Chapter 62

Everyone couldn’t help but stand up and gather by the door, trying to distinguish the sound of an approaching vehicle.

They were currently staying in the backyard of the Li family’s mansion. In front was a four-part courtyard with wing rooms on both sides, and at the back, a rear hall. The heavy wooden doors were closed, and tall walls surrounded them.

Previously, they had been living in the second courtyard, but after a while, too many zombies piled up outside the walls, allowing some of them to crawl into the yard.

They didn’t have enough weapons or manpower to clear the outside, so they had to retreat to the highest walled courtyard.

The square-shaped yard was paved with bricks and stones, with grayish-blue walls and an old, thick wooden door, enclosing a temporarily safe cage.

Inside, the most common sound heard every day was the constant growling of zombies wandering outside. Hearing it day and night had numbed the residents to it.

When reminded, the numbed nerves of the group were stirred, and slowly, they began to hear the sound of a vehicle—its approach growing closer. It wasn’t just their imagination!

“Someone’s coming!” a soldier exclaimed with excitement.

“We’re saved! Someone’s here to rescue us!” the young researcher cried with joy.

Anyone willing to enter an ancient city filled with zombies and no resources at this time was likely coming for them.

Whoever it was, it was still a glimmer of hope.

It was as if everyone had been injected with a dose of adrenaline. Two soldiers quickly brought a ladder to climb to the highest point of the wall.

The soldier who reached the top first, and then climbed onto the roof, quickly showed a look of surprise. He turned to shout down, “There really is a vehicle! I saw the headlights!”

At this point, no one bothered to remain quiet so as not to attract attention from the zombies around them. Standing on the roof, the soldier saw the headlights flickering in the alley, disappearing and reappearing. He hastily removed his clothes and waved them to signal, “Over here! We’re here!”

Xue Ling was actually a little lost. The roads in the ancient city were too winding.

The ancient city was full of real ancient architecture, not those fake ancient towns. The streets and houses all looked similar, and there were no shops on the streets, nor any landmarks to help with navigation.

She saw the figure waving the clothes from the rooftop, but because the medical vehicle was too large, it couldn’t get any closer to that person. It had to stop temporarily on the street outside the gate.

When Xue Ling got out of the car, a group of zombies eagerly approached, but soon lost interest and scattered.

She didn’t pay attention to these disoriented zombies and, carrying her backpack, went to knock on the big gate. The door was bolted from the inside, and only the growls of zombies could be heard behind it.

It seemed that the yard had been taken over by zombies, and she couldn’t enter through the main gate.

Xue Ling turned and carried her backpack into a narrow alley.

The soldier on the roof was Li Shixi. He saw the vehicle stop near the main gate and was so anxious that he almost jumped down to tell the person that the front yard was impassable because it was full of zombies—it was too dangerous.

However, he then saw a person getting out of the vehicle and walking toward the alley.

In the darkness, Li Shixi couldn’t see whether the person was male or female. He only saw that the person was holding a flashlight and walking through the alley, which was full of zombies.

Li Shixi’s mind briefly wondered, “Why is only one person here?” He then realized that this person was walking right through the zombie crowd!

None of the surrounding zombies attacked him. Occasionally, a zombie would block the path, but the person simply pushed it aside, and the zombie didn’t react.

The person just… walked through?!

Li Shixi stood there dumbfounded, watching this scene, wondering if he was dreaming, his hunger possibly causing hallucinations.

Xue Ling reached the wall and looked up, waving at the person on the roof.

Li Shixi snapped back to reality and repeatedly asked, “You! How… How did the zombies not bite you?! I mean, you just walked through all those zombies and…!”

He was so shocked that he couldn’t form a coherent sentence.

The people still waiting in the yard hadn’t seen the previous scene and kept asking what had happened.

Xue Ling took out a folding ladder and leaned it against the wall. She lifted her foot to climb up.

Li Shixi quickly moved to help her but was stopped when Xue Ling didn’t touch him. Instead, she extended a tablet to him, signaling for him to look.

Li Shixi didn’t quite understand. He took the tablet and saw a video with the face of one of his teammates on the cover.

It was one of the teammates who had gone out to seek help a long time ago!

He returned to the yard and watched the video with the others.

His teammate said they had found the Beizheng Base, but he was the only one left. However, he had brought back someone for rescue.

At present, the main rescue force couldn’t enter the city, so they had sent a special soldier to make contact with them, deliver some emergency supplies, and exchange information.

The teammate specifically emphasized that this special soldier was a zombie with retained intelligence.

Everyone watching the video was stunned: “?”

A zombie with intelligence?

Li Shixi suddenly understood. “No wonder! I saw him walk through the zombie crowd without being attacked! I was wondering why, and now it makes sense—he’s a zombie!”

The teammate in the video said, “Xue Ling is friendly. She’s an important soldier. Please don’t harm her.”

After watching the video, everyone turned to look at the person on the roof. Xue Ling was still waiting there, crouching at the edge.

“Are you really a zombie?” someone asked.

Xue Ling pulled off the mask she had been wearing to avoid scaring them, revealing a pale, ashen face.

It turned out it wasn’t “him,” but “her.”

She quickly adjusted her mask, placed her backpack on the wall, and signaled for someone to take it.

Two soldiers didn’t hesitate and stepped forward to take it.

Xue Ling tapped her tablet and read aloud the prepared question.

“How is Professor Ji Shiping doing?”

A slender, middle-aged woman with short hair quickly walked to the wall and said, “The teacher’s condition isn’t good. He needs treatment, but we’ve run out of medicine…”

Seeing her urgency, Xue Ling quickly reassured her, “There are many supplies in the medical vehicle. It’s temporarily impossible to bring it in, but I have some emergency medications in my bag. Let me see if they can be of use. If you need anything else, I’ll check the medical vehicle to see if we have it.”

Lin Shuyang hurriedly rummaged through the backpack, pulling out the first aid kit and opening it to check.

She went through everything without paying attention to anything around her, urgently returning to the house to administer the medicine to the teacher.

Soon, she came back out and quickly told Xue Ling what additional supplies were needed.

“Okay, I’ll go get it right away.” Xue Ling climbed down from the wall, neatly packed up the ladder to prevent zombies from climbing in.

She made three trips, not only bringing the necessary medicine but also a lot of food.

She noticed that the people in the courtyard were starving. Their faces were hollow, and their lips were cracked.

When she brought in a bag full of food and water, Li Shixi looked at Xue Ling and asked, “Do you want to come inside too?”

Xue Ling shook her head. Li Shixi heard the soldiers in the courtyard cheer, “So much delicious food!”

He glanced down, his eyes lighting up, and without another thought, squeezed into the crowd, eager to start eating.

Canned meat, canned fruit, jerky, biscuits, self-heating rice, bread, and the long-forgotten instant noodles all smelled so delicious that they made people’s stomachs ache.

There were glucose, energy drinks, dairy products, candies, and even vitamin supplements.

For a while, all that could be seen in the courtyard were people eating voraciously. Aunt Lin, who had been giving Professor Ji Shiping an IV, came out with red eyes and joined the group, focusing completely on eating.

The feeling of being full was so fulfilling and happy that it almost brought tears to their eyes.

When everyone finally finished eating, someone remembered, “Where is the person who brought us the food just now?”

Xue Ling was clearing the front yard of the Li family mansion.

Professor Ji Shiping’s condition was critical, and they needed to get him into the medical vehicle for treatment. However, it was impossible to carry him out, so they had to leave him at the gate.

Outside, the roads were open, and as soon as someone stepped out, zombies would come in waves.

So, it was necessary to bring the vehicle into the spacious courtyard, closing the door to hold out longer.

To do this, they first needed to clear the zombies in the yard.

Xue Ling had gone on several missions, so she was well-practiced at handling these tasks.

She climbed into the front yard first and dealt with the zombies there.

When Xue Ling shot at the zombies, she never missed—she got so close to the zombies that she shot them directly in the head. There was no chance of missing.

Her physical advantage made it easy for a beginner to be spot-on every time, and her teammates praised her as a sharpshooter.

If it weren’t for her rationality, Xue Ling might have gotten carried away.

Hearing the gunshots, the well-fed soldiers stood up.

“Is she clearing the zombies up ahead? Let’s go help.”

“Leave two people here to guard. The rest of us will go.”

“She just brought guns and bullets. Let’s all share them.”

Now that they were full and armed, the battle-hardened soldiers regained their strength and confidence.

Xue Ling waved at them when she saw they were coming to help but moved away slightly to avoid getting too close.

These people had been living under constant pressure and danger. She didn’t want to cause them any unnecessary stress.

The group worked together, and by dawn, they had cleared all the zombies from the Li family mansion. They went around dismantling door panels and wooden planks to place under the stairs to help Xue Ling drive the medical vehicle into the yard.

To get the vehicle in, they even had to tear down the screen wall.

After a lot of hard work, they finally succeeded.

Professor Ji Shiping’s condition was too critical. No one dared to move him casually, so the soldiers carefully carried him using a bed board.

Lin Shuyang, who knew some first aid, stayed with the unconscious Professor Ji Shiping in the medical vehicle.

Xue Ling took her tablet back from them and was about to head outside the city to report to the main force, to see what their next plan was.

Seeing that she had been busy without rest and was about to walk back, one soldier quickly said, “We have a car parked on the big road at the left turn up ahead. You can take it, though there’s not much fuel left.”

Xue Ling gave them an OK sign. As she headed to the car, a line of heads popped up from the wall, watching her.

They watched in awe as she cleared the zombies in her way, then marveled again as she drove past.

“How convenient… I wish I could do that.”

Xue Ling heard them. She had heard these words many times before.

Every time someone saw her effortlessly accomplish tasks that seemed impossible to others, they couldn’t help but feel envious.

They either thought it was convenient for missions or that she was now safe from zombies.

Xue Ling understood. People often saw the “good” side of others’ lives but never the struggles behind the scenes.

Everything has its pros and cons. It’s impossible for everything to be purely beneficial.

Once she relayed the news from the city to the team outside, Xue Ling’s mission was complete. The rest was up to the others.

Whether they would send people to clear out the zombies in the ancient city and rescue the people, or stay stationed here for a while, was uncertain. For now, Xue Ling was told to rest.

She found an open car and sat down, facing the slowly rising sun.

She stretched her hand out and compared it to her slender wrist.

It seemed to have worn out a little recently.

In the distance, the ancient city walls, bathed in golden sunlight, looked like a dream from centuries ago.

The morning sunshine was very comfortable. Xue Ling placed her hands on her abdomen, slowly closed her eyes, and felt the satisfaction and tranquility in her heart at that moment.