Chapter 63 He Is, After All, a Fastidious Zombie

"Nakano, y-you must have turned into a zombie by now!"
The boy's childish voice sounded with a hint of composure.

"Do you think I'm a zombie?" Zhang Chengyi asked, feeling a faint sense of amusement as he vaguely sensed the boy gripping a short blade.

"Your eyes and skin have turned ashen-gray, the bite mark on your arm, and now you can't see clearly..."
The boy gripped the short blade tightly. Although he looked and sounded at most eight or nine years old, he was not the kind of useless child who only dragged people down in apocalypse stories.

Satisfied with his performance, Zhang Chengyi asked, "What's your name?"

"..."
The boy remained silent for a moment before answering, "Longyi, I am Longyi." He crouched slightly, looking as though he were ready to charge at any moment.

"A good name."
Zhang Chengyi asked, "Even if I've turned into a zombie, are you still going to follow me?" If the boy was unwilling, he wouldn't force him.
Opportunities were always reserved for those willing to seize them. Lacking this pair of 'eyes', he could simply go find someone else.
He was not so saintly that he would bother saving someone who didn't want to live.

Longyi hesitated for a few seconds, then carefully approached with the knife, answering with his actions.

"Watch yourself, make no noise, and stay close to me." In his blurred field of vision, Zhang Chengyi could make out what seemed to be a window not far from the dead man, so he turned and walked toward the other end of the corridor.

"Hrool~"
As expected, the corpse in the corridor staggered to its feet.

"Hello?" Zhang Chengyi reached down to pick up a slightly bent, blood-stained baseball bat he had tripped over upon entering the room, and asked in a relaxed tone, "Mister Zombie, oh, it seems you can't communicate with humans."
He had tried to see if zombies were capable of communication; if they could communicate, he could translate it, but alas, there were only meaningless growls.

"Thud!"
Mister Zombie's head was instantly blasted into a spray of blood in mid-air.

Zhang Chengyi took a step back, avoiding the dark red blood and twitching, flying tendons, then looked back at the boy and said, "Remember, I am not Nakano."
"I am Jinshan Ranger, Zhang Chengyi."

With that, he walked forward step by step, his shoes squelching in the sticky blood while the headless corpse twitched gently nearby.
Corpses in the corridor climbed up one after the other. Humming a tune, Zhang Chengyi strode forward with the baseball bat held high.

The zombies, showing no inclination to attack one of their own, stood there in blank confusion.

"Thud!"
Amidst a resonant yet hoarse and deep sound, the heads of one zombie after another were smashed open by the curved bat.

Although Zhang Chengyi could not see clearly, his movements were extremely concise with no wasted motion, as if the zombies were voluntarily thrusting their heads forward. The immense strength derived from his zombie transformation allowed him to shatter skulls effortlessly.
It was just like... just like a dance.
A battle hymn filled with violence and gore.

Possessing such formidable martial prowess and being a zombie to boot, killing a child would probably not even require a second blow.
Such a thought crossed Longyi's mind. Amidst a thrill of inexplicable excitement, he clenched his teeth. Even if the other person was a zombie, he truly had no other choice left.
If he couldn't leave with this person, his survival skills wouldn't keep him alive past tomorrow. After a brief hesitation, he gripped his short blade and ran after him.

Half an hour later, on a street littered with corpses.

"So it turns out to be a detached house."
Zhang Chengyi let go, dropping the broken bat onto the ground, squinting his milky-white eyes to barely recognize the shape of the building behind him, and asked casually, "Hey, kid, do you even know what we came here for?"
Judging from the distribution of the numerous zombies he had killed, it seemed they had tried to keep the zombies from entering the residence, only to be completely wiped out.

"Y-You guys came to pick up me and my grandfather." Longyi's expression turned somewhat gloomy, though he kept his tone as calm as possible.

Zhang Chengyi couldn't see and had no idea what the kid nearby was thinking, though he could roughly guess what had happened. He walked back into the courtyard, stepped over a few corpses, groped around to pick up a watering hose, and said, "Turn on the water."
Longyi silently turned on the faucet.

"Whoosh~"
Zhang Chengyi squeezed the hose and blasted himself all over. He was filthy all over; no matter how well he evaded, it was inevitable to pick up dirt and odors when slaughtering a large number of zombies in tight spaces.
As a zombie, his senses were extremely dull—he couldn't see well and couldn't smell, but his mind still felt disgusted.

While washing his body, he glanced at his status panel. This zombie body possessed no stamina yet possessed tremendous strength. The exact mechanics were unclear, and he didn't even know which zombie apocalypse world he was in.
All he knew was that it had a modern background.
Notably, as time passed, the degree of bodily decay was deepening. He hadn't adjusted the other data yet; after all, the raw physical strength of a zombie body was already immense, and while its speed was slightly slower, it was more than enough to deal with other sluggish zombies.

Zhang Chengyi adjusted the decay rate back to zero, casually dropped the hose, and asked, "Where do you think the nearby survivors would go?"
In a zombie apocalypse, crowded places should obviously be avoided temporarily. He needed some time to study whether this body had any special attributes.
This was a modern world with guns and artillery. As a zombie, he still had to be wary of firearms, so he needed to avoid contact with survivors as much as possible in the short term.

"Daiei Shopping Mall, Hitachino South Branch," Longyi answered honestly.

"Hitachino?" Zhang Chengyi noted the place name and pressed further, "What kind of place is this?"
"Chome 2."
"I mean, which city is this?"

Though full of confusion, Longyi quickly answered, "Hitachino City."

*High School of the Dead*, in other words.
Zhang Chengyi understood. If he guessed correctly, this was a world with even less prospects than the world of *Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils*; it lacked supernatural powers, and the 'dead bodies', or rather zombies, were extremely weak, completely useless aside from having brute strength.
Anyway, since he had logged into multiple worlds simultaneously, it was just right for familiarizing himself with multi-threaded operations. In such a rotten and mediocre world, there would be nothing to regret even if this body were destroyed.
To him, the biggest advantage was being able to play to his heart's content without worrying about whether the body would die.
Besides, this manga—or rather anime—had people and factions he wanted to get rid of, such as Hirano, that disgusting fatso from the OVA, and the Yokoku Isshinkai. If possible, he might as well just wipe them out along the way.
Anyway—
"Does your house have any new clothes that fit my size?"
Zhang Chengyi asked in a very relaxed and casual tone. Soaked through as he was, it was better to change into a fresh set of clothes.
After all, he was a particular kind of zombie.