Chapter 12: Forgiveness
When Chi Xiaoxian woke up, he smelled the sweet, rich aroma of milk. Scrambling up groggily, he saw Fang Yue mixing a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast.
“Can I have a bowl too?” Chi Xiaoxian twitched his nose.
“Sure.”
Chi Xiaoxian hadn’t eaten anything since last night, and his stomach let out a long, rumbling groan.
After washing up, he sat down next to Fang Yue, picked up a bowl, and took a large gulp of warm milk. As the soothing liquid flowed into his stomach, he felt alive again.
Scooping up a spoonful of oatmeal, Chi Xiaoxian took a bite. It was soaked to the perfect consistency—soft and sticky, yet with a faint bite to it.
“Still studying these?”
Seeing Fang Yue flipping through those two copies of the *Apocalypse Survival Guide*, Chi Xiaoxian let out a curious “Huh? Why are you wearing gloves? Is there something on the books?”
Fang Yue picked up the top copy, pinched the side edge, and fanned out the pages into an arc. Right then, an inconspicuous small red dot on the edge of the paper stretched open into a thin, elongated bloodstain.
Chi Xiaoxian’s eyes widened instantly. “What’s that?”
“The color of the bloodstain is still very fresh. I suspect Li Tong didn’t actually have a long incubation period; rather, he happened to get infected through some method he hadn’t anticipated.”
“Like this, for instance.” Fang Yue’s gloved finger tapped the side of the pages. “If there was virus on this book, and the page was sharp enough to cut Li Tong’s hand and infect him, that would explain why he still got infected despite staying inside his dorm room the entire time.”
“Is a method like that enough to infect someone, though?” Chi Xiaoxian asked in confusion.
In the zombie movies he had watched before, people were generally infected only after being bitten by zombies or sustaining other open wounds.
“In theory, if the virus concentration on the book was high enough, it is possible,” Fang Yue said rigorously. “The virus is transmitted through blood, but that doesn’t mean it can only survive inside the human body. The virus can exist in the air or on object surfaces—it just might not survive very long and would die quickly, maintaining a very low concentration.”
“You mean there was a high concentration of the virus on this book?”
Chi Xiaoxian swallowed hard instinctively, growing nervous. After all, the other copy of the guide had been kept with him the whole time.
“If there was a high concentration of the virus, the most direct cause would be a zombie splattering blood onto it.” Fang Yue paused. “However, I didn’t find any blood splatters.”
Indeed, if one didn’t look closely, they wouldn’t even notice the bloodstain on the edge of the pages, let alone a whole pool of blood splattered on it by a zombie.
“When zombies bite people, the infection is triggered when the virus in the zombie’s saliva enters the human bloodstream. Is it possible that what landed on this book wasn’t blood, but saliva or some other transparent bodily fluid?”
“I’m just saying ‘what if,'” Chi Xiaoxian tested the waters. “What if there was just some bizarre zombie that hated this book so much it spat a huge glob of drool onto it just to disgust humans?”
“Your imagination really is…” As someone with a obsession with cleanliness, Fang Yue’s brows had already knit together.
Suddenly, a thought flashed across his mind.
He touched the cover of the manual. The cover was exquisitely produced, printed on a thick, glossy waterproof paper.
Although Chi Xiaoxian had made the remark jokingly, it broadened his line of thinking.
He examined the pages carefully once more, and sure enough, he found what he was looking for—
Two curved indentations. Judging by their width, they were left by incisors.
“What is it?”
Seeing Fang Yue’s expression, Chi Xiaoxian felt he had discovered something else.
“Remember what we used to make arm guards earlier?”
“Rolled-up cardboard.”
Fang Yue handed the book over, aligned the desk lamp right at the two tooth marks, and tapped them for Chi Xiaoxian to see. “Someone must have used it to block a zombie’s bite.”
Light dawned on Chi Xiaoxian. “Books can indeed be used like that.”
“However, the thickness of a single copy isn’t enough to block it.” Fang Yue retrieved the other copy and stacked the two together. “Doing this makes it enough.”
“So the bite mark on one copy is on the front cover, while the other is on the back cover,” Chi Xiaoxian said in surprise. “No wonder we didn’t spot it at first glance. If only one copy had been used for defense, the book would definitely have been bitten out of shape, and we wouldn’t have missed it so easily.”
Fang Yue nodded.
“You’re incredible—you could even deduce that.”
“I was merely inspired by you,” Fang Yue said nonchalantly.
—
After finishing breakfast, Chi Xiaoxian originally intended to return to his own dorm room, as he felt a bit embarrassed continuing to disturb the ultimate tryhard. The moment he stepped into the stairwell, however, the stifling, hot air suffocated him, and he retreated back inside without a word.
Fang Yue was still engrossed in his reading, so Chi Xiaoxian tiptoed back to his bed, lay down quietly, and pretended nothing had happened.
He felt he must have been the god of sleep in a past life, possessing an endless supply of fatigue.
If he had no classes, he could stay glued to his bed all day, sleeping from midnight straight through to ten in the morning. After eating lunch, he would take an afternoon nap until three, and after dinner, he would grow groggy all over again, easily squeezing in another nap by seven or eight.
Engrossed in his book, Fang Yue had assumed Chi Xiaoxian had already headed back, until he stood up halfway through to pour some water and caught a soft snoring sound from the bed behind him.
That same arm had stubbornly stretched out again, looking as if it were ready to grab a handful of hair from anyone who passed by at any moment.
Fang Yue no longer had any psychological barrier against it. Without a second thought, he reached out to stuff Chi Xiaoxian’s hand back in.
“Mm.”
This time, however, Chi Xiaoxian woke up right on the mark.
Opening his eyes, he found his wrist clamped in Fang Yue’s hand.
The two stared at each other.
A nerve on the inner side of Chi Xiaoxian’s wrist twitched.
Looking at Fang Yue, he recalled the bizarre dream he had last night—dreaming that he was in a park learning Tai Chi hands-on from an old man, pushing and pulling back and forth…
“You have OCD,” Chi Xiaoxian said word by word.
“I don’t,” Fang Yue said, keeping a stone face.
“Then you have a crush on me.” Chi Xiaoxian wiggled his arm, saying languidly, “You’re taking advantage of me.”
Only then did Fang Yue realize he was still holding Chi Xiaoxian’s wrist, and he released his grip immediately.
“Don’t know how to explain it now, do you?” Chi Xiaoxian smiled faintly. “Let me teach you how to talk nonsense.”
“?” Fang Yue thought he was hearing things.
“You could say you were checking my pulse. And then diagnosed that I’m sick.”
“What sickness do you have?”
“The kind of terminal laziness.”
Fang Yue felt like kicking this guy out.
This was the first time Chi Xiaoxian had ever won a verbal battle against Fang Yue, and he lay back down thoroughly satisfied.
The second he lay down, a heavy *CLANG!* of an object slamming into the floor echoed from downstairs, followed by a gut-wrenching, bloodcurdling roar.
Directly downstairs was the dorm room he shared with Zhang Wensheng. Chi Xiaoxian sat up abruptly, an ominous premonition creeping into his heart.
He held his breath and listened quietly for a while, but the commotion ceased.
He sent a message to Zhang Wensheng, but after waiting a long time, Zhang Wensheng didn’t reply.
Chi Xiaoxian felt something was off—Zhang Wensheng shouldn’t be asleep at this hour. Getting up and heading downstairs, he knocked on his dorm room door.
He knocked for a long time, but no one answered. Left with no choice, he pulled out his key to unlock it, only to find that the key jammed the moment it turned to the end. The door wouldn’t open no matter what.
Chi Xiaoxian grew frantic, shouting “Old Zhang!” twice in a row before pounding continuously on the door.
Just then, his phone rang with an incoming call from Zhang Wensheng.
“Why are you calling my phone through the door?” Chi Xiaoxian said, somewhat speechless.
“Listen to me,” Zhang Wensheng’s voice carried an unnatural tremble. “I’m infected…”
“What?” Chi Xiaoxian felt as if struck by lightning.
“Don’t stand at the door. Go back upstairs, lock the door tightly with Fang Yue.”
As he spoke, the commotion from the door pounding just now caught the attention of Yuan Chengmin from the room across the hall. Poking his head out, Yuan Chengmin asked what was wrong. Chi Xiaoxian merely said it was nothing, turned around, and went upstairs.
Yuan Chengmin watched Chi Xiaoxian walk up the stairs and closed his door in utter confusion. The moment he shut the door, Chi Xiaoxian’s legs went completely limp.
Leaning against the railing, he gasped for air, his heart pounding like a chaotic drumbeat.
“Are you back inside?”
“Yeah.” Chi Xiaoxian locked the dorm room door, collapsing straight onto the floor.
“I blocked the door to my room,” Zhang Wensheng said heavily. “I don’t plan on coming out.”
“Didn’t we check each other yesterday? How could you suddenly be infected? Are you sure?”
Chi Xiaoxian still couldn’t bring himself to believe it. Rather than disbelieving it, it was more accurate to say he couldn’t accept it.
“I’m sorry, I lied to you guys,” Zhang Wensheng gave a bitter laugh. “I didn’t even realize when my wrist got scratched. I was terrified out of my mind at the time. In an emergency, I put my watch on to hide the wound with the strap. Forgive me… I didn’t want to be tied up and thrown outside like Li Tong, nor did I want to be trapped to death in a basement. I have claustrophobia.”
Only then did Chi Xiaoxian recall a detail he had overlooked yesterday.
When Zhang Wensheng rushed downstairs to help them last night, he hadn’t been wearing his watch. He had always cherished that watch, rarely wearing it casually. Yet when they checked each other after everything ended, he was clearly wearing it.
“So when you said the AC was broken, it was to send me away?”
“Yes…”
Chi Xiaoxian was struck speechless instantly.
The floor tiles beneath his seat felt exceptionally icy, almost freezing the blood in his entire body.
His whole person felt as though he had fallen into an ice cave.
“I won’t be able to look out for you anymore in the future.” Zhang Wensheng’s voice began to grow urgent. “Listen to me—I ran an experiment yesterday. If you find a wound suspected of zombie virus invasion, you must wash it frantically and disinfect it like crazy. I even bound my joints tightly with cloth strips to slow down the infection speed, but it only delayed it. I’ve already lost all feeling in my right shoulder, and next it should be very fast…”
“I lost the gamble, Chi Xiaoxian. If you’re ever unfortunately bitten, you must chop it off without hesitation. Only by doing that can you, can you…” Zhang Wensheng’s voice became intermittent and broken.
Chi Xiaoxian imagined that agony and knit his brows tightly.
“Directly outside my window is the perimeter wall. I should be able to jump out without landing inside the dorm grounds.”
“The fifth floor is high enough… This is the final measure…”
Chi Xiaoxian’s eyes widened. “You’re going to—”
*CRASH!* He heard the sound of glass shattering and exploding.
Immediately following was a dull, heavy *THUD* that slammed violently against his heart.
Chi Xiaoxian rushed over to the dorm window and looked down.
He saw Zhang Wensheng’s twisted body.
In the grass, bloodstains began to stream outward in all directions, mixing with the soil like a black rivulet.
