Chapter 322: The golden fruit 33.

Bai Li looked at the dark mall.

"Always."

She got off the motorcycle.

Yan Cijin stood beside her.

They faced the entrance together.

The doors waited.

The darkness beyond them waited.

And somewhere on the top floor, hidden among the dead shops and shattered glass, the golden fruit waited too.

Bai Li took one step forward.

Yan Cijin matched it.

Another step.

Another.

They were only a few meters from the entrance now.

Neither woman looked afraid.

They had no reason to.

Behind them, the city remained silent.

Ahead of them, the abandoned mall opened its dark mouth.

Bai Li stopped at the edge of the entrance.

Yan Cijin stopped beside her.

Neither crossed the threshold.

The motorcycle stood behind them, its black body catching the last faint light from the street. For a moment, the two women simply stood there. After everything that had happened on the road, the quiet felt almost unnatural. Bai Li could hear distant movement in the city, but none of it mattered anymore. The mall was only a few steps away. Yan Cijin adjusted her grip on her weapon and looked sideways at Bai Li. Bai Li gave the smallest nod. No speech was necessary. They had spent the entire journey learning each other’s rhythm without ever admitting it. Now that rhythm brought them naturally to the same place, at the same time, facing the same darkness.

A faint golden reflection appeared on the broken floor tiles just inside the entrance. It vanished almost immediately. Yan Cijin noticed it. Bai Li noticed that she noticed it. Neither commented. The scent of the fruit was stronger now, sweet and warm against the cold air flowing from the abandoned building. Somewhere deep inside, something moved once, then became still again.

Yan Cijin took one slow breath. Bai Li did the same. Neither was nervous. Neither was afraid. They had crossed a city filled with death to reach this exact point, and the darkness ahead was simply the next obstacle.

Bai Li took one step forward. Yan Cijin matched her.

They had reached the mall entrance.

For several seconds neither Bai Li nor Yan Cijin crossed the threshold. The silence inside was so complete that it seemed heavier than the noise of the ruined city behind them. The entrance doors had long since lost most of their glass. What remained hung in jagged pieces from the metal frames, and a layer of dust had gathered over the tiled floor. A few dead leaves had blown in from the street and collected around an overturned security barrier. The mall had the shape of a giant dead thing sleeping with its mouth open.

Bai Li looked up at the sign above them. Half the letters had fallen away. The remaining lights were dark, but the faintest gold shimmer seemed to sit behind the sign, almost like sunlight trapped under the metal. The sensation lasted only a heartbeat. Yan Cijin noticed it too.

"So that is it," Yan Cijin said quietly.

Bai Li glanced at her. "The fruit?"

"I can feel it."

"So can I."

There was no excitement in Bai Li’s voice. That was what made Yan Cijin smile.

"You are not even a little curious?"

"I am curious," Bai Li said. "I am just not planning to let curiosity make decisions for me."

Yan Cijin’s smile deepened. "That sounds sensible."

"You expected anything else?"

"A little."

Bai Li stepped inside.

Yan Cijin followed.

The instant their feet crossed the threshold, the atmosphere changed.

The city outside smelled of smoke, old blood, dust and damp concrete. The mall smelled different. It smelled stale, sweet and strangely alive. There was the odor of rotting food somewhere in the darkness, the damp smell of carpets that had absorbed too much rain, and underneath all of it there was another scent, almost impossible to describe. It was sweet like ripe fruit, but also sharp like crushed herbs. It settled into the back of the throat and made the body instinctively want to breathe more deeply.

Bai Li did the opposite. She took one slow breath and stopped.

"Do not follow the scent too closely," she said.

Yan Cijin immediately understood. "It attracts things."

"The stronger things will be able to sense it from farther away."

As if answering her, something moved above them.

A single piece of metal scraped across the ceiling.

Both women looked up.

Nothing happened.

Bai Li kept staring for another second, then calmly drew her weapon.

Yan Cijin rested one hand near her own blade.

"First floor?" Yan Cijin asked.

"We clear the entrance first."

They had taken three more steps when the first zombie fell from the ceiling.

It was not a dramatic attack. There was no scream or roar. The creature simply dropped through a broken maintenance panel and hit the floor in front of them with a wet crack. Its body had already decayed badly. One arm was twisted backward, and its jaw hung at an unnatural angle. It moved anyway.

Bai Li did not even stop walking.

She stepped around the creature’s reaching hand and drove the point of her weapon through the side of its skull. The body collapsed before it had managed to stand.

Another one came from the left.

Yan Cijin turned once, caught the thing by the wrist, and used its own momentum to throw it against a steel column. The impact broke its spine. Before it could crawl, Yan Cijin stepped forward and ended it with one clean strike.

A third and fourth zombie rushed from behind the information desk.

Bai Li sighed.

"They really like entrances."

Yan Cijin replied, "People probably did too, before the apocalypse."

The two of them moved together.

There was no formal signal, no shouted plan. They had fought together enough that each woman’s movement automatically created a space for the other. Bai Li handled the left side, Yan Cijin the right. When one zombie stumbled into the other woman’s path, it was already being struck. When a body fell, neither looked down because neither had to.

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TO BE CONTINUED.