Zombie Life Begins in Hongxi Village

When Lin Yi resurfaced, he was completely bewildered.

"Where the hell have I gotten to?"

This is no longer his swimming pool; the water is bright red, like blood!

Good heavens, he just went swimming at home.

……

Lin Yi is 24 years old and has just been laid off from her company.

It's pretty ridiculous, really. He went to a proper second-tier university, and after graduation, he worked in the provincial capital for two years, doing new media operations.

To put it bluntly, he edits short videos and writes articles for the company's WeChat official account. He earns 5,000 yuan a month, but rent takes up 1,800 yuan, and food, transportation, and other expenses take up another 2,000 yuan. The money he can save each month isn't even enough for his father to buy two bags of fertilizer.

Last month, the company boss called everyone into the conference room and said with a somber expression that the current economic climate was not good, the company was having operational difficulties, and that it was necessary to optimize the personnel structure.

Lin Yi sat below listening, thinking to herself, "You just bought a Porsche last month, and now you're telling me you're having business difficulties?"

And so, he received compensation equal to n+1 months' salary, and carried the cardboard box back to his rented room.

In the following month, he submitted at least fifty resumes to various job recruitment platforms, but they either disappeared without a trace or he never heard back after the interview.

One company's HR even told him directly, "We can't offer you that salary expectation. Nowadays, fresh graduates can do the same job for 3,500 yuan."

Lin Yi almost dropped his phone—I've worked for two years, and in the end, I'm not even as good as a recent graduate?

After a month of turmoil, he simply gave up, returned the house in the provincial capital, and packed his bedding to return to his hometown.

His home is in a place called Qingshi Town in the southwest. Although it's called a town, it's actually just a large village.

His family contracted dozens of acres of orchards, growing navel oranges and sugar oranges. Their annual income was just enough for the family to eat and drink. They were not rich, but they were not poor either.

His father, Lin Jianguo, was a man who couldn't sit still. When he was young, he worked in transportation, decoration, and building materials. He did all sorts of things, but he couldn't do anything for long.

In the past two years, I've become obsessed with watching Douyin (TikTok), especially videos about "rural self-built house renovations." I can watch them all day long, even until midnight.

Watching wasn't enough; he wanted to try it out!

For those two months, Lin Yi's yard was never quiet.

Lin Jianguo worked as a laborer himself and hired two bricklayers to demolish and rebuild the courtyard wall, extend the kitchen by three meters, add a terrace to the second floor, and even put up a Roman column gate at the entrance of the courtyard. From a distance, it looked out of place, like the entrance of a small town KTV.

The most outrageous thing is that he also dug a swimming pool.

Next to the vegetable garden, he dug a pit measuring four meters by six meters, laid a waterproof cloth at the bottom, built bricks around it, and covered it with the cheapest blue ceramic tiles he had bought from a building materials store in town.

Although the tiles were laid crookedly, and some of them were even peeling off, from a distance it did indeed look like a swimming pool.

It's only June, and it's already so hot that people wish they could stuff themselves into a refrigerator.

Lin Yi stayed at home for two days, but the heat became unbearable, so she filled the swimming pool with water, stripped down to only her shorts, and plunged in.

The water was well water, ice-cold, and soaking in it made every pore on my body cheer.

Lin Yi swam two laps, then lay on her back on the water, looking at the blue sky and white clouds above her head. She thought that lying flat like this seemed pretty good. At least she didn't have to see the boss's face, squeeze onto the subway during rush hour, or be bombarded with phone calls in the middle of the night.

Then he dove into the water again, and then he saw something.

In a corner at the bottom of the pool, there was a blue, shimmering object, about the size of a fingernail, that glittered faintly in the sunlight.

Lin Yi was stunned for a moment.

He remembered clearly that he had specifically checked the bottom of the pool before filling it with water, and there was nothing there at the time. Where did this thing come from?

A thought popped into his mind—a meteorite.

He had seen it on short videos, saying that some meteorites were blue when they fell and could sell for hundreds of thousands or even millions of yuan.

Although reason told him that the probability of a meteorite falling into his swimming pool was probably lower than winning the lottery, what if it did? People do win the lottery, don't they?

Lin Yi's heart suddenly raced. He held his breath and swam towards the light, using both his hands and feet.

As he got closer, he could see what the thing looked like.

That's not a meteorite.

It's a blue glass bead, teardrop-shaped, about the size of a little finger, completely transparent, with something seemingly flowing slowly inside. It looks like some kind of cheap handicraft.

"That damn fat kid from next door's Wang Laoshi's family threw it there," Lin Yi cursed inwardly.

The youngest son of Mr. Wang next door is five years old this year. He's at that age where he's always throwing things around. Last time, he threw firecrackers into Mr. Wang's yard, which almost scared away his mother's chickens.

That glass bead was probably thrown in over the wall by that kid.

Despite her disappointment, Lin Yi still reached out and scooped up the glass bead, preparing to float to the surface for air.

The moment he held the bead, he felt a slight coolness in his palm, as if he were holding an ice cube that had just been taken out of the refrigerator, but the feeling was fleeting and he didn't pay any attention to it.

He pushed off the bottom of the pool with both feet and floated upwards.

However, the moment he broke through the water, he saw the scene from the beginning.

He was soaking in a pool of blood-red water.

The water was red, almost black, as if countless bags of pig's blood had been poured in; it was so thick it was horrifying.

A metallic smell emanated from the water, making his stomach churn.

At that moment, several gunshots rang out in the distance, along with faint shouts, but the sounds were too distant to be clearly heard.

Lin Yi was completely stunned.

"Is this still in China?"

He looked down at himself—he was only wearing a pair of wet shorts, and the blue glass beads in his hand had disappeared sometime during the night.

Good heavens, he really just went swimming at home, and now he's abroad?

Before he could even process what was happening, a series of hurried footsteps and shouts suddenly came from the reeds on the bank.

A man in a khaki military uniform stumbled out of the woods, carrying a child in his arms.

The man was clutching a samurai sword, his uniform was stained with blood, his hat was nowhere to be seen, his hair was disheveled, and his face was full of ferocity.

The child in his arms was about five or six years old, his face was pale, and he was motionless. It was unclear whether he was dead or alive.

Another person came chasing after them, wearing a gray-blue coarse cloth military uniform, carrying a large machete, and shouting something.

Lin Yi's first reaction was—is this a movie shoot?

He instinctively shrank into the water, sinking until only half of his head and eyes were visible, no longer caring whether the water was red or fishy.

His mind raced: Where's the camera? Where's the director? Where's the production assistant? What kind of movie is this? An anti-Japanese war drama?

I'm not wearing any clothes!

All I'm wearing are shorts! If this gets caught on camera, I'll be utterly humiliated.

He hid in the shadow of a clump of water plants by the pond, barely daring to breathe, thinking that he would wait until this scene was finished before asking the crew where this place was and if he could borrow a phone to make a call.

However, when the officer carrying the child ran to the vicinity of the pool, only about ten meters away from him, Lin Yi saw the face clearly.

His pupils suddenly contracted.

He recognized that face.

It wasn't because he had met the person in person, but because the face belonged to a character he had recently come across in a short video.

Kazuo Yamamoto.

No, to be precise, it's the face of the actor who played Yamamoto Kazuo.

But that's not entirely true—the person in front of you has real bloodstains and dirt on their face, their expression is twisted and crazed, and no actor could pull off that murderous and ferocious look in their eyes.

This is something only someone who has actually killed people would have, and perhaps quite a few at that.

Lin Yi then looked at the child he was holding in his arms.

The child was wearing a traditional Chinese jacket from the Republican era, with a dark red bloodstain on the collar, and his face was as pale as a sheet of paper.

Kuang Fusheng.

Lin Yi felt as if her heart had been suddenly squeezed.

The pursuer behind them also rushed up. He was a young man in a gray-blue military uniform, with thick eyebrows, big eyes, dark skin, and bulging veins on his hand holding the knife. His face was filled with a murderous rage.

Kuang Guohua.

Lin Yi's heart, which had been hanging in suspense, finally died.