Chapter 109
Chapter 109
The truck sped down the street, heading toward the desolate outskirts of the city.
The six of them remained on top of the vehicle, continually taking out the Madmen still pursuing it. As the surroundings grew more barren, the Madmen fell one after another.
The Scarred Woman leaned halfway over the edge of the roof and glanced down. “Get inside.”
Qingshui did not hesitate. She twisted around, caught the edge of the cargo bed, and slid into the truck’s open rear compartment. The moment her feet touched the floor, she saw two figures huddled in a corner.
Wen Lianfeng.
Chu Jingchu.
They were both soaked to the skin and in just as sorry a state as she was. Water still streaked Wen Lianfeng’s face, while Chu Jingchu’s disheveled hair clung to her cheeks.
The instant their eyes met, unconcealable surprise flashed across all three faces.
“You…” Wen Lianfeng opened her mouth, but her voice was so hoarse it was barely audible.
Qingshui said nothing. She merely nodded, then leaned against the inner wall of the cargo bed and gasped for breath.
Chu Jingchu’s gaze lingered on her for a few seconds before shifting away.
Neither side had expected the other to still be alive after such a horrific ordeal.
Once the initial shock faded, a deathly silence settled over the truck. No one spoke. There was only the sound of strained breathing and the vehicle rattling over the road.
Without making it obvious, Qingshui began sizing up the unfamiliar survivors.
The Scarred Woman clearly had the strongest presence of the group. There was an intimidating force behind her every movement, and the others all seemed to revolve around her.
The Short-haired Girl and the Silent Man carrying two bags exchanged noticeably more looks than the others. They were probably well acquainted.
That left one woman and one man, both around twenty-seven or twenty-eight. They had relatively mild demeanors and were currently huddled in a corner of the cargo bed, their faces expressionless.
Qingshui lowered her eyes.
She was still alive.
Wen Lianfeng and Chu Jingchu were still alive too.
But Quan Lin was dead. Guan Yuzhen was dead. Wu Wujie’s fate was unknown. And Song Yunqing… The last time Qingshui had seen her, Song Yunqing had been struggling in the flood. She had no idea whether the woman had managed to climb out.
After an unknown amount of time, the truck stopped.
It had pulled up in front of an abandoned farmhouse.
The two-story brick house had mottled, peeling walls. Vast stretches of barren farmland surrounded it, with yellowed weeds growing waist-high. Behind the farmhouse, the vague outline of a row of low sheds could be seen, long since collapsed until only their frames remained.
Xu Wenlie jumped down from the truck, landing almost soundlessly. She gave a hand signal, and the Short-haired Girl and Silent Man immediately leaped down and approached the farmhouse on high alert.
The other woman and man climbed down as well. Instead of entering the house, they hurried toward the woods beside the farmhouse. Under everyone’s watchful eyes, they nimbly climbed the trees and vanished among the branches and leaves.
Qingshui remained leaning against the side of the cargo bed. Wen Lianfeng and Chu Jingchu did not move either. They were the ones who had been rescued, so they needed to follow this group’s rules.
Only after everyone else had moved away did Wen Lianfeng lower her voice and ask Qingshui the question she could no longer hold back.
“Did you… run into any of the others?”
Qingshui shook her head, her voice so calm it bordered on numbness.
“Quan Lin is dead.”
The air seemed to freeze for an instant.
Wen Lianfeng pressed her lips together. Chu Jingchu’s brow furrowed at once, and she glanced at Wen Lianfeng. The two exchanged a complicated look.
After several seconds of silence, Chu Jingchu asked the question they both wanted answered.
“What about… that Madman?”
The one leading them. The one with scarlet eyes. The one that had followed them the whole way.
Qingshui lowered her gaze.
“I don’t know.”
She did not know whether it was dead, whether the flood had swept it away, or where it might be now. She did not know whether it was already following them again from somewhere unseen.
Wen Lianfeng asked no more questions.
About five minutes later, the Scarred Woman returned. “Out of the truck. Everyone inside.”
Only then did Qingshui and the others climb down.
The instant Qingshui’s feet touched solid ground, her knees nearly buckled. The prolonged running, falling, and hanging on for dear life had exhausted every last bit of her strength.
Just as they were about to enter the house, something suddenly shifted on the truck’s roof.
The sound was faint, but every muscle in Qingshui, Wen Lianfeng, and Chu Jingchu instantly tensed.
The next moment, a handsome, clean-cut face appeared over the edge of the roof.
He had a buzz cut, clear-cut features, a high-bridged nose, and skin that looked exceptionally fair beneath the dim gray sky.
He looked more like a model who had stepped out of a fashion magazine than a desperate fugitive driving a truck through the apocalypse.
Expressionless, he looked down at the people below, no discernible emotion in his eyes.
The Scarred Woman tipped her head back to look at him. A faint smile appeared on her face, and her voice was gentler than when she spoke to anyone else. “Let’s go inside.”
The buzz-cut man shook his head.
“Sister Lie, you go inside. I’ll stand guard.”
She studied him for a few seconds but did not press the issue. “All right,” she said. “I’ll come keep you company in a bit.”
With that, she turned and entered the house.
Qingshui followed without hesitation.
Wen Lianfeng, however, paused.
She looked back at the young man on the roof of the car, a trace of undisguised curiosity in her eyes.
She felt as though… she had seen that face somewhere before.
In the end, Wen Lianfeng withdrew her gaze and went inside as well.
Inside the house, the Short-haired Girl and the Silent Man had each claimed a corner. They stood by the windows, vigilantly scanning the farmland outside.
When Qingshui and the others entered, both of them looked up, their gazes sweeping over the newcomers in unison.
Wen Lianfeng was the first to break the silence. She offered her name without prompting.
“Wen Lianfeng.”
Chu Jingchu followed. “Chu Jingchu.”
“Qingshui.”
The moment Qingshui finished speaking, Xu Wenlie abruptly asked, “You know each other?”
“Yes.” Qingshui did not try to hide it.
The Scarred Woman nodded, seemingly satisfied with the answer. She took a couple of steps farther into the room and leaned against the edge of a wooden table that was still mostly intact before introducing herself.
“Xu Wenlie.”
The Silent Man spoke next, his voice deep. “Qi Zhi.”
The Short-haired Girl said, “Ye Que.”
“The one on the car roof is Li Chong,” Xu Wenlie added. “The lookouts in the tree are Cheng Youyi and Guan Mu. She’s the woman, and he’s the man.”
That concluded the introductions.
Silence settled over the room once more.
It was not awkwardness, but the unspoken distance survivors kept between one another. Everyone was exhausted. They had neither the energy nor the need for small talk.
Qingshui had already begun stripping off her clothes with practiced ease.
Her soaked coat, soaked sweater, and soaked pants came off one by one. She wrung each garment out and draped it over a lopsided chair to dry.
She made no attempt to avoid anyone’s eyes.
Wen Lianfeng and Chu Jingchu soon removed their wet clothes as well.
Qi Zhi silently turned his head away and put his back to them, continuing to keep watch.
Ye Que lowered her head, took a neatly folded towel from her bag, and held it out.
Qingshui accepted it.
“Thank you.”
The towel was dry and still quite clean, though that could not hide how worn it had become.
Ye Que opened her mouth, hesitated, and finally managed to say, “You don’t have to give it back.”
Qingshui glanced at her.
Beside them, Xu Wenlie explained flatly, “She’s a clean freak.”
A clean freak.
In a world littered with corpses, where the stench of blood and decay forever hung in the air, someone still clung to such standards of cleanliness.
The absurdity of it left Qingshui momentarily dazed. She looked down at the towel in her hands, then at Ye Que’s face, which was straining to remain expressionless.
She nodded.
“All right.”
She kept the towel, accepting the other woman’s kindness.
After another long, oppressive silence, Xu Wenlie suddenly stood.
“Qi Zhi, Ye Que. I’m leaving this place to you,” she said. “I’m going outside to keep Li Chong company.”
Qi Zhi grunted in acknowledgment without turning around. Ye Que did not react either.
Xu Wenlie turned and left without hesitation. Her figure paused in the doorway for an instant before vanishing into the ashen light outside.
Only Qingshui, Wen Lianfeng, Chu Jingchu, Qi Zhi, and Ye Que remained in the house.
Qingshui found a corner by the wall and sat down. She wrapped her arms around her knees and stared blankly at the floor.
Her gaze drifted to the opposite wall. A faded New Year print hung there, depicting a child clutching a carp with a stiff smile on his face.
As she stared at the print, a crushing weariness suddenly washed over her.
It was not only physical exhaustion. Her mind was exhausted too.
In her previous life and this one, she had always been running, always fleeing, always killing, and somehow always surviving.
Surviving, fleeing, watching people die, being tormented by nightmares… It was all like a mire she could never wake up from.
Something writhed deep within her mind. Those malicious whispers were beginning to surface again.
Qingshui slowly closed her eyes and let the whispers linger in her ears.
She no longer had the strength to fight them.
Outside the window, the sky gradually darkened. Another night was about to fall.
The silence inside the house continued. Qi Zhi and Ye Que remained motionless by the windows.
Wen Lianfeng and Chu Jingchu leaned against the wall on the other side, equally silent and equally exhausted.