What?! I Became the Zombie Beauty in the Villain’s Arms – CH44

Chapter 44: Control

The directors and high-ranking military officials massed in the dreadnought’s conference room watched the brief flash of video footage dissolve from the air before their optical sensors could record a single clear metric. Left with nothing but the raw, disembodied audio feed, a wave of profound disorientation rippled through the assembly.

What is the tactical justification for this, Chief Judge?

Is an uncalibrated variable disrupting his perimeter?

Under standard operational protocols, a high-level summit explicitly required a live biometric video link to authorize the encryption keys before a signature could be transmitted to the main base registry.

Certain high-clearance mandates even demanded real-time facial recognition and dual-fingerprint verification before the administrative software would execute an override—especially tonight, with the interface scheduled to link directly with the supreme directors of Franlun’s headquarters and the sovereign military high command.

This marked the absolute first time in the syndicate’s history that the Chief Judge had refused to project his face to the council.

However, the two supreme Franlun directors who had been violently locked in the screaming match a moment ago let out a synchronized, silent sigh of relief.

Under normal circumstances, the rumor mill at headquarters dictated that the Chief Judge rarely vacated the sovereign inner sanctuaries. Although these two directors wielded immense administrative leverage within their respective sub-divisions before being deployed to oversee Base Three’s judicial courts, and had achieved flawless success metrics in purging local corruption over the past quarter, it had been over a month since their systems had last crossed paths with his presence.

The sudden, unannounced notification of his arrival had triggered a massive spike of survival anxiety in their processors.

The elite operatives of Franlun were calculated, hyper-intelligent entities. They prided themselves on their capacity to dissect human psychology and maintain absolute, flawless control over Base Three’s infrastructure—yet standing beneath the shadow of the ultimate authority governing their syndicate, the sheer psychological pressure was suffocating.

With the Chief Judge remaining behind the veil of a deactivated video feed, the crushing weight in the room lifted by a fraction.

Long Yan was similarly taken aback by the protocol shift, but her veteran nervous system stabilized her baseline in a millisecond. “Mhm… Representative Duan, the dual directors from Franlun’s oversight committee have cleared the chamber, and the Base Commander has indicated their division will broadcast a high-priority tactical document to your desk requiring your sovereign signature… Are your current coordinates managing a crisis?”

The line hung in absolute, freezing silence for two heavy seconds before his magnetic voice cut through the static. “Does your division run an optimization clock that demands immediate compliance?”

“Affirmative. There are precisely one hundred and twenty seconds remaining before the network initializes the synchronized link with the supreme global commander and Franlun’s high council,” Long Yan reported, her voice taut. “This specific window was calculated and locked by your own command file. If we execute a last-minute cancellation on the transmission, the Marshal and Director Qiu Chao will—”

“I have logged the data.”

Long Yan hesitated. “Representative Duan, what is the exact timestamp of your physical arrival at the war room? Or will you be directing the summit via this encrypted audio channel?”

The man on the opposite end of the line paused for half a second—a remarkably rare anomaly in his processing speed. A faint, uncalibrated audio frequency subtly bled into the background of the transmission. Just as Long Yan opened her mouth to query whether his perimeter had encountered an active threat, the holographic blue screen in the center of the air flickered wildly, and the man’s imposing figure slowly stabilized within the projection.

Duan Xiaolin sat framed within the digital viewport, his formal suit immaculate. He reached up, calmly adjusting the silk of his necktie with fluid, unbothered precision. His expression was a wall of clinical indifference, his green eyes freezing and entirely detached. The sharp, statuesque lines of his jaw were as cold and unforgiving as ever.

Long Yan let out a quiet breath of relief. “Representative Duan, our division has extracted a fresh batch of intelligence regarding the local black-market smuggling cells; I am broadcasting the data packets to your terminal this exact second. The council meeting initializes in sixty minutes. The file contains a sequence of follow-up parameters for Franlun’s internal execution squads, alongside several high-profile treason files pending at headquarters. The Marshal explicitly requested your sovereign evaluation before the execution orders are stamped.”

“Route the files to my secure terminal.”

The man leaned back against the deep leather of the sofa, his long legs slightly parted as his gaze swept downward—colliding flawlessly with the eyes of the girl huddled like a completely boneless, pliant creature directly against his knees.

The profound depth of his pupils ruthlessly locked down the dark, predatory hunger raging within his cells, his face betraying absolutely zero trace of the physical reality unfolding below the frame. Only Pei Xiqing, anchored mere inches from his torso, could detect the microscopic, erratic shift in his respiration.

She looked up at the smooth, perfect contour of his jawline, then cast a mischievous glance toward the shimmering holographic display hovering in the upper quadrant of the room. Safely shielded within a blind spot completely invisible to the high-definition lens of the console, her fingers slithered forward, playfully hooking around the man’s little finger.

Duan Xiaolin lowered his heavy eyelids, the visual shift running a silent, dangerous inquiry through her nervous system.

Pei Xiqing flashed a sly, unvarnished smile, her lips silently mouthed the words: Bring your posture lower.

The man executed the directive without a microsecond of hesitation.

Pei Xiqing tilted her head back completely, her lips firmly pressing a hard, deliberate kiss against the prominent, sexy line of his Adam’s apple.

Duan Xiaolin’s physical frame stiffened by a microscopic fraction. In the next millisecond, his massive palm violently locked around the back of her head, forcing her face upward as he deepened the kiss with a ravenous, unforgiving ferocity. Her cognitive defenses shattered from the sudden intensity, and she subtly tried to weave her head away as a sharp ache flared across her mouth.

A tiny bead of dark crimson seeped from the corner of her delicate lips.

Pei Xiqing’s pulse pounded like artillery against her ribs. The man’s calloused fingertips slowly, methodically traced the fresh laceration scoring her mouth. He narrowed his eyes, looking down at her from his position of absolute dominance, a dangerous, pitch-black glint flashing behind his gold-rimmed lenses.

Before her brain could calculate the trajectory, a sudden, heavy restriction clamped violently around her wrists. A sharp ache flared through her skin, accompanied by a crushing, inescapable pressure.

Staring down at her forearms, her eyes widened in pure shock. A heavy silk necktie—the exact one that had been neatly knotted beneath the man’s throat a second ago—had been wrapped twice around her wrists, bound into an absolute knot.

He remained entirely invisible within the transmission matrix. Pei Xiqing had been weaponizing his administrative preoccupation to test his limits, fully calculating that he wouldn’t dare execute a counter-move while the high command was monitoring the line. She had deliberately initiated the provocation. But her strategy collapsed instantly; Duan Xiaolin simply reached out and casually threw the holographic projection crystal onto the far edge of the mahogany coffee table, recalibrating the projection lens until the live display illuminated nothing but a blank, concrete wall.

Pei Xiqing remained half-kneeling at his boots. The silk tie that had anchored his pristine collar was now held firmly within his slender knuckles, the fabric pulled taut to lock her limbs in place.

Her arms seemed to instantly lose all biological vitality, her muscles completely drained of the leverage required to break his grip. More critically, the wool blanket had slid entirely from her bare shoulders during the struggle, pooling around her hips. The current parameters ensure I am essentially wrapped in nothing but his shadow.

The conference line had officially initialized the connection to the supreme global headquarters. A sequence of distinct, powerful masculine voices began to crackle through the audio array in an intermittent stream. She raised her eyes, tracking the holographic viewport as the video split into several distinct command sectors, high-ranking faces stabilizing within their respective grids.

One of the supreme directors materialized in the lower quadrant of the screen. His military uniform was casually unbuttoned to the waist, exposing the dense, heavily scarred muscle mass of his chest. He was lounging back, a long-haired female asset cradled carelessly against his lap as his eyes danced with a lazy, mocking amusement.

After running through a sequence of high-priority security updates, his sensory focus locked onto an interesting anomaly in the logs. “Where exactly is my brother Duan anchoring his line tonight? Why is my interface registering nothing but his raw audio feed while his video matrix remains completely dark?”

Duan Xiaolin’s free hand clamped around Pei Xiqing’s chin, his mouth ruthlessly tracing the line of her jaw before sinking back into the fresh laceration on her lips, his tongue systematically invading her mouth to claim her breath.

Pei Xiqing was completely submerged beneath the terrifying depth of his aggression. Her mind finally calibrated the ground truth: during their previous encounters along the trail, the man had been operating under an immense wave of calculated restraint. This kiss was an absolute dictatorship, entirely paralyzing her vocal receptors and inflicting a crushing, suffocating weight on her nervous system. She was physically forced to keep her neck arched back to absorb the impact.

His fingers threaded deeply through her dark hair, seizing absolute sovereign control over every single inch of her anatomy.

…

“I have executed a thorough audit of the internal Franlun dossiers your division routed to my terminal,” Duan Xiaolin’s voice broadcasted into the global council room, his tone perfectly level, calm, and completely unbothered, betraying zero trace of the visceral reality occurring below the frame. “I will schedule independent, secure sub-channels to finalize the specific operational parameters with each director. We must meticulously calculate the exact political leverage possessed by the rogue assets currently under investigation. Regarding the logistical black market you highlighted, my sensors have identified identical corruption patterns running through the sub-sectors of Base Three. I will initialize the judicial purge within this quadrant first; my office has already compiled a preliminary asset log of the directors implicated in the treason.”

He still refused to activate his video matrix, his disembodied voice remaining a monument of steady administrative command.

Across the global network, one of the supreme military heads let out a sharp exclamation of surprise. “Your division has already successfully extracted the target manifest?”

“Affirmative. The files are cleared for immediate transfer to your station the moment your encryption keys open.”

“Negative. Retain the data within your secure terminal for now,” the director countered quickly, his jaw tight. “The geographical parameters of the strongholds are highly volatile; a premature leak of that manifest would trigger a catastrophic security failure across the command chain.”

“Acknowledged.”

“Chief Judge, our intelligence division has logged a critical mutation tracking back to the high-explosive detonation that leveled the western suburbs of the headquarters sector last month, alongside dozens of targeted high-yield supply robberies and executions. Our initial hypothesis has achieved a ninety-nine percent verification match: a rogue scientific faction has successfully synthesized a hyper-virulent variant of the pathogen and is currently executing uncalibrated live experiments on wild mutant swarms and high-tier human ability users alike.”

The man tilted his head down into the dark, his slender fingers gently tucking a stray lock of hair behind Pei Xiqing’s ear, his thumb tracing the brilliant, feverish flush consuming her face. His voice remained perfectly crisp as he addressed the council. “My office has already extracted the preliminary biometric clues. The raw chemical data sheets recovered from their active laboratories have been routed back to the central research division. Ensure your execution squads maintain a continuous tracking vector on the anomalies.”

“Understood, Judge.”

He issued the global directives with absolute, unyielding composure.

The mechanical actions his hands were executing below the frame stood in violent, terrifying contrast to the cold, structured professionalism leaving his lips.

Pei Xiqing’s eardrums were buzzing with a high-frequency ring, her brain entirely incapable of processing the specific tactical data leaving his mouth. She could only track the distant, rhythmic parting of his thin lips through the haze of her delirium, his face an absolute mirror of pristine calm.

She couldn’t formulate a single cognitive concept to explain how his mind could meticulously analyze high-level global military strategy while systematically depriving her lungs of oxygen.

Furthermore, the audio array intermittently broadcasted the council members debating the trajectory of the pre-written villains, but her cognitive reserves were completely spent; she lacked the spare processing energy to map the plot variables. Her physical resistance hit absolute zero. As his movements grew exponentially more aggressive and unyielding, a quiet, involuntary sob finally escaped her throat, and she threw her arms around his neck, her tears spilling over her lashes in a silent, broken plea for mercy.

The holographic viewport continued to project the ongoing strategic debate—a chaotic blur of military vocabulary and high-clearance criminal files that her brain couldn’t decode—but Duan Xiaolin ceased all verbal input, completely withdrawing from the dialogue. Reaching down into the dark, his massive arms clamped around her waist from behind, effortlessly hoisting her pliant, trembling frame off the carpet and pulling her securely against his chest.

She had no methodology to calculate how many hours her nervous system had been subjected to the intense sensory overload, until the electronic chime signaling the termination of the global link finally echoed through the room.

The high-ranking officials massed in the dreadnought’s war room severed their connections one by one, their grids dissolving from the viewport.

Yet, a singular secure line remained active on the console.

Judging by the lazy, mocking tone bleeding through the speaker, it was the supreme director who had been publicly fondling his female asset during the briefing.

His voice was thick with a frivolous amusement as he chuckled into the mic, “Hey, hey… listen to me, you vanguard elites—especially you, Long Yan. You operated under my direct command before you took the captaincy, so why is your memory log so incredibly ungrateful? Why are your sensors continuously analyzing what the female companions in my quarters are executing? Provided their presence doesn’t corrupt my strategic output, the metric is irrelevant to the high command. Instead of auditing my logistics, your division should be running an optimization clock on exactly when your supreme boss is going to secure a permanent female asset.”

The lazy, drawling cadence sounded entirely devoid of standard military discipline.

“Representative Duan has already crossed his thirtieth winter cycle. If his timeline delays the integration for another calendar year, his cells won’t retain the youth metrics required to secure a high-end match. The elite asset who touched the sleeve of his uniform jacket during the last supreme gala—the young Major General anchoring the northern defense line—I run a high probability calculation that her background parameters are optimal. Her aesthetics are flawless, and she possesses the exact social leverage to balance his board.”

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