Chapter 47: Delivery Service (Princes and Princesses, Please Follow)

Outside the safety door, Chongzi’s face instantly shed its pain and sycophancy the moment the door shut, replaced by venomous malice; enduring the agony of shattered bones, he muttered to Xiangge, who lay on the ground.

“Xiangge, brother did everything he could to bring you here. You’re dead now—don’t drag me down. Do me one last favor: use your blood to lure those things over, kill this bunch of bastards, and that’ll be your revenge. Isn’t that thoughtful of me? Hehe…”

As he muttered, Chongzi’s face twisted grotesquely as he rubbed his hand across Xiangge’s face, then smeared the blood thickly onto the eighth-floor safety door. Even after seeing the blood-slicked panel, he felt it wasn’t enough—considering whether to smear more on the wall.

“You fucking bastards, you think you can run wild? You broke my arm—I’ll take your lives!”

Chongzi smeared the blood with wild excitement. He knew zombies struggled with stairs, but no matter how slow, they’d eventually climb up—he already imagined them tearing into Zhang Su and the others.

“Oh? Planning to draw talismans to curse us, or wards to protect us?”

Chongzi stood halfway up the eighth floor when he suddenly noticed the sealed safety door had been pushed open—Zhang Su leaned against the frame, smirking at him, while two cold gazes stared from behind him.

“I, I… I…”

Chongzi fell straight onto his ass, terrified.

He never imagined they’d turned back!

By experience, Zhang Su and the others should’ve been happily counting supplies—why would they bother coming out to deal with him?

So strange…

“Did you two see that? This is human nature! The danger from zombies is obvious—but human evil catches you off guard!”

Zhang Su turned slightly to speak to the two behind him.

“Die!”

Chongzi knew he couldn’t plead his case—he was utterly insane. He hurled a nearby wooden board at Zhang Su, jumped to his feet, and bolted upstairs.

Thud.

Zhang Su sidestepped the board, stopping Zheng Xinyu from rushing after Chongzi. Listening to Chongzi’s footsteps, he climbed the stairs slowly, whistling a calm, melodic tune.

As dusk fell, the whistle echoed through the blood-smeared stairwell, eerily haunting.

Chongzi fled frantically upward; hearing the cold whistle behind him, his bladder tightened—as if it were a death knell, or the grin of a demon lord from the netherworld.

“Roof, go to the roof—then I can reach Building Two! Yes, yes!”

Thinking fast, he ran faster—but tripped from lifting his foot too low. Ignoring the pain everywhere, he didn’t even groan—just got up and kept running.

When Chongzi gasped his way to the door leading to the roof, he saw a solid iron lock—his heart sank.

“Fuck, shit, damn it!”

He tugged at the lock—unmoving. Frustrated and desperate, he slammed his body against the door—but his frail frame couldn’t budge it. The door stood firm.

“Calm down, calm down—there must be another way, there has to be! I can’t just wait to die—I won’t die! Fuck, damn it!”

Chongzi chattered nervously, but the whistle grew closer—through the stairwell gaps, he could even see silhouettes ascending. Panic nearly swallowed him whole.

“Right—the elevator!”

Chongzi turned his gaze to the twelfth-floor safety door, his eyes sharpening—he suddenly remembered that Unit One’s elevator had stopped at the twelfth floor. He and Xiangge had debated whether to take it when they came up.

He’d forgotten one crucial detail: municipal power was cut. The neighborhood’s emergency generator had kept the elevator running, but only for under an hour—by the time Xiangge died, the elevator’s power was already gone.

“Ha! Heaven won’t let me die! You bastards, just wait!”

Chongzi’s face twisted into a cruel grin. He leapt down five floors at once, landing on the twelfth floor with two jumps. He sneered coldly at the stairwell corner, flung open the door, and charged inside.

But the moment Chongzi crashed into the twelfth floor, he froze.

He couldn’t see if the elevator was there—because a horde of zombies blocked his view.

Their skin was grayish-blue, eyes crimson, their bodies emitting a faint stench of decay after days without food. Their teeth clicked, throats rattled with phlegm, low growls rumbling.

The visceral assault on sight, sound, and smell left Chongzi staring, frozen, at the zombies mere feet away—he pissed himself instantly.

The seven or eight zombies, aimlessly wandering the twelfth floor, suddenly sensed fresh meat. Their savage instincts surged—they lunged toward the safety door, claws outstretched.

“Ahh…”

A terrified scream rang out—but before he could turn and push the door, the zombies pounced and dragged him down.

Thud.

His upper body slammed onto the floor, his gaze catching Zhang Su and the others just reaching the eleventh-floor landing.

“Save me!”

Chongzi reached toward Zhang Su as if he were salvation—but a powerful force yanked him into the corridor.

The safety door slowly closed. The piercing scream didn’t last long. Crimson blood seeped from the crack, replaced only by faint chewing sounds.

Zhang Su reached the twelfth floor, relocked the safety door. His superior hearing let him clearly hear the zombies tearing out organs, chewing, even swallowing—it made him feel nauseated.

He gave a hand signal to the two women, and they headed downstairs together.

Zheng Xinyu and Zhong Xiaoshanyi wore heavy expressions, their emotions tangled.

Sometimes you know the right thing to do—but you still can’t bring yourself to do it. Even if you do it, you still feel something inside…

That was exactly how they felt now.

Having seen Xiangge’s brutality and Chongzi’s deceit, they knew letting Chongzi go was letting a tiger return to the wild—but actually forcing him to die still left them with a sliver of guilt.

“Eliminate evil completely. In this fucked-up world, human evil grows infinitely. If you still handle things the way you did before, you’ll lose your lives!”

Standing halfway up the eighth floor, Zhang Su stared at the blood-smeared wall, his face grim.

“C-can I borrow your axe?”

Zheng Xinyu pointed weakly at Zhang Su’s axe, voice trembling.

“Scrape off all the wall plaster. Otherwise, you might attract zombies. Clean the door too. Toss the corpse downstairs—pile it with the zombies’ bodies!”

Zhang Su handed the axe to Zheng Xinyu, showing no intention to help.

“Xinyu-jie, don’t blame Shu-ge. I think… his way of thinking really fits this world.”

Zhong Xiaoshanyi saw Zheng Xinyu listening to the sounds upstairs while carefully scraping the wall—her heart ached, so she stayed to help her clean the blood-soaked plaster.

Zheng Xinyu paused slightly, sighed, and said: “Shanshan-jie, I’m not blaming Shu-ge. I’m angry at myself—I knew what to do, but I couldn’t do it. I almost brought disaster on everyone.”

As she spoke, her eyes welled with tears. She worked faster, scraping away the bloodied plaster—swish, swish, swish—chunks fell to the floor.

(End of Chapter)