Rather than saying the stone wall fell, it would be more accurate to say it was smashed down. As Lu Xiaojie pulled the switch rope, the wall crashed onto the ground. So zombies that had just poked half their bodies through were quickly bisected, their thick, foul-slling blood splattering all around, while their upper halves stubbornly crawled towards Tang Ye and Lu Xiaojie.
However, by now, they no longer posed a threat to Lu Xiaojie. With a swift shovel strike, these few pitiful zombies quickly ended their aningless existence.
Having dealt with the zombies that were now only upper torsos, Lu Xiaojie put away her shovel, patted her hands, and said, "It’s done."
"What’s next?"
"Follow ."
Waving to Tang Ye, she took the lead towards the darkest area. Tang Ye nodded and followed with the candlelight, which cast a faint glow. In the dim light, the large room seed even darker. Tang Ye shook his head, feeling as if in the face of absolute darkness, the darkness he was used to seed childlike and clear, a strange visual contrast in his eyes.
Not long after following Lu Xiaojie, he ca across a corridor.
"How could there be a corridor here?"
"I told you, you wouldn’t see it. Just go through the corridor," replied Lu Xiaojie ahead of him.
Following her into the corridor, which was not long and could be crossed in less than a minute at a normal pace, they soon saw the candlelight scatter in all directions as they entered another space.
Tang Ye looked down and realized for the first ti that there were no shadowy figures on the floor.
"This is really dark," Tang Ye remarked.
"Look behind you," Lu Xiaojie said as soon as Tang Ye finished speaking.
Tang Ye turned and was stunned for a mont: "This..."
The corridor they had walked through was no longer visible, just a wall.
"Is it fake?"
Muttering to himself, Tang Ye reached out to touch the wall behind him, but felt resistance. It was a real wall, not an illusion.
"How do we get out?"
"Don’t worry, if I dared to co in, I naturally have a way out. Now, let’s get moving," she said.
"That seems like your job."
"From the mont you ca in, we’ve been colleagues. If you want to search for a way out alone, OK, I won’t stop you, but you have at most half a year. After that ti, you won’t rember anything, and your brute strength will slowly return to that of a normal person."
"That’s not what I ant. I’m not like you; I don’t understand what it ans to persevere like a zombie."
"But here, you have to learn to persevere too, otherwise, you have no hope."
"Alright, what should I do?"
Lu Xiaojie swept her gaze around the room and suddenly raised her candle higher, illuminating further away. At the sa ti, Tang Ye saw several movable dical gurneys not too far off. These beds were crude and looked like products that might have been used in the 80s or 90s, with so of the paint peeling off and showing signs of age, most of them empty.
"You search over there, and I’ll look here. There should be three bodies here; just find them," she said.
"Okay."
Tang Ye nodded, lifting the candle and headed towards the direction Lu Xiaojie had pointed out, while the other imdiately turned towards the opposite direction, taking their candle into the darkness.
There were many nursing beds in the darkness, nearly filling up every walkable space. Guided by the light of the candle, Tang Ye checked each visible bed one by one. After a while, Lu Xiaojie’s voice resonated from afar, eerily ethereal in the empty space.
"Hey, did you find any? I found one here!"
As the words faded, Tang Ye heard the sound of a nursing bed being dragged and turned to see the light from Lu Xiaojie’s candle moving slowly.
"Should I co over and help?"
"No need, keep looking for the other bodies, they aren’t all together."
Turning back, Tang Ye lifted the candlelight higher, casting its glow on more nursing beds. Not far away, partly hidden in shadows with just a corner visible, a nursing bed seed to have sothing on it. Upon closer inspection, there lay a body, covered with a white cloth.
He lifted the white cloth to look, revealing a man’s body with nurous bite-and-tear wounds; it was the body of the man from the second floor of the hotel. But now, the wounds on his body had turned black, and a faint sll of rot was detectable.
"Rotting this quickly?"
As if understanding or rembering sothing, a sense of forgetfulness swiftly ca over him, preventing Tang Ye from thinking further. Scratching his head, he gave up and looked towards the speck of light representing Lu Xiaojie, shouting, "I found one too. What’s next?"
"Is your sense of direction good?"
"What do you an?"
"Just push the body back to where we ca in from."
As she spoke, she seed to have found another body; her voice carrying over along with the sound of a nursing bed being pushed.
"If you can’t find the way, co towards ."
"Got it."
After responding, Tang Ye, though not having the strongest sense of direction, wasn’t too disoriented. He grabbed the nursing bed with the body of the man from the hotel’s second floor and started walking towards the exit of the corridor they had co through.
By the ti he got there, he saw another nursing bed with a body on it in the position where they had been standing before, and Lu Xiaojie was pushing another bed with a body towards the spot.
"That’s the three of them."
She nodded, then unzipped her jacket and pulled out three cloth sacks from the pockets inside—one she threw to Tang Ye, one she placed on one of the nursing beds, and the other she kept to herself, opening it as if preparing to place the body into the sack.
"Help out, put him into the sack. After all three are bagged, carry them, and I’ll lead you out."
"Okay."
Tang Ye opened the sack, which was quite capacious, easily able to fit an adult corpse. Beside him, Lu Xiaojie lifted the white cloth from another nursing bed, and upon seeing the almost-mushy body, her eyebrows instantly furrowed.
"How did it end up like this, what a hassle!"
She complained but showed no disgust, getting hands-on and began tossing chunks of Little Ru’s body into the sack, much like a chef stuffing minced at, making one’s heart race just watching.
Though not having done the work of bagging bodies often, for Tang Ye it was simply executed; soon he had the man’s body secured in the sack, then he took another sack and bagged Lu Xin’s body, all while querying Lu Xiaojie.
"How do you plan to dispose of these stolen bodies?"
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