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

Chapter 265: You Idiot

Pei Xiqing’s mind was completely preoccupied with the rigid, lethal rules of the plot. When Ling Lang announced he was going to lead the vanguard into battle, she had called out to him on pure instinct.

But when he actually stopped and looked back at her—his eyes carrying a faint, unmistakable glimmer of expectation—she opened her mouth and found she had absolutely no idea what to say.

In a stark departure from his usual short temper, Ling Lang seemed incredibly patient with her. He didn’t even mind that she was standing there with her mouth open, failing to articulate a single complete sentence.

He just stood there, watching her quietly.

The surrounding streets were completely deserted; the only movement came from the dry, fallen leaves being swept up by the evening breeze.

The temperature had dropped significantly, and the night air carried a sharp, biting chill. The wind ruffled the few strands of stark white hair falling across Ling Lang’s forehead. He squinted slightly against the cold, spinning his military cap idly in his hand. He raised an eyebrow, projecting an air of total nonchalance. “What is it? Has it been so long since you’ve seen me that you suddenly have a million things to say? Or did those parasites scare you so badly that your brain has officially flatlined?”

Pei Xiqing gathered her thoughts for a moment before speaking softly. “Just… be careful out there. Come back safely.”

Ling Lang’s cocky smile faded slightly. He casually waved a hand. “I know.”

“Do you know what those parasites are most afraid of?” she pressed.

“Do you?”

“I’m not entirely sure either, but…”

“Then why bring it up? Isn’t that just a bunch of useless nonsense?”

Pei Xiqing gritted her teeth in frustration. “I’m just trying to gauge how much tactical data you actually have on the swarms, so you don’t end up getting slaughtered out there on the battlefield!”

Ling Lang was stunned for a second, then burst into genuine laughter. “What does it matter to you? Just focus on taking care of yourself. Don’t get sick again, and don’t cause any more trouble for my brother. As for the war against those beasts, the situation hasn’t deteriorated to the point where I need you to play armchair commander.”

“Just let me finish!” she snapped, feeling unusually annoyed and deeply embarrassed.

Ling Lang shrugged, maintaining his nonchalant facade. “Fine. Go ahead.”

“Although I can’t confirm the exact biological weaknesses of the parasites, if you find yourself backed into a corner out there, you should try utilizing the raw energy within a crystal core.”

As she spoke, she stepped forward and opened her palm. A single, flawless crystal core lay quietly resting against her skin.

Ling Lang stared at it. “I thought you absorbed the entire cache. How do you still have one of these?”

“I hid this one away a while ago…”

Long before the recent crisis, she had meticulously hoarded every single crystal core Duan Xiaolin had ever scavenged for her. After the situation began to escalate, her paranoia had kicked in, and she had secretly tucked this specific core away as an absolute last resort.

“Keep it for yourself,” he refused flatly, taking a step back.

“No. I’m giving this to you.”

“Are you out of your mind?” he snapped, genuine anger flashing in his eyes. “Why would I ever need something like this? Who do you think you are? I don’t need your charity… You need to hold onto your own life-saving equipment…”

In the original timeline of the novel, Ling Lang was perhaps only mentioned in passing; he was a minor character with very few actual scenes. But reality was different from a book. In any given world, the narrative didn’t exclusively revolve around the male and female protagonists.

The world they currently inhabited was incredibly real and terrifyingly cruel. Only by experiencing the apocalypse firsthand could one truly appreciate the vibrant, fiercely independent lives of the people fighting to survive within it.

Ling Lang was exactly that kind of person. He was real.

She didn’t know what his ultimate fate would be once he marched out to the front lines, nor did she know how the battle would end. But she firmly believed that, in some matters, human willpower could shatter predetermined fate.

“If you don’t take it, I am never speaking to you again,” she threatened.

Ling Lang kicked a loose stone at his feet, glaring at her with intense frustration. “You’re threatening a commanding officer, you idiot.”

Despite his harsh words, he reached out and snatched the crystal core from her palm. Seeing that, Pei Xiqing couldn’t help but laugh out loud. “You’re no better than I am.”

Just come back soon.

“I know, I know… You talk way too much nonsense…”

Ling Lang turned and walked away briskly, his grip tight around the crystal core hidden in his palm.

She watched his retreating back until he disappeared around the corner. Looking down, she saw that Xiaobai was completely oblivious to the emotional exchange, happily munching on some fresh grass sprouting from the cracks in the pavement. She tugged gently on his leash. “Let’s go, buddy. Time to head back.”

For over ten days, the central headquarters remained eerily calm, completely isolated from the chaos of the outside world. Pei Xiqing had absolutely no intelligence on what was happening beyond the walls, and it was highly unlikely that any outsiders could easily breach the capital’s fortified perimeter.

Operating under Duan Xiaolin’s absolute protection, she possessed the security clearance to freely enter and exit virtually any sector within the headquarters. The only restriction was that she was strictly forbidden from stepping outside the main gates.

If the capital had felt anything like the village or Base Three, she might have felt more at ease and tried not to overthink the situation. Unfortunately, with the exception of Shadow and Qiu Chao, the pedestrians on the streets and the various military staff operating the headquarters… simply didn’t feel like living human beings.

When she had voiced this observation to Duan Xiaolin, he had just laughed and told her she was overthinking things, explaining that the populace at headquarters were merely the products of extreme, long-term domestication.

She had replied, “What’s the difference between that and a corpse being puppeted back to life?”

The man had smiled and asked if she remembered seeing the infected zombies locked inside the observation cages along the streets of Base Three.

“Of course I remember.”

Duan Xiaolin had elaborated with a chilling smile: “When a zombie is subjected to prolonged imprisonment and continuous drug injections, its nervous system gradually numbs, and it completely loses its primal aggression. That exact same methodology applies to managing the civilian populace at headquarters.”

She had been struck speechless for a long time.

The reinforced cages lining the streets of Base Three were prisons for the undead. Meanwhile, the crushing, high-intensity labor and the absolute systemic control of the headquarters served as an invisible cage for the living.

Unable to leave the capital and unwilling to cause any operational headaches for Duan Xiaolin, she could still vividly sense the sheer, catastrophic scale of the ongoing war. She felt it in the emergency floodlights that burned throughout the night across the compound, in the desperate prisoners crammed into the overflowing water dungeon, and in the sheer volume of refugees gathering near the outer perimeter.

It was highly probable that the world outside the walls had completely collapsed into chaos, resulting in catastrophic casualties. Caught in the combined crossfire of the parasite swarms and the undead hordes, countless civilians had undoubtedly died on the roads, failing to even reach the shadow of the capital’s walls.

However, she genuinely hadn’t expected the military high command to actively begin accepting external refugees into the grid.

Having stayed cooped up in the villa for two or three days, she finally took Xiaobai out for a walk. She was stunned to find massive, snaking lines stretching down both sides of the once-orderly commercial streets, as if the population were queuing up for emergency supply rations.

The influx of refugees from the outer sectors had surged into the capital in massive waves. In a terrifyingly short amount of time, they had practically overrun all the major thoroughfares, leaving Pei Xiqing with barely any room to walk. She was aggressively bumped into several times as she tried to navigate the crowds.

The refugees seemed frantic, their eyes locked on the supply depots, their steps hurried and desperate. They were completely oblivious to Pei Xiqing standing on the curb. When they inevitably collided with her, their faces twisted with immediate impatience and aggression.

However, the second their eyes registered the high-quality fabric of her clothes and her clean, healthy complexion, their anger instantly evaporated into sheer terror. They immediately bowed their heads in submission, stammering, “Please excuse us, Madam. We deeply apologize for bumping into you.”

Pei Xiqing shook her head gently. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

Watching them scurry away in fear, she tightened her grip on Xiaobai’s leash, deciding it was best to head back to the villa.

But Xiaobai seemed to be completely bewitched. He stubbornly dug his paws in, insisting on shoving his way straight into the dense sea of people queuing up ahead.

She frantically tried to pull him back. “Xiaobai! Heel!”

The dog ignored her, lunging directly into the crowd and instantly disrupting the rationing line. She rushed forward, hastily apologizing to the startled refugees. Just as Xiaobai finally slammed to a halt, before Pei Xiqing could even register what he was tracking, a rancid, foul stench hit her nostrils.

She instinctively clamped a hand over her mouth and nose, tracing the source of the rot.

A grotesque, human-faced octopus was slowly crawling across the scalp of a refugee standing in line. Its razor-sharp tentacles were actively piercing into the man’s skull, and the creature began to ravenously devour his neural tissue right in front of the horrified crowd.

Someone nearby shrieked in absolute terror.

The orderly rationing line instantly shattered as people scrambled wildly in every direction.

“Help… help me…” the victim gasped, reaching a trembling hand out toward Pei Xiqing. The foul, acidic saliva dripping from the mutated parasite on his head sizzled as it hit his skin, filling the air with the sickening stench of burning flesh.

Pei Xiqing instantly dropped the leash. “Xiaobai! Attack!”

The massive white dog launched himself through the air.

His jaws clamped down violently, tearing the parasite completely off the man’s skull in a single, brutal motion.

The parasite and the dog hit the pavement in a tangle of limbs, the creature’s tentacles whipping wildly as they desperately tried to wrap around Xiaobai’s muzzle.

The dog didn’t give it a chance. Xiaobai bit down with bone-crushing force, violently shaking his head from side to side. Combined with his terrifying bite strength, the parasite’s central mass was utterly pulverized in less than five seconds.

Dropping the mangled carcass, Xiaobai proudly carried the remains over to Pei Xiqing, wagging his tail frantically as if demanding praise for his flawless execution.

Pei Xiqing patted his head affectionately, then squatted down to examine the remains of the parasite.

It was roughly the size of a human palm. Its skin was coated in a vile, sticky mucus that reeked of decay. Yet, despite its grotesque appearance, it possessed an incredibly terrifying evolutionary trait: it could seamlessly camouflage itself entirely within a human host.

If it hadn’t been for the overwhelming stench of rot that had triggered Xiaobai’s predatory instincts, the creature would have been virtually impossible to spot hiding in the dense crowd.

The parasite had been completely neutralized by the bite. She pulled out a handkerchief and carefully wiped the toxic, sticky fluid from Xiaobai’s muzzle.

She then turned her attention to the man on the ground, who was groaning in agony and clutching his bleeding scalp. “Did this parasite breach the perimeter inside you?” she demanded. “How exactly did you bring it past the checkpoints?”

“No… I… I have absolutely no idea!” the man sobbed hysterically. “It just suddenly burst out of my ear canal! Madam! Please, you have to save me! I haven’t been fully infected yet, my neural pathways are still intact! I swear, I will never turn into a zombie!”

Chapter 266: Ants

The man grew increasingly agitated as he spoke, his grip tightening on Pei Xiqing’s clothes, a glint of madness in his eyes.

Pei Xiqing gently tugged her sleeve free. “Try not to panic,” she said. “That thing was feeding on your brain. You need immediate medical attention. We can worry about the rest once your test results come back.”

When Pei Xiqing turned around, she saw that the people who had just been tightly packed in line had scattered in the blink of an eye, putting as much distance between themselves and her as possible.

It made sense. The viruses carried by these parasites were like ticking time bombs; no one wanted to risk getting close.

She helped the trembling man to his feet. “This is the central headquarters,” she reassured him. “You don’t need to worry about chaos breaking out here. Just trust the people in charge.”

Seeing her calm demeanor, a hesitant refugee took a cautious step forward. “Miss, are you a resident of headquarters?”

“I guess you could say that.”

The man stared at her in awe. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen! People in these big bases are definitely different from us folks out there.”

Many others in the crowd were looking at her face now. They marveled at the seemingly perfect conditions of headquarters, which somehow allowed a woman to remain so pristine in the middle of the apocalypse. Unlike them, who were weather-beaten, calloused, and hardened, even the prettiest girls they knew couldn’t compare to a fraction of her beauty.

“Miss, you just told us to trust the people in charge,” another person chimed in. “Do you know who’s actually running this place now? We just got here, and we’re completely in the dark.”

“Huh? How did you get in?” Pei Xiqing asked, puzzled. “Didn’t anyone brief you on the rules here?”

“We… we were just let in without any explanation,” a woman stammered. “They didn’t even give us a medical check-up!”

“Really?”

“We were all hiding outside the perimeter,” a man explained. “We didn’t know the exact coordinates of headquarters or how to get in, so we hid wherever we could—caves, ravines, basements… We were holding out for as long as possible. But then, out of nowhere, a few heavy doors in the outer walls just opened up, and they let us all inside!”

Pei Xiqing almost thought she had misheard them.

“Since you’re a distinguished lady from headquarters, you must know who gave the order,” the first man said earnestly. “We were all hoping to go and thank him personally! If he hadn’t ordered those doors opened, we would have never made it inside.”

“If they had any specific arrangements for you, they would have made an appearance,” Pei Xiqing replied gently. “Since they haven’t shown up, you should just focus on resting for now.”

“I see…”

“Miss, do you know how much longer we have to wait in this line? We’re starving!”

Pei Xiqing gazed down the street. The line of refugees stretched on as far as the eye could see. She wasn’t entirely clear on the logistics here, nor did she have the authority to interfere with the rationing.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know.”

“Alright, we’ll just have to keep waiting. Let’s just hope the supplies don’t run out before we get to the front.”

A murmur of agreement rippled through the crowd, many whispering silent prayers.

A few moments later, a medical team arrived and escorted the man who had been attacked by the parasite away.

Pei Xiqing turned and walked away with Xiaobai, leaving the line to slowly return to order. As she left, she couldn’t help but overhear the snippets of conversation behind her.

“The leaders here are so kind! They actually took us all in. The outside world isn’t a place for humans anymore; it’s terrifying…”

“You said it… If I hadn’t made it inside, I would have been snatched by those parasites and used as an incubator by now. Disgusting!”

“How did our perfectly good base get completely destroyed like that? Sigh…”

Shortly after Pei Xiqing and Xiaobai had walked away, a luxury car drove up alongside the line. The stylishly dressed woman in the passenger seat leaned over and laid on the horn incessantly.

Seeing the mass of people blocking the street, she complained, “Brother Lin, my stomach hurts! I’m rushing to the hospital for my prenatal checkup! Why are all these filthy refugees blocking the road? Are they even going to let anyone pass?! This is so annoying!”

She pouted, her eyes flashing with extreme displeasure. “Why are there so many random nobodies flooding into headquarters? It’s unbearable! What do they think this place is, a public market? How can they just crowd the streets like this? They’re making the whole place look like a slum!”

The man she called “Brother Lin” was sharply dressed in a military uniform, handsome with an air of arrogant superiority. He pushed his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose and cast a disdainful glance at the crowd.

“They’re just a bunch of lowlifes. Don’t get angry over a few ants.” He honestly had no idea what the high command was thinking, letting all this filth inside the walls.

“But my stomach hurts so much!” Ma Mengjia whined. “Will the baby be okay? They’re delaying my checkup! What if this affects the baby?”

The man laughed softly. “What’s the problem? With me here, I won’t make you wait.”

Before Ma Mengjia could even ask what he was planning to do, the man slammed his foot on the gas and accelerated straight into the crowded line ahead.

Meanwhile, Shadow was standing a short distance away, maintaining a discreet perimeter. Seeing Pei Xiqing walk out of the crowd with Xiaobai, he quickly approached.

“Did that thing touch you?”

“No,” she replied.

“Brother Duan will definitely have Qiu Chao run a full examination on you anyway.”

“I think we should get Xiaobai checked out first,” she laughed. “That kind of stuff doesn’t really affect me. Xiaobai was the one biting down on it pretty hard.”

Shadow nodded in agreement.

Pei Xiqing looked back at the crowds. “Why are there suddenly so many people inside?”

“I don’t know either. You should ask Brother Duan,” Shadow suggested.

“Alright.”

They had only taken about a dozen steps when a chorus of agonizing, tragic screams erupted behind them.

Shadow instantly stepped in front of Pei Xiqing to shield her as they both whipped around.

The once relatively orderly line had been violently torn apart. The culprit’s vehicle ruthlessly ran over the legs of several fallen refugees before speeding away into the distance.

Chapter 267: Retain Your Abilities

The refugees didn’t even get a clear look at the perpetrator. In the eyes of the elite, the crowd was nothing more than a swarm of ants—inconspicuous and entirely disposable.

The victims could only help each other up, limping to the side of the road to quietly tend to their crushed legs and bleeding wounds. None of them had seen the driver’s face, nor did they recognize the make of the luxury vehicle. They only knew one absolute truth: anyone arrogant enough to speed down a main thoroughfare within the central headquarters possessed an extraordinary status, one that a mere refugee could never afford to offend.

As a result, no one dared to speak out or voice their grievances. They simply swallowed their pain in silence.

However, just because the refugees couldn’t see clearly didn’t mean Shadow hadn’t caught the details.

“Who was that?” Pei Xiqing asked, her brow furrowed in anger. “How could they drive like that?”

“Lin Zhou,” Shadow replied flatly.

He elaborated, “He’s the son of an army battalion commander. He’s incredibly accustomed to throwing his weight around headquarters. Still, it’s unbelievable that he would actually run people over in broad daylight just to clear a path.”

“Lin Zhou…” she murmured. She didn’t recognize the name.

“I will report everything that transpired here to Brother Duan,” Shadow assured her. “He will handle the matter.”

“Good.”

The severely injured refugees were quickly carried away by a medical response team. Pei Xiqing and Shadow turned around, making their way back toward the villa.

As they walked, she couldn’t help but ask, “Were all these people really granted entry by the Marshal’s direct order?”

Shadow gave a slight nod. “Yes.”

“That is genuinely bizarre…”

“What do you find strange?”

“Breaching the headquarters perimeter is supposed to be incredibly difficult, requiring multiple, highly complex security and quarantine checkpoints,” Pei Xiqing reasoned. “How was such a massive influx of civilians allowed inside without the military being one hundred percent certain they weren’t carrying parasites or the zombie virus?”

Shadow paused for a moment before answering. “Then I don’t know.”

Pei Xiqing couldn’t shake the feeling that a deeply sinister motive was driving the decision.

Returning to the villa with these troubling questions weighing heavily on her mind, Pei Xiqing immediately caught the rich aroma of food the second she opened the front door.

The man had his back to her, working quietly in the kitchen.

“Brother Duan, I’m back,” she called out.

After swapping her shoes for comfortable slippers, she couldn’t stop herself from venting about what had just happened. “The people in that luxury car were so utterly unreasonable,” she complained, walking into the kitchen. “Headquarters has already taken in a massive wave of refugees, and the streets are completely packed. That specific corner was a rationing distribution point! How could they just accelerate straight through a dense crowd? God only knows how many people were seriously injured.”

The man calmly set out a fresh bowl of premium dog food, placing it on the floor for Xiaobai.

As he moved, the cuffs of his expensive dress shirt rode up slightly, revealing the corded muscle of his forearms. He didn’t even blink at her story, merely asking in a calm, flat tone, “What exactly were you doing at that distribution point?”

“I found a parasite there!” Pei Xiqing replied instinctively. “It was literally feeding on a man’s head! Brother Duan, did you know? That parasite was just clamped directly onto his scalp in the middle of a crowd, openly sucking his blood. It was terrifying…”

As she spoke, she finally looked up and met his gaze. Seeing the absolute, freezing coldness in the man’s dark eyes, she belatedly snapped her mouth shut.

Sensing the danger, Pei Xiqing quickly leaned closer, attempting to change the subject. “Oh, let’s not talk about that anymore. What delicious food did you make today, Brother Duan? My mouth has been watering ever since I walked through the door.”

“Where did the parasite go?” he asked softly.

He deliberately raised a hand, gently pinching her cheek. “Let me see?”

Pei Xiqing flushed, batting his hand away. “Be serious.”

The faint smile playing on his lips vanished completely. “You have only just recovered from a catastrophic biological collapse. The parasite’s virus still poses a lethal risk to your system.”

“I know… I didn’t mean to get close. I was just walking Xiaobai, and he spotted it first. By the time I even realized what was happening, Xiaobai had already dragged me over to it. But don’t worry too much! That thing didn’t bite me at all. Even if it had tried, Xiaobai would have shredded it before it even touched me.”

Duan Xiaolin remained unnervingly calm. He cast a cold, indifferent glance down at the massive white beast currently happily munching on its kibble.

“If there is a next time, I will personally break your legs,” he stated flatly.

Xiaobai immediately shrank his neck back. The massive dog flattened himself against the floor, looking utterly aggrieved, entirely lacking the courage to even meet the man’s gaze.

Pei Xiqing felt the threat was a bit sudden, though she admitted she had acted impulsively. When she had spotted the parasite, her first reaction hadn’t been to call for military backup or run away; instead, she had stared at the horrifying creature with intense, morbid curiosity.

Her courage had truly been forcibly honed by the sheer volume of absurd, terrifying events she had survived in this apocalyptic world. Before all this, just the sight of a parasite would have sent her screaming in terror.

Feeling a twinge of guilt for worrying him, she gently tugged on his sleeve. “Please don’t be angry.”

Duan Xiaolin grasped her wrist and slowly lifted her arm, as if trying to confirm a specific metric.

Curious, Pei Xiqing followed his gaze, looking down at her own skin.

She saw absolutely nothing unusual.

A flash of distinct disappointment flickered through his dark eyes.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“There are active zombies currently breaching the headquarters perimeter,” he said quietly. “But you aren’t reacting to them.”

Pei Xiqing finally realized what he was doing. He was checking her arm to see if the dark, necrotic corpse spots had surfaced, just as they always had when she was in proximity to the undead.

Those corpse spots had once been her greatest, most terrifying weakness. But now, they represented her absolute strongest biological defense—a metric he clearly cared about immensely.

“When you engineered that false pregnancy, didn’t that specific procedure permanently extract the virus from my system?” she asked, confused.

“Yes. But I explicitly instructed Qiu Chao to ensure that the procedure preserved your sensory abilities.”

Pei Xiqing’s mouth dropped open. “Huh?”

Ever since she woke up from the coma, she had genuinely believed she was now indistinguishable from a normal human being. And now he was casually telling her that Qiu Chao had deliberately engineered her system to retain her zombie-sensing abilities?

Then why hadn’t she exhibited a single physical reaction to the threat today?

The man’s deep eyes swirled with complex, heavy emotions. He lifted her hand and gently pressed a kiss against her knuckles.

Pei Xiqing’s heart skipped a beat, her body instantly going soft under his touch.

“The influx of refugees you saw today is nothing more than a calculated exit strategy engineered by the high command,” Duan Xiaolin revealed smoothly. “Within the next two months, the military elite intend to completely abandon the central headquarters.”

“An exit strategy? Abandoning the capital?” Pei Xiqing was stunned.

“Why else do you think those massive crowds were so easily permitted past the reinforced checkpoints? If those civilians weren’t still incredibly useful to the high command’s survival, they never would have been allowed to set foot inside.”

“The elite are evacuating…” she murmured, piecing it together. “But they are forcing the refugees to stay behind?”

“Yes.”

“How… how could they do something so monstrous?”

Duan Xiaolin pulled out a chair and sat down at the dining table, his demeanor entirely unfazed. He showed absolutely zero surprise at the horrific tactical maneuver.

To him, it seemed that sacrificing tens of thousands of desperate civilians to act as biological bait—using them to bog down the parasite swarms and zombie hordes while the elite escaped—was a perfectly logical, standard military operation.

“Those people were never going to survive the apocalypse anyway,” he stated coldly.

“Why do you say that?”

Sitting down, he seemed to only just notice the dried blood staining the webbing between his fingers—a remnant from his brutal work in the water dungeon earlier that day, when his hand had punched straight through a prisoner’s chest cavity.

The man smoothly pulled a sterile tissue from the dispenser, leaning back in his chair as he meticulously wiped the evidence away. Before Pei Xiqing could even process the dark stains, his hands were entirely clean, showing absolutely nothing unusual.

Pei Xiqing hadn’t caught the subtle movement. Her mind was entirely consumed by the fate of the refugees who had entered the capital believing they had finally found salvation. Even having somewhat adapted to the crushing cruelty of this apocalypse, she couldn’t help but feel a deep, sickening unease in her stomach.

Regardless of whose orders were driving the operation, or what the ultimate strategic goals were, the mass sacrifice appeared to be an unchangeable, predetermined fact.

She picked up her chopsticks, staring blankly at the lavish food in front of her. She had completely lost her appetite.

Duan Xiaolin smoothly served her half a bowl of clear broth. “Drink something light to settle your stomach.”

Pei Xiqing took a small, obedient sip of the soup, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Are you still planning to return to the water dungeon?”

Logically speaking, with the world outside rapidly collapsing into total chaos, there was absolutely no strategic value in keeping those condemned prisoners alive in the subterranean cells; they were merely a drain on critical resources. The truly heinous criminals should have been executed or thrown to the swarms long ago.

“I am,” he confirmed.

“The last time I was down there… I saw you actively hunting for crystal cores inside their bodies. That’s directly related to my condition, isn’t it?”

Qiu Chao had explicitly mentioned that her current biological stability still required a steady influx of high-grade crystal cores to maintain. If her condition couldn’t be permanently stabilized… would this bloody, horrific harvesting cycle have to continue indefinitely?

Duan Xiaolin placed a tender piece of meat onto her plate. “Eat more.”

He didn’t answer her question.

Pei Xiqing felt a sharp pang of frustration and upset.

They ate the rest of their meal at an agonizingly slow pace.

She would far rather endure the terrifying, mutating horrors of the water dungeon herself than allow Duan Xiaolin to continue risking his humanity and his life down there just to keep her stable. She despised this vicious cycle.

She only managed a few more bites before setting her chopsticks down definitively. She grabbed Xiaobai’s leash, leading the dog out to the courtyard pool to thoroughly wash his mouth out.

Duan Xiaolin didn’t stop her. He simply kept his dark eyes locked onto her silhouette, watching her through the glass window.

After dinner, the heavy silence between them remained unbroken. The only sound in the villa was Xiaobai letting out soft, humble whimpers as he settled onto his bed.

Pei Xiqing dawdled as long as she could while taking a hot shower. When she finally emerged, wearing a soft silk nightgown and towel-drying her hair, the man was already locked inside his ground-floor study, conducting a secure meeting with someone over the comms.

The heavy oak door was pulled tightly shut. The soundproofing was absolute; even pressing her ear against the wood, she wouldn’t have been able to hear a single syllable. Peering through the exterior windows would be far too conspicuous.

Pei Xiqing’s long, damp hair cascaded down her back like a dark waterfall. The upstairs hallway was dimly lit, casting shadows over the deep worry etched across her beautiful features. She stood there, unconsciously twirling the wet ends of her hair around her fingertips, wrapping the strands tighter and tighter until the sharp pull on her scalp finally made her wince.

She stepped out of her bedroom, leaning over the carved wooden railing of the mezzanine to look down at the ground floor.

The soft, warm glow of the lamp spilling from beneath the study door showed absolutely no sign of being extinguished anytime soon.

Pei Xiqing hesitated for a long moment. Then, adjusting her silk robe, she slipped her feet into her slippers and began the slow descent down the stairs.

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