Chapter 138: Your Doom Has Been Delivered (21)

Night fell.

With no village ahead and no store behind, they had no choice but to camp out in the wilderness.

Sleeping in the wild was a common occurrence on this journey. Ling Qiong pulled her exclusive folding chair out from the back and reclined comfortably, as if she were on vacation.

An Changjing was exhausted from a full day and truly had no energy left to ponder anything else.

Once he had eaten and drunk his fill, he dropped his head and fell fast asleep, his snores gradually rising.

Jiang Xunchu spoke up abruptly, "Before the virus outbreak, my dad came back and injected me with a kind of medicine."

"I passed out right after the injection. When I woke up, I found myself locked inside a cupboard. My dad was already gone, the house had been tossed upside down, and the virus outbreak followed immediately after."

Jiang Xunchu's father was a virology expert.

After the meteorite landed, a laboratory was quickly established, and Jiang's father was summoned there.

For the following two months, Jiang Xunchu did not see his father; their contact was entirely through video calls. Although only his father appeared on screen, Jiang Xunchu still managed to pick up on subtle clues.

His father was being monitored.

Jiang Xunchu hadn't paid too much attention to it, as many of the projects his father worked on were classified.

Before the virus outbreak, he returned from school and ran into his father downstairs.

At the time, his father looked rather exhausted, but otherwise normal.

After going upstairs, his father injected him with a full syringe of medication.

His father's excuse was that the flu had been severe lately and it was for prevention.

Before Jiang Xunchu even had time to feel puzzled, he had completely lost consciousness.

At first, Jiang Xunchu didn't know what the medication was supposed to do; it seemed merely to induce a deep sleep.

When Jiang Xunchu discovered his father was missing, he even doubted whether the person he had seen that day was truly his father.

However, judging from several minor details, that man was indeed his father.

It wasn't until he was bitten and remained unmutated for a full day that things changed.

Since there were still no changes even later, Jiang Xunchu recalled the medication his father had injected him with.

...

Jiang Xunchu had never told a single soul about this.

Because once it was spoken aloud, the outcome would likely be the same as before...

As for why he was telling her now...

Jiang Xunchu couldn't quite explain it either; it was probably because he felt she would never harm him.

Ling Qiong tilted her head to look at him. "What do you think he injected you with?"

Jiang Xunchu replied, "I don't know. It might be a vaccine, or it could be something else."

Ling Qiong pondered for a moment. "In other words, you didn't mutate precisely because you were injected with that medicine."

"Yet the virus is still inside your body, which proves that this drug is not fully developed—it's probably just a semi-finished product."

"...Your dad is a hardcore man."

He actually dared to inject a half-finished drug into his own son's body.

Jiang Xunchu said, "If he hadn't injected me, I probably would have turned into a zombie long ago."

"That's true..." Ling Qiong thought of something and asked Jiang Xunchu to show her the location of his wound.

The black veins had actually receded, retreating to about three or four centimeters around the edge of the wound.

They were already a very long distance away from that county town now.

"Now we can basically confirm that the virus suddenly accelerated its spread because we were close to the meteorite," Ling Qiong concluded.

"But... why do the zombies keep chasing after you?"

It couldn't possibly be because her dear little darling was too good-looking, could it?

There had to be some other reason...

Those zombies seemed capable of sensing the darling's presence.

Ling Qiong's eyes rolled around a few times, and she pressed down on Jiang Xunchu's arm. "Brother, let's conduct an experiment."

"???"

"Rest assured, I will protect you."

"..."

...

The experiment Ling Qiong spoke of was to find some zombies and figure out why they kept chasing him.

After leaving the county town, no zombies had actively come out or chased after him on their own accord.

They were only pursued if a commotion was made to alert them.

In the end, Ling Qiong proposed bleeding.

She lured a dozen or so zombies over and had An Changjing and Jiang Xunchu cut their fingers to let their blood drip at the same time.

An Changjing asked, "Why me?"

Ling Qiong smiled slightly. "Would you prefer it to be me instead?"

An Changjing muttered, "..."

A human tool had no right to speak.

An Changjing glanced down at the zombies wandering below. Gritting his teeth and closing his eyes, he slashed a cut across his finger.

Blood dripped from the air and hit the ground.

The zombie closest to the scent caught the bloody smell, letting out low growls while sniffing wildly in the air.

The rest of the zombies heard the noise and gradually closed in on the spot.

However, the moment Jiang Xunchu's blood fell, the zombies suddenly swarmed toward his direction in a frenzy.

Their movements were much more violent than before, and their roars were much louder.

They desperately tried to scramble upward.

Their reaction was completely different from when they faced An Changjing's blood.

An Changjing suddenly reached out and slapped Ling Qiong's arm.

"What is it?"

An Changjing pointed forward with trembling fingers.

The spot where they were standing happened to offer a clear view of two intersecting streets.

At that moment, from the corners of the streets, zombies appeared one after another, sprinting madly toward their direction.

The sight was remarkably reminiscent of a movie scene where the protagonist faces monsters crawling out intermittently from the ruins.

Ling Qiong muttered, "..."

F*ck! Run!!

...

After shaking off that overly enthusiastic group of zombies, Ling Qiong slumped back into the rear seat, eventually sliding sideways to lean against Jiang Xunchu.

With no space left to shift away, Jiang Xunchu had no choice but to sit there stiffly.

"They really love your blood, don't they?" Ling Qiong tugged on Jiang Xunchu's hand, gently touching his finger wrapped in a bandage.

Jiang Xunchu stayed silent. "..."

He tried pulling his hand away, but it wouldn't budge.

Those zombies tracked Jiang Xunchu by distinguishing his blood.

As for why...

That remained unknown.

After all, nobody knew what was going on inside a zombie's brain.

"Brother Jiang, is there something special about your blood?" An Changjing, still completely clueless about what was happening, asked with burning curiosity.

These two pseudo-siblings spoke in such cryptic and mysterious ways.

Judging from previous events, though, something was definitely wrong with Jiang Li!

Ling Qiong spoke up first. "Don't ask things you shouldn't, or you might end up silenced."

An Changjing choked out, "..."

An Changjing obediently focused on driving, occasionally glancing through the rearview mirror at the two people in the back.

Neither of them spoke another word.

Ling Qiong leaned against Jiang Xunchu, her fingers resting in his palm as she looked half-asleep.

Jiang Xunchu looked out the car window with a calm expression, deep in thought.

A strange feeling welled up inside An Changjing.

When he looked back again a little later, he found that Ling Qiong had already fallen asleep, her arm draped horizontally across Jiang Xunchu's waist as she nestled intimately against his chest.

The very next second, An Changjing met Jiang Xunchu's gaze.

"Watch the road," Jiang Xunchu reminded him.

An Changjing hurriedly retracted his gaze, staring straight ahead while his hands on the steering wheel alternately tightened and relaxed.

"Brother Jiang, can I ask you a question?"

Jiang Xunchu answered, "Go ahead."

"Is the relationship between you... and your sister a bit..." An Changjing struggled to find the words, giving Jiang Xunchu a look that urged him to understand without further explanation.

"What about it?"

"Well... it just doesn't look much like a normal brother and sister."

He had brothers and sisters among his acquaintances—some with great relationships, some with bad ones.

He had never seen a relationship quite this... ambiguous.

Right, An Changjing had felt something was off about them all along.

Now that he thought about it, these two were simply far too ambiguous.

Jiang Xunchu stated plainly, "We are not siblings."

An Changjing was dumbfounded. "Huh?"

The idea that they were biological siblings was entirely an assumption An Changjing had made when he heard Ling Qiong calling him brother; neither Ling Qiong nor Jiang Xunchu had ever explicitly stated their actual relationship.