There was only one person in the entire camp with the surname Zeng, and that was Wen Yi’s boyfriend, Zeng Yitong.
Yesterday, Xue Ling had blended into the activity area and heard quite a bit of gossip. Life in the camp was too monotonous, and there were only so many topics people could talk about, among which Wen Yi and her boyfriend were included.
This Mr. Zeng was said to be like them as well, a zombie who possessed rationality.
It was precisely because of him that people in the camp had some understanding of zombies with rationality, knowing that this kind of special zombie existed.
But in reality, not many people had actually seen Zeng Yitong with their own eyes.
He basically stayed inside the medical vehicle. Only occasionally would Wen Yi go over to see him, and on ordinary days he was guarded there by Wen Yi’s junior schoolmate, Xu Zhihua.
The one who came to tell Wen Yi that Zeng Yitong had woken up was precisely that junior sister Xu.
Xue Ling had been very curious ever since she learned of Zeng Yitong, and now, hearing Xu Zhihua say that he had woken up, she was even more curious.
Zombies didn’t sleep, so how did he “wake up”?
Seeing Wen Yi walk toward that medical vehicle, Xue Ling also tugged Wen Jiuzhe and followed along to join in the excitement.
Xu Zhihua had originally wanted to remind them that the medical vehicle counted as a confidential laboratory and that they couldn’t enter without permission, but seeing that after they followed along Wen Yi didn’t say anything, she also didn’t speak up to stop them.
Wen Yi walked at the very front, arrived before a modified large RV, and pulled open the door.
The moment the door opened, the indistinct sounds inside the vehicle instantly grew louder—it was the roaring of a zombie.
Xue Ling was especially familiar with this kind of roar from her own kind. When wanting to attack humans, or when being attacked, zombies would make this terrifying kind of roar.
But wasn’t the one inside supposed to be that Zeng Yitong? He also had rationality; he shouldn’t be roaring like this.
So there should be other zombies inside the vehicle?
Xue Ling loosened her grip on Wen Jiuzhe and followed behind Wen Yi as she walked onto the vehicle, curiously observing the interior.
The inside of the vehicle was arranged like a laboratory, with various instruments. In the center, on a restraint bed, a zombie was bound.
He was extremely dried out, his face shrunken and darkened, and he was struggling frantically, crashing the restraint bed so that it kept making noise.
Especially upon seeing Wen Yi, he became even more agitated. His cries were practically as if he were tearing his throat apart to roar, behaving extremely viciously.
Xue Ling did not see another zombie inside the vehicle. So, this was Wen Yi’s boyfriend, Zeng Yitong?
“How long did the brain stimulation last this time before he became conscious?” Wen Yi walked over and examined an instrument beside the restraint bed.
Her tone was calm; she had only glanced at Zeng Yitong once when she entered.
Xu Zhihua stepped forward to answer, “Each discharge was fifteen minutes, continued for three rounds. Before this…”
Xue Ling listened to their conversation, then looked again at the bound Zeng Yitong, and felt that things seemed a little different from what she had imagined.
After hearing what Xu Zhihua said, Wen Yi put on isolation gloves and personally checked Zeng Yitong’s condition. Only after his roaring grew a bit quieter did she say indifferently, “Are you conscious? How do you feel now?”
Zeng Yitong glared at her, then opened his ferocious mouth and let out another loud roar.
Wen Yi withdrew the inspection tools. “Looks like you don’t want to communicate. Then let’s talk again in a couple of days, when your condition is a bit better.”
Only then did Wen Yi gesture for Xu Zhihua to bring him a tablet, similar to the one Xue Ling had received.
Zeng Yitong’s hands were not untied. He used his blackened fingers to poke and tap at the screen, extremely laboriously.
Xue Ling did not go over, so she couldn’t see what he was writing, but the tablet hadn’t turned off automatic reading. Very quickly, a female voice read out: “Kill me, kill me, kill me, please kill me.”
Xue Ling: “?”
Behind her, Wen Jiuzhe put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her back a little.
This wasn’t the first time Zeng Yitong had made such a request. Wen Yi was already used to it, with no fluctuation at all. As she flipped through the records of his physical condition data, she said:
“I still have many important experiments that aren’t finished. You’d better hold on a bit longer for me.”
When Zeng Yitong heard this, he fell into madness again, starting to roar and struggle.
Wen Yi frowned slightly. “He’s more irritable than a month ago. Later, take brain images and see if the recent experiments caused brain damage.”
After she finished speaking, she looked up and saw Xue Ling, who had retreated to the side of the car door, doing her utmost to hide her tension and fear.
Wen Yi suddenly chuckled softly.
She was beautiful, and usually her emotions were faint and her expression cold. Suddenly smiling like this, it was simply like spring warming and flowers blooming.
Xue Ling immediately felt that Wen Yi must have her reasons for doing this. Perhaps Zeng Yitong had done something to wrong her.
“No need to be afraid, I won’t do this to you.”
Wen Yi ignored the pain and anger of Zeng Yitong beside her and explained, “Some dangerous experiments have already been tested on him. I now have experience, so it will be much safer.”
Zeng Yitong indeed looked like he had been tortured badly.
After seeing this scene with her own eyes, Xue Ling no longer felt that Zeng Yitong was Wen Yi’s boyfriend. This clearly looked more like her enemy.
Wen Yi quickly finished the inspection, told Xu Zhihua to continue watching him, and then got off the vehicle and returned to her own RV.
The zombie’s roars inside the vehicle were shut behind her by the soundproof door.
Xue Ling followed her and also got onto her vehicle.
Wen Yi waved at her and at Wen Jiuzhe behind her. “You two go play by yourselves, don’t come onto my vehicle to make noise.”
Xue Ling turned back to Wen Jiuzhe. “Wait outside for a bit.”
Wen Jiuzhe: “?”
He reached to take the tablet from Xue Ling’s hands, but she forcefully pushed him off the vehicle with her backhand.
Seeing her shut Wen Jiuzhe outside the vehicle, Wen Yi didn’t insist on kicking her out as well, and went to wash her hands on her own.
Xue Ling walked over and quietly asked her, “Last time you said there was also an experimental subject who had taken a quarter of Taisui and could be used to extract medicinal liquid—could it be the one just now?”
Wen Yi: “Yes.”
“Although there are still some experiments on him that haven’t been completed, if you’re willing to cooperate with me on some small experiments that aren’t very harmful, I can also let him be scrapped in advance.”
Xue Ling: “……”
Seeing the shock in her expression, Wen Yi understood what she was thinking and said, “Not all boyfriends and girlfriends are like you and Wen Jiuzhe.”
She and Zeng Yitong, although they were boyfriend and girlfriend, did not have any particularly deep feelings between them.
Zeng Yitong was a rich second-generation, third-generation heir with an excellent family background. His family had extensive connections, and his looks were also quite good. From his teenage years onward, there had never been a shortage of girlfriends around him.
When Wen Yi was in university, she devoted herself wholeheartedly to her research and was a famously aloof academic prodigy.
Zeng Yitong could be said to have fallen for her at first sight, but his never-failing pursuit game met a setback with her. From then on, he persistently launched a year-long pursuit of her.
His methods of pursuit included but were not limited to giving expensive gifts, creating large-scale confession scenes, appearing anytime and anywhere to block her path, bribing everyone around her to persuade her to accept the pursuit, and deliberately creating trouble for her before stepping in to resolve it.
It annoyed Wen Yi endlessly.
At the time, she wanted to transfer to Teacher Rong Lanjia’s supervision, but she had no connections. After learning of this, Zeng Yitong proposed that he could help her, on the condition that she date him.
Just then, Wen Yi’s grandfather on the Wen family side was also pushing her to go on blind dates with the child of some leader. Wen Yi therefore turned around and agreed to Zeng Yitong’s pursuit, becoming yet another topic this young master could show off.
They dated for two years. Everyone said she was Zeng Yitong’s longest-lasting girlfriend, but Wen Yi knew very well that while he was dating her, there had never been a lack of lovers outside.
He was a scumbag who was romantic and promiscuous, just like her biological father.
But Wen Yi didn’t care. The only time she ever got angry was when a junior female student from the same laboratory, Xu Zhihua, told her that Zeng Yitong had asked her out. She wanted to refuse, but was afraid of angering him and being retaliated against.
Wen Yi stepped in and warned Zeng Yitong not to touch the people in her laboratory and not to interfere with her work.
Until the apocalypse arrived, Zeng Yitong was accidentally infected with the zombie virus. At the time, Wen Yi was still researching the Taisui she had brought back to the laboratory from the Wen family and discovered that the special active components inside could suppress the zombie virus.
Somehow, this news was learned by Zeng Yitong. He broke into her laboratory and ate that portion of Taisui, then became a zombie that retained rationality.
Wen Yi could not tolerate his foolish behavior.
Since he had eaten her important experimental material, then it was only natural that he himself became her experimental material.
At the time, Zeng Yitong still thought that after eating the Taisui he wouldn’t turn into a zombie and would return to normal. He never expected that he would still become a zombie.
He couldn’t accept that result. He went mad everywhere, frightening away the people who had originally protected him until they abandoned him. After that, he was quite naturally locked into the laboratory by Wen Yi under the pretext of treatment.
The identity of “girlfriend” made it convenient for Wen Yi to do anything she wanted to him.
With only this one example before her eyes, and with Wen Yi’s particularly strong desire to explore, she had been somewhat aggressive at the start of the experiments and hadn’t really cared about his feelings or thoughts. It seemed that this caused him some mental damage, turning him into what he was now.
Strictly speaking, Zeng Yitong’s condition was much worse than Xue Ling’s, even though both had consumed a quarter of a Taisui. He was often uncontrollable.
Wen Yi guessed that this was also related to the fact that her portion of Taisui had undergone some experiments back then and had lost part of its medicinal effect.
Before encountering Xue Ling and Wen Jiuzhe, Wen Yi had already asked her teacher to search everywhere for Taisui, and she herself had also collected some. Unfortunately, none of them had the effect of the Wen family’s Taisui.
Wen Yi believed that it was an unreplicable mutated individual, and she no longer placed hope in finding another Taisui with the same effect.
She was also close to giving up on researching Zeng Yitong and preparing to change direction.
For the past three years, her teacher Rong Lanjia had been trying to obtain a vaccine to suppress the zombie virus from animals, because the zombie virus does not infect animals.
Just as there seemed to be progress, news of viral mutation from Jizhou City came, and her teacher’s research also ran into difficulties.
At a time like this, the appearance of Xue Ling and Wen Jiuzhe let Wen Yi see many new possibilities.
Unfortunately, Wen Jiuzhe was impervious and far too difficult to deal with, while Xue Ling was much easier.
Wen Yi thought coldly in her heart, while on her face she revealed a trace of gentleness toward Xue Ling.
“You’ve seen it today too, Xue Ling. Do you really not want to try the medicine extracted from Zeng Yitong? I’m very confident that it can make you a bit better than your current state.”
Xue Ling looked at her, then shook her head.
Wen Yi didn’t get angry at her refusal and asked instead, “Have you bitten anyone?”
Xue Ling felt a little guilty. She hesitated and didn’t dare nod, thinking to herself that Wen Yi could be considered official personnel—would she arrest her for having infected someone?
Seeing her expression, Wen Yi guessed that she had bitten someone and continued, “For ordinary zombies, once they infect a human, it counts as successful reproduction. The more times they reproduce successfully, the longer their ‘lifespan’ becomes.”
“The latest research shows that zombies can also obtain nutrients from certain substances in the air to maintain their activity.”
“But your situation is different.”
Wen Yi lifted her arm. “The medicinal effect of Taisui allows you to retain rationality, but the zombie virus in your body has never given up on controlling you. The struggle between the two will continuously consume your body. If this keeps up, you may shrink into a lump.”
Xue Ling felt that Wen Jiuzhe really did understand this older sister of his—she really knew how to talk.
After she said this, it felt as if her whole body was starting to feel uncomfortable everywhere, with a pressing sense that if she didn’t see a doctor immediately, she would die.
But… Xue Ling had accepted her own death a long time ago. What she had always been afraid of was not death.
Xue Ling held the tablet and typed, then flipped it around for Wen Yi to see: “Let’s talk about this later. I came over just now to ask, can you give us another tablet?”
