"Huh?"

"What he means is that the dead people become fertilizer for the plants, or that some plants grow from the dead people." The man explained mysteriously, and from the look in his eyes, it was clear that he was not lying.

"And then?" I'll admit it's getting a little interesting now.

"We wanted to lock the door and leave immediately, but Sister Jiang found something strange." The man pointed with his chin to a middle-aged woman sitting behind him, she was the Sister Jiang. The woman was slender, wearing a brown-and-yellow T-shirt and a slightly slim denim jacket, with medium-sized hair, a pair of thin-rimmed metal glasses, a blood-rusted machete in her hand, and a pistol in her purse.

Sister Jiang stepped forward, leaned slightly, cleared Qingsang and said: "Those are not ordinary dead people, they are all zombie corpses, all of them!" ”

Wei Hong saw that I was curiously looking at Sister Jiang, who had become the center of the topic, so he leaned into my ear and whispered: "This person is a more powerful scout in Qingshan, and he seems to be a dance teacher in the past, her name is Jiang Yifei, and we call her Sister Jiang." ”

"Dance teacher? I can't see ......" I shook my head with a smirk, continuing to refocus my attention on the topic they were discussing.

"I don't understand, what's wrong with the corpses full of zombies?" Wu Fei, like me and Wei Hong, didn't seem to hear anything special about the corpses of zombies in a room, after all, this can be regarded as a street scene that can be seen everywhere now.

"Who did you think left those zombies there?" Sister Jiang sneered, as if she already knew the answer.

Without hesitation, I replied, "I guess it's the crazy people of the converts." ”

"Converts?"

After thinking about it, I realized that Wei Hong and the others did not know the identity of the converts, so I briefly introduced: "It is the group of people who arrested me just now. ”

"No, not the group." Sister Jiang categorically said, "They walked over on their own." ”

"No, it won't." This conclusion really made me a little incredulous, "You mean the mutants themselves get together and wait for them to rot into mud and make fertilizer for plants?" ”

"That's right! We were about to leave that room when we bumped into a zombie that was about to enter the room. The man who spoke at first didn't seem to have recovered from what had just happened, and recklessly grabbed the conversation, "We hid first, and then we saw the group of zombies lying in the pile of corpses. ”

"Then why did they chase you again?" Wei Hong sneered.

"It's my ......," the reckless man said guiltily, "I...... I threw up ......"

"Well, it's not your fault, I was about to take it anymore." Sister Jiang sighed and patted the man's back.

I can't blame me for being cold, but I didn't feel the urge to comfort the poor fellow at this point, and it was the room full of mutant corpses that piqued my interest. If it is according to what Sister Jiang said, then these mutants and these living dead still have some connection with each other. It's like if you kill a sarcoma monster, the mutants around it will die. There should be a connection between them similar to the consciousness of the swarm, and the virus that controls them should be the key. According to this logic, then the reason why they come together to rot is because the virus wants to do it. Is it because the human beings they parasitize cannot continue to feed? It's possible...... In short, the ultimate goal of the virus is to survive, just like us.

"That...... I'd like to go to the room you mentioned. ”

"Du Yuheng, you are really like what Chen Mo said, you are a desperate guy." Wu Fei smiled bitterly, "They just escaped from there." ”

"I know, but when you say that, don't you think this incident may be a breakthrough in vaccine research?"

Wei Hong took a deep breath and supported me: "I think what Du Yuheng said makes some sense. Besides, with him, we don't have to worry about being hunted down by mutants. ”

"No, are you really going?" The three companions who had just escaped death immediately showed timidity.

Wei Hong smiled: "If you go, you must go, but not now." It's too dangerous to say anything tonight, and there are some converts out there. ”

"I didn't expect this kind of inexplicable cult to appear here."

"In the face of death, what can keep them alive is their spiritual sustenance." Wu Fei sighed meaningfully, "It's like we trust you." ”

Wu Fei looked at me, and what she meant by this was to agree to my proposal. As for Sister Jiang, they thought about it and reluctantly acquiesced. Seeing Wu Fei's trusting eyes, I was probably selfish, not wanting them to blame me after something happened, so I said in a warning tone: "I am not an absolute guarantee that you will be protected from mutants, because there have been situations where even if I am present, they are still attacking all humans except me. ”

"Hmm......" Wei Hong was obviously a little uneasy, "Let's go there tomorrow morning." ”

The night was destined to be long, and a few of us talked about some topics that didn't make much sense, and after missing the past, we all found a place to rest, but I couldn't sleep.

"The Holocaust claimed two-thirds of humanity's lives, and more than half of the remaining third died fighting for supplies; In other words, maybe the virus really hit our civilization hard, but it is we who really make us perish. The words of the prophetess have always echoed in my mind, and I am afraid that this sentence is the only one in her madness that reveals reality.

I closed my eyes tightly, but my keen hearing, which I didn't know at some point, kept me hearing the sound of rustling in the empty mall outside the door. Halfway through the night, someone was already snoring, but I was still awake, and even felt more energetic in the night.

There was a small window in the wall of the warehouse near the ceiling, and after the first thunderstorm of spring, the dark clouds had cleared, and a few rays of moonlight hit the floor in front of me, as if a small patch of hoarfrost had formed. The coldness of the tiled floor tried to freeze through the fabric, and the temperature of my hands and feet plummeted, but my chest was hot like a fireball. It's not because of some psychological factor, but it's a real temperature, and I can really feel the heat spreading in my chest, and the bite marks of the mutants on my neck are also hot. The abnormality of my body finally couldn't resist the sleepiness, and I finally fell asleep after a lot of tossing and turning.

It is better to take a nap after falling asleep, and as soon as I close my eyes and open them, I will come to the early morning of the next day. Wei Hong had already gotten up early and was lightly packing up his equipment, while Wu Fei and several others were still asleep. In this sleepy-eyed state, I slowly half-sat up, my head feeling groggy and aching like a hangover.

"Woke up so early?" Wei Hong whispered hello to me.

"Hmm......" I hadn't woken up to take care of Wei Hong, leaning against the wall and watching him clean up.

"Why don't you bring a gun?" I looked at Wei Hong's equipment, almost the same as when I first met him, a crossbow and a knife, and other than that, a large backpack and an arrow bag with crossbow arrows.

"You've been out there for so long, haven't you noticed? Cold weapons are more useful than guns. ”

"Well, I remember Zhang Xiaoying also said......" At the mention of Zhang Xiaoying, my heart couldn't help but tremble. The scene when I saw her for the last time was really unbearable, and how would she and Huang Weizheng end......

Wei Hong could see that I was absent-minded. "It's okay, whether it's Zhang Xiaoying, or Huang Weizheng, they'll all be fine."

To be honest, I really don't want to tell Wei Hong that it was Zhang Xiaoying who caused us not to get rid of Jiangshang people in the end. After all, even I can't believe that Zhang Xiaoying will betray us. Fortunately, Wei Hong did not continue this topic, and Wu Fei and the others just happened to be woken up by us. After a brief tidying up of their gear and eating a compressed biscuit, they decided to head out to see the room that was littered with the corpses of mutants mentioned last night.

Wu Fei gave me a dagger that she carried with her, although I don't think I'll ever be able to use it. Under the guidance of Sister Jiang and two other brothers, we found the room. This room in a restaurant on the second floor was supposed to be a kitchen.

As soon as we walked outside the restaurant, we smelled a rotting stench; I don't know how curious Sister Jiang and they walked in last night. The tables and chairs in the restaurant were knocked over, but there was just enough to leave an empty path that stretched all the way into the kitchen. The kitchen had a double door, and the two round windows were covered with a thick layer of greasy like the smooth skin of an animal.

Sister Jiang and another more bold middle-aged man mustered up their courage and opened the door. There was an uproar, and a foul smell swept over the face in an instant. Even though I was mentally prepared to cover my mouth and nose, my stomach was still churning violently. The room was filled with the stench of decay, and the noise of flies and insects was heard one after another. I forced myself to vomit and tried my best to see the room at once.

Indeed, as Sister Jiang said, the corpses here are all rotting mutants, and some of them are still staring at me with brown-green eyes. Some of their bodies have rotted, leaving strips of rotten flesh like rags hanging on the white bones of the forest, some of them have grown moss and even a few clusters of ferns, and there are even a bunch of corpses that have long been unrecognizable attached to the aerial roots of a large tree that has broken through the wall.

I asked Wei Hong to take out an empty plastic bottle from his backpack and scrape a piece of rotten meat on the corpse, I wanted to take a closer look at the details of the corpse, but I didn't expect Wu Fei behind me to force me out of the kitchen.

Sister Jiang and the middle-aged man hurriedly closed the door. We rushed out of the kitchen in a swarm, and for some reason, trotted for a while, knowing that the air around us no longer had the rancid stench we had just had.

"Oh my God...... It's disgusting......" Wu Fei retched while panting, "You also dug up a piece and packed it away?" ”

"It might be valuable for those scientists." I lifted the plastic bottle with an innocent face.

As soon as everyone saw the maroon rotten meat in the plastic bottle, they couldn't control it anymore, and spit on the ground with a loud bang, only I felt indifferent and put the bottle into Wei Hong's backpack. Of course Wei Hong wasn't happy, but he had no choice, he couldn't let me hold the bottle all the time and let them take a few looks from time to time, right?

We found another place to catch our breath and adjust our mentality; Although the disgusting room was still vivid, it was not until everyone had recovered that they were back on the road.

It didn't take much time to get out of the mall, probably because during the day, everyone was a lot more courageous, and we were really moving faster. Actually, where we were last night is still under the control of the converts, but I think they were busy extinguishing their own fires yesterday. Wei Hong told me that the gas depot at that gas station had been emptied long ago, which is why they were so brazen to shoot and set fire to it. And when I asked Wei Hong why it was not easy to shoot the prophetess with an arrow, his answer was simple - not sure.

Although many of the abandoned buildings in the Dead City Forest have been colored, and they are naturally hungry to regain their territory, there is still a way to walk on the cracked asphalt road, and the abandoned cars on both sides are like two metal pythons, stretching crookedly to the end of the road. Perhaps because of human activity, the vegetation cover here is not as much as I have seen in the dense forest area before, and the few green clearings along the way have become overgrown because they are untended.

We didn't walk in the middle of the road; Wei Hong feared that there were still sentinels of the converts in the buildings on either side, so until we stepped out of their borders, we were close to the side of the roadside building, estimating the old facilities that could be used as bunkers around us with every step.

As I was approaching an intersection, I saw the stop-horses and some road signs made of white bones that I had glimpsed yesterday when the converts were brought into their gas station. This intersection is supposed to be the outpost in the convert-controlled area, and the exterior walls of the buildings on our side of the intersection have been spray-painted with demagogic slogans and threatening profanities. The scrap cars on the edge of the intersection were placed horizontally in a line to close the intersection close to our side, leaving only a place where a car could roughly pass, and of course, a piece of rejection was also placed in front of this reserved space.

We were about fifty meters from the crossroads, and several wandering figures appeared around there. I hurriedly and vigilantly called out to Wei Hong and them. "Alas, there are people!"

Wei Hong pulled his neck and carefully looked at the few people walking back and forth on the edge of the intersection, and then smiled at me lightly: "It's okay, let's go." ”

"Let's go?"

"Don't worry, it's your own people." Wei Hong shrugged and smiled, then got up and trotted away.

The people at the intersection also spotted him, and for a moment, I was worried that if the other party was an enemy, we would all be done, but when the people at the intersection put away their weapons and hooked up with Wei Hong, my tense nerves relaxed.

"I didn't expect you to really save this guy." A middle-aged man wearing a combat uniform and holding a rifle patted Wei Hong's shoulder and smiled, "I can be regarded as returning your favor." ”

"No problem." Wei Hong nodded proudly. If I guessed correctly, these people didn't plan to come to save me in the first place, Wei Hong should have done a lot of work.

"Your name is Du Yuheng, right? You relieved us that day, and this time we don't owe each other. The middle-aged man spoke with a lot of anger, and he didn't know why he cared so much about these love debts. I didn't know what to say in response, so I smiled and nodded in the affirmative.

Wei Hong quietly counted the teammates around him, thought about it carefully, frowned, and asked the middle-aged man, "Didn't you say that only two people are here to be responsible for contacting the joint?" Why are you all here? ”

"That's right, we were going to set off to find that gang of Jiangshang, but not long after we left, we caught this guy." As he spoke, the middle-aged man motioned for his subordinates to pull forward a man with a blue nose and swollen face who had been beaten.

The young man, who had been kicked down like a lamb to the slaughter, bowed his head in panic and curled up innocently, helplessly trying to cover the part he had been kicked with his hands whenever the people around him mockingly kicked him. Although I didn't see his face clearly, this redhead reminded me of the red-haired man from the river.

Just when I wanted to confirm further, the middle-aged man kicked the man again and sneered: "This guy is from Jiangshang, they should have been separated from the big army, and just now they wanted to sneak attack one of our lone brothers with two other idiots." Unfortunately, gangsters are always gangsters. ”

"What about the other two?"

"Needless to say, it's done." The middle-aged man replied bluntly, "Just keep one." ”

Listening to the middle-aged man's casual answer, Wei Hong was surprised: "Killed? The mayor said we can't do that! ”

"We may not be able to survive in this hellish place, how can we take so many prisoners? When the time comes, you will say that you only have one catch, wouldn't it be good? With that, the middle-aged man kicked the captive again, this time obviously harder, as if he was warning Wei Hong.

"Hey!" I couldn't see it, and I kicked away the middle-aged man's foot on the captive's head, "He is also human and dignified." What's the difference between you doing this and those people who kill people without blinking? ”

"Don't talk to me about this, it's the same thing whether you're a human or not." The middle-aged man suddenly took a step forward and forced me to take a step back, he was much taller than me, and the whole person was a head taller than me. ”

Seeing this, Wu Fei pulled away the middle-aged man and supported me: "Hey! Du Yuheng is right, all people have dignity. ”

"Hehe, what's wrong today? For the sake of a captive, how? Is there going to be something big? Behind the middle-aged man stood up a few supporters who should be his cronies, he tilted his head, and said, "Listen to Wei Hong, and a few of you, if you talk to me about this bullshit again, you will complete the task yourself." If it weren't for the last word, I would be willing to play with you in this place? ”

"Wei Hong." Sister Jiang quietly stepped forward and whispered in Wei Hong's ear, "Don't take this matter too seriously, after all, we still have to save people." ”

After thinking about it, Wei Hongsi retreated, he put away the tense momentum just now, pulled Wu Fei out of the way and said, "Don't go too far." ”

"Nonsense, you little kid knows how to measure a fart." The middle-aged man took another step forward.

Now that I was the only one left to protect the hapless captive, Wei Hong kept giving me a look and asking me to get out of the way. I looked at the captive behind me, who happened to be looking up secretly. When I looked at it, I realized that the captive was really the red-haired man from the river. Thinking about it, he was red-haired and arrested because he belonged to Jiangshang, who else could he be.

"You don't have to stand up for me." The red-haired man had long remembered who I was, his swollen eyes showing a hint of gratitude, and all that remained on his scarred face was helplessness.

I shook my head and turned my head to glare at the middle-aged man. I can't swallow this breath!

"Just kidding, we saved you, and now you're going to stand up for a captive, what the hell do you think?" The middle-aged man couldn't help but laugh and shouted, "Don't force Lao Tzu to do it." ”

"A captive is a captive, but if you torture a captive, I can't see it!"

As soon as I finished my righteous words, the middle-aged man pushed me away without saying a word, and deliberately kicked the red-haired man several times in front of me. Due to the large number of middle-aged men, Wei Hong and the others could only helplessly watch him go wild. The red-haired man screamed as he was kicked, while the middle-aged man seemed to be getting more and more excited as he kicked, and seemed to not care about the life or death of the person under his feet at all.

I ran up to the red-haired man in anger and was about to turn my head to theorize, but the middle-aged man's last kick was right in my face, and the military boots he was wearing on his feet wiped off a piece of skin from my cheek, and I even felt like my jaw was about to dislocate.

At this moment, my chest throbbed, and I turned my head to glare at the middle-aged man angrily, showing my canine teeth and saying angrily: "Believe it or not, I will tear you apart!" ”

Everyone was stunned, but they were not just because of my amazing words, but because of that hideous face. Although I couldn't see my expression clearly at this time, I could see from the reactions of everyone around me that at that moment, I frightened them all. When I came back to my senses, I realized that I was standing in front of the middle-aged man at this time, so to speak, and one hand grabbed his right hand.

I controlled my manic emotions and let go of my hand and took a step back. The middle-aged man breathed a sigh of relief, and there was not much left of the momentum he had just now. In order to find a step for himself, he had to clear his throat and say, "Forget it, just don't worry about it." ”

The middle-aged man turned around with his attendant and prepared to leave, and I was not complacent, so I quickly turned around and asked about the red-haired man's condition. "How are you?"

"Thank you......" The red-haired man staggered to his feet with my help, "After that night, we were separated from Brother Cao and them. ”

"Then do you know where they went?" I rubbed my chin, feeling a little pain in my mouth.

"Hmm." The red-haired man nodded, "This time, the boss values it very much." He will come to trade with Zhang Xing in person. The location should be at the port station of the Huluding Bridge, which is under the control of the people on the river. ”

Speaking of which, Wei Jiahui sent us to that port station last time, but I didn't expect to go back there this time to ruin his good deeds. Wu Fei and Sister Jiang helped the red-haired man to the side and briefly washed his face with water, and the middle-aged man was already waiting impatiently for us to follow up not far away. And I inadvertently caught a glimpse of Wei Hong standing aside, he held the crossbow in both hands, lowered slightly, and looked at me with solemn eyes, and when I shrugged at him awkwardly, he only pursed his lips lightly and nodded.

In fact, I can guess that at that moment just now, Wei Hong's crossbow arrow was already aimed at me, but he didn't pull the trigger.