Chapter 63: Zombies must die

“Okay… okay.”
Feng Yi stuttered.
“What… what can I help you with?”

The sunlight shone diagonally on the oak desk in the ancient book section.
The bangs of the girl in front of him covered half her face, and her hair cast a spiderweb-like shadow on the pages of the book.

“Can you be my model?”
She deliberately shook the art department’s curriculum schedule.
The fake seal she had just made had a floating light in the sun.
“Don’t worry, it won’t take long.”

‘No matter what, I have to gain Feng Yi’s trust first, and then take him to a deserted place.’

Actually, the girl was still a little flustered.
After all, she wasn’t professionally trained like Xu Zhi.
It was still unknown whether she could gain Feng Yi’s trust.

“Okay, it’s… it’s okay.”
Feng Yi’s rusty vocal cords squeezed out a reply.
His Adam’s apple rolled with difficulty on his pale neck.

His words were still stuttering, but they seemed to be much better than before.
At least, his speech speed was gradually approaching that of a normal person.

“That’s a great help.
Thank you.
I’ll treat you to a Coke after I’m done drawing!”

“Just… just draw here?”

“This isn’t very convenient.
Let’s go to the artificial lake behind the campus.
The scenery there is great.”

‘It’s also a good place to bury you.’

The scenery of the artificial lake behind the campus was indeed very good, but that wasn’t the main reason the girl had chosen that place.
The main reason was that there was almost no one there at this time.

And there was a large amount of water, which was very convenient for the girl to use her demonic energy to condense a large amount of ice crystals.

No matter from which angle, that place was very suitable as a place to bury a zombie.

“Oh, okay…”
Feng Yi agreed.

‘Is that it?’

The girl was a little in disbelief.
She hadn’t expected to be able to trick Feng Yi into going to the artificial lake so easily.

‘Should I say that this guy is simple-minded and easy to trick? Or is he confident in himself?’

But this was no longer something the girl should be considering.
What the girl should be considering now was what moves to use to quickly deal with him.

The shadow of the camphor tree wove a golden spiderweb on the asphalt road.
The girl counted her steps, calculating the best ambush distance.
The 10:07 AM sunlight pierced through the gaps in the camphor leaves, refracting a colorful halo on the sweat seeping from the girl’s neck.

It was just the time when the first big class was over.
The radio station was just playing a nostalgic golden oldies program.

Feng Yi brushed past the students who were holding graduate entrance exam materials.
No one noticed that this zombie’s pale knuckles were lightly tapping his waist with the rhythm of the radio.

“I’ve… I’ve heard this before!”
Feng Yi suddenly pointed to the speaker in the treetop.
He lightly hummed along with the melodious music coming from the speaker.

“When I was young, I’d listen to the radio…”

His dry vocal cords actually accurately reproduced the vibrato of the Carpenter siblings, startling the gray doves roosting on the library’s windowsill.

That was “Yesterday Once More” by the Carpenters.
This song entered the country in the 1980s and 1990s and became a collective memory of that generation, accompanied by radio and cassettes.

The girl had once read about the story of this song in an article.

One theory was that the Carpenter siblings’ father was born in China and had a strong sense of homesickness for China, so the two siblings had written this song based on their father’s memories, spreading the Carpenter’s father’s lingering homesickness all over the world.

“I like this song.”
Feng Yi stopped humming.
He caressed his well-defined fingers, as if reminiscing about the past.

“I like it too.
When I was a child, the uncle next door often listened to this song.”
The girl looked at the mottled shadow that the camphor tree cast on Feng Yi’s pale face.

She suddenly thought of Xu Liyan, Xu Zhi’s father, the man who always looked so tall and great.

That man was always wiping the old, Taiwanese-made Sanyo radio he had bought from a flea market, saying that the girl’s last voice was stuck inside.

She suddenly felt that the pale face had a little bit of humanity.

And, he had suddenly stopped stuttering.

“I used to hear this song on the radio a lot.”
He caressed the old wound on the inside of his wrist.
It was a callus left from holding a sword for a long time.
“Back then, Master was always calling me to practice the sword.
I would say, after I finish listening to this song.”

The phantom of an old-fashioned radio from the 1990s floated between them.
Feng Yi’s pupils reflected the young man in the small courtyard, who was in a horse stance—Master’s rattan cane was lightly tapping the bluestone slab with the rhythm of the radio.

“Master’s sword box was very heavy, and practicing the sword was very hard.
I would be in pain all over after practicing every day.”

For some reason, his words had suddenly become more frequent.
Perhaps he didn’t even know why he was telling these things to a girl he had just met.

‘Maybe he just wanted to talk more with someone before that little bit of clarity dissipated?’

“The sword qi would rush from the web of my hand to my heart.”
Feng Yi’s fluent words suddenly stopped, like a cassette player suddenly skipping.

He touched his now-elastic vocal cords in confusion.
The glass curtain wall of the teaching building not far away was refracting the sunlight into a colorful grating.
The girl suddenly realized that this was a temporary neutralization effect of the faint corpse qi under the sound wave resonance—just like the heart that was beating at a frequency of 72 times per minute in her chest.

This neutralization effect would probably last for about eight hours.

The crowd in front of the teaching building suddenly separated the two.
The figures cut the sunlight falling on the road into gold foil.
Two streams of people converged at the staircase, and the young men holding books were pushing and shoving each other.
Someone’s notebook was knocked to the ground and scattered.

Feng Yi stopped and stood there in a daze.
The sunlight shone diagonally from the third-floor patio, plating his eyelashes with a golden edge.

Suddenly, a rustle of cloth rubbing broke the noise.
A girl with a single ponytail and a cherry blossom-colored hair tie stumbled on the stairs—her canvas shoe was stuck in the gap of the handrail, and she fell like a broken kite.

“Ah!”

Her textbooks scattered like snowflakes, and the girl fell on the third step.
Dark red blood beads seeped from her clenched ankle, blooming into star-like red plums on the off-white tiles.

Feng Yi almost flashed to her side.
The hem of his T-shirt tore with a crisp sound, revealing half a lean waistline.

Bai Ling stood where she was, the ice cone that had condensed in her hand ready to be fired.

‘Blood will awaken a zombie’s bloodthirsty instinct.
Will you extend your claws to her?’

“Don’t move.”

He knelt on one knee, his pale knuckles nimbly moving.
The cotton cloth that had been torn into a strip was quickly wrapped around the wound, and the hemostatic knot was tied more neatly than a military doctor’s.

Bai Ling stood outside the wall of people with her arms crossed, and casually dispersed the ice cone that had formed in her hand.

The manicure she had done when she was cosplaying yesterday left a crescent-shaped mark on her arm—when the young man bent down, a faint green blood vessel appeared on the back of his neck, and his Adam’s apple rolled slightly with his swallow.

“Where is the health center?”
He helped the girl up and asked the crowd.

‘Health center? Should be the infirmary, right? There’s no such thing as a health center now.’

“I’ll take you there.”
Bai Ling pushed through the crowd and helped to support the girl.

The smell of disinfectant from the infirmary, wrapped in the heat of late summer, rushed towards them.
The school doctor pushed up his glasses, and the metal frame cast a cold light on the girl’s swollen ankle.

“Superficial abrasion.
Ice for half an hour.”
The moment the tweezers with an alcohol cotton ball pressed down, Feng Yi subconsciously curled his fingers, as if the gasp of pain was on him.

Fortunately, the girl was not seriously injured.
She had just sprained her ankle and had scraped a little skin from falling down the stairs.

The vending machine spat out two cans of cold Coke.
The girl bent her finger and tapped the can.
The water droplets rolled down her nude pink nail polish.

“Here, for you!”
She deliberately turned the pull tab outward and, as expected, saw the other clumsily wipe a handful of foam.

“Thank you.”
This zombie, disguised as a young man, was fumbling to wipe the Coke foam, as clumsy as a young beast that had just learned to use a straw.

“I’m sorry for taking up your time.”

“It’s okay.”
The girl stood on her tiptoes and sat on the flower bed.
Her white high heels dangled under the piping of her cheongsam, creating fine light spots.
“You’re a pretty nice person.”

“Master said that if you see someone in trouble, you should lend a hand.”

“Your master seems to be a good person,” she suddenly said, her high heel lightly tapping the flower bed’s tiles.

Hearing this, the young man suddenly stood up straight.
The faint green blood vessels on the back of his neck throbbed in the sun, like the bronze bells on the eaves of an ancient temple being stirred by the wind.

“She is the most powerful person in the world!”

When he mentioned his master, there was a light in Feng Yi’s eyes.

A commotion came from the direction of the infirmary, and a few girls ran past, holding iodine cotton swabs.
The girl’s peripheral vision caught Feng Yi quickly moving aside to make way, and he even raised his elbow in advance to protect the medical box in their arms.

‘Is this guy really the same zombie who had attacked her with a killing move at the riverside before?’

“Let’s go.”
She spun and jumped off the flower bed, a faint demonic aura hidden in the wind from her skirt.

‘Even so, you must die.’