Surviving the Game as a Zombie - Chapter 105

“I don’t know.” That was Song Lengzhu’s answer.

Tang Yu’s gaze fell on the other woman’s fingertips. The budding expectations, having received no response, were silently pushed back down.

Song Lengzhu was in a difficult position, Tang Yu could tell. Perhaps she shouldn’t have asked such a question.

A moment ago, Song Lengzhu had been leaning back relaxedly, her eyes soft and gentle. But now, she sat bolt upright, her expression turning serious. Her fingertips tapped on the yellow sticky note as she stared at Tang Yu without speaking.

Tang Yu couldn’t ignore Song Lengzhu’s reaction. It left her feeling empty and unmoored. Tang Yu had once asked Jin Ye a similar question. Jin Ye had accepted it quickly and given her a clear answer.

But Song Lengzhu hadn’t.

Forget it. Tang Yu, feeling sullen, leaned forward, pressed down on the other end of the sticky note, and forcefully pulled it out from under Song Lengzhu’s fingertips.

Without a word, she lowered her head, folded the note in half, then in half again, and stuffed it into her pants pocket.

“Um…” Song Lengzhu spoke up, her fingers still resting on the tabletop.

Tang Yu had no choice but to look up at her.

“Ahem… It’s nothing.” Song Lengzhu seemed to think of something but stopped herself. She withdrew her hand, clasping both of them firmly on the table. “Your handwriting is quite nice.”

Song Lengzhu changed the subject, a deliberate attempt to find something to say.

Tang Yu kept her lips tightly sealed, not knowing what she was sulking about, and for the moment, didn’t want to react much.

Song Lengzhu felt the words catch in her throat, hesitating. She could tell the little zombie was unhappy. She had only given an honest answer, not expecting her to care so much about it.

Is this a very important matter? Song Lengzhu’s thumbs crossed over each other, rubbing absently.

But the little zombie’s undisguised emotions, on the contrary, brought her a bit of joy—a joy she shouldn’t be feeling.

Song Lengzhu softened her tone and picked up a new topic. “How long will you be staying in the library?”

Tang Yu said nothing.

Song Lengzhu seemed to have anticipated this. Her emotions were stable as she continued to ask gently, “What about your teammates? Zhou Zhou, and that zombie and the little girl.”

She unclasped her hands, shed her serious expression, and leaned toward Tang Yu, waiting for the little zombie to communicate with her.

If she didn’t answer a third time, it would be rude.

Besides, Song Lengzhu’s voice was so soft, and the woman was injured. Tang Yu really couldn’t keep acting like a block of wood.

Tang Yu composed herself and finally picked up the pen beside her.

Just as she was about to write, she saw the small line of text she had written earlier, which glaringly read, “You said you didn’t dislike me before.”

Ah, how embarrassing. Feeling a mix of shame, indignation, and guilt, Tang Yu tore off the note, crumpled it into a ball, tossed it aside, and took a new sheet of paper.

“They left.” Tang Yu tapped the paper with her pen, answering Song Lengzhu’s last question. She pushed it toward Song Lengzhu for a glance, then quickly pulled it back and wrote the names “Jin Ye, Xiao Li” next to it.

It seemed Song Lengzhu still didn’t know her teammates’ names, always referring to Jin Ye as “that zombie.”

How tragic. Doesn’t Jin Ye deserve to have a name?

Song Lengzhu leaned over to read the writing. “Jin Ye, is that the zombie? So that’s her name.”

“Mhm,” Tang Yu uttered a simple syllable, looking at the strands of hair that fell by Song Lengzhu’s face.

“I remember fighting her before, when she was still in human form. So she became a zombie player because of you, right?” Song Lengzhu shifted her gaze from the paper to Tang Yu’s hand holding the pen. The hand was bony with well-defined knuckles, and the nails were untrimmed, probably for scratching at a moment’s notice.

“Sort of.” Explaining the specifics would be very troublesome, so Tang Yu wrote down the two words.

“Let me guess. The game added a new mechanic that allows you to let players remain in the game as zombies, but you can’t control this mechanic, and the players have to pay some kind of price.” Song Lengzhu was thoughtful. She had seen Tang Yu kill other players, and not everyone she scratched had remained in the game. After Jin Ye became a zombie, her attack power was also much lower than before.

Tang Yu neither confirmed nor denied it. Song Lengzhu was very smart. Although she hadn’t hit the nail exactly on the head, the conclusion was more or less correct.

She looked up at Song Lengzhu, marveling inwardly. How can this person be so strong and so smart? What was even more infuriating was that she was also so beautiful. Her features were sharp and defined, possessing a keen beauty. It was a cold face that should have inspired awe and deterred any offense, but right now, a soft, approachable warmth flowed from her eyes.

The bit of sullenness in Tang Yu’s heart vanished under that gaze. She didn’t dare to look any longer, afraid she would fall in if she stared for another second. A playful impulse suddenly struck her, and she buried her head to write on the paper.

“Being a zombie is fun. Want to give it a try?”

Song Lengzhu smiled brightly. “That depends on whether you have the ability.” As she responded, she silently made a judgment about Tang Yu: the little zombie’s moods came and went quickly; she was quite easy to coax.

Tang Yu pouted and put down her pen. Fine, she really didn’t have that ability right now.

In the silence, Song Lengzhu suddenly reached out to grab the crumpled ball of paper.

What does she want with that paper ball? The words on it are mortifying. Feeling guilty, Tang Yu quickly swatted her hand out to block her, knocking the paper ball to the floor.

Song Lengzhu laughed. “What are you doing? Can’t I take another look?”

No! Afraid Song Lengzhu would go pick it up, Tang Yu decided to make a preemptive move. She got up from her seat and bent down to retrieve the yellow paper ball from the floor.

The paper ball had rolled to the corner of a bookshelf. Tang Yu grasped it firmly in her hand. As she stood up, her peripheral vision caught something out of place on the bottom shelf.

Huh? Tang Yu turned, grabbed her small flashlight, and shone it on that shelf.

“What’s wrong?” Song Lengzhu didn’t get up. She ducked down and saw Tang Yu crouching by the bookshelf through the gap under the table.

The books on this shelf were flashy, with eye-catching girls on the covers and rather explosive titles. Song Lengzhu straightened up and saw the shelf label read “Web Novels.” She looked down at Tang Yu again, who was crouching in front of a novel titled The Cold School Belle Falls for Me, flipping through something.

“So you… like this kind of thing?” Song Lengzhu asked, word by word, an indescribable expression on her face.

“Huh?” Tang Yu glanced back at Song Lengzhu, then followed her gaze to the bookshelf.

“No! It’s not!” Tang Yu quickly shook her head, making whimpering sounds of denial. She held up an object in her hand and hurried away from that shelf.

A yellow notepad was placed on the table by Tang Yu. The pad had been wedged at the very bottom of the bookshelf, its small size completely hidden by the adjacent books. If Tang Yu hadn’t gone to pick up the paper ball, she would never have noticed it.

The notepad was thick, and the adhesive strip at the top showed no signs of being torn. Tang Yu had already flipped to the first page, revealing the writing inside.

There were only three characters on this page. “Restroom.”

The handwriting was very familiar, the strokes sharp and flying upwards, very flamboyant.

Song Lengzhu looked at Tang Yu with confusion, her expression gradually turning serious. “Your handwriting,” Song Lengzhu said. “When did you write this?”

When Tang Yu had left her seat, she had clearly left the pen on the table.

Probably… six or seven months ago? Tang Yu answered in her mind, but she remained silent, flipping to the next page. She found another short term written there.

“Anchor Point.”

Flipping further, she found a strange drawing. It depicted seven irregular polygons fitted together like a map, but it was completely devoid of information. Inside one of the shapes near the bottom, there was a black dot with the word “Library” written next to it. Besides that, there was no other information.

What is this? I don’t understand.

Tang Yu continued to flip, but the rest of the pages were completely scribbled over, as if stained with ink. They were a mass of black, making it impossible to see the original writing. There were no indentations on the pages underneath; it had been cleanly and deliberately erased.

Only the first three pages contained any information.

Tang Yu flipped back to the first page. Restroom. Tang Yu remembered Qi Jinyin had also mentioned a restroom, saying her past self used to talk to herself in a restroom mirror. She was likely referring to the mirror here in the library.

But Tang Yu couldn’t figure out what “Anchor Point” meant. Generally, anchors were found where there were boats, used to secure the vessel. What did an “Anchor Point” refer to in the game?

Tang Yu thought for a moment, then pushed the notepad toward Song Lengzhu. She pointed at the word and drew a question mark next to it.

Song Lengzhu was even more baffled than she was. First of all, this handwriting that had appeared out of thin air was already beyond her comprehension.

Song Lengzhu pushed the notepad away and stared into Tang Yu’s eyes. “Have you been here before?”

“Probably?” Tang Yu wrote on her original notepad. Speaking of which, I really do seem to like yellow notepads.

Song Lengzhu looked at the question mark with a strange expression. “What do you mean, ‘probably’?” She paused. “Are you saying your amnesia doesn’t just cover things outside the game, but you also don’t remember your experiences inside the game?”

That wasn’t wrong. Tang Yu leaned over the table and wrote, “I haven’t figured it out either.” She thought about how to explain this to Song Lengzhu.

Finally, she wrote down the keywords “Second time in the game?” on the paper, then crossed out “Second” and wrote “Third.” She put a question mark after each one.

She couldn’t say for sure which time it was.

Song Lengzhu’s gaze darkened as she quickly understood Tang Yu’s meaning. She murmured in a low voice, “So something like this can happen…” This kind of situation had never occurred in the game, at least not that she had heard of. Any player who quit the game could never re-enter.

Song Lengzhu shook her head. “I don’t know what ‘Anchor Point’ means either.”

It was very likely a word Tang Yu had created herself to refer to some crucial item or location.

Tang Yu sighed. Not giving up, she got up and searched all the nearby bookshelves, even turning the pile of emergency blankets and packaging inside out.

Unfortunately, aside from this notepad, she couldn’t find any other suspicious information.

She must have communicated with Qi Jinyin using pen and paper, but she didn’t know if Qi Jinyin had taken those things or destroyed them. She couldn’t even find the pen and paper.

Tang Yu’s gaze returned to the notepad. Perhaps she should head to the restroom to have a look.