Having people to order around was great.
In just two hours, the people in the basement had collected nearly all the food from every household in the village.
Qi Xing ended up with two large bags of food and four boxes of gasoline.
Besides the bread he had been longing for, there were even several packets of vegetable seeds—an unexpected bonus.
This food was enough to last him alone for more than half a month.
At last, Qi Xing no longer had to eat only two packets of compressed biscuits a day and carefully ration even his water.
With his supplies suddenly abundant, Qi Xing was in a great mood. He changed his expression at once and became immediately much kinder to these people.
Qi Xing took a wallet from his pocket, unfolded it to reveal the photo inside, and asked whether any of them had seen the girl in it.
It was a group photo.
When Qi Xing took out the picture, Jiang Zhaosu, standing beside him, quietly rose onto her toes and caught sight of the man and woman in it.
The man was naturally Qi Xing.
The Qi Xing in the photo was younger than he was now, looking as though he had just come of age. He wore a Blue and White School Uniform, with a trace of youthful innocence in his bearing, and held a little girl in his arms.
The little girl was only seven or eight years old. With long curly hair, a puffy dress, and the appearance of a doll, she had delicate features and fair skin. Her beautiful, lively fox eyes resembled Qi Xing's by seventy or eighty percent. At a glance, anyone could tell they were siblings.
Both of them were looking at the camera.
Qi Xing was smiling with narrowed eyes, but the little girl had no expression. Her small hand clutched his lapel, her gaze blank.
So Qi Xing's little sister had been this pretty and adorable.
No wonder Qi Xing, who was usually cold and ruthless, as if he had not a shred of human feeling, would unconsciously soften his gaze and tone whenever he mentioned his sister.
Watching Qi Xing walk up and question those people one by one with the photograph, Jiang Zhaosu's stomach, which had just been filled, seemed to grow hungry again. A sourness rose in her gut.
She was a little envious.
Although she had long grown used to being alone and thought it was not necessarily a bad thing.
Whenever she saw others with family or friends, however, Jiang Zhaosu, who had always been alone, could not help feeling a small stab of jealousy.
He had managed to lose such a pretty, adorable little sister. What an irresponsible brother.
Though Qi Xing clearly had never let the matter go. Even in the apocalypse, he was still tirelessly searching for her.
Did he think that would make her sympathize with him?
No.
Thinking that Qi Xing would suffer because of it made Jiang Zhaosu feel much more balanced.
If one had never possessed something, one would never know how terrifying it was to lose it.
Luckily, her parents had abandoned her early on. She could not even remember what they looked like, so she was not sad at all.
Whenever Jiang Zhaosu thought of her unreliable parents now, she felt nothing but resentment.
She would curse them to have miserable lives.
After questioning everyone, Qi Xing received no answer he wanted.
When he turned around, Qi Xing saw Jiang Zhaosu squatting beside the pond in the courtyard, fiddling with something on the ground using a Little Tree Branch.
The little zombie's thin, weak body was curled into a ball like an undernourished kitten.
Jiang Zhaosu was far too skinny. Every time Qi Xing held her, he felt as though he were carrying a weightless plastic bag.
He wondered what kind of life the girl had lived before she died, and how her parents had taken care of her.
Even if they had only urged the child to eat a few more bites at every meal, she would not have become this thin.
Qi Xing closed his wallet, tucked the photograph back into his pocket, and waved for everyone to disperse.
Then he strode toward Jiang Zhaosu on his long legs.
"Fortune, what are you playing with?"
Qi Xing bent down to look at what Jiang Zhaosu was drawing on the ground.
After becoming a zombie, Jiang Zhaosu's fingers had become very clumsy. She could barely hold the Little Tree Branch, and the shapes she drew were crooked and uneven.
Even so, it was clear that she had drawn two people with twisted faces.
After finishing the drawing, Jiang Zhaosu drew two large X's over them.
They only gave birth to her and never raised her—two irresponsible bastards.
Death sentence!
Seeing the pattern Jiang Zhaosu had sketched with the branch, Qi Xing asked in surprise, "Fortune, you can draw too?"
When Qi Xing said this, he was standing behind her, bent over and very close to her.
Jiang Zhaosu was completely absorbed in judging her trashy biological parents and had not noticed Qi Xing approaching at all.
His cool, magnetic voice suddenly sounded beside her ear.
Jiang Zhaosu, whose thoughts had long drifted somewhere else, jolted in fright and sprang to her feet.
But she had been squatting for too long, and her legs had gone numb. She lost her balance and landed on the ground on her butt.
Qi Xing, who had only casually asked, was nearly knocked over by Jiang Zhaosu.
He felt something brush against his lips. His beautiful fox eyes widened slightly, and he instinctively raised a hand to touch his lips.
After a brief moment of stunned silence, Qi Xing looked again at Jiang Zhaosu sitting on the ground.
Looking at Jiang Zhaosu, still clutching the branch with a dazed expression, Qi Xing mercilessly laughed at her. "A zombie, yet you're still so timid. You're so stupid, Fortune."
Damn.
Who said zombies could not be timid?
Besides, it was Qi Xing deliberately startling her that had made her fall.
"Roar!"
Jiang Zhaosu angrily threw the branch in her hand at Qi Xing and let out an embarrassed, furious howl at him.
She did not bare her teeth.
She was angry, but did not dare be completely angry.
Jiang Zhaosu still remembered Qi Xing's vicious threat that if she bared her teeth at him again, he would break them off and stuff them into her eye sockets.
She did not want to gamble with her teeth.
"Are you angry?"
Qi Xing asked with a smiling face. He bent down, picked her up from the ground, and brushed the dirt and dust from her body.
Then Qi Xing picked up the Little Tree Branch she had dropped, neatly cut away its twigs with a dagger, placed the smooth little stick into her hand, and held her as he tilted his head to examine the drawing on the ground.
"Are these Fortune's parents?" Qi Xing asked.
She had drawn them like that, and he could still tell?!
Jiang Zhaosu was stunned.
Back in school, her grades in every subject had nearly always ranked at the top.
Only art class gave Jiang Zhaosu trouble. The abstract paintings she created gave her art teacher endless headaches and made them impossible to grade.
No one understood Jiang Zhaosu's art.
Yet now, in another world, she had encountered someone who understood her. Jiang Zhaosu nodded, and her anger toward Qi Xing faded.
"Why did you draw X's on their faces?" Qi Xing was unexpectedly sensitive to other people's emotions. "Were they bad to Fortune?"
"..."
Jiang Zhaosu thought about it, then shook her head.
People who had left her at the entrance of an orphanage after giving birth to her, people of whom she had no memories at all—what was there to say about whether they had treated her well or badly?
Qi Xing met Jiang Zhaosu's bright, clear black eyes.
She was clearly a zombie, yet Jiang Zhaosu's eyes were unlike those Low-Level Zombies that knew only how to hunt. They were practically human—bright and lively, always brimming with countless emotions.
Yet now, Qi Xing saw only confusion and emptiness in them.
That familiar look made Qi Xing's heart tremble suddenly.
He reached out and gently touched Jiang Zhaosu's pale, thin little face, comforting her softly. "It's okay. From now on, I'll treat Fortune well."
Jiang Zhaosu was looking at Qi Xing too.
When Qi Xing spoke this time, the usual careless smile was gone from his face. His beautiful, affectionate fox eyes looked at her with gentleness and sincerity.
But the person he saw was not her.
Who did Qi Xing see in her?
Forget it. It was not important.
Jiang Zhaosu wrapped her arms around Qi Xing's neck, pretended to be attached to him, and buried her face in his chest, greedily soaking up the man's warm body heat.
As long as Qi Xing was willing to protect her and give her meat to eat, that was enough.
Given their current situation, the most important thing was to do everything they could to survive. Every extra day alive was a gain. Who had the energy for so much sentimentality?
Before you continue