Chapter 179: Zombie Siege Practice
When Tang Xinjue received the call for the second time, she was climbing over the school wall.
As they had expected before, as if specifically meant to block students from passing through, the main gate area connecting the dormitory area and the teaching area was filled with unprecedented prosperity and liveliness, with nearly half the school’s zombies throwing a party here, forcibly blocking the place into a rush-hour subway.
To go pick up Zhang You, climbing over the wall became the only choice.
“Hello? Xinjue?”
Zheng Wanqing’s voice was hidden amid the faint sound of falling into the grass.
She sounded quite happy on the other end of the phone: “Good thing I didn’t leave the medical building directly, otherwise I wouldn’t have encountered those two! They gave me your contact information… Right, where are you now?”
Tang Xinjue briefly judged her location and, after giving her instructions, asked: “Where are you?”
Zheng Wanqing was in high spirits: “Oh, I’m in a room on the third floor of the medical building. There’s a student stronghold here, and they’re chasing me outside!”
Tang Xinjue: “…”
“It doesn’t sound like a good thing. Do you need help?”
“No need, I’ll just jump out the window and find you when the time comes. It’s just that there are two other students here, and their current situation is a little complicated.”
Zheng Wanqing quickly recounted what had just happened.
She had slipped into the stronghold mainly because she wanted to find a telephone. Only after finding one did she remember that the school had already lost power. She happened to encounter two students who claimed to know Tang Xinjue, so she conveniently rescued them from the stronghold and, along the way, snatched two mobile phones.
According to her, the combat ability of the stronghold organizers could practically be ignored. It was only after these people discovered that even calling all their helpers together was no match that they secretly brought several syringes out from the second floor and injected the “helpers” with them.
“That stuff is like a stimulant, but strangely so. One tube is red and one is black. The red one is injected into their own people, and the black one is used to inject us.”
Zheng Wanqing had not been injected, but the two students she rescued had not been spared. She took the two of them and temporarily hid in a room, personally witnessing the process of them going from painful convulsions to their bodies gradually becoming zombie-like.
Tang Xinjue could hear that there was not only Zheng Wanqing’s voice coming through the receiver, but also the banging against the door and painful groans.
The stronghold students who had been injected with the red injection not only went berserk and had their strength surge, they also almost completely lost their sense of pain and danger. Zheng Wanqing complained that if the virus turned people into dead zombies, then the red injection turned people into “living zombies,” a kind of monster that only knew how to obey and attack.
How could this kind of drug appear in the hands of ordinary students?
“Another injection…” Tang Xinjue’s thoughts stirred.
In the East Gate cafeteria stronghold, what the organizers forced students to inject was also a kind of black liquid.
They were both controlled by a small number of organizers who controlled hundreds of students, their attitudes cold and sinister. It did not look like genuine protection, but rather exploitation and squeezing, yet between the two sides there was also competition and hostility…
Zheng Wanqing suddenly gave an “Eh”: “The zombie mutations of these two seem to have stopped?”
But the frenzied howls and impacts outside the door were still continuing. It should not be because the time limit of the drug had expired.
As Zheng Wanqing described it, she moved closer to observe and discovered that the two people’s bodies had stopped convulsing, their breathing had not disappeared either, and their vital signs were clearly becoming stable.
Although the rotting and wounds were still horrifyingly visible on their skin, she could feel that the aggressive mutation from just now had failed, and the two people before her had returned to normal.
“Ugh, vomit—”
The girl with a hairstyle similar to Guo Guo’s was the first to wake up. The moment she opened her eyes, she began vomiting, digging at her throat and vomiting out a large amount of dirty blood and broken tissue, while her complexion instead recovered considerably.
She raised her head blankly: “I, I’m alive again?”
After only a few seconds, the other male student went through the same process. Zheng Wanqing immediately decided: “As long as you’re awake, that’s enough. Let’s go first!”
The sofas, tables, and chairs braced against the iron door were already shaking incessantly, and the door lock was in an even more precarious state.
She quickly climbed out the window to the floor below, then caught the two people as they jumped down one after another. Just as she was preparing to leave, she stopped because of something Tang Xinjue said.
Tang Xinjue said: “Those injections are very likely related to the zombie virus. They’re using students as culture dishes.”
Zheng Wanqing was startled. She remembered what she had just seen. The students staying on the first floor were basically all listless, with abnormal abscesses spreading over their bodies.
This was the medical building. There were large quantities of food, water, and medical supplies on the second and third floors, but not a single bandage had been used on these students. On top of that, there were groups upon groups of zombies gathering abnormally outside the building…
Under the bewildered gazes of the male and female students, Zheng Wanqing turned around and walked to the front entrance of the medical building, then brought the shovel down hard!
On the other side, Tang Xinjue crossed the road intersection and successfully met up with the approaching Zhang You.
Before Zhang You had even caught her breath, she heard the enormous bang from Tang Xinjue’s phone.
“That is, Wanqing smashing the door?”
She did not even need to guess, because Guo Guo would not make this much noise.
Following it came the sound of the main door opening, and after a burst of commotion, Zheng Wanqing’s voice became clear again:
“I didn’t smash the door. I just knocked twice, to remind them that those lunatics are on the third floor right now. If anyone wants to run, they can run.”
As for how those students chose, that was their own business.
“Oh, right, I also brought two people out. You can study them later… Hey, you two, hurry up and follow me.”
She reminded the two people behind her.
The two students ran until they were panting: “But big shot, you’re too fast…”
They wanted to follow too, but they simply could not catch up!
Although they were exhausted half to death, the benefit was also obvious—the stronghold’s pursuers had been left far behind by them, and soon they disappeared from sight.
Following Tang Xinjue’s directions, Zheng Wanqing took roads with fewer zombies and went around. The two groups finally met inside a supermarket.
“As long as everyone is fine.”
Zhang You checked them over and confirmed that none of the three, Zheng Wanqing included, showed signs of infection.
The unlucky male and female students who had suffered all morning were respectively named Yang Hang and Sun Qian. Horrifying ulcers caused by the black drug still remained on their bodies. They themselves had not noticed while busy escaping, and when they suddenly saw them, they were almost scared unconscious:
“I’m going to die, I must be going to die…”
Yang Hang collapsed onto the ground, as if he could already see himself about to become a zombie.
Sun Qian was much calmer. She trusted Tang Xinjue and the others’ judgment more. Moreover, she had experienced the feeling of nearing death, yet now she seemed even healthier than she had been in the morning.
“I also feel that I don’t have any symptoms of infection.”
She thought for a moment and said firmly: “Many infected people develop symptoms within an hour, and the more intense the exercise, the faster the onset. If the two of us were infected, we should have mutated while running just now.”
Yang Hang’s eyes were blurred with tears: “Really? But even if we didn’t die, our faces are ruined.”
Sun Qian was speechless: “…Then next time you can go die, and I’ll ruin your face for you, okay?”
“When you were at the East Gate student stronghold, what abnormal reactions occurred each time you were injected with the drug?” Tang Xinjue suddenly asked.
Sun Qian was startled. After thinking for a moment, she hesitantly said: “Actually, after getting the injection, many of us couldn’t remember much. We only remembered that our whole bodies hurt a lot, we convulsed, couldn’t breathe, and our heads were confused as if we were dreaming. It lasted for more than an hour, roughly.”
“No skin ulceration, no zombification?”
The girl shook her head: “No.”
The two black injections were clearly different varieties.
According to her supplementary memories, the East Gate cafeteria stronghold and the medical room stronghold were also completely different. The group of organizers at the cafeteria did not rely on injections to control the students. They were numerous and used violent methods, while the organizers here at the medical building used more insidious methods.
For ordinary students, the level of terror was about the same.
Tang Xinjue continued asking: “Would it produce hallucinations? Not limited to after the injection.”
This time Sun Qian thought for even longer before answering: “It seems… yes?”
She and Yang Hang looked at each other.
Yang Hang sniffled: “Every time after I get that injection, I have a feeling that I’m already dead, and am lying on the sports field basking in the sun.”
Sun Qian tightly furrowed her brows. She had originally found it somewhat difficult to say. But when she looked into Tang Xinjue’s eyes, that suppressed fear seemed to be inexplicably diluted again, and she could not help saying:
“Sometimes when I dream, I dream that I’ve completely died. Not turned into a zombie, but died in a way that’s even more terrifying and even more despairing than being a zombie…”
She suddenly shuddered, her expression becoming blank again, unable to remember the remaining content.
Across from the two, Tang Xinjue, Zhang You, and Wanqing exchanged glances, seeing the same guess in each other’s eyes.
Tang Xinjue’s voice sank slightly: “What kind of clothes do the organizers of the East Gate stronghold usually wear?”
Yang Hang and Sun Qian did not understand: “They all wear more or less the same thing, white with red stripes, like sportswear.”
The three from 606: !
At this moment, the accounts of the two students overlapped with Guo Guo’s prophetic hallucination, pointing toward the same answer that was about to emerge—
The organizers of the East Gate cafeteria stronghold were the executors of that sacrifice!
Then what about the organizers of the medical building? What position did they play in this dungeon? Before the three of them had time to continue asking, Tang Xinjue suddenly caught a faint sound. She raised the shovel and blocked it in front of the others.
“Someone's here.”
The five people became tense at the same time and carefully observed their surroundings. In the silent air, that sound became increasingly clear and increasingly close—finally stopping behind a shelf.
After a burst of rustling, the entire shelf was actually pushed apart from the middle toward both sides, revealing the space behind it.
And behind the shelf, a group of students covered in dust and dirt cautiously crawled out. The moment they saw Tang Xinjue and the others, their expressions were even more horrified than Yang Hang’s:
“There are zombies, run!”
The leader turned around without hesitation and ran inward, but forgot that a whole group of people was squeezed behind him. Immediately, those behind stepped on the shoes of those in front, while those in front got stuck at the crotch, and like a row of dominoes, one fell onto another, collapsing into a messy heap amid shouts and screams.
“Don’t panic, the zombies aren’t faster than us. We can make it back, once we return to the stronghold we’ll be safe! Don’t panic!”
The leader shouted until his voice was hoarse, completely forgetting that he was hanging at the very back of the crowd, unable to push the fallen companions in front of him no matter how hard he tried.
Tang Xinjue and the others: “…”
Did they look that much like zombies?
Yang Hang sniffed and tentatively said: “Um, classmates, we’re not zombies.”
The leader glanced at him and decisively turned around: “Your body is already zombified, who are you trying to fool! Everyone, run faster, once we get back to the stronghold we’ll be safe…”
“Stronghold?”
Tang Xinjue caught the word.
She remembered that besides the East Gate medical room stronghold and the cafeteria stronghold, there was also a third stronghold that had had the least presence up until now.
“You’re people from the Student Affairs Center?”
The author has something to say: ------
Fake stronghold: Peacefully guarding home without worrying about food or drink, the mutated Rong momo who injects needles
*容嬷嬷 (Róng Mómo) is a character from the famous 1998 Chinese TV drama 《还珠格格》 (My Fair Princess), the villainous palace maid/nanny who famously tortures characters by sticking needles into them. The needle scene became an iconic pop-culture reference in China.
Real stronghold: Collectively going out to grind, exhausted from hard work, the impoverished unlucky bastards
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