Ch98 - Complete Wusheng

Translator: transcendentwings

Although Ximo Pavillion was nice, it wasn’t suitable as a long-term shelter.

When Kuang Ye sneezed for the twentieth time, Song Fei finally gave up on radioing Qi Yan—That side had obviously turned off their walkie-talkie for the sake of preserving their safety as they moved on ahead.

“No good?” Kuang Ye leaned into Song Fei’s arms and asked as he trembled.

Song Fei shook his head in disappointment, but soon cheered up again: “If we still don’t show up, Qi Yan will definitely take the initiative to contact us, when that happens we can tell him about going to the basketball court.”

“Then we’ll just keep the walkie-talkie on and wait for Qi Yan?” Kuang Ye was still traumatized by the incident caused by Ma Weisen’s interference earlier.

“Just run away if zombies are lured overbei, after all, we have plenty of experience, and that’s better than missing contact with Qi Yan.” Song Fei had his mind made up, thus he no longer hesitated and carefully stuffed the walkie-talkie that remained on into his bag.

Currently, Kuang Ye fully trusted this person who was the backbone of the class with all of his heart. As long as it was something Song Fei said, then it would definitely be the absolute truth, so if Song Fei wanted to keep the walkie-talkie turned on, no matter how psychologically traumatized he was, he would still be a firm supporter.

However, after Song Fei crammed it in halfway, he paused.

Kuang Ye became puzzled: “What’s wrong?”

Song Fei frowned then suddenly pulled the walkie-talkie out again, carefully scrutinizing the buttons. The more he examined it, the more befuddled he became: “That’s not rightah, I didn’t press the push-to-talk button, how was he able to hear us talking?”

After a walkie-talkie is turned on, it can directly receive the sounds from other walkie-talkies tuned to the same frequency, such as Qi Yan was able to before, also Ma Weisen who plead for help after that, however, if he wanted to transmit sounds to Qi Yan and Ma Weisen, then he must press and hold the button on the side of the walkie-talkie to proceed and the moment he lets go, the walkie-talkie would’ve automatically switched back to the receiving state. This is why, now that he’s finished radioing Qi Yan, his thumb was numb due to the long-term pressure exerted upon it.

According to He Zhiwen’s cram session, the reason why one needed to hold down the button when talking, but not when answering was because the built-in transmitter in the walkie-talkie cannot be kept in a transmitting state all the time, otherwise the inner components will burn out directly. It must only be switched into a transmitting state when talking and said state must be taken out of operation mode when not.

Similarly, the person on the other side with the other walkie-talkie must also operate theirs in the same fashion.

If neither side talks and keeps the walkie-talkie in a receiving state, then in fact, the walkie-talkie would be kept in absolute radio silence on both sides and even the noise of static wouldn’t exist.

Just like presently for example, Ma Weisen wasn’t making a fuss anymore and had obviously released the talk key, so the walkie-talkie he possessed was as quiet as if it was turned off. Similarly, Ma Weisen at this moment cannot tap into his conversation with Kuang Ye because he, himself, was not currently pressing down on the talk button.

Before departing from the swimming pool, the comrades in their squad who were eager to learn, all fiddled with this walkie-talkie one by one and Kuang Ye was also one of them. He also listened with rapt attention when He Zhiwen ran his quick tutoring session, so now that Song Fei brought it up, he picked up on the other’s reasoning and immediately attempted to come up with a reasonable explanation—

“Would it be possible that when you were communicating with Qi Yan, he just happened to capture it?”

“The time interval in between is too long. I was still on top of the pavilion when I contacted Qi Yan and when Ma Weisen reached out to us, we had already run quite a distance away from it.”

“Then maybe when you were running, the walkie-talkie was tumbling around in your backpack and something else happened to hit the talk button?”

“That might be possible. . . But from the moment we dropped off the eaves of the pavilion to run ahead, we didn’t say a word, even if the talk key was held down, Ma Weisen would only hear the sound of running or the friction from the walkie-talkie in the bag. . .”

“If he had been frequently adjusting the frequency, he should be able to tell that someone was pressing on the talk button when he heard the sounds of friction.”

“But he said he heard us talking. . .”

“He was trying to con usbei, just like playinghide-and-seek, the classic line of the one who’s it is always ‘stop hiding, I’ve already seen you’.”

“. . .”

Song Fei’s doubts evaporated as an explanation formulated in his mind.

It was probably like what Kuang Ye said, when he was running, the walkie-talkie just happened to be jostled in his backpack to a position where the talk key was pinned down, thus what Ma Weisen heard was the continuous sound of friction and rustling of movement. Then since his side was in a speak state, Ma Weisen could only receive and not respond back, so it was only until the moment he and Kuang Ye had stopped behind the tree, when he reached out a hand to halt Kuang Ye’s movements, holding the other back to wait for the appearance of the eleventh zombie that the wide-ranged motion caused the walkie-talkie in his bag to shift again, removing the pressure on the talk button, allowing the walkie-talkie to return to a receiving state, making Ma Weisen’s persistent call for help seem like a volcanic eruption.

Thinking of it in this way, it became understandable why the other party kept howling later on, because for them, Ma Weisen was on the same frequency the entire time, but for Ma Weisen, except for the initial sounds of friction, Song Fei’s side remained silent afterwards. It wasn’t until Song Fei returned to Ximo Pavilion again, whipped out the walkie-talkie and pressed on the talk key did Ma Weisen finally hear his first sentence of “human language”. No wonder he was so persistent in seeking attention.

Subjectively, there was no ill-intent, objectively, it produced a bad consequence and the blame for the aggravation culminated from the zombie due to the howling should still be attributed to that guy.

Seventeen minutes later, on the roof of the basketball gymnasium.

The single layer of soaked clothes was also discarded by Kuang Ye. Now he was a mirror image of when they first met, regaining his natural state, with only a pair of underwear to his name from head to toe.

Yet no matter what, being naked was much better than stewing in wet clothes. In addition, they had to run all the way from Ximo Pavilion and clamber onto the roof of the basketball court, so even bare chested, they were covered in a layer of sweat. The bone-chilling bite of cold had long since disappeared to who knows where, instead it could be said that a slight steaming heat had replaced it instead.

Neither of them were frequent visitors at the indoor basketball courts so they became lost instantly when they reached the roof.

Song Fei retrieved the walkie-talkie that he had turned off after entering within a 50-meter radius of the basketball courts from his bag, turned it back on, and pressed the button to talk: “Come in Ma Weisen, come in Ma Weisen.”

At first, he assumed that he’d receive a screeching cry immediately, but in fact, he only heard the other side crackle to life with azilalaafter waiting several seconds, mixed in along with it was a weakly questioning: “. . . Song Fei?”

The person who was named made a face: “Why are you making it sound like you hadn’t talked to me before. . .”

“No, that isn’t it, I. . . You. . . I thought you changed the frequency. . .”

“Why would I change the frequencyah!”

“Didn’t your subordinate say that I lured many zombies over. . .”

“. . .”

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“Did you guys also come from the dorms? Where are you guys now? Did you decide to just stay in a safe place or are you guys aiming to escape to the outside?”

He said he wanted to chat and so that’s exactly what he did, not even a drop of water out of place. Ma Weisen switched seamlessly to the “A Date with Lu Yu” show, as if he had determined that the other side was sitting stably somewhere like he was, had nothing else to do and just raised the walkie-talkie for a tête-à-tête.

Song Fei didn’t know whether to be angry or whether to laugh. After waiting for Ma Weisen to finish his series of sincere questions at long last, he finally clicked to reply: “I think these inquiries can wait until you open the window, then we’ll converse face to face.”

“. . .”

Ma Weisen didn’t respond at all.

Song Fei frowned, assumed he didn’t understand, thus could only make it clear: “I’m already at the basketball stadium, and now I’m standing directly above your head.”

Another five seconds of silence.

Then, the sound of static once again sent out a long-lost howl—

“You really came?!!!”

Song Fei made a face, the flames of “putting a sack over the other’s head and beating him to death” that had just extinguished promptly rekindled—

“Didn’t you beg me to come!!!”

“But I didn’t expect you to actually. . . I just randomly. . . f*ck, wait for me!” Ma Weisen’s voice was both excited and in wonderment, both pleasantly surprised and worried that this was merely a pipe dream, in just a few seconds, all kinds of emotions coursed through like a roller coaster.

Kala—

The sound of the window opening came from the other side. Song Fei met Kuang Ye’s gaze and immediately sprinted over.

As soon as they reached the edge of the eaves, before they were able to look down, they heard a thieving voice: “Hello,Iamhere. . .”

When they lowered their heads, they directly faced half of a head that was sticking out the window.

Although they could only see the forehead and a pair of eyes, the forehead was smooth and full, the eyes were bright and energetic, and when their gazes met, those eyes were obviously trembling with agitation. However, compared to Kuang Ye’s reaction when he first saw a living person again, this meeting was completely sober and calm.

Song Fei dropped down nimbly, followed closely by Kuang Ye.

At the moment of landing, he finally saw Ma Weisen’s full figure—he was as tall as Wang Qingyuan, who was 180 cm tall. His loose, casual down jacket couldn’t conceal his well-proportioned and slender figure. He had a fresh and sunny face, wasn’t as fiercely handsome as Zhao He was, but looked bright and dashing, the same type as Qi Yan. . .

“Don’t stand thereahSong Fei, come in quickly. . .” Ma Weisen’s voice wavered as his hands trembled to receive Kuang Ye inside enthusiastically.

Song Fei: “. . .”

Qi Yan, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t put this humongous fool in the same category as you.

Outside wasn’t a good place to talk, Kuang Ye could only make the best of his mistake, and take the title of “class leader” to climb in through the window.

Ma Weisen didn’t favor one over. When Kuang Ye was brought through the window, he immediately extended a friendly hand to Song Fei.

Song Fei didn’t want to refuse his kindness, so he grabbed the window frame tightly and prepared to swing himself across the space into Ma-tongxue’s arms. Who would’ve guessed that as soon as his hand touched the window frame, the expression on Ma Weisen’s face changed suddenly!

Song Fei only felt a gust of wind from behind him. Before he could react, Ma Weisen, who was about to stretch out his arms to greet him, abruptly seized his shoulder and shoved him to the side!

Song Fei was caught off guard and fell directly to the right!

The “putong” of his fall and the “dong” of the zombie hitting the edge of the windowsill overlapped, the noise was heavy and muffled!

The zombie who pounced on air, didn’t even look at the windowsill that was at chest level nor the two people inside, just whirled around and aimed for Song Fei, lunging for the second time!

Song Fei hadn’t gotten up yet, let alone whipping out the metal chopsticks, he couldn’t even dodge in time!

The zombie opened his bloody maw, the shadow that descended from a more commanding position had completely enveloped Song Fei below!

In a flash, a figure rushed behind the zombie. Song Fei hadn’t even been able to discern how he had dashed over, but what was more crazy was that the classmate who sprinted up behind the zombie didn’t even slow down, and directly used the inertial momentum to shove the zombie flying!

The zombie that was originally going to attack Song Fei was immediately sent in a direction that was completely out of attack range, crashing down on the ground face first with apaji, eating a mouthful of mud.

However Ma Weisen, who rammed into him, wasn’t in a better position and flew in the same direction, nearly stacking on top of the body of the zombie!

The zombie struggled to get up.

Ma Weisen, who was pinning it down, didn’t give it any chance. He pressed down on the back of its head with his left hand, drew a switchblade from his pocket with his right hand, pressed it to make the blade spring out, and with a stab, the zombie was killed!

Without any reluctance to retrieve his murder weapon, Ma Weisen leapt to his feet and ran over to pull Song Fei along to sprint to the window!

Song Fei was a little dazed and couldn’t figure out the situation for a while. He let Ma Weisen manhandle him without resistance and didn’t even take note of how they crossed through the window. When he came to his senses, he was already in the breakroom and the window had already been slammed securely shut by Ma Weisen and Kuang Ye had already began to refute—

“I’m not Song Fei, he is.”

Ma Weisen’s surprised eyes bounced back and forth between the two several times before he finally believed it. He bear-hugged Song Fei with a force that seemed as if they were closer than that of blood-related brothers, his voice choked up as he howled piteously with sincerity: “I thought I would never see a living person ever again in my lifetime and that no one would collect my body when I diedahhhhh—”

Over Ma Weisen’s shoulder was the body of a security guard. Judging from its condition in death and the obvious signs of zombies having gnawed on his face, he must’ve turned into a zombie and was then felled under Ma-tongxue’s blade.

Considering the still warm corpse beyond the window, Song Fei kept having the nagging feeling that Ma-tongxuehad seriously underestimated his own strength.

After calming down for a short time, Ma Weisen launched into a description about his experiences in recent days.

At first, like Song Fei’s situation, a riot occurred during the exam and he had followed the masses to escape to the dormitories. Later, after hiding in the dorms for a while, there wasn’t much food left, and there were always some people eyeing everyone else like a tiger locking onto prey. Thus he gritted his teeth and broke out only to just so happen to run into classmates who ran out of the sports building and simply joined them to camp out on the track and field circuit. Subsequently, when they nearly ate through their stock of food as well, after some deliberation, they decided that they might as well head out of the university grounds. Who knew that they’d encounter zombies along the way and he became separated from the main group as a result, stumbling into the basketball hall accidentally where he spent a long and lonely week in the quaint food station surviving off of what little was left inside after already being swept clean, yet not completely cleaned out. And now, the last of the stock in the station had been finished off by him.

Witnessing Ma Weisen’s deft skills first hand, Kuang Ye and Song Fei had differing thoughts. His initial reaction was that Ma Weisen’s fear had been faked and he even began to doubt whether he and Song Fei’s actions of staging a rescue was merely gilding the lily.

However, when Ma Weisen described his experiences these few days一he had to believe that this person’s fear of the zombies was real and his surprise at their arrival was also sincere, because the eyes can’t lie. When he was narrating his skirmishes with the zombies, it was as if every cell he possessed was trembling. As he illustrated how the hope of contacting “the living” was ignited after he looted the walkie-talkie from a security guard, he couldn’t help but burst into tears.

“Really, I didn’t deceive you guys, when I heard that there was static coming from the walkie-talkie, I thought I saw God!” After spilling out the truth, Ma-tongxuebegan to express his true feelings.

Kuang Ye believed that he was being sincere, but still hoped that he’d understand: “We also didn’t trick you, when we heard the person on the other end of the walkie-talkie howl and wail, we really wanted to send you up to see God.”

Ma Weisen pouted, sticking out his lip, his school hunk appearance looked aggrieved once more.

Song Fei supported his forehead and felt as if the other’s looks were a complete waste: “Can you please bring out that confident aura you had when you stabbed the zombie!”

“I don’t possess any charisma, I was just lucky, had it turned around and bit me, I would have died!”

“. . .”

“Oh right,” Ma Weisen abruptly became serious as if he suddenly remembered something and continued gravely, “Let me tell you, you must never let them sink their teeth into you, if you get bitten, then you will be infected, if you are infected, then there is no hope. I saw several classmates become infected this way firsthand. Also, they’re most vulnerable via a stab through the skull, anywhere else is pointless, only their brains are precious, they will fall as soon as it is impaled. It took me quite a bit of trial and error to figure it out!”

Song Fei blinked, not sure how he should respond. It was the first time that he went from being the tutor to becoming the tutored, so his emotions were somewhat subtle.

“Have you guys memorized what I said? Don’t take it lightly, once you’ve been munched on, it’ll be too late. . . That’s right, precisely like a zombie! I just realized that your naming is too accurate! Speaking of, this mask of yours is quite specialai. . .”

Song Fei: “. . .”

“What about youne, why are your clothes all wet?”

Kuang Ye: “. . .”

“Why do both of you keep falling silent. . .”

Song Fei, Kuang Ye: “Because every time you speak, you always talk about one thing but want an answer to another.”

Ma Weisen: “But if I’m the only one talking, I’ll seem like quite the chatterbox. . .”

Song Fei, Kuang Ye: “Only this self-understanding of yourself is accurate!”

To be entirely fair, Kuang Ye admired Ma Weisen greatly. He was similarly struggling alone in a confined space and very nearly collapsed. Although he was howling and crying like a ghoul, his mentality was sober with no signs of seeking death. According to the other party, the walkie-talkie was a pleasant surprise. Even without it, if he felt that he couldn’t stay here anymore, or if he had run out of food, he would still continue forward.

After he finished his story, Ma Weisen also became curious about what Song Fei and the rest of them had experienced. Then, when he heard that they were a sizable crew of fifteen total, his entire face lit up, as if he had unearthed a treasure.

Yet, after hesitating for a long time, he still hadn’t uttered a single word.

Which resulted in Song Fei feeling frustrated: “Just spit it out, don’t restrain yourself!”

Ma Weisen swallowed a mouthful of saliva and muttered with difficulty: “Your class. . . can I be counted as one as well. . .”

Song Fei raised his eyebrows slightly and didn’t comment.

Ma Weisen wracked his brains and finally dredged up a reason: “See you, you have eight in one class, and seven in the other. I’ll join the class that has seven, coincidentally balancing out the numbers, curing any obsessive compulsiveness. . .”

The more careful Ma Weisen was, the more Song Fei felt as if something was wrong. Finally, he couldn’t help but interrupt: “This wasn’t the attitude you carried earlier on the walkie-talkieah, you were so confident when you called us over.”

A flash of embarrassment swept across his face as he honestly explained: “I didn’t expect you guys to really come over, I just wanted to satiate myself, who knew when you’d adjust the frequency, of course I had to barrel forward as I pleased when I could.”

The players’ lounge wasn’t particularly warm, but there were still several sets of sportswear available when they pried open some lockers. As such, Kuang Ye swiftly shed his soaked clothing and changed into a basketball jersey and shorts with two layers of long-sleeved sportswear on the outside. The warmth the outfit provided definitely wasn’t as good as a down jacket, but at the very least he could power through and survive.

For more than half an hour after that, the three of them hovered around the active walkie-talkie, waiting for Qi Yan.

However the walkie-talkie was so silent that it made people feel desperation claw at them.

Instead of waiting around foolishly, it was better to find something to do in order to kill time, thus Ma Weisen continued to interrogate Song Fei on the details of their escape: “You mentioned that you all. . . no, that we’ll drive our way out?”

Song Fei: “That’s right and head directly to the city, there are airdrops there.”

Ma Weisen: “Airdrops?”

Kuang Ye: “En, the country’s relief supplies, planes are sent to drop packages every day.”

Ma Weisen: “Then why are they able to airdrop supplies, yet unable to send troops?”

“Because they must first concentrate the forces to stabilizeJing-Jin-Tangand the East. . .” Song Fei suddenly trailed off halfway through when he realized that he only informed the other about the Wusheng Classes’ escape story and hadn’t given the other party any general background information they gathered.

As the reason for that was, Ma Weisen’s emotions were too stable, excluding the overly enthusiastic glomping session in the beginning, he dropped into a state of fear and trembled while he looked forward to a better future which made you want to comfort him one moment, but then thinking that it was completely superfluous in the next.

However, no matter how strong and optimistic one was, motivation was still necessary to maintain it.

Song Fei fished out his cell phone, prepared to play the recording he had played for Kuang Ye again for their new companion.

—When he made his way from Ximo Pavilion to the indoor basketball courts, Song Fei had nearly offered his phone as tribute as well. In the end, Kuang Ye couldn’t stand it any more and exclaimed that the cost was too high if they kept doing it that way, so he had tied a rope to the cell. On the surface, it seemed as if the cell phone was tossed onto the ground, but after the zombies crowded around and they had made their getaway, with one tug of the rope, the phone was returned to its owner. And this time, the direction they had thrown it was opposite of where they had done so previously, thus when they ran away, Kuang Ye retrieved his own along the way, completing this low-cost, high-return exchange.

Zilala—

“Song Fei, Song Fei?”

Just as he was fiddling with his cell phone in preparation to play the recording, the walkie-talkie abruptly came to life without warning.

Song Fei immediately tossed his phone aside and snatched up the walkie-talkie, pressing down on the button to answer: “Qi Yan!”

Qi Yan: “Where are you now?”

Song Fei: “The basketball stadium. And you all?”

Qi Yan: “How come you guys backtracked?”

Song Fei: “It’s a long story, tell Huang Mo that her class will gain another companion. In the future, there will be an even eight in each class, I’m thinking that we will beblessed!”

Huang Mo: “I’m listeningne, Director Song of the admissions office.”

Song Fei: “. . .”

Jokes aside, Qi Yan’s voice sank: “We are huddled on the awning of the Academic Activity Center, but we can’t get through the window.”

With Qi Yan’s alteration in tone, Song Fei’s heart skipped a beat. After hearing the second half of that sentence, as expected: “The conference room is full of zombies?”

“It’s worse than zombiesne,” Qiao Siqi interrupted angrily, “It’s full of professors and students. They won’t let us in. Even if we wanted to f*cking fight them, we aren’t able to!”

Song Fei was stunned, rendered speechless for a while.

“We wanted to check in to see where you guys were, if you were almost here, we would’ve waited for you and then headed straight for the Houde building after meeting up. We didn’t expect you guys to have doubled-back.” Qi Yan continued, his emotions stable. After going through so much, it was difficult for these things to cause any further damage.

Song Fei shook his head and also stopped being hung up on it.

They were in possession of their own beliefs and bottom lines. They were unable to control others and similarly won’t be shaken by them.

“How about this, you continue onwards to the Houde building and we’ll still reunite with you guys there, just changing the destination from the Academic Activity Center to the Houde building.”

“No way.” Qi Yan rejected it without pause, “The Activity Center is too far from the Houde building. We won’t succeed in one run and must have multiple temporary stops in between, which may be other academic lecture structures or other locations which will make it difficult for us to meet up at that time. Instead of this, why don’t you stay where you are while we also head for the basketball courts. There is only a single barrier in the form of a lake between our side and your side. Then after everyone has gathered together again, we’ll set off as one.”

Song Fei: “But in this way, won’t you also be losing progress?”

Qiao Siqi: “It’s better than taking theroute to the underworldah. You’re unaware, but without you, Qi Yan is restless, which makes the rest of us also feel insecure. Dating within the class will kill othersah—”

Song Fei was happy, feeling sweet in his heart, but still wanted to call Qi Yan out and tease the other with a sentence or two verbally.

However, before he could speak, the walkie-talkie was abruptly snatched away by Ma Weisen, who was so overcome with shock that his brows were furrowed in undisguised disgust—

“John?!”

The other side of the walkie-talkie was silent for two seconds, then Qiao Siqi’s voice, similarly dense with distaste—

“Wilson?!”

Author’s Chapter Summary: Song-Kuang entangled in peril to rescue a classmate, the two classes are split eight-eight with the addition of a newcomer to satiate

The translator has something to say: MWS is so stupidly competent that his entire person is perfectly summed up by SF, it’s a waste of resources for his appearance and skill, I can’t tell if his humbleness and lack of confidence in the face of his competancy is endearing or aggravating

P.S. I nearly wasn’t going to post this chapter today because as I finished editing and was hitting update, the stupid website logged me out for some reason and erased all my progress, but I already stayed up late to do it so I guess my stubbornness outweighed my irritation

P.P.S. I WAS going to post this last week but accidentally forgot to change access. . . whoops, sorry everyone, but good news is that everyone gets a double chappie this week