Chapter 22: Standing Alone
The campus at dead of night was utterly silent. Aside from the rustling of leaves stirred by the wind and the sound of human footsteps, everything seemed swallowed whole by the darkness.
Chi Xiaoxian’s mood was far calmer than imagined.
He raised his head to look up at the sky, surprised to find a few sparse stars tucked into the night sky, resembling tiny diamonds embedded in black velvet.
Perhaps because normal nighttime artificial lighting was usually too bright, Chi Xiaoxian rarely caught sight of stars. Even with just these few, they were the brightest and clearest he had ever seen.
Standing beneath this celestial canopy, standing entirely alone, he felt a brief moment of aimlessness—aside from staying far away from others, he had no idea where he should go.
Maybe he should leave the school and go on a journey—go take a look at the world beyond the Highlands. When tired or hungry, he could just lie down and take a sleep, sleeping till the end of time with no one around to disturb his rest.
No need to make long-term plans. Perhaps along the way, he would have already forgotten his destination.
No, wait—Chi Xiaoxian suddenly thought of Zhang Wensheng.
He wasn’t truly alone…
Perhaps he could search the campus for Zhang Wensheng. After all, before long, he too would turn into one of his kind, a thought that brought Chi Xiaoxian a trace of comfort.
Zhang Wensheng was likely still near the dormitory building. He had taken quite a nasty fall and wouldn’t necessarily be able to walk very far.
Although, Chi Xiaoxian had taken a tumble just now as well.
After stepping out of the second-floor window, he used cloth strips torn from clothing to lower himself down bit by bit. As it turned out, the cloth strips weren’t sturdy enough, snapping when he was still about a meter above the ground. He had landed flat on his rear, and his tailbone was still aching fiercely right now.
By this time, the people inside had probably discovered he was missing.
Fang Yue would definitely be able to guess the reason for his departure. Chi Xiaoxian even felt that Fang Yue seemed to have discovered something in advance.
To thank Fang Yue for taking care of him, he had left a small gift for the other before leaving; he wondered if he had found it by now.
Chi Xiaoxian walked toward the dormitory building. Meeting several wandering zombies along the way, he neither dodged nor ran, instead standing in place to wait for them.
Yet those zombies bypassed him as if ignoring his presence altogether, brushing past his shoulders.
Now Chi Xiaoxian felt even more certain in his heart.
He let out a sigh of relief. Having set down a survival burden, even his footsteps felt somewhat lighter. Unsure if his body carried any strange zombie odor, he felt only the air of freedom swirling around him.
Before long, he arrived near the dormitory building.
Four or five zombies were in the surrounding area. Despite the night light being extremely dim, Chi Xiaoxian could still discern that Zhang Wensheng was not among them.
He circled the dormitory building once, yet still failed to find Zhang Wensheng.
Where could Zhang Wensheng have gone? Was he still on campus?
Suddenly, he heard a flurry of footsteps behind him. With a creak, the heavy iron gate of the dorm opened.
In the dark of night, he saw several students cautiously squeezing out through the gap in the iron gate.
Before Chi Xiaoxian could dodge, he ran head-on into the group who had escaped.
As several pairs of eyes met, someone shrieked in terror, “Zombie!”
In the next second, Chi Xiaoxian turned on his heel and bolted.
The group of students: “???”
—
Having run for only a short distance, Chi Xiaoxian was panting so hard he couldn’t catch his breath. He realized that it wasn’t just his right arm aching now—it felt as though sand and gravel had been stuffed into every joint across his entire body, grating together with intense pain.
Stopping at the cafeteria entrance, he found a pillar to lean against and rest for a bit, suddenly realizing he could go check the spot where Zhang Wensheng had fallen; perhaps there would be some clues.
Turning around, he came to that patch of overgrown land outside the dormitory building. The open sky above the field faced the windows of the dorm building directly—the very spot where Zhang Wensheng had taken his leap back then.
He quickly located that patch of land—because it was soaked in blood, it presented a darker black color than the surrounding soil, the grass flattened into a vague human shape.
Chi Xiaoxian lowered his head to inspect it carefully, discovering a series of shallow and deep footprints in the grass, blood-clotted grime embedded in the grooves of the shoe prints as well.
Tracing the direction of those footprints, he saw they led toward a street heading to the academic buildings—the very street in front of the print shop.
Because his joints felt uncomfortable, Chi Xiaoxian had no choice but to sway and stagger along, stumbling his way to the print shop. He squatted down first to pull up the rolling shutter, finding it completely unmovable from the outside, so he rounded the narrow alley to the back door.
There were several dumpsters beside the back door, and the one closest to the print shop seemed to contain a few items. Chi Xiaoxian picked up a small tree branch to poke around. Picking a piece up to look, he found it was a strip of gauze. Stained with bloodspots, it had already turned a deep, blackish-red.
Chi Xiaoxian knit his brows, tossed it aside, and walked toward the back door.
The back door was left ajar, the door lock showing no signs of being damaged—in all likelihood, Feng Bing had opened the door and come out herself. Furthermore, the alley was very narrow, requiring one to squeeze in sideways. Given a zombie’s wobbly walking posture, forcing its way inside would be extremely difficult.
Stepping into the print shop once more, despite Chi Xiaoxian having prepared himself mentally, he was still taken aback by the sharp contrast of the scene. The shop was in total disarray: books littered the floor everywhere, and the computer had been smashed onto the ground, its display screen covered in spiderweb cracks.
Strangely, however, there were only very sparse bloodstains on the first floor, dotted across the scattered book pages on the ground. They didn’t look like they were caused directly by fighting or biting, but rather resembled blood left behind after an injury.
He discovered very chaotic footprints on the stairs, mixed with bloodstains, printed clearly onto the floor.
Stepping onto the second floor, the second floor was dead silent as well.
The bedroom door on the right hand side was tightly shut. Chi Xiaoxian stepped forward to turn the handle, finding the door locked from the inside.
Chi Xiaoxian had slept in this bedroom and understood this type of door: as long as one pressed the lock button on the inside beforehand and pulled the door shut, it could be locked from the outside.
Zombies wouldn’t lock doors, however, so the person who locked it must have been Feng Bing. He guessed that when the alarm outside on the street rang, drawing the zombies toward the bedroom side facing the street, Feng Bing took the opportunity to lock the door behind them to escape smoothly.
Chi Xiaoxian kicked the door with force, but the door proved sturdier than he imagined. After several kicks failed to break it open, his foot began to ache first.
He had no choice but to pull out the metal rod he had been carrying in his bag, using his uninjured arm to lift the rod and smash it several times before finally destroying the door lock.
The moment he pushed the door open, the night wind that had long filled the room swept through the space, blowing Chi Xiaoxian’s lapels and hair tips.
There were no zombies in the room whatsoever.
The first thing he saw was the completely empty window—only a ring of sharp, broken glass remained on the outer frame, while the central section had vanished entirely.
He walked over to the window to look down. The night was dark, and nothing could be seen clearly below. There were no large pieces of broken glass inside the room, however, indicating the glass had shattered from the inside out—it was likely a zombie had smashed through the window and jumped out itself.
Squatting down again, he studied the bloody footprints in the room. The footprints were extremely chaotic, many of them only half-complete.
Chi Xiaoxian compared and recalled: at the time inside the print shop, only the owner was wearing slippers, while everyone else wore their own proper shoes.
Sure enough, he easily located the footprint belonging to the slipper among the marks—the sole pattern was dotted and very shallow.
Additionally, he discovered the outline of a bare foot—featuring a clear footprint and toe contours.
At first he assumed it was a footprint left behind by Feng Bing not having time to put on shoes, but looking closely, something was off: this footprint seemed somewhat too large, a full size bigger than his own, indicating this person must be taller than him.
Feng Bing was at most just over 150 centimeters tall, and the owner was about as tall as him; neither of their footprints matched.
Could this be the zombie’s footprint?
A barefoot zombie??
No, he still had to figure out where it came from first.
Since it didn’t enter from the rolling shutter, the back door, or the window, only their previous theory remained—a basement, or some other hidden space.
—
Before going downstairs to search, Chi Xiaoxian visited the owner’s bedroom once more.
The owner’s bedroom was stacked with many items: cased tissues, two beds’ worth of blankets and clothes piled high, and a small desk by the wall corner. On the desk stood a desk lamp whose metal rod had rusted through, with a photo frame placed beneath it.
Chi Xiaoxian picked up the photo frame; inside was a photo of two people. The man on the right was indeed the owner, his beard shaved very clean, looking much younger than he did now. The young man in the middle was very tall, grinning widely with an arm slung over the owner’s shoulder while his other hand flashed a peace sign.
The two shared somewhat similar facial features, particularly their hooked noses, and both had naturally curly short hair.
*Could he be the owner’s son?*
Rummaging through the drawers again, he found an account ledger, but flipping through it revealed nothing special. Next, he found a transparent plastic bag containing some documents: a print shop transfer contract, utility payment slips, a photocopy of an ID card…
Wait, the ID photocopy was here, indicating this bag didn’t hold the most important items.
*Where was the original ID card?*
Chi Xiaoxian engaged in another round of rummaging, turning every openable drawer completely upside down, yet finding nothing.
Could it be downstairs?
Unlikely. After all, people came and went downstairs under normal circumstances. Placing valuable items downstairs… an older person like the owner would likely be very cautious, just like his grandmother, who always placed valuable things…
A flash of inspiration struck Chi Xiaoxian. Approaching the bed, he lifted the pillow and bedsheet, pried open the mattress, and finally located a small package wrapped in plastic bags in the gap between the mattress and the bedboard.
Unwrapping three full layers of plastic bags and unfolding a layer of paper, he finally saw the contents inside: the owner’s ID card, a passbook, a household register, and a fairly thick stack of cash.
He had already seen the owner’s ID card. Opening the household register, Chi Xiaoxian saw three people listed in total: the owner Chen Dong, his wife Yang Mei, and his son Chen Qihang.
Feeling he might not find any further clues, Chi Xiaoxian opened the passbook with the mindset of just browsing casually. Very few people used passbooks nowadays; only the elderly preferred maintaining this paper record of their wealth.
The passbook showed a balance of roughly one hundred thousand dollars, indicating that over recent years, the owner earned around fifty thousand dollars annually, with the payer listed as Southern United Highlands First University—which Chi Xiaoxian presumed was income from the print shop.
Additionally, a specific expenditure caught Chi Xiaoxian’s attention: the payer was the owner himself, while the payee was the Highland Psychiatric Treatment and Prevention Hospital, amounting to roughly thirty thousand dollars per year, paid continuously from five years ago up until now.
*Could this money be…*
Earlier, Zhang Yun had mentioned that the owner kept nagging about having a son who never came to visit him. Could his son have been in the psychiatric hospital all along?
Chi Xiaoxian recalled that news headline he had seen when the zombie outbreak first erupted: *”Fire Breaks Out at Highland Psychiatric Treatment and Prevention Hospital.”*
Could it be that the owner’s son was a psychiatric patient who took advantage of the fire to escape?
—
Holding onto the handrail, he made his way downstairs step by sluggish step, using his memory of the bookstore basement’s position to locate the corresponding spot in the print shop. That area was originally covered by a rug with a bookshelf beside it; right now, the bookshelf had toppled over, books scattered across the floor.
Expending a great deal of effort, Chi Xiaoxian dragged the bookshelf aside, lifted the rug, and sure enough, spotted the basement. Pulling open the basement’s hatch, the interior was pitch-black, impossible to see anything clearly.
Rummaging through the print shop with great difficulty, Chi Xiaoxian found a flashlight that still had battery power, switched the beam on, and walked carefully down the stairs.
A damp smell of mold and dust rushed into his nose—a smell so ancient it felt as though it had accumulated in this basement for a long time, taking on a solid form.
Covering his nose, Chi Xiaoxian illuminated that modest space with his flashlight.
In the center stood a crude iron-frame bed, covered with a blue checkered sheet and a small pillow. Beside the bed stood two buckets and a small wooden table; on the table rested a pair of chopsticks, while a bowl lay smashed on the floor with a piece chipped off.
Squatting down, Chi Xiaoxian picked up a few transparent, shiny items from the floor—dried plastic tape, forming a circular shape, with signs of tearing and snapping open in the middle.
Clearly, a person had been bound here originally.
Who could it have been?
Was it Chen Qihang?
Chi Xiaoxian walked over to the bedside, bent down, and searched meticulously with his flashlight. Finally, beside the pillow, he found two thin strands of hair that displayed a natural curl under the flashlight beam.
Chi Xiaoxian was eighty percent certain now.
The logic of this story was nearly complete.
Finding no further clues in the print shop, Chi Xiaoxian took his flashlight and prepared to leave, when his head suddenly grew heavy and groggy, as if an iron block had been forcibly stuffed inside, the dragging weight making his legs go limp. His temples began pounding wildly like mad, bringing him to the verge of fainting.
Chi Xiaoxian realized he needed to rest—ideally take a sleep.
Turning around to return to the first floor, he saw that bamboo lounge chair Fang Yue had slept on.
Although he knew there was a bed upstairs where the owner had slept—a bed clearly far more comfortable than a lounge chair—for some reason, Chi Xiaoxian missed Fang Yue intensely at this moment, wanting to touch the things Fang Yue had interacted with.
It was as if doing so would bring a trace of extra composure to his heart.
He walked silently over to that lounge chair, reaching out to touch it; the bamboo felt cool and smooth to the touch, flowing with a water-like chill.
Climbing up, he nestled down gently, resting half his face against the lounge chair.
The pain and dizziness in his brain blended together, chaotic like the genesis of the universe.
In the surging, murky sea of consciousness, a fragment flashed through Chi Xiaoxian’s mind.
That memory shone brightly, glowing with a faint warmth—the moment after he helped retrieve the medicine and Fang Yue escaped the zombies’ pursuit, where Fang Yue had reached out to ruffle his hair.
The palm had felt so warm, as if the sensation still lingered atop his head right now.
Relying on this remaining trace of heat, Chi Xiaoxian drifted groggily into a pitch-black, boundless dreamland.
