After accidentally meeting the mysterious man I fell in love with at first sight, I started dreaming every day, but unfortunately… not those spring dreams.
They didn’t even have anything to do with romance, love, or girlish feelings.
The scenes I dreamed of were fragmented and chaotic. Sometimes there were flying bullets and artillery fire, and the huge explosions could directly shake me awake from my dream. Sometimes it was very peaceful, and a woman was humming a children's song I had never heard before in weather as sultry as the summer in this mountain city. Sometimes it felt like I had returned to the battlefield of the Cold Weapon era. In the dream, I became a black-armored general with a blurry face, carrying a heavy sword, licking the hot blood of the enemy from my lips on the cold battlefield.
I thought that after being frightened by the zombie, my brain had gone into overdrive, brimming with too many ideas to finish during the day so at night, they spilled into my dreams. Being a professional, I dutifully sketched out every scene I dreamt of.
I always thought that God had opened my third eye and was giving me inspiration every day, until one day, Li Peipei had a day off, and I went out with her to walk the dog.
It was a rare sunny day in Chongqing. The spring sunshine made me feel very comfortable. I stretched and glanced at Li Peipei next to me. She was wearing a big sun hat, and huge sunglasses almost completely covered her face. She was also wearing a mask and a sun protection shirt, fully armed.
"Why bother coming out during the day when it's so hard..."
I asked her, and then released the rope, letting Li Mangzi run around freely, tongue flopping. Li Peipei pushed her sunglasses. "I've been on vacation for a few days. If I don't go out for a walk, I'll feel too suffocated."
I pursed my lips, considerately not exposing her.
Li Peipei is a vampire who has the wind in her bones and the sea in her soul. She can't survive without a little wildness. Staying indoors is a great imprisonment on her free soul. She took a few days off from work and stayed at home for a few days. She couldn't hold it in anymore, so she had no choice but to choose to walk the dog during the day, simply because…
She's afraid of ghosts.
That's right, as a vampire, a ruthless character in the "ghost" category, she's afraid of ghosts.
She's especially afraid of the ghosts in Chinese legends, especially afraid of the ghosts in horror movies, and she also has a strange fear of the zombie that appeared that day.
After I was bitten by the zombie that day, she knew that the lost zombies were haunting the area, so she didn't dare to go out to work alone at night.
She cares about face and usually doesn't say it, pretending to be natural. I understood it but didn't say much. I walked with her for a while, then sat down on a chair under a tree to ponder yesterday's dream.
I always felt that some of the scenes in my dream could be connected, so after drawing them, I took pictures of them and looked at them when I was bored, thinking about whether I could find some other inspiration.
Li Peipei didn't have much energy during the day either. She walked around and sat down next to me, resting her head on my shoulder, panting like Mangzi.
Although she and Li Duidui are both daywalkers, her power isn't as strong as Li Duidui. She felt tired after walking for a while. After panting for a while, she looked down at my screen. "Oh, these old Chongqing landscapes are drawn very well. So nostalgic..."
My fingers stopped. I turned my head to look at her. She didn't notice anything. She curiously stretched out her finger and swiped twice on my screen, looking at a few pictures behind:
"You even drew the bombing back then… so realistic. Xiaoxin, have you been drawing historical themes recently?" She asked me. "Meimei said that her neighbor came back recently. Did you let that old man take you back to the past to play?"
Of course I didn't.
I'm not familiar with the old man who can travel through time and space at all.
And for old Chongqing and the Great Bombing back then, I only have a basic understanding. This basic knowledge is probably what I heard in high school history class. Many years later, I only remember the May 3rd and May 4th Great Bombing, and the 6.5 Great Tunnel Tragedy. The reason why I can remember this time is because every year on June 5th, the main city of Chongqing will sound an unignorable air raid siren.
In this context, I thought carefully about Li Peipei's words and couldn't help but feel a little hairy.
"Peipei," I asked her, carefully, "What era were those zombies that the corpse driver from Xiangxi lost?"
"The report seems to say they were from the Republic of China, about the same time as the things in your paintings."
Li Peipei looked at me, and I looked at her. Our eyes met, and a brief silence fell between me and her.
Although the bright spring sunshine was only a few steps away from the chair, I still felt a cold wind enter my spine, and the goosebumps on Li Peipei's neck stood up at a speed visible to my naked eye...
She stood up with a "whoosh," staggered back two steps, and stood in the sunlight. "I... I suddenly feel a little uncomfortable. I'm going to the bathroom." As she said this, she turned around and ran away, swinging her arms...
I was stunned for a while, then quickly stood up and chased after Li Peipei, shouting as I chased, "Stop! Don't leave me alone! I'm so scared!"
"You stop!" She also shouted. "Don't chase me! I'm also so scared!"
I really never thought that I, such a timid and ordinary human, would one day chase a vampire all over the park.
Li Mangzi didn't understand what was going on. He thought I and Li Peipei were playing, and he was running wildly behind my butt, barking "Woof woof woof" extremely happily.
I chased for a few minutes and didn't know what remote place I had run to. I didn't see a single person around. My body, which hadn't exercised for a long time, felt as uncomfortable as if it was about to fall apart. The forceful breathing filled my mouth with a bloody taste. "Are you going to stop or not!" I shouted.
Li Peipei ignored me.
I slammed to a halt, turned, and grabbed Li Mangzi. "If you don't come back, I'll kill the dog!"
Li Mangzi panted foolishly, licking my face with his big tongue, covering my face with saliva. While he was licking my face all over, his useless owner appeared behind a banyan tree in front, revealing half of her face, staring at me warily. "You've really been assimilated by the zombies."
I was so angry that I couldn't stand it. "Assimilated my ass! Didn't your brother Li Duidui say that they won't assimilate people, they only eat people! I don't understand, and you don't understand either? Have I watched more movies, or have you watched more movies?"
"You're already dreaming!"
"Besides these things from the Republic of China, I also dream of ancient war scenes from even earlier, with knives and swords! I might just be simply dreaming!"
"Maybe you're also connected to other zombies, dreaming of a whole group."
"..." These words made me a little scared. "Really? “…Do zombies have cloud memory storage now?”
Li Peipei saw that I was still standing well in the sunlight, hesitated for a while, and finally walked out from behind the tree, also stepping into the sunlight. "Logically speaking, it should be impossible, but before you were attacked by the zombie, Li Duidui said when he went to the Vampire Association meeting that these zombies might have mutated."
"What mutation?"
"These Chinese zombies are weird and mysterious. Right now, they don’t even have an association within the World Supernatural Alliance. They’re mostly controlled by corpse drivers, being driven home for burial. Many of the ones that get separated don’t have any self-awareness at all, the only thing driving them is their instinct to hunt. But they don’t spread viruses or anything, they just… eat things clean."
As an educator at a vampire school, Li Peipei became a little serious when popularizing knowledge:
"The zombie you encountered a few days ago, attacking you, might have just been to eat you. But you said that she took the child away when she left, which proves that she can protect children. In other words, she actually has self-awareness, and... I heard that the child seems to have been snatched by the zombie."
"Snatched?"
"Yeah, she snatched a child from a pair of human parents. The parents reported the case to the police, saying that the child disappeared after school. The police are currently investigating it as a missing person case, but the National Non-Human Management Committee is very nervous and wants to catch that zombie as soon as possible and return the child to his parents, fearing that exposing the existence of non-humans will cause unnecessary panic."
"Why did she snatch someone else's child?"
"How would I know that? I only know that these zombies have mutated. You were bitten, so maybe you've also mutated..." She stretched out her hand. "Give me Mangzi back. Don't suddenly go crazy while standing there and bite Mangzi. What if he mutates too?"
"Li Peipei, you're just like your brother in your bones!"
As soon as I said this, Li Peipei's expression suddenly became solemn, her eyes sharp, as if she was a different person from when she was teasing me just now. Without saying a word, she flashed like lightning and pounced on me directly.
I was surprised and didn't even have time to open my mouth before Li Peipei knocked me to the ground.
Mangzi howled and rushed out in a straight line.
I supported myself and sat up, hearing Li Peipei take a cold breath while pressing on me.
I was very nervous. "What's wrong? What happened?"
"Awoo!" Before I could get Li Peipei's answer, Mangzi's painful wail came with a heavy thud. I looked up and saw that the Alaskan Malamute, so big with fur and flesh, was now lying sideways on the ground as if dead. Standing in the sunlight was a man wrapped in a black robe. He was facing me. Before I had time to see his face inside the big hat, Li Peipei pulled me up.
"Go!"
I felt like I was being carried on Li Peipei's shoulder, my butt facing the sky and my head facing down. In a short while, my eyes were so congested that I couldn't open them.
Everything was chaotic. I saw Peipei pull out her Egg Whip, yeah, that’s what she calls it. It cracked through the air with a shrill whistle, followed by two sharp crack sounds. It must’ve hit something. There was an intense rumble in the air. My hair, clothes, and internal organs were all tossed around like a ragdoll.
But all of this happened so fast, like riding a rollercoaster that was too intense. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, I was thrown onto the cold ground.
After lying on the ground for a while, I struggled to get up, my head spinning. After finally distinguishing between heaven and earth, I recognized the corridor on the first floor of the old residential building in front of me, and then my stomach lurched, and a rush of acid shot up my throat.
I supported myself with one hand on the wall and vomited two mouthfuls of sour water while clutching my stomach.
"Tsk, you're so dirty." Black Dog squatted on the dilapidated railing of the corridor stairs, licking his cat paws. "Don't vomit in front of my master's door, okay? My master has a very good sense of smell, and this smell will disturb him."
As it finished saying that, I heard the click of a door unlocking behind me.
I turned my head and met Li Duidui's slightly hazy gaze. He seemed to have just woken up from a dream. He squinted his eyes, his hair slightly disheveled.
He glanced at Li Peipei, who was leaning against the wall catching her breath, and then his eyes moved to me. He straightened up, casually raised a hand to adjust his glasses. The golden-rimmed lenses unfolded with a flick and were casually placed on the bridge of his nose. He gave them a gentle push, brushing away the sleepiness in his gaze, though his voice was still low and husky:
"Who bullied you?"