Chapter 29

Playing cards was a bit troublesome for Xue Ling, who was now a zombie.

First, her fingers were stiff and slow to bend, making fine movements difficult.

Playing cards are very thin and slippery, so it is much harder for a zombie to hold all the cards and then select and play them compared to using a pen to tap on a tablet.

If she wasn’t careful, the cards would scatter from her hand, and she often struggled to pick out one or more cards accurately.

Secondly, the people playing cards with her were not human beings.

Xue Ling was already in such a miserable state, but Wen Jiuze, sitting opposite her, still wanted to look at her cards. He was struggling to pick up the cards that had fallen on the ground. When Xue Ling realized her cards were being looked at, she glared at him.

Angrily, she put the cards down and wrote on the writing board: “Are you human?”

She slapped the writing board.

Wen Jiuze turned the cards in his hand like he was performing a magic trick and shrugged. “Oh, woof woof.”

Then he threw all the cards in his hand and announced, “I win.”

Xue Ling: “…”

Xue Ling stopped playing cards and began playing with Wen Jiuze, which was much easier for her.

In the end, this deck of cards became a prop for Wen Jiuze to play poker and darts out of boredom, and he scattered them all on the road.

But playing cards seemed to spark some inspiration in Wen Jiuze.

He got a set of flying chess from someone in the camp and invited Xue Ling to play with him.

Xue Ling was too bored. Although she felt this guy was definitely up to no good, she still wanted to play.

She was much more skilled at rolling the dice, and although moving the flying chess pieces was slow, fortunately, Wen Jiuze wasn’t in a hurry to urge her and just waited for her to move at her own pace.

Everything went well at first. When her red chess piece was about to reach the finish line, Wen Jiuze suddenly knocked her piece back to its starting point, forcing her to start all over again.

Xue Ling: “…”

Well, that’s how flying chess works. It’s easy for others to send your pieces back home. That’s fine, she could just try again.

She was not at all surprised that Wen Jiuze would do this. Haha!

She almost got fooled by his relaxed demeanor, thinking he didn’t want to cause any trouble today.

Xue Ling then focused intently, keeping an eye on all of her and Wen Jiuze’s pieces, calculating whether hers were in danger of being sent back home.

Her second piece was sent home, and then her third…

While the objective for others playing flying chess is to get all their pieces to the finish line, Wen Jiuze had a different goal. He aimed to send Xue Ling’s pieces home.

Xue Ling was furious. She switched her focus and tried to send Wen Jiuze’s piece back home. However, when she knocked it back, Wen Jiuze didn’t care at all and continued to obstruct her. He was playing a strategy of hurting the enemy by a thousand while harming himself by eight hundred.

Wen Jiuze rolled a six, sending Xue Ling’s last piece home again, leaving four of her pieces neatly at the starting point.

“Alright, we can start from scratch again,” Wen Jiuze said with a smile.

Xue Ling looked down at her clenched fist, feeling the frustration rising within her.

Wen Jiuze asked, “What’s wrong, Ling? Hurry up and continue from ‘Ling’.”

When Xue Ling lunged at him with her fists clenched, Wen Jiuze almost instantly pressed down on the stone beside him and jumped several meters away.

The two were sitting under a tree by the roadside, playing their game. The area around them was open, and with Wen Jiuze’s agility and quick reactions, Xue Ling couldn’t catch him.

Frustrated, Xue Ling turned around twice, grabbed her chess piece, and tossed it into a nearby ditch.

Still angry, she fell forward and lay on the ground. Since no one was around, she dug several trenches in the soil before her.

Seeing that she had stopped chasing him, Wen Jiuze casually walked back and squatted not far away. “You are getting more and more angry,” he remarked.

“Roar!” Xue Ling let out a terrible zombie cry.

“Although I don’t understand, I know you’re swearing like crazy,” Wen Jiuze said, trying to persuade her to get up. “Okay, okay, we’re just playing a game. I promise I won’t hit your pieces again.”

Xue Ling picked up a handful of dirt and threw it at him, but Wen Jiuze’s reflexes were quicker than his thoughts, and he dodged it instantly.

The zombie that had just raised its head lay back down, seeming unwilling to get up again.

Becoming a zombie really brought out her true nature, and now she was as angry as a child.

Wen Jiuze found her amusing for a while, but then suddenly said nervously, “Hurry up, get up! There are so many ants crawling on you!”

Xue Ling stood up immediately, frantically checking herself.

When she didn’t find any ants and saw Wen Jiuze laughing, she realized she had been tricked.

Two years ago, when Xue Ling was a zombie wandering on an endless road, she had considered stopping.

Coincidentally, she found a hole dug on the roadside. She lay down and discovered it was just the right size for her.

She rested peacefully in the pit for three days, hoping that a kind-hearted person would pass by and cover her with soil.

But no one came by, only many ants did.

When she realized this, she jumped out of the pit, slapped her body, and soaked in water for a while.

From that day on, no matter where she lay down, she couldn’t stay there long and would often get up and move around to avoid ants crawling on her.

She couldn’t stand it if they crawled into her nostrils or mouth.

These little creatures rarely crawled on living beings but were very rude to corpses.

Wen Jiuze’s casual threat surprised him with her strong reaction. After a long moment of laughter, she still searched her body in disbelief, rummaging through her clothes and touching her hair.

At first, he thought it was funny, but gradually, he began to understand.

Why was she so nervous?

After checking her body, Xue Ling found no ants and angrily kicked him.

She took the writing board and solemnly declared, “You can’t scare me with ants!”

“I’d really be mad!”

To show Wen Jiuze the seriousness of the situation, she decided to scare him back. “I was almost eaten by a lot of ants before!”

Wen Jiuze held the writing board and stared at the words. The smile on his face vanished completely.

After that, he stopped playing those little games with Xue Ling, avoided teasing her, and hardly spoke at all.

At first, Xue Ling was satisfied with this change, feeling that her warning had made an impact.

However, one or two days were fine, but three or four days passed, and he wore a blank expression, driving in silence as if lost in thought.

Xue Ling wasn’t used to him being so quiet.

Realizing that her earlier comments must have hurt him and made him depressed, she felt speechless.

The things he cared about were strange. No matter how angry she got and scolded him, he didn’t seem to care at all. If they fought, he wouldn’t take it to heart. He was so thick-skinned.

She tried to talk to him nicely, but that only made things worse.

Was it really just because of the phrase, “I was almost eaten by ants”?

Could it be that he had imagined many miserable situations and it made him uncomfortable for days?

Usually, when Xue Ling and Wen Jiuze got angry, it was just a momentary outburst, and the tension passed quickly.

But Wen Jiuze’s moodiness lasted several days.

Xue Ling opened her tablet and began to watch a collection of jokes she found funny.

She, a zombie who couldn’t laugh, was almost dying of laughter, while Wen Jiuze beside her didn’t seem interested in laughing at all.

Xue Ling: “…” You’re not even laughing. Aren’t these jokes funny?

At night, Xue Ling was washing up in the tent.

The temperature had dropped recently and it was colder at night, so Wen Jiuze had boiled some hot water for her to wash with.

Halfway through, Wen Jiuze lowered his head and entered the tent. Rolling up his sleeves, he said, “I’ll help you.”

This wasn’t the first time Xue Ling had asked him for help, so after a moment of hesitation, she handed him the towel.

Wen Jiuze invited her to sit on his lap and gently wet a towel to help wipe her down. When the warm towel touched Xue Ling’s delicate back, he suddenly paused.

Xue Ling felt his head resting against her back, his breath brushing against her skin.

He held her close and spoke in an especially gentle voice, “What does it feel like to be a zombie? Is it unbearable?”

“Would you like to be free?”

Xue Ling was startled by his overly gentle, even slightly unsettling words, and she almost turned to look at him in horror.

Could it be that he thought her life as a zombie was so miserable that he wanted to grant her a quick death?

She slapped his arms around her. No! Don’t scare zombies like this!

Honestly, being a zombie wasn’t all that bad. While she had considered the idea of “just burying it,” upon further reflection, she realized there were benefits to being a zombie.

Xue Ling recalled Wen Jiuze’s decisiveness in chopping off zombies’ heads on the road and shuddered. She regretted not being able to speak and persuaded him not to act impulsively!

Wen Jiuze rubbed his nose against her back, raised his head, and saw the fear in her eyes. For the first time in days, he smiled.

“What are you afraid of? I’m just asking, I won’t do anything.”

Xue Ling looked at him with lingering doubt for a long time, almost wanting to ask him to swear he wouldn’t. She gently patted his chest, still feeling a bit frightened.

Wen Jiuze helped her wash and comb her hair.

While Xue Ling absentmindedly held her writing board, she prepared to have a conversation with him.

She wrote for a long time, focusing on the theme: “Encouraging people to cherish (zombie) lives.”

—Just think of her as a sick person with an infectious disease, forced to live alone. Although she faced some difficulties and endured the pain of her illness (mostly hunger), she couldn’t just decide to die because she was sick, right?

There’s no case where a patient hasn’t given up yet, but the family thinks it’s too painful to watch and then kills the patient, right?

Wen Jiuze finished reading what Xue Ling had written in thirty minutes within just three seconds.

“Yes, what you wrote makes a lot of sense, much more reasonable than those cliché articles.” He said this while combing her hair.

Xue Ling felt that his attitude was dismissive.

They couldn’t let him avoid treatment any longer!

She took out the bag of psychiatric medication, picked out a pill, and offered it to Wen Jiuze.

If Xue Ling hadn’t been afraid of accidentally hurting him, she would have stuffed the medicine directly into his mouth.

Holding the pill to his lips, Wen Jiuze was too indifferent to refuse. He took it and swallowed it down with a sip of water, saying, “This medicine isn’t as effective as you think. It’s unlikely to make people happy. In most cases, it’s just a placebo.”

If taken for a long time, it could lead to a fate similar to his mother’s. It would keep her spirit on the verge of collapse while worsening her physical condition. Beyond that, it would be useless.

Not long after taking the pill, Wen Jiuze suddenly frowned and got off the chair.

Xue Ling heard him vomiting.

After quickly rinsing his mouth, he returned and leaned back in his chair, saying, “Doctor Xue, you can’t treat a living horse like a dying one.”

Xue Ling touched the medicine box and carefully read the densely written instructions. After some time, she found the dosage: half a tablet at a time. It was such a small pill that she had assumed one tablet was the minimum unit.

Had she accidentally given him too much, causing him to vomit?

She flipped through the instructions, feeling a little guilty, and noted that vomiting and nausea were listed as potential side effects.

It could also be a normal reaction to the medication!

Though Wen Jiuze didn’t blame her, he seemed uncomfortable sitting there.

Xue Ling cautiously touched him and handed him some water.

Wen Jiuze looked at her, took the drink, and Xue Ling raised the writing board: “Are you angry?”

“Why would I get angry about such a trivial thing?” He chuckled, closing the lid on the kettle and setting it aside.

Xue Ling wrote, “It’s my fault. I won’t force you to eat next time.”

She felt guilty. Although her face was pale, stiff, and expressionless, one could vaguely see her former self.

Her reaction was reminiscent of when she had first impulsively kicked him.

He had been angry just before she kicked him, but once he realized he had hit someone, guilt and fear flashed across his face.

There was clear fear in his eyes as he stood there, lost and uncertain, like a child caught in trouble awaiting a scolding from an adult.

She had hit him, but in the end, she was the one who scared herself.

What was the big deal?

Wen Jiuze was not known for his patience, and the environment he grew up in had accustomed him to violence.

But seeing Xue Ling’s expression, he couldn’t stay angry with her. Instead, he felt afraid of scaring her. He instinctively put on his usual nonchalant smile and said lazily:

“You even hit me, so you can’t let go of others who make you angry.”

This was a phrase he often used during that period.

When Xue Ling punched him in the chest, he would rub his chest and say with a smile, “You dare to hit me, so don’t be afraid of others.”

Perhaps the beatings made her braver, and she gradually began to stand up for herself.

After being apart for too long, she started to feel scared again.

Wen Jiuze closed his eyes and whispered, “What are you afraid of? Didn’t I promise you I wouldn’t be angry with you?”

Xue Ling: “…”

Is this true? When did she agree to that? How come she doesn’t remember?