Chapter 93: This Must Be a Grand Conspiracy

“This planet is truly astonishing,” Douzhi said inside Du Yun’s mind. “It was the first place zombies appeared, and the first to fall. Yet the records say nothing at all about what happened after the collapse. What on earth happened here?”

“Yes. First the zombies appeared out of nowhere, and then that strange starship that seems able to draw people in showed up,” Du Yun thought with her head bowed, carefully sorting through everything that had happened. Then she suddenly froze and looked up at once.

“Could we turn the monitor back on and see what’s really happening outside?” Du Yun said, looking straight at the leader.

“Outside?” The leader’s brow lifted slightly, clearly surprised by why she would ask that.

“No, no, absolutely not!” Before the leader could answer, Hongmei shrieked and rushed forward, glaring fiercely at Du Yun. “Are you trying to get us killed? That blue light outside is terrifying. If we look at it again, what if we lose our lives? No way!”

“If it weren’t for me, you’d already be dead!” Du Yun spoke to the leader in a tone of negotiation, but toward Hongmei, whom she had never liked to begin with, she had no patience at all when faced with such an extreme reaction.

“Whether it works or not isn’t for you to decide. Either you have the ability to fight alongside us, or you shut your mouth and honestly play the burden you are. If you don’t have the skills, but still want to point fingers, you’d better give up that idea now!” Du Yun was in a terrible mood. The possibilities forming in her mind made her increasingly restless, and her words grew far sharper.

“You—” Hongmei had not expected the usually mild Du Yun to suddenly become so cutting. She was stunned into silence and could not muster a rebuttal.

If it had not been for Du Yun, she might still be standing there in a daze. She could not deny that. And along the way, Du Yun really had been fighting like a man, even stronger than some men.

“But I’m a woman. Shouldn’t women be protected by men?” Hongmei muttered weakly, trying to argue, but even she could barely stand the words coming out of her own mouth.

“If you’re afraid to die, then all of you go back inside. We’re trapped here either way. I’m going to look at what’s happening outside.” Du Yun’s tone had never been so forceful; in it there was even a faint air of command from someone in authority. She turned abruptly toward the monitor and stood there with her back straight.

Footsteps sounded one after another. After a long while, the entrance was utterly silent, as though in all heaven and earth, aside from Du Yun, there were no other people at all.

Du Yun drew a deep breath, then slowly turned back, only to collide with the leader’s dark, steady eyes.

“Come. I’ll go with you.” The leader reached out a hand to her, a faint smile on his face.

“We’ll go with you too!” said Dazhuang, Thin Monkey, Green Fruit, and Peach. Even Fat Auntie was there, someone Du Yun had not expected at all.

This was not a simple matter of glancing at a monitor. If that eerie blue light outside was dangerous, then turning on the monitor might well cost them their lives.

“Thank you all!” Du Yun felt tears threatening to rise. With a smile on her face and a resolute heart, she switched on the monitor. The next instant, a scene no one would ever forget appeared before everyone’s eyes.

Inside the monitor, the blue sky had long since been occupied by a massive disc-shaped starship. In its center, that ghostly blue light still flickered. Only now, countless black silhouettes had appeared within it—humanoid shadows rising slowly upward, as though being drawn up by the starship.

“It’s those zombies!” Fat Auntie could not help crying out. There were already not many living people left in this world. Anyone appearing nearby in such numbers now had to be zombies.

Yet at this moment, those zombies, who had once worn ferocious expressions and struggled desperately, seemed to have lost all power. They simply rose slowly within the blue light, their bodies stiff, their faces strangely calm.

“That starship is absorbing the zombies...” Du Yun murmured under her breath, feeling as though her heart had been tightly bound by something, so tightly that she could hardly breathe.

“What do they want zombies for? Are they trying to save this planet?” Peach could not help asking. Though small, she still held a child’s hope for the good in this world.

“I don’t know.” Du Yun fell silent. She could only answer in that dry, helpless way, because deep down she faintly sensed that the relationship between that blue-light starship and the zombies was deeply suspicious.

Watching the zombies stand rigid in the blue glow, Du Yun faintly felt that the blue light was something that restrained them. A terrifying thought even rose in her mind: could it be that the owner of that blue-light starship had spread the virus that turned the living into zombies, and then sent this blue-light starship to harvest them?

The thought made Du Yun shudder all over. She could not help rubbing her gooseflesh and dared not think any further. How could there be such people, disregarding the lives of an entire planet’s population and committing such cruel acts?

But once that notion had surfaced in Du Yun’s mind, the thought of believing in that blue-light starship could no longer rise again. Looking at that starship, which was like the gaping maw of a demon beast, Du Yun drew a deep breath, yet no words would come.

The entire shelter sank into a dreadful silence.

“Calling Leader, this is Haimo escape pod!” Just as everyone was silent, a low, hoarse female voice suddenly came through the communicator. It was someone from the Haimo starship. They had finally received a response.

“Lia, how are you?” Dazhuang hurriedly asked. Since the Haimo had been shot down until now, too many things had happened. In his mind there still lingered the image of those escape pods engulfed in flames, and there had been no room to wonder how they were doing.

“We got out. We’re not seriously hurt.” Lia replied quickly, then paused. When she spoke again, her words sent everyone’s hearts plunging straight to the bottom of a freezing abyss. “A large number of zombies and a few living people appeared near the escape pods. Attracted by the starship that attacked us, they have already boarded it. I’m afraid their prospects are grim.”

Lia was closer to that starship than Du Yun and the others, and her view was clearer. She had noticed details Du Yun’s group had not. When the zombies were transported to the top of the starship, they were not gathered into one place. Instead, under intense heat and pressure, they were instantly crushed into crystals remarkably similar to energy crystals, losing all life and vitality.

“There must be a huge conspiracy behind this,” Du Yun said after hearing Lia’s account. She felt as though all the blood in her body had frozen solid, her teeth grinding audibly. It was only after quite some time that she managed to speak.