Chapter 133 Sealed Memories

Lu Yan's faint smile froze.

Fu Qing used a question, but his tone was very certain.

Lu Yan could tell at a glance that there was no hope of her struggling, but he still asked, "Why do you say that?"

“Intuition.” Fu Qing glanced at Lu Yan’s thunderstruck expression and chuckled. “Actually, it’s not entirely intuition. During winter break, I went to the lab to find you and Zhao Yunxiao. You said you had made two discoveries… but there were more than two, weren’t there?”

Lu Yan's expression when he paused for a moment before continuing was all too obvious.

Seeing his silence, Fu Qing leaned back and sat on the examination bed, then continued slowly, "And, I suddenly remembered something."

“Do you remember the shelter where we met the believers in our last life? The day the believers took advantage of a security breach and opened the door from the inside, causing the shelter to fall, I went out with the team to search for supplies.” Fu Qing looked up at him calmly, “But you didn’t.”

“You usually go out with us, but that day you stayed at the shelter to stitch up a little girl’s leg. The little girl’s bunk was next to that woman’s, and you witnessed her suicide.”

Several years ago, and given that the group had stayed in various shelters and refugee hideouts afterward, this memory was buried deep in their hearts, and Fu Qing had genuinely overlooked it before.

Looking back now, it seems that when the system initially selected her, it said that she was even luckier than others.

Her luck in the lottery was indeed better than she had imagined.

Before recruiting Lu Yan and Xu Mingyue, she used the "a little luck" item in the mall to make three wishes for talent.

All three wishes have actually come true.

However, seeing two resumes, both from acquaintances, she subconsciously assigned them their respective skills.

However, they did not realize that Lu Yan was not only a "medical" professional, but also someone who understood "zombie believers".

All of this, along with Lu Yan's occasional hesitations and pauses, led Fu Qing to basically confirm that he had indeed concealed some information.

"What exactly do you know?"

Lu Yan stared at her intently, a conflicted look and a subtle hint of pain flashing in his eyes.

Fu Qing stared back without blinking.

Finally, Lu Yan was the first to look away, sighed softly, and, as if making a decision, turned back and walked towards the pharmacy.

After a while, he took out a sealed vial of blood, which was still tinged with cold air.

“This is…” Fu Qing narrowed his eyes, remembering, “the blood of that devout believer?”

This is Lou Han's blood.

Lou Han was the runner-type devout believer who attacked Song Rushuang and others during the Xishan assessment, and who ultimately died from his injuries after Lu Yan arrived with simulated zombies to join the battle.

Before he died, Lu Yan used him as a waste and drew twenty tubes of blood from him in one go.

The blood, along with fragments of the hooded woman's limbs, was brought back for research. However, the hooded woman's limbs and ears proved very useful afterward, and the twenty vials of blood were never mentioned again.

Lu Yan was in a bad mood and gave a low "hmm". Since he didn't have any suitable experimental tools at hand, he grabbed a plastic bag from a mask and dripped a drop of blood onto it.

Before Fu Qing could understand his intention, Lu Yan spoke up: "I was indeed there the day Z107 shelter fell."

He lowered his eyes, his gaze fixed on a point in the void, briefly lost in memories.

"That day, from early morning, that crazy woman was muttering something incoherently."

"She's always like this, and nobody pays much attention. Everyone has their own things to do, and nobody has time to focus on a madwoman."

Who could have imagined that just a few hours later, this madman would drag thousands of people in the entire shelter down with him?

"But what she said that day was a little different from usual."

If Lu Yan hadn't been forced to stay by the woman's bedside for a long time because he needed to stitch up the girl, he wouldn't have noticed what she said.

Lu Yan glanced at Fu Qing and continued, "She said she received a divine oracle."

The woman kowtowed and wept with emotion, kissing the ground beneath her feet and praying while gazing at the ceiling.

Then, with a look of intoxication and madness, he looked in a certain direction.

Perhaps it was because her behavior was so unusual that it finally attracted the attention of some people around her.

During a break from sewing, Lu Yan glanced at her casually and a thought popped into his head.

—It seems she was looking at the bed where Fu Qing was sleeping.

However, the shelter was small and densely populated, with too many people sleeping in one place, so Lu Yan didn't pay much attention.

The madwoman seemed to have stepped into a beautiful dream, a blissful smile on her face, as she swayed unsteadily to her feet as if sleepwalking. She had been in a semi-mad state for a long time, and her body reeked of a stench that hadn't been cleaned for a long time. When she passed by Lu Yan, the stench made both him and the girl frown, and then they heard the woman muttering to herself.

"Find her...find her...find her..."

“Dedicated to Him…Dedicated to Him…Dedicated to Him…”

Where are you...where are you?

Soon, she drifted to the corner near her target, and after a moment of silence, she suddenly burst into a heart-wrenching scream.

"It's gone! It's gone!! Where is it! Where is it!!"

"Ah!! Where did you go?!"

Everyone was startled by the sudden scream.

The woman was seen digging her fingernails into her cheeks in terror. Her nails fell off, leaving deep, bloody scratches on her skin, but she ignored them all. Her bloodshot, eerie eyes scanned the people around her without blinking.

Then he curled up and cried out in anguish.

No one dared to approach, but two or three people who usually listened to her "preaching" out of pity but did not believe her whispered: "She is probably looking for her daughter. It is said that her daughter, husband and both sets of parents all died in the zombie attack, and she was the only one who survived."

"Sigh, it's pitiful. I guess the shock was too great for them to believe that people don't die after turning into zombies, they just live in a different form..."

The crowd sighed in dismay, but still dared not approach, fearing that she had completely gone mad, or that she had been infected at some point and was gradually losing her mind.

Some people were eyeing her body warily, ready to call the guards at the first sign of trouble.

In the end, Lu Yan and a few young men who were helping her stepped forward and knocked her unconscious with a karate chop.

—Given the condition of a shelter, tranquilizers are naturally not available, and even if they were, they wouldn't be wasted on a madman.

They moved the woman to an empty bed, left her in the care of one of them, and then went back to their own business.

It wasn't until the riot broke out and Lu Yan rushed over that he saw the guard's body lying in the corner and realized that it was actually the work of that madwoman.

She had only ever talked nonsense, and no one expected her to suddenly lash out and even kill a young man who was much stronger than her, leaving him no chance to call for help and dying silently.

This is simply unbelievable for a middle-aged person who has been able to only get the bare minimum of food intake for a long time, suffers from severe sleep deprivation, and walks with a limp.

By the time they realized they had misjudged women, it was already too late.

The woman and her accomplices pushed open the shelter door from the inside and rushed towards the horde of zombies.

A frenzied horde of zombies poured into the shelter, and what happened next was beyond description, even if it were a living hell.

Lu Yan finished reminiscing, and as he uttered his last sentence, his eyelashes trembled, then he turned to the dripping drop of blood.

The packaging bag was waterproof, and the blood had congealed on the surface into a bead the size of a red bean, swaying slightly. In order to see it more clearly, Fu Qing subconsciously took a step forward. The next second, as she got closer, she saw the blood droplet suddenly boil!

It was as if a huge energy surged from within, heating it to boiling point in an instant. Bubbles rose and dissipated on the surface, each tiny bubble like a little hand, struggling and stretching towards Fu Qing with all its might and without regard for anything else.

The violent commotion took her by surprise.

Fu Qing suddenly stopped in her tracks, hearing Lu Yan continue.

"After escaping from the shelter, it took me a long time to suddenly realize that the woman that day might not have been looking for her daughter, but for you."

His voice was low and hoarse, as if speaking was a difficult thing for him.

"Fu Qing, she's looking for you."

Lu Yan didn't say anything, but Fu Qing suddenly understood why he had kept all of this from her.

Or perhaps, that's one of the reasons.

No one can guarantee that the madwoman chose that day to push open the shelter's door because she wasn't there.

Therefore, while obtaining this blood, Lu Yan also discovered the secret within the devout believer's body.

They could sense Fu Qing, and although he didn't know why, he kept it a secret for the time being due to various considerations. He still hadn't figured out how to bring it up with Fu Qing.

Fu Qing understood, paused for a moment, and said, "But that crazy woman isn't infected."

Then, they fell silent again.

Because the woman was not infected, she could not sense Fu Qing's presence, nor did she know that Fu Qing had left the shelter.

Her source must have been other devout believers not in the shelter. Perhaps her companions infiltrated the outing group and obtained the information, or perhaps the group contacted each other using other methods.

With accomplices outside, the woman's first goal would definitely be to take Fu Qing out alone. However, when she discovered that Fu Qing was not there, she chose her second goal in despair or mental breakdown—to sacrifice the survivors to help the zombie king increase its power.

Fu Qing couldn't suppress the thought that arose in his mind.

Imagine that on that day, you didn't go out with the group, but stayed in the shelter instead.

...Will the rest of the people be safe?

“Fu Qing?” Lu Yan shook her abruptly, his face grim. “That woman is dead. Her original plan can no longer be verified. Besides, the thoughts of a madman are unpredictable. You can’t take someone else’s malice as your own mistake.”

Normally, Fu Qing wouldn't need him to remind her at all.

But now... that's thousands of lives at stake.

Lu Yan said urgently, "We're back now, it's not too late. As long as we kill the zombie king, we can save those who were supposed to die, so..."

“I know.” Fu Qing wiped her face and interrupted him.

She rarely showed a hint of fatigue, leaning against the wall and looking at Lu Yan with great focus and attention. Lu Yan held his breath for a moment, but after a while, he realized that her gaze was not actually on him.

It was as if through him, I could see many people who had left.

“But they won’t be coming back,” Fu Qing said softly.

She recalled the day she and her fellow teachers were exposed after their rebirth, and the discussions on the forum.

One student once said that she recognized a city in the game as corresponding to a real-world city. However, a century-old shop in that city in the game did not exist in reality.

An NPC in the instance mentions that the shop owner and his wife have turned into zombies.

Based on this, the students speculated that the two worlds were extremely similar parallel worlds, but Fu Qing once had some doubts.

If it's a parallel world, why do some people disappear while others still exist?

When Fu Qing was giving a statement at the police station after her act of bravery, a city leader came over to thank her. She recognized him immediately; he was a face that often appeared in the news.

But I didn't think much of it.

Looking back now, almost all the news she read was from her previous life.

That leader also appeared in the previous life, holding the same position, and his appearance and personality have not changed much.

In addition, there was the arson case involving the hooded woman, which occurred before the apocalypse. When Fu Qing communicated with the hooded woman and Tian Xuejun based on his memories from his previous life, none of them noticed anything unusual.

The details of the fires and the number of deaths were almost identical between the two eras.

Even the amount of the inheritance left by Fu Qing's parents remained unchanged.

In contrast, Fu Qing's familiar classmates and friends, as well as the news anchor who died on the day the virus broke out during a live broadcast, all disappeared from this world.

Previously overlooked details have surfaced, posing a problem—

What exactly determines the overlap and differences between the two lifetimes?

Why did those who stayed stay, and why did those who disappeared disappear?

If before today, Fu Qing only vaguely sensed something was amiss but couldn't connect the dots, now she has an answer in her heart.

—Zombies.

All those who become zombies, or die at the hands of zombies, are permanently dead in their previous life.

Only those who die for other reasons, or those who, like Fu Qing, are bound to the system at the moment of death and never actually die, will continue to exist.

As for the hooded woman, the zombie king in her previous life didn't awaken this early. She most likely died in that fire. Being "saved" in this second life does indeed fit the name of a phoenix reborn from the ashes.

At the same time, she also got the answer to another question.

—The madwoman in the shelter, Fan Zheng who later joined the group, a devout believer in his previous life, why is he looking for her?

"system."

Fu Qing thought to himself, "What we are experiencing is actually the third cycle of this small world, isn't it?"

Your understanding of this world has deepened!

[Received 300 teaching points as a reward]

World exploration complete!

[Bonus Reward: A Sealed Memory (Viewable inside the simulator)]