Abandoned Village - Part 21

The fish is as happy and free in the water as she is.

Hai Baihe couldn't help but indulge in this joy, completely immersed in it, almost forgetting where they were. Fortunately, their remaining rationality reminded them to resurface. When they looked back, not a single zombie was in sight.

Hesitating for a moment, they chose to stay in the water rather than going ashore. This time, they remembered to swim back slowly, only coming ashore when they saw the zombies from a distance.

Just as they had walked a short distance from the shore, they noticed a truck parked on the side of the road. Surprisingly, the other three were there too. Mu Ge and Ni Xuanxuan were trembling, sitting in the car, while Liang Xiao looked at them helplessly. "Try to calm down. Have you seen Hai Baihe?"

"Is Baihe not with you?" Mu Ge's face turned pale, resembling a ghost in a graveyard.

"Looking for me?" Hai Baihe wrung her wet hair and said, "I'm here."

Liang Xiao finally showed a relieved expression when he saw her. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." Hai Baihe sneezed twice. "Damn, this water is cold."

"Baihe." Mu Ge suddenly pushed open the car door and hugged Hai Baihe, bursting into tears. "Baihe, I'm so scared. This place is too terrifying."

Hai Baihe said, "Huh?" You've already seen zombies, why the sudden change?

She looked up at Ni Xuanxuan, who was nervously gripping the steering wheel, her teeth chattering, clearly terrified.

She asked Liang Xiao, "What happened to them?"

Liang Xiao also found it strange. "After escaping from that direction, I came to find you. I saw some lights over there, so I went up to the road to see where they were coming from."

He pointed in the direction they had come from.

Hai Baihe patted Mu Ge, who was sobbing and hugging her tightly. "Mu Ge, calm down. Did something happen?" She then turned to Liang Xiao. "You drive. It seems like Ni Xuanxuan is not in a good condition."

Liang Xiao got into the car and nudged Ni Xuanxuan, who was holding her head, with a concerned voice. "This is a ghost town, there are ghosts here!"

Liang Xiao had a bad feeling. Even when facing zombies, Mu Ge and Ni Xuanxuan had never been this distraught. He said, "I'm sorry," and gave Ni Xuanxuan a slap. She was stunned, raising her head to look at him blankly.

"Look into my eyes," Liang Xiao grabbed her shoulders. "Take a breath, exhale. Good, do as I say. Inhale again, exhale. Does it feel a little better?"

Tears continued to stream down Ni Xuanxuan's face as she said, "There are ghosts here." She was already a delicate and sensitive girl, and there were countless rumors circulating in the archaeology department about curses of pharaohs and encountering ghosts while excavating tombs.

Hai Baihe pondered whether she should give Mu Ge a slap too. "What exactly happened? Can one of you explain it to me?"

Their reluctance to reveal the main theme of what was strange here was frustrating her.

"Both of you get in the car first." Liang Xiao helped Ni Xuanxuan to the passenger seat. "We can talk while we drive."

Hai Baihe agreed. She was completely soaked, and the cold wind outside was unbearable. She pulled Mu

Ge into the car. "Come on, I'll take the wheel first. After I leave, you drive away, alright?"

"That person came back," Mu Ge said with a trembling voice. "When he saw the car, he came running towards us. We didn't know what to do, so Xuanxuan did as you said and drove the car straight at him."

"He died from the impact?" Hai Baihe wondered if it was the collision that caused their strange behavior.

"No, he dodged," Mu Ge said absentmindedly. "We didn't dare to stop, just kept driving, and driving."

"There was only one road, so we just kept going in one direction," Mu Ge looked at her in fear. "Then, then we saw him."

"Me?" Liang Xiao felt something was off. "Which way were you driving?"

"In the direction of the guard post, the same one we saw when we came here," Mu Ge was certain. "I didn't forget, it was the same as when we arrived."

The direction of the road from east to west had several landmarks: rows of factories, the main road, a small supermarket, and the guard post. They had arrived from the guard post, which was the western direction, and reached the main road. From there, they saw the hospital, and Liang Xiao's location was near the small supermarket.

In other words, Ni Xuanxuan and the others kept driving west, and after a while, they saw the guard post and Liang Xiao near the small supermarket again.

They ended up going east.

Even if the road was circular, they should have seen the factories first, not Liang Xiao. It was impossible to see the guard post. Hai Baihe sneezed.

"Are you cold? I'll hold you." Mu Ge hugged her, feeling a chill on her own back. "Baihe, what should we do?"

Liang Xiao said, "I know you're probably not lying, but in a state of panic, memories can become confused. Even directions can be mixed up. Let me drive again, heading west. You all just try to stay calm."

The car was already on the road, leaving everything behind in Huyang Township. However, due to Mu Ge and Ni Xuanxuan's experiences, their hearts were far from at ease.

Hai Baihe was exhausted, completely drenched from head to toe, including her shawl in her bag. She tried to find some clothes in the car and unexpectedly pulled out a package of food from under the seat.

"Oh!" Hai Baihe immediately opened the package of Oreos. "Quick, everyone have some. We need to eat and gather strength before we can escape."

No one could refuse food, not even Ni Xuanxuan, who seemed lifeless with a face of despair. They all ate several pieces.

In addition to Oreos, there were jerky, beer, and a few packets of white powder in the plastic bag.

After noticing the contents, Hai Baihe nonchalantly stuffed the plastic bags into her back pocket.

Liang Xiao didn't notice.

With a bit of food in their stomachs, Mu Ge and Ni Xuanxuan's conditions improved. They stared outside the window without blinking, afraid to miss any crucial landmarks.

However, despite coming back the same way, the road ahead, though not completely flat, was a well-paved cement road without any forks or turns. From a distance, it appeared to be a straight path.

It should have been a joyful escape, but now nobody spoke.

"We're running out of fuel." Liang Xiao suddenly spoke, breaking the silence. "Let me stop for a moment."

Ni Xuanxuan asked,

"Why don't we keep going?"

"Everyone is tired, and I'm afraid you won't be able to endure it if we keep going like this. Let's take a break," Liang Xiao explained.

If their situation was truly as they described, then what would happen next was likely impossible to explain using common sense. Instead of facing the eerie circumstances and endless zombies in their mentally and physically exhausted state, it was better to rest peacefully in the wilderness and reassess their situation later.

Hai Baihe quickly fell asleep without having a single dream.

When she woke up, it was already dawn. She checked the time—it was 1 p.m.

Liang Xiao was outside smoking a cigarette. She pushed open the door and went out. "Why do you look so troubled?"

He gestured for her to look not far away, where the outline of a house could faintly be seen. Hai Baihe remained silent for a while before asking, "Are you scared?"

"Are you scared?" she countered.

"I am," Liang Xiao wouldn't have parked the car here in the middle of the night if he wasn't. He needed some psychological preparation as well.

Hai Baihe took the cigarette from his mouth. "Let me have a puff."

She took a drag, feeling the sharp and pungent taste of the cigarette, definitely not a good one, but she still finished smoking the half-cigarette.

"You go rest, I'll take the wheel." She stretched and yawned. "To answer your earlier question, yes, I'm scared."

Liang Xiao extinguished the cigarette she had thrown on the ground. "Smoking is bad for your health, quit it."

"No addiction, just to wake myself up," Hai Baihe said as she got into the driver's seat. "Get in."

Liang Xiao sat in the back and soon fell asleep.

Hai Baihe drove forward in silence.

She saw the guard post, and not long after, the small supermarket came into view.

She felt like she needed another cigarette to calm herself down.

"Ah!" As soon as Ni Xuanxuan opened her eyes, she saw the familiar scene and immediately panicked. "We're back again, it's like hitting a wall!"

"I'll tell you the truth, stay calm," Hai Baihe flipped through the opened package of cigarettes she found in the driver's seat. "Zombies are more scientifically explainable. A ghost town like this is not scientific. I haven't seen two things appearing in the same scene. I've seen zombies with my own eyes, but I haven't seen a single ghost. I think it's more likely a spatial displacement. Otherwise, it would be too inconsistent, right?"

Ni Xuanxuan blinked slowly, as if... it made sense.

Zombies and ghosts seemed to belong to different realms. She had never seen them appear together in one scene, and the concept of hitting a wall was just too implausible.

"So, what's really going on here?" Ni Xuanxuan asked.

Hai Baihe grinned mischievously. While she knew a bit about chemistry, physics, and the universe were a different story. "Maybe our vision is being misled. We thought we were moving forward, but in reality, we've already made a turn?"

"I know about that. There are visual displacement experiments online," Mu Ge felt a sense of relief as soon as she mentioned it. She leaned back on her seat and offered a suggestion.

Hai Baihe racked her brain and finally recalled a professional term. "Mobius strip?"

Ni Xuanxuan facepalmed. "Officer Liang?" Can't someone provide a reasonable guess?

"I'm encountering this for the first time too," Liang Xiao rubbed

his temples and smiled bitterly. "You girls have more open-minded thoughts than me."

Mu Ge chimed in, "I know you're thinking that I have a big imagination, but I have another wild idea. Can I share it?"

"Go ahead, as long as you don't say we're all dreaming," Hai Baihe replied.

"All horror games or movies have this kind of setting. If we can't find a way out, it's essentially like being in a locked room, just like the snowbound mansion in Detective Conan," Mu Ge said seriously. "Remember what I said before? Just like in Detective Conan, where the police will come when the murderer is found, in the game, we have to investigate the cause and effect of the whole incident to find a way out."

"Do you think we should find the cause of the zombie outbreak?" Hai Baihe asked.

"Perhaps the magnetic field had a problem due to the zombie outbreak, which is why we can't escape," Mu Ge continued. Being friends with Hai Baihe meant she could also speak nonsense with a straight face. "If we find the cause, maybe we can get out."

Ni Xuanxuan, with a weak voice, said, "There's no other option now. Otherwise, let's give it a try."

Liang Xiao had no objections to that.

In such a terrifying environment, the silver lining was that their teammates seemed reliable. No one sought death voluntarily, nor did anyone abandon the group. Although there were minor conflicts, everyone was still working together to find a solution.

They were three adorable girls.

However...

"How do we investigate?" the three girls asked with wide-eyed anticipation.

Liang Xiao couldn't help but laugh. "Okay, this is my expertise. I suggest we go to the local school and take a look."

"Isn't that a government agency?"

"If the dramatic changes in Huyang Township happened in July, then there would be hardly anyone at the school, making it relatively safe. That's the first reason. Second, finding documents in government offices won't be easy, especially confidential files."