Chapter 163
Chapter 163
Qingshui tightened the rope. Once the trap was finished, she jumped down from the tree and dusted off her hands.
An Xiaolin crouched beside a patch of withered yellow grass, clutching her gun as her gaze swept over their surroundings.
Qingshui walked over and crouched shoulder to shoulder with her.
“Xiaolin.”
“I’m going to the shelter.”
“I’m going to make a deal with the military,” Qingshui continued without waiting for her to respond. “I know where the Madmen come from. They crawl out of the Rift.”
“Remember the earthquakes we went through? The ground was actually splitting open, and the Madmen were crawling out from below.”
“And the whole truth lies in the White Hole, at the northernmost edge.”
“White… Hole?” An Xiaolin narrowed her eye. “What’s that?”
Qingshui’s throat tightened, leaving her momentarily speechless.
How was she supposed to explain it? Tell Xiaolin she wasn’t from this world? That Dorm Leader had told her? That Dorm Leader had been her companion in her previous life?
After a moment of silence, she continued.
“I’m going north. To find the Rift and uncover the truth. Maybe I can put an end to all of this.”
An Xiaolin finally turned to look at her. There was no emotion at all in her single black eye.
“Are you scared?” she asked.
Qingshui froze. She hadn’t expected Xiaolin to ask that.
“No,” she said.
“Neither am I.” An Xiaolin looked away and resumed watching the distance. “Wherever you go, I go.”
As Qingshui looked at her, courage welled up inside her. She should tell her the truth. She thought of Li Wei’an, of how she had died somewhere Qingshui knew nothing about, and of all the things Qingshui had never gotten the chance to say.
She couldn’t let that happen again.
“Xiaolin, there’s something I’ve never told you.”
“I’m not from this world.”
Not… from this world?
The revelation crashed through An Xiaolin’s mind. She had heard every word clearly, yet strung together, they seemed utterly incomprehensible.
Not from this world? What did that even mean?
Was she going to leave?
An Xiaolin sat frozen for several seconds before finally coming back to herself. She felt like a rope twisted to its breaking point.
Stay calm. Stay calm. The corner of An Xiaolin’s mouth began to twitch, and her grip tightened until she nearly snapped the gun’s handle.
“I came from another world. That world had monsters too, but not Madmen like these. They were zombies. They bit people and spread the infection, but they couldn’t talk or laugh.” Qingshui’s voice was so calm it was almost numb. “I lived in that world for twenty years. At some point, I started killing zombies, and I never stopped. Every day, I killed. Every day, I ran. The people around me died one after another. I thought I’d die too. Eventually, I did.”
“But I didn’t disappear. I came here. When I woke up in the hospital, Dorm Leader was the one who brought me back.”
An Xiaolin’s breathing was barely audible.
No wonder… Qingshui was so strange. No wonder… she was so strong.
She remained perfectly still as she listened.
“I thought I’d grown, but when it comes to losing people, I haven’t made any progress at all.”
“Later, because of…” She skipped over what had happened at the Psychiatric Hospital. “Because of some things, I remembered Dorm Leader. It turned out… she was the family I’d grown up with in my previous life. We went to the White Hole together. She disappeared, and I went insane.”
An Xiaolin knew she had occupied only two years of Qingshui’s life. Yet something inside her twisted painfully.
She couldn’t put it into words. All she knew was that it made her feel sick.
Qingshui continued, “Dorm Leader said this world is a game, and the Rift is a bug.”
She paused. “If you come with me to the White Hole, we might disappear. Or we might learn the whole truth.”
But deep down, Qingshui had a cold intuition that those they had lost would never return.
Even if this world really was a game, what could they possibly do to fight it?
An Xiaolin tried to take a deep breath, but her body refused to obey. It was as if only suffocation could bring her pleasure.
Every sentence Qingshui spoke rang deafeningly in her ears. Every word sounded like Qingshui was drawing a line between them.
An Xiaolin wanted to say something. She wanted to say, “I’m all you have now.” She wanted to say, “I’m glad that person died.”
But she didn’t.
She merely bit down on the tip of her tongue until it bled, then swallowed those despicable thoughts along with the blood.
“Don’t bite.”
Qingshui reached over and pried her mouth open. “Whatever you’re thinking, remember this: we’re partners.”
Partners. That was right–they were partners. An Xiaolin was going with Qingshui to the White Hole to search for the truth.
“Let’s go back,” Qingshui said.
An Xiaolin stooped and followed Qingshui back to the rocky opening they had found.
Qingshui had barely pushed aside the weeds and jumped down when she found herself staring into two pairs of eyes, each wearing a different expression.
Neither Ye Que nor Wu Wujie was particularly expressive, but Qingshui could still see a trace of uncertainty in their eyes.
Qingshui sat down. “An Xiaolin. My partner.”
Looking at her, Ye Que inexplicably thought of Xu Wenlie, then Qi Zhi. She abruptly cut off that train of thought, straightened her back, and stared gravely at Qingshui.
“She’s… a Madman?”
The Director’s figure suddenly surfaced in her mind. Ye Que couldn’t tell whether the Director herself counted as a Madman, but anyone who kept Madmen as pets was already no different from a lunatic.
“Yes,” Qingshui admitted.
“But I won’t make any promises on Xiaolin’s behalf, and I won’t claim she’ll never lose control.” Qingshui enunciated every word clearly. “In the apocalypse, anyone can lose control. A bite from a Madman can drive someone mad. So can being crushed by despair, or watching a companion die.”
She paused, her gaze sweeping over their tense faces as her voice gradually steadied. “But I trust her. I trust that the gun in her hand will only ever be aimed at Madmen, never at her companions. I trust that even if those vicious urges gnaw away at her, she’ll still find her way back to herself.”
Qingshui tilted her head slightly and glanced at the silent An Xiaolin beside her. When she looked back, there was even greater conviction in her eyes. “Just as I trust you to fire when I’m attacked, and to pull me up when I can’t keep going.”
“To me, trust doesn’t mean being absolutely safe. It means facing danger together.”
“Isn’t that right?”
As her words faded, even the wind blowing through the rocky opening seemed to soften. Qingshui said nothing more. She simply watched the two of them, her eyes holding no pressure or coercion–only the open sincerity of someone willing to walk beside them.
Then An Xiaolin spoke. “I’ve never eaten anyone.”
She detested the two people in front of her, but the more that disgust churned inside her, the more certain she became that it was the Madman’s vile urges at work. She refused to give them what they wanted. She would do the exact opposite.
“I’m not interested in either of you. But if you turn into Madmen, I might consider having a taste.”
She hated Madmen more than anyone. They were the ones who had dragged her into this twisted state with their own hands, leaving her neither human nor monster.
Qingshui caught Xiaolin by the wrist, pulled her hand over, and held it tightly.
Ye Que closed her eyes, her breathing growing ragged. In the darkness, the Director’s kindly face appeared once more. Bone-deep terror spread from her fingertips, making her tremble.
Reason told her that distancing herself from this source of danger might help her live longer.
Fear raged within her. Ye Que dug her fingers deep into the dirt beneath her palm. The pain of her nails nearly snapping brought her back to her senses.
She kept her eyes closed and thought of Wenlie. Wenlie had never abandoned her. She didn’t want to abandon anyone either.
She couldn’t run away. At least this once, she wanted to try trusting Qingshui’s decision.
“I’m coming with you.”
Qingshui froze for a moment, then the tension at the corners of her mouth eased slightly.
Beside her, Wu Wujie chuckled. He reached out and patted Ye Que on the shoulder, his gaze carrying some teasing but far more relief.
“If all of you are going together, I can’t exactly stay behind alone.” Wu Wujie shrugged. “I’ll feel safer sticking with you anyway.”
Qingshui looked at the three people before her, and the heavy weight in her heart finally lifted.
“An Xiaolin.”
An Xiaolin was the first to introduce herself.
Ye Que paused, then gave her own name in a solemn voice. “Ye Que.”
“Wu Wujie.”
“Qingshui.” A smile curved Qingshui’s lips, but her gaze quickly turned cold again. “Now that we’ve decided, there’s one thing everyone needs to understand.”
“Our goal is to survive together.”
“We do not abandon our companions. We do not give up on them.”