Translator: transcendentwings
Update 2/2
Lin Dilei and He Zhiwen were resting at half-time, while the other twelve companions who were trying their best to lure the great zombie army away from the two of them were becoming more and more weary.
The ones spearheading the attack were replaced by the three musketeers from the sports department and following close behind them was Qi Yan. Song Fei, the one who originally initiated this change of trajectory had slowly fallen back into the middle of the troop, running neck to neck with Wang Qingyuan, Zhou Yilu, Luo Geng while Huang Mo, Li Jingyu, Feng Qibai, and Qiao Siqi formed the tail of the ranks.
After the companions detoured past the field, they returned to the track anew and continued to circle around it full circle.
As such, they swiftly greeted the adorable hurdles for the fourth time.
They were scattered across the track, some were standing, some had already been knocked over, and about seven or eight were basically blocking the entire circuit. Every time the Wusheng class passed here, barring the three musketeers from the sports department who cleared it with one lunge, the rest of them detoured around it. However the zombies didn’t have this awareness, thus every time they reached here, they would stagger and stumble to the ground with a pilipala. Following that, the zombies who fell to the ground would use their bodies that had not yet climbed back to their feet to trip over their companions behind them which would imperceptibly slow down the pace of the entire grand zombie army.
Before He Zhiwen could conceal himself in the pile of zombies, he was nearly overtaken once, fortunately he had reached this part of the track and was rescued by the hurdles.
“Do you guys feel that there was a battle here before—” despite having run four laps, Li Jingyu managed to maintain his place as fourth from the last somehow and still had the energy to speak.
However, he belonged to minority—
“We just feel a lack of oxygen!” Qiao Siqi’s exclamation was breathless and extremely labored.
Qi Yan was still okay, although he was tired, he still maintained a relatively steady breathing rhythm: “I also get that feeling, otherwise there would be no reason for there to be so many corpses scattered all over!”
Song Fei initially didn’t want to respond, but his curiosity became more and more intense: “Who are ‘they’ ah?”
Qi Yan was speechless: “I’m not a god!”
Qiao Siqi: “If you want to name a deity, it’d have to be our Huang. . . aiaiai?!”
All the comrades who couldn’t see what was going on behind them were immediately alarmed: “What’s wrong?!”
Qiao Siqi looked flabbergasted, not sure if this was reality or just an illusion: “De, The deity seemed to have plunged into a heap of dead bodies!”
Under the moonlight, the madly dashing flowers of the motherland decreased to eleven.
It turns out that after the companions realized that the turf was full of corpses instead of frozen stiff but living, zombies playing dead, they subconsciously no longer guarded against that field and and unconsciously moved from the outer lanes 5-8 to the inner lanes 1-4, and now were practically hugging the edge of the field in the center as they looped around.
The head sheep could still gather in a small group and the last four were basically only a meter apart from each other, without He Zhiwen, Huang Mo had been second to last, and Qiao Siqi occupied the last.
Just now, everyone happened to pass by the rim where the bodies were stacked, thus Qiao Siqi saw clearly as Huang Mo’s figure in front of him flickered and then just up and disappeared.
At first, he thought that the other had fallen after stumbling, and almost ran over to help her up. However after taking two steps, he realized that the other had taken root in the mound of corpses and was even crawling further in.
Qiao Siqi subconsciously peered back and saw that the zombie troops behind him showed no signs of budging and continued to pursue them clumsily.
A few seconds later, he had already run to the turn a step behind his companions while the main forces of the zombie army just bypassed the place where Huang Mo was concealed.
Looking at it from a distance, it was just a stack of remains and nothing else.
Qiao Siqi abruptly felt incomparably excited. This was a method that would allow him to explode with happiness as long as he threw all caution to the wind ah. Once he entered that sea of carcasses, he would be able to conceal his merits and name!
Half a minute later, Qiao Siqi finally spotted this geomantic treasured location again and used his final bit of strength to rush to the middle of the team. .Then using the cover of his comrades in the rear, he made a low-altitude leap and dove into the sea of corpses.
The companions at the rear who had been taken advantage of with no apparent warning, were stunned for a moment, but were also enlightened by that action at the same time.
Li Jingyu, who had unknowingly wandered into the camp of the first legion, could finally discuss “them” with Qi Yan up close—
“If it was like we guessed and there were people here once before, with combat abilities beyond the norm, then where are they now?”
Qi Yan: “Maybe, like us, they found an opportunity to break out!”
Li Jingyu was prompted: “Could those bodies that we discovered on Xuezi Avenue before also be their handiwork?”
Before Qi Yan could answer, Zhao He couldn’t help but interject: “If so, I really want to beat them up! They should’ve either taken care of none or cleaned up all, leaving so many live ones to lie down and pretend to be dead in the middle of the road, what a farce ah!”
Li Jingyu: “Maybe those zombies were originally from the track and field area and were led to the avenue when they escaped!”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Zhao He: “Once they hit the road, they should’ve just kept chasing ah, what’s the point of creating a blockade on the road!”
Li Jingyu: “Their pursuit was shaken off bei, and then they just decided to stay put, lying in wait to avenge their companions on the field like the farmer that awaits the rabbit by the tree stump, but in the end, they didn’t apprehend the right perpetrators and welcomed our arrival.”
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Song Fei: “Literary and artistic inspiration?”
Li Jingyu: “My dream is to be a novelist.”
Song Fei: “. . .”
Song Fei, who was deeply aware of the gap between himself and the first legion, slowed down due to sorrow and wanted to return to the second line of troops.
As a result, he decelerated his pace, but no one ever ran up to him.
Song Fei turned his head in confusion and was abruptly struck by a bolt from the blue.
There was no one else behind him, only those d*mned zombies were left!!!
Under the moonlight, the wildly sprinting flowers of the motherland came down to six.
“That inhumane crew ahhhhh—”
On the east side of the arena, Wang Qingyuan and Luo Geng, who had just laid down, exchanged glances with calm and peaceful expressions.
In the south side of the field, Feng Qibai, who had squirmed away from the edge of the track, was blanketed by zombies as he stared at the starry sky above.
At the southwest side of the field, Huang Mo was perfectly hidden, not even her eyes were revealed.
On the west side of the field, Zhou Yilu, Qiao Siqi, Lin Dilei, He Zhiwen, the four of them were huddled together, reluctantly keeping each other warm.
They crossed the hurdles for the seventh time.
Song Fei: “I can’t anymore my compatriots, I can’t run anymore, you guys hold on a little longer, I’ll take a break and then switch shifts with you and take over!”
The three musketeers of the sports department and Li Jingyu: “I don’t believe you!”
Song Fei: “I swear by the conscience of the heavens and the earth!”
The three musketeers of the sports department, Li Jingyu: “Scram!”
Song Fei: “Okay lei—”
The three musketeers from the sports department, Li Jingyu, Qi Yan: “. . .”
The eighth time they crossed paths with the hurdles.
Wu Zhou: “F*ck, this will really run us to the ground!”
Fu Xiyuan: “If I had known earlier, I would have insisted on continuing the resistance training!”
Li Jingyu: “Aren’t you guys from the sports department!”
Wu Zhou: “We are from the societal sports major ah!”
Fu Xiyuan: “From the day I decided to be a primary school physical education teacher, I was no longer a man like the wind!”
Before Li Jingyu had time to say anything, two of his companions had already entered the mode of an arrow that could pierce the clouds, they dashed out quickly, reaching the curve in the blink of an eye, then with a flicker of their figures, they disappeared without a trace.
The speed was so swift that he didn’t capture it clearly, let alone the zombies.
Zhao He’s reacted a beat slower and wasn’t able to catch up with his fellow classmates of the same major, regretting it until his guts ached.
Finally, he copied their movements at the next corner and saved his lungs which were about to burst.
“Isn’t he from the competitive sports major—” Li Jingyu suspected that these three were fake students from the sports department!
Qi Yan was also close to his limit and could only spit out two words: “Javelin.”
Li Jingyu was enlightened, yet was hit with sorrow at the same time: “What should we do, we are the only two left. . .”
Qi Yan shook his head: “It won’t be just the two of us.”
Li Jingyu’s eyes lit up as if he saw a beacon of hope.
Qi Yan sprinted ahead without warning, pulling ahead of Li Jingyu by several meters in an instant as he took the lead in entering the bend.
Li Jingyu suddenly realized what Qi Yan’s “it won’t just be the two of us” meant, because he would be the only d*mned one left!!!
“Qi Yan, you b*stard—”
“Didn’t you want to be a writer ma, just treat it as experiencing life—”
“My dream is to write serious literature, not horror stories ah!!!”
Qi Yan’s back disappeared around the far end of the curve.
Li Jingyu didn’t even see the exact turning point the other had chosen, only that in a blink of an eye, the person was gone as well.
Under the moonlight, the crazily charging flower of the motherland became one.
Trying to adjust his breathing, Li Jingyu soon found his rhythm again.
The overall speed of the zombies had dropped significantly. The closet zombies that were chasing hot on his heels were still about 5-6 meters away from him, and the frontline soldiers behind them were sparse and scattered, trailing behind across a long distance. However no emotions could be discerned from their faces, whether it was joy, anger, sorrow, happiness, or liveliness and weariness.
Li Jingyu didn’t know if the zombies had developed mindless mechanical movements after going around in so many loops. He even fancied that maybe the zombies had already lost focus on himself such that if he unexpectedly jumped into the pile of corpses, the zombies might not even spare him a glance and just skip over him directly.
Yet in the end, he was only entertaining that thought.
People only possessed one life, which couldn’t afford to be made light of at all.
When Li Jingyu was a child, his health wasn’t very good and his immunity was poor. In order to strengthen his body, his parents forced him to start his routine of long-distance jogging. He was very resistant to it at first, but who would have known that he would fall in love with it the more he ran and that so many years would pass by just like that while he persisted all the while.
Li Jingyu’s running was never for competitive purposes, so he had never pursued speed, and just ran at a pace that he was comfortable with. Who knew that this kind of jogging at nearly the same pace from beginning to the end would basically eliminate all his competitors at sports meets in seconds, from junior high to high school, from high school to college, he was unparalleled.
The fifteen loop.
Li Jingyu skirted around the last hurdle, counting silently in his heart.
He also felt fatigued, but this soreness was within a tolerable range.
It’s just, when will his companions receive the baton ah!!!
“Little Whale, come underneath the podium—”
Song Fei’s voice pierced the heavens.
Li Jingyu’s feet moved faster than his brain reacted. He didn’t have to think about when Song Fei had slipped over there and his body already made a sharp turn, plunging diagonally across the lawn, skipping and hopping around the body covered field and headed straight for the rostrum!
The zombies didn’t understand what the “platform” was, but they picked up on the sound. However before they could identify the direction, they saw their prey change its course and became distracted. After being stunned for a moment, they immediately adjusted their pursuit of Li Jingyu.
However, the corpse-covered lawn was a more complex obstacle course than a track with a few simple hurdles making the zombie army instantly fall into the whirlpool of the dead one step at a time, each stride a pit, each footstep a fall.
When Li Jingyu was about to reach the stand, he belatedly realized that he had brought the zombies into the field and so wouldn’t that bring danger to his comrades that were hiding in it?
Just then Song Fei couldn’t wait any longer so he lunged forward quickly, yanked the other over and dashed into a secret side door underneath the dais!
As soon as Li Jingyu stepped through, he heard a “guang” at the next second and the door panel was slammed shut tightly then locked by Zhao He, who had been lying in wait for a long time, in one smooth motion.
Not long after, the sounds of the door being slammed on with a dongdong rang out.
However the thick metal door panel calmly dealt with such impact, isolating all the horror and fear beyond it.
Li Jingyu slumped to the ground, feeling utterly drained.
Not physically, but mentally.
All the companions were present, which made the Little Whale who was worried about his friends being trampled on finally feel at ease.
It was just that the conditions of his companions were not that great. Although the intermission was enough for them to even their breathing and reduce their fatigue, each and everyone of them looked worse for wear with dust and dirt all over their faces and their hair a mess. Some of them even had strange red and black stains smeared on their faces, it was unknown how lively they had been while churning about in the corpse sea.
This was a sports equipment and supplies room. On weekdays, when students from the various departments took the mass physical education lessons in the gymnasium, the physical education professors would remove supplies such as mats, basketballs, footballs, and ropes out from here and return them when class ended.
Li Jingyu was vaguely aware that there was such a place, but he had never paid attention to it, after all, there weren’t many opportunities to use the equipment here in their physical education classes and on the few occasions that they were used, it had always been the class monitor who would accompany the teacher to retrieve them, anyway, it had never been him.
“How did you guys think of this place?” Li Jingyu was curious.
Zhao He coughed very deliberately.
Li Jingyu made a face.
Song Fei made a face: “Relax, no one will steal the credit from you.”
It turned out that after Zhao He saw the zombie carcasses on the field and the hurdles on the track, he had a tentative conjecture—that the people who had fought here were very likely to be classmates from the sports department.
However, such an ocean of bodies couldn’t have formed in such a short period of time, so the time these students stayed at this sports center must not have been brief.
Then taking into account the entire track and field venue, the only places where one could hide were the few limited spaces below the rostrums.
As such, when Zhao He passed by the stage several times, he went out of his way to scrutinize it. It was only a shame that the doors were designed to be relatively well hidden and he had only been able to make out the faintest light shining from the ajar door of the sports equipment room after going back and forth several times.
So after throwing himself onto the lawn, he crawled forward, connected with all of the companions, and finally carried out this mission with all the squad members while Li Jingyu kept the zombie army occupied, leading them far away.
After listening to Zhao He illustrate the odds and ends of it quietly, Song Fei added another sentence, which was both an affirmation of the contribution of his comrade as well as the conclusions drawn from a narrow escape from death: “If Zhao He hadn’t discovered this place, we’d have run ourselves to our demise.”
“It is I, who would have run to my death.” Li Jingyu ground his teeth with hatred when he recalled his comrades’ “betrayal and desertion”.
“We were all about to get up to receive your baton,” Song Fei explained, “But unexpectedly, Zhao He crept his way over.”
Li Jingyu pretended to survey his circle of friends and without exception, everyone’s faces were filled with guilt and trepidation. Remorse, because they felt that what they did wasn’t proper, nervous, because they were afraid that he would really go crazy on them.
These fools.
Li Jingyu felt his eyes become sore.
They only saw him fighting alone this time and felt that what they did was improper, but they never thought about how many fruits of victory they shared with him which they had fought with their lives on the line for him before.
As early as in the library, he had never been part of the main force in combat, including the time at the canteen later on, or when they sought the radio, or even when they headed to the hospital to find medicine for their sick comrades, those were all moments where he had no ability to get involved responsibly.
Only the heavens knew how much he wanted to be useful for once and be able to contribute some strength to their team, for his comrades.
The process to achieve this dream come true was pretty cruel, but the aftertaste was quite worth savoring.
After the heat at the base of his eyes subsided, Li Jingyu slowly raised the corners of his mouth as he asked abruptly: “Wasn’t I particularly handsome today?”
The entire squad didn’t even hesitate: “Superb!”
Li Jingyu: “Especially powerful?”
All the comrades-in-arms: “Amazing!”
Li Jingyu: “Actually, I only know how to run.”
All the comrades: “You’re being modest.”
Li Jingyu: “In the future I may still frequently be a burden, so when you guys are holding back the urge to whack me, please recall the me of today a bit more ha.”
All the comrades: “. . .”
Li Jingyu: “What is the meaning of your silence!”
Author’s Chapter Summary:
After waiting a long time to reach today, dreams finally came true in this way!
The translator has something to say: and then there were none
