Chapter 9: Entering the Building
Inside the perimeter wall, neither Chi Xiaoxian nor Fang Yue spoke for a long time.
The noise outside quickly faded, vanishing like a cloudburst that had come to a sudden halt.
“Let’s go,” Fang Yue finally spoke up.
Suppressing the sting in his nose, Chi Xiaoxian followed behind Fang Yue, making his way toward the dormitory building.
The dormitory building was dead silent at this moment. No one seemed to have noticed what had just transpired. Compared to Building B, which had already fallen, Building A possessed an almost surreal tranquility, with only the flickering warm lights from the windows serving as a reminder that a group of uninfected students was still here.
The zombies’ activity seemed to have weakened significantly during the night as well.
Walking downstairs, they pushed open the doors and stepped into the familiar main lobby.
To save space during the university’s construction, no dedicated supermarket area had been planned. Instead, retail shops were placed directly in the dorm lobbies for student convenience. If students needed items that weren’t available, they could make a reservation a day in advance through the Rome Mall system, and goods would be delivered to the lobby the next day in a single batch.
Chi Xiaoxian scanned the shelves in the lobby. Unsurprisingly, everything had been cleared out completely.
Just as they were about to head upstairs, a heavy set of footsteps echoed from the stairwell.
“Who is it again?!” the newcomer’s voice boomed with anger. “I told you to stay quietly in your rooms! Can’t you just behave?!”
The stairwell lights clearly illuminated the newcomer’s face—a broad face with wild, thick, ink-black eyebrows, holding a baseball bat in hand. He was flanked by two other students, looking thoroughly imposing.
It was their class president and dorm head, Li Tong—the very person who had locked them outside without a second thought.
Chi Xiaoxian had known about this guy ever since he first entered the university; he had delivered a speech on behalf of the freshers at the orientation ceremony. Word had it that his father was a high-ranking official in the Department of Education, accompanied by the principal himself whenever he visited the school for inspections.
Fang Yue paid him no mind, brushing past his shoulder to head upstairs.
“Hold it right there! What are your names?!”
Li Tong’s voice was loud and clear, creating a strong resonance in the stairwell.
Perhaps because Fang Yue was so remarkably calm, Chi Xiaoxian settled down as well, giving his name casually as if nothing were amiss.
“No going downstairs again!” Li Tong’s baseball bat slammed hard against the metal railing, causing it to hum loudly. “If I catch either of you again, I’m throwing you outside to feed the zombies!”
Chi Xiaoxian and Fang Yue continued walking upstairs. The moment they rounded a corner, the metal rod in Chi Xiaoxian’s hand caught Li Tong’s eye.
“Halt!” Li Tong scowled.
Chi Xiaoxian’s heart skipped a beat as he stopped in his tracks.
Just then, someone came running down the stairs, coming face-to-face with Chi Xiaoxian and Fang Yue. From a floor above, he shouted urgently down to Li Tong below, “Bro! These two came in from the outside! I saw flashlight beams over by the perimeter wall!”
“What?!”
Li Tong took swift steps forward and grabbed the arm of Chi Xiaoxian, who was closest to him. Several others came down from upstairs, joining up with Li Tong’s patrol group to surround Chi Xiaoxian and Fang Yue in a pincer movement.
“How did you get in?” Li Tong demanded, pinning Chi Xiaoxian firmly.
Chi Xiaoxian cast a pleading look toward Fang Yue.
“How did we get in?” Fang Yue said indifferently. “How else could we get in?”
Li Tong flew into a rage: “I’m the one asking you, not the other way around!”
“You locked the main gates. How else could we possibly get in?”
The calmer Fang Yue’s voice sounded, the more it struck Li Tong’s ears as a deliberate provocation.
The student behind Li Tong chimed in, “They definitely climbed the wall! Why else were they sneaking around the back courtyard wall?”
“Ah, that…” Chi Xiaoxian’s brain spun fast. “We were digging up wild greens to eat.”
Such a unique answer made Fang Yue cast an involuntary glance at Chi Xiaoxian.
“Digging up wild greens in the middle of the night?! Are you out of your mind?!” The other party clearly wasn’t buying Chi Xiaoxian’s quibble.
“Can’t someone crave a fresh taste in the middle of the night?” Chi Xiaoxian said earnestly. “We’ve been eating instant noodles for two whole days.”
“There are wild greens under our dorm building? Stop pulling my leg.”
“That’s why we didn’t find any,” Chi Xiaoxian shrugged. “So we can only keep eating the dried vegetables from the instant noodle packets.”
“Where did you get the thing in your hand?”
“Picked it up off the ground.”
“What did you pick it up for?”
Chi Xiaoxian looked at the metal rod, pondered for a moment, and then said sluggishly, “…To knock out wild greens if they try to run away?”
“Are you fucking treating me like an idiot?!”
Li Tong lost his patience entirely. With a wave of his hand, the rest of the group swarmed forward, trapping the two completely.
“What do you want?” Fang Yue’s gaze cooled down.
“Who knows if you two are already infected?” Li Tong narrowed his eyes, weighing the baseball bat in his hand. “If an infection breaks out in this building, I won’t be able to shoulder that responsibility.”
“Yeah!” a student chimed in. “We worked so hard to keep this building safe. Building B next door almost entirely turned into zombies, all because infected people were let into the dorms.”
“That’s right! We can’t take risks for the two of you!”
With everyone shouting at once, Chi Xiaoxian and Fang Yue were pushed straight to the eye of the storm.
“No way!”
A booming voice rang out.
A male student pushed through the crowd, barging in out of breath as he shouted, “Going outside is a dead end! You’re driving them out to commit murder!”
Seeing the newcomer, Chi Xiaoxian shouted in delight, “Old Zhang!”
Zhang Wensheng said indignantly, “They carry a risk of infection, but we don’t? It hasn’t even been three days since the attack, and plenty of people fled back here from the academic buildings. How can you be so sure there aren’t infected people among us right now?”
“The zombie virus doesn’t have an incubation period!” Li Tong barked harshly. “If someone was infected, it would have broken out long ago!”
“Are you really that certain?” Fang Yue asked.
“It breaks out the moment someone is bitten. I haven’t seen an exception yet,” Li Tong said with absolute conviction.
“Since you’re so certain,” Fang Yue said, composed and poised, “we can stay downstairs in the lobby for two hours. If we show no reaction after two hours, let us back in.”
“Judging by what he said, half an hour is more than enough,” Zhang Wensheng sneered. “Why would we need two hours?”
Li Tong let out a snort, crossing his arms as he stared straight at Fang Yue and Chi Xiaoxian: “I will monitor you from upstairs.”
Fang Yue stared back at him: “Then it’s a deal. Two hours.”
Li Tong stood in place, watching Fang Yue and Chi Xiaoxian walk away. However, the moment Fang Yue rounded the corner of the stairwell, he inexplicably came to a halt, turned back, and locked his gaze on Li Tong once again.
His gaze was like a sword. Li Tong felt an inexplicable chill run down his spine, yet he still said stiffly, “What? Regretting it already?”
“I changed my mind,” Fang Yue dropped the line calmly.
“What?!”
Unslings his backpack, Fang Yue lifted his hammer, uttering every word distinctly: “You are infected.”
The stairwell fell dead silent instantly, everyone’s eyes locking onto Li Tong.
“Nonsense! How could I possibly be infected?” Li Tong stretched his arms and kicked his legs, finding it absurd. “I’m perfectly fine.”
Yet as he turned around to prove himself to the crowd, the students behind him underwent a drastic change in expression, stumbling back several steps.
“What are you guys doing?” Li Tong felt bewildered, touching his own face. “Is there something on my face?”
He grabbed the nearest male student by the collar: “Speak! What are you backing away for?!”
The male student said in a terrified, tearful voice, “Y-Your eyes!”
Li Tong wanted to ask further, but in the blink of an eye, his vision began to blur, as if a thick gray fog had descended upon him.
His hand was still clutching the student’s collar, yet all sensation in his fingertips vanished, as though his body no longer belonged to him.
He caught a sickly sweet odor in the air.
It was the smell of blood. He was no stranger to it, but at this moment, it possessed an extraordinary magnetic pull—as if a matching magnet inside his body were drawing toward it.
A flash of silver arced through the air as Fang Yue swung his hammer.
Li Tong’s head slammed against the wall. His grip loosened on the student’s collar, his body wobbled, and he collapsed to the floor.
His blood trickled down the wall in a squiggly, jagged line.
Just as everyone breathed a sigh of relief, the male student stumbled backward several steps, clutching his neck with an expression of sheer horror.
“I-I…”
Zhang Wensheng stepped forward to forcibly pry his hands apart, revealing a fresh fingernail scratch across his neck.
After another bout of chaos, two people lay bound on the ground: one was Li Tong, and the other was the student infected by him.
Working together, Fang Yue and Zhang Wensheng subdued them without much effort, as both were in the early stages of infection with relatively weak attack power.
Chi Xiaoxian pulled out the roll of tape from his bag, and Fang Yue bound their hands and feet securely.
To prevent biting, he gathered some scrap paper into a ball and stuffed it into Li Tong’s mouth.
Just as he was about to plug the second student’s mouth, the guy tilted his head to dodge, a whimper escaping his throat.
“Please…”
“Save… me.”
A line of tears slid down his blood-and-dirt-smeared face.
Fang Yue froze for a moment.
“Liu Xi!”
A girl with disheveled hair wearing a nightgown came rushing down the stairs: “What are you doing? Why are you tying him up?!!”
She tried to rush forward, but was stopped by the students beside her, who barked, “Zhao Yiru, he’s infected!”
“Nonsense! How could he possibly be infected!”
“It’s true! Take a good look at him!”
The girl shoved past the student blocking her and threw herself beside Liu Xi.
The moment she caught sight of Liu Xi’s face, she couldn’t help but gasp, collapsing onto the floor.
She and Liu Xi were both seniors set to graduate this year. She had passed the Security Department’s assessment and was about to become a civil servant; Liu Xi had received an offer from one of the top pharmaceutical companies in the Southern United Highlands. They had originally planned to get married right after graduation.
—
“How should we handle them?”
With Li Tong infected, the building had suddenly lost its leader. Someone asked in a quiet voice.
“What else can we do? Naturally, we throw them—” The speaker paused, suddenly mindful that Li Tong was their class president moments ago, before correcting himself, “Send them outside the dorm building.”
“Yeah, keeping them in the building is a ticking time bomb. If they manage to break free, we’ll be in huge trouble.”
“No way!” The girl immediately objected. “My boyfriend isn’t fully infected yet! He clearly still has his consciousness!”
Liu Xi turned his head toward the girl’s direction, broken syllables spilling from his throat, muffled and slurred: “Xiao…”
His lips moved with great effort, acting almost on pure instinct to utter the sound that was fading fast from his mind.
Zhao Yiru crawled over to Liu Xi’s side and hugged him tightly: “I can’t abandon him! Healthcare is so advanced nowadays—there must be a way to save him!”
“Zhao Yiru, are you trying to get everyone killed?!” someone scolded her. “It’s not just the two of you living in this building.”
“But he still has his consciousness!” Zhao Yiru bit her lip, suppressing her tears as she said firmly, “I don’t care! If you throw him outside, it’s murder! It’s a crime! Once we get out of here one day, I will report you all immediately! I’ve already been accepted into the Security Department!”
Her words intimidated a small portion of the crowd—after all, the Security Department was a key core institution of the United Highlands.
“So what if you’re entering the Security Department?” Someone stepped forward, stating coldly, “Is our safety not safety? The law protects our safety too. Besides, this is completely different from murderous methods; we’re just putting them outside. They can still hide somewhere else!”
No sooner had his words landed than numerous people chimed in with agreement.
Outnumbered and outmatched, Zhao Yiru gradually lost ground, yet she stubbornly guarded Liu Xi’s side all the same.
“Why don’t you just go outside with him?” someone suddenly suggested. “If you don’t want to leave him, then go with him! Stop bringing trouble to everyone here! What kind of skill is sticking around here like a leech?”
“Hey, that’s actually a great idea.”
Echoes of agreement rose from all around.
“Fine,” Zhao Yiru gritted her teeth. “I’ll leave. Every single one of you will get what’s coming to you sooner or later! Just look at Li Tong!”
“The condition is that we can’t untie him!” someone added.
Zhao Yiru didn’t reply. Hoisting Liu Xi up, she dragged and carried him with great difficulty, escorting him toward the stairwell. Liu Xi kept his eyes half-open, his lips still moving as if trying to say something. Zhao Yiru turned her head, reaching out to wipe the dust and bloodstains from his face: “I’m right here. We’re going out together.”
As if he understood, Liu Xi closed his eyes quietly, allowing her to move him.
“Wait,” Chi Xiaoxian suddenly spoke up. “There’s actually another way.”
