Chapter 1855: Chapter 1853: The Dead
"Clang clang... boom boom... CLANG!!"
The heavy tank rocked left and right as it rumbled down the road, then gave a sudden jolt when it reached the village entrance and came to a stop.
A moment later, the hatch opened, and the girls scrambled out one after another like refugees fleeing for their lives.
"I am never riding in that again!"
Misaka Mikoto looked absolutely miserable.
"I think walking is still better..."
"Me too, Sister Dear..."
Right now Kuroko Shirai also looked completely drained.
"We already knew about Mr. Fang Zheng’s driving Skill, but this time... it was still... still..."
Kuroko Shirai dragged that "still" out for ages, but just couldn’t find a word to describe it.
On the other side, Saten Reiko was gently patting Lei’s back, staring at her worriedly.
"You okay, Lei?"
"Mm... I’m... okay..."
Lei turned her head, her pale little face looking a bit weak, and gave Saten Reiko a small smile.
"Come on, are you all for real?"
Fang Zheng climbed out, curled his lip at the girls in front of him.
"I just wasn’t that used to it at the start. You saw me later, once I got the hang of it I drove us all the way here, didn’t I? What’s the problem? Back in the Level Ten rooms I was a total tyrant behind the wheel, okay? Learn from Alisa and Feli—look how soundly those two were sleeping in there. You girls are just too pampered..."
"Sleeping soundly?"
Kuroko Shirai’s figure flickered as she flashed back into the tank, and the next second her shriek rang out.
"Not good, Sister Dear, Saten, Miss Alisa and Miss Feli have passed out!"
"What?"
"Hurry up and get them out of there!!"
The group of girls fumbled around in a flurry, finally managing to drag the two unlucky unconscious victims outside. A moment later, Feli and Alisa slowly came to.
"Man, humans really are fragile."
Fang Zheng shook his head, then looked toward the village ahead, narrowing his eyes as he studied it.
"Why... does it feel like there’s no one here?"
The others also came back to their senses now. The tank was insanely loud, and on top of that they’d made a racket just now; if anyone lived in this village, they would’ve come out to check by now. Yet at this moment, the village before them was still shrouded in Deathly Silence, not even a single light to be seen.
"Uu... I’m getting the creeps."
Ruiko couldn’t help rubbing her own arms, uneasily glancing around.
"I remember in the horror movies I watched before, there were always scenes like this. A group of people comes to an empty village, and then when midnight hits..."
"Wah, stop, stop, don’t say it, Saten!"
Before Saten Reiko could finish, Misaka Mikoto already had her ears covered, and Kuroko Shirai let out a helpless sigh.
"Honestly, Sister Dear, you actually believe that kind of stuff they use to scare kids... Still, this place really is off."
Ignoring the discussion going on behind him, Fang Zheng casually walked up to one of the houses, reached out, and pushed the door. With an ear-piercing creak, the wooden door slowly swung open, revealing the furniture inside. Fang Zheng snapped his fingers, and in no time a Light Orb appeared in front of him, illuminating the room that had been Pitch Black before.
"Doesn’t look like it’s been abandoned for long."
By now Alisa and Feli had also forced themselves to perk up and walked over, carefully observing the situation here. Abandoned settlements weren’t rare in the apocalypse, but things here were clearly different. The furniture inside looked old, but it was very clean and intact, and...
Fang Zheng reached out and lightly ran his finger across the tabletop, looking at the thin layer of dust on it.
"At most it’s gone two or three days without being cleaned. Which means up until two or three days ago, there were still people living in this village."
"But now they’re gone, and... it looks like they left in a big hurry."
Kuroko Shirai walked over to the table and picked up a cup—inside was still a lump of some kind of mushy stuff. She didn’t know what it was, but it was obvious that just a few days ago, someone had been drinking something from this very cup. Then something happened, they put the cup down and... never came back.
"Let’s go in deeper and take a look."
Fang Zheng gestured, and the group continued walking into the village.
Everything along the way looked perfectly normal, nothing out of the ordinary at all. But when they followed the village road to the plaza in the center of the village, things finally changed.
"This is...!"
Seeing the shattered windows and wooden doors all around them, as well as the bloodstains splattered across the ground, the girls all widened their eyes in shock. You didn’t need to think hard to tell that a pretty intense battle had taken place here.
"So, there was a fight in the village. Was it infighting? Or did some outside enemy attack?"
Fang Zheng folded his arms, staring at the battlefield before him, then suddenly his eyes flew wide open.
The next moment, time began its Retrospection.
In Fang Zheng’s eyes, the square before him changed rapidly, and then the battle broke out.
It was a white‑haired young man in a black trench coat, a pistol in his hand. Standing opposite him were dozens of villagers wielding various weapons. Their clothes looked no different from ordinary people’s, but the knives and spears in their hands made it perfectly clear these people were far from just simple, kind villagers.
Then, a one‑sided slaughter began.
However, the ones on the stronger side weren’t the villagers. On the contrary, the white‑haired youth casually blew their heads apart, and in no time the ground was littered with corpses.
Not long after the white‑haired youth finished killing the villagers, a girl in her early teens with a shovel on her back came here. It was obvious she knew those villagers. When she discovered they’d been killed, the girl was clearly furious and immediately launched an attack on the white‑haired youth—only to be knocked out by him in short order.
After knocking the girl out, the white‑haired youth carried her into a house nearby, then came back out and sat by the well smoking, waiting until the girl woke up again. This time the two exchanged a few words, then the white‑haired youth grabbed the girl and walked toward the village outskirts. After a while, they saw the girl walking back along the same path, wiping her tears as she came. Then, from who‑knows‑where, she produced one coffin after another, put the corpses into them, and dragged the coffins toward the small hill outside the village once more......
"Let’s go take a look over there."
Watching the girl’s figure disappear, Fang Zheng blinked, then set off toward that little path.
When the group climbed up the slope, the scene before them left the girls stunned and speechless.
On the hillside, dozens of tombstones stood upright on the ground, and under the silver‑white Moonlight they looked especially... eerie.
"Uu......"
Misaka Mikoto couldn’t help but hide behind Fang Zheng, while Kuroko Shirai could only press her forehead with a helpless sigh at this sight.
Fang Zheng slowly walked up to one of the graves and stared at it. Then he raised his hand, and the soil began to churn violently, soon revealing a coffin buried within.
"Mr. Fang Zheng, what are you doing?"
Seeing this, Saten Reiko couldn’t help asking. Fang Zheng just waved his hand, signaling them to keep quiet, then reached out and opened the coffin lid.
A foul stench wafted out at once, making the girls hastily cover their noses and retreat. Fang Zheng frowned and stared into the coffin for a long while without speaking.
"Mr. Fang Zheng, what exactly are you doing?"
Now the others were also looking at Fang Zheng in puzzlement, not understanding why he’d dragged them to a cemetery in the middle of the night to dig up graves.
"Come over and take a look. Guess how long this person’s been dead."
"Eh———!?"
At Fang Zheng’s request, the girls’ faces instantly twisted. Misaka Mikoto, Kuroko Shirai, and Saten Reiko not only didn’t come closer, they even took two steps back—honestly, they were just a bunch of ordinary students; they hardly ever saw dead bodies!
Of course, Creature corpses didn’t count.
Alisa at least was a trained God Eater, so she followed Fang Zheng’s order, stepped forward, studied the corpse carefully, and frowned slightly.
"Judging from the level of decomposition, it’s probably been dead for two or three years..."
"Heh heh heh."
But at Alisa’s answer, Fang Zheng just let out a dry little laugh.
"What if I told you this corpse was still moving around three days ago—would you believe it?"
"Eh?!!"
At that, the girls all screamed. Now no one was afraid of the corpse anymore; they all crowded forward—Saten Reiko took one look and immediately covered Lei’s eyes and dragged her aside, while Misaka Mikoto and Kuroko Shirai had gone deathly pale and hurriedly backed away again. Feli didn’t go up to look at all.
"How is that possible? Mr. Fang Zheng, judging from the decomposition, this body’s clearly been dead for quite a while."
"That’s right. And not just ’a while’—in fact, this person’s been dead for almost ten years."
"No way!"
This time Saten Reiko shrieked aloud.
"If it’s been ten years, wouldn’t it have rotted down to bare bones already? How can there still be... still be flesh?"
"You’re right, that’s how it is with normal corpses. But a living corpse is different."
"A... living corpse? What’s that supposed to mean?"
At Fang Zheng’s explanation, the girls all felt a chill brush past them. At the same time, Feli and Alisa seemed to catch on.
"Mr. Fang Zheng, are you saying this is that place blessed by the Deity? The place where people never die?"
"Eh?!"
Hearing this, the others finally remembered the information and stories they’d heard on the way: rumors of a Sanctuary blessed by a Deity, where people would not die, and even Wild God would not invade......
"But these people are still dead, right?"
Misaka Mikoto also noticed the flaw in that story now. If people there never died, then what was lying in these graves? Movie props?
"I don’t know either."
In response to Misaka Mikoto’s question, Fang Zheng shook his head and waved his hand again. The coffin closed by itself and slowly sank back into the earth.
"But it’s obvious there’s definitely something wrong with this place......"
