Chapter 137: Your Doom Has Arrived (20)

Ling Qiong slumped over the steering wheel, gazing at the building for a moment before turning her head to look at Jiang Xunchu. "Why were the zombies chasing you?"

Jiang Xunchu frowned. "Chasing me?"

"Or were they chasing me?" Ling Qiong straightened up. "I was driving right behind them earlier, and they didn't react at all. It was only after you got into the car that they came after us."

An Changjing served as a witness.

What Ling Qiong said was true.

It really was only after he got into the car that those zombies started chasing them.

Furthermore, the place those zombies had wanted to gather earlier was precisely where Jiang Xunchu had been.

"I... don't know." Jiang Xunchu's brow furrowed even deeper.

"What did you do?"

At the time, seeing Ling Qiong trapped and fearing for her safety, Jiang Xunchu had happened to notice a chemical tanker parked nearby.

That location was very close to the shops, and an explosion would definitely have endangered the people inside.

So he figured out a way to detonate the tanker.

He had calculated beforehand that the explosion wouldn't harm Ling Qiong.

"You didn't do anything else?"

Jiang Xunchu shook his head. "No."

After the explosion, he came right out and got into the car, and after that came the pursuit by the zombies.

He simply hadn't had time to do anything else.

Ling Qiong puzzledly scratched her head, unable to make sense of it.

Could those zombies have just gone crazy?

Ling Qiong pushed open the car door. "Get out. Let's go inside and take a look."

"Why are we going in? Shouldn't we be leaving right away?" An Changjing thought Ling Qiong had lost her mind. "What if the zombies chase us again?"

"They won't."

"How do you know they won't?"

"I say they won't, so they won't." Hit by the smell of blood lingering in the car, Ling Qiong stepped back a bit and instructed An Changjing, "You don't need to go in. Clean up the car."

An Changjing: "???"

"Let's go." Ling Qiong casually grabbed Jiang Xunchu's hand.

Jiang Xunchu let out a slight gasp and pulled his hand back.

"What's wrong with your hand?"

"Got scratched a bit. It's nothing."

Ling Qiong glanced back, then looked at Jiang Xunchu's hand thoughtfully. "Let me see."

Jiang Xunchu politely declined. "It's already fine."

Ling Qiong widened her eyes slightly. "I'll decide if it's fine after I look. Hurry up."

"..."

There was a wound on Jiang Xunchu's palm, still bleeding, though not very severely.

Ling Qiong dug out some alcohol wipes from the car and applied a bandage.

Jiang Xunchu: "..."

It was just a tiny scratch; he really felt it was completely unnecessary.

However, the young lady was terribly stubborn.

If he didn't cooperate, it looked as though... she might just cry for him to see.

...

The card for the one-kilometer mark hadn't flipped over yet, which proved that this matter wasn't over.

There might be answers inside this building.

The ancient architecture was simple yet grand, its mottled traces of time steeped in the vicissitudes of history.

In front of the building was a courtyard.

The vegetation in the courtyard had all withered, presenting a desolate and withered scene.

This should be a pagoda; stepping inside led straight to an atrium. Looking up, a bell seemed to be hung at the very top.

There wasn't much inside the tower.

It seemed that few people came here; it was quite clean and had not been vandalized.

"What do you think is in here?" Jiang Xunchu walked around a circle without figuring anything out.

"I don't know. Let's look around." Ling Qiong smiled. "Maybe there will be a pleasant surprise."

After walking around, Jiang Xunchu had already figured out which dynasty the architecture belonged to and could even recount its history.

"Where did you see that?" Ling Qiong hadn't seen such complete information anywhere.

"There are some exhibits upstairs. Combined with some materials I've read, I deduced it."

Ling Qiong let out a "wow," cupped her hands over her chest, her eyes sparkling with tiny fragments of light: "You're so amazing."

Her actions were quite exaggerated, and anyone with eyes could tell she was putting it on.

Yet the young lady's eyes were clean and clear, and looking at him at that moment with such a delighted and adoring gaze made it easy to overlook her over-the-top gestures.

Jiang Xunchu felt his heartbeat quicken noticeably.

Jiang Xunchu: "I just read a lot of books..."

Finding nothing useful inside, the two of them came back out.

Ling Qiong paused in the courtyard for a moment, staring at the withered vegetation in the yard.

She walked halfway around it, propping her chin in thought. "Don't you think that stone looks a bit strange?"

There was a red stone amidst the grass and trees; its color and shape were very odd, feeling somewhat out of place in this location.

While Ling Qiong spoke, Jiang Xunchu didn't respond. When she turned around, she saw that his complexion was terrible, and he seemed unsteady on his feet.

"What's wrong?" Ling Qiong anxiously supported him.

Jiang Xunchu pressed his hand against the thigh that had been injured earlier. "It suddenly hurts a lot."

Confused, Ling Qiong helped him sit down nearby and rolled up his trouser leg to examine the previous injury.

The black markings had already spread to his knee and were still creeping upward at a visible rate.

"Did you feel anything just now?"

"A slight stinging pain when we came in, not very noticeable." Afterward, it had become increasingly pronounced, and now he could barely stand.

Ling Qiong glanced around and made a prompt decision: "This place isn't right. Let's get out first."

...

Ling Qiong led Jiang Xunchu out, then re-entered alone.

Stepping on the edge of the flower bed, she walked into the garden and squatted down to examine the red stone.

It wasn't a natural red; it looked more like some kind of pigment.

Finding something to wrap around her hand, Ling Qiong flipped the stone over. The bottom wasn't colored—it was black...

Was this thing a meteorite?

It looked very much like the meteorites that had fallen to the ground before the apocalypse.

The virus had been brought by the meteorites; Cub had been infected by the virus, and now touching a meteorite was accelerating the mutation?

Were meteorites catalysts?

After observing for a while, Ling Qiong left the flower bed and exited through the main gate.

An Changjing had already cleaned the car, and Ling Qiong got in and told him to drive away from here.

As they got further and further away from that tower, Jiang Xunchu's discomfort eased.

When Ling Qiong checked his injury again, she discovered that those markings had actually receded quite a bit.

"It's those meteorites," Ling Qiong said. "They affect you."

Jiang Xunchu had been completely normal the entire journey; it was only upon entering this county town that the markings had suddenly started spreading.

It was because there were meteorites here.

It was just that earlier, the meteorites had been too far away, so the impact was minimal.

Ling Qiong noted, "The meteorites are like magnets, accelerating the disease progression in people infected by the virus."

An Changjing was completely lost. "What are you guys talking about? What's inside there?"

Could they say something he could actually understand?

Ling Qiong asked, "What on earth is going on with your body?"

Hearing this, An Changjing suddenly remembered that someone had previously said he had been bitten... because Jiang Xunchu looked no different from a normal person, An Changjing had assumed the other person was just talking nonsense.

Could it really be true?

Jiang Xunchu lost himself in thought, and silence fell inside the carriage.

The buildings outside the window steadily receded. Occasionally, a zombie would chase after them, run alongside for a short stretch, and then disappear.

Those zombies seemed capable of identifying Jiang Xunchu.

Fortunately, there weren't many zombies along this stretch of road, and they hadn't formed a horde.

Ling Qiong and the others were quite lucky; they found a car in a courtyard, and there was gasoline in it.

It had probably been prepared by survivors, who unfortunately didn't manage to escape before being attacked by zombies.

With gasoline secured and the county town unsafe, they drove straight out of the city.