At that time, everywhere was in chaos. In that instant, it seemed that the panicked people had all lost their moral boundaries. Every day, things happened that would have seemed utterly unimaginable in the past.
Village Chief Yu led everyone through a difficult journey of hiding and fleeing. They had to avoid not only the monsters but also people who had already gone mad.
Finally, one day, their luck ran out. A group of men armed with iron bars and wearing vicious expressions cornered them in the dilapidated supermarket where they now lived.
Actually, by the time they found this place, the supermarket had already been searched by others. Only a few useful things remained, hidden in inconspicuous corners.
However, people in rural areas were accustomed to storing food at home, so when they had fled, everyone had managed to bring at least some supplies with them.
That was how the group of men set their sights on them.
There was no discussion or negotiation. The men immediately began beating them mercilessly and stealing their belongings. They were so vicious that it was as if their victims weren’t even human.
The young men who stood in front of everyone fell first. The attackers had absolutely no qualms about killing people.
Just as everyone was falling into despair, Nizi suddenly appeared from nowhere. After killing three of the attackers, she finally frightened the rest into fleeing.
Everyone had been saved.
They had been saved by a zombie.
Nizi had been different from the way she was now. At first, she had merely been a little more agile than the other monsters. However, she seemed to remember the villagers and never harmed them.
Grateful for her having saved their lives, the villagers couldn’t bear to watch her eat human flesh, so they took out some cured meat they had been hiding for a long time and gave it to her.
Nizi didn’t particularly like eating it, and with everyone stopping her, she didn’t force herself to eat human flesh either. In the end, she went off and caught a rat somewhere to eat instead.
Later, since they had nowhere else to go, everyone simply settled down in the supermarket. During the day, the younger men and women went out to search for supplies. Ideally, they would also catch a few rats to bring back for Nizi to eat.
At first, everyone had firmly resolved to protect and feed Nizi. But as time passed, the chaos outside seemed to gradually subside, while the monsters grew increasingly powerful. It became difficult for everyone to venture outside again, and ordinary rats were replaced by mutated ones.
Once again, everyone fell into despair.
But at that point, Nizi took on the responsibility of going out to search for supplies.
Her intelligence was still low then, and her ability to distinguish between things was poor. She often brought back all sorts of useless items, but at least she managed to find enough supplies to sustain everyone’s lives.
At the same time, she frequently brought back some glittering stones, which she would secretly eat by herself in a corner.
The villagers didn’t know what the stones were or where she had found them. But as long as she had something to eat, that was still better than eating human flesh.
Later, Nizi became increasingly intelligent and powerful. By now, she could fully understand what everyone said and even give some stiff, awkward responses.
It was only today, when Nizi went out once again to find food for everyone, that she had encountered Chu Tian and the others.
After telling the story, Village Chief Yu sighed. He lamented that such a good child as Nizi had ended up with such a fate. He also lamented how badly the world had deteriorated. No one knew whether they would be able to survive this inexplicable disaster together and return to their former lives.
As for Chu Tian, while listening to the story, he had also been communicating with Nizi and learning more information than the others.
While the village chief recounted the story, Nizi was supplementing it in Chu Tian’s mind with details that the others didn’t know.
For example, she told him when she had first begun to develop a vague sense of consciousness. Another detail was that, although the villagers’ insistence that she mustn’t eat human flesh had played a part in preventing her from doing so, the half-conscious Nizi at the time had been drawn by an even more powerful temptation: the glittering stones that had been placed in her mouth.
Those stones had been taken from the heads of zombies.
After she gradually regained her consciousness, she became immensely grateful that the villagers had stopped her. Otherwise, if the Nizi she was now had to recall the memory of consuming human flesh, she might very well have gone mad.
There was something else, too. She had actually regained all her memories from when she was human a long time ago. However, she couldn’t speak. It was probably because certain nerves in her brain had been damaged after she became a zombie. She also couldn’t communicate with the villagers by writing, so they assumed that she could only understand human speech.
In reality, she understood everything perfectly well.
The two were communicating through their mental connection when Xie Mingxuan’s thoughts suddenly barged in. He began howling excitedly.
“What… does he want to do?” Nizi asked Chu Tian. She was clearly terrified of the zombie, whose level was far higher than hers.
“Don’t be afraid. He… probably… has found a playmate…” Chu Tian replied uncertainly. “His intelligence is only around that of a three-year-old, but he has extremely powerful mental-control abilities. Maybe your relatively high intelligence made him sense that you’re different, so he became interested in you. You have to believe me when I say he doesn’t mean you any harm. Otherwise…”
With his Level Six mental-control ability, dealing with a Level Four zombie that had evolved unusually in intelligence would still be very easy.
“Then… then he…” Nizi didn’t know how to express what she was feeling at that moment.
“He might simply want to be friends with you. Has he actually attacked you?”
Nizi froze, then thought back over what had happened. Aside from that brief moment when she had fled and felt dizzy, as though she were about to lose consciousness, followed by hearing him howling loudly inside her mind, she really hadn’t suffered any other harm.
She had simply been frightened by his overwhelming strength and fled in a panic, unknowingly returning to the supermarket. Perhaps, deep in her subconscious, she felt that the place where everyone was gathered was the safest place to be.
Now that she thought about it, she was also filled with regret and lingering fear. If these people hadn’t been good people, she would truly have led wolves into the house.
However, perhaps because Chu Tian was the first human who could communicate with her without any barriers, and because he appeared gentle and harmless, she felt an inexplicable sense of trust toward him. So she carefully explained what had happened when she first encountered them.
“Mm. How about trying to communicate with him?” Chu Tian suggested to Nizi. “His intelligence isn’t very high, so just treat him like a child. He’s actually quite well-behaved.”
Nizi hesitated for a while but eventually decided to try what Chu Tian had suggested.
While Chu Tian dealt with that matter, Bai Mingxi had already begun discussing the villagers’ future with the village chief.
This town was practically a dead town now. Perhaps there were still survivors like them hiding in some corners, but most of the survivors had already left and joined various survivor organizations or bases, large and small.
Several organized base teams had already swept through the town. The main reason they had never discovered the people in the small supermarket was that the villagers were hiding behind the small factory. Many search parties had been stopped by the spiders and tree demon occupying that place, and none had managed to reach the supermarket.
But now the spiders had been eliminated, and no one knew whether the tree demon was alive or dead. It was only a matter of time before someone discovered the villagers.
The people at survivor bases varied greatly in character and ability. There was no guarantee that some of them weren’t vicious people who would kill without batting an eye. Under normal circumstances, the villagers had nothing at all, so there was little reason for anyone else to take an interest in them. But what if Nizi’s existence was exposed?
What if someone with ulterior motives developed some strange idea about Nizi? Who would protect the villagers? And who would protect Nizi?
Therefore, Bai Mingxi briefly told them about the situation at Dawning Base and suggested that perhaps they could move there.
However, after discussing it among themselves for a while, the village chief and the others decisively rejected Bai Mingxi’s proposal.
They were worried that outsiders might not accept Nizi. If they joined an outside organization, Nizi would be the one in the greatest danger, and they weren’t willing to take that risk.
Bai Mingxi and the others fell silent as well. It was true that even at Dawning Base, there was no guarantee that everyone would accept Nizi.
After all, she was different from Xie Mingxuan.
Xie Mingxuan had saved everyone. The doctor never spoke of his gratitude aloud, but he acknowledged the debt all the same. He had always tacitly accepted Xie Mingxuan’s presence and protected him.
There was another crucial point: Xie Mingxuan could be controlled. As long as Quan Xiaoyu was there, Xie Mingxuan remained manageable. Therefore, as long as Quan Xiaoyu was present, Xie Mingxuan’s existence would be accepted by the upper echelon of Dawning Base.
Yes, the upper echelon!
Only those who had experienced the rescue involving Xiao Yu, Xiao Ning, and Xie Mingxuan could understand how Quan Xiaoyu felt about keeping a zombie by his side. But that understanding extended only to them.
They had all agreed to protect this secret. Because once it became public, the other members of Dawning Base, who hadn’t experienced everything that had happened in the past, would probably react to Xie Mingxuan’s existence with incomprehension and fear.
Zombies were enemies and hated foes to most people.
Therefore, the village chief’s concerns were entirely reasonable.
There wasn’t much more the group could do to help, so they could only leave it at that.
Bai Mingxi left the villagers enough supplies to help them hold out for a while longer, and then the four of them prepared to leave.
Xiao Yu and Xiao Ning had been waiting impatiently. The moment they saw everyone getting ready to leave, they immediately became excited.
Xie Mingxuan, on the other hand, was the complete opposite. Perhaps Nizi had followed Chu Tian’s advice and communicated properly with him, making him quite happy. Now, when Quan Xiaoyu said they were leaving, he seemed reluctant to go.
The village chief led everyone in thanking the four of them once more. He also said that if they truly couldn’t survive any longer in the future, they would try going to Dawning Base.
Before they departed, the village chief glanced at Xie Mingxuan, whom Quan Xiaoyu was forcibly dragging away, and sincerely reminded them to be careful, too.
Chu Tian naturally understood what he meant. The village chief’s several additional decades of life experience had given him a penetrating understanding of human nature.
After thinking it over, Chu Tian secretly slipped a handgun to the village chief. He briefly explained how to use it, leaving it with them for self-defense.
And so, they parted ways.
In the difficult and seemingly endless apocalypse, this was merely a brief interlude in each person’s journey through life.