Chapter 16: The Convenience Store
Chi Xiaoxian was still deep in dreamland when he suddenly felt someone shaking him non-stop, vaguely hearing sharp, piercing shrieks ringing out.
He snapped his eyes open, gasping heavily for air as he asked in terror, “What’s happening outside?”
“Zombies broke out in the building.”
“What?!”
“I just saw Liu Xi through the peephole,” Fang Yue paused for a second. “He’s completely lost his mind.”
“Wasn’t he locked in the basement?” Chi Xiaoxian went blank for two seconds.
Before long, he pieced together how it must have happened. His eyelashes trembled slightly before he finally lowered his eyes.
“It was my idea,” he murmured in self-blame.
Fang Yue shook his head, however. “Not necessarily. There were too many variables. Liu Xi could have been an exceptionally good research specimen—he was the first person we encountered who didn’t lose his willpower immediately after infection. To be honest, I had some selfish motives too; I was hoping that one day I could bring him back to the lab.”
“But didn’t you just say he also—”
“Yes,” Fang Yue said. “He’s turned into one of those zombies just like the rest.”
Thinking for a moment, Fang Yue added, “Something must have happened in between, though.”
Unable to speculate further, they had no choice but to drag over more items to block the door tightly shut. To save money, the school had originally installed stainless steel door panels for them, which were thin and easily deformed. Fang Yue had paid out of pocket to replace his with a much thicker zinc alloy steel plate—a heavy door that gave them an overwhelming sense of security right now.
When locking the window, a sudden thought struck Chi Xiaoxian’s mind. Mustering his courage, he looked down at the patch of grass below where Zhang Wensheng had fallen earlier.
“Zhang Wensheng is gone!” he exclaimed, calling Fang Yue over.
In that patch of wild grass, some of the blades were still flattened against the ground—clearly, Zhang Wensheng’s “corpse” had been lying on them not long ago.
Pondering for a moment, Fang Yue concluded, “Zombies have remarkably strong motor recovery capabilities. Generally speaking, jumping from the fifth floor would mean body bones and internal organs were essentially…”
“Can the virus repair them?” Chi Xiaoxian felt a chill of terror.
“We’d have to actually see Zhang Wensheng to know the exact reason,” Fang Yue said. “I don’t think bones would be repaired that easily. Do you remember that rebel army from the United Highlands in the past?”
“Yeah.”
“To combat the Highlands’ official military, they conducted biological experiments—like severing a monkey’s sensory perceptions, including pain. After throwing it from a high place, even though the monkey suffered comminuted fractures, it could still involuntarily crawl forward for a certain distance.”
“How cruel,” Chi Xiaoxian said, scowling at the thought.
By the time they completed their defensive measures, it was already three in the morning. Chi Xiaoxian was so sleepy he could barely keep his eyes open.
“Go to sleep,” Fang Yue glanced at him.
“Won’t the zombies break the door down and storm in?”
“A security door isn’t that easy to break. There are likely still plenty of survivors in the building, so don’t worry.”
Fang Yue spoke with calm composure, his steady voice having the tranquilizing effect of a sedative.
When Chi Xiaoxian woke up the next morning, Fang Yue had just finished working out.
Sitting up on the bed, Chi Xiaoxian saw Fang Yue pulling off his T-shirt and tossing it into the hamper, holding a towel as he prepared to shower.
Bare-chested, his frame was lean and tight, his skin glistening with a faint sheen of sweat. His muscles weren’t bulging or exaggerated like those who deliberately pumped iron; instead, they were beautifully proportioned with smooth, flowing lines that suited his tall, slender height remarkably well.
Chi Xiaoxian was still hovering between sleep and reality, staring groggily at him for quite a while.
Once Fang Yue left, he touched his own lower abdomen—there was only a layer of delicate skin with a thin layer of fat beneath.
The desire to work out and grow abs would occasionally pop into his mind, but it would promptly be nipped in the bud.
Such a tryhard endeavor was a big no-no; it simply wasn’t for him.
—
After the zombie breakout in the building, their dorm life entered a state of walking on thin ice—calm on the surface, yet with latent crises lurking to strike at any moment.
They could only passively wait until the food ran out; before that, there was nothing they could do.
Chi Xiaoxian played on his phone as usual, while Fang Yue read research papers. After reading for a bit, Fang Yue picked up his phone and dialed a number.
“Hello, Dean. Sorry to disturb you,” Fang Yue exchanged a few pleasantries with the other end.
“Is that Fang Yue?! It’s been a while since I last heard from you. Are you graduating soon?”
“Yes.”
“How are things over on your end? I see reports all over the internet about zombies in the Southern Highlands—is it a new type of virus?”
Fang Yue gave the person on the other end a brief overview of the situation.
“Are you calling to seek help from me?” the other side said. “I’m sorry, but I haven’t come across first-hand information and can’t offer many suggestions. It would be great if you could send me a blood sample.”
“No, public transit and postal services around here should be completely halted by now, so there’s no way to send it to you. I have something else I’d like to request your help with.”
“You published a paper on cryonics technology on July 22nd. I have a few questions regarding the experiments in it…”
Following that, he spoke a long string of technical terms and jargon with the person on the line that Chi Xiaoxian couldn’t understand in the slightest.
“Haha, Professor Kevins and I are old friends too. You raise a very good question, but one must also account for physiological indicators after the human body returns to normal temperature. I’ll explain it to you in detail once you become my PhD student.”
Fang Yue thanked him politely and hung up the phone.
“Are you studying cryonics technology?”
“My advisor is a technical consultant for a cryonics institution, so I do some research topics alongside him.”
“Does that mean any illness can be cured in the future? Just freeze someone up and that’s it?”
“It’s not that simple. As far as current technology goes, freezing isn’t the difficult part—resuscitation is the key. The human body contains hundreds of millions of cells, and freezing technology disrupts all their vitality. Ensuring the body remains undamaged, especially the brain, is extremely difficult. Even if this technology truly matures, it will inevitably remain a scarce resource that not everyone will have the means to use.”
Chi Xiaoxian nodded as if grasping something. “So are you going to pursue a PhD in the future?”
“Mm.”
“Heading to a government research institute after graduating?” Chi Xiaoxian thought about it again. “Going to Zhifang Bio would be pretty good too. Their company practically holds a monopoly—drugstores now are filled with their medications and nutritional supplements, so employee salaries must be sky-high.”
Fang Yue said, “I plan to stay in academia and do research at a university.”
Chi Xiaoxian: “Wow, professors get winter and summer breaks. Full marks.”
Fang Yue raised an eyebrow: “So the key point is winter and summer breaks?”
“What else?”
Fang Yue shook his head helplessly, asking Chi Xiaoxian back what he wanted to do in the future.
“There’s nothing I particularly want to do. In my view, most jobs are profoundly anti-human.”
“Requiring people to clock in at specific times and places, requiring them to squat in the same enclosed office space, requiring them to follow rules and regulations, requiring one group of people to obey another group, requiring introverted people to become extroverted, extroverted people to become steady…”
Chi Xiaoxian’s tone grew increasingly indifferent.
“Anyway, I can’t think of what I want to do for now. If I absolutely have to work… do you know there was a thing in the Old World called a newspaper kiosk?” Chi Xiaoxian looked toward Fang Yue.
“The Old World?”
“Oh, right, that’s game terminology—meaning the pre-disaster era in the early twenty-first century,” Chi Xiaoxian explained. “A newspaper kiosk was a place that sold print newspapers and magazines. Back then, print media still existed, and people liked buying a newspaper to read while eating or slacking off at work.”
“I just want to sell newspapers at a kiosk,” Chi Xiaoxian said, resting his chin on his hands. “Collect money when there are customers, and when there aren’t, read books or play games, lounging back in a chair inside the booth, watching pedestrians and traffic passing by outside.”
Fang Yue visualized it: “Sounds pretty nice. It seems to suit you very well.”
“I thought you’d think I have no ideals or ambition,” Chi Xiaoxian said, somewhat surprised. “You told me, a weakling, to become stronger earlier.”
“That was out of concern for your personal safety, meaning I wanted you to stay alive,” Fang Yue turned a page of his book gently, saying in a calm voice. “It has nothing to do with life ambitions.”
His words were as plain as ever, yet they acted like a pure white feather, gently tickling Chi Xiaoxian’s heart.
—
So as not to disturb Fang Yue, Chi Xiaoxian stopped talking, picking up his phone to continue his game.
Today, Gu-Ji hadn’t gone out; it had started raining in the forest again.
Chi Xiaoxian built a small shelter for it using two broad leaves. Curled beneath the leaves, Gu-Ji unhurriedly licked its rain-dampened fur, waiting for the rain to stop.
Putting on his headphones, Chi Xiaoxian heard the sound of rain in the game—rustling as it fell onto the leaves, making a gentle pitter-patter. A light watery mist pervaded the woods, giving off a sense of fresh moisture even across the screen.
It was far too realistic. If a place like this truly existed, he’d be willing to live inside it for a lifetime.
“You really like it here, don’t you?”
Gu-Ji stood up to stretch its four limbs, let out a long stretch, and flopped back down: “This is the place we’ve stayed in the longest, you know.”
“Do you want to leave?”
“Whatever works,” Gu-Ji yawned, the pitter-patter of rain making it a bit sleepy. “I’m just a little kitty; as long as there’s food, I’m good.”
Chi Xiaoxian went to farm some gold coins, bought a fishing net, and squatted by a mountain stream for half a day, catching two small fish and tossing them into the sidebar backpack as reserve rations for the lazy cat.
When he exited the game, he noticed a line of small white text at the very bottom of the page—”Yueran Studio.”
This was presumably the production team behind the game.
—
Another four days passed. There was virtually no zombie activity in the hallway outside anymore, but Chi Xiaoxian and Fang Yue’s food supply was almost at its absolute end, with only protein powder remaining.
On one particular night, the power in the dormitory building unexpectedly went out.
Looking out from the window, it was as though an opaque dome had been clamped down over the area. The entire campus was pitch-black, pervaded by a heavy, lifeless silence.
To prevent water shutoffs, Fang Yue gathered every container that could hold liquid, filled them to the brim with water, and placed them in the living area.
Two hours later, exactly as he anticipated, the water shut off as well.
Chi Xiaoxian felt a bit panicked; he hadn’t experienced life without water and electricity for a very long time.
Fortunately, Fang Yue fully charged both power banks every day, so their phones could hold out for a while longer, but Chi Xiaoxian didn’t dare play games anymore.
Just as he was about to switch to power-saving mode, he received a message from Yuan Chengmin.
Yuan Chengmin: *Are you planning to escape? I’ve been starving for two days already and plan to take a gamble and break out.*
Chi Xiaoxian: *Do you have any suggestions?*
Yuan Chengmin forwarded a chat log between himself and a friend directly. His friend originally lived in Building B—the dorm building that fell shortly after the zombie outbreak—but at the time he was in the graduate student teaching building and couldn’t make it back, so he hid directly inside the unmanned convenience store downstairs.
Another classmate had hidden in the convenience store alongside him. Fortunately, there was plenty of food, and the two had been laying low there until now.
Yuan Chengmin: *Do you want to come to the convenience store with me? I asked the two of them, and they said there’s a back warehouse in the convenience store that can house people, plus plenty of bottled water in the store.*
Chi Xiaoxian thought for a moment and replied: *I have to stay with Fang Yue; if we go, both of us go together. Ask them if they’re willing to take in one more person.*
Yuan Chengmin went to ask, but there was no reply for a long time, as the other end was likely somewhat hesitant.
After all, one more person meant one more mouth to feed. Resources were limited, and everyone had to prioritize survival.
Chi Xiaoxian suddenly remembered something and messaged Yuan Chengmin again.
*We have enough multivitamins and protein powder here to guarantee nutrition, which can serve as a trade for taking us in.*
This time, Yuan Chengmin replied much faster: *They said it’s okay, it’ll just be a bit cramped with more people.*
Chi Xiaoxian shared the idea with Fang Yue. Fang Yue calculated the distance from the dormitory building to the convenience store—roughly one kilometer.
Pondering, Fang Yue mentally rehearsed the route in his mind: “It’s a bit far, but it’s worth a shot.”
