Translators: phizzlepop, kurisu
Editor: mantou
As Song Fei had guessed, at the time of the incident, Qi Yan had been waiting for him inside the canteen. Running back from the education area to the dormitories required passing by the canteen. Since it wasn’t eleven o’clock yet, very few people were inside the canteen. At first, seeing countless students running to the dormitories like crazy outside the French windows had left them baffled all around. A few busybodies even watched the excitement like it wasn’t a big deal, and directly rushed to the doorway to spectate.
But soon, the fast-footed First Legion disappeared into the residential area, while the slow-footed Second Legion became entangled with the mutants. The students on the verge of extermination had no chance of fleeing back to the dormitories, and could only hide wherever was most convenient, so a large wave of students flooded into the canteen, joining hands to find a way to shut its glass doors.
However, there were also seven or eight mutants who were locked up inside the canteen together with them.
At first, everyone could only run along the rows of tables and chairs, playing a game of chase with the mutants. Fortunately, the mutants’ joints seemed to be rather inflexible, which wasn’t too apparent when they were running, but was immediately exposed when they encountered obstacles, and for a while, couldn’t do anything to them. Later, the serving auntie’s sense of righteousness erupted, and she rose up in arms, hacking and chopping away with the kitchen knife she’d found in the back kitchens, single-handedly felling two mutants with her own strength. If this had been the time when the incident had just occurred, perhaps no one would’ve been able to accept wielding a knife against any of their own schoolmates, but while they were fleeing, they’d already witnessed too much of the madness along the way, and anyone with a bit of a brain knew that these people had already gone crazy. Once hit with an actual, critical moment of life or death, the instinct to survive would always be first place, and ethics, morals, or whatever else could be discussed later ba— thinking about it this way, the hundreds of students in the canteen made a concerted effort as those who took up arms did so, while those who didn’t dare touch the knives helped to overall restrain the mutants’ movements by grabbing on to their arms and holding on to their legs. These seven or eight mutants were actually annihilated by a boundless sea of civilian combatants.
“You were probably scared silly at the time, ba.” Song Fei’s seemingly teasing tone hid his concern and heartache. Qi Yan’s narration was concise, and almost completely objective, untainted by any subjective feelings, but it was impossible for any individual to remain completely unperturbed in that kind of situation. This ostensible tranquility was merely him squashing the fear deeper inside his heart.
He’d originally thought that Qi Yan would stubbornly insist otherwise, but unexpectedly, he rubbed his nose in embarrassment, and admitted for once, “Indeed, a bit.”
Song Fei’s eyes widened in astonishment: “Since when were you this honest?”
Qi Yan almost collapsed, those memories from yesterday that he’d tried so hard to play down resurfacing once again: “We actually killed people and dismembered them, ah, if I’d said that I hadn’t been scared silly and was calm, you’d believe it?”
Song Fei: “…that’s true.”
Even the heavens wouldn’t be able to stand this kind of bragging, lightning would strike.
“Why haven’t you told him the rest?” Qiao Siqi, who’d also been in the canteen sharing in adversity, had waited a long time for the main point, but in vain. He was all too anxious to push Qi Yan aside and tell it himself.
“The rest?” Song Fei wore a look of confusion. “Didn’t you guys sleep all night, then flee to the dormitories after the doors were broken through?”
Qi Yan’s gaze dimmed. Evidently, Qiao Siqi hadn’t been referring to this.
Song Fei waited patiently. He knew that it definitely couldn’t be anything good for Qi Yan to instinctively resist those recollections.
However, Qiao Siqi had run out of patience. Originally, he’d been straddling the chair, with his chin on the back of the chair. And now, since he still had yet to hear Qi Yan speak up, he simply straightened up, and personally pitched in, “When we were dealing with those zombies, some students were bitten. By the time we got our headshots in on those fellows, those who’d been bitten had also turned into zombies. This cycle repeated itself three times, and more than a dozen students died in total.”
On the staircase, Song Fei had seen a classmate who’d been knocked down and nibbled on stand right back up and walk again. In the dormitories, he’d seen the boy who’d been dragged into his room with only half a face left come back to the balcony again, so he could imagine the scene that Qiao Siqi was describing.
But, he couldn’t imagine the frame of mind everyone inside the canteen had been in.
The classmates who’d just finished fighting side by side had become mutants in the blink of an eye. It was easy to kill mutants, but what about killing comrades-in-arms? The mutants could lose their reason in a flash, but the remaining students couldn’t change their feelings instantly.
When Qiao Siqi brought up the death of more than a dozen students, he suddenly lowered his voice, and there was still discomfort in it that couldn’t be concealed. But, regardless of whether he was talking about zombies or headshots before, it sounded very natural, as though this was how things ought to be, so there was no need to make a fuss.
“Don’t be all zombies or headshots with every other breath.” Song Fei didn’t like this casual attitude with movie analogies, as if those students who’d mutated were no longer humans, and didn’t need to be viewed as such. But, just twenty minutes ago, he’d pushed one downstairs with his own hands, playing assassin on the one hand, while still feeling like they couldn’t dismiss them as human beings on the other. Even Song Fei felt like he was being hypocritical. However, ever since yesterday’s incident until now, he’d indeed been trapped in this contradiction, just like a final math problem in a university entrance exam, racking his brains, yet still having no solution.
Qiao Siqi was stunned by his words, and it took a long while before he vaguely got Song Fei’s point, so he quickly explained, “About that, I wasn’t trying to joke around. I really think this is a zombie virus, and confirmed it when we were in the canteen. It’s useless to injure them anywhere, you have to cut off their heads or destroy their brains before they’ll thoroughly lose their attacking power. ”
This was like gibberish to Song Fei, so he could only look to Qi Yan.
Qi Yan shrugged, the meaning of this very obvious— don’t ask me, I’m also just a confused, normal person.
“I’m not very educated, so hold on a bit,” Song Fei’s thoughts were a bit jumbled, “Do zombies have brains? Don’t they all dig for brains in the movies, eating to supplement what they're lacking in.”
Qiao Siqi’s face contorted. He thought for a while, then changed to more precise wording, “While it’s true that the intelligence of zombies has declined substantially, the cranial cavity should still contain some functional brain tissue, and it’s exactly this brain that drives the zombies to attack living humans and eat human flesh, even blocking their nociception, therefore reducing joint flexibility and nerve ending acuity, causing their movements to lack mobility…”
Song Fei had originally been leaning back in his chair, but towards the end, he’d straightened his back, feeling as though he wasn’t listening to a schoolmate bullsh*tting, but rather, “Approaching Science“.
Initially, Qi Yan had only considered Qiao Siqi to be the impetuous kind. Although up until now, there still had yet to be a reasonable explanation for the chaos that was occurring, that didn’t mean they could bring in all sorts of irrelevant matters. However, the more he listened, the more he felt that what he’d brought up didn’t seem to be totally unreasonable. It was to the point where Qiao Siqi hadn’t even finished talking yet and had only paused a bit to catch his breath, when he couldn’t resist chiming in, “When those people were cut down, regardless of whether their arm was cut off, leg was cut off, or were even stabbed in the chest, none of these affected them at all. It wasn’t until one of them was hacked in the skull by a kitchen knife that something began to seem off.”
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.
“En,” Qiao Siqi nodded furiously, “The ones that’d collapsed and stopped moving were either those who’d directly had their heads split open, or those who’d been stabbed countless times in the face until their heads had finally been pierced through. At any rate, it was all the ones whose heads had been destroyed. This is exactly the same as a zombie setting: no pain, no intelligence, sluggish, and another point, people bitten by them also turn into zombies. Do you still think I’m joking around?”
Song Fei couldn’t refute this, but he also couldn’t convince himself: “That’s all in the movies, ah! This is f*cking straight out of science fiction, ba!”
Qiao Siqi sighed, and was silent for a long time, before he said solemnly, “If you transmigrated to the Tang, Song or Yuan dynasties right now, and tell them that in the future, two people who are thousands of miles apart can still instantaneously talk with each other, and people can go up to the moon, don’t you think they’ll also believe that’s straight out of science fiction?”
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“It’s not any different,” Qi Yan interrupted, evidently already a part of John-tongxue’s camp, “Technology can evolve, viruses can as well.”
“And art imitates life,” Qiao Siqi added, “How do you know for sure that those zombie films were all fabricated out of thin air, and have no basis in reality?”
“…” Vbcu Mfl ofia atja tlr lgbc klii jr j remmfrrbg bo rbmljilrw kjr jybea ab mgewyif.
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There was a nagging question inside Song Fei’s heart. From yesterday until today, he’d forced himself not to think about it, but right now, he couldn’t take it anymore: “So many people have died already, surely some word of this should’ve spread outside, so why hasn’t anyone come to save us yet…”
There were some things that people were afraid to say out loud.
But, pretending everything was okay by not saying it was sometimes even more difficult to bear.
Qiao Siqi shook his head heavily: “If it really is a viral outbreak, the densely populated areas would’ve been the first to bear the brunt. I suspect that the source of infection in our school came from the city. Otherwise, where would we even go to look for a virus out in this wilderness?”
“So you mean someone in our school went out to the city, was infected with the virus without realizing it, then came back before it hit?” At this, Song Fei somehow thought of Xu Qiulei who he’d run into on the way to the exam.
Qiao Siqi: “It’s possible.”
“But that’s not right, ah,” Song Fei couldn’t figure it out, “Now we already know that the mutation occurs soon after being bitten, but it takes more than an hour to return to the school from the city even without traffic. How could it be possible to not show any signs of it until after returning to the school?”
Qi Yan narrowed his eyes: “Either that person got sick halfway through and infected other people, and that person or the people bitten by that person made it back to our school through whatever strange combination of circumstances, or…”
“The virus mutated within a short period of time,” Qiao Siqi finished.
Song Fei was watching this two-man show with mixed feelings: “Why do I feel like the two of you know everything and I’m the only idiot?”
At this time, the three people were facing each other, while their chairs had unknowingly scooted together at some point in time. Qiao Siqi raised a hand and patted Song Fei on the shoulder, then spoke in earnest, “You’ll be fine after you watch some more movies, like “Resident Evil”, “28 Weeks Later”, “Zombieland”, “Land of the Dead”, “Dawn of the Dead”, “The Return of the Living Dead”, “Braindead”, “Doghouse”, “Dead Snow”…”
“Thank you,” Song Fei interrupted him while still maintaining a smile, then turned to Qi Yan, “You also like these kinds of things?”
Qi Yan shrugged, and his eyes curved into a smile: “I can analyze things with my brain.”
Song Fei wanted to use a machine gun and go pewpew on these two guys.
Meanwhile, Qiao Siqi was over there still trying to advertise for Amway: “Actually, you really should watch them, you can learn quite a lot, but too bad my notebook is in my dorm room, otherwise I’d be able to give you a lesson right now…”
Song Fei’s expression collapsed, then he suddenly became curious: “Apart from being disgusting, what’s so fun about these kinds of films?”
Qiao Siqi thought for a while, then answered very seriously: “At first, I also felt nauseated, but after I’d watched a lot more, one day I suddenly felt, hey, it’s actually kinda cute, da!”
Song Fei’s ears automatically blocked out this very last adjective, as well as the ludicrous ending of his exclamation: “Since it made you feel nauseated, why’d you still insist on watching to the end!”
Qiao Siqi looked at him quietly, then sighed: “For someone in the jianghu, his body is no longer his own, ah.”
Song Fei frowned: “There’s one that can force other people to watch a film? ”
Qiao Siqi: “Of course.”
Song Fei: “What’s this jianghu called?”
Qiao-tongxue from the English program in the Department of Foreign Languages took a cigarette out from his pocket like he was performing a magic trick. There was no lighter, so he could only suck on it unlit, before he finally puffed out an invisible smoke ring—
“Fansubbing.”
After a detailed chat, it turned out that Qiao-tongxue and his group did horror films, and had an entire Blu-ray collection with both Chinese and English subtitles, which was quite a endeavor. Song Fei could only be sorry that he wasn’t blessed with the ability to accept these kinds of films, otherwise just Qiao-tongxue‘s hard-drive alone would be enough for him to enjoy for three to five years.
Seeing these two people go from chatting about films to chatting about donghua to chatting about bromance, and getting more and more enthusiastic, Qi Yan gave an unobtrusive snort, then spoke up: “Speaking of, I just happened to remember something…”
Song Fei and Qiao Siqi stopped very naturally, then turned to look at him simultaneously.
Qi Yan raised his arm and waved it in front of Song Fei: “I think I got this in the canteen. ”
Qi Yan’s sleeve was rolled up to his elbow, exposing a horrifying, two-inch long scratch on his forearm. It wasn’t deep, but there was exposed flesh, and the color of his blood was eye-piercing.
Qiao Siqi stood up with a teng and leapt on top of the farthest loft bed like a firework rocket.
Song Fei, however, had grabbed on to his arm, his brow furrowed deeply: “How’d you get that!”
The impact of this scene made Qiao- and Song-tongxue forget just one thing— listening on the side to the two of them chatting about bromance, before he just happened to remember his wounded arm, wasn’t this “just happened” a bit contrived?
Qi Yan just let Song Fei grab on to him as he wished. He liked the concern on the other person’s face. As for Qiao-tongxue over there, the farther he could leap away, the better: “While I was helping hold down a girl, it got scratched by her fingernails.”
Song Fei could feel that even his teeth were chattering: “A, a mutant?”
Qi Yan nodded.
Song Fei’s heart turned cold, and his mind went blank.
Qiao Siqi really wished he could take a snare pole and drag him over: “What’re you standing there gawking for, ah? He’s going to mutate!!!”
Thanks to Qiao-tongxue’s shout, the gears in Song Fei’s blank mind actually started to turn, and coupled with the scene of what was undoubtedly still the ever annoying Qi Yan that he was intimately familiar with, his heart fell back in place for the most part, and he turned around and choked out, “If he was going to mutate, it would’ve happened earlier, would it wait until now?”
Qiao Siqi was also perplexed. Without even mentioning his running back here or climbing up to the balcony or whatever, he himself had already gossiped away almost half an hour, and this Qi Yan had indeed not shown any signs of zombifying whatsoever.
“It should be saliva,” Qi Yan said suddenly, with confidence and certainty in his steady voice, “The virus should be in their saliva, but this virus can only be transmitted through blood. Their fingernails came in contact with my blood, no problem, their saliva came in contact with my skin, also no problem, but if their saliva comes in contact with our blood, we’ll mutate. So all the mutants have all been bitten before.”
Qiao Siqi tilted his head and contemplated carefully. This did appear to be the case.
“If you’re going to help hold someone down, then just help, what’d you roll your f*cking sleeves up for, ah!” As Song Fei’s heart settled down, his temper rose. Qi Yan’s clothes were completely intact, yet his arm had been scratched, so clearly his arms had been exposed during the fight.
Qi Yan tilted his head, his gaze pure and innocent: “Someone seems to have said to me before, that you have to roll up your sleeves when fighting to have the aura of a gentleman.”
Song Fei froze there, blushing and tongue-tied.
Qiao Siqi had already spotted the hints from the balcony embrace, and now he’d thoroughly confirmed it.
Sh!t, the situation was already f*cking like this, why were they still tormenting him like this!
“So what the heck should we do now?” Qiao Siqi asked. In the face of life and death, romance had to step aside.
This question was also something Qi Yan had been thinking about. As he ran from the canteen to the dormitories, he came to understand along the way that the school was already completely screwed. As for the teachers or the security guards, forget rescuing them, he estimated that their personal safety already wasn’t looking too optimistic. They were now trapped inside the dormitories. There were mutants outside, and not many rations inside. How to survive was the top priority.
“Achoo!”
Song Fei sneezed without warning. He rubbed his nose, his entire body feeling chilly for some reason. He looked up, and saw that the balcony sliding door had already been closed tightly, so logically, it shouldn’t have been this cold.
Qi Yan suddenly got up, walked to the windowsill and felt the radiator below it. It was ice-cold.
Song Fei came to a realization: “It’s stopped?”
Qi Yan nodded.
Sitting cross-legged on the loft bed, Qiao Siqi pitifully tugged a blanket over and covered his body with it, then despaired a little: “Looks like the outside isn’t doing that much better than us.”
If there was no longer any heating all of a sudden, there were two possibilities— the mutation had already spread to the nearby heating plant, or the disturbance from the mutations caused the supply of heating oil to be cut off. But if the oil supply had been cut off, the heating plant’s own oil reserves should’ve at least been able to last them for a period of time, and the heating shouldn’t have stopped so quickly, so it could only be the former.
“Is it really the end of the world?” Song Fei asked Qi Yan.
Qi Yan pondered for a short while, then slowly shook his head: “The water and electricity haven’t stopped yet, so it can’t really be considered the end.”
Qiao Siqi wasn’t as optimistic as him: “The virus will also spread there sooner or later.”
Qi Yan looked at him: “If we’re this far away from the city and were still hit by the viral outbreak, does it make sense for only the water plants and power plants to be spared?”
Qiao Siqi had already covered himself with the blanket until he’d turned into a tumbler doll: “What do you mean?”
Qi Yan said, “Water and electricity are the most basic human necessities. As long as the water and electricity don’t stop, the survivors still have a possibility of living on. A large-scale zombie tide outbreak is difficult to deal with, but if you concentrate your full forces on protecting the water plants and power plants, it’s not impossible to defend them.”
Qiao Siqi’s bleak face gradually lit up: “You mean…”
Qi Yan: “It’s not just the three of us that are fighting.”
Song Fei: “That goes without saying, we still have two dormitory buildings-worth of schoolmates in front of us.”
“…” The rising fervor that’d just been rekindled was disrupted by Song Fei, and Qi Yan didn’t even know whether he should be angry or laugh.
But Qiao Siqi had already regained his spirits, so he lifted his covers and jumped down: “Then now let’s plan a bit, ba, how should we deal with the current situation?”
Qi Yan casually grabbed a pencil and paper, thought about it for a little bit, then started to scribble shua shua shua—
1. Food supply.
2. Security measures.
3. Escape route.
These two, Qiao- and Song-tongxue, looked at those six words, and seemed to understand, but also didn’t seem to have a very deep understanding.
Qi Yan explained them one by one: “We’re trapped in the dormitories right now, just like a besieged city in a war. There’s no source of food, so even without the zombies coming in, it’ll already be game over for us, so we have to gather and store as much food from the other dorm rooms as possible. Additionally, the dormitories aren’t 100% safe, and no one can know for sure whether or not the zombies will further mutate. In the case they break down the door and enter, we need to have weapons to resist them with. Even if we can’t wipe them out, we’ll at least be able to defend ourselves against being bitten by them. Finally, if the dormitory buildings fall like the canteen, we need to plan out a back-up shelter, so once that happens, we can escape immediately.”
Song Fei: “…”
Qi Yan really enjoyed going on and on when expressing his own opinions. When they’d still been together, there’d been countless times when Song Fei had wanted to stuff a rag into the other’s mouth. It wasn’t until today, that he discovered that a Qi Yan who was going on and on could actually shine so brightly.
Qiao Siqi snatched the paper out of Qi Yan’s hands, and read it from top to bottom, then from bottom to top several times, and was finally overcome by the impulse to applaud him: “F*ck, coherent methodology, sound logic, Mt. Tai crumbles… er… collapses onto the face, yet there’s no change in expression. A talent, ah! ”
Qi Yan ignored him, and just looked at Song Fei fixedly.
Song Fei was still immersed in a feeling of “is this really my ex-boyfriend” disbelief, but after being stared at for such a long time, he met Qi Yan’s gaze, and immediately gave him two big thumbs-up, praising him sincerely: “Nice.”
The corner of Qi Yan’s lips twitched a bit, as though it wanted to climb up, but was clamped down by him in the end. There was only a tiny splash of joy in his eyes that couldn’t be restrained, the unbridled waves rolling and billowing at will.
Qiao Siqi ruthlessly flung the sheet of paper in his hands onto the ground, but this couldn’t assuage his anger, so he hopped on top and stomped on it 800 times— if he wasn’t bitten to death by the zombies, he’d be tortured to death by these insane displays of affection. It was too f*cking difficult for a single dog to live on in this world!
Author’s Chapter Summary:
The three heads hold a dormitory meeting, an academic tyrant plans for a rainy day!
The translator has something to say: commence Fight the Landlord (Science Edition) followed by 101 Ways to Sprinkle Dog Food Around the Zombie Apocalypse, ft. Single Dog Abuse
P.S. how apropos for 5/20 & 5/21.
Aww, Qi Yan is kinda cute! Seeking praise from his ex-boyfriend~~
Thank you for the chapter 💜💜💜
the best part is how ~pleased~ he was just with Song Fei’s lil thumbs-up + 1 word of praise… he was so jealous the entire time they were chatting away too
thanks for reading! (´,,•ω•,,)♡
Haha😂, thank you very much❤️❤️❤️❤️
their antics make me laugh so much… poor Qiao Siqi, he’s so done with room 440
thanks for reading! <3
QSQ, one of the first single dogs to suffer in the face of dog food in the apocalypse- RIP comrade
Thanks for the chapter!
i considered asking for more candle lightings but i think any more would either turn us into a fire hazard or a Bath & Body Works… silent condolences to him instead
thanks for reading! ♡(｡- ω -)
😂
They are literally spreading dog food in the Zombie Apocalypse 😂 . Poor Qiao Siqi has to witness everything firsthand.
Thanks for the chapter
i like how Qiao Siqi’s just tryna stay on topic but he’s being forced to witness Qi Yan over there play spiderman, flirt, and make eyes at Song Fei all day long… too much, ah, too much…
thanks for reading!
Thanks for the chapter <3
thanks for reading! <3
I guess they can be happy that they have the more classic zombies stumbling around there. But as they said, who knows if they will mutate further.
That Xu Qiulei was mentioned again. I wonder if he plays a bigger role lol Since his behavior was strange.. hmmm…
Oh, he mentioned Zombieland and Dead Snow, but why not Shaun of the Dead? xDD Nevertheless, good choices >3
Thx for the ch ٩(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )و
i was wondering where Xu Qiulei even went to get infected. shouldn’t he have been studying for that exam like everyone else? he even mentioned his clothes were weirdly dirty like he’d been rolling around in dirt
im also kinda sad “The Walking Dead” wasn’t mentioned but perhaps he was focusing on movies
thanks for reading! (ฅ’ω’ฅ)
Maybe we will get answers or that Xu guy really is just an unimportant role.
Well, there’s so much zombie stuff out there. But it surprises me a bit that TWD isn’t mentioned. Isn’t it really well known? (Dead Snow surprised me too.)
i feel like a new zombie apocalypse movie/show comes out every year or so haha but i did think TWD was very well known too. QSQ is an entire mood tho i also love horror movies but i also cant fall asleep after the serial killer ones~
Thanks for the chapter <3
thanks for reading! <3
Anyway…. if my man can’t climb a building for me, he ain’t my man no more!!!!
hahaha, it’s true, standards have def risen! (en, but if i combine how much mine have risen thanks to all the fandoms im in and novels ive read…. hmmmmmmmmmm) Spiderman or no man!
Thank you for the chapter 🙏
Yes, it’s really difficult to live as a single dog. The malice of the world, is hard to bear. [trying hard not to laugh]