Bai Chen Zhu rarely had a good sleep, and when he woke up, the fatigue on his body had eased somewhat.
In comparison, the temperature beside him was scorching hot.
Bai Chen Zhu’s half-opened eyes immediately snapped wide awake. He sat up and reached out to touch Jiang Ye’s forehead.
Jiang Ye buried the lower half of his face in the blanket and coughed weakly twice.
“What did you go out to do in the middle of the night?” Bai Chen Zhu pinched his face hard. “Speak! What did you go do! How did you get yourself feverish again?”
Jiang Ye refused to answer the question and evasively buried his pinched-red face in the blanket. Bai Chen Zhu laughed in anger and ignored him, going off to wash up first.
Jiang Ye watched his broad back and thought hazily, ‘It really feels like being nagged by a wife.’
After washing his face and calming down, Bai Chen Zhu noticed some biscuits, bread, and mineral water on the table, packed in a grimy bag. He looked at it again and again, confirming that Jiang Ye had gone out foraging last night while he was asleep.
“Did I starve you?” Bai Chen Zhu couldn’t hold back and yanked open his blanket to ask.
“No.” Jiang Ye said this, but his eyes flickered.
Bai Chen Zhu said nothing, just stared at him coldly. “You’d better be hungry. Don’t go wandering off alone again while I’m asleep.”
Under his intensely oppressive gaze, Jiang Ye had no choice but to raise his hands in surrender. “Wander where? I was a bit hungry—you know my appetite’s gotten huge lately. I just conveniently scouted around. We might need to change our destination.”
The last sentence successfully drew Bai Chen Zhu’s attention with its seriousness. “Why change the destination?”
Jiang Ye said seriously, “Last night, I discovered the zombies gathering toward the downstream river.”
Bai Chen Zhu understood immediately. “You mean that monster is downstream?”
“Not just that.” Jiang Ye paused. “I suspect there’s something besides the monster there—humans, or non-humans.”
He told Bai Chen Zhu about the monster’s collar.
Bai Chen Zhu tried hard to recall.
Back then, the moment he opened his eyes, he first saw Jiang Ye blocking in front of him, then met those pale gray eyes and the massive figure. As for the monster’s neck, he really hadn’t paid attention.
But if the monster had a collar, didn’t that mean it was being kept like livestock? And if someone was raising monsters to attack ordinary people, then the others they’d lost contact with might also be downstream.
Bai Chen Zhu realized the severity of the situation. He nodded, agreeing with Jiang Ye’s suggestion. “We should go check it out.”
Just as Jiang Ye breathed a sigh of relief, thinking he’d gotten past it, Bai Chen Zhu suddenly doubled back. “But how are we settling the score for you sneaking out to scavenge food behind my back?”
“What do you mean sneaking? Wronged! There’s no such thing!” Jiang Ye’s spirits, which had just settled, rose again, and he quickly begged for mercy.
Bai Chen Zhu had no intention of letting him off. He narrowed his eyes. “Tonight, we’ll follow the zombies and take a look. Now, you rest properly. If the fever comes back…”
Jiang Ye looked at him nervously.
Bai Chen Zhu racked his brains but couldn’t think of anything that could threaten Jiang Ye. But he couldn’t just let him be— if Jiang Ye burned out and turned into a complete idiot, it wouldn’t benefit him at all.
His gaze fell on Jiang Ye’s wrinkled clothes. Right—Jiang Ye loved wearing flashy, colorful outfits. From the first time they met, Bai Chen Zhu had found them an eyesore.
Bai Chen Zhu’s face turned cold. “I’ll throw out all those gaudy clothes of yours!”
Jiang Ye’s eyes widened, and he let out a miserable sound. “No——”
Bai Chen Zhu was always helpless against Jiang Ye and didn’t understand how someone could have so much energy. He directly pressed Jiang Ye’s head into the bed with a pillow, his tone brooking no argument. “Shut up! Sleep!”
“Mmph mmph mmph!”
—
Jiang Ye’s recovery ability was indeed strong. Under Bai Chen Zhu’s watch, he spent the whole day either eating or sleeping, unable to leave the room to fool around. By evening, his wounds had healed about seventy or eighty percent—no more bleeding, and the fever hadn’t returned.
As for Bai Chen Zhu, he only had some minor scratches from the rocks and strange fish, which had already scabbed over and didn’t affect his movements.
When evening came, they packed two backpacks with some food and water and left the room. Before going out, Bai Chen Zhu thought it over and grabbed two masks, stuffing them in his pocket.
That night, the zombies once again moved eerily in the same direction.
Fortunately, the buildings by the river were packed tightly together, unlike the spaced-out apartments in Bai Chen Zhu’s old neighborhood. Here, the buildings were either airtight or separated by narrow alleys barely wide enough for one person.
So they walked across the rooftops, slowly following the direction of the zombie gathering. Once they got the hang of it, Bai Chen Zhu didn’t even need Jiang Ye’s help—he could smoothly leap from balcony to balcony on his own.
The dense mass of zombies flowed down the streets like a river, surging toward the downstream area of Deer Cry Ancient City. There stood a very famous theater.
The theater in Deer Cry Ancient City had been one of a kind back then. Visiting the ancient city without entering the theater to hear the famous opera was a lifelong regret.
But in the long-abandoned ancient city, with the theater—some thirty or forty meters tall—still lit up and ‘bustling with voices,’ that was utterly bizarre.
In front of the theater, several people stood on the protruding second-floor balcony.
Bai Chen Zhu hid on the nearest residential balcony and stared in shock at those people with wings.
They wore form-fitting strange clothes, had antennae on their heads, wings behind them, and odd colors for their eyes and hair. Bai Chen Zhu felt his pocket and pulled out the translator he’d swiped earlier.
“Careful? Hah. What’s there to fear from those stupid natives? Tech’s destroyed, nations are dead—who’s going to discover us? Once we clean up these natives, we can go home!”
“But Lord Kula will be angry!”
The short Insect Race member in the middle shoved the one beside him. “Insect God above, what right does it have to be angry! Skulking around afraid of this and that—how could the Cosmic Alliance come to a low-level planet like this!”
…
Bai Chen Zhu stuffed the earpiece into Jiang Ye’s ear, wanting him to hear these shameless words, but Jiang Ye waved it off. “You use it. I can understand roughly.”
Bai Chen Zhu looked at him in surprise.
Jiang Ye grinned and held up two fingers to show a tiny gap. “A little bit. Insect language, level four.”
The metaphor was vivid.
Bai Chen Zhu: …
Bai Chen Zhu, at zero in insect language, put the earpiece back on.
They were still talking, but Bai Chen Zhu only caught a few vague words before noticing that the short one in the middle was using mental power to drive the zombies.
The zombies surged into the theater entrance en masse, and it got lively inside.
Once enough zombies were attracted, those Insect Race members flew into the theater and shut the doors.
Jiang Ye poked Bai Chen Zhu and pointed to a small balcony beside the theater’s second floor, where there was a glass window offering a view inside.
Bai Chen Zhu nodded, and the two cautiously crouched low to the balcony.
Two heads poked out in front of the glass window. The theater’s warm light shone on Bai Chen Zhu, making him squint as he peered inside.
The theater’s north side was the stage, south was tiered audience seats, and east and west were corridor-style seating. This uniquely designed theater had now been mostly wrecked and turned into a bloody, violent beast-fighting arena.
On the east corridor was a massive iron cage holding over a hundred grubby humans, men, women, elderly, and children.
The south side had half-intact audience seats where dozens of Insect Race members sat high above, looking toward the stage.
The star on the north stage was none other than the giant monster they’d seen that day!
The theater had trapped it, and the horde of zombies too.
The monster was extremely tall, its body like a sturdy little mountain, muscles knotted, looking utterly ferocious. It went berserk in the zombie pile, tearing limbs, scooping out brains, turning the first floor into its personal kitchen.
Like a lion king battling cubs.
No suspense.
Bai Chen Zhu looked around and spotted an iron door on the small balcony leading inside. He tugged at Jiang Ye, who was intently watching inside. Jiang Ye suddenly grabbed his finger and said gravely, “Sister Zhuo Hua is in there!”
