What?! I Became the Zombie Beauty in the Villain’s Arms – CH42

Chapter 42: What Do You Want to Do?

Pei Xiqing rubbed her eyes, a sudden shiver racking her frame as her consciousness snapped fully online. She rapidly sat upright, snatching the heavy wool blanket that had slid off her shoulders and wrapping it securely around herself. Curling her legs up onto the leather sofa, she asked, her voice slightly thick with sleep, “What time is it?”

“It is nearly two in the morning,” Duan Xiaolin replied smoothly.

If her memory logs were accurate, it was barely past eight o’clock when she had finished executing Xiaobai’s decontamination bath and stepped out of the wash bay. She hadn’t calculated collapsing into such a prolonged sleep cycle.

She had spent hours trapped in a heavy delirium while being carried across the mountain pass, a lingering side effect of the weaponized atmospheric anomaly Long Yan had noted. Her head still throbbed with a dull, localized pressure, making it difficult to stabilize her cognitive focus.

She shook her head, her vision slightly blurring in the dim light. Before she could shift her weight, a pair of cool, steady fingertips firmly pressed against her temples.

Pei Xiqing opened her eyes in surprise. The man leaned over her, his voice a low whisper. “Do not move.”

He sat down on the edge of the sofa, extending his long arms to pull her back against his chest, anchoring her within his space.

She felt his fingers initiate a hyper-precise, gentle massage along her temples, the rhythmic pressure instantly dispersing the heavy cloud of dizziness plaguing her neural network. Surrendering to the relief, she closed her eyes.

The cold, sharp scent of his expensive cologne completely saturated her senses, while the immense, solid expanse of his broad chest behind her spine radiated an absolute, unyielding security.

She leaned back completely, resting her head against the crisp fabric of his shoulder. A massive shadow swallowed her torso as he leaned closer. She slightly tilted her head up to analyze his profile, noting the faint, dark trace of exhaustion lingering between his sharp brows. She raised her hand, intending to brush a stray lock of hair from his forehead, but his fingers shot forward, firmly catching her wrist. “That dead forest is a weaponized terrain barrier engineered by the high command,” he murmured, his breath hot against her ear. “The majority of rogue elements navigating that sector inhale the localized neural fog and suffer a total cognitive collapse, permanently trapping their timelines in a cycle of death.”

“Then why did the vanguard operatives pass through the sector completely unaffected?”

“The biological tolerance varies by asset tier. That forest functions as a lethal defense shield for Base Three, preventing external entities from executing a casual breach. My special ops units have undergone rigorous biochemical conditioning within the base laboratories for five years; their cells have long since integrated a permanent immunity to that specific neurotoxin.”

“So that’s the underlying data,” she murmured. “I was running an internal calculation wondering why my system was the only one crashing from a neural headache.”

Duan Xiaolin maintained the precise massage for several minutes, his kinetic force perfectly modulated, his movements incredibly delicate. Pei Xiqing felt a sudden wave of self-consciousness flood her system. Just as she gathered her leverage to break the hold, his long fingers hooked beneath the collar of her oversized linen shirt, smoothly pulling the fabric down past her shoulders and trapping her upper arms, completely exposing a vast expanse of her pale skin to the room.

The only structural flaw cutting across her pristine anatomy was a network of pale, grey-green necrotic spots pulsing faintly over her shoulder blades. The marks were scattered and restricted in size, but they served as undeniable biological proof of her active viral mutation.

Pei Xiqing couldn’t analyze her own back, but during her decontamination shower earlier, she had logged similar faint green webs tracing along her inner thighs and forearms. Instinctively calculating the nature of his scrutiny, she frantically tried to twist her body away to conceal the marks, but his large hands clamped onto her bare shoulders from behind, locking her in place.

Sensing his breathing draw closer against her bare skin, her nervous system spiked with adrenaline, her respiration stalling entirely as his lips dropped in a soft, burning kiss against her neck.

The tip of her ear flushed a brilliant, violent crimson. The man tilted his head down from behind her shoulder, his kisses tracing a line along her throat, his voice dropping to a low, gravelly rasp. “Does the presence of these viral markers introduce an internal physical discomfort to your system?”

“…Occasionally,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “Specially when my coordinates are in close proximity to a dense concentration of the undead. If the horde density scales past a certain threshold, a violent, systemic itch erupts beneath my skin—almost as if the virus is trying to hijack my cognitive baseline, forcing an intense craving to sink my fangs into human tissue.”

She had cataloged the pattern during her transit: the erratic internal hunger usually stabilized on its own, but the second an active mutant breached her immediate perimeter, her entire neural network would ignite with that maddening itch, tracking all the way into the roots of her teeth, forcing her to frantically search for an object to grind her jaw against.

Yet, the moment the infected cleared the sector, her skin parameters would reset, and those ugly, grey-green spots would slowly dissolve back beneath her epidermis.

“Perhaps… our board should execute a controlled clinical experiment?” he murmured.

“Huh?” Pei Xiqing’s eyes widened in sudden panic. “An experiment?”

“I am transferring your coordinates to the central command hub of the base in a few days.”

Pei Xiqing nodded numbly. “Mhm.”

Her thoughts briefly drifted back to her utility kit; she was still desperately tracking a methodology to revive her dead smartphone.

During the mountain migration, she had rationed the lithium battery with extreme efficiency, but the hardware simply couldn’t sustain the drain, finally shutting down permanently a few days ago.

The man caught the shift in her focus. “What metric are you analyzing?”

“Do your quarters contain a high-compatibility military charging array? If I accompany your unit into the central hub, I want to verify if my device can log onto the local network interface to run a data check-in. But I issue an absolute administrative guarantee: my camera lens will never target a restricted zone or intercept classified military blueprints, and I will maintain total compliance with every single directive issued by Franlun’s overwatch. I simply want to run a baseline visual audit of the interior infrastructure.”

She had successfully infiltrated a hyper-fortified human empire. Having thoroughly calculated the staggering physical tier of the man pinning her down and the lethal efficiency of Ling Lang’s vanguard squad, she realized that since they had chosen to smuggle her past the automated gates, she had zero reason to stress over the base regulations.

Since her timeline had breached the walls.

She might as well analyze the empire’s internal mechanics.

When she had first stared at the titanic outer silhouette of the central command dreadnought from the highway, a profound curiosity regarding their advanced engineering and interior cybernetic structures had seized her mind.

Duan Xiaolin’s gaze remained locked on her profile. “Every single asset cleared for public viewing will be fully exposed to your lens. The elements classified under the high command’s restricted codes will simply never be brought before your coordinates.”

“Of course, I hold zero intention of operating as an espionage drone,” she laughed, her shoulders relaxing slightly. “I simply want to document the milestone.”

“Very well. I shall personally authorize your transit.”

She cleared her tight throat. Her arms were still pinned against her ribcage by the man’s enveloping grip from behind, making it impossible to pull her linen shirt back up. The raw skin of her bare back was pressed flush against the dense fabric of his formal vest, allowing her to perfectly map the rigid outline of his ribs and the cold positioning of his silver buttons.

The texture of the wool and the metallic buttons felt intensely cool and slightly prickling against her skin. She subtly tried to shift her weight to create a boundary, but she could continuously feel his heavy, unblinking gaze drilling into her bare shoulders from behind.

The visual focus felt like a physical wire tracking down her spine, sending a numb, electrifying current straight through her nervous system.

She reflexively tried to turn her head to face him, but his long fingers smoothly caught her jawline, guiding her face straight back toward the front. “Pei Xiqing.”

“Huh?” She blinked, startled by the sudden, low gravity of his tone. “…What’s wrong?”

“Strip the remaining fabric down, okay?”

“…???!!!”

Pei Xiqing’s eyes widened in pure, unadulterated disbelief, her jaw dropping. “What exactly did your vocal receptors just broadcast?”

“I ordered you to undress.”

Trapped in his grip, she couldn’t physically turn around to read his expression. She could only fixate her gaze onto the spotlessly clean, minimalist titanium bookshelf lining the opposite wall, her mind violently buzzing with a single, panicked question. “W-Why?”

Her vocal receptors were nearly paralyzed by the shock, and it took several seconds of forced respiration to steady her voice. “Brother Duan… authorize me to turn around and look at your face. This specific orientation is generating an immense wave of psychological tension, and my database cannot decode the underlying meaning of your directive.”

“The current calculation yields a significantly higher efficiency if your visual sensors remain locked forward,” he murmured, his eyes scanning the brilliant crimson flush rapidly consuming her pale skin. She looked impossibly delicate, her body trembling with a beautiful, frantic shyness even as she desperately tried to simulate a calm baseline. The elegant, jade-like curve of her bare shoulders was shivering under his touch. Even without analyzing her face, he could easily calculate exactly how hazy, soft, and utterly intoxicating her expressions were in this exact millisecond.

It was an exceptionally rare anomaly for an administrative entity of his tier to harbor a profound physical interest in a female asset, and he had zero intention of letting her analyze the dark, predatory facets of his biology just yet.

Pei Xiqing’s survival instincts instantly flagged the absolute danger radiating from his aura, paralyzing her limbs. She offered a soft, breathy whisper, “What exactly are you preparing to execute?”

“Nothing,” he murmured, his tone dropping to a smooth, soothing purr against her ear. “Surrender the control to my board.”

Pei Xiqing tightly squeezed her eyes shut, her nervous system entirely overwhelmed as his long, calloused fingertips began to slowly slide down the bare skin of her spine. Within a matter of seconds, the wool blanket and the loose linen shirt slid completely down her frame, pooling uselessly around her waist.

Ever since clearing the shower bay, she had been dressed in nothing but that thin shirt and a pair of short pajama bottoms that terminated just above her knees. Duan Xiaolin’s large hands smoothly slid down, his palms anchoring around the contours of her long legs. She executed a faint, desperate struggle to shift her weight, her entire body burning with a deep, radiant flush as if her capillaries had been scorched by fire.

“The… the pants as well?” she gasped, her voice cracking.

“Negative. Though, does your system desire to purge the remaining fabric?” His gaze slowly tracked upward from the delicate bone structure of her ankles, running along the smooth line of her calves before anchoring heavily against her hips. The intense heat in her face peaked, her cheeks a blazing, brilliant crimson. Summoning the absolute maximum of her remaining willpower, she forcefully wrenched her head around, her eyelids fluttering open to stare straight into his dark green eyes. She demanded, her breath ragged, “What exactly do you want to do to me?”

Duan Xiaolin raised his right hand, his long, cool fingers gently tracing the contour of her flushed jawline. “My board intends to execute every single physical protocol available. But before I run that calculation, I require a baseline confirmation on a specific variable.”

Pei Xiqing’s mind completely short-circuited. “What variable?”

Duan Xiaolin’s fingers closed firmly around her wrist, his eyes dropping to track the skin exposed right above her collarbone. “What exact timestamp did this Serpentine Teng curse mark manifest across your chest?”

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