Chapter 45: The Zombie King’s Cook
“Hiss!” The half-human, half-zombie’s jaw split wide open. One side was a mess of torn flesh and blood, while the other exposed yellowed, decaying bone. Nanjiao tightened the vine in his hand, forcing the grotesque creature to let out another sharp cry of pain.
“Gaha!” Gaha didn’t show a single ounce of hesitation, immediately stepping forward to shield Song Yuqing.
Song Yuqing carefully examined the monster. Looking closely at the human half of its face, she finally recognized who it was: Chen Ke. It was the loyal follower who had clung to Lin Han, the unfortunate victim who had been dragged away by the Golden-Eyed Zombie King. Had the Zombie King spared her from being eaten, choosing instead to assimilate her for some twisted purpose?
“Chen Ke? Are you still alive?” Even as she said it, Song Yuqing felt the word “alive” didn’t quite fit, but she couldn’t think of a better way to phrase it.
Hearing her name, the half-zombie grew visibly more agitated, struggling frantically against her restraints to pounce at Song Yuqing.
“You know this thing? Who is it?” Nanjiao asked, using his vines to bind the creature tightly like a rice dumpling before turning to listen to Song Yuqing’s explanation.
Song Yuqing was just about to answer when the sharp, distinct sound of a pigeon cooing echoed from the window. The half-zombie flinched in terror at the sound. Nanjiao subconsciously tightened his vines, but the creature suddenly erupted with an astonishing surge of terrifying strength, violently snapping the thick vines into several useless pieces.
Nanjiao and Gaha reacted instantly, lunging forward to restrain her again. But the half-zombie spun around and vaulted straight out the window without a backward glance, leaving the three of them staring at the empty frame in total bewilderment.
“Damn it, she got away!”
“After her!” Song Yuqing yelled, spinning on her heel and sprinting out the door with Gaha hot on her heels.
Nanjiao cast one last, reluctant look at the scattered electronic debris littering the internet cafe’s floor. Letting out a heavy sigh, he abandoned his salvage mission and sprinted after them.
The internet cafe was located on the second floor. By the time Song Yuqing and the others bolted down the stairs and hit the street, the half-zombie had vanished completely. Seeing they had lost their target, Nanjiao turned back, intending to head upstairs to finish his scavenging, but Gaha firmly grabbed his arm to stop him.
Gaha flared her nostrils, sniffing the air intensely before pointing a pale finger across the street. Song Yuqing and Nanjiao quickly realized the zombie girl had locked onto Chen Ke’s lingering scent. Without wasting another second, they sprinted in the direction Gaha indicated. After tracking the trail for about a kilometer, Gaha finally skidded to a halt inside a deserted, overgrown park.
Coo—coo—
In the southwest corner of the park stood a grove of dead trees, their barren branches draped in what appeared to be heavy clusters of white objects. From a distance, it almost looked like a blanket of fresh snow.
Coo—coo—
Suddenly startled, the white layer covering the dead branches fractured into hundreds of white doves, exploding into the air in a chaotic, fluttering frenzy.
“Whoa!!!” Nanjiao shouted in pure excitement, earning simultaneous looks of absolute disgust from both Gaha and Song Yuqing.
“What’s wrong with you? Have you seriously never seen a flock of pigeons before?” Song Yuqing asked.
“You don’t understand!” Nanjiao beamed. “Pigeons are the ultimate, naturally evolved doomsday delivery couriers!”
He explained that Base Zero was already training a flock of mutated pigeons to operate as a messenger network, and the initial results were phenomenal.
“If we can capture and tame this flock, the Doomsday Online Shopping Platform will be fully operational in no time!” Nanjiao cheered. He felt incredibly lucky today. Every logistical nightmare blocking their path was resolving itself one by one. First, the botanical signal tower, and now an entire fleet of avian delivery drivers—all practically falling right into their laps.
Song Yuqing frowned. Nanjiao’s attention span was painfully short, constantly drifting to the next shiny object. It was getting incredibly annoying.
“Gaha, was the Nanjiao you knew back then always this scatterbrained?” Song Yuqing turned her head and asked.
Gaha blinked, momentarily stunned as a fleeting memory flashed through her mind—a vision of Nanjiao training alongside her, his expression deeply serious and entirely focused on their martial arts drills.
Before Gaha could even shake her head, Nanjiao began hollering again. “Catch the pigeons!” These birds were indeed mutated variants. With a little professional taming, they could be transformed into highly obedient couriers dedicated to serving the survivor camps. However, while they looked like a charming, harmless patch of snow when clustered together, their dispersed flight was a nightmare. They acted like an erratic hailstorm, entirely ready to pelt anyone standing below with a barrage of hard droppings.
“Manager Song, it’s time for you to shine!” Nanjiao yelled. He thrust his hands upward, launching a massive, sprawling vine net high into the sky, effectively trapping a large chunk of the flock mid-air. “Quick, vacuum them into your spatial void!”
The spatial psychics back at Base Zero had already engineered a highly specialized system for conditioning pigeons under the strict guidance of expert handlers. Whether Song Yuqing actually wanted the job or not, Nanjiao had already executive-decided to transfer everything he knew about the training protocol onto her plate.
But before Song Yuqing could even trigger her ability, the half-zombie burst out of nowhere, launching herself high into the air. Swiping her razor-sharp, mutated nails, she violently sliced right through the thick vine net. As the panicked pigeons spilled out, she whipped open a large burlap sack and scooped them out of the sky. One desperate pigeon managed to wriggle out of the opening, its wings frantically flapping. The half-zombie simply snatched it out of the air, viciously bit its head clean off, and tossed the bloody, twitching carcass back into the sack.
Song Yuqing, Gaha, and Nanjiao froze in absolute horror. Watching a creature that still retained half of its human face casually execute such a savage, animalistic act was deeply jarring.
Jolted out of her shock by Nanjiao’s urgent shouting, Song Yuqing forced herself to channel her spatial power, vacuuming the remaining pigeons trapped inside the torn net directly into her vault. In an instant, her normally quiet internal storage was completely overrun by a chaotic frenzy of fluttering wings. Without a spare second to focus on disciplining her new flock, she bolted forward alongside Nanjiao and Gaha, chasing after the half-zombie as she fled with her sack of birds.
Gaha pushed her agility to the absolute limit, moving like a blur as she stayed hot on the half-zombie’s heels. Song Yuqing and Nanjiao trailed further behind, struggling to keep pace. The chase led them deep into a labyrinthine grid of alleys, littered with countless narrow forks. In a single moment of carelessness, Song Yuqing and Nanjiao took a wrong turn, completely losing sight of both Gaha and their target.
As Song Yuqing and Nanjiao leaned against a brick wall, gasping heavily for breath, Gaha suddenly slipped out from an alleyway behind them. The fresh scratches on her face were already rapidly healing. Without making a sound, she grabbed both of their hands and led them on tiptoes toward a small, jagged hole at the base of a dead-end wall.
Song Yuqing and Nanjiao shared a tense look, tacitly agreeing to stay completely silent as they followed Gaha’s lead. Crawling through the cramped opening, they emerged into an abandoned, suffocatingly gloomy indoor vegetable market. The concrete floor was entirely slick with a thick layer of wet mucus and scattered with black, unidentifiable lumps.
A putrid, overwhelming stench of rotting fish and decaying flesh hit Song Yuqing like a physical wall, making her stomach violently churn as she fought down the urge to vomit.
“Shh!” Nanjiao hissed, raising his index finger to his lips as his eyes locked onto the center of the market. Without warning, Gaha forcefully pressed her hands down on the tops of Nanjiao and Song Yuqing’s heads, forcing the three of them to duck deep into the shadows beneath a heavy concrete butcher’s stall.
Song Yuqing suddenly felt something squirming beneath her boot. Slowly lifting her foot, she recoiled in disgust. A massive, pulsing white maggot the size of a cigarette lighter was slowly dragging itself across the slime. She frantically shuffled backward, suppressing the desperate urge to rip her boots off and throw them across the room. Noticing her distress, Gaha urgently poked Nanjiao’s arm. Catching the hint, Nanjiao swallowed his own nausea, sprouted a thin vine from his fingertip, and flicked the grotesque bug into the darkness. Thoroughly disgusted, he immediately snapped off the tip of the vine that had touched the maggot and threw it away.
“Hiss!”
“Hiss…”
Song Yuqing carefully peeked out from the side of the stone counter, tracing the source of the noise. About twenty yards away, Chen Ke was sitting with her back to them. She was pulling a dying pigeon from her burlap sack and appeared to be meticulously plucking its feathers. Crouching directly in front of her were two Golden-Eyed Zombie Kings. Their backs were heavily hunched, and their glowing, amber eyes were locked intensely onto Chen Ke—or, more accurately, onto the fresh pigeon clutched in her bloody hands.
Song Yuqing rapidly calculated the odds. With the combined combat power of Gaha and Nanjiao, they should easily be able to overpower the two high-tier variants and capture Chen Ke alive for a proper interrogation. She turned to look at Gaha, fully expecting a nod of agreement—but the zombie girl firmly shook her head. Gaha’s heightened undead senses were screaming at her. The two Golden-Eyed variants sitting in the center of the market radiated a terrifying, suffocating level of power that vastly eclipsed her own. If they wanted to survive this encounter, a direct, head-on assault was suicide. They would have to outsmart them.
