Before the apocalypse, there was a Favorites folder on one video app on Xue Ling’s phone, filled entirely with soul-soothing chicken-soup videos.

There were beautiful female voices, against background music of flute and erhu, narrating life philosophies whose origin no one knew;

There were broadcast-style baritone male voices, paired with rousing music over landscapes of mountains and rivers, reading excerpts from classic literature;

There were lecture clips of some famous master of traditional Chinese studies from the last century, inspiring the masses;

There were Daoist priests with beards and topknots, dressed in Daoist robes, calmly teaching how to face adversity;

There were well-known university professors teaching Buddhist life courses;

There were chibi-style animated characters saying strange yet funny “lying-flat” survival tips for young people;

There were tarot readers spreading out tarot cards, telling the you in front of the video what kind of luck you would encounter in the future……

From refined high culture to grassroots tastes, from ancient philosophy to Western mysticism, it was a complete hodgepodge with no clear structure, embracing everything indiscriminately, with only one shared theme—chicken soup.

Wen Jiuzhe had once seen this Favorites folder of hers and had even given it a well-deserved round of mockery.

This book in front of her now, “The Soul Chicken Soup Contemporary Young People Need Most,” was absolutely carrying his deliberate sarcasm!

Fine, Xue Ling admitted that some of those chicken-soup videos were indeed rather strange.

But she didn’t watch those videos to learn any grand truths; she had only one purpose.

She wanted to hear someone tell her that as long as she persisted, life would get better, that all the pain she was suffering right now would pass, and that many good things would still happen in the future.

In her past life, there were many moments when she felt it was hard to endure, when she didn’t know who to talk to, and there was no one who could help untangle her feelings, so she could only silently digest her emotions on her own.

When emotions piled up too much, there would always be times when they couldn’t be released, and then she would go watch these videos.

Some of the reasoning was complete nonsense, but it could make her laugh;

Some toxic chicken soup made her angry, and she would refute it in her mind, saying that it wasn’t like that at all;

Some humor and cuteness could lift her mood;

Some gentle comfort would make her follow along and say, yes, that’s right, next something lucky will happen!

She had relied on this method to live, more or less healthily and happily, into her twenties.

But Wen Jiuzhe was someone who harbored heavy hostility and vigilance toward everything around him, and he was also somewhat pessimistic.

His first reaction upon hearing the words “chicken soup” was to kick it over—he wouldn’t listen carefully to whatever lesson others wanted to teach him.

Because of his birth and environment, he was more mature than the vast majority of his peers, yet he still had immature parts.

Being laughed at by him, Xue Ling didn’t argue with him—just treat him like a dog.

If she was really angry, she would punch him hard a few times; anyway, he wouldn’t fight back.

Xue Ling sat in the passenger seat, calmly flipping open the copy of “Soul Chicken Soup” that Wen Jiuzhe had slipped in, and the first sentence that caught her eye was: “As long as a person is still alive, there is hope.”

Xue Ling: “……”

What a way to rub salt in the wound—wasn’t a person already basically dead at this point?

Xue Ling closed the book and set it aside.

Wen Jiuzhe said, “Why did you stop reading after just one look?”

Sigh, don’t mention it, the version isn’t compatible anymore.

Xue Ling thought gloomily, and wrote a sentence on the writing board: “Because your taste is terrible, I don’t like reading it.”

With cooking skills this bad, what good chicken soup could he possibly pick out.

As they spoke, they passed Yuanhu City First Hospital.

This hospital, which covered a very large area, had nearly half of it razed to the ground, and inside there weren’t densely packed zombies, only bombed, collapsed buildings—it looked like it had been violently cleared out.

Xue Ling pressed against the window to look out at the hospital ruins, guessing what kind of large-scale team it would take to force their way through the strongest hospital dungeon in the apocalypse.

People were still in the minority, the firepower support needed would definitely not be small.

Explosions would attract zombies from the surrounding area; no wonder the hospital and several nearby streets, too, had hardly any zombies to be seen.

But after they passed this stretch, the closer they got to several bustling main streets near the city center, the more zombies there were again.

Quite a few zombies followed their car; Wen Jiuzhe darted left and right on a street packed with abandoned vehicles, and the number of zombies chasing behind the car kept increasing.

This kind of scene of being pursued by zombies, Wen Jiuzhe had long since gotten used to; he observed the surrounding environment, yanked the steering wheel, crashed through a roadblock placed at the entrance of a high-end residential complex, and turned into the complex.

Cutting straight through the complex, when they reached the back gate, Wen Jiuzhe didn’t get out of the car—he raised his gun and precisely shot open the lock on the gate, rammed the gate open and drove out, shaking off that huge swarm of zombies.

Just like that, constantly changing routes to evade zombies, they circled around for a long time before finally seeing Yuan Lake.

Yuanhu City was named after its most beautiful lake, Yuan Lake; it was said the lake water was clear, and for dozens of li along the lakeside there were lotus flowers planted, with peach, plum, and apricot blossoms on the embankments, able to attract many tourists to visit every spring.

Now wasn’t the best season to view Yuan Lake, but it was still not bad.

When the car drove near Yuan Lake, from very far away, they could see people coming and going by the lakeside; at first glance, it looked no different from before the apocalypse.

Once they got closer, they could clearly see that those “pedestrians” by the lake walked slowly and sluggishly, stiff and swaying.

Many small stalls along the shore were in a mess, and the bright signboards had lost their color from wind and rain.

Wen Jiuzhe found a place with fewer zombies to park, and got out of the car together with Xue Ling.

Xue Ling hesitated—was he going, too?

“You wait for me in the car.”

Before she had finished writing, Wen Jiuzhe said, “No.”

He lifted his legs and walked to the front of her.

By the lake the green trees cast shade, willows drooped softly, so quiet that only the sound of cicadas remained.

Pink-white lotus flowers had bloomed in great numbers, especially gorgeous against the round, platter-like green leaves, and there were also quite a few green lotus seedpods.

But as long as you looked carefully, you could see that under the lotus leaves, there were still quite a few zombies soaking.

—Having no railings by the lake really wouldn’t do; zombies wandering around on the shore could easily misstep and fall in!

Xue Ling glanced at the warning sign standing by the lakeside: Beware of falling into the water, pay attention to safety.

Then she looked at the zombies soaking in the water like a human pyramid— they hadn’t drowned, but they couldn’t crawl back up either.

Wen Jiuzhe stepped on a zombie’s upturned head in the water with one foot, stuffing the roar back into its mouth, and casually yanked off a lotus leaf to wipe his blade.

Behind him, two headless zombies fell.

Just now, Xue Ling had been focused on looking at the lake and hadn’t even heard the sounds of him killing zombies.

This stretch of the lakeside embankment simply had fewer zombies—it wasn’t that there were none.

Aside from the two lying on the ground, other zombies had already noticed the living people here and were heading this way.

When the second batch of several zombies surrounded them, Wen Jiuzhe wrapped an arm around Xue Ling’s shoulder and pushed her forward at a brisk pace: “Let’s move faster.”

Xue Ling: I wanted to take a walk by the lake, not speed-walk by the lake?

Wen Jiuzhe was different from her—he was playing Plants vs. Zombies by the lake.

It really was quite similar: at the beginning only one or two zombies came over and were easily dealt with by him; the further it went on, the more zombies there were, until he started running out of time to deal with them.

Seeing so many zombies closing in, Xue Ling shoved Wen Jiuzhe’s back hard: Stop killing them, hurry up and go! Hurry up and go!

Wen Jiuzhe held a short knife in one hand and grabbed her arm with the other; his long legs stepped over the flowerbed by the lake, and he conveniently lifted and hauled the slower-walking Xue Ling over as well.

Avoiding a group of zombies on the left, he kicked over one zombie that lunged from a side path.

Xue Ling pounded Wen Jiuzhe’s back hard, urging him to go back to the car.

Wen Jiuzhe turned his head and saw her imitating him, trying to kick another zombie; he couldn’t help laughing, dragged her back, and hoisted her onto his shoulder.

While the main horde of zombies hadn’t yet arrived and the small group in front hadn’t fully surrounded them, the two broke out from the side and ran back to where the car was parked.

The lake tour plan, barely begun, was declared over due to overly enthusiastic “visitors.”

The car started up and left the lakeside. Xue Ling sat in the passenger seat and looked out the window.

She had never before felt such heart-pounding fear just from being among zombies.

Wen Jiuzhe’s nerve was way too big.

“Pu, pu.” Xue Ling lowered her head and saw the lotus seedpods in her hand—the few she had snatched from the lake in the chaos just now.

When she got nervous, her fingers jabbed into the skin of the seedpods, making pu-pu sounds.

A hand reached over from the side, took the seedpods from her, peeled them open, and ate them.

Wen Jiuzhe chewed on the lotus seeds, started the car, and casually asked her, “Where to next? Duyun Ancient Temple?”

Xue Ling waved her hand.

Not going anymore—what was there to go for, there were too many zombies, and Wen Jiuzhe insisted on coming along.

She had stayed in the countryside for so long that she had almost forgotten how many zombies there still were in big cities.

At Xue Ling’s strong insistence, the brief trip to Yuanhu City came to an end; they changed direction, and the car drove onto a remote road.

This was a highway connecting two provinces, with a long stretch in the middle passing through the mountains—so remote that after driving more than ten kilometers, the roadside houses disappeared, and there wasn’t a single abandoned vehicle to be seen on the road.

On both sides of the fairly wide asphalt road, there were only trees left.

The endless green on either side made their car seem as if it were driving into a quiet green corridor of light.

The sky gradually darkened; it was about to rain.

In the drizzling rain, Wen Jiuzhe parked the car inside a tunnel on the road, planning to spend the night here.

Since Xue Ling didn’t kick him out of the car to cook, Wen Jiuzhe just ate something simple, then lay in the car to kill time.

The car windows were open; the sound of rain outside grew louder, the heavy rain washing away the stifling summer heat.

Wen Jiuzhe turned on a dim yellow lamp inside the car.

The sound of pages turning made Xue Ling glance over.

He had picked up that soul chicken-soup book and was reading it, and suddenly, unhurriedly, read aloud a passage from it.

“The predicaments of life can also be seen as the growth of life… Life is a course in experience; we use our bodies to perceive the world, and our souls to explore meaning…”

He read lazily, with neither agreement nor mockery in his tone, just reading it flatly, but perhaps because his voice was rather pleasant, it actually made this ordinary chicken soup sound quite reasonable.

It even seemed much nicer than the chicken-soup videos she had saved before.

Listening to Wen Jiuzhe read this kind of hypnotic material amid the pattering rain, Xue Ling felt a long-lost sense of peace.

She placed both hands over her abdomen, closed her eyes, and listened quietly, lying on the reclined passenger seat, with a kind of calm in her heart like being laid to rest.

Wen Jiuzhe read a few passages out of boredom, then suddenly stopped.

He leaned over and tapped Xue Ling’s shoulder.

Xue Ling didn’t move, still lying there with her eyes closed in that peaceful manner.

Seeing no reaction from her, Wen Jiuzhe tossed the book aside and leaned over entirely; he held his breath for a moment, and used his fingers to pry open Xue Ling’s eyelids.

Xue Ling: “……”

Her dark red pupils rolled once, and she reached out to knock his hand away.

Really—interrupting her rest for no reason.

He was the best at ruining the atmosphere.

Wen Jiuzhe withdrew his hand and leaned back into the driver’s seat, smiling in relief. “You scared me—I thought I’d accidentally read you into being delivered.”

Do you think you were reciting Buddhist scriptures? Delivering, my ass.

She changed her position, but didn’t close her eyes again; when Wen Jiuzhe looked over, she would perfunctorily wiggle her fingers to show that she hadn’t been delivered.

Accompanied by the sound of rain, they passed the night. In the morning the sky cleared, and the sun came out again.

The dim tunnel brightened, the exits both ahead and behind glowing with light. The car started forward, driving into the clear, luminous greenery washed by rain.

Wen Jiuzhe looked at the road signs ahead, checking the map and preparing to turn left at the intersection, when Xue Ling beside him suddenly handed over the writing board.

On it was written: “I want to go see the Terracotta Army.”

Wen Jiuzhe: “……”

The Terracotta Army was extremely far from where he was headed, Andong City—one to the south, one to the north.