The Stiff

An hour earlier

In the mountains,

At the tree hollow where Luo Di had first found the wooden box,

Because the locust tree within the residence had been felled, the corpses burned, and the corpse-refining ritual forcibly interrupted,

Repeated roars now echoed from deep within the tree hollow.

If the camera extended deeper and deeper through the hollow, it would reach a hidden cave, where the coffin at the very back had already been pushed open.

Then, as the camera returned to the hollow's entrance,

A shriveled, blackened, decaying hand covered in cracks reached out from within. Clearly, it was still incomplete.

It had not even fully regained its consciousness, perhaps because it had failed to "absorb" its blood relatives.

Inside the residence.

The group had stared at the paper windows for a long time, yet neither shadows nor footsteps appeared.

Luo Di suddenly realized something.

In a single stride, he reached his backpack, fastened the Machete—with its leather sheath and securing chain—to his waist, and picked up the silver chainsaw case in his right hand.

Even without him saying anything, the others moved with him, each grabbing something for self-defense.

Gao Yuxuan had only a Field Knife.

Anna had intended to bring her entire backpack, but considering that the target had yet to appear and carrying it while running around would waste too much energy, she ultimately took only her Tactical Axe.

As for Wu Wen,

She had not taken out any defensive tools since they had entered the mountain. Now, she reached into her backpack, feeling around before pulling out something very long.

A cold gleam flashed.

She held an eight-sided Han sword forged with modern craftsmanship, its overall design simple, defined by straight lines and rectangular forms.

Its hilt was pitch-black, etched with vertical grooves.

Its diamond-shaped guard was exceptionally narrow.

The scabbard was black as well, using modern magnetic technology to fit perfectly against the guard and form a seamless whole. At first glance, it looked like nothing more than a sleek black metal rod.

After arming themselves simply, everyone put on white masks.

The four exchanged no words. They seemed to already know where they were going and what they needed to do.

They descended from the second floor, followed the corridor, and arrived at the all-too-familiar door to the backyard.

The stench remained, but this time, none of them seemed to smell it. There was no physical discomfort whatsoever.

Standing at the doorway, they shone their flashlights into the backyard beneath the night sky. It still looked mostly normal.

Only, the felled locust tree lay across the pig and cow carcasses, blocking their view of what lay behind its trunk.

Unlike the steady rainfall of the afternoon, which had concealed much of the ambient sound, the rain was much lighter late at night.

In that stillness, they could hear a faint, discordant sound coming from the depths of the backyard, its source concealed behind the fallen locust tree.

The class monitor quickly raised her index finger to her masked lips, signaling for them to follow her quietly.

They stepped almost soundlessly through the sticky muck, advancing slowly.

Neither the stench nor the sensation beneath their feet distracted them anymore. Their attention was fixed entirely on what lay beyond the trunk, on that strange, discordant sound.

The closer they got, the clearer it became.

It was the sound of flesh and bone being torn apart, of something hard being chewed.

When the four reached the locust tree and pulled aside the branches obscuring their view, they all froze as though a doctor had just delivered a critical diagnosis. They could hardly believe what they were seeing.

Though each of them had more or less imagined a scene like this beforehand,

When it was truly laid before them, when they truly tasted that "flavor," the impact was completely different.

It wore black cloth robes, with Bagua-patterned buttons sewn along the center seam.

The head above its collar belonged to the diseased middle-aged man from the photograph.

Black veins crawled across its face.

Granular pustules left behind by the illness it had suffered in life hung from its skin.

Its cloudy, whitish eyes saw nothing in the world.

It stood there perfectly straight.

Its outstretched arms held a rotting cow's head impaled before it.

Its teeth, leaking Black Mist, tore and sucked fiercely at the filth within the cow's head, feeding on the residual Yin Energy inside.

The pig and cow corpses around it had mostly been devoured, used to supplement the unfinished parts of the ritual as much as possible.

Perhaps because the cow's head in its hands was nearly drained,

Or perhaps because the four had drawn close,

Smack!

The cow's head, stripped down to bone, fell to the ground.

Black cloth shoes stepped into the mud, carrying its body into a powerful leap.

It used the jump to turn its body.

Its milky-white eyes faced the fallen locust tree, as though it could see through the gaps in the branches and leaves to the four young people spying on it.

More precisely,

It had smelled the living scent of humans, unlike that of livestock.

This thing did not hop slowly like a typical movie zombie.

Its feet gradually rose until only its toes touched the ground, its body maintaining a thirty-degree forward lean.

It glided!

As though propelled by Yin Energy, its toes slid across the backyard full of filth, rapidly closing in on the watchers behind the tree.

Viewpoint shift

When the zombie tilted its head,

The four people spying on it knew they had been exposed.

They now had to make a decision in a very short time.

Fight or retreat?

Fight directly in the backyard, or choose another area?

But they had already considered those questions when they came downstairs. Running or retreating was impossible.

Since they had interrupted the ritual, now was the best time to kill this thing.

Delaying would only make the zombie more complete, while they would grow increasingly exhausted from hiding and running.

Of course,

They could not remain in this sacrificial backyard, where the zombie possessed a natural advantage.

The open space before the residence, where they had burned the bodies earlier, was a far better battlefield.

"Go!"

The four began running the moment the zombie pursued them. The class monitor and Luo Di started at nearly the same speed, Anna followed close behind, and Gao Yuxuan trailed at the rear.

The class monitor was the first to cross the backyard filled with sticky filth. As she stepped onto the residence's floorboards and prepared to accelerate further, she was surprised to find Luo Di gone from beside her. He seemed to have deliberately dropped to the back of the group.

Above her mask, her eyes held none of the fear of being pursued by a zombie. Instead, they carried a strangely gratified smile.

Their withdrawal went fairly smoothly. They were all athletic standouts; even Gao Yuxuan, the slowest among them, could run one hundred meters in 11.9 seconds. That speed was barely enough to keep the zombie from catching up.

In front of the residence,

The pit where they had burned the corpses yesterday had filled with rainwater, with several charred black bones floating on its surface.

When the zombie chased them into this area, its nostrils caught the scent of its blood relatives lingering in the air. Instinct drove it to temporarily change targets and approach the pit where the bones floated.

The moment it sensed that the flesh of its blood relatives had been completely destroyed and could no longer be absorbed, a beastlike roar erupted from its throat, deafeningly loud.

However, while the zombie's attention was diverted, someone among the four launched an attack.

A sharpened Tactical Axe, its surface engraved with the emblem of a famous military-industrial company, carved a perfect straight line through the air as it came down vertically.

Crack~

The axe struck the zombie's shoulder.

Yet the sharp blade sank less than three centimeters deep.

Anna was so shocked by its hardness that she could not speak. It did not feel like she had chopped into flesh at all, but into something between stone and metal. Even her arm tingled slightly from the recoil.

Whoosh!

Anna pulled out the axe, swiftly retreated, and shouted:

"This thing is insanely hard. Normal 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 ran back into the residence.

Although that chop had not harmed the zombie's essence, it had still posed a considerable threat.

The zombie immediately turned its head in the direction Anna had left, but another prey had already blocked that path, and bursts of roaring sound came at the same time.