Yan Xing struggled to eat normal food but now that he wasn’t starving it was a lot easier to down the food. He knew he’d have to force himself to eat normal human food quite often now so he tried to work on not showing his distaste for it.

“You don’t have to force yourself to eat, your nerves might make you feel sick afterward,” Jiayi said and patted Yan Xing’s back, the two of them were eating breakfast with He Guang and Hu Shi now that they had returned from the outside.

Jiayi was helping him out a bit, Yan Xing’s poor appetite was explained by his words and people seemed to not look at him as suspiciously anymore.

Yan Xing murmured, “okay…”

He took a few more bites but stopped soon afterward. When Jiayi got up, he got up and where Jiayi went, he followed. He could feel Wu Yanyu staring at him but even if he was embarrassed he didn’t want to try and get away from Jiayi, Jiayi could probably kill him if he went astray so he trusted him.

Jiayi climbed back up to his lookout area and Yan Xing just stared up at him with an expression that slowly became more and more distressed. 

Jiayi chuckled a little at his expression and reached down his hand and pulled Yan Xing up to sit with him. There wasn’t much space but Yan Xing fit well across from Jiayi. He could’ve also fit if he sat cuddled up to Jiayi but Yan Xing was too shy (and too concerned about his appetite) for something like that.

The rest of the day was a little less stressful than the previous day but tensions were still high because of the new inhabitant of the warehouse and the unknown situation outside.

“What are we even going to do in the future?” Ha Yuexin asked as she and most of the people in the warehouse sat to eat dinner. 

“Even if by chance the zombies never come here, we’ll run out of food eventually….”

“Well we’ve got enough rice to last us 3 years...but everything else will start running low in half a year…” Jin Fang murmured, he and Jiayi were in charge of stocking the warehouse so he could pretty much estimate how long their supplies would last.

“Eating just rice will definitely cause health issues…We’ll get scurvy in no time.” Li Ying murmured. Right now their meal was pretty standard and balanced but if they started running low on supplies they would surely suffer from vitamin deficiecies.

“We will eventually leave this warehouse, probably even before we run out of food.” Jiayi explained, “But for now we have to see how things play out. We obviously can’t go out unprepared.” 

“We don’t even know if they’re standard sci-fi zombies or not. We need to study them.” Huang Xuhuan suggested.

“How do we study something that actively wants to kill us?” Wu Yanyu asked with an annoyed look, Li Ying quickly nodded in agreeance with her.

“Gang up on it,” Jiayi said nonchalantly and glanced up at Yan Xing who was nibbling on a granola bar up near the window. Jiayi motioned for him to come down but Yan Xing shook his head a little and turned away.

“Where are we going to find one to gang up on?”  Ha Yuexin asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Even this far from society, we are not perfectly safe here or anything. There are bound to be zombies that stumble over here. We just have to wait.”

—

Their wait didn’t take too long. Mid-afternoon the next day, Jiayi felt that a zombie was getting closer and closer. He didn’t immediately draw attention to it, he just checked on whether they could be seen through the security cameras outside and decided to wait until it could be seen. He watched Yan Xing shiver a little and wake up from his small nap.

“…” He wanted to call out to Jiayi but he didn’t know what to say.

“Ge!” 

Jiayi turned to He Guang who was incredibly distraught and half-naked as he ran up to just below where Jiayi was.

“He Guang put a shirt on!”

“Oh my…a tattoo….”

‘Oh, it’s been 3 days…I guess it’s starting…’ Jiayi murmured and jumped down.

“T-There's a red mark on my back!” He Guang exclaimed and quickly turned around for Jiayi to see.

A red tattoo-like mark was on He Guang’s back. It was like a mark out of a video game.

“Earth?” Yi Boqin murmured as he looked at the mark, he was an avid gamer so he made some sense of the symbol.

“It doesn’t seem like something a zombie did…” Jiayi murmured, feigning confusion.

“Check your bodies, maybe He Guang isn’t the only one with one of these marks?” Jiayi announced.

He took off his shirt, pretending he was looking for something even though he already knew exactly where it was.

“Ah, Ge! There’s a mark on your side!” He Guang exclaimed. The mark was along the side of Jiayi’s ribs.

Jiayi was a bit confused by the marking. The first time around it was a violet lightning bolt mixed with fire to symbolize his affinity for both elements in his special ability but now it was three stars, one large one in the center and a small one above and below.

“He Guang’s was a bit more obvious but I don’t know what yours means….”

Jiayi stared at it silently for a while, he had gotten other markings as his power grew the first time around but now he only had this marking despite having all of his previous powers. The one marking he didn’t recognize.

“Maybe it’s just something that you guys have because you went outside?” Ha Yuexin’s mother murmured, she didn’t find any markings on herself or her husband and daughter and she was glad she didn’t.

“N-No! I have one too!” Wu Yanyu exclaimed and showed a marking that wrapped around her upper arm, it was like a vine with a single flower on it. 

“A Nightshade?” Ha Yuexin murmured as she saw the flower.

Jiayi was still silent but his eyes narrowed a little as he saw the marking. The marking that led many men to their deaths for Wu YanYu’s sake.

“A-Xing? Do you have a mark on you?” Jiayi asked and climbed up to Yan Xing. He knew Yan Xing definitely had a mark but he never got to see it because of all the layers he wore. 

Most zombies were weak to hot temperatures but high-ranking ones were actually the opposite, they were constantly cold. That helped them stay hidden among humans since they were different from all the other zombies. Yan Xing was always wearing multiple layers when Jiayi saw him and in his final moments when he wasn’t wearing as many layers (because they had been ripped while they fought), he was trembling from the cold. The mark disappeared when a person died so he never had any chance to see it after Yan Xing died either.

Yan Xing didn’t seem like he had gotten to that level yet, he had stayed huddled in a hoodie for the past few days but he wasn’t wearing many layers under that.

“I don’t know.” Yan Xing murmured, examining his arms.

Jiayi watched him and then noticed something when Yan Xing shifted a little.

“It’s…here,” Jiayi murmured and pulled down Yan Xing’s collar.

The marking shocked Jiayi completely. The lightning and fire marking that he had on his side the first time around was now tiny and on Yan Xing’s collarbone.

They had switched abilities? Or at least marks? 

“Oh..” Yan Xing murmured, he seemed to have noticed the slight change in Jiayi’s expression.

“Um…Let’s just all sleep separately from everyone else, it’d be bad if it's something bad that’s spreading through us.” Wu Yanyu suggested and walked away from Ha Yuexin and over to below where Jiayi and Yan Xing were.

“Gege, lift me up please!”

Jiayi turned to look at her for a second as he decided what to do. Yan Xing grabbed his arm and shook his head a little, he didn’t want to be close to any humans who weren’t Jiayi. He was too worried about his zombie instincts kicking in.

“It’ll be fine,” Jiayi murmured and reached down to help Wu Yanyu.

Wu Yanyu noticed that Yan Xing had tried to get Jiayi to not help her and was irked by this but she said nothing.

“He Guang, come up here too,” Jiayi called out and reached his hand down to help He Guang up. Wu Yanyu was upset by this and Yan Xing was terrified by this but neither of them spoke, Yan Xing just retreated farther into the corner.

He Guang brought some pillows and blankets with him since only Jiayi and Yan Xing had their stuff up there. Wu Yanyu had forgotten to get them.

Jiayi settled himself so he was separating Yan Xing from the other two by a bit. Wu Yanyu was more inclined to sit close to him so he avoided sitting too close to Yan Xing so as to not trouble him with temptation.

Yan Xing stayed stuck to his corner and covered himself up in a blanket. He didn’t sleep at all and Jiayi could sense it, he felt Yan Xing’s nervousness from not too far away and he too couldn’t sleep.

—

When morning came everyone was anxious to see if anyone else got marks and sure enough Yi Boqin ended up with a mask as well. Everyone was burdened by this. Those without marks, especially the older couple, didn’t seem very fond of receiving marks and Yan Xing was very upset that more people were now staying very close to him.

By the next day, no other people started to get marks and everyone saw that it wasn’t a symbol of zombification or anything like that so they decided to get down from the lookout place and go about life like normal.

Well…sort of normal.

“The Zombie is going to be reaching us soon,” Jiayi said and watched everyone shrivel up in fear.

“You all going to have to learn to kill one of them eventually so get used to it, especially you guys!” Jiayi said and pointed at the guys in the group, “You’ve all been in the military before, stop being scaredy cats.”

The guys all flinched, this was quite different from the military…But Jiayi’s point still stood.

“...How are we gonna go about this…?” Jin Fang asked and opened up the weapons area of the warehouse.

“Well, there’s only one of them so we can’t exactly have much of an experiment. But let's test a few theories.” Jiayi said and looked through the weapons.

“Theories?” Wu Yanyu asked with a confused expression.

“According to science fiction, their head is their weak point, so that’s the first thing we should check,” Jiayi explained.

“We should see if they can sniff out blood too…” Yi Boqin suggested, “But that's a bit dangerous…”

“...What if it suddenly starts running at us..?” Hu Shi murmured.

“I think we should just assume they can…” He Guang murmured.

Wu Yanyu looked up at Yan Xing who was still up in the lookout area and called out to him.

“Aren’t you going to come down here? All of the other guys are learning to kill Zombies so you should t–” 

“Leave him alone Wu Yanyu.” Jiayi suddenly called out to her and had a disapproving look on his face.

Wu Yanyu grumbled about it and Yan Xing only lifted his head a little to show Jiayi a grateful expression.

‘I have to feed him soon…’ Jiayi thought and began preparing everyone.