Chapter 115
Chapter 115
“Something even more terrifying than the Madmen.”
Chu Jingchu’s breathing instantly grew heavy.
She could no longer even hear her own heartbeat. Those words were the only thing echoing over and over in her mind: something even more terrifying than the Madmen.
Something more terrifying than those monsters wearing human skin.
What was it?
Just what could it be?
Qingshui suddenly spoke, her voice so soft that she seemed to be talking to herself.
“Something… even more terrifying than the Madmen?”
Her brows drew together slightly.
At that moment, she felt as though she had caught hold of a loose thread.
The countless days and nights she had inexplicably forgotten, the more than twenty years she had spent being hunted by zombies in her previous life. The answer behind her rebirth, which had always eluded her.
Could it… could it be connected to this?
She felt as though she were standing before a door. A sliver of light shone through the crack. All she had to do was reach out and push it open, and she would see what lay beyond, but she couldn’t grasp it.
The thread was too slippery. The instant her fingers touched it, it slipped away again.
Chu Jingchu suddenly broke down, clutching at her hair as her voice rose into a shrill pitch. “Something more terrifying than the Madmen… something that could tie up the entire government… What could it be? Huh? What could it possibly be?”
Wen Lianfeng looked at her with a trace of pity in her eyes.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s only a guess.”
Chu Jingchu took several ragged breaths and forced herself to calm down.
After all, she had been following Wen Lianfeng from the very beginning. Once the panic passed, her mind started working again.
“Since you said it wasn’t a bioweapon,” she said slowly, “that means these Madmen… mutated instantaneously?”
Wen Lianfeng nodded.
“Wow…” Chu Jingchu let out an ambiguous exclamation. Whenever her anger reached its limit, she couldn’t help babbling.
“I can’t believe this. It was even more sudden than CF’s Biohazard mode. At least that gives you a countdown and builds up the atmosphere first. But this? One second, and the whole world went mad at once.”
She suddenly stopped.
“Wait.”
She looked at Wen Lianfeng, her gaze sharpening.
“Could it… have something to do with the origin of the Madmen? Even if most of humanity turned into Madmen, three months should’ve been enough for every country to join forces and wipe them out, right?”
The faster she spoke, the more worked up she became.
“But what if they can’t be wiped out? What if the Madmen just keep respawning endlessly? No matter how many are killed, there are always more of them. Their numbers never stop growing.”
“It’s not that the government doesn’t want to do anything. It can’t. Because it has to commit everything it has to containing those Spawn Points. That’s why it has no resources left to spare for ordinary people like us.”
Only after Chu Jingchu finished did she notice that Wen Lianfeng and Qingshui both looked somewhat… bewildered.
Qingshui stared at her, her eyes widening slightly.
Wen Lianfeng wore the same expression.
They simply stared at her as though she had suddenly started speaking a foreign language.
Chu Jingchu fell silent.
She took a deep breath.
“May I ask,” she said, enunciating every word, “have neither of you… ever played a video game?”
They shook their heads in unison.
The corner of Chu Jingchu’s mouth twitched.
“Fine. I’ll explain.”
She gestured with her hands, trying to make her explanation as simple and straightforward as possible.
“In some games, monsters don’t exist on the map all the time. They keep being ‘born’ at fixed locations, and those locations are called Spawn Points. Unless you destroy the point itself, monsters will keep pouring out forever. You’ll never be able to kill them all.”
“If something like that exists in the real world too…”
Wen Lianfeng frowned. “Then there should be more than one of these so-called Spawn Points, right?”
Chu Jingchu paused, then nodded. “Of course. One wouldn’t be enough. There’d have to be lots of them.”
“Then why,” Wen Lianfeng asked, “do some people suddenly mutate? The kind who are perfectly normal one second, then turn into Madmen the next?”
The question stumped Chu Jingchu.
She rubbed her chin, her brows knotting together.
“Hmm… a Progenitor?”
“Some games have something called a ‘Progenitor.’ The Progenitor can infect humans, and anyone it infects turns into a monster too. And…” She spoke more and more slowly, realizing that her analogy wasn’t quite perfect. “And when the Progenitor infects someone, it doesn’t necessarily need physical contact. A single glance might be enough…”
“So you’re saying,” Wen Lianfeng continued for her, “that the people who suddenly mutate were infected by a Progenitor, while the Spawn Points exist to continuously produce new Madmen?”
“Exactly!” Chu Jingchu’s eyes lit up. “They’re destroying humanity from within and without at the same time!”
Her excitement lasted all of two seconds before Wen Lianfeng extinguished it with a single sentence.
“This isn’t a game.”
Chu Jingchu choked.
She opened her mouth to argue, but couldn’t think of anything to say. In the end, she could only offer a feeble defense.
“I’m only… I’m only guessing, Sister Wen!”
Wen Lianfeng didn’t refute her, nor did she discourage her.
She merely leaned against the wall, her gaze fixed on some point in empty space, lost in thought.
Qingshui had not taken part in their discussion. She had only listened in silence.
She watched Chu Jingchu’s eyes suddenly brighten at the mention of video games, watched her expression come alive with excitement.
Video games.
She did know what they were.
Over the past two years, some of her classmates had played them on their phones during class. While the teacher lectured at the front, they would secretly tap away at those tiny screens beneath their desks, occasionally letting out stifled giggles.
She had never played one.
She had never been interested.
Back then, all she had wanted was to stay alive. To study as hard as she could and become a normal person. To make it through each day.
But now, as Qingshui watched Chu Jingchu’s face come alive while she talked about the game, watched her animated expression, a dull heaviness suddenly welled up inside her.
Aside from Li Wei’an, Chen Yuhui, and An Xiaolin, everyone she had known before and everyone she knew now had been fighting to survive the apocalypse.
They all carried wounds. They all had something in their eyes, something hardship had ground into them. They ran, hid, fought, and died, never once given the chance to stop and become the people they had been before the apocalypse.
Qingshui had never seen them like that.
She had never seen how full of life they had been before the end of the world.
If disaster had never struck, where would Aunt Chen be? What would she be doing?
Would she still be a busy researcher, striving toward her ideals every day?
Would Captain still be leading her assault team, fighting on the front lines every day?
Would Brother Nan and Sister Fang still be ordinary corporate workers, squeezing onto the subway, clocking in, working overtime, occasionally meeting friends for dinner and complaining about work and life?
Maybe… they all would have been happy.
Qingshui lowered her eyes.
She didn’t know why she was thinking about any of this.
These thoughts… were meaningless.
They couldn’t keep her alive. They couldn’t help her kill Madmen. They couldn’t bring back the dead.
Yet the thoughts kept rising beyond her control, one after another, like bubbles drifting up from the bottom of a lake.
Chu Jingchu was still discussing something quietly with Wen Lianfeng. Snatches of their conversation floated into Qingshui’s ears, only to fade away again.
Qingshui didn’t take in a word. She simply watched Chu Jingchu and the vivid expressions that crossed her face as she spoke.
All at once, someone came to mind.
Someone she had dreamed about countless times, yet whose face she could never see clearly.
What had she been like?
What did she look like when she smiled? When she was angry? What did she like? What did she hate? Did she have any strange hobbies? Had anything ever excited her so much that she couldn’t sleep all night?
Qingshui didn’t know.
Her throat suddenly tightened.
She didn’t move or make a sound. She only kept her head bowed, staring at her swollen ankle and the towel that had completely thawed.
Light streamed in through the window, casting a long shadow across the floor.
She had no idea how much time had passed before Wen Lianfeng’s voice pulled her back to reality.
“…Qingshui?”
She looked up.
Wen Lianfeng studied her with a trace of curiosity in her eyes. “What are you thinking about?”
Qingshui shook her head.
“Nothing.”
After a pause, she added, “Go on.”
Wen Lianfeng watched her for a few seconds but didn’t press the matter.
She merely nodded, then returned to the question they had started with.
“So, no matter what that thing is,” she said, her voice calm and resolute once more, “my goal won’t change. I’m going north, to the Far North. I’ll survive until the very end, until the day I learn the truth.”
Chu Jingchu looked at her. “When do we leave?”
“In two months,” Wen Lianfeng said. “We’ll rest, build up our strength, and wait for the government’s next airdrop.”
She rose and walked to the window. Peering through the narrow gap at the gray-white sky outside, she extended the invitation to Qingshui once more.
“What about you, Qingshui?”
The room fell silent for several seconds.
Qingshui stared at her back.
Her figure was like a mountain, yet also like a blade drawn from its sheath.
Forty years old. Captain of a criminal investigation team. She had seen her teammates transform, escaped death, and endured despair countless times. Yet she was still standing there, looking north and saying, “I’m going.”
And Qingshui?
She couldn’t remember how old she was. She couldn’t remember her past. An incessant voice lived inside her head, and she had lost so, so many people.
Where was she supposed to go?
Where could she go?
“I’ll go too,” she said.
Wen Lianfeng’s insight amazed her.
This woman had managed to infer the most terrifying truth through deduction alone.
She was someone Qingshui could trust to guard her back.
Someone Qingshui wouldn’t have to fear would abandon her in her sleep.
Someone who… would fight with everything she had to survive and never leave Qingshui alone again.
She reminded Qingshui of Captain.
The woman whose face had faded from her memory, but whose eyes she would never forget. The woman who had hidden her away at the very last moment.
Qingshui lowered her eyes, her throat tightening slightly.
In that case, she would go.
It didn’t matter where Wen Lianfeng was headed, whether it was the Far North or the ends of the earth. As long as Qingshui could travel with them. As long as she didn’t have to be alone anymore.
“But,” she said, raising her head as her voice returned to its usual calm, “I have one condition.”
Wen Lianfeng didn’t ask why. She gave a single, curt reply.
“Say it.”
“Stay alive.” Qingshui looked directly at her, enunciating every word. “Do everything you can to stay alive.”
Everything she could.
She had to use every last ounce of strength, try every method she could think of, and stay alive.
Wen Lianfeng looked at her, then suddenly understood. The corners of her lips lifted into the faintest of smiles, but it was genuine.
“That goes without saying.”
Her voice was calm, but filled with certainty.
“Even if you hadn’t said it, I’d still do everything in my power to stay alive.” She paused. “I, Wen Lianfeng, made it from the Cangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau to this day without dying at anyone’s hands. The Madmen won’t change that.”
Beside them, Chu Jingchu smacked her lips and cut in.
“As long as we don’t run into another Madman that just won’t stop following us.”
Qingshui and Wen Lianfeng fell silent.