Extra 2
Inside the wall, Area 103.
The cemetery has expanded, with more dead people than living ones, and new graves are built closer together than old ones, trying to give everyone a place to rest.
All burial expenses are paid by the federal government, so that people can die without even being able to afford it. Xie Jiazu still remembers Huo Wenxi's words: If we can't even guarantee the dignity of the dead, how can we guarantee the dignity of the living?
A natural born leader, Xie Jiazu thought this in his heart more than once. Everyone knows that there is a high probability of destruction in the future, people may gain nothing, the destination is despair, and the process is also hopeless.
But in this world there is Huo Wenxi. It is like walking in the wind and snow. The person walking in front always has his back straight, and everyone just needs to look at Huo Wenxi's back to move forward.
The second batch of life detectors was launched not long ago, but has not yet returned.
While guarding the cemetery, Xie Jiazu was always listening to the news. He listened to the stories related to Huo Wenxi over and over again. It was like the background music of his life.
Xie Jiazu was wearing headphones. It was two o'clock in the morning and there was no one else patrolling the cemetery except him.
He walked past the tombstones of the dead, and would subconsciously pick up the flowers that were blown down. At the graves where no one was paying homage, he would help buy a bouquet of flowers and clean the dust. This is what a gravekeeper does.
Xie Jiazu didn't really want to go to Xu Meng's grave. Every time he was about to patrol, he would subconsciously want to avoid it. There was a sign saying "Cheetah's Home" hanging there, but in fact there was no body buried there. Xu Meng had turned into contaminated spores and rotten flesh, and there was no complete body left.
But Bobcat disappeared outside the wall. There were so many people missing in that era that it was impossible to find the whereabouts of everyone.
Cheng Mofei's body turned into a snail man and had long been purified by Zhu Ning, so he and Daju were the only two people left alive in the Cheetah Team.
The lemon tree has grown up. It was just a sapling half a meter high before, but now you can enjoy the shade under it.
Last year, the fruit was ripe, and bright yellow lemons were dangling among the leaves. Xie Jiazu picked one and ate it. It was so sour that it brought tears to his eyes.
It is said that Huo Wenxi brought Zhu Ning's body, which was buried secretly in the middle of the night. No one knew that the man who saved the world was buried here. Even Xie Jiazu had never seen what was in the tomb. It was probably an empty coffin.
Xie Jiazu had already seen the shadow of the lemon tree and took a deep breath before approaching. He thought of patrolling it like an ordinary tombstone, but as soon as he got closer, he heard unusual movement.
Xie Jiazu immediately took off his headphones and reached for the baton at his waist. Judging from his many years of experience as a tomb guard, he might be a tomb robber.
The man was under the lemon tree, which made him have other worse guesses. If it was Zhu Ning's tomb, it might not be just a tomb robbery. Zhu Ning was surrounded by conspiracy.
Xie Jiazu placed his other hand on the intercom. As a former undercover agent, he knew he had to pass on information and call the police immediately if anything went wrong.
He carefully moved behind the lemon tree, which became a perfect cover in the dark, but he paused and asked in disbelief, "Big Orange?"
It was Daju in the darkness. She was wearing a gray plaid shirt with her sleeves rolled up to her elbows. She was holding a small iron shovel and shoveling out soil one shovel at a time.
Daju wiped his face, which was rubbed black, like a cat that had just crawled out of the stove.
Xie Jiazu asked, "What are you doing here?"
Daju didn't even turn his head: "Tomb robber."
"No, ancestor," Xie Jiazu said incoherently, "this is Zhu Ning's tomb."
"I know, I didn't dig wrong." Daju panted, slammed the shovel down, raised his eyelids and asked, "Are you going to tell on me?"
"No," Xie Jiazu was confused by her, "Are you challenging my career?"
"You are so fragile, there is no need for me to challenge you." Daju was probably tired and just wanted to take a break.
"Aren't you a hacker?" Xie Jiazu hadn't seen Daju for a long time. After the pollution disappeared, many people with special abilities lost their abilities and their jobs needed to be reshuffled, but Daju relied on hacking skills for her survival, and no matter what the world became, it would not affect her employment.
On the contrary, Daju is very popular, and one order is enough for Xie Jiazu to work for ten years.
Daju held his knees and gasped, "It's so troublesome to talk to you."
She rolled her eyes and began to explain compassionately, "Do you know what Huo Wenxi buried?"
Xie Jiazu shook his head. "It's an official secret. How can I have the permission to read it?"
"Oh, it's okay, I have it." Daju lifted the hair beside his ear.
Xie Jiazu: "..."
Xie Jiazu was no longer surprised. Daju had been walking on the edge of the law for many years. No matter what level of secret it was, she would take a look if she wanted to.
Daju: "It was dug out from District 82. It didn't stay anywhere else after being dug out. It was sent to the cemetery in one go."
"So?" Xie Jiazu followed up her question.
"Su He was also arrested in District 82. Zhu Ning must have had a fight with Su He there." Daju: "That might really be Zhu Ning's body in here."
"Nonsense," Xie Jiazu couldn't help but say, "This is a cemetery. What else can we put here if not corpses?"
"But Zhu Ning left the wall and entered the Far North. There's no record of him returning to the wall. That means when the black moon occurred, Zhu Ning should still be in the Far North. And the black tide came from the north."
"so?"
"So, I guess there are two Zhu Nings, one in the Far North, and one in District 82."
Xie Jiazu's expression grew serious. "But Zhu Ning had the ability to remotely control things back then. What if it was just a robot? And how do you know it's a corpse and not a keepsake?"
Xie Jiazu had seen a lot of this. If he couldn't find the body, he would just find a piece of clothing and bury it.
Daju shook his head: "If Huo Wenxi just wanted to leave a token of his loyalty, he wouldn't have buried it secretly."
Huo Wenxi was so busy that he would sometimes come to visit late at night, bring a bottle of Coke and place it in front of the grave, and sit alone for a long time before leaving.
"Also," Daju said, pulling out a device from his pocket, "I monitored this area, and there are always unusual noises at night."
"Monitoring?" Xie Jiazu's words were getting more and more outrageous. Did Daju have anxiety? Why would he monitor a cemetery?
Xie Jiazu couldn't help but move closer. Daju was holding a palm-sized computer in her hand. She clicked on an audio program and heard a rustling sound.
Xie Jiazu listened for a while, but he really had no clue. It didn't sound like leaves or wind. It felt very familiar, but he couldn't remember where it was.
It was the middle of the night and the cemetery was silent and eerie. What a great start to a horror story.
Xie Jiazu asked: "Can you understand?"
"I don't understand, that's why I came to dig. I want to know what's in the coffin."
After hearing this, Xie Jiazu turned around and left. Daju's cursing was useless. Two minutes later, Xie Jiazu came back.
This time he took a big shovel. Daju rolled his eyes. The two of them dug much faster together and soon found the coffin lid.
"Really open it?" asked Xie Jiazu.
After all, this is Zhu Ning's tomb. If some destructive power is released, the two of them can only die to apologize to all mankind.
Daju was also a little hesitant, mainly because he was afraid of Huo Wenxi. He even thought about confessing to Huo Wenxi and letting her do the digging.
Boom——
There was a sudden thud in the coffin, and Daju and Xie Jiazu froze all over. The sound was extremely clear in the darkness.
Daju took a deep breath and rubbed the goose bumps on his arms, "Did you hear that?"
Xie Jiazu hummed, and the hair on the back of his head stood up. "Zhu, Zhu Ning is alive?"
Xie Jiazu, who is in charge of the cemetery, knows all kinds of ghost stories. The most common ghost story here is that people are not dead but buried alive, and there is a knock on the door in the middle of the night.
"No, no, I don't know." Daju was frightened at first, but later he became vaguely excited. Zhu Ning was resurrected?
"Open the coffin quickly."
Xie Jiazu and Daju opened the coffin together. The moment they opened it, dust flew up. They subconsciously held their breath, thinking that they would smell a foul stench. It had been buried for five years, and no one knew what was inside.
But the strange thing was that there was no stench of decay from any living creature, more like the smell of dust from an old house that had not been lived in for many years.
A woman lies in a coffin.
The moment Daju saw it, his eyes turned red. It was Zhu Ning's face, it must be Zhu Ning himself.
But her condition was very strange, like a ceramic doll that accidentally fell off the table and was glued back together piece by piece. Zhu Ning was covered with cracks.
Daju took a look but didn't dare to look. When he reacted, he found that his hands were shaking.
Xie Jiazu reached out and felt Zhu Ning's breath. He waited for a while but there was no sign of life. He tried to feel the pulse and heartbeat, but there was no sign of life. From the perspective of human judgment, this was a dead person, or to be more precise, an abandoned robot.
"There is no sign of life." Xie Jiazu shook his head at Daju.
Daju took a deep breath. He was just impulsive to begin with, and now his hope was reduced to zero.
Suddenly, Daju was attracted by something, "What is the connection?"
Xie Jiazu frowned. He turned on the flashlight and illuminated the joints of Zhu Ning's body. She had been shattered before, probably using the ability to split and reassemble. The ability was exhausted when she died, so the shattered parts could not be reassembled. Some force allowed her to reassemble.
Daju: “Plastic?”
A piece of red plastic was exposed under the skin of Zhu Ning's neck. Not only the neck, but all the cracks on the body were filled with plastic. Zhu Ning was wrapped in plastic.
Bai Cheng and Zhu Ning merged?
Daju has read confidential information and knows a lot of things that Xie Jiazu doesn't know. In Huo Wenxi's records, Zhu Ning found the previous savior Bai Cheng. Bai Cheng can control corpses. She controlled the spread of pollution when the first disaster came, and bought time for mankind.
But Huo Wenxi did not record what happened after Zhu Ning met Bai Cheng. What did they do?
It was equivalent to an extended version of the temporary prevention of pollution back then. Bai Cheng and Zhu Ning did it together. Daju saw not one corpse, but two. Bai Cheng was squirming inside Zhu Ning's corpse, lying comfortably in his stomach.
Rustle, rustle—
She heard the sound again and finally understood what it meant. It was Bai Cheng squirming when he was bored, or some kind of entertainment.
But she didn't know that the sound was captured by Daju, attracting Daju to come and dig the grave in the middle of the night. Daju didn't know whether he should laugh or not for a moment.
She and Xie Jiazu stood silently in front of Zhu Ning's body. They had agreed to visit the captain's grave together, but after Bobcat and Zhu Ning left, the Cheetah team couldn't even gather the last few people.
Daju came to pay his respects on his own, bringing a small speaker and playing the captain's favorite music in front of the grave. He left after a while.
Xie Jiazu is running away, and Daju is almost the same. No one is much better than the other in this matter.
Daju seemed to understand why Huo Wenxi buried Zhu Ning secretly, and she gave Zhu Ning space to rest in peace.
Daju: "Why do I feel like Zhu Ning will wake up?"
The plastic is obviously alive, but the pollution concentration is low and the activity of the plastic is also low. Does this mean that Zhu Ning is actually just sleeping?
If the pollution concentration increases, Zhu Ning might really be reborn as a demon.
Xie Jiazu: "I think so too. Zhu Ning is a true god, so it's not surprising that he was resurrected."
"What true god? It's a caracal."
"Yeah, yeah, cats save the world."
Daju laughed out loud: "Cat saves the world!"
Xie Jiazu and Daju smiled and high-fived, celebrating Zhu Ning's victory like a family. Perhaps they felt that Zhu Ning was watching them, but they felt a lot more relaxed than before and even chatted about the past for a while.
Daju opened his secondary brain and found an old audio file. It was an original song that Xu Meng had made when he was in a band.
Daju knew that Zhu Ning wanted to hear this, but was afraid that the sound would be too loud and disturb other residents in the cemetery, so he whispered it softly into Zhu Ning's ear.
The rock music is very loud, and the main creator is roaring. In fact, Daju is a music idiot and can't even tell the difference between bass and guitar. Xu Meng seems to be the guitarist.
Xie Jiazu was also listening quietly beside him. When one song was finished, he started the next one. When the whole album was finished, Xie Jiazu scratched his ears.
Daju also scratched it, "Actually, I can't appreciate it."
Xie Jiazu nodded vigorously, feeling that he had met a kindred spirit, and whispered, "It was a little noisy."
Daju couldn't even figure out the tune; Xu Meng was too much of a rebellious girl before.
A little light appeared on the horizon, and Daju sighed, "We should bury it back."
"Not reporting it?" Xie Jiazu asked. If Zhu Ning was still alive, wouldn't it be better to ask professionals to intervene?
Daju shook his head. "Huo Wenxi knows Zhu Ning best. She must have buried him here out of respect for his wishes, or perhaps there were other more important considerations. Bury him back."
Xie Jiazu was reluctant when he was digging the grave, and now he is even more reluctant than Daju, as if Zhu Ning was not lying there just now, but chatting with them.
"Wait until next time." Daju said, "We come here once a year."
"Good fellow, are you going to dig Zhu Ning out every year?"
"Yeah, lying underground is so boring, why not dig it out, get some fresh air and some sunshine? Once every six months is fine."
"Okay, okay, I can't argue with you. You'd better hope I don't lose my job."
"It's okay, I can bribe your boss."
"Give me some serious advice, sister."
Before closing the coffin lid, Daju suddenly said, "Wait!"
She thought of something and jumped onto the grave to find the backpack under the lemon tree. She placed Xu Meng's album and an old-fashioned player in the coffin so that Zhu Ning could listen to them when she woke up. Xie Jiazu followed suit and picked a lemon and put it in. Xie Jiazu remembered that Zhu Ning loved to drink Coke, so he thought of buying a box next time to wrap Zhu Ning up in a circle.
Daju whispered in Zhu Ning's ear: "Goodbye, Zhu Ning."
This goodbye is meeting again.
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