It was only after lying on top of Kiana for over half an hour that Yu Luo finally felt a trace of strength return to his weak, limp limbs. Watching beads of sweat roll down Kiana's face, Yu Luo patted her shoulder. "Put me down. I'm fine now."
"Okay." Kiana answered blankly and immediately let go. Caught completely off guard, Yu Luo's butt made intimate contact with the pavement. With a dull thud, he took ages to recover, feeling like his butt no longer belonged to him.
"Sorry, Teacher. I'm just too clumsy." Kiana hurriedly apologized. "What can I do? I'm a White-Haired Idiot, after all."
"So you really are still holding a grudge over me calling you an idiot!"
"Tee-hee!" Kiana made a fist with her right hand, tapped herself on the forehead, and stuck out her tongue in an adorably silly pose. Yu Luo was instantly left speechless. He could only get to his feet indignantly and say irritably, "Let's go. We need to get out of this academy while we have the chance."
If Yu Luo had to describe what he was thinking right then, it would be: I was going to get mad, but she's just too cute. I can't refuse her at all.
After Mei's rampage, the sun was already gradually sinking westward, staining the horizon blood-red. The two of them walked and stopped along the road behind the mountain. The Zombie Girls here were no longer clustered in groups like those around the dorms and classroom buildings; they were scattered in twos and threes, and Kiana picked them off one by one.
From time to time, Ghostfire Girls riding motorcycles came charging at them, only for Kiana to blow out their tires with two quick shots. It perfectly demonstrated what happened when the ghostfire revved: parents had raised their kid for nothing.
After making their way through that relatively peaceful stretch, they finally saw Senba Academy's back gate. Yu Luo let out a sigh of relief. It had only been half a day, but he felt as though he had spent several days here already. In such a suffocating apocalyptic environment, if he had not bickered with the system and cracked a few jokes, his mind might have gone wrong by now.
"Looks like all of Changkong City has been completely contaminated by Honkai." Kiana easily vaulted over the locked back gate. Looking at the scorched earth ahead, she sighed, a rare sight for her.
Yu Luo followed Kiana over the gate. Seeing the scene before him, he too rarely felt like making jokes. Wrecked cars, rising black smoke, devastated storefronts, and Zombie Girls wandering the streets—it was all the sort of thing commonly seen in zombie games, like a real-life Resident Evil.
"Isn't this where you're supposed to say something like, 'Another cliché scene? Why not throw in a Gundam?'" The system found Yu Luo's silence strange and even mimicked his tone of voice.
Interrupted by the system, Yu Luo, whose heart had been heavy at the sight of civilization and life reduced to ruin, suddenly did not feel quite so bad anymore. "You've already made all the jokes for me. What else am I supposed to say?"
"I learned it from you, hehe."
Yu Luo rolled his eyes and looked at Kiana. Kiana raised her head and stared at the surrounding buildings in confusion, pointing vaguely into the air with her right hand. "Um... north is this way?" She lowered her head to check the map on her phone, shook her head, turned around, and murmured uncertainly, "Or is it this way?"
"Uh..." Yu Luo looked at Kiana, whose eyes were practically spinning in circles, and asked in disbelief, "Don't tell me you have no sense of direction?!"
"W-What nonsense!" Kiana shouted, putting on a fierce front despite her lack of confidence. "This lady just can't tell north from south. That doesn't mean I have no sense of direction!"
"Isn't that exactly what having no sense of direction means?!"
"Isn't that exactly what having no sense of direction means?!"
Yu Luo and the system had reached a consensus. In the end, Yu Luo could not bear to watch any longer. He pointed north and said to Kiana, "North is this way."
"This lady already knew that. I was merely testing you!" Kiana's face reddened as she forcibly put on a righteous expression.
"Hey, hey, tsundere doesn't suit you!" Yu Luo teased Kiana, only to receive a heavy elbow strike from her. Clutching his battered stomach in agony, Yu Luo slowly crouched down. The system even added a sound effect for good measure: "K.O.!"
"Quit messing around! It'll get harder to see once it's dark, so we need to move quickly!" Kiana glanced at the sky. The sun was about to sink below the horizon, and darkness was gathering. In the night, the abandoned buildings looked like monsters waiting to devour people, mixed with the occasional howls of Zombie Girls. It was seriously creepy.
"What's our route from here?" Yu Luo stood up and narrowed his eyes as he observed their surroundings, wary of a sudden Zombie Girl attack.
"Changkong City has already been entirely eroded by Honkai, so going through the city is too dangerous." Kiana wore an expression of absolute confidence and proudly puffed out her chest. "And Changkong City has an elevated rail line that goes out of town. Only staff can enter the rail tracks, so there definitely won't be many Zombie Girls there. We can just follow the tracks when the time comes!"
Yu Luo helplessly slapped his forehead and pointed out the flaw in Kiana's plan. "Have you considered what the station itself will be like? The station must be full of people, right? Even if only young women can be infected by Honkai and turned into Zombie Girls, there still won't be fewer of them than there were in all of Senba Academy."
"Relax, relax." Kiana said energetically, "If you think too much, you'll never get anything done. We'll deal with it when we get there! The urgent thing is finding somewhere to rest for the night. Poor visibility at night will seriously affect combat."
The two found a relatively secluded apartment building nearby. Relying on her exceptional physical ability, Kiana easily jumped up onto a second-floor windowsill. Watching Yu Luo clumsily climb up the drainpipe behind her, she curled her lips and reached out with her left hand to pull him up.
"I'll count to three, then we rush in together!" Kiana whispered into Yu Luo's ear. Her breath brushed against his face, and Yu Luo scratched his cheek, saying somewhat awkwardly, "Why do I feel like we're breaking into someone's home to rob them?"
Kiana said irritably, "Taking things is robbery. We're just borrowing a place to stay."
"Borrowing a place to stay by coming through the window with guns and planning to kill the owner?"
"Enough nonsense!" Kiana pulled open the window and shoved Yu Luo into the pitch-black room. Dizzy and disoriented, Yu Luo did not even get a clear look at the room before shouting, "Water meter inspection! Crossdressers to the left, girls to the right!"
Unfortunately, there were neither crossdressers nor girls in the room. There was only a Zombie Girl wearing black-rimmed glasses. Hearing the commotion, she lunged straight at them.
Bang! The USP in Kiana's hand accurately struck the black-rimmed-glasses girl in the head. She fell in response, her limbs twitching on the floor as she struggled to get back up.
Yu Luo stepped forward and removed the black-rimmed glasses from her head. The Zombie Girl immediately stopped moving once she lost them, lying motionless on the floor.
"So it really can keep you alive!" Yu Luo clicked his tongue as he looked at the glasses in his hand. He wanted to put them on and try out the feeling of extending his life himself. "The moment you wear those, you're on the expedited list. Think it through first." The system's words were like a bucket of cold water dumped over Yu Luo's head. Yu Luo regretfully looked at the glasses, then painfully tossed them out the window.
"At such a young age, why recite poetry? Why raise dogs?"
A small light suddenly lit up in the dark room. Kiana held a desk lamp in her hand and said excitedly, "It's actually a rechargeable desk lamp! We finally have light!" When civilization had collapsed, even the smallest bit of light was enough to make people happy.
Yu Luo hurriedly drew the curtains to keep the desk lamp's light from leaking outside. They still did not know whether Zombie Girls, like moths, would gather wherever there was light. Better safe than sorry.
"There are so many books on the shelf. Looks like she was a literary girl when she was alive." Using the desk lamp's light to inspect the room, Kiana curiously pulled a book off the shelf and began flipping through it.
Yu Luo also looked curiously at the book in Kiana's hands, but regretted it the moment he saw the cover. He almost wanted to gouge out his own eyes.
The cover read "May I Win One Person's Heart," and showed two refined, handsome men embracing each other. From that alone, Yu Luo already knew the book's main content. He hurriedly pounced over, snatched the book from Kiana's hands, and threw it under the bed.
"What are you doing?!" Kiana was a little angry. She had only just opened the book and had not even read a single page before Yu Luo snatched it away and tossed it aside.
"This book has an evil god sealed inside it!" Yu Luo said solemnly. "If you finish reading it, Lucifer will harvest your soul. This is heretical scripture!"
"Tch, you're so superstitious!" Kiana did not believe in any of that fancy nonsense. She reached out and pulled another book from the shelf. It was much the same as the previous one. After quickly flipping through it twice, she closed it with a bored expression and put it back where it had been.
"What? It's just love between men. Boring. Only girls who don't understand love would like this stuff."
Yu Luo sighed in relief. He had genuinely been worried that Kiana would be corrupted by those rotten books, but her reaction put his mind at ease.
"Exactly! Men with men are heresy!" Yu Luo nodded repeatedly in agreement with Kiana.
"Teacher, you think so too, right?!" Kiana excitedly began to expound at length. "Only love between girls is real—so pure, so tragic, so..."
"Wait!" Seeing the conversation heading off the rails, Yu Luo hurriedly stopped her and asked Kiana in disbelief, "You like Yuri?"
"Isn't that obvious? What's there to like about men? Girls are the best!"
"Then never mind. I'm going to sleep." Yu Luo decisively ended the conversation, sprawled across the only bed in the room, and closed his eyes with an utterly dead expression.
If you think this book is good, remember to add it to your bookshelf so you won't have trouble finding it next time.
Before you continue