to be found. No one knew where he had gone.
And when Jun Yueyue learned that it was not only him, but Jiaojiao who had disappeared too, the ominous feeling in her heart grew heavier.
Fang Anyu activated his ability and used plants to search every corner of the base. He did not discover any trace of Wu Zhenfei or Jiaojiao.
Only then did Jun Yueyue begin pacing restlessly in the room.
She suspected Wu Zhenfei had gone outside. But there was no sign that the drawbridge had been opened. That meant the only possibility was going out from the back mountain.
He often trained near the back mountain. Climbing over the wall there to the outside might be difficult for ordinary people, but for mutated ability users, it was very simple.
He and Jiaojiao had disappeared together. Could the two of them have left together? Had he finally failed to resist Jiaojiao’s coaxing and eloped with her?
Under these circumstances, when a man and a woman suddenly vanished into thin air, and one of them was an ability user, Jun Yueyue could not think of anything other than them leaving together.
Although Fang Anyu could drive plants, they could only transmit some information under his control. The plants growing everywhere did not possess life on their own. So when Fang Anyu had not specifically driven some plants to monitor and observe, they could not independently discover and report things. Because of this, regarding Wu Zhenfei and Jiaojiao’s disappearance, Jun Yueyue had even thought of elopement.
But she never imagined that they were currently inside the base, in the cupboard of a woman’s room — a woman they had rescued some time ago, who looked completely harmless and even timid.
Ming Zhen had only opened the door once during the day, to receive the food people brought in. She did not eat any of it. After eating Jiaojiao yesterday, only one night had passed, and by now her stomach had already digested everything and shrunk back, returning to its original dry, pitted state from being bitten and torn.
The little village originally had surveillance cameras, but because some time ago Fang Anyu and Jun Yueyue had been arguing and a violent storm had raged for half the night, the cameras had already been damaged. They had barely managed to restore the electricity only because among the survivors, there was someone who understood circuits a little.
So no one suspected Ming Zhen.
No one even suspected that an ability user like Wu Zhenfei had been attacked. Everyone thought he had taken Jiaojiao and run out of the base.
Jun Yueyue’s group could not just wait like this. Whether Wu Zhenfei had been persuaded by Jiaojiao to take her away, or whether it was something else, they had to find a way to search. After all, he was their companion. He had fought side by side with them many times, and he was also one of the few people Jun Yueyue regarded as a friend.
They organized two small teams to search for traces at the back mountain.
At this very moment, the two people everyone believed had eloped…
Strictly speaking, one person and a little bit of a person, because Jiaojiao only had her head left, while Wu Zhenfei was still intact, were in the cupboard in the room, with Wu Zhenfei gagged and tightly bound, struggling so hard that the cupboard banged and clattered.
His whimpering was very faint. His mouth was stuffed, and he was wrapped in the quilt. Even with all his strength, he could not break free.
Ming Zhen knew that people outside were currently looking for Wu Zhenfei.
But she had no intention of letting him go. Instead, she planned to eat him. If those people could not find him, after a few days, they would stop searching.
So while Wu Zhenfei was banging around vigorously, Ming Zhen dragged him out from the cupboard. She held a kitchen knife and measured it against his neck.
Wu Zhenfei’s muffled whimpers immediately stopped.
After all, even though he had abilities now, if a kitchen knife cut open his neck, he would not survive.
He stared tightly at this strange woman. When he met her eyes, Wu Zhenfei paused for a moment.
But only for a moment.
Because Ming Zhen’s eyes had already changed colour, becoming much paler. The way she looked at him was also completely different from before.
In the past, when Ming Zhen looked at him, her eyes held a passion that could burn people.
Now, when she looked at him, it was as if she was looking at a piece of meat, studying where it would be most suitable to start eating.
Ming Zhen studied for a while.
It was not very easy to use the knife, because Wu Zhenfei’s neck was surrounded by the quilt. Cutting it would be inconvenient.
Of course, she could directly bite him like she had bitten Jiaojiao yesterday, but that was troublesome. It would get everywhere and take more time.
In that large mall, when those people had kept her, they would always chop people up before sending them into her room. Ming Zhen actually missed those people a little. But if this group had not gone to the mall, after a few more days, those people would have been eaten up by her. Then Ming Zhen would have run out of food.
Ming Zhen measured for a while, then directly chopped down with the kitchen knife onto Wu Zhenfei’s body…
Onto the quilt he was tied in.
She had to let the person out first before it would be easier to act.
Wu Zhenfei was so frightened he made a muffled sound. But then his body loosened. He quickly struggled free of the quilt. His first reaction was to attack Ming Zhen.
Unfortunately, he had been trapped for too long, and his hands and feet were stiff. On top of that, his little bit of combat ability was truly not enough in front of Ming Zhen, a third-level zombie.
His fist, swinging toward her, was easily pushed aside by Ming Zhen. Ming Zhen’s kitchen knife also chopped directly toward his shoulder.
Fortunately, Wu Zhenfei reacted quickly enough. He rolled on the spot, looking miserable and ugly, but truly dodged Ming Zhen’s slash.
“Who are you?! What do you want?!” Wu Zhenfei shouted.
But the next moment, Ming Zhen grabbed him by the neck.
As long as Ming Zhen applied force, she could crush Wu Zhenfei’s throat. But she did not immediately kill him. Instead, she tilted her head in some confusion.
Wu Zhenfei glared at Ming Zhen. His eyes were filled with fear and anger. Ming Zhen was very familiar with this look.
Wu Zhenfei had once looked at her with this kind of gaze and spoken to her in this kind of straightforward tone. That had been a morning after waking from drunkenness.
In truth, Ming Zhen also did not know what had happened. At the time, she had indeed wanted to be with Wu Zhenfei, but she had not been insane enough to want to use that kind of method to be with him.
She had also been a victim. She had only never explained, because compared to Wu Zhenfei’s shock and anger, the joy in her own heart had been greater than her surprise. Her expectations for being with him afterward had also outweighed the terrible circumstances at the time.
Ming Zhen did not understand why she had wanted so badly to be with this person, nor why she had jumped out of the car for this person.
She could no longer understand such feelings.
So she was curious. She opened her mouth and asked, “Why… does my chest hurt?”
Ming Zhen had not spoken for a long time. Her voice was very low and hoarse. But as soon as she spoke, Wu Zhenfei, who had once again taken advantage of Ming Zhen’s daze and had swung his fist halfway toward her, suddenly froze beside Ming Zhen’s head.
Wu Zhenfei’s eyes widened in disbelief.
His throat was held by Ming Zhen, and his breathing was extremely difficult. He felt that because of suffocation, he was now experiencing auditory hallucinations.
Otherwise, why did this strange woman in front of him have exactly the same voice as Ming Zhen?
Wu Zhenfei’s hand moved in sync with his thoughts. The next moment, he grabbed the black cloth covering Ming Zhen’s face and pulled it down hard.
Ming Zhen slightly turned her head to the side. It was not because she felt she was now too ugly. It was because she felt that if she wanted to hide among the crowd, she could not expose these obvious bite wounds and arouse anyone’s suspicion.
But after that, it was as if the whole world fell silent.
Wu Zhenfei opened his mouth slightly. His lips moved several times before he finally said in a low voice, “Ming… Ming Zhen?!”
“How did you… How did you become like this?” Wu Zhenfei reached out to touch Ming Zhen’s face, but Ming Zhen knocked his hand away.
She did not cover her face again. With that face and neck full of twisted, ferocious wounds, she stared at Wu Zhenfei for a while. The colour in her eyes gradually turned grey-white, and all colour was covered by dead ash, cold and eerie.
She asked again, “When I see you, why does my chest hurt?”
Wu Zhenfei’s tears fell.
Ming Zhen’s hand was still around his throat, but she left him space to breathe.
Wu Zhenfei’s tears landed on the back of her hand. Ming Zhen seemed to be burned and quickly withdrew her hand. She became angry. She felt that Wu Zhenfei was attacking her.
Ming Zhen pressed her hand against her chest and screamed at Wu Zhenfei.
The sound was sharp and unpleasant, as if it could tear through someone’s eardrums. It was long and far-reaching, almost piercing through half the base. Wu Zhenfei covered his mouth, then could not help covering his ears too. A sweet, metallic taste even surged into his mouth.
When Ming Zhen stopped, Wu Zhenfei was hunched over on the ground. Somewhere inside his mouth had been bitten open, and blood flowed from the corner of his lips.
Jun Yueyue’s group clearly all heard this sound.
And when Ming Zhen went berserk, Fang Anyu also instantly sensed the presence of a powerful zombie.
A group of ability users quickly ran toward Ming Zhen’s room.
Meanwhile, Ming Zhen threw herself onto Wu Zhenfei. Wu Zhenfei lay facing upward, looking at Ming Zhen on top of him, who was clearly no longer human. Tears flowed from the corners of his eyes into his temples.
He did not try to attack Ming Zhen again. Instead, he asked in a trembling voice, “How did you become like this… What exactly happened?”
Ming Zhen did not answer him. Instead, she opened her mouth and bit toward his neck.
Wu Zhenfei closed his eyes.
He did not even struggle.
He also did not know why he did not struggle. Perhaps Ming Zhen’s appearance was too hard for him to accept. Or perhaps he was truly tired, so tired he did not want to move at all.
That day, Wu Zhenfei had passed out. He did not know what happened afterward. But only three people had escaped. After the man surnamed Zhang was beaten to death, all the truth could only be heard from Jiaojiao alone.
Wu Zhenfei had never believed Jiaojiao’s words. He had all kinds of guesses, but he could not guess what exactly Ming Zhen had encountered.
Jiaojiao had been vague about Ming Zhen’s death, saying she had not seen clearly. But the moment Wu Zhenfei saw Ming Zhen’s appearance, he completely understood.
Those everywhere, ferocious wounds symbolized exactly what she had experienced.
As for how Ming Zhen became like this, Wu Zhenfei did not dare imagine it.
In the end, it was he who had brought her along… It was he who had been useless and failed to protect her.
But just as Wu Zhenfei was prepared to calmly accept Ming Zhen tearing into him, Ming Zhen stopped when she touched his neck.
She remembered such a morning…
She had woken in Wu Zhenfei’s arms. At that time, Wu Zhenfei’s neck had also been this close to her. She had also leaned her mouth toward him then. But she had smiled and kissed Wu Zhenfei, even though she had not known what had happened at the time.
Ming Zhen remembered all these things.
What she did not remember was why she had done that.
Why had she kissed a sleeping person so gently, so carefully?
Ming Zhen could not understand at all.
But she could not bite him.
Her chest hurt too much.
Ming Zhen got up from Wu Zhenfei. Then she screamed again. Afterward, she pressed down on her chest and shrank into the corner, looking at Wu Zhenfei with some fear.
Why did it hurt this much whenever she wanted to eat him or bite him?
Wu Zhenfei sat up. He looked at Ming Zhen, his voice choked so badly he could not speak. Ming Zhen kept shrinking toward the corner. She realized she was afraid of Wu Zhenfei.
When he looked at her, her chest hurt. When he cried, her chest hurt too. When she touched him, it hurt even more.
Wu Zhenfei crawled toward Ming Zhen. Ming Zhen screamed again and again, even jumping up and crouching on the kang, staring at him warily.
Just as the two were frozen in this standoff, the door was pushed open.
All the people in the base with combat ability had arrived, surrounding the little house densely. When Jun Yueyue, Fang Anyu, and the others rushed into the room, they saw Wu Zhenfei trying to approach the woman crouched in the corner, holding her head and screaming continuously.
No matter how one looked at this scene, it looked like Wu Zhenfei, a grown man, was trying to bully a woman. The people who rushed in also froze briefly.
But then someone kicked Jiaojiao’s head on the ground. And in the gap between the woman’s screams, she raised her head and shouted agitatedly at Wu Zhenfei, “Don’t come over!”
Jun Yueyue and the people beside her all recognized Ming Zhen.
Although Ming Zhen had already become like this, they all recognized her.
But could someone really still be alive after turning into this state? The screams bursting from Ming Zhen’s body, and the fact that she could still move around in this condition, already made it clear that something was very wrong with her.
For a while, no one knew what to do.
Wu Zhenfei could not get close to Ming Zhen. His eyes were full of tears. He turned his head and looked at Jun Yueyue, his voice choked. “Ming Zhen… She turned into a zombie.”
As soon as they heard “zombie,” the people behind them became restless. But most of them were confused.
Ming Zhen had indeed wrapped herself strangely in a black robe, covering herself completely. She had seemed eerie. But she had not entered the base just yesterday.
However, as Wu Zhenfei tried to approach again, Ming Zhen’s scream and her changing eyes proved that she was a zombie.
Just as everyone was about to act, Ming Zhen suddenly stood up, smashed the window behind her, and quickly ran outside.
Everyone rushed out.
Ming Zhen’s speed was so fast that if not for her black robe being too wide, she would have been almost impossible to catch with the naked eye.
The ability users chased closely behind. Jun Yueyue’s speed was already the fastest among the mutants, but even she almost could not catch up to Ming Zhen. Fang Anyu was not fast enough, but he could drive plants to block Ming Zhen. Ming Zhen tripped twice, rolled several times on the ground, and then was pinned to the ground by vines that grew wildly everywhere, tangled into a spiderweb-like net. No matter how she screamed and struggled, they pressed tighter and tighter.
Realizing she could not break free, Ming Zhen screamed again.
But this time, the sound was different from before. It was not very loud, yet it carried a strange vibration. The zombies locked up inside the base for ordinary people’s training immediately began howling one after another.
Jun Yueyue immediately shouted, “She’s summoning companions! Block her mouth!”
Vines instantly wrapped over Ming Zhen’s face. Very quickly, they sealed her mouth. Like a small insect stuck to a spiderweb, she could no longer move or scream.
Wu Zhenfei quickly ran to Ming Zhen’s side. Fang Anyu wrapped the vines pressing on her around her body instead, turning her into a dense green cocoon, leaving only Ming Zhen’s eyes and the top of her head exposed.
Wu Zhenfei knelt beside Ming Zhen and reached out to help her. But Ming Zhen looked at him with eyes full of fear and resistance. Warning sounds kept coming from her throat.
Everyone relaxed slightly after seeing Ming Zhen captured.
They carried Ming Zhen and locked her into an iron cage specially used for holding zombies.
Everyone went to check whether there were any gaps in the base. They discovered that because of Ming Zhen’s screams just now, many wandering zombies had gathered around the base on all sides.
Fortunately, the walls had been reinforced, and the drawbridge was not easy to climb over. For now, there was nothing to worry about.
However, they carefully checked every area again and added patrol teams to clear the zombies gathered by the walls and ensure there were no overlooked places where zombies could slip into the base.
Wu Zhenfei stayed until he saw Ming Zhen locked inside the cage and still did not leave.
Jun Yueyue did not know what kind of feelings he had for Ming Zhen, but even seeing a stranger one knew turn into this would make anyone feel terrible.
She patted Wu Zhenfei’s shoulder but could not say any comforting words.
Wu Zhenfei said to Jun Yueyue, “She didn’t bite me…”
Jun Yueyue had originally been about to turn and leave. Hearing Wu Zhenfei say this, she paused.
Wu Zhenfei said, “She had the chance to bite me. I didn’t move at all. But in the end, she didn’t bite me. She still has consciousness. She’s different from those second-level zombies…”
Jun Yueyue was silent for a moment before saying, “But she ate Jiaojiao. Zhenfei, I know you feel awful, but judging from her condition, she really isn’t a second-level zombie.”
Wu Zhenfei’s eyes were red as he turned to look at Jun Yueyue.
Jun Yueyue sighed and said, “Although I’ve never seen one, and I don’t know why Ming Zhen became like this, she can speak, has that kind of speed and strength, and just two screams from her summoned hundreds or thousands of zombies. Ming Zhen isn’t a second-level zombie. She’s third-level.”
Wu Zhenfei opened his mouth but could not speak.
Jun Yueyue continued, “Third-level zombies can remember things from when they were alive. So she knows what she’s doing, and she recognizes you.”
Jun Yueyue squeezed his shoulder again and said to Wu Zhenfei, “For now, we can only keep her locked up. Since she remembers you, if you have anything to say… say it to her.”
What Jun Yueyue did not say was that third-level zombies were powerful beyond imagination. They could attract thousands upon thousands of zombies to form a zombie tide for them to command. And this was not like second-level zombies, which only drove zombies forward aimlessly.
Once the one commanding the zombies became third-level, an undying army led by a commander with human intelligence would possess unimaginable destructive power.
So Ming Zhen…
After they checked the base’s gaps and prepared defenses, she had to be killed.
Wu Zhenfei stood in front of the cage. Ming Zhen was trapped, her mouth blocked by vines, but she still huddled in the farthest corner and refused to approach him.
“What happened after I passed out that day? How exactly did you become like this…” Wu Zhenfei was practically talking to himself. No matter what he said, Ming Zhen gave no reaction. She did not even shake or nod her head.
In the end, she simply closed her eyes, leaned inside the cage, and silently spread her ability, summoning nearby zombies.
Jun Yueyue had never seen a third-level zombie before. Her knowledge of third-level zombies’ abilities was very limited. So she did not know that even without screaming, Ming Zhen could also summon companions.
But Wu Zhenfei kept speaking. These words disturbed Ming Zhen. She was summoning companions to save her, but Wu Zhenfei kept interrupting her.
Ming Zhen could no longer endure it. Like a cannonball, she suddenly slammed from inside the cage toward him, crashing against the bars in front of Wu Zhenfei, trying to scare him away.
But Wu Zhenfei only looked at Ming Zhen with guilt all over his face. He did not leave.
Ming Zhen slammed again and again, using especially great force. After all, she did not feel pain. But what bound her was vines. After several impacts, the vines on her face loosened.
Ming Zhen opened her mouth and was just about to scream when Wu Zhenfei suddenly reached into the cage. With one hand, he hooked the back of her neck, and with the other, he covered her mouth.
Ming Zhen paused.
Then she really did not scream again.
It was not that she herself did not want to scream. Since she had been caught, of course she wanted to call for help. But she closed her mouth out of habit from when she had still been human.
As everyone knew, in front of the person one liked, one always became especially talkative. When Ming Zhen had been with Wu Zhenfei, she had often chattered like a parrot. Sometimes, when Wu Zhenfei could no longer endure it, he would use this posture to block her mouth.
This had been one of the few touches between the two after that night. Later, in order to make Wu Zhenfei touch her like this, Ming Zhen would deliberately find things to say.
And whenever Wu Zhenfei did this, she would obediently shut her mouth and stop annoying him.
The two looked at each other like this for a while.
Wu Zhenfei said to Ming Zhen, “Don’t scream, okay?”
From the moment he saw Ming Zhen, Wu Zhenfei knew she was no longer human. But because Ming Zhen had not bitten him earlier, Wu Zhenfei held onto the last trace of hope, looking at Ming Zhen almost pleadingly.
He did not even know whether Ming Zhen could understand. He thought Ming Zhen would not listen to him.
But Ming Zhen really nodded.
Wu Zhenfei’s eyes were red. He slowly let go of his hand.
Ming Zhen really did not scream. Instead, she quietly looked at Wu Zhenfei, different from her earlier fear and resistance.
“Let me go,” Ming Zhen suddenly said. “Let me go. I became like this because of you.”
Wu Zhenfei had actually already guessed this. He felt as though his heart had been heavily kneaded and crushed. His voice trembled as he asked, “Why did you kill Jiaojiao? Did she harm you?!”
“Yes. She encouraged that officer surnamed Zhang, the one who came to pick you up,” Ming Zhen said without much emotion. “At the time, many zombies were chasing the car. She told that officer to throw you out of the car, because you had already passed out, your head was covered in blood, and you probably couldn’t survive.”
“I jumped out of my own accord,” Ming Zhen said in a flat, emotionless tone. “Because I loved you. I wanted you to live.”
Wu Zhenfei gripped the bars tightly. He choked so hard his voice changed, and his expression twisted. “I’m sorry… It was my uselessness. I harmed you…”
“Let me go. I only killed Jiaojiao,” Ming Zhen said.
Her eyes were pale, and in this night, they carried an almost innocent clarity.
She patiently tempted him, using words that were not at all skilful to deceive Wu Zhenfei. “Save me. I loved you so much. I already died for you. Aren’t you moved?”
Ming Zhen had never spoken to Wu Zhenfei like this before. When one loved someone humbly, there was no way to say words like “love” out loud.
There was even a faint smile on Ming Zhen’s pitted face. She leaned closer to Wu Zhenfei through the iron cage. “Before we got married, that drug incident—I was a victim too. I never harmed you. I’ve always loved you. Pity me just this once.”
Things in this world were truly both laughable and tearful.
Ming Zhen’s careful attempts to please him in the past, her sensitive and fragile admiration, had never moved Wu Zhenfei.
Yet at this moment, wearing a face more terrifying than a ghost’s, speaking of love she herself no longer understood, she successfully made Wu Zhenfei collapse. Guilt and an indescribable heartache made him slowly clutch the cage and crouch down, choking with sobs.
Ming Zhen stood pressed against the cage. Bound like a silkworm, she lowered her gaze and looked at the top of Wu Zhenfei’s head. Her eyes showed no emotional fluctuation.
In the night, her pale pupils seemed clear. But if one looked closely, one would discover there was only calm dead ash within them.
Apart from Ming Zhen’s cage, there were other cages around them too, all holding zombies. The guards were at the door not far away.
Wu Zhenfei’s heart had been crushed by the cruel truth, and his mind had been overwhelmed by Ming Zhen’s words.
After crouching there for a moment, he stood up and fiercely wiped away his tears. He walked toward the door and quickly knocked out the two ordinary people guarding it.
Ming Zhen had not expected that Wu Zhenfei truly intended to release her.
When Wu Zhenfei used his ability to forcefully pull open the cage, then tore off the vines binding Ming Zhen, pulling her to avoid the crowd and run toward the back mountain—
Ming Zhen’s heart began twisting in pain again.
Wu Zhenfei often trained at the back mountain. He knew that absolutely no one went there. With his help, Ming Zhen easily slid down from the stone wall. Her black robe blended into the night without the slightest discord. Very quickly, Ming Zhen disappeared.
When Wu Zhenfei returned to the base, what awaited him was everyone standing in full battle readiness, having already realized Ming Zhen had escaped.
Jun Yueyue walked forward. Her expression twisted for an instant, and then she slammed a punch hard into his shoulder.
“Fuck you. When she was alive, you didn’t treat her properly. Now that she’s become a zombie, you let her go? Do you know how terrifying a third-level zombie’s ability is?!”
“If she comes back for revenge, every single one of us will be destroyed by you!”
Wu Zhenfei pressed his lips together. After a moment, he knelt in front of everyone and lowered his head. “I’m sorry. But she promised. She won’t come back. She only came to take revenge on Jiaojiao.”
“You believed what she said?” Jun Yueyue’s voice drifted. “Then do you know, when we counted people just now, we discovered that in the accommodation building, there was an old lady who had no children or relatives, living alone in a small single room…”
Jun Yueyue’s voice broke for a moment. She forced down the tremor in it and said, “Inside the room, all that was left was a pool of blood and chewed-up bone fragments…”
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