Chapter 30

Qi Wu and Xie Xishu stopped at the same time. They exchanged a glance, then turned in unison toward the direction from which the sound had come.

Only now did they notice an “invisible door,” a fashionable feature these days, set somewhere along the corridor. In the poor lighting, it was indeed difficult to tell that there was a door there at all—especially since it was now completely concealed behind a toppled antique display shelf.

They had both passed through this corridor before. But with monsters running rampant, the wreckage inside what had once been a luxurious mansion had long since become an ordinary sight, and neither of them had paid much attention to that corner.

Yet now, a human voice was coming from it…

Was it truly the voice of a human being?

Qi Wu frowned slightly. A trace of annoyance flickered through his cold, shadowed eyes.

He had caught a scent.

A faint current of air seeped through the cracks of the concealed door and flowed into his nostrils. He detected a barely perceptible stench of blood and decay, somewhat resembling the odor of a monster—though it might simply have been left behind by the creature they had encountered earlier. Beneath that was the smell of blood, the foul tang of rust, and the animal reek produced by human skin oils and grime.

It was the smell of a human.

Qi Wu quietly rubbed the tiny fangs emerging from the base of his tongue.

For several seconds, he regretted bringing Xie Xishu along with him. Even setting aside his fierce possessiveness, it was necessary for Xie Xishu’s safety. But if he had been alone in the villa, he probably would have left without the slightest emotional disturbance.

Even if the person inside really were a living human being desperately begging him for help.

Unfortunately, Xie Xishu was standing beside him now. His little crybaby—and almost-boyfriend—had clung to a set of nearly ridiculous moral principles even in the age of the apocalypse…

“Xishu?”

With that thought, Qi Wu lightly bumped the young man beside him with his shoulder.

“What do you think?”

Xie Xishu turned to him, uneasy and uncertain, as though he was unaccustomed to Qi Wu voluntarily relinquishing the initiative and asking for his opinion.

“I… I don’t know.”

If this had happened at the beginning of the mutation—when they had first fled into that supermarket, for instance—Xie Xishu would probably have rushed forward without hesitation the moment he discovered another “person,” determined to rescue them.

But after enduring one encounter with monsters after another, Xie Xishu had discovered that he had grown timid.

Especially now. The person calling for help had appeared far too abruptly. The mutation had been going on for so long, and the two of them had been coming and going from the villa to gather supplies for more than a day or two. Why had they never noticed that a living person was still inside one of the houses?

It was almost as though the voice had sensed their hesitation and uncertainty from outside. The cries behind the door instantly became louder and more frantic.

“I—I haven’t been infected! I’m alive!”

“Believe me, I’m really not a monster! I’m still alive! My name is Xiao Tianming. I’m a top influencer on Douyin—go check my account if you don’t believe me! I’m a real human being!”

“But the door’s jammed shut, and I can’t get out! Brother, big brother… Dad… please, please save me! I have money! I have lots and lots of money! Let me out, sob…”

Accompanying the man’s tearful pleas came a series of thudding impacts from behind the concealed door. The sounds were surprisingly weak; even the antique shelf wedged across the entrance merely trembled faintly.

At this, Xie Xishu glanced at Qi Wu again.

“I think… he’s probably human?”

Qi Wu curled one corner of his mouth and snorted coldly.

“He sounds like it.”

“Then… should I—”

“It’s fine. Let him out.” Qi Wu’s tone was indifferent. “If the sky falls, I’ll hold it up. Besides, that man smells awful. Even if I truly lost control, I wouldn’t eat something like that, so you don’t need to worry.”

“…That wasn’t what I was worried about.”

*

After their brief exchange, Xie Xishu cautiously approached the concealed door. Once he drew near, he realized that the thing preventing the person inside from opening it was not the solid-wood antique shelf blocking the entrance, but the lock, which had long since been twisted out of shape.

It was easy to see that something had once frantically tried to force its claws through the crack and pry the door open. The edges of the doorway were covered in mottled bloodstains and deep claw marks.

Even the door frame had warped slightly under the force.

That was probably why the man had become trapped inside.

Qi Wu then moved the antique shelf away with ease. Following through with a single kick, he sent the door flying open.

A man with tears and snot streaming down his face came tumbling out from behind it, rolling and scrambling through a wave of foul stench.

“Sob… benefactors!”

“My saviors—!”

Xiao Tianming’s gratitude sounded more like a mournful howl, so much so that Xie Xishu tensed instinctively, nearly believing for a moment that he had fallen into another monster’s trap.

After all, the monsters they had encountered during this mutation were far more troublesome than the zombies in horror films and novels.

In addition to the same bloodthirsty instincts as traditional monsters—sometimes even more intense—many of the creatures in the real world had evolved the ability to lure survivors with human voices or mimicry.

Fortunately, judging from the current situation, Xiao Tianming, once a wealthy second-generation celebrity on the internet, was indeed merely a lucky—or perhaps unlucky—survivor.

Behind the concealed door that had nearly trapped him to death was a basement. The family had converted it into a completely sealed home theater. Now, however, it had become a hell of foul odors and sweltering heat.

The thick carpet was covered in Xiao Tianming’s unavoidable waste, along with food that had long since rotted.

Without a fresh-air system, the enclosed room had become thin and murky with stale air. Xie Xishu could hardly believe that anyone had managed to survive inside for so many days.

“…Hey, don’t even get me started. You know those foreign movies where they always say you should hide in a cellar as soon as danger strikes? I figured my basement was pretty sturdy too…”

About half an hour later, the man, having finally recovered somewhat, sat cross-legged on the floor and wolfed down the food Xie Xishu had temporarily given him. Between mouthfuls, he seized every opportunity to tell the two of them about his ordeal.

“Actually, I’d planned everything pretty well. I stocked up on food, even got some military rations and compressed biscuits and all that. I figured I’d take my supplies down to the basement and hide there. No matter what happened, I should’ve been able to tough it out. But at the time, I never really believed this could happen. I was kissing my online girlfriend when—guess what? Right in the middle of it, she suddenly shoved her tongue down my throat, nearly all the way to my stomach. I was so terrified that I kicked her away, and then I saw her…”

“Get to the point.”

Qi Wu leaned against the wall, staring coldly at the man. He cut Xiao Tianming off without mercy.

“Oh, right, right. Anyway, I realized my girlfriend had turned into that… that thing, and my scalp went numb. I rushed into the basement and locked the door. I was lucky—the moment I locked it, that woman started clawing at the door like crazy. She finally quieted down after a long while, and just when I was breathing a sigh of relief, I suddenly remembered: damn, I’d been so busy running for my life that I’d left every single one of the supplies I’d bought outside…”

“And by then, I couldn’t get out even if I wanted to. If there hadn’t already been some snacks and drinks in the room, I’d have died in there ages ago. Ah, don’t even mention it. Why did my little refrigerator have nothing but braised meat in it? Those duck wings were marinated by our housekeeper—they were delicious. But then the power went out, and when I got toward the end of them, I took a bite and maggots started popping out of my mouth…”

“I figured protein was precious, right? Maybe it could save my life. So I tried to swallow it. But guess what? It all shot out through my nose in the end—”

Xiao Tianming had probably grown accustomed to talking nonstop during his livestreams. Once he opened his mouth, he became almost unstoppable. Worse, he described everything with such vivid detail that—

Xie Xishu had initially watched him with a grave, guarded expression. But as he listened, his attention was gradually dragged off course, and his face slowly turned pale.

Fortunately, Qi Wu soon interrupted him, looking thoroughly irritated.

“Shut up. Nobody asked about that.”

Although Qi Wu displayed nothing remotely monstrous at that moment, Xiao Tianming seemed to sense something. His neck jerked, and he immediately fell silent.

He raised his head and looked timidly at the two people before him. Anyone could see that neither of them was particularly old; in fact, both were several years younger than he was.

But the tall young man clearly was not someone to provoke. His entire bearing radiated menace.

Xiao Tianming happened to have heard of him. His unreliable father had once spoken to him with a tense expression, warning him never to offend one of the neighboring households—the Qi family.

At the time, Xiao Tianming had merely brushed the warning aside. Later, he had crossed paths with this man a few times but had never dared to form any real connection.

Seeing him again now, Xiao Tianming felt that he was even fiercer and more terrifying than he remembered.

As for the refined, scholarly-looking boy beside him, who looked every inch the model student… he seemed as though he ought to be easy to manipulate. Yet whenever Xiao Tianming met that boy’s focused gaze, his mind grew hazy. Whatever he was asked, he found himself babbling on and on, eager to spill everything he knew.

…And then Qi Wu would give him an icy, razor-sharp death stare.

Once he came back to his senses, Xiao Tianming decided that there was something distinctly wrong with both of them.

By then, Xie Xishu had also gradually collected his thoughts. After considering the matter for a moment, he immediately identified the source of the faint but unmistakable incongruity in Xiao Tianming’s story.

“Wait. You said you had already prepared supplies and made plans to hide in the basement for shelter?”

Xie Xishu stared straight at him.

“You knew something was going to happen? Who told you? What else do you know?”

The young man’s voice suddenly sharpened.

Under his urgent, stern questioning, Xiao Tianming’s movements visibly stiffened.

“Ah… yes. Yes, I did. But I swear, I thought I’d just run into some lunatic…”

By then, the man had already swept all the meager food before him clean.

He stammered a few times, but his voice faltered whenever he touched upon the subject. Finally, he opened the precious bottle of mineral water beside him. After hesitating, he carefully poured a little of the cool, crisp water into his palm and splashed it over his filthy face.