What?! I Became the Zombie Beauty in the Villain’s Arms – CH77

Chapter 77: Her Name is Pei Xiqing

Pei Xiqing and Long Yan had already started organizing the ingredients for the evening hot pot.

Midway through their prep, a delivery courier arrived at the villa. She had assumed Duan Xiaolin’s dense schedule would block him from returning early, so she trotted to the entrance. But the exact millisecond she unlatched the heavy blast door, a dark silhouette dropped a package onto the threshold and immediately executed a high-velocity retreat down the lane.

She blinked in confusion. Looking down at the porch, she noticed a folded slip of paper resting near the container.

She crouched to harvest the note, shaking it open.

The interior was completely blank.

But right as she was analyzing the paper, a shadow crossed the outer gate. A passing operative took advantage of the structural blind spot to step close to the porch, his voice dropping into a low, menacing murmur. “Master Gu instructed my line to broadcast a message: He has missed your presence immensely.”

“…”

Pei Xiqing opened her lips to say, “Brother, your radar targeted the wrong asset registry,” but within a microsecond, a rush of suppressed memory files flashed across her neural cortex, leaving her completely frozen in place.

It was only when Long Yan’s voice drifted from the interior that her system snapped back online. “What’s the status out there?”

Long Yan stepped into the hall, her eyes narrowing. “Who cleared the gate? Was that entity broadcasting to your station? Did they require directory routing to hunt down Duan Xiaolin or Ling Lang?”

“The target… was my own registry.”

“Mm?”

Pei Xiqing’s processing units were still sluggish, her words halting under the weight of the data shock. “A-An asset from my past… isolated my coordinates, then dumped a vocal transmission into my path.”

“Does the file introduce a critical threat?”

“It’s a low-tier anomaly. Nothing my system can’t manage.” She smoothly pulled the heavy blast door shut, locking the bolts.

Long Yan closely scrutinized her face. “Are your vitals stable?”

Pei Xiqing let out a dry, forced laugh. “The baseline is clear. My processors are simply managing a sudden headache.”

In truth, her situation had just turned remarkably volatile. This newly arrived variable felt exponentially more dangerous than the toxic loser she had left back in City B—Meng Jiankai, that relentless stalker who had constantly plagued her trail.

As the historical records unlocked in her brain, she realized the specific debt the original host had logged was attached to a creditor commanding an immense wave of military leverage.

The asset tracking her with the surname Gu was an absolute predator. He was none other than the newly promoted Major General Gu He, currently auditing the fortress.

According to the pre-written novel, this specific general would eventually cross paths with her elder sister, Pei Yanting, down the line, developing an intense obsession with her.

He was a thoroughly calculating, hyper-pretentious character.

He had scaled the rungs of the base command step by step, driving his career entirely across the political pathways paved by his influential father, utilizing his rank to protect crooked human-trafficking networks. He specialized in engineering complex traps against his rivals, preserved every single grudge with absolute fidelity, and mathematically refused to absorb a financial or personal loss.

The original host had anchored her timeline to his compound for less than a month, before plundering every single high-tier crystal core and valuable asset inside his private vault and vaporizing into the night.

The good news according to the original book layout was that his intense fixation on Pei Yanting only catalyzed because the host had been marked as deceased, forcing him to utilize the sister as a psychological substitute.

The catastrophic bad news was that her current body was very much alive and functional.

Worse, his scouts had successfully isolated her residential coordinate sheet.

The calculated fallout was incredibly binary: either his execution squads would liquidate her timeline out of pure vengeance, or his volatile ego would force a confrontation to violently reclaim his property.

Pei Xiqing pressed a palm against her throbbing forehead, letting out a heavy sigh as she stared at the rising steam of the hot pot broth.

How did his division manage to bridge the distance to this base?

The verbal transmission his scout had just dumped on her porch felt precisely like a formal execution warrant.

Still, her baseline logic calculated a protective countermeasure: as long as her boots remained strictly confined within the perimeter of this high-command villa, his squads couldn’t execute a breach. No matter how massive Gu He’s military leverage appeared, within the grand architecture of the novel, his character was ultimately just high-tier cannon fodder. He commanded a brief sequence of plot armor, but compared to the crushing institutional weight of Duan Xiaolin, his metrics couldn’t even register on the grid.

The parameter was manageable. If his division deployed a strike, she would simply route the defense directly to Duan Xiaolin’s desk.

Otherwise, what was the actual utility of staying anchored to this cold-faced tyrant’s side?

As that logic stabilized, her internal anxiety rapidly deflated, and her expression brightened.

A short while later, the heavy mechanical locks clicked, and Duan Xiaolin pushed into the foyer, his long fingers carrying a fresh bag of premium wild mushrooms and uncultivated greens.

She trotted forward, eagerly harvesting the logistics from his hands. “Thank you for the supply run, Brother Duan.”

The administrator let out a low, smooth chuckle, his hand briefly smoothing over her hair. “Enjoy the meal.”

Long Yan emerged from the kitchen grid, balancing a series of freshly prepared baseline platters. She barked down the hall, “Accelerate the deployment, team! The vanguard squad members are clearing the sector checkpoints right now. Bring the hardware out to the table! Xiqing, hurl that logistics bag to my coordinate; I’ll handle the rinsing!”

“Understood! My line is initializing support!”

Within a brief window, the heavy boots of Fu Feng, Nie Bin, and Lu Xudong—vanguard combatants she hadn’t crossed paths with since the trail—cleared the threshold.

She logged the data that Lu Xudong functioned as the division’s premier demolition and blasting specialist. He had historically managed operations flanking Long Yan’s field units.

Amusingly, Lu Xudong hadn’t marched alone; he had integrated a civilian girl into his column today. The two of them held fingers with such intense, romantic sweetness it immediately triggered a wave of playful mocking from the rest of the vanguard crew.

“Hey, demolition man, what calendar block is your office allocating for the marriage registry? Our glasses have been empty for winters waiting for that wedding banquet!”

The girl clearly lacked the hardened aura of an elemental ability user. She looked incredibly shy, her face flushing a deep crimson as she hid her profile behind Lu Xudong’s broad shoulder to dodge the verbal flak.

Lu Xudong quickly raised his arm to shield her coordinates, barked back, “She anchors to my neighborhood residential sector. Cease the aggressive teasing. If your systems require a target, direct the fire straight to my station.”

The room erupted into a massive wave of shared laughter.

Shortly before the broth hit a boil, Ling Lang pushed through the blast door. He was still decked out in his heavy combat boots, his handsome face looking thoroughly clouded and unhappy. Noting the high-spirited atmosphere packing the living area, he forced his volatile irritation into a temporary lockdown.

Pei Xiqing tracked him as he muttered a few quiet, tense syllables straight to Duan Xiaolin’s station, before her entire attention matrix was completely plundered by the boiling hot pot.

The following morning shift, Ling Lang arrived at the central command building exceptionally early to log his biometric pass.

But the exact millisecond his fingers hovered over the terminal interface, an external asset smoothly cut across his path to claim the scanner first.

Ling Lang’s white brows arched in immediate irritation.

Gu He stood anchored right at the center of a massive cluster of high-ranking base directors and administrative executives. The officials continuously cycled around his uniform, flooding his ears with high-frequency praise.

One department chief completely bypassed Ling Lang’s coordinate, broadcasting loudly to the young officer, “Major General Gu commands an exceptional synthesis of tactical bravery and strategic intellect! Young, yet remarkably promising! Your career trajectory will definitively inherit the glorious legacy of the Old General!”

“The Major General’s deployment just initialized. Once the central assembly terminates its shift, route your column to the grand hotel for dinner. My division isolated several premier dining lounges.”

Ling Lang gritted his teeth, let out a sharp, venomous sneer through his nose, and marched straight into the private elevator shaft, routing the lift directly to the 30th floor.

Inside the primary executive suite, Duan Xiaolin was methodically wiping his lenses with a microfiber cloth. He raised his green eyes a fraction as the door slid open.

Ling Lang stomped into the room, snatched a glass from the sideboard, and gulped down a massive volume of water to cool his systems.

Slamming the glass down, he sank onto the leather sofa, crossing his heavy combat boots over the low table with reckless irritation. “That trash asset with the surname Gu initialized an unauthorized surveillance sweep against my registry yesterday shift. He inexplicably detailed an espionage tracker to trail my boots through the sectors. I can’t deduce what specific play his board is attempting to run.”

Duan Xiaolin smoothly slid his silver-wire glasses back onto the bridge of his nose, his voice flat and unyielding. “The diagnostic suggests his uniform harbors highly malicious structural intentions.”

“Is that the ground truth? Then my combat cores are frantic to audit what actual qualifications his rank commands.” Ling Lang jumped to his feet, matching his brother’s long strides as he cleared the desk. “The assembly grid is open?”

“Mm. Let’s initialize the transit.”

The base-wide operational assembly convened inside the supreme penthouse chamber of the command tower.

The exact millisecond the session initialized, the senior directors of the base sectors led their respective command delegations into the conference hall to anchor the perimeter tables. Once the room stabilized, Duan Xiaolin slowly marched through the central double doors, Ling Lang flanking his shadow like a lethal guardian.

Gu He’s scanning arrays instantly locked onto the tall individual ascending the main high seat at the apex of the room. His brows pulled into a hard, immediate knot.

His ears intercepted the base director respectfully addressing the man as the “Chief Judge.”

Gu He’s expression plummeted into absolute, freezing gloom.

The Chief Judge?

Was that beautiful witch Pei Xiqing genuinely anchoring her timeline to an institutional ruler of this magnitude? His database completely rejected the probability.

The massive security briefing finally finalized its run hours later.

It marked a rare anomaly in Gu He’s career parameters: his intellect had failed to log a single data stream broadcasted during the meeting. His entire processing capacity had remained strictly dedicated to monitoring the physical micro-movements of Duan Xiaolin and Ling Lang up on the high dais.

As the delegations cleared the room, the heavy double doors locked down automatically, leaving only three specific assets remaining inside the cavernous briefing chamber.

Ling Lang leaned his spine completely back into his leather chair, swinging his heavy military boots up onto the pristine conference table with absolute, unpolished arrogance. He hoisted his sharp chin toward Gu He’s position, his posture dripping with unvarnished hostility.

Gu He maintained his pristine, diplomatic smile, adjusting his gloves as he vocalized a few polite, standard queries regarding the strategic defense points highlighted in the brief.

Ling Lang’s patience hit immediate zero. “Does your uniform lack functional audio receptors, or is the intellectual processing unit inside your skull simply malfunctioning? My own lips mapped out those exact deployment metrics with absolute clarity ten minutes ago. Why is your station still dumping the same basic queries? How did an asset with your subpar cognitive baseline manage to secure a Major General’s badge?”

The rehearsed smile on Gu He’s face twisted violently for a fraction of a second, before his intense self-control forced the mask back into a smooth, icy chuckle.

“Then let us permanently archive the defense files for this shift,” he noted, his voice dropping into a level, measured frequency.

He executed a deliberate, heavy pause, his eyes locked onto the high seat.

“Let us execute a dialogue regarding an alternative parameter instead. Captain Ling Lang… Chief Judge… does either of your databases maintain a registry for my current girlfriend?”

“What precise data is your mouth releasing?” Ling Lang shot back, his lip curling with utter disdain. “The command grid just closed. What utility is there in broadcasting gossip about women?”

Gu He adjusted the collar of his pristine uniform. “My office intends zero structural harm. The official shift has terminated. I simply desire to execute a brief synchronization with your respective lines regarding a private legal matter. After all, my father’s desk at global headquarters preserves an intense, ongoing concern regarding the Chief Judge’s localized operations.”

Ling Lang let out a harsh, mocking laugh through his nose. He didn’t waste a single watt of processing power on the threat. The pathetic coward can only swing the weight of his old man when his own board runs dry.

Gu He pressed forward, his eyes narrowing to sharp slits behind his smile. “My permanent girlfriend executed an unauthorized evacuation from my private compound a few months back. Her file essentially vaporized from the global tracking arrays—or to state the ground truth of the transcript: she plundered the highest-grade assets and crystal cores inside my vault before disconnecting her timeline from my board. My reconnaissance teams have driven an exhaustive search across the strongholds to locate her coordinates, and finally, my sensors verified her presence inside these specific base walls.”

He paused, leaning his torso slightly over the mahogany table, his voice a lethal purr. “Our systems shared a profound, highly intimate history long before she crossed the outer gates of this stronghold. A girlfriend asset.”

Ling Lang’s brows knit, his voice flat. “Identify the asset’s registry name.”

Gu He’s smile widened, a toxic gleam reflecting off his uniform insignia. “Her name is Pei Xiqing.”