In the era of Tongyuan, there was a Stealing Zombie Village nestled deep between the mountains.
This village, aside from some basic daily trade, had very little contact with the outside world.
Some people even lived their entire lives without taking a single step beyond the mountains.
The reasons for this were, firstly, due to its geographic location—leaving the village required a long and dangerous journey. Secondly, the villagers maintained a unique inherited faith, and their closed-off way of thinking kept them rooted to the land on which they lived.
Even so, despite all these disadvantages, the people living here never complained.
On the contrary, they strictly adhered to the rules of the village, gratefully placing their faith in the spirit that protected them, maintaining their traditions and daily routines. Even though only women lived there, they could still bear descendants through methods with no scientific basis.
Logically speaking, in a place where one could be completely self-sufficient, never worrying about food or clothing, a paradise untouched by the world, it should have lasted forever.
However, one day, the village was struck by a natural disaster. Fierce winds ravaged their crops, torrential rains caused the mountain slopes to collapse, and the resulting mudslide buried their homes.
Though they struggled through the disaster and attempted to rebuild the village, their fate was already sealed. Their god had forsaken them, and so, the village quietly vanished into the river of time. Even historical records are fragmentary—complete accounts are rare to this day.
“Disappearance… is nothing more than escaping the Disappearance Curse in another form.”
Closing the Ti Pi Leather-bound Book in her hands, the Literary Girl, with braided hair and glasses perched on her nose, slowly looked up, her face expressionless as she gazed out the window at the dawn.
After a while, a notification tone chimed from her desk.
She withdrew her gaze, eyes landing on the lit-up screen of her phone.
The summer breeze drifted in through the open window, but it couldn’t blow away the melancholy beneath her eyes.
The Literary Girl put away her phone and left her seat. She placed the leather-bound book back on the bookshelf behind her, then opened the large doors of the Activity Room and stepped outside.
As she reached the end of the corridor, a beautiful figure passed right in front of her.
A glance told her it was a third-year Senior wearing the black uniform of students one grade above.
Beautiful girls were not rare in this School, but that striking silver hair drew the attention of many.
However, when the Literary Girl saw the silver-haired girl’s silhouette, her eyes only narrowed slightly beneath her glasses. Without further reaction, she turned around and closed the Activity Room’s doors, striding purposefully toward her intended destination.
The Library—this was the girl’s goal.
The School had undergone reconstruction in the past, but since the campus was so large and almost all the buildings were still intact, “reconstruction” was not really reflected in the facilities themselves.
Thus, both the exterior and interior of the Library carried a strong sense of age.
Upon arriving, the Literary Girl pushed up her glasses and exchanged a glance with the librarian at the entrance, as if communicating some secret code. She then accepted a key from the staff member’s hand.
Wearing the Steel Key around her neck, she walked to the center of the Library. From there, she climbed the spiral staircase up to the floor housing the History Book Section.
At the end of the corridor on this floor stood a pair of aged double wooden doors, exuding an ancient atmosphere.
She inserted the key into the door’s rusty lock, turned it several times, and with a heavy click, the thick, old door was slowly pushed open.
The Literary Girl paid no special attention to the office revealed before her eyes. In other words, this was not her first visit, so the tightly locked office did not surprise or intrigue her.
After entering, she went straight to a mural, which depicted a group of people in the mountains, worshiping an immense ancient tree.
She stretched out her hand and flicked the wall lamp to the left of the mural, walked several steps, then flicked the lamp to the right. Turning around, she approached the office’s only desk, crouched down, and twisted a round mechanism hidden beneath it. Once this series of actions was completed, the wall with the mural shifted, opening a concealed door.
Entering the hidden door, the Literary Girl began to descend the staircase.
After quite some time, she finally reached the deepest level beneath the ground, where the spiral staircase ended.
At the base was a wooden door just wide enough for one person. She pushed it open, and a passage appeared before her.
Since there were no branching paths or options in this corridor, the Literary Girl only needed to keep walking forward, turning whenever she reached a corner, to reach the end of the passage.
That was exactly what she did. Though several doors appeared along the way, leading to other rooms, she continued straight to the end of the passage, for at the end there was no dead end—one only had to trigger a mechanism to open a new path.
After triggering the mechanism, she passed through a secret door into a passage almost identical to the last.
However, unlike before, there were now several branching paths, each leading elsewhere, signaling she had entered a vast underground space.
That’s right—the Literary Girl was now in the School Underground Prison, specifically in a corridor between the two entrances that Xia Fan had discovered: the one on the north side of the Underground Prison.
Unfortunately, after turning a corner, she ran into the last person she wanted to see—Lin Xue’er.
“What are you doing here? Why did you show up in this place?”
When Lin Xue’er saw the Literary Girl, she was stunned for a moment, then her gaze turned cold as she stared intensely at her.
But the Literary Girl’s silence only fueled Lin Xue’er’s irritation, as if her own territory had been trespassed by yet another unwanted intruder.
This was something she absolutely could not tolerate.
“I shouldn’t have chosen this place from the start. Whether you’re with that group, or you came here specifically to disrupt my plans—you must explain yourself!”
Watching the Literary Girl finally close her eyes forever, Lin Xue’er put away the Electric Shock Device. Her eyes were lifeless as she looked in a certain direction.
That gaze seemed to pierce through the cold stone walls, landing on a girl bound to a fixed frame, her eyes a bit clearer than before.
“Hey… Xiao Tai, was what you said a few days ago really true? If that’s the case… then I’ll have to make sure you never set foot on this earth again…”