Chapter 20 Grudges

Tap, tap, tap.

Footsteps arose behind Feng Tiegen.

The Black Zombie's foot, covered in sticky, filthy blood, grated against the tiny pebbles on the cement road; in the silent shroud of night, it sounded exceedingly grating.

Feng Tiegen didn't dare look back, but desperately moved his broken ankle, staggering forward step by step.

The intense pain that stabbed into his brain had to yield before the combined forces of fear and the will to survive.

Crack.

The sound of breaking bones was so clear. Feng Tiegen stumbled and fell to the ground. He struggled to turn around and saw the emaciated zombie, his face covered in tears, snot, and dust.

The Black Zombie bent its spine, stepping slowly toward Feng Tiegen, unspeakable red organs falling from its toothless mouth, its remaining eye cloudy and lifeless.

It bent over, its long, sharp nails swaying in the wind, unconsciously scratching the ground.

Amidst the jarring noise, the cement was torn apart, leaving deep scars.

"Mom!" Feng Tiegen cried with tears streaming down, shouting hoarsely, "Mom, it wasn't me who starved you, it was Zhang Cuifang, it was that woman Zhang Cuifang who wouldn't feed you!"

The Black Zombie remained as if deaf.

Hatred, grievance, rage, despair. Those extreme emotions that reanimated the dead completely dominated the Black Zombie's consciousness,

Beyond revenge, its decayed mind could contain nothing else.

Face-to-face with the Black Zombie, Feng Tiegen slumped to the ground, retreating backward with his hands and feet,

"I'm Tiegen, Tiegen! Your own son!"

"Mom! Do you remember? Dad died early, and it was you who raised me, cleaning me up from my filth."

"That year when the village suffered natural disasters, and no one had food to eat, you, who had always been upright, were forced to become a thief stealing grain, smuggling food from the commune's Windmill Room."

"When the commune noticed the missing grain and started rigorous searches to prevent smuggling,"

"You had no choice but to sneak into the Windmill Room before the end of your shift, gulping down the dry, raw grains in the dim light."

"Grandma and I starved at home, dizzy with hunger. When you returned, your face flushed red, you doubled over and began retching into a wooden basin."

"Peas mixed with saliva and the taste of blood, plop, plop, fell into the wooden basin."

"You looked up at me, smiled, and said hoarsely, 'Son, we're saved now.'"

"Day by day, Grandma and I no longer starved, but you grew thinner, like a reed."

"Our family survived the famine."

Feng Tiegen, his eyes red-rimmed, knelt before his mother's zombie, crying out, "Mom, I've wronged you, I'm not human, Mom."

The Black Zombie stopped in its tracks, standing in front of her son, that muscle-withered, grotesque face momentarily flashed with an unusual expression.

It trembled as it leaned over, reaching out to embrace Feng Tiegen.

Just as a look of joy crossed Feng Tiegen's face, in the next moment, he was clutched tightly in the arms of the Black Zombie.

The hands of the Black Zombie clamped around Feng Tiegen like a vise, causing his face to turn crimson and veins to bulge on his face.

"Mom..."

Feng Tiegen's eyes bulged, and he groaned a single word from his throat.

Crack.

Bones snapped, organs burst, and Feng Tiegen died, slumping like a lump of mud from the Black Zombie's embrace.

The Black Zombie stood motionless, gazing blankly at the corpse under its feet. After a long while, it squatted down, split open the dead body's abdomen, and sifted through the intestines and stomach, chewing and swallowing.

As it devoured the bloodied flesh, the zombie's skin, as dry as tree bark, gradually became moist, and the hair on its body started to glisten.

If its body had not decayed, if its consciousness had not perished, it would certainly have laughed and cried hysterically.

Unfortunately, on that pitch-black face, there were neither tears nor laughter.

Suddenly, while still chewing on the organs, the Black Zombie sensed the breath of a living person. It abruptly lifted its head, looking towards the wooded area above the winding road's stone wall.

Whoosh, Li Ang walked out from the dim tree shadows, jumped down the stone wall, and stood on the road.

He had been hidden in the woods for over ten minutes, silently watching the Black Zombie complete its revenge, thanks to the presence-diminishing function of the Mask.

"Every grievance has its culprit, every debt has its debtor. Revenge must be sought for hatred, grievances must be resolved."

Li Ang, not caring whether the Black Zombie understood or not, said calmly, "Zombies are born from the resentment, misfortune, and yin energy of the world, fueled by anger and sustained by flesh and blood. I did not stop you from taking your revenge, but now that your grievances have been settled, it is time to move on."

The Black Zombie did not utter a word but responded with silence, its eyes completely filled with a bloody red hue. The only emotions left in its gaze were two intense and pure feelings—

Hunger, and appetite.

"No chance for communication, then..." Li Ang sighed softly as he stood solemnly facing the Black Zombie under the night sky. The small truck that had crashed into the post, now emitting light smoke, seemed to finally give out, its headlights flashing erratically, slowly dimming.

In the moment when the headlights went out, the Black Zombie moved.

Its figure, ghostlike, took a step that seemed to float across a dozen meters of distance, appearing in front of Li Ang in a flash, swinging a claw at him.

The narrow claws cut through the air, producing a sharp whooshing sound. Li Ang, prepared, planted his feet as firmly as iron in the ground, his upper body erect and stiff as a board, tilting backward,

Dodging the claw strike with an Iron Plate Bridge maneuver, Li Ang, without waiting to get up, grabbed a short-barreled Shotgun loaded with steel pellets and fired diagonally at the Black Zombie's chest.

The gunshot thundered, the bullets sprayed, and even with the protection of thick black hair covering its body, the zombie was blasted back several steps by the sudden, tremendous impact.

In the moment of rising, Li Ang quickly reloaded, firing another shotgun blast at the Black Zombie without looking.

The steel pellets shot out, tearing apart the Black Zombie's funeral robe, but the disheveled black hairs hindered the pellets, making it difficult to penetrate further.

Li Ang swiftly reloaded, shooting and retreating simultaneously, darting into the woods and disappearing from sight.

The Black Zombie stomped on the ground, its modest funeral shoes creating bowl-sized indentations in the concrete surface, its figure shooting into the trees like an arrow released from a bow.

The forest was dense with leaves and bristling branches, dark and lightless, silent and still.

The zombie tread on the soft pile of dead leaves, flaring its nostrils, taking in the scents around it.

All of a sudden, the zombie abruptly lifted its head just to see a shadow descending from above—it was Li Ang, who had been lying in ambush tens of meters up in the treetops.

By reducing his presence with the Face-Changing Mask, Li Ang had evaded the Black Zombie's keen senses. As the zombie looked up, Li Ang leaped, falling freely with the pull of gravity, axe in the right hand, shotgun in the left, using the force of his descent to viciously strike the Black Zombie's crown with the axe.

In the blink of an eye, the Black Zombie had just enough time to raise its left arm in front of itself.

The high-quality 420 stainless steel Camping Hatchet, both tough and sharp, tore through the outer layer of black hair unabashedly, chopping into the zombie's withered arm and leaving a deep wound on its radius bone.

Before the Black Zombie could react, Li Ang, steadied upon the soft pile of fallen leaves, had risen to his feet. In his left hand, he held the short-barreled Shotgun against the ulnar side of the Black Zombie's left arm.

Li Ang pulled the trigger. With a dull "bang," countless steel pellets embedded themselves into the black hairs of the zombie's arm.

Although the zombie's strange black hair could withstand and weaken the impact of the bullets, at such close range, the shotgun pellets still shattered the Black Zombie's left arm bones to pieces,

And the entire arm drooped down like putty.

The long black hairs on the left arm swayed in the wind, attempting to entangle the axe blade, but the stainless steel axe, coated with an anti-corrosive and anti-oxidation layer, easily broke free from the black hairs' embrace, like a heartless playboy shaking off his flings.

Li Ang pulled back his axe for another strike, a slanted chop that brought the wind with it, hacking fiercely into the Black Zombie's neck.