The street remained desolate and eerily quiet. It was noon, the scorching sun hung high, but walking down the street didn’t feel hot at all. Instead, a chilling cold seemed to linger around them.

Si Nan walked between Si Xuanyang and Yu Sen, constantly glancing at the two of them. He always felt that there was something off about the atmosphere between them, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what was wrong.

If you had to say they weren’t getting along, well, he knew Yu Sen well enough. Yu Sen would never bother looking for bandages in a hotel for someone he didn’t like. And Si Xuanyang, this hothead he had watched grow up, though he had a bad temper, his likes and dislikes were clearly shown on his face. He could tell Si Xuanyang was annoyed by Luo Yu, but his attitude towards Yu Sen… now that was hard to describe.

Two words: it’s complicated…

The gaze was too blatant. Even if Yu Sen wanted to ignore it, he couldn’t. Annoyed, he turned his head. “Am I that handsome?”

“Handsome, you’re the most-handsome,” Si Nan answered reflexively to such a question, almost without thinking.

Si Xuanyang frowned in displeasure: “…”

“Oh, keep staring, and I’ll kill you.” Yu Sen said calmly.

“……”

Si Nan thought to himself: Why am I walking between these two? I’m not getting any normal response here, am I?

Lin Jianchuan hadn’t spoken much along the way. After they left the city and walked a stretch along the official road, he pointed to a small hill in the distance and said, “At the foot of that hill is the mass grave.”

“Tsk, out here in the wilderness, it’s really convenient for someone to kill and dump a body,” Yu Sen said.

“This Song Ningxiu, dying was truly not worth it.”

“Being a vengeful ghost for hundreds of years isn’t worth it either,” Si Nan added. “And now we’re stuck digging up bones. After all these years, the bones all look the same. How are we supposed to identify anything?”

He noticed the heavy atmosphere and tried to lighten the mood, sidling up to Yu Sen. “Not like my Yu Ge. Even if you turned to ash, I’d still recognize you.”

“……”

Si Xuanyang glanced at him, expression cold, then quickened his pace and moved to the front of the group.

Yu Sen watched his back and gave Si Nan a hard elbow. “Are you cursing me or what?”

“Injustice! My loyalty to you is as clear as day and night!” Si Nan bared his teeth.

“Fine, then you can carry the body bags later,” Yu Sen raised an eyebrow.

“…But isn’t Xuanyang here too? And there’s also Lin Jianchuan and Luo Yu,” Si Nan stammered. “Besides, I was the one who found the body bags and carried them all this way. It’s time to switch hands.”

“Do you even know what ‘seeing things through to the end’ means, baby?” Yu Sen patted his head and leisurely walked ahead.

…

When they arrived at the mass grave, they were so shocked they froze in place.

After a long while, Yu Sen finally stammered, “Why are they all… fresh?”

In their minds, the mass grave had existed for so many years, exposed to the elements daily; any visible corpses would mostly have turned to skeletons. Who would have thought the real mass grave was a deep pit filled with bodies?

And the bodies weren’t even decayed to the point of being mere bones. They were still recognizable, with some showing signs of decomposition and carbonized flesh, layered on top of one another like a slaughterhouse.

Several gray-black vultures circled above them, ignoring Yu Sen and the others, occasionally descending to peck at the rotting flesh on the corpses.

Fortunately, there wasn’t a strong stench of decay. Otherwise, given the number of corpses, they wouldn’t last half an hour before being overwhelmed by the smell.

“…My legs feel weak.” Si Nan took a few steps back. Just by glancing over, he could see several corpses with eyes wide open, staring blankly at them, sending chills down his spine.

“Damn, Lin Jianchuan, why didn’t you tell us it was like this before?”

Lin Jianchuan, honest as always, sighed. “I was afraid you wouldn’t dare to come if I told you.”

“Even now that we’re here, I want to leave immediately.” Yu Sen frowned, pressing a hand to his throat and stomach, feeling a bit nauseous.

“Come on, we’re already here,” Lin Jianchuan said with a wry smile. “If we don’t hurry up and finish the task, staying here will only creep us out even more.”

“But when will we finish this? There must be hundreds, if not a thousand, bodies here. They’ve withstood the weather for thousands of years without decaying. Who knows when a zombie might pop up? It would be just like the last time with the zombie city.”

“It won’t be easy to find,” Si Xuanyang frowned, raising the hoe in his hand and examining it. Then he glanced at the shovel Si Nan had found in the utility room. “The hoe should be useful. Otherwise, this ordinary thing wouldn’t have fallen along with the candles.”

He lifted the hoe above his head. The glaring light reflected off the blade, bright as a mirror. But as he shifted angles, it still didn’t reflect anything in sight.

Having a rough idea in mind, Si Xuanyang asked Lin Jianchuan, “Is the scope of the mass grave just this pit? Are there any other places?”

Lin Jianchuan hesitated for a moment, then quickly pointed to the left of the pit. “There’s a burial ground over there, but it’s not as neatly piled as here. Some bodies are just thrown beside gravestones, and others are half-buried in the dirt. It looks even worse.”

“Take me over to have a look.”

Lin Jianchuan didn’t say much more and nodded, leading them in the direction he had pointed earlier.

Yu Sen followed behind, tugging at Si Xuanyang’s clothes, and asked, “Did you find any clues?”

“Hmm, I think… maybe the hoe can reflect the location of Song Ningxiu’s body.”

Si Xuanyang said this and then remembered something, glancing at Yu Sen before hesitating, “How about you wait here? Didn’t Lin Jianchuan say the graveyard is even worse?”

“Tsk! Waiting my foot! How can you look down on me like that!” Yu Sen glared angrily, “Don’t forget, I’m a few years older than you; you’re the younger one!”

Si Xuanyang rolled his eyes helplessly, “I’ve seen you get nauseous a few times, afraid you might throw up.”

“No choice. After coming to these damn places a few times, I’ve even got heart disease. Stomach problems are nothing; I don’t find it hard at all.” Yu Sen smiled with an air of innocence.

“…Then go ahead and throw up, remember to do it a few times.”

“Heartless.”

“……”

---

Since it was also a mass grave, the distance to the cemetery wasn’t far. After walking a few hundred meters of muddy road, they saw the scene of the graveyard filled with bodies and dark, eerie energy.

Although it was called a graveyard, there were no complete tombstones. At least Yu Sen didn’t see any. Most are just small stone slabs, some of which are partly cut away, and some were tilted and fallen to the ground.

The graveyard was about the size of four dining halls in a hotel, with over a hundred corpses lying around in disarray.

Some had only one dark, blackened arm sticking out of the ground, some were stuck in the earth like inserted radishes, with half their bodies exposed and stiffly standing, which looked even scarier than full corpses from a distance.

Flies buzzed everywhere, vultures pecked at will. Si Xuanyang turned to look at Yu Sen and asked, “Do you want to throw up?”

Yu Sen coldly returned him a glare: “I want to die.”

It seemed he wasn’t going to throw up, so Si Xuanyang turned back with relief.

He lifted the hoe again, holding it up to the sunlight, and slowly rotated in place, constantly adjusting the angle of the hoe.

When he stopped at a certain spot, he signaled Yu Sen to come over.

Yu Sen squinted and stepped closer. Following Si Xuanyang’s angle, the hoe blade happened to reflect a tree.

Besides that tree, there was nothing else.

“There!” Si Nan pointed sharply.

About six meters behind them, a twisted and gnarled poplar tree, with only dead branches left, lay on the ground. Its protruding branches looked like the arms of demons crawling out of hell.

Yu Sen stomped around the poplar tree, testing the soil, and spread his hands: “It’s all pretty solid, just dig randomly. Whether we hit it in one strike depends on luck.”

Si Xuanyang: “……”

The first hole took ten minutes to dig. Si Xuanyang sighed: It seemed their luck was not good.

The second hole took fifteen minutes and was still empty. Si Xuanyang began to get impatient, his temper flaring: This luck is really damn bad!

The third hole also took fifteen minutes, and still nothing. Even Yu Sen himself was frustrated: “What’s going on, why is your luck so terrible!”

“Stop with the sarcastic remarks. Why don’t you dig instead…” Si Nan complained softly, “I can’t take it anymore.”

There were only two hoes among the five of them, and with three people taking turns digging, Yu Sen hadn’t had a turn yet.

“Tsk tsk tsk… Too weak, Si Nan. A man shouldn’t admit he can’t do it,” Yu Sen sighed.

Si Nan habitually countered: “Don’t you know best whether I can or not?”

Yu Sen: “……”

He reflexively looked at Si Xuanyang but saw no difference, only felt that Si Xuanyang’s expressionless face had turned colder. With one swing of the hoe, he cut off a meter-long section of the dying poplar tree.

His voice became very stern: “Hurry up, it’s getting dark, and it’s unsafe.”

Yu Sen clicked his tongue and sighed in boredom, taking the hoe from Si Nan’s hands. His gaze lingered over the three large holes for a moment before moving to the poplar tree.

“I think this tree looks pretty scary. Let’s just cut it down.”

Saying this, he raised the hoe and struck it down heavily, severing it from the roots.

“…”

Yu Sen looked at Si Xuanyang with delight: “How’s that? Isn’t it in line with your style of doing things?”

“Tch, barely.” Si Xuanyang looked uninterested.

“Hehe.”

Digging out the tree was harder than digging the holes. They spent a long time loosening the roots, and Si Xuanyang finally pulled it up, letting the surrounding soil fall away.

Yu Sen straightened up, patted the dirt off his hands, and handed the hoe to Luo Yu. “Alright, I’ve done my part. The rest is up to you.”

Si Nan made a face at him: “You’re really good at avoiding work. Yang Yang is still digging, so Luo Yu, don’t listen to him.”

At this moment, Si Xuanyang ‘just happened’ to look up at Luo Yu, impatiently urging: “It’ll be dark in an hour. What are you waiting for? Hurry up and dig!”

“…”

Luo Yu: Damn, such double standards!