Salted Fish Zombie

Chapter 48.2: Manman (21)

June 26, 2023 by Wyrd

On that day, in a large flat.

Zhu Shuangshuang and Zhi Zhi sat side by side by the window, watching the bustling traffic outside.

Zhi Zhi rested his head on her shoulder, looking at her hair glistening in the colorful halo created by the sunlight.

“Sister,” he called.

“Yeah,” she responded while knitting a scarf.

“Sister, would you like to play chess?”

In a thatched house.

Ji Mingrui was teaching Sui Sui how to recognize numbers and do arithmetic. “If you don’t even know these, you won’t even know how to spend money in the afterlife. This is the most basic, and you must learn it.”

“By the way, do you have foreign friends? Do you want to learn a foreign language?”

“The young who don’t work hard will have regrets when they grow old. When I was your age, I could already speak a foreign language.”

Sui Sui leaned on the desk in pain, not wanting to hear this nonsense.

In a bungalow.

Meng Jiang lay on the bed, covered in tight and dense white bandages.

He asked, “A Yi, is this how you were killed? Did it hurt?”

A Yi said, “Yes, it hurt. They kept tightening it, and it felt like my bones were being crushed. It was suffocating, and I couldn’t breathe.”

In a seaside villa.

The wax figurine boy ran to Shi Tianzhu, who was reading, and asked, “Aren’t we leaving yet?”

Shi Tianzhu replied, “Don’t worry, I’ll be able to take you to other worlds soon. You will see a broader universe, and the past will become insignificant, like a tiny sesame seed.”

In a dark building.

The Gu Witch was breeding insects on a strange monster child.

The boy with a birthmark was half hiding behind the bedroom door, visibly afraid. After a while, he timidly walked over, holding a candle in his hands.

A faint and trembling cluster of candlelight illuminated a modest and perfectly balanced little world for the Gu Witch.

The witch turned to him.

The boy had a black birthmark on his face, covering his right eye socket, but it didn’t diminish the beauty of his eyes.

Just like that boy.

It was strange. At first, he thought he resembled him, but now he felt like he resembled the boy.

Perhaps it was because the boy holding the candle for him had transformed from something dirty to something beautiful in his heart.

Only four days remained of the 30 days.

***

On that day, Ning Su wore shorts and a short-sleeved shirt as he swam in the pool. Suddenly, chunks of ice flew into the pool from outside the door, making loud “bang, bang, bang” sounds as they hit the water.

The clear water overflowed, and the 200-square-meter pool was filled with huge chunks of ice, forming a massive iceberg.

The swirling ice vaporized.

By the time the transfer of ice was over, four hours had passed.

Gui Sheng poked the arm of the boy floating in the icy water, then poked his own arm, widened his eyes, and said in a crisp voice, “So cold!”

That night, Ning Su smelled blood and the scent of fresh death once again.

In a lavishly decorated room with a wealthy atmosphere, numerous bottles and distillation apparatuses were arranged in a disharmonious manner, resembling a chemistry laboratory.

The final part of a female player’s body was engulfed in flames.

A girl wearing glasses held a bottle with one arm while the other arm was raised in front of a jar. Drop by drop, an unidentified liquid fell from her fingers into the container.

She murmured, “Soon, we’ll be able to play together hand in hand forever.”

Only three days remained of the 30 days.

***

During Ning Su’s afternoon nap, numerous poisonous snakes appeared throughout the room.

They dropped from the ceiling, crawled in through the windows, and emerged from the corners of the walls.

They slowly made their way onto the bed.

Snakes of various colors and patterns, bearing venomous fangs, approached Ning Su with their tongues flickering. With just a gentle bite, they could kill a person.

That night, Gui Sheng knocked on Ning Su’s door and said, “Little skeleton friends came to play.”

The Little Skeleton band returned, and they had another party on the grass.

A barbecue party.

One by one, the poisonous snakes were skewered over the fire, accompanied by Ning Su’s secret barbecue sauce developed over eighteen years. The aroma of the meat filled the air.

The topic of conversation that day was when human flesh tastes the best.

On that day, a new member was added to Fairy Tale Town, while one player was missing.

In the opulent room, a somewhat ordinary girl wearing glasses held the hand of another doll-like girl.

They had finally become lifelong companions and could play while holding hands.

Only two days remained out of the 30 days.

***

Just after midnight, while Gui Sheng was still in a dream, four skeletons carried Ning Su out of the room.

In the courtyard of the villa, numerous skeleton people stood there.

The dense crowd of skeletons held torches and surrounded a bonfire. Beside the bonfire stood quietly a little girl in a white dress.

Ning Su was tied upside down on the bonfire by the skeletons, his head facing a pile of fire with a porcelain jar beside it.

Ning Su knew that this was the way the little girl died.

Zombies weren’t afraid of being burned, but a four-year-old innocent child was.

After the fire burned for a long time, an intact Ning Su saw the little girl’s eyes becoming moist again.

It wasn’t a gory blood but clear tears, falling drop by drop.

The scene in sight within the flames became distorted and hazy.

Having exhausted all the ways to kill the boy, she couldn’t think of any more terrifying or powerful methods.

“You don’t have to earn money, you don’t have to work hard. You can sleep as long as you want, and I’ll bring you whatever you want to eat. I can also find many seeds. There must be some that will sprout...”

Ning Su blinked his eyes. He wasn’t able to finish what he’s saying because the girl already ran away.

After the skeletal army dispersed and the little girl disappeared, Ning Su flipped over and jumped down from the fire rack, walking towards the backyard of the villa.

There was a small roasting lamp on the garden field, providing light and warmth to the seeds even on cold nights.

Ning Su lightly placed his finger about 5cm above the garden field, continuously channeling black energy into the soil.

“Please sprout quickly, or she will be sad.”

In the thick darkness, within the circle of light covered by the small roasting lamp, the boy softly spoke to the seeds in the ground.

On that morning, Gui Sheng excitedly knocked on Manman’s door.

Amid his persistent knocking and noise, Manman finally opened the door during daylight.

Gui Sheng bent his eyes and excitedly waved his little arms, saying, “Sprouts, sprouts!”

The small garden field that Ning Su had opened up was adjacent to the backyard corridor, enclosed by a small brown fence in a square shape.

Ning Su and Gui Sheng had assembled the small fence together using small wooden boards, nailed together in a cross pattern.

The small wooden “X’s” formed a peculiar garden field.

Within the brown low fence, tender green or deep red sprouts emerged.

Delicate and small, under the dim sky, their precious and vigorous vitality sprouted.

Manman stared blankly at those sprouts, biting her lip forcefully.

During her lifetime, she rarely went outside because she couldn’t be exposed to sunlight.

There was one rare occasion when she secretly sneaked out and picked up a few seeds by the roadside, discreetly putting them in her pocket and returning to give them to the woman who loved gardening and planting flowers.

That elegant lady never made eye contact. She simply put the seeds into a lace pouch.

The round lace pouch was exceptionally delicate and beautiful, with a long, thin silk ribbon like a cicada’s wing.

She coldly said, “These strange, unidentified seeds will not sprout. Since that’s the case, there’s no need to attempt to nurture them.”

On the night of her fourth birthday, under the gaze of a group of eerie Gu Man Tong and in the presence of a smiling old Taoist with a wrinkled face, she was excitedly placed on a funeral pyre by that man.

She screamed and wailed in agony amidst the intense flames, her head always facing the direction of the first-floor door.

Finally, in the last moments of her life, she saw that woman rush out from the first-floor door.

The little girl’s eyes were brighter than the flames on her charred face.

However, the woman in silk pajamas, crying and struggling, turned and walked into the backyard.

In her hands, she held the lace pouch with its delicate silk ribbon, faintly illuminated by the moonlight, dreamlike and exquisite.

When fireworks erupted in the front yard, she cried as she planted those strange, unidentified seeds in the backyard.

She pretended to be busy, planting the seeds her daughter gave her in the backyard, and thus remained unaware of what was happening in the front yard.

Tears fell drop by drop onto the ground, onto the seeds, but they still didn’t sprout.

Day after day, the Blood Doll stood there, watching.

Year after year, she would occasionally walk over and take a glance.

But now they were sprouting.

Clearly, they were the same seeds.

Ning Su scratched his slightly itchy arm and looked at the girl, who was about to burst into tears. He said, “You didn’t let me finish speaking that day before you ran away. Actually, there is another way to have long-lasting companionship and leave here together.”

The boy whispered something in the girl’s ear, and she suddenly looked up at him.

At that moment, there was a loud noise in the Fairy Tale Town.

Three children looked up and saw the tallest castle in Fairy Tale Town collapse with a thunderous crash.

Even if the children were born successfully, the mother couldn’t hold on.

The statue of a fetus pierced by a spire at the highest point of the castle seemed to be both far and near, sometimes close enough to see its anguished expression clearly, and other times far away, making it unclear whether it was struggling or not.

Ning Su looked at the fetus and thought that he really didn’t like this dungeon world.

If only this world could be permanently closed, without ever being restarted.

The boy took a step forward and disappeared in front of their eyes. Only the sight of his swift figure heading towards the castle remained.

On this day, Zhu Shuangshuang found herself hanging upside down in the storage room once again.

Zhi Zhi stood in front of her and said in a hoarse voice, “If there’s a way for both of us to continue existing in this world, why did sister want me to die? Aren’t we companions?”

Zhu Shuangshuang wearily replied, “Companionship means that if I leave or disappear, you won’t be able to continue existing. You’ll vanish from the world, like the rag doll or the scarecrow.”

Zhi Zhi nodded.

In the light of the lotus lamp on her chin, Zhu Shuangshuang closed her eyes in exhaustion.

It turned out that a dungeon instance was not necessarily terrifying; it could also be nauseating.

This nauseating setting, nauseating experiment, nauseating system.

She clenched her teeth and opened her eyes again amidst the dizziness.

“Zhi Zhi, sister doesn’t like this lotus lamp. Can we try a different method?”

The boy, for some reason, with an extremely hoarse voice, managed to utter a faint sound, “This is the least painful method. The lotus lamp will gradually absorb sister’s soul and preserve it well.”

Zhu Shuangshuang’s head throbbed painfully. “When sister was a child, she drowned. There was a lot of dirty mud in that pond, sister...”

She shook her head, feeling dizzy, and said intermittently, “Sister is in the dirty mud, lift, lift your head... above, above, it’s completely covered by towering lotus leaves, unable to see the sun...”

“The only light that can seep through... is lotus flowers, lotus pollen, so annoying.”

“So annoying, lotus leaves and lotus flowers...”

Zhu Shuangshuang became increasingly dizzy and in pain under the scorching heat of the lotus lantern. The pain caused her body to convulse, as if something was pulling away from her.

The color of the light changed to pink, then green, the colors of lotus flowers and lotus leaves.

She seemed to have returned to the bottomless mud of that pond.

The despair of that time once again gripped her, gradually spreading within her body and mind, corroding her physical and mental state.

In a hazy state, she seemed to hear a voice.

Was it her brother calling her?

No, it was a tender and cool voice.

[Mother’s belly is so warm, I want to tear it apart and accompany her to hell.

When I died, it trembled, but was it a longing for me?]