Chapter 14: Stiffness
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[One hour earlier]
In the mountains, at the hollow where Rody had first found the wooden box, the locust tree in the estate had been felled, the corpse burned, and the corpse-refining ritual forcibly interrupted. Yet now, deep within the hollow, a series of roars echoed outward.
As the camera moved steadily into the hollow, it reached a hidden cavern. The coffin deep inside had already been pushed open.
Then, as the view returned to the mouth of the hollow, a withered palm—rotted black and covered in cracks—reached out from within. Clearly, “it” was still incomplete.
Because it had failed to “absorb” its blood relative, even its own consciousness had not fully recovered.
…
Inside the estate.
The group had been staring at the paper windows for a long time, yet no shadow appeared, nor did they hear any footsteps.
Rody suddenly realized something.
He strode to his backpack, fastened the mountain-cleaving machete—with its leather sheath and securing chain—to his waist, and lifted the silver chainsaw case in his right hand.
Though he said nothing, the others began moving as well, each taking up whatever they had for self-defense.
Gao Yuxuan had only a field knife.
Anna wanted to carry her entire backpack, but since their target had yet to appear, running around with all that weight would only waste her energy. In the end, she took only a tactical hand axe.
As for Wu Wen, she had not taken out a single defensive weapon since coming up the mountain. Now she reached into her backpack and felt around for something before pulling out an unusually long object.
Cold light flashed.
In her hand was an eight-sided Han sword forged with modern techniques. Its overall style emphasized simplicity, straight lines, and rectangular forms.
The hilt was pitch-black, marked with vertical grooves. The guard was an extremely narrow diamond shape, while the scabbard was black as well, fitting perfectly against the guard through modern magnetic technology. The whole thing was seamless; at first glance, it looked more like a sleek black metal rod than a sword.
After arming themselves, the group put on white masks.
The four exchanged no words. They seemed to know where they were going and what they had to do.
They descended from the second floor, followed the corridor, and arrived at the back door they knew all too well.
The stench remained, but this time none of them seemed to notice it. They felt no physical discomfort whatsoever.
Standing at the doorway, they shone their flashlights into the backyard beneath the night sky. Overall, it looked much as it had before.
The felled locust tree now lay across the corpses of the pigs and cattle, blocking their view. They could not see what lay beyond the trunk.
Unlike the afternoon, when the patter of rain had drowned out much of the surrounding noise, the rain had weakened considerably in the dead of night.
The silence allowed them to hear a faint, discordant sound coming from deep within the backyard. The fallen tree was directly between them and its source.
The class monitor quickly raised an index finger to her mask, signaling for everyone to advance quietly behind her.
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They moved slowly through the viscous muck, their footsteps almost soundless.
Neither the stench nor the sensation beneath their feet could distract them anymore. Their entire attention was fixed on what lay behind the trunk, on that strange and discordant noise.
The closer they drew, the clearer the sound became.
It was the noise of flesh and bone being torn apart, of something hard being chewed.
When the four reached the locust tree and reached out to push aside the branches blocking their view, they all froze as if a doctor had suddenly issued them a critical-condition notice. They stood there in disbelief, unable to process the sight before them.
To some extent, they had all imagined a scene like this in advance.
But when the real thing was placed directly before their eyes—when they truly tasted that “flavor”—the shock was entirely different.
The figure wore black cloth robes, fastened down the center with buttons patterned after the eight trigrams.
The head above the collar belonged to the sickly middle-aged man from the photographs.
Black veins crawled across his face, which was still covered in the granular pustules left behind by his illness. His cloudy, milky eyes seemed blind to the entire world.
He stood perfectly straight.
His arms were stretched horizontally, and a rotting ox head had been impaled before him. Teeth wreathed in black mist tore and gnawed at the filth inside the skull, sucking up the lingering yin energy.
Nearly all the corpses of the pigs and cattle around him had been devoured, as he desperately replenished what the unfinished ritual had failed to provide.
Perhaps the ox head in his hands was nearly drained.
Perhaps it was because the four had drawn too close.
Crack!
The ox head, reduced to bare bone, fell to the ground.
The black cloth shoes planted in the mud launched the body into a powerful leap. Using the jump to twist around, the creature’s milky eyes turned toward the fallen locust tree, as if it had seen the four young people spying on it through the gaps between the branches and leaves.
More precisely, it had smelled the living scent of humans—something that did not belong to livestock.
Unlike the slow hopping common to zombies in ordinary films, its feet gradually rose upright until only the toes touched the ground. Its body leaned forward at an angle of thirty degrees.
It glided.
As if propelled by yin energy, the tips of its shoes skimmed across the filthy backyard, rapidly closing in on the watchers behind the tree.
[Change of viewpoint]
When the zombie tilted its head, the four hiding figures knew they had been exposed.
They had to make a decision within seconds.
Fight or retreat?
Should they confront it in the backyard, or choose another location?
They had already considered these questions while coming downstairs. Running away or withdrawing was impossible.
Now that the ritual had been interrupted, this was the best opportunity to kill the creature. Delaying would only allow the zombie to become more complete, while hiding and fleeing would steadily exhaust them.
Of course, they could not remain in the backyard, the site of the sacrifice. The zombie possessed a natural advantage there.
The open ground in front of the estate, where they had burned the corpse earlier, would be an excellent battlefield.
“Go!”
The four began running as the zombie gave chase. The class monitor and Rody started almost evenly, with Anna close behind and Gao Yuxuan bringing up the rear.
The class monitor was the first to cross the filthy backyard. Just as she stepped onto the estate’s floorboards and prepared to accelerate, she suddenly realized that Rody had vanished from her side.
He seemed to have deliberately fallen to the back of the group.
Above her mask, her eyes showed no fear of the pursuing zombie. Instead, they held a faint, relieved smile.
Their retreat proceeded smoothly enough. All four were outstanding athletes; even Gao Yuxuan, the slowest among them, could run a hundred meters in 11.9 seconds. That speed was just enough to keep the zombie from catching them.
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In front of the estate, the pit where they had burned the corpse the previous day was now filled with rainwater. Several charred black bones floated on its surface.
When the zombie chased them into the area, its nostrils caught the lingering scent of its blood relative in the air. Instinct drove it to change targets temporarily and approach the pit where the bones floated.
The moment it sensed that the flesh of its blood relative had been completely destroyed and could no longer be absorbed, a beastlike roar erupted from its throat, deafening in its intensity.
Yet while the zombie’s attention was distracted, one member of the four-person team had already launched an attack.
A tactical axe, honed razor-sharp and engraved with a famous military-industrial emblem, traced a perfect straight line through the air before cleaving down vertically.
Crack!
The axe struck the zombie’s shoulder.
Yet the razor-sharp blade sank less than three centimeters into the flesh.
Anna was so startled by its hardness that she could not speak. It was nothing like chopping into a body. It felt as though she had struck something midway between stone and metal, and the recoil left her arm tingling.
Whoosh!
Anna wrenched the axe free, swiftly widened the distance between them, and shouted,
“This thing is unbelievably hard! Conventional physical attacks can barely kill it! I’m going back to the bedroom to get something. Hold it off for now! I’ll be right back!”
Anna had suddenly thought of an excellent way to deal with the zombie and sprinted back toward the estate.
Her blow had not injured the zombie’s essence, but it had posed a considerable threat.
The zombie’s head immediately turned toward the direction in which Anna had fled. However, another prey had already blocked that path.
A series of thunderous roars rang out at the same time.
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