Chapter 48

Zhong Xiaoshan patted Zheng Xin on the back and said, "I really admire Brother Su for actually guessing that the skinny monkey would play dirty. By the way... Sister Xinyu, I haven't washed my hair in several days and it's itching terribly. How are you all handling that?"

Asked about other matters, Zheng Xin's mood improved slightly. She said, "I'm the same. I just use wet wipes to wipe it down. There's no other way; water is too scarce."

"Sigh, I haven't been back in three or four days. My Popcorn must have run away..."

Zhong Xiaoshan curled her lip and picked up the iron wrench to help scrape the wall.

"Popcorn? Is that a little dog?" Zheng Xin asked curiously.

Zhong Xiaoshan seemed to recall some interesting memories, a smile appearing at the corner of her mouth as she nodded and said, "A big orange cat, over three years old."

"That's so nice..." Zheng Xin's face showed a look of longing, then she pouted and said, "I originally wanted to keep a pet dog too, but... the landlord, which is Brother Su, wouldn't let me!"

"Speaking of that... Sister Xinyu, what exactly was your relationship before? I can tell you two didn't sleep together before; your bedrooms were separate."

Zhong Xiaoshan asked curiously.

After sharing hardships, their relationship had grown much closer, and their conversation gradually delved into more private territory.

Zheng Xin didn't stop working, rolled her eyes, and said, "Zhang Su was the owner, and then he pretended to be a tenant to sublet with me. I didn't know at first and was manipulated by him in all sorts of ways. He's black-hearted and stingy; before this disaster broke out, he even wanted to raise my rent!"

"Pfft..."

Zhong Xiaoshan couldn't help but laugh out loud, then quickly covered her mouth and listened to the floor above. Only after confirming there was no movement did she continue, "You young people are really funny. You're so pretty; didn't he show any interest in you before?"

"He said he changes girlfriends every few months when he's out. Who knows? But he really never did anything inappropriate. I even suspected for a while that he was gay."

As she finished, Zheng Xin lowered her voice, a sly look appearing in her still-red eyes.

"Brother Su is so manly, there's no way he could be gay. Eh..."

Suddenly, Zhong Xiaoshan's expression turned serious. She frowned and said, "Sister Xinyu, have you noticed a phenomenon? Logically speaking, there should be quite a few people in this residential complex who keep pets, so why haven't we seen a single pet running around?"

Being a woman herself, she could fully accept Zhong Xiaoshan's jumping topic and immediately caught the rhythm. She frowned and pondered for a moment before saying, "Now that you mention it, it seems we really haven't seen any cats or dogs—alive, dead, or even turned into zombies. We haven't seen any!"

The two looked at each other, revealing expressions of confusion.

Sitting in the room, Zhang Su heard the two women's conversation and also frowned. The sky was gradually darkening, but he could still see clearly downstairs. He quickly sat by the window, pulled back the curtain, and looked. Sure enough, there wasn't a shadow of an animal. Recalling his experiences over the past few days, it seemed he hadn't seen any animals either.

"The dog belonging to the young woman downstairs hasn't barked either. Could it be that all the pets were bitten to death at the very beginning? Or is there some other reason..."

Just as he was pondering, Zhang Su saw Zhong Xiaoshan walk into the room. As expected, she told him about the discovery they had just made.

"I don't care if those cats and dogs died or ran away; I'm only worried about whether they might also turn into zombies. In any case, this is something that needs attention. Be careful in the future!"

Zhang Su said.

"Mm-hmm, that's what we were thinking too. Then... Brother Su, I'm going to go help Sister Xinyu."

"Mm, go ahead." Zhang Su nodded.

Zhong Xiaoshan gave a sweet smile and turned to walk out of the room.

While waiting for the two women to finish dealing with the wall plaster and the corpse, Zhang Su wanted to conduct a more intuitive test of his hearing, but found it difficult to quantify.

Human senses are all like this—whether it's hearing, taste, or smell. Even if there is an eye chart to measure vision, in actual practice, vision will undergo various changes due to environmental factors.

Zhang Su only used his phone to do a rough test. When separated by two doors, he could hear sounds played at three bars of volume, but he could no longer distinguish the content; he could only guess.

Finally, Zhang Su arrived at a vague range: if two people were having a normal conversation, it could probably penetrate three ordinary apartment walls and not exceed thirty meters. In a normal transmission environment, he could hear the sound of zombie footsteps scuffing the ground from about seventy or eighty meters away.

He didn't have a concrete concept of how much it had improved compared to before, but this ability gave him a full sense of security. Although he wouldn't have fallen for the trap even if he hadn't heard the plan of Chongzi and Brother Xiang in advance, dealing with it would have been more convoluted.

By the time Zhang Su had finished his research, Zheng Xin and Zhong Xiaoshan had finished their work outside and returned home. Only then did the three of them begin to carefully count their spoils.

"No wonder those two guys had the evil intention to rob us!"

Zheng Xin cleared the items from the black hiking backpack onto the floor one by one. There was almost no food or drink, just a bunch of miscellaneous odds and ends. It was clear that the two of them must have truly been at the end of their rope.

"So many homes are empty or have turned into zombies. They could have found something if they searched anywhere, yet they had to come and cause trouble for me..."

Zheng Xin said, feeling very depressed.

Zhang Su shook the empty bag. Although there was no food or drink, there were still some tools that could come in handy. After hearing Zheng Xin's words, he laughed: "In their minds, you were so easy to bully—much easier to bully than zombies."

"Hmph, let them know how tough we are. Now they don't even have a chance to regret it!" Zheng Xin clenched her fists. Things had reached this point, and she wasn't as afraid anymore; her own life was more important.

"This just... the disaster has only broken out for four or five days, and some people have already started doing evil. I really can't imagine what it will be like in the future."

Zhong Xiaoshan was worried. If it hadn't been for Zhang Su today, she and Zheng Xin would have suffered. The shift in mindset couldn't keep up with the changes in the situation.

"It's mainly because the disaster broke out too suddenly, without any warning. Anyway, ordinary people couldn't react in time. No one would store massive amounts of food at home, unless they were doomsday survival enthusiasts..."

Zhang Su shrugged and said: "Besides, those two didn't look like good guys. If I remember correctly, that Brother Xiang is a hoodlum. I saw him acting bossy with the toll collector at the night market before. People like this will do very well in a world where civilization has collapsed and legal constraints are gone, because his heart is dark enough!"

Zheng Xin looked at Zhang Su with a strange expression and said weakly: "The black-hearted Brother Xiang was killed by an even blacker-hearted guy..."

Zhong Xiaoshan's mouth curled up, and she quickly covered her mouth and laughed embarrassedly.

Zhang Su didn't mind Zheng Xin's teasing at all. He licked his lips and said: "A very good teaching tool. Using reality to teach you: from now on, don't trust anyone. I can tell you both very responsibly that even if you kill everyone you meet from now on, the ratio of wrongly killing good people will be less than one-tenth—no, one-twentieth!"

"I don't believe it... According to you, that means out of a hundred people, there are only five good ones?"

Zheng Xin was somewhat unwilling to believe that the future would become that cruel.

"Five good people is even a high estimate. But I didn't say the other ninety-plus are all bad people. Many people, according to the old way of saying it, are neutral. I prefer to call these guys fence-sitters. They know how to see which way the wind blows; they have no clear stance, and whoever they see as powerful, they will cling to!"

Zhang Su said indifferently.

Zheng Xin quickly said: "You... I think that's quite good, isn't it wise to follow the powerful?"

"You didn't understand what I meant. A fence-sitter doesn't just follow whoever is powerful; they follow whoever is strong. Once the boss has a problem, the fence-sitter will immediately betray them. If it were just a simple job change, that would be fine, but those fence-sitters will even kick someone when they're down. They are even more disgusting and worse than purely bad people!"

A look of disgust appeared on Zhang Su's face; he had been screwed over by such people before.

"You say we can't be good people, or we'll die miserably, and you also say we can't be fence-sitters who see which way the wind blows. Could it be that we have to become bad people like Brother Xiang and his group in the future?"

Zheng Xin asked, feeling somewhat lost.

"Haha..." Zhang Su suddenly laughed, then sighed: "That's right. In the future, we will become the people we hate. When starving, we will go and snatch food from the weak, but we will also dare to wield a blade against the stronger. To survive—this is my only belief, and I hope it is your only belief as well!"

"Brother Su, I'm the same as you. Surviving is my only belief!"

Zhong Xiaoshan had been listening silently and thinking silently until she stated her position at this moment.

Zheng Xin also nodded, saying with a hint of hesitation: "I don't care about good or bad; anyway, I want to live. I will remember what you taught me!"

That night, the three of them ate the only edible spoils—two bags of potato chips—to celebrate the counter-kill of the intruders. Added to the leftover snail rice noodles from noon, and paired with some high-calorie Snickers bars, all three of them ate their fill.

"Brother Su, it didn't get dark this early in Qincheng at the end of September before, did it?"

In the dim room, Zheng Xin sat in the position specifically used for observing the situation outside. The curtain was pulled open a small slit. She was fiddling with a trash bag in her hand; she would need to go to the bathroom in a moment.

"It's a cloudy day; it's normal for it to get dark a bit earlier."

Zhang Su was wiping his axe; he didn't like the wall dust sticking to it.

Zhong Xiaoshan, who was tidying up the dining table, chimed in: "The weather this year is very abnormal. I grew up in this part of Qincheng, and it has never been this cold in September. It's almost catching up to November..."

The darkness of the sky could be explained by the cloudy weather, but the low temperature had indeed exceeded the normal range.

"The zombie virus has already broken out, so a drop in temperature isn't strange. It's acceptable for it to be cold early, but let's hope it doesn't keep dropping—that would be unbearable!"

Zhang Su exhaled a puff of hot air, feeling that it was at most eleven or twelve degrees inside the room.

"It used to be so lively in the complex at this time."

Zheng Xin looked downstairs, leaned her head on Zhang Su's shoulder, and murmured: "At this time, kindergartens and elementary schools would have let out, and old people would be taking children downstairs to play. I used to be so annoyed by those kids running around and making noise; even wearing headphones couldn't block their screams. Now that I think about it, it was truly a kind of happiness."

The garden that was once happy and joyful had now become a gathering place for zombies to roam.

"Sigh... I used to go to the gym at Wanda every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday night, and then go for a spa. Now... hehe, I don't even know what day of the week it is!"

Zhong Xiaoshan shook her head with a bitter smile. A few days had passed, and the whole world had been turned upside down. Everything around her had changed; being able to survive was already a great stroke of luck.

It was already cold, and chatting about heavy topics made the temperature of the air seem to drop another two degrees. The best way to fight the cold was exercise—serious, proper exercise.

After resting for a while, Zhang Su began training with the two women. This was an unshakable item; the time was not fixed, but the intensity was as high as possible.

Whether during battle or in the process of training, Zhang Su did not treat Zheng Xin and Zhong Xiaoshan as women. In this shitty world, there was only the distinction between the living and the dead. If you want to survive, make yourself strong!

Zheng Xin and Zhong Xiaoshan naturally had this realization as well. They put away their delicacy and used all their might to exercise desperately.

When acting cute and coquettish cannot provide help for survival, women can also be very fierce, and sometimes, even more deceptive and dangerous.

In the pitch-black room, three hot bodies were panting heavily. If one didn't know the specific situation, one would definitely let their imagination run wild...

At the same time, Building 4, Unit 1, 902.

"Xiaoyu, be a good boy, eat your food."

Qin Ya placed the prepared instant noodles in front of a little boy. The boy was about seven or eight years old, and his bowl-cut hairstyle looked somewhat cute and silly, though he was dirty from head to toe.

On the table, a small birthday candle was burning tenaciously. The light from the candle, which was as thick as a chopstick, was weak; illuminating the dining table was already its limit.

Compared to the afternoon, Qin Ya's complexion had recovered slightly. After fulfilling his promise and finding the old captain's child, he was in a very good mood, and at the same time, he was increasingly grateful to the young man who had helped him lure the zombies away.

A single righteous act had directly saved two lives.

"No, I don't want to eat. Instant noodles taste terrible. Mom said these are junk food. I'm growing, I can't eat junk food!"

Liu Xuanyu shook his head stubbornly, then cast his gaze on the shriveled potato chip bag on the floor.

A bowl of instant noodles soaked in cold water was truly only so good. For Qin Ya, who had been hungry for two days, it was almost a delicacy, but Liu Xuanyu usually ate all kinds of fast food; how could he eat instant noodles that were hard to chew?

Facing Liu Xuanyu, Qin Ya felt a headache coming on. He wasn't married; how could he have imagined that a child would be so difficult to serve?

"Xiaoyu, you have to be good. There are many monsters outside now, and there isn't much food left. This isn't junk food; it's life-saving food. If you don't eat, you'll only go hungry. Does Xiaoyu want to be hungry?"

However, facing Qin Ya's threat, Liu Xuanyu was completely unmoved. He crossed his arms over his chest and turned his head away: "Hmph, Uncle Qin is a bad guy. If I'm hungry, I'm hungry; I'm not afraid!"

Under the bean-sized flame, a look of helplessness appeared on Qin Ya's face. Thinking about having to survive in the apocalypse with such a brat, he felt his future was bleak. He had to give him a little color...

"Didn't Xiaoyu say you wanted to find your mom and dad? If you don't eat your meal properly, then Uncle won't take you to find your mom and dad!"

"No, Uncle Qin promised me, you can't go back on your word!"

Apparently, this tactic was more effective than the previous threat. Liu Xuanyu immediately stopped being difficult.

Hehe, celebrating entering the third round of recommendations next week. Adding a chapter today, or maybe two, doubling the word count—4K+2K. Thanks for the support, fellow book friends.

(End of chapter)