MERIDIAN OF THE DAMNED

Ch 03. Silence Beneath the Tingzhou Sky

"Ugh... my head feels like it's about to split open," Wu Chen groaned hoarsely, opening his eyelids, which felt as heavy as lead.

A drop of cold rain landed directly on his forehead, sending a sharp ache through the back of his skull. He woke in the dead of night inside the remains of a ruined old temple. Heavy rain had begun pouring over Tingzhou, creating a constant roar that fortunately masked the foul stench of blood and decay from the three zombie corpses surrounding him.

"Fucking system," Wu Chen muttered, wiping the rain from his filthy face with his trembling left hand. "Three months of my lifespan gone just to survive for one minute. And now... my vision really is like it's covered in a gray fog. Damn it."

He tried to stand, but both knees immediately buckled beneath him. Li Jian Nan's body felt incredibly fragile, as though every last bit of energy had been squeezed out of it.

"I'm fucking weak. My legs feel like they don't even have bones," he muttered, rubbing his slowly throbbing chest. "I can't stay here. This place is too exposed. Sooner or later, the smell of these corpses is going to attract more monsters."

Dragging his bruised and battered body, Wu Chen forced himself out of the temple. Using the walls of the narrow, filthy alley for support beneath the heavy rain, he staggered forward. His vision remained severely blurred, his field of view narrow and hazy because of the penalty that had reduced his biological lifespan the previous night.

After nearly fifteen minutes of stumbling along, Wu Chen's blurry eyes caught the silhouette of a half-burned building at the corner of the street. It was an old tea shop, scorched and partially collapsed.

"Burned-out tea shop? Good. No sane person would come looking for a hiding place here," he whispered hoarsely.

He slipped inside through what remained of the blackened wooden door. Behind a pile of tables and chairs, their charred surfaces soaked by rainwater, Wu Chen discovered a wooden trapdoor in the floor leading to a storage basement.

With the last remnants of his strength, he pulled open the iron door and lowered himself into the darkness of the cold, stuffy basement.

"It's fucking dark," Wu Chen whispered, narrowing his still-blurred eyes. "But at least it's dry down here."

Creak... scrape...

"Who's there?! Come out, you bastard! Don't fuck with me!" Wu Chen shouted instinctively.

His left hand clenched into a tight fist despite trembling violently, ready to face whatever threat lurked in the darkness. From behind a pile of moldy grain sacks in the corner of the room came the faint sound of a small, trembling sob.

"D-don't kill me... h-hic... please don't eat me..." a child's voice begged in terror.

Wu Chen breathed a sigh of relief, but his eyes remained alert as he stared into the darkness.

"A kid? Are you human, or some crazy zombie like the ones outside?"

"I'm h-human... I'm not a monster... d-don't..." the voice replied, trembling violently.

"Eat you? No fucking way. You've barely got any meat on you. You're mostly bones. Besides, do I really look like some crazy cannibal out there?" Wu Chen scoffed, stepping backward before dropping himself onto the dry wooden floor. "I'm fucking exhausted."

A little girl in tattered clothes and with messy hair slowly emerged from behind the grain sacks. Her dirty face was streaked with tears, and her hands clutched a rag doll that had been torn to pieces.

"Mister... you're really not a monster?" the little girl asked, her round eyes filled with fear.

"No. But if you keep crying and making noise, I might turn into a monster scarier than the ones outside," Wu Chen threatened harshly, trying to maintain his cold facade in front of the child. "Damn, my back..."

He reached into Li Jian Nan's soaked, coarse robe. His fingers touched something hard inside.

A piece of dried bread, hardened like a brick.

"This thing's fucking hard. I'm gonna break my teeth eating it," Wu Chen grumbled, frowning as he stared at the bread.

He glanced toward the little girl in the corner. She was staring at the bread while repeatedly swallowing her saliva. Her stomach suddenly growled loudly.

"Shit, your stomach's loud," Wu Chen remarked.

Crack!

With a single motion of his hand, he broke the rock-hard piece of bread in half. He tossed one half toward the little girl.

"Here. Eat it. Maybe that'll shut your mouth and your stomach up," Wu Chen said coldly.

The little girl hesitated, staring at the bread on the floor before cautiously looking back at Wu Chen.

"T-this... is really for me?"

"No, it's for the ghost haunting the basement of this shop. Of course it's for you! Eat it before I change my mind and take it back!" Wu Chen snapped.

"T-thank you, b-big brother..."

The little girl immediately snatched up the bread and devoured it greedily, as though she hadn't eaten in days.

Wu Chen bit into his own piece. It tasted bland and hard against his tongue. As he chewed slowly, he began using this moment of calm to figure out where he was.

"What's your name, kid?" Wu Chen asked without taking his eyes off the basement ceiling.

"X-Xiao Yu... my name is Xiao Yu, b-big brother..." the little girl answered softly after managing to swallow her first bite.

"I'm Wu... ah, just call me whatever you want," Wu Chen quickly corrected himself to avoid arousing suspicion. "Do you know why the people outside went crazy and started biting each other like that?"

Xiao Yu slowly nodded, deep sadness filling her eyes.

"They said... it's the Meridian Plague. It's been spreading through the Common’s District for a month now. At first, people just had ordinary fevers. Then their meridians burned up and their eyes turned red... after that, they went completely insane and attacked anyone they saw."

"The Meridian Plague? So this isn't some ordinary biological virus?" Wu Chen asked, frowning.

"No, big brother. My mother used to say... it was because of an experiment by the imperial court. King Wuji... King Wuji was looking for a formula for immortality, but his experiment failed in an underground laboratory beneath the palace. The liquid leaked into the water system of the Common’s District... that's why poor people were the first to get infected."

"Tch. King Wuji..." Wu Chen hissed, disgust immediately filling his chest.

"Everywhere you go, the rich and the rulers always sacrifice the poor for their own greed. Same old story."

"Then where are your parents, Xiao Yu?" Wu Chen asked again, trying to sound indifferent despite the small amount of curiosity he felt.

"M-my father... turned into a monster two weeks ago. Mother... Mother was dragged away by the royal soldiers because she was coughing." Xiao Yu lowered her head, tears dripping onto the piece of dried bread in her hands. "They said Mother was going to be treated, but... but I heard they were all burned alive in the square..."

Wu Chen fell silent for a moment.

His old memories as a triad boss flashed through his mind, memories of his men dying, betraying one another, or being discarded once they were no longer useful. This cultivation world was not so different from the underworld he had known. The cruelty of those in power was always the same, no matter where he went.

"Don't cry over it. Your tears won't bring them back," Wu Chen said, his voice softening slightly despite remaining cold. "What matters is that you're alive. In a world like this, only people with brains and an iron will can survive."

"B-big brother... where are you going after this?" Xiao Yu asked in a tiny, timid voice. "All the roads out of the Common’s District have been completely sealed off by the military."

"Sealed off?" Wu Chen turned sharply toward Xiao Yu.

"Yes... across these alleys, there's a huge iron gate separating the Common's District from the Merchant District. But the gate is locked tight. Fully armed royal patrols are stationed there. Anyone from the Common's District who tries to get close is shot full of arrows."

"The Merchant District... so it's safer there? More food and money?" Wu Chen asked, trying to map out Guangzhou's geography in his mind.

"Yes. That's where wealthy merchants and mid-ranking officials live. But they won't let poor people like us inside, big brother. They say we're filthy and carrying the plague," Xiao Yu explained sadly.

"Wealthy merchants, huh?" The corner of Wu Chen's mouth lifted into a thin, chilling smile. "Good. Wherever there's lots of money and greedy people, that's exactly the kind of territory I like to play in."

Silence once again settled over the dark basement.

Wu Chen lowered his head and stared at his reflection in a puddle of rainwater seeping across the wooden floor.

The reflected face of Li Jian Nan looked pale, emaciated, and pitiful. It was worlds apart from the imposing physique of Jian Wu Chen, who had once ruled Shenzing underworld.

"I miss my cigars. I miss the leather sofa in my office," Wu Chen whispered hoarsely, clenching his fingers, which still ached.

"Look at me now... stuck in some godforsaken world, eating rock-hard bread beneath a burned-out shop with an orphaned kid."

He clenched his fists tightly until his knuckles turned white. A fierce anger suddenly blazed within his chest, replacing the despair that had briefly taken hold.

"But I swear, on my name and reputation from my past life... I won't die in some pathetic way like this in this godforsaken world!" Wu Chen hissed, his eyes flashing sharply.

"King Wuji... whoever the hell you are... you're going to pay for every drop of blood spilled from this body."

Xiao Yu stared at Wu Chen with a mixture of admiration and fear as she saw the ironclad determination shining in the young man's eyes.

"Big brother... your eyes... they look really scary..."

"Go to sleep, kid. Tomorrow morning, we have to start moving if we don't want to starve to death under this place," Wu Chen cut her off curtly, ordering Xiao Yu to be quiet.

Several hours passed amid the silence of the night.

The heavy rain gradually subsided, replaced by the first light of dawn, casting a gray glow through the cracks in the wooden door above.

Wu Chen opened his eyes after barely one or two hours of sleep. He tried to stretch his body, but a surge of excruciating pain immediately struck his left shoulder.

"Ow... my shoulder," Wu Chen groaned softly.

The zombie's slash from the previous day was still throbbing violently, indicating that the poison or infection had not completely left his body. His vision also still retained a severely blurred ring around the edges of his field of view.

Li Jian Nan's body now truly felt like a fragile piece of flesh ready to fall apart.

Clack... clack... clack...

Suddenly, the sound of heavy, noisy footsteps came from directly above the wooden ceiling of the basement where they were hiding.

They were not the irregular dragging footsteps of zombies. They were the steady, rhythmic footsteps of military boots reinforced with thick iron armor.

Xiao Yu immediately jolted in alarm and was about to cry out in fear.

Whoosh!

With lightning-fast reflexes, Wu Chen immediately lunged forward and covered Xiao Yu's mouth with his left hand.

"Shh! Quiet, kid! Don't make a single sound!" Wu Chen whispered sharply.

As he moved swiftly to silence Xiao Yu, the wound in his shoulder suddenly throbbed with blinding pain.

His vision, still half-blurred from the previous night's penalty, made it difficult for Wu Chen to focus on the gaps between the wooden planks in the ceiling above them. He held his breath deeply and stared straight upward, silently accepting the tactical reality of the situation.