Chapter 2

Chapter 2

“Run!”

When Qingshui saw Li Wei’an still frozen in place, she grabbed her wrist and dragged her toward the stairwell at a dead sprint.

As they passed the classroom’s front door, they ran straight into several students who had stepped outside to investigate. The girls were blocking the hallway, and when they saw Qingshui and Li Wei’an racing toward them, they reached out to stop them and ask what was going on.

Qingshui violently tore herself free of their grasp. Her fingertips trembled as she gritted her teeth and snapped, “Run if you don’t want to die!”

Not daring to stop for even a second, she dragged Li Wei’an toward the stairs and raced down with everything she had.

One of the students they had shoved aside cursed, “Are you insane?!”

Then she found herself staring at a group of blood-drenched lunatics.

“Aaaaaaaaah!”

She let out a piercing scream. The sheer horror before her made her collapse to the floor, trembling uncontrollably.

Blood… There was blood everywhere… They… They were holding heads in their hands.

Her stomach convulsed violently, and she vomited with a retch.

She tried desperately to crawl backward on all fours, but it was as though she had been nailed to the spot. Her legs were as limp as overcooked noodles and refused to move.

“No… Don’t come any closer…”

Her broken voice dissolved into dry heaves. Tears and blood-red shapes blurred her vision as she kicked futilely against the floor.

The students still working on their assignments inside the classroom looked up at the commotion, only to be scared out of their wits by the sight before them.

The classmate who had been standing in the doorway moments ago was now pinned to the floor by a group of “demons” wearing crazed smiles. Scarlet blood splattered across the walls as shrill screams intertwined with the lunatics’ wild laughter, instantly turning the entire classroom into hell on earth.

“Hehehe… Don’t be scared, classmate. I’ll give your heart back to you. Open wide. Ahhh…”

A girl with a blood-smeared face stuck out her tongue and smiled as she forcibly stuffed a mangled lump of flesh into a boy’s mouth.

“You’re all so adorable, hehehe… The heads… Hang them all upstairs… Heh… Hehehe…”

Shredded flesh and body parts flew through the air. In the blink of an eye, the classroom became an inferno.

Screams and crazed laughter echoed throughout the entire building.

By then, Qingshui had already dragged Li Wei’an out onto the campus. Fortunately, their elective class had been on the second floor, buying them a precious sliver of time to escape.

The inhuman screams behind them finally jolted Li Wei’an out of her terror. Her stomach churned violently, but she clenched her teeth and fought back the urge to vomit.

She knew that if she stopped, only death awaited her. She tightened her grip on Qingshui’s hand, squeezing so hard that her fingertips turned white.

A vehicle! They needed to find one!

Qingshui quickly spotted her electric scooter among the rows of parked scooters.

“Get on, Dorm Leader!”

Li Wei’an practically scrambled onto the back seat and wrapped both arms tightly around Qingshui’s waist. Gripping the handlebars, Qingshui spoke with an almost unnatural calm.

“Hold on tight, Dorm Leader!”

The moment the words left her mouth, she twisted the throttle all the way. The scooter shot across campus like an arrow released from its bow. Students along the road scrambled out of the way in fright, their curses rising one after another.

“Are you in that much of a hurry to get reincarnated?!”

“Are you crazy? What if you hit someone?!”

Li Wei’an’s trembling voice sounded beside Qingshui’s ear. “Qingshui, what were those things? Zombies? Were they like the zombies in movies?”

“Can zombies talk like they do?” Qingshui shot back.

Even the highly evolved zombies from her previous life had never been that terrifying.

“Text Yuhui and Xiaolin! Tell them not to go anywhere! They need to stay in the dorm and lock the door!”

“Oh, okay! Okay!”

Behind them, inhuman giggles rang out as the stench of blood spread through the air.

Qingshui’s gaze sharpened. She twisted the throttle to its limit, and the scooter surged forward.

Vroom!

Wind rushed down her collar and whipped her hair backward. The numbers on the dashboard climbed wildly. Soon, the only sounds in her ears were the howling wind and the shriek of the motor as the laughter behind them rapidly faded into the distance.

The two reached the dormitory building without further incident. Before the scooter had even come to a complete stop, they jumped off and stumbled all the way up to the fourth floor.

The moment she collapsed onto the dorm room floor, Li Wei’an vomited until the world seemed to spin, nearly emptying her entire stomach.

Chen Yuhui and An Xiaolin, who had just woken up, instantly snapped awake in fright. They hurried over to support her.

“Dorm Leader, w-what happened to you?”

“What’s going on?! Here, drink some water first!”

Qingshui ignored their panic. She walked to the dorm room door, grabbed the heavy bed frame with both hands, and forcibly dragged it across the room, wedging it firmly against the door.

Seeing this, Li Wei’an forced herself up from the floor. Sobbing, she went over to help, and together they dragged another bed frame across the room and barricaded the door with it.

Their actions left Chen Yuhui and An Xiaolin completely dumbfounded. They exchanged bewildered looks.

“Qingshui, have you two lost your minds? Why are you blocking the door with the beds?”
“Have you two lost your minds?”

Li Wei’an wanted to tell them that the whole world had gone mad, that the outside was crawling with lunatics who ate people. But before she could get the words out, her stomach cramped violently again. She shoved past them, rushed back into the bathroom, and began dry-heaving.

Qingshui pulled out her phone and quickly opened the social media app she usually browsed. Her heart instantly sank.

Just as she’d feared, the horrifying “lunatics” had already spread across the world. The internet was flooded with videos of bloodshed and violence. Social media had become a livestream of hell on earth. As she scrolled through the videos with trembling fingers, a chill seeped deeper and deeper into her heart.

They definitely weren’t zombies! They could talk, they were strong and fast, and they might even have retained their intelligence!

Qingshui cursed under her breath and tossed the phone to Chen Yuhui and An Xiaolin. “See for yourselves.”

“See for yourselves.”

With that, she turned and began searching the dorm room, her gaze sweeping over anything that could be used as a weapon.

Chen Yuhui caught the phone in confusion. The video appeared to have been secretly filmed in a shopping mall’s atrium. In one corner, lunatics with grins stretching all the way to their ears laughed wildly, leaping around in delight as they held blurry, ball-shaped objects aloft. At the center of the frame, several naked people had been bound to the stage by crimson, rope-like strands, leaving them unable to move.

One of the lunatics picked up a knife and plunged it deep into a man’s abdomen. Then, amid the man’s bloodcurdling screams, it shoved a hand into the wound and tore out his organs. Blood spilled across the floor, staining the stage red, but the sight only drove the lunatics into an even greater frenzy.

By then, An Xiaolin had gone deathly pale. She ran to the bathroom and threw up. Chen Yuhui, however, remained transfixed by the gruesome scene on the phone.

The lunatic onstage held half of a human body in its hands, a bizarre smile plastered across its face. Suddenly, it stared straight into the camera. Chen Yuhui flinched so hard that the phone slipped from her hand and crashed to the floor!

It took her several seconds to realize that the lunatic hadn’t been looking at her. It had discovered the person filming.

“You’ve got to be kidding… This has to be fake, right? Special effects?” Her voice trembled, unable to accept what she had just seen.

Qingshui had found two fruit knives, an extremely sharp pair of scissors, and a folding knife in the dorm. She drove one of the fruit knives into the wardrobe door, burying the blade deep in the wood.

At Chen Yuhui’s question, she didn’t argue. She merely said, “No one wants this to be fake more than I do.”

Li Wei’an emerged from the bathroom, her face as white as a sheet. Supporting herself against the wall, she rasped, “It’s real… All of it is real. Those lunatics are everywhere outside. They eat people. They tear people apart…”

Before she could finish, an unbearably shrill scream suddenly ripped through the sky above the campus and rang clearly through the dorm room!

Everyone fell silent in an instant, barely daring to breathe. Qingshui gestured for them to keep quiet, crept over to the balcony, and slowly peeked outside.

Below, a blood-drenched lunatic was dragging a female student away. A long trail of blood stretched from the dormitory entrance to a flower bed in the distance. The girl’s screams grew weaker and weaker until they finally vanished beneath the lunatic’s jubilant cheers.

Not far away, a group of crimson figures was sprinting toward the dormitory. Their crazed voices drew closer, shrill enough to make everyone’s eardrums ache.

“Found you… I’ve been dying to play with someone. No one ever plays with me. I want to play with you!!”

“There you are, there you are! You’re in this building, aren’t you? Hahahahaha! Let the game of hide-and-seek begin!”

“Now, let’s see. Which building should I choose…?” One lunatic cocked its head and raised a hand to make its selection. “Which one, hehehe…?”

While the others were still frozen in shock, Qingshui quickly pulled out her phone and opened the campus group chat. The group was already in complete chaos.

At first, when someone posted a video of the lunatics committing atrocities, everyone accused them of faking it. But as more and more people uploaded gruesome videos and desperate pleas for help, they were forced to accept that it was all real.

The world had truly changed.

[Holy shit! Someone help me! I’m hiding in a bathroom in the academic building. Those lunatics are everywhere outside. They’re eating students from the class next door!]

[Calling the police is useless! The cops can’t handle them at all. These things aren’t human! They’re even worse than zombies!]

[Everyone, lock your dorm room doors and stay inside! Whatever you do, don’t make a sound!]

[I don’t know what these things are, but I tested it. Destroying the brain kills them!]

The last message came with a photo. A lunatic covered in blood and gore lay on the ground, its brain impaled through the eye socket by a long pole.

“Hey… Wait. Look!” Chen Yuhui suddenly gasped in terror, pointing rigidly at the women’s dormitory across from them.

Everyone followed her finger.

The next second, a deafening bang struck terror into every heart.