[Hunter] How to kill a zombie

It can be said that I have friends in various places. "

"..."

"If I remember correctly, one of the agreements between the tenth old man and Lucas was to hand you over to them." Pariston continued, "Well - after all, anyone might be interested in a special case like yours, right? Of course, His Royal Highness the Fourth Prince of Kajin Kingdom also heard about this matter, and sent someone to find Lucas in private."

"The following are of course just my guesses. First of all, although Lucas found you, he did not report to the old man, but has been going around with them. At the same time, the envoys of Kajin Kingdom also Here, of course, the ostensible reason is to fund a scientific investigation of a big project that will be announced next year. The other party also promised that it will not cause harm to you, and agrees that Lucas will wait by the side. Maybe your brother almost It's about to agree, maybe he didn't intend to make peace with them from the beginning, but anyway, the meeting went wrong, so it turned into what you saw."

"So..." In the end it was her question.

If it weren't for her, Lucas would not have encountered such a thing.

"Let me guess, you are thinking about how to sneak into King Kajin's palace now."

"..."

"Hahaha, I guessed it?" Pariston tilted his head.He laughed, but quickly stopped smiling, "Although it's okay to think about it, but have you really figured it out? If someone finds out that you did something like that, Lucas will face The danger is not just as simple as a fourth prince. Maybe it will turn into an international war, although it seems to be quite interesting."

"Then what should I do?" Zooey suddenly felt very tired.

"What should I do... What does His Royal Highness the Fourth Prince want, just give him what he wants?" The person opposite showed an evil smile.

"what……"

In other words, asking her to sacrifice herself?

Zooey thought about this idea carefully, and found that it seemed to be no different from her original idea.

"However, don't attack him, just follow his will."

"what?"

"Anyway, little Zoe, you won't die, and you don't feel anything, just being skinned. What's the problem?"

No, that's not what it said.

Who would be willing to watch themselves being skinned by others?

She wondered what Pariston was planning.

"As for Lucas, after the fourth prince gets what he wants, he will probably lose interest in him, right? Maybe he will lose interest in you soon." He continued, "If you If I think it is feasible, I have a channel here to introduce you to him."

Should she tell him that they actually "know each other"?forget it.

"Unfortunately, I still have a lot of things that cannot be separated from me." Pariston said with a full face of regret, "Otherwise, I really want to take you there in person. Hey, there is no way, no way..."

Zoe didn't know for a while who was more perverted, whether it was Celidonish, who liked to skin people alive, or Pariston, who gave her to others to be skinned alive with a face of indifference, or herself——because She didn't even resist the idea that much.

In the past, she might not even think about such a thing.

The world is really crazy.

thought Zoe.

burial

It was still some time before the so-called "meeting" arranged by Pariston.

During this period of time, Zooey found that she had nothing to do, and just like before, she couldn't read books or movies.It was as if the things that once constituted the fulcrum of her life turned gray all of a sudden, as if the whole world turned gray in an instant.

She thought about Lucas' nursing home.She wanted to see him, but she didn't really want to get close to that place.Thinking of that weird door made her feel uncomfortable.

She started walking around to pass the time.The meeting place was Youkexin, so Zoe flew back to Youkexin from Swadani, where the association was located, the city where she had lived for many years.

The former store has been contracted by others, and the bookstore has now become a chain coffee shop.Zooey just stood at the door and took a look before leaving. Who called her a zombie?Zombies don't drink coffee.If you ask the clerk if they offer the human meat set meal, you will probably hear the siren of the police car coming this way soon.

She roamed the streets, through dirty alleys, glamorous avenues, bustling crowds, deserted construction sites.There is no difference between day and night.She doesn't need to sleep, and she doesn't feel tired on the street, she just wanders the streets alone, looking at all kinds of pedestrians walking on the road.Hurried, sad, expectant—she walked among them, feeling like a ghost of the city.

The streets at night are different from those during the day, and the city really "lives" after night falls.During the day, people huddle in their cubicles like walking dead and work hard, and after work, they play wildly like revenge for the boring day.Or this city is such a place where day and night do not distinguish. Maybe it is not as exaggerated as the famous "City of Pleasure", but it is enough to be called a "city that never sleeps".

Ellen Poe, who loves to wander out in the dead of night, and Baudelaire, who, like her, wanders aimlessly through the streets and feels restless when leaving the crowd, are in this city here no longer exists.

It is too easy to be invisible here.

Zooey didn't rent a house, nor did she live in a hotel.She just felt that wandering outside every day and night like this seemed to be a good pastime on a whim.Corpses don't sweat, don't secrete oil, and don't need to be bathed.One day, on a whim, she went to the underground morgue of Youkexin's family to coerce the staff there to embalm her, and then wiped their memories.She just wanted to try and see what it felt like.That felt weird.The blood in her body stopped flowing long ago, and it was a sticky black-red substance.She ordered the staff to be fully armed, sealed the removed viscera and blood in airtight containers to prevent other people from being infected and turned into zombies, and then filled the blood vessels with formalin , filled with resin and cotton, she felt like a strange humanoid toy.It felt new and weird, and she began to wonder why she hadn't done it sooner.

She replaced her eyes with plastic eyeballs, and the brain in her head became a mass of artificial stuffing, and found that there was no hindrance to her vision, and her thinking did not stop.

She looked at the bottles and jars containing her own organs, and was dumbfounded.

What is she using to see the outside world?Since she doesn't use her eyes, can her perspective be changed?

Just when she was thinking about this, a strange thing happened.She found that her point of view became a third person, as if looking down at a 45-degree angle from top to bottom.With a second thought, the angle of view changed from looking down to looking backward again.Her body is clearly standing forward, but she can see things behind her.

It was strange that, having abandoned her eyes, her vision should be free.

This series of seemingly processing also brought more peculiar effects.She found that the hunger in her stomach disappeared.

It's also normal, after all, the digestive organs are not here.

She felt much lighter all over.

And apparently, formalin doesn't turn other people into zombies, it just poisons them to death.

Zoe erased the memory of the mortuary staff, went to the incinerator and tried to throw the organs that once belonged to her into the furnace and burn them.I don't know what's going on, those things can be cut by a sharp blade, but they can't be carbonized by high temperature.Just like... water, which can change the form of existence, become liquid, solid or gas, but never completely disappear.

But these things obviously made other humans suffer, so she found a place, a hidden place, a cemetery.

Unlike other places in the city, this cemetery is quiet and beautiful.She found an open space and buried the materials that belonged to her in the ground.

Then she stood in front of this small piece of land in a daze for a while.

It's almost like burying yourself.

She said good-bye to herself, and went out into the street again.

lose/get

Pariston looked at her a little strangely, but it's no wonder, after all, she gave herself a complete modification, not to mention from head to toe, at least the content inside was completely different.This is about as unacceptable as ordering a plate of braised pork at a restaurant only to find out that the meat is made of tofu.Now she herself is the living ship of Theseus—wrong, dead? ——Anyway, it’s a walking sample.To ask how many parts are replaced and the ship is no longer the original ship-well, just ask her.

What is her answer?

God knows.

Zoe Corleone didn't know when she changed, and it's not without nostalgia.She misses the harmless days, as if the crisis is always in other people's stories, on the other side of the screen, on the other side of the book.She loves to read stories.But she didn't like it so much because of her own story.

If you want to hear sophistry, she can bring out the commonplaces for you.For example, the cells of a person change their water every five years. Can it still be said that they are the same person?Or that one cannot step into the same river twice, or that everything is in motion, and that change is the only constant truth—if you ask her, these are bullshit, and it’s useless to have sounds and smells