Tang Ye, after running for a while, sat exhausted at the edge of a road, tossing his gun aside. He held up his trembling hands, having them steady down, letting his inner panic dissipate, and slowly regaining his composure.
A zombie clad in red passed in front of him, eliciting from him a surge of hunger. He had the urge to pry open its skull and consume its brain, but at that moment, he remembered the "jelly" he had taken from the giant zombie’s brain. It was still in his pocket.
Tang Ye reached into his pocket and pulled it out, not sure if it could alleviate his hunger like other zombie brains. But since he was already a zombie, even if it was poisonous, it couldn’t kill him, could it?
With that thought, Tang Ye raised his hand and swallowed the "jelly" in one gulp.
When the "jelly" entered his mouth, Tang Ye felt peculiar. It didn’t burst with any flavor; it was just like drinking plain water. He didn’t feel any warm sensation in his abdomen.
"What a letdown!" Tang Ye stood up, slung the Type 81 Rifle over his shoulder, picked up his crowbar, and prepared to feast on some zombie brains.
However, just as Tang Ye took a few steps, a massive wave of energy surged like a storm, causing his entire body to tremble!
He felt every part of his body frantically absorbing this energy. Tang Ye felt pain, experiencing the first sensation of pain since becoming a zombie!
Tang Ye collapsed on the ground, losing consciousness under the extreme pain!
Time slowly passed by. Much like a corpse, Tang Ye lay motionless on the ground. His body underwent significant changes. His half face that had been shot off by Fu Xinkun earlier started growing clusters of dark purple flesh, which looked evil, regenerating his marred face. His teeth slowly became sharp until they were all triangular, sharp as a shark’s teeth. Looking at them made one feel uncomfortable — one bite from him would definitely rip off a large chunk of flesh! His fingernails were also changing, becoming increasingly long. However, they stopped growing once they hit five inches, quickly retracting back into his fingers, returning to normal.
The following morning, as the sunlight just began to rise from the horizon, Tang Ye slowly opened his pure white pupils.
Much like an ordinary person waking up in the morning and lost in thoughts while sitting in bed, he blankly stared ahead. Tang Ye had a dream, a long, long dream.
He dreamt of himself searching for something in a world with warped space. That thing seemed incredibly important to him, but he didn’t know what it was or what it looked like. All he knew in his dream was that he needed to find it.
His dream-self was melancholic, much like someone who had lost a valuable treasure. His heart filled with regret. The dream went on and on. Tang Ye felt like he had spent millions of years in it, but without experiencing anything.
This dream was bizarre. Tang Ye stood up from the ground. At that moment, his heart was filled with the sentiment his dream-self had. He tried to make his thoughts more active, but he just couldn’t lift his spirits.
"Sigh..." Tang Ye heaved a sigh. He stuck out his tongue and licked his teeth. His body seemed to have undergone certain changes.
Wait a second, there’s more...
Tang Ye stretched out his hand. His purple nails, much like that of a cat’s, extended. He looked at them with interest, then raised his other hand. The nails on that hand also extended. With mindful concentration, they retracted back.
"Kind of pointless!" Having retractable nails was indeed fun, but Tang Ye didn’t trust their durability.
Tang Ye moved his body and realized his strength had increased by about half, still far from the giant zombie. His body was brimming with energy, but Tang Ye could feel it being continuously absorbed by every muscle in his body to aid in nutrition.
The imagined scene of him growing as tall as the giant zombie didn’t materialize. He only grew to 1.9 meters in height, which was already quite tall, but Tang Ye wasn’t satisfied. The giant zombie’s physique made him harbor a sense of competitiveness!
Looking at the dawn in the east, Tang Ye thought it was already dusk. Recalling his previous condition, he couldn’t help but worry.
As time passed since he turned into a zombie, he felt his cognitive abilities were being replaced by zombie instincts. He didn’t know what he would become, but he could only establish a bottom line for himself — never to eat human flesh. Maybe... He didn’t know when he would break this oath. Tang Ye wasn’t confident in his self-restraint. The future was long, and he didn’t know how long a zombie could live, but for now, every moment he could hold onto his humanity was a victory.
"Eh? It’s morning?" Tang Ye looked at the red sun, finding it not dipping under the horizon, but rising higher, dispersing the morning mist.
"I was unconscious for so long!" Tang Ye mumbled to himself.
He held up his ash-white arms tinged with dark purple stripes and studied them.
"I wonder how that mother-daughter pair is doing? I should check on them." Tang Ye patted off the dust from his body and set off, heading towards the home of the little girl, Lanlan, and her mother.
Lanlan looked out of the window at the red clouds in the sky. When she heard the roars of the zombies downstairs, she quickly drew the curtains. Her mother had told her that the outside world was full of flesh-eating zombies. They must not make any noise, or they would be captured. She had witnessed zombies devouring humans before, instilling a deep fear of the outside world in her.
Her mother was still sleeping. She was bored. Before the Apocalypse, she used to watch cartoons on her mom’s phone, but now the building where they were staying had no electricity. There was nowhere to charge the phone, so she couldn’t watch cartoons endlessly.
Lanlan took out a piece of A4 paper and sat down at a table. She used a watercolor pen to scribble and doodle on it. In no time, she had drawn a bunch of abstract, childishly innocent flowers.
Outside, Tang Ye was bringing up two bags of food. He noticed that three zombies had appeared in the floor where the mother and daughter lived. The dead bodies of the zombies that he had killed earlier had already decayed and stunk.
Gently, Tang Ye placed the two bags of food at Lanlan’s door, took out his crowbar from his back, and moved toward the three zombies. He quickly smashed their heads in two or three blows. Afterward, he returned to the doorway, curling up his middle finger and knocking on the door three times.
The little girl Lanlan looked up, a question mark in her eyes. Her mom had also told her that zombies couldn’t knock. She got up, went to the door, and pulled open the handle. Seeing two large bags of food at her doorstep, she called out to her sleeping mom.
"Mom! Someone sent us food again!" Then she ran outside!
After leaving the food, Tang Ye had left. Just stepping into the corridor, he heard Lanlan’s voice and quickly sped up...