CH 153

The shopping mall had six levels, each containing sections for clothes, beauty, and even a movie theatre; it was not hard to see how extravagant it was before the apocalypse. But now it was all empty, dead silent, without a single living thing in sight. Only dark trails of blood on white tiles were left, leading off to be swallowed up by the darkness.

Pei Ran searched through every floor and indeed found that there were no high level zombies; only ten or so T1s which weren’t hard to deal with. He dragged Qu Yan along with him to the fourth floor which was filled with clothing stores. With the unexpected free time and no worries, he browsed slowly before changing his dirty clothes out for a new set.

Compared to Pei Ran’s high standards, Qu Yan was much more casual, only changing into a dark fuzzy sweater. Perhaps, it was because those with special abilities had a special body composition, but with just the past few days of rest, the scab on his face had already healed, leaving only a faint scar. At a glance, he did look quite like a young but depressed beauty.  

“Puh, how old are you to be dressing in such dark colors.”

Wearing a casual black tee and leaning with his back against the counter, Pei Ran was radiating a mature aura and was evidently way better at working with this color than Qu Yan.

Qu Yan walked over to Pei Ran and wrapped his arms around his neck, standing up on his tiptoes. He laughed in a suggestive way and said in a low voice, 

“I’m already twenty years old.”

As someone who had started school two years later than when people normally did.

Pei Ran’s focus was not on him, instead he reached out to pick up a black hoodie with some english letters on the front. Measuring it up against Qu Yan’s body, he then signalled for Qu Yan to change into it,

“Really couldn’t have ever guessed it. You’re so skinny that I would have thought you’d be seventeen or eighteen.”

Qu Yan pulled up his fuzzy sweater, revealing a pale white waist. He took it off and exchanged it for that hoodie, the scars on his body flashing in the open for a split second before it was once again hidden under his clothes.

Pei Ran paused and then smiled, nodding his head, 

“Looks quite good.”

He looked at Qu Yan before reaching out to touch the side of his face with fingers that felt warm and dry. Quietly complimenting the other, he said,

“Grew up to be quite good looking as well.”

Qu Yan was evidently quite delighted. The beauty mark by his eye suddenly added a layer of seductiveness as his expressions changed. He held onto the hand on his face, lowered his eyes, and lightly nuzzled at it. 

Then he lifted his head and asked, 

“Is this what you like?”

“Of course this is what I like.” 

Pei Ran moved to let the other lean against the counter and then set his hands on either side of the other’s body. He said in a semi-truthful manner, 

“If this was before the apocalypse, I would have thrown all my money at you. Given you cars, houses, flowers until I won your hand.”

Qu Yan was intrigued enough to ask, 

“What then? After you’ve won my hand.”

After all, they have a long journey ahead of them, and they’ll need to do something to pass the time. No matter how hard they’ll have it, they can’t pass the burden onto children; no matter how poor they could be, they can’t take away education.1 What if the apocalypse ends, perhaps then they might even revive the national college entrance examinations.2

Qu Yan: “……”

Sitting on a desk, he looked at Pei Ran contemplatively and wanted to tell him, true studious and smart students would never be afraid of studying.

The door to the library was wide open when a sudden cloud of darkness blew by, gathering all the papers scattered on the ground to spin into a spiral. Qu Yan seemed to sense something and imperceptibly looked outside before suddenly jumping down from the desk.

Pei Ran was still picking out books when Qu Yan said to his back, 

“I’m going to head out for a bit. Yell for me if there’s anything and don’t head upstairs.”

Pei Ran took a look at him and then nodded his head, 

“Come back soon.”

Who knew what level Qu Yan’s psychic ability was. Pei Ran only knew that Qu Yan would get up every night during this time, when he was deep asleep, to go on a large-scale zombie killing spree and only come back in the morning. Although he would clean himself off quite well, that strong musk of blood could not be hidden.

In a lawless world, martial arts were the special techniques chosen and used to kill, and perhaps it was only through nonstop battles and fights to the death that you would be able to get used to this world faster.

Pei Ran was not worried that something would happen to Qu Yan. When he finished picking out the books he wanted, he listened to Qu Yan and walked down the stairs. But when he reached the second floor, there were footsteps that sounded like they came from the outside, a sound that was all too obvious and clear in this silent mall.

Pei Ran paused and crouched down. He used the escalator handrail to hide himself, enough to block others from seeing him but not enough to block his line of sight. He could see the doors to the mall suddenly open and in came a large group of people. Ten of them were wearing military gear with guns in their hands while the others were wearing quite normal clothes, but Pei Ran could faintly feel that they were possibly ability holders.

The leader of the group, a military man, was quite cautious and carefully examined their surroundings. His eyesight was as sharp as an eagle’s, and Pei Ran had only went to tug at his shoelaces when he suddenly heard a large shout by his ear, 

“Who’s there! Come out!”

A gun was pointed right at the exposed half of his head. Pei Ran paused, knowing that he had been discovered. He slowly raised his hands up and stood up from the escalator, 

“Don’t shoot, I’m human.”

He looked too clean and his handsome looks loosened a bit of the tension in the group. A long haired woman in the group said, 

“You are a survivor huh, we thought it would be a zombie.”

The military man put his gun down, his eyesight not as lazer pointed as before, but he was still quite suspicious. He sharply asked, 

Notes:

*1 This is a contemporary phrase that has been passed around, I think quite politically with a lot of opinions and debates on education issues, but as it states, it’s of or something like the mindset that education is so important that it shouldn’t be taken away even if there are financial issues, that children shouldn’t have to suffer (missing out/fall back on the starting line/not have something because of poverty/because they are children born into lives that they didn’t choose) no matter how hard it gets.

*2  I think the national college entrance examinations are more, I think, well known as “gaokao” where every student must take this and pass to be accepted into college/uni. Most countries have their own version (of course, with many variations and degrees/weights of what those examinations mean or what they test on) such as what is listed here on wikipedia, but if you want to read up more on this specific examination, here’s a very brief article and their list of 30 example questions.