What?! I Became the Zombie Beauty in the Villain’s Arms – CH208-210

Chapter 208| Chapter 209| Chapter 210

Chapter 208: It’s All Him

The man led her into the bathroom, where a soft, warm light poured down from the ceiling. Her upper body was bare, and his eyes fell squarely on her back.

“No,” he murmured, his gaze darkening as his voice dropped into a low, flat cadence.

Sensing that something was amiss, Pei Xiqing tried to look over her shoulder.

But Duan Xiaolin firmly caught her by the shoulders, arresting her movement. “Wash up first. Don’t catch a cold.”

The rain hadn’t been particularly heavy when she walked back, but she had still gotten damp, and the ends of her hair were slick with moisture. By now, he had systematically stripped away almost all of her clothes.

A sudden draft blew past the window. Shivering, she rubbed her bare arms, a wave of self-consciousness washing over her. “…Get out.”

Duan Xiaolin didn’t budge. Instead, another light, burning kiss fell against her shoulder blade.

Pei Xiqing felt as though her entire body were on fire. The totem on her back was beginning to flare to life again. Whenever this man touched her, she was easily overwhelmed, drowned beneath a flood of raw, uncontrollable sensation.

Only this time, she could distinctly feel a sudden restraint—a deliberate pause—from the man behind her. It was as if he hadn’t fully recognized the shifting pattern on her skin.

Pei Xiqing felt a stab of confusion. “Is there something unusual?”

She instinctively reached back, her fingers brushing against her skin. She could feel the subtle, raised texture of the totem tattoo. She hadn’t taken it to heart at first, but when she turned her back to the mirror and glanced over her shoulder, she realized the ink had distinctly faded. Only then did she comprehend the reason behind Duan Xiaolin’s severe reaction.

“I remember it being much darker than this before,” she murmured under her breath.

Duan Xiaolin pressed his palm flat over the mark. The soft, searing touch made her body tremble violently.

She swallowed hard. “Is it… related to the Qiong Snake?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he leaned down, sealing her lips with a deep, authoritative kiss. When he finally broke away, his voice was incredibly hoarse. “Hurry up and take your shower.”

Afterward, Pei Xiqing didn’t have the time or energy to worry about the state of her back. The intense, predatory look in his eyes made it clear that his desires tonight were entirely different from his usual baseline. If Duan Xiaolin was gentle, fiercely polite, and meticulously self-controlled most of the time, the gaze he had directed at her in the bathroom was blatantly, unapologetically dangerous.

She finished her bath with a heart fluttering with trepidation.

When she finally emerged in her pajamas, Duan Xiaolin had already served dinner and was casually tossing a chunk of raw meat to Xiaobai.

Since devouring those parasites, the giant pup’s appetite and physical dimensions had exploded. Even the canine teeth in his jaws had grown terrifyingly sharp, gleaming like a cluster of honed daggers. His bite force was astronomical; a bone thicker than a grown man’s arm stood absolutely no chance against his teeth.

Yet, with his shirt sleeves rolled neatly to his elbows, Duan Xiaolin handled the bloody meat with absolute ease. Xiaobai was careful never to let his teeth brush against the man’s fingers. More than anything, the massive beast radiated a sense of absolute submission, completely suppressed by the man’s sheer presence.

Hearing her footsteps behind him, the man turned his head. “Let’s eat.”

Pei Xiqing sat down hesitantly. She was entirely unable to shake the memory of the dark look he had given her in the bathroom, leaving her completely distracted throughout the meal.

Desperate to break the suffocating silence, she scrambled to find a topic of conversation. “Are we still on track to see the parasite in three days?”

“Mhm.”

“Can I bring Xiaobai with us?”

“Bring him,” his tone was concise and commanding. “Let Xiaobai familiarize himself with the entity ahead of schedule. Perhaps he can learn something from it.”

“You aren’t planning to let Xiaobai eat that thing, are you?” She reached into the fruit bowl, picking up an apple. “I only caught a fleeting glimpse of that parasite back then, and it was a complete nightmare. Xiaobai probably wouldn’t stand a chance against it.”

“He merely needs to learn how to deliver a transmission.”

Duan Xiaolin sat back in his chair. He casually wiped the residual blood from his hands with a clean handkerchief, picked up his chopsticks, and began to eat.

Still feeling deeply unsettled, Pei Xiqing deliberately dragged out her movements, taking over an hour just to finish her food. By the time she set her bowl down, Duan Xiaolin had already completely cleared and sanitized the kitchen.

The man smoothly took her empty dish from her hand. “Wait for me in the study.”

Pei Xiqing blinked, her lips parting slightly. “What’s this about?”

“You’ll understand once you get there.”

Pei Xiqing prepped a fresh bowl of water for Xiaobai, guiding the massive pup along as she headed toward the study.

The room was located on the ground floor. During the past week, while the displaced villagers had been occupying the first-floor guest rooms, the study had remained strictly locked. Now that the refugees had cleared out, the entire ground floor had been cleaned and converted into an open indoor exercise space for Xiaobai.

She pushed the heavy door open, stepping into the dim room. The windows were tightly shuttered. Throughout her entire month of living in this homestead, she had only stepped foot in this room twice, and she had actively avoided it ever since. The shelves were packed with official paperwork, operational logs from the base, and high-priority dossiers on wanted targets. Staring at those grim files for too long was a guaranteed recipe for nightmares.

The study was modest in size, dominated by a long mahogany desk and a 1.8-meter leather sofa resting against the wall.

Leading Xiaobai inside, she bypassed the couch and sat directly in the man’s executive chair. Resting right at her elbow was a thick stack of internal warrants from the base and administrative requisitions from various sectors—all of them awaiting his personal signature and official seal.

It appeared he hadn’t been idling away his time in this valley at all. By day, he labored diligently in the dirt fields, and by night, he sat in the dark analyzing these grueling administrative burdens.

Pei Xiqing idly pulled one of the documents from the pile. Her eyelids began to twitch violently as she scanned the contents.

Subject: Black Market Corpse Trafficking Syndicates. The criminal networks have aggressively scaled up operations, successfully infiltrating military repositories to exhume and smuggle hundreds of casualties. The victims—all frontline soldiers killed in active containment zones—had their vital organs systematically harvested before abandonment, rendering the remains completely unrecognizable.

She rubbed the bridge of her nose, a dull ache pulsing behind her eyes. After reading to the bottom of the page, she callously tossed the document aside.

Sometimes, ignorance truly was bliss. The fortified base circuit was essentially a massive, man-eating grave. Yet, paradoxically, it carried the collective survival hopes of millions of souls.

She reached for the next file jacket, her eyes locking onto the header:

Subject: Comprehensive Log of Parasitic Contamination and Latest Containment Metrics…

Before she could read any further, the door swung open, and the man stepped into the room.

Pei Xiqing raised her head. “Brother Duan.”

Duan Xiaolin closed the door behind him, his eyes dropping to the file gripped in her hand. “Reviewing the intelligence?”

“Do you mind if I read through this?” she asked. In the past, she would have never willingly touched these grim records. Even if they were laid out directly in front of her, she would have kept her mouth shut. This was the first time she felt an urgent, serious need to understand the underlying mechanics of the war.

“Go ahead.” Duan Xiaolin picked up a glass, turning toward the electric kettle to boil some fresh water for her. “It should detail the latest operational brief from headquarters. Read it aloud for me.”

Pei Xiqing unfastened the seal of the file jacket, pulling out a thick sheaf of documents and high-resolution surveillance photographs.

“On May 11th, the primary parasitic breach was detected along the outer perimeter of Base Six. The casualties were entirely comprised of operatives belonging to Base Six Tactical Squad 0162.”

“On May 15th, within the dense woodlands precisely one hundred meters outside the walls of Base Five, eyewitness accounts confirmed the reappearance of the parasitic variant. The encounter resulted in 55 confirmed casualties.”

“On May 18th, the parasite breached the interior sectors of Base Five…”

She skipped down the lines, her voice dropping as the data grew increasingly grim.

“On June 10th, the parasitic anomaly manifested a mere ten kilometers outside Central Headquarters, executing its eighteenth coordinated harassment strike against the capital’s elite ability divisions. Total casualty count: 539.”

Pei Xiqing tracked the timeline all the way down to the final entry. She paused, looking up at the man in profound shock. “Why is the parasitic infection suddenly spreading across the sectors at this trajectory?”

“Perhaps that is a query best directed toward the masterminds running the Black Market syndicates,” he replied smoothly.

“Could this outbreak be connected to our previous infiltration of the Ghost Market?”

The man shook his head, his expression impassive. “Of the two prime parasites recovered from that zone, one is dead and the other is trapped in a state of near-lethal hibernation. They lacked the operational capacity to orchestrate an external assault.”

“Then… what is the source? Are these wild variants emerging directly from the untamed sectors of the Ghost Market?”

“It is a strong mathematical probability.”

Pei Xiqing fell deep into thought, her mind piecing together the political architecture. “These entities share the same biological baseline as the zombie virus, but their cellular adaptability makes them infinitely more complex to suppress. To make matters worse, the black market smugglers accidentally triggered an acceleration when they started trafficking contaminated military corpses. Now that the pathogen has integrated into their black-market trade routes, containing the spread is going to be a nightmare.”

She shifted in the chair, her gaze turning razor-sharp as she locked her eyes onto him. “Brother Duan, what exactly is your true alignment when it comes to the Black Market infrastructure? Are you one of the shadow bosses who actively funded and engineered the syndicate’s growth from behind the scenes? Are you merely a detached bystander who deliberately turned a blind eye to their operations to serve your own metrics? Or… are you truly a loyal enforcer of Franlun, who successfully infiltrated the high command to claim the seat of Chief Judge?”

The room fell dead silent. For a rare, heavy interval, the man offered absolutely no reply.

Yet, an overwhelming, intuitive premonition suddenly gripped Pei Xiqing’s mind from out of nowhere.

It didn’t matter which distinct persona she tried to analyze. The mastermind behind the syndicates, the detached observer, the ruthless Chief Judge—every single one of those masks belonged to him. They were all pieces of the same puzzle.

She realized with a sudden, freezing certainty that the current, catastrophic proliferation of the parasites across the alliance bases was also completely tied to his master plan.

Even though she had mentally prepared herself for the absolute ruthlessness of this novel’s ultimate villain—even though she had always known that Duan Xiaolin was never the righteous human savior the base believed him to be—a profound, deep chill still settled into the very depths of her heart.

Chapter 209: Scared Weak

Pei Xiqing took a deep breath and closed the folder.

She hadn’t been in this world five years ago and didn’t know the specifics of how the apocalypse had unfolded back then. But judging by how the zombie tides had been repelled and how humanity had rapidly constructed a fortified base network in just five years, there had to be a hidden story. As for what that story actually was, she was afraid only Duan Xiaolin knew the truth.

The man noticed her shifting emotions. He hooked her chin with his slender fingers, tilting her head slightly upward so she was forced to look at him from his chair. His knuckles were firm enough to easily leave lasting impressions on her delicate skin, and her cheeks flushed red at his mere touch. His movements gradually filled with an intense, quiet desire as he traced her skin inch by inch, finally stopping at her throat. With just a fraction of his strength, his palm completely enveloped her neck.

Pei Xiqing didn’t feel any real pain, but the sheer sense of being dominated was overwhelming. She craned her neck slightly, her voice a soft murmur. “What’s wrong?”

Duan Xiaolin’s voice dropped into a low, raspy register. “Five years is far too short for an apocalypse to naturally progress to this state. We are simply each taking what we need from the board.”

Pei Xiqing blinked. She seemed to grasp his meaning, yet she didn’t fully understand the underlying mechanics. She nodded blankly, looking completely innocent. “But now that the parasites are running so rampant, Central Headquarters can’t be safe either. I saw the reports—they said you are desperately needed back there. Don’t you plan to go back and take charge of the situation?”

Before the man could even answer, Pei Xiqing wrapped her arms tightly around his waist, burying her face against his firm abdominal muscles. “They are so annoying. You finally managed to get a vacation.”

Duan Xiaolin looked down at her. “Do you not want me to leave?”

“Selfishly speaking, I’m incredibly reluctant to let you go,” she muttered into his shirt. “But you are the Chief Judge of Franlun after all, and there are countless innocent lives at the base. I can’t be unreasonable. If you feel you absolutely must return to handle the breach, I won’t blame you.”

Besides, Sister Long Yan, Ling Lang, and the other friends who had actively protected her in the past were likely all stationed at the capital. It was impossible for her and Duan Xiaolin to simply sit back in this valley and completely ignore whether those people lived or died.

Duan Xiaolin stroked the top of her head gently. “When the time comes in three days, I’ll take you to see the prime parasite. After that, you can decide whether you want to accompany me back to headquarters.” He paused, his gaze softening. “If you don’t want to go, we’ll simply come back here. You can continue to live exactly the kind of quiet life you want. Just grant me a little time, and I will systematically take care of everything.”

Pei Xiqing looked up. “Is there a massive difference between Central Headquarters and Base Three?”

“Yes.” He lowered his eyes, his expression turning cold. “Headquarters is the core hub of the alliance. Base Three was merely a minor peripheral branch.”

Pei Xiqing had never gotten to see what the capital looked like during her reading of the original text. In fact, she hadn’t even survived long enough to reach that specific narrative arc. All she knew from the lore was that the male and female protagonists eventually thrived within headquarters, rising to a status that was second to none—standing high above tens of thousands of survivors. Later on, the protagonist even completely bypassed the authority of the alliance’s Marshal. Who could stop them when they were hailed as the new generation of saviors of the apocalypse?

Although she harbored a faint curiosity, she got goosebumps the moment she recalled that the capital’s methods for containing zombie breaches might be infinitely more terrifying than anything she had seen. The nature of the dormant virus inside her own body had still not been explained. If she marched into the capital rashly, even with Duan Xiaolin’s absolute protection, it wouldn’t alter the physical reality that she was technically half a zombie. Once the medical divisions uncovered the truth, she was terrified she would become a massive liability, dragging Duan Xiaolin down and forcing him to waste his focus protecting her from his own people.

Pei Xiqing shook her head firmly. “The zombie virus inside me is still highly unstable. It’s fine while we’re isolated in this village because there aren’t any active strains around. During this past month, I haven’t even seen the shadow of a walker, so the virus hasn’t triggered. But if I leave this valley, there’s no telling when we’ll cross paths with a wandering horde. I’m terrified that I won’t be able to maintain control of my consciousness then.”

Duan Xiaolin pinched the back of her neck, his thumb massaging her skin. “If that is your only concern, I promise you I will never let you get caught.”

Pei Xiqing still gently shook her head, refusing the offer. “No, Brother Duan. I don’t want to become a variable that affects your performance. I’m already utterly exhausted just dealing with the chaotic factions out here. I don’t want you to have to split your attention worrying about my safety over there.”

She was currently surviving in a brutal post-apocalyptic wasteland with a dormant virus in her bloodstream, the Qiong Snake totem on her skin, and her own specialized perception abilities. For her, staying alive in this quiet valley was a beautifully simple matter.

Duan Xiaolin studied her face. “Have you firmly decided?”

“Mhm.”

The exact moment the answer left her lips, a sudden wave of apprehension washed over her. Sure enough, when she met the man’s dark green eyes again, her heart skipped a violent beat. His pupils were filled with an overwhelming, profound tenderness, yet they were terrifyingly dark.

“I have absolutely no desire to be separated from you,” he said smoothly, his tone leaving no room for negotiation. “And I thoroughly dislike the concept of you sliding out of my sight again. I have no inherent obligation to preserve anything regarding that base or its directorate.”

Pei Xiqing quickly reached up to clasp his hand. “I know, I know. But if the biological crisis over there is truly hitting a critical threshold, what will happen to Sister Long Yan and Ling Lang?”

“Do you truly believe I would ever abandon you for them?”

“No, that’s not what I meant at all.” Pei Xiqing leaned her weight fully against his chest, her voice softening into a plea. “You must understand—I simply harbor a deep aversion to returning to the capital’s sectors. I despise the political lifestyle there, and my physical anomalies make me entirely unsuited to blend into their high-density zones for long. Just let me inspect the parasite in three days. I desperately want to uncover the exact cellular link between you and that entity, and figure out why its destruction would claim your life.”

Faced with her sudden, yielding dependency, Duan Xiaolin finally let out a low sigh. He possessed the terrifying capability to force a monstrous, dominant parasite into absolute submission, yet he was entirely powerless to make Pei Xiqing blindly follow his executive arrangements.

Pei Xiqing clung to him, pouring out her charm as she practically hung her entire body off his frame. It was only when the man casually slid his hands beneath her thighs to hoist her upward that she realized what was happening.

Duan Xiaolin supported her weight effortlessly with one strong arm, while his other hand reached past her shoulder to unlock the heavy wooden case resting on the study bookshelf. Pei Xiqing was smoothly deposited onto the edge of the mahogany desk right beside the shelf. By turning her head slightly, she could see the exact contents of the opened chest.

The sight of the specialized items inside was pristine and cold, instantly causing a familiar ache to pulse in her lower back and making her legs go entirely weak.

Duan Xiaolin appeared to be methodically selecting a tool. His fingertips paused idly among the neatly organized array of leather and polished metal. Every single movement he made was deliberately, agonizingly slowed down, as if he were actively testing the limits of her endurance.

Seeing the specific restraint his fingers were closing around, Pei Xiqing frantically reached out, clutching his forearm tightly as a wave of pure panic flooded her eyes. “Brother Duan…”

“There is nothing to fear.” He lightly pinched her chin, leaning in until his cheek brushed against hers. His voice was a dark whisper against her skin. “I will only deploy these measures to correct you when you commit an executive error.” He paused, a dangerous glint behind his glasses. “Though, perhaps it is more accurate to define it as a reward.”

Pei Xiqing felt her entire scalp go numb. He looked genuinely, intensely interested in the prospect.

“Don’t,” she stammered, her voice trembling. “Don’t use those on me. I’m terrified.” Worried that she didn’t sound pathetic or vulnerable enough to break his resolve, she deliberately lowered her voice, softening her tone into a desperate whine. “Please… Brother Duan.”

The man let out a low, genuinely amused chuckle at her sudden submission. “That depends entirely on your compliance during our evaluation, doesn’t it? Besides, the dynamic friction doesn’t actually cause significant physical trauma.”

Pei Xiqing stared at him, her eyes wide. “Have you… have you actually tested them?”

“Not in reality,” he murmured, his lips brushing the shell of her ear. “But I have executed the simulations on your body countless times inside my own mind.”

A sudden, surreal realization washed over Pei Xiqing.

He had clearly harbored these exact, dark calculations from the very first moment she had intercepted his unit out in the untamed wilderness. She thoroughly understood the terrifying, predatory darkness hidden beneath this man’s polished, elegant exterior. Having been isolated with him for so long, her cognitive defenses completely short-circuited whenever she was forced to confront his raw intent.

It wasn’t that she was entirely incapable of accepting his nature… but she only possessed the bravado to imagine such scenarios from a safe distance. The exact second the physical apparatus was laid out directly in front of her eyes, the sheer terror was enough to make her knees turn to absolute water, threatening to send her sliding straight onto the floor.

Anyone could talk big when they were safe, but the moment the reality materialized, her heart hammered frantically against her ribs. She was already on the verge of tears before Duan Xiaolin had even unclasped the first restraint.

Chapter 210: I’ve Been Hungry for a Long Time 

Then, the man gently grabbed her ankle. His palm slid down the smooth curve of her calf, sending a warm, tingling sensation through her skin.

Pei Xiqing looked down and saw him wrapping a braided cord around her ankle, from which a pale, pristine white jade token hung. The jade pendant was delicate and small, roughly the size of a pinky finger. It was a sleek little rectangle, incredibly light, and tied securely to her skin. He didn’t just tie it once; it took three loops of the cord to firmly secure it in place.

Pei Xiqing parted her lips slightly, watching him. “This is…”

“I swept everything from my office into that chest when I left the base,” Duan Xiaolin murmured smoothly. “I was just sorting through it and found this, so I’m giving it to you.”

“Have you been preparing for this since back then?” she asked, surprised.

“You made it clear you didn’t want to join a major base, and you were even less thrilled about staying at Central Headquarters,” he replied, looking up at her through his glasses. “So, I made preparations a long time ago.”

Pei Xiqing idly fiddled with the cool jade token. There were no characters engraved on its smooth surface—only the intricate, elegant silhouette of a coiled snake.

“I suppose I don’t have to worry about losing it,” she murmured.

“That’s the idea.”

“Why didn’t you just hang it around my neck?”

“The logistics of that are a bit too conventional,” he said, a slow smile stretching across his lips. “When I first designed it, my original intention was always to fashion an anklet for you.”

To demonstrate, he gently lifted her ankle, holding it in his large palm as he pressed a slow, lingering kiss against the skin right above the token.

“In the initial blueprint, I actually planned to attach a series of small silver bells, wrapping them around your ankle layer after layer.” He deliberately slowed his cadence, his voice dropping into a dark, teasing register as his thumb brushed over the braided cord. “That way, every single time you moved, you would make a sound.”

He leaned in closer. “The bed would be shaking like a sieve, and the chimes would echo through the room. I imagine the melody would be incredibly pleasant to hear.”

Pei Xiqing flinched, instinctively trying to retract her leg, but his grip remained absolute.

“But later,” he continued smoothly, ignoring her panic, “I swapped them out for this jade token instead.”

“Is there… a specific history behind it?” she asked, her voice trembling slightly.

“It functions as a passive defensive ward,” he murmured, his eyes darkening with an intense, proprietary heat. “Besides… you already possess far more beautiful ways to cry out than a cluster of silver bells.”

The jade pendant was flawlessly polished and moist against her skin, and contrasted against her slender, pale ankle, it looked breathtakingly striking—carrying a delicate, almost artistic elegance.

Pei Xiqing let out a soft cough, hurriedly pulling her foot out of his grasp the moment his fingers loosened. But before she could scramble away, his calm, even voice drifted after her. “Next time, I’ll make sure to secure the bells to the rest of your pulse points to make up for the omission.”

“!!!”

Pei Xiqing took a sharp breath, her face burning. He was smiling, but his demeanor was completely unyielding. He was deliberately teasing her, yet she knew with absolute certainty that he fully intended to execute every word of that threat.

Pushing against his chest, she practically scrambled off the mahogany desk. “Xiaobai! Come on! We’re going upstairs to bed!”

Without looking back, she darted out of the study in her slippers. The massive pup immediately bolted up from the rug, happily wagging his tail as he trotted after her heels.

Left alone in the dim study, Duan Xiaolin slowly turned back toward the desk. His gaze went entirely cold, and with a casual flick of his fingers, a localized surge of his latent energy reduced several confidential documents on the desk to a pile of featureless gray ash.

The population of the valley had dropped sharply, but with the combined effort of the remaining residents, the damaged homesteads were completely repaired and reinforced within three days. Now, even if another torrential storm broke over the peaks, the houses would easily withstand the pressure. And if a wandering pack of zombies somehow breached the valley walls, the structural barriers would buy them enough time to mount a defense.

At dawn on the third day, Pei Xiqing and Duan Xiaolin quietly left the village.

After nearly two hours of navigating a rugged route that cut through barren wastelands, dense woodlands, and dried riverbeds, their vehicle finally arrived at the perimeter of the Ghost Market they had infiltrated a month prior.

The concept of a supernatural “ghost market” was merely a carefully fabricated rumor designed to keep scavengers away. In reality, this restricted sector was a massive underground repository utilized exclusively for host parasite containment. Because the organisms systematically tunneled through the subterranean strata, appearing and vanishing without a trace, the locals believed the zone was haunted by phantoms.

They bypassed the industrial laboratory they had previously breached. Instead, Duan Xiaolin guided her toward a separate, more deeply concealed facility buried in the lower bedrock of the sector.

Stepping inside felt like entering a bottomless, concrete abyss. The deeper they advanced into the complex, the more the air filled with a heavy, suffocating chill and a visceral sense of dread.

The core containment cells were located far below the surface. Duan Xiaolin held her hand firmly, guiding her down a pristine flight of stairs until they reached a secure elevator bay. The heavy steel car descended rapidly, finally grinding to a smooth halt at Sublevel Seven.

The doors slid open, and Pei Xiqing stepped out to scan the interior of the lab. At this hour, the sector was completely deserted. The sweeping chamber was dominated by massive mainframe towers and towering automated mechanical arms that resembled giant, dormant robots. This entire facility functioned as an impenetrable cage engineered specifically to suppress a dominant host parasite; every single piece of heavy equipment was hard-wired to disrupt its biological frequency.

The environment was defined by dark, damp concrete and a chilling, subterranean isolation. Walking through a succession of heavily armored security corridors, they finally halted outside a colossal observation bay.

This parasite wasn’t confined within a standard glass specimen vat. Instead, it was entombed behind layer upon layer of reinforced alloy cages. Staring through the thick bars, she could see the silhouette of the massive organism. Its colossal frame was bound in heavy, localized gravity chains, suspended limply in mid-air, entirely restricted from movement.

Its multiple heads hung dejectedly toward the floor. If she hadn’t personally witnessed its savage, world-altering ferocity out in the wilderness, she would have never believed that this pathetic, captive entity was the legendary Nine-Headed Hydra parasite.

Shadow stepped forward, systematically disengaging the primary locks of the outermost barrier. Pei Xiqing instinctively shifted half her weight behind Duan Xiaolin, peering cautiously into the cell.

The exact second her gaze locked onto the specimen, the dormant entity violently snapped its eyes open. Nine massive heads reared back simultaneously, exposing eighteen glowing, unblinking eyes. The sight was so overwhelming that she didn’t even know which pair of eyes to focus on.

“ROAR—!”

“HISS—!”

A chaotic symphony of deafening roars and vicious, sharp hisses erupted from the monster’s multiple throats. It glared down at her with pure, unadulterated hostility, thrashing against its restraints as though it wanted nothing more than to break its chains, plunge through the bars, and violently tear her limb from limb.

Duan Xiaolin calmly stepped directly into her line of sight, shielding her. He reached for the primary control console on the wall, casually adjusting the cellular suppression metrics inside the cage. He cast a single, chilling glance toward the thrashing beast.

In an instant, the Hydra went entirely rigid. The roars died in its throats, and its massive heads dropped back toward the dirt, completely motionless.

Even dominant parasites feared the concept of absolute termination. As long as a handler possessed flawless intelligence regarding their exact biological weaknesses and fatal nerve clusters, even a legendary tier beast could be forced to experience pure terror.

Taming a host required more than advanced hardware and calculated extraction methods; it fundamentally demanded an overwhelming, absolute aura from the tamer himself. The more unbothered and immovable the handler remained, the more the parasite’s primal instincts would panic. Conversely, if a human approached the cage screaming and projecting unstable aggression, the entity would immediately perceive them as an inferior organism—a weak vessel ripe for cellular invasion and genetic takeover.

Absolute authority and crushing power were the only metrics these monsters respected. And it was mathematically undeniable that the man standing before the cage completely overwhelmed the entity in every conceivable category. Therefore, the moment the Hydra processed Duan Xiaolin’s presence, its rabid aggression evaporated into absolute submission.

Suddenly, a mechanism in the ceiling hissed open, and several highly mutated, aggressive zombie variants were dropped straight into the containment bay from the upper levels.

To Pei Xiqing’s absolute shock, the Hydra’s immediate behavioral reflex wasn’t to hunt or consume the undead. Instead, the massive beast began to frantically thrash against its chains, desperately trying to scramble into the furthest, darkest corner of the cage to distance itself from the walkers.

Pei Xiqing blinked, her curiosity piqued. “Don’t parasites view zombies as a primary food source? And walkers usually try to swarm and tear into them the moment they detect their scent. They’re supposed to be mortal enemies contesting the same ecosystem. Why is a tier-one beast hiding like a frightened animal from a few baseline walkers?”

Duan Xiaolin glanced at the display, his tone casual. “Perhaps it’s simply full.”

“Really?” She leaned closer to the viewing port, studying the creature’s slitted eyes. The moment the Hydra looked at the flesh of those walkers, its pupils glowed with a feral, desperate green light. It was a textbook biological indicator that the beast had been starving for a very long time.

“Ignore its posturing,” he murmured, gently nudging her shoulder. “If you want to analyze its frequency or extract data, you can step closer to the inner barrier.”

Pei Xiqing nodded, stepping past the primary threshold until she was standing right outside the final layer of the alloy cage.

Inside the cell, the dropped zombies had already begun to frantically tear into one another, completely driven mad by the confined space. In their mindless, violent thrashing, one of the walkers slammed hard against the inner bars right in front of her face, its snapping jaws missing her by a mere hair.

Pei Xiqing didn’t flinch; she was entirely immune to the baseline pathogen. But as she stood in such immediate proximity to the active virus, she instinctively raised her arm to check the state of her skin.

According to her usual biological baseline, the mere atmospheric proximity of active walkers should have instantly triggered her latent virus, causing thick, necrotic patches of corpse spots to bloom across her flesh. Yet, even with the snapping zombies pressed directly against the bars right in front of her, it took a long, drawn-out interval before a single, tiny discoloration—barely the size of a fingernail—sluggishly manifested on her forearm.

She froze, staring down at her skin in absolute bewilderment.

Behind her, Duan Xiaolin’s gaze sharpened. Having meticulously monitored her vitals, he clearly noticed the mathematical anomaly the exact same second she did. His expression turning grim, he strode forward, his large hand instantly clamping around her wrist to pull her arm up for inspection.

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