2 Zombies

Food spoils if left untouched for too long, machines grow old if not used for years, and when people keep silent for too long, their faculty for speech deteriorates. The same is true of zombies.

Of course, the last point has no scientific basis.

Qin Zhen privately believed this was due to human prudishness and the habits of the zombie way of life.

If humans held fewer prejudices and less fear toward zombies, and could treat them as equals, perhaps they might uncover more of a zombie’s nature. And if zombies liked to live in groups the way humans did, the development of zombie culture might not necessarily lag behind human civilization. After all, zombies were simply another way in which human life continued after death, and it was common for the later generation to surpass the earlier.

Enough said. In short, zombie culture was far too barren. Qin Zhen could only make guesses based on human civilization: perhaps she had gone so long without speaking that she had developed aphasia.

That could hardly be blamed on her. After all, she was the only zombie living alone in this tomb, and a lack of communication was inevitable.

“I... d-destroyed... my tomb... compensation... not... too much!” Qin Zhen lay in her coffin, wrapped in the coat she had just acquired, clutching a luminous pearl in her arms as she stammered to herself. “...I d-didn’t even eat... eat him.”

Aphasia had put Qin Zhen at a disadvantage in her confrontation with the sinister tomb raider. After much bitter reflection, she returned and diligently began practicing speech.

Unfortunately, she had so little she could say. After complaining about the human who had intruded into her tomb, she no longer knew what to talk about, so she contented herself with practicing sounds like “ah, yi, wu, xu.”

Her hoarse voice drew out long notes that spread through the tomb chamber, struck the stone walls, softened, and then rolled outward in layer after layer, turning into eerie cries thick with resentment.

...

Bang—

No one knew how much time had passed before the coffin lid was abruptly opened from outside, and a head appeared from above.

One zombie and one human stared at each other across the space. After a moment, Qin Zhen held back her anger and blurted, “R-rude!”

The human named Fu Qi looked surprised. “Sorry, I didn’t expect it to be you...” Then, changing his tone, he said tactfully, “Maybe it’s because, in our human understanding, you usually don’t need to knock and announce yourself before opening a coffin.”

Which was why, in so many films, novels, and legends, the moment the coffin lid was lifted, the human inside would be hunted down by the zombie within. Qin Zhen very much wanted to say that. Unfortunately, the sentence was too long, and she could not express it smoothly. All she could do was stare at him with her hollow eyes, hoping he would feel the murderous gaze of a zombie.

“Are you practicing speaking?” Fu Qi either didn’t notice or didn’t mind. He went on, “The fastest way to learn a language is through conversation. How about I keep you company?”

Qin Zhen glared at him hard.

Although they had only interacted for a few minutes, she had already seen through his nature. He was not normal... Would a normal human, upon encountering something that might not be human, play dead to lure it in and still have the mind to joke?

He could never be so kind. He was surely trying to pry information out of her, loot the treasures in her tomb, and then run off.

Tomb raiders were always so despicable and deceitful.

Qin Zhen resolved to be a cruel zombie. She said, “P-prying... useless... no exit!”

“Been seen through already.” Fu Qi looked regretful. After speaking, he sighed again. “I did make a round through the tomb and really found no exit, nor did I find any food or water. I probably won’t live much longer. When that happens, there’ll only be you left here again... Fate brought us together, so come out and have a chat.”

Qin Zhen was a little tempted.

She had been cut off from the world for far too long. She was lonely, and very curious about what human society had become. But she did not want to be led by a human in conversation, so she asked a question inspired by his words.

“You... how many t-thieves?”

Fu Qi, being mistaken for a tomb raider, smiled without defending himself. “Four in all. The other three misunderstood me somewhat and blew open the stone wall above, burying me here. Don’t worry. They’d love for me to die, and won’t come save me.”

“...Treasure.”

“Treasure?” Fu Qi’s tone lifted slightly at the end. He thought for a moment, then asked, “What treasure do you have here that they want?”

Qin Zhen again felt that this tomb raider was deeply scheming, able to infer her meaning from a few scattered syllables.

Only his wording was a little inaccurate. He should have said “we” instead of “they.”

But Fu Qi rested one elbow casually on her coffin, his manner too relaxed, his voice indifferent. Looking down from above, his sharply defined face, lit by the glow of the luminous pearl, was full of interest, with not a trace of fear or despair. That made Qin Zhen especially displeased.

If she had known he would be this sort of person, she should not have stolen his clothes to cover herself first. She should have given him a show of force.

Alas, it was too late.

Her irritation outweighed the impulse to correct his poor choice of words. Qin Zhen suddenly sat bolt upright in the coffin, nearly colliding with Fu Qi as he looked down at her.

She felt no apology at all, simply swept one hand outward and said grandly, “Treasure!”

There were oil lamps fixed to the stone walls of the tomb. Qin Zhen had no fire, so she could never light them and always relied on the luminous pearl for illumination. Now Fu Qi had lit them all, and the tomb was filled with shifting light and shadow, every furnishing laid bare.

Fu Qi followed her gaze around the chamber and nodded. “There really are plenty of burial goods in the side chambers outside. Judging by their age, they’re all antiques of very high value. They could certainly be called treasure. It’s a pity...”

His tone shifted, and he sighed. “It’s a pity human values have changed dramatically. These things are already worthless in our eyes now, and no one would risk their life for them.”

The implication was that the people above would not come down to save him, nor would they descend into the tomb for these treasures.

Qin Zhen did not quite believe it. As far as she knew, human recognition of the value of burial goods could be traced back thousands of years. The very phrase “grave robbers” had a long history.

But humans were indeed highly inventive. Perhaps they really no longer coveted such things.

She had been cut off from the world for far too long and could not be certain of many things.

“Earlier, when you heard the explosion and thought the tomb door had opened, that was why you went looking for it?” Still weighing whether Fu Qi’s words were true, she heard him ask, “You want to get out?”

Qin Zhen said, “O-of course!”

She had lived in this tomb since she could remember. Life here was terribly monotonous. She had long wanted to leave, but no matter how many times she searched up and down, she never found any exit.

Realizing she could never get out by herself, Qin Zhen could only place her hopes on humans—more precisely, on tomb raiders.

When the burial pit collapsed, she had been lying in the coffin asleep... Zombies did not need to sleep, but if not sleeping, what was there for her to do?

When she realized the tomb chamber had been blown open, she grabbed the luminous pearl and rushed over in a hurry, nearly stepping on someone... a man. Qin Zhen screamed and hurried back.

She hurried back to put on her most presentable clothes.

How should one put it? To humans, zombies were always rare, and tomb raiders with a flair for the dramatic always wrote down the bizarre species they encountered in their notebooks, letting them spread into the world years later in one form or another and exposing them to the public.

A zombie sounded terrifying.

A female zombie running around naked sounded a bit perverted.

Qin Zhen did not want to be perverted, but all her clothes had rotted into scraps and could only barely cover her shame.

After changing, Qin Zhen quietly crossed the dark passage and reached the place where the injured “tomb raider” had fallen when the tunnel collapsed. She found that too many broken stones had fallen, sealing the passage shut tight. She still could not get out.

Since she could not get out, learning something about the outside world would be fine too. Qin Zhen decided to temporarily forgive the little thief who had come to steal from her tomb, but before formally meeting him, she needed to borrow his clothes while he was unconscious to cover herself. That was how the later events came about.

“L-lier!” Remembering how Fu Qi had pretended to be dead to fool her, she denounced him again with great severity.

Fu Qi said, “What can I do? In an underground tomb with no light at all, it’s only natural to be frightened when something strange happens.”

Qin Zhen could not see the slightest sign of fear in him.

Besides, he clearly had a light source.

Perhaps her expression was too obvious, because Fu Qi explained, “This can’t be blamed on me. You were sneaking around, and only dared come near after I pretended to faint. You were even patting me all over, which looked very much like you were coveting my body.”

“Ha! Ha!” Qin Zhen laughed twice, looking into Fu Qi’s eyes, and for once enunciated clearly as she attacked him, “Narcissist!”

He did look decent—tall, with well-proportioned muscles that felt good to the touch—but a mere human was not worth a zombie breaking species barriers for him.

Fu Qi explained again. “When I said coveting, I meant it literally.”

That was impossible too.

“I won’t eat.” Qin Zhen said.

Before Fu Qi could say anything, she emphasized it again, more forcefully: “I don’t eat people. I’m a good zombie!”

The ancient word “zombie” seemed to surprise Fu Qi slightly. He did not show it, only asked, “Really don’t eat people?”

Qin Zhen was resolute. “Don’t eat!”

Fu Qi thought for a moment and asked once more to confirm, “No matter what, you won’t eat?”

“No!”

Fu Qi nodded, then stepped back. Under Qin Zhen’s watchful eyes, he lifted one long leg and suddenly kicked the half-open coffin lid. With a harsh scraping sound, the heavy coffin wood slammed to the ground with a thud, landing face down and kicking up a cloud of dusty ash.

Qin Zhen: “...?”

Under her stare, Fu Qi slowly drew back his leg, adjusted the hem of his T-shirt that had ridden up with the high kick, and turned to ask, “Still not eating?”

Qin Zhen: “...”

She was shocked and angered in equal measure. Looking at Fu Qi, whose expression clearly said, "You’re angry now, aren’t you? You’re going to eat me, aren’t you?" she found him utterly hateful and very much wanted to smash him with the coffin lid.

But in the end, reason prevailed. She only glared at him furiously and stubbornly repeated, “Don’t eat!”

Fu Qi raised a brow.

At last Qin Zhen could not help cursing, “Humans are d-despicable, c-cunning!”

Zombies were always buried underground or in remote mountain ravines. It was rare for a zombie to leave a tomb unprovoked and attack humans; it was always greedy humans who disturbed them for the treasures in the tomb.

In such cases, the zombie was clearly not the wrong party. Yet once a human was harmed, whether that person was good or bad, the final outcome was always the same: either subdued by a Daoist priest, or blasted to pieces by some extraordinary person with special powers.

Humans were unreasonable, and very frightening. Qin Zhen did not want to provoke them at all, and even when challenged face-to-face, she endured it without erupting.

Anyway, there was no food in the tomb. He would die sooner or later.

“Starve to d-death!”

She vented her anger viciously.

After hurling her threat, Qin Zhen braced herself on the coffin and climbed out. As she stepped down, the oversized shirt that could have served as a dress fluttered up, and Fu Qi’s gaze shifted aside slightly. At the same time, he said, “Sorry. I just wanted to see whether you really don’t eat people... Actually, I’m a good person.”

Qin Zhen ignored him and walked stiffly toward the corner of the tomb chamber.

There lay a skeleton. Aside from the skull and torso still remaining together, the rest had already broken apart into scattered bones, though they were very clean, white to the point of almost shining. A few scraps of cloth that Qin Zhen had originally used as clothing still hung on the skeleton, but now someone had moved them aside and stacked them to one side.

Who had done it was beyond doubt.

Qin Zhen shot Fu Qi a fierce glare.

Fu Qi had already followed her over and was crouching nearby. Seeing that she only gathered up the bones and did not touch the scraps of cloth beside them, he said, “Is this your relative? Sorry, I thought it was a clothes rack and moved it around a bit.”

Qin Zhen ignored him. He asked again, “Why did the two of you end up like this—one a skeleton, the other turned into a zombie?”

No reply.

“Still angry?”

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have kicked your coffin lid. Should I put it back for you in a moment?”

“Are you cursing me in your head? Cursing in your head is nowhere near as satisfying as saying it out loud. It can also help you practice speaking.”

Fu Qi said quite a few things, but Qin Zhen did not want to respond to a single one of them. She made several trips back and forth to gather the bones from the ground and place them in the coffin, then went to move the coffin lid.

This pitch-black coffin was made of something unknown and was extremely heavy. She struggled to lift it, and only with Fu Qi helping did it finally get back into place.

But Qin Zhen did not want to thank him at all. She climbed into the coffin, sat up, and pulled at the lid. Just as she managed to move it, Fu Qi pressed down on the other end.

“Originally, I didn’t believe you really didn’t eat people. After I lifted your coffin lid, I believed it. But now I’m doubting again.” Fu Qi held down the lid, one elbow resting on the coffin edge. Frowning, he said, “You haven’t said a word. Could it be you’re thinking that once I fall asleep, you’ll eat me? Anyway, there’s no one else here. If you eat me, no one will know.”

On the matter of eating people, Qin Zhen absolutely could not allow any misunderstanding.

She endured it and said through gritted teeth, “Don’t eat!”

“Then I’m relieved.” Fu Qi let out a breath of relief. Then he asked, “Since you don’t eat people, why do you want to get out?”

No matter how she looked at it, Qin Zhen felt he was being insincere. How annoying.

She had explained so much about whether or not she ate people only to make clear her attitude of keeping her distance from humans, so as to avoid misunderstandings and human retaliation. She had no interest in exposing her private matters.

Refusing to answer, she only wanted to make clear that they had nothing to do with each other. She pointed at Fu Qi and said, “Trap, starve.” Then she pointed at herself. “No connection.”

Fu Qi nodded. “Fine. Whether I’m shot dead by a trap or starved to death is none of your business... I’m not going to die anytime soon anyway. Since we’re roommates now, why don’t we introduce ourselves? My name is Fu Qi. What’s yours?”

He still wanted to know her name?

Qin Zhen felt that being able to tolerate him alive until now already showed great mercy on her part. She did not answer, but instead asked, “Have... hand, h-phone?”

She said it very coldly, but unfortunately her stammer robbed it of the intended chill.

Fu Qi smiled and replied, “I have hands, but no phone.”

Qin Zhen immediately lost all interest in speaking to him.

“Chatting over.” She lay back in the coffin, hugged the luminous pearl, and said, “C-cover, thanks.”

Fu Qi laughed again. His shadow, cast by the oil lamps in the tomb onto the stone wall, looked ferocious, like some enormous beast.

“I still have one last question. If you answer it for me, I won’t disturb you anymore...” He set aside the amusement in his tone and, with a clear and pleasant voice, asked gently, “What era’s zombie are you?”

Qin Zhen made him a twisted, terrifying face, then raised both hands and yanked hard. With a dull thud, the coffin lid shut from the inside.