What?! I Became the Zombie Beauty in the Villain’s Arms – CH51

Chapter 51: Innocence and Guilt

The master bed had been meticulously made, the premium linens and wool quilts feeling impossibly soft and warm the exact millisecond she sank onto the mattress.

She couldn’t resist subtly swaying her weight against the structural spring of the bed.

Having grown thoroughly accustomed to fracturing her spine across the cramped back seat of abandoned vehicles or anchoring her joints against the hard, unyielding earth of a tactical field tent, sleeping on a soft, sprawling mattress felt entirely surreal and slightly disorienting.

Pei Xiqing vigorously rubbed the damp ends of her dark hair with a clean cloth before collapsing face-first onto the linens, executing a loose, luxurious roll across the quilts. The sheer material comfort triggered a sudden, vivid memory of the apartment she had proudly secured with her very first box-office paycheck back in her previous world, just weeks before the transmigration matrix flipped.

A sharp pang of existential regret shadowed her thoughts.

She calculated that the prospect of a total cellular resuscitation—permanently purging the pathogen to revert back into a pristine human—was an absolute statistical impossibility. Even if the base’s bio-labs managed to engineer a genetic miracle, her nervous system couldn’t absorb the staggering probability of waking up with severe, permanent neural degradation.

Sinking deeper into the plush wool, the heavy cloud of atmospheric fatigue violently hijacked her receptors.

Her long lashes slowly, rhythmically fluttered shut, her consciousness fracturing entirely before her mind could log the exact timestamp she drifted into a deep sleep.

Deep into the night cycle, an erratic friction in her immediate perimeter violently breached her sleep data.

Trapped in a heavy, residual delirium, her subconscious simulated a frontier tactical nightmare: Sister Long Yan had forcefully breached her tent, her commanding voice screaming that a millions-strong alpha mutant swarm had permanently compromised the defensive trench, ordering her to execute an immediate sprint.

Pei Xiqing’s eyelids snapped open in pure survival panic. Blinking through the darkness, her visual sensors registered a grey, rotting face hovering a mere inch above her jawline, and her motor reflexes automatically deployed—delivering a resounding, high-velocity slap straight across the target’s cheek.

Xiaobai instantly dropped his heavy, armored torso flat against the floorboards, whimpering miserably.

The reanimated Husky looked completely, systematically depressed by the tactical rejection.

Pei Xiqing frantically clutched her racing heart, her breath ragged. “Xiaobai… what precise operational objective drove your frame to breach my sleeping perimeter?”

The canine lay anchored to the carpet, letting out a sequence of low, pathetic gurgles, feeling profoundly penalized.

Pei Xiqing rapidly threw back the heavy quilt, sliding off the mattress to stroke his armored skull in reassurance. “My apologies, boy. My cognitive processing assumed an active frontier mutant had penetrated the grid. The impact didn’t disrupt your structural integrity, right?”

Xiaobai refused to reset his parameters, remaining flat against the floor.

His red, bulging eyes were fixed defensively toward the bedroom threshold.

Pei Xiqing tracked his visual sensor path, peering out into the main suite.

The digital timer indicated it was already past two in the morning, yet Duan Xiaolin was still meticulously driving his desk, buried deep beneath a mountain of high-clearance judicial files.

The massive bay windows of the living room remained unlatched, allowing a thin, lingering trace of premium tobacco smoke to drift past her jawline.

“Did your system seek refuge in my sector because his freezing administrative pressure paralyzed your compliance parameters?” she murmured.

The reanimated hound let out another pitiful, high-frequency whine.

Deducing that the animal’s primitive primitive brain was genuinely terrified of the tyrant’s proximity, Pei Xiqing smoothly slid the glass balcony threshold open, pointing toward the exterior recess. “Transition your coordinates to the secondary bay.”

The enclosed balcony sector functioned as an auxiliary laundry hub, packed with high-velocity dryer drums, automated wash units, and a sequence of cybernetic climate-control hardware.

The exact second the Husky cleared the frame, Pei Xiqing gathered the loose edges of her fresh casual jacket around her throat and stepped out into the amber glow of the living room.

The administrator slowly raised his heavy eyelids from a thick stack of treason documents, an unlighted tactical cigarette still balanced precisely between the long fingertips of his left hand.

He tilted his head back, his deep green eyes slightly bloodshot from the extreme cognitive load.

“Did the noise parameters of my station compromise your rest cycle?” he asked, his voice a low, gravelly rasp.

“Negative.” Pei Xiqing closed the distance, smoothly sliding her frame onto the leather couch directly adjacent to his thigh. “What baseline prevents your system from initializing a sleep shift?”

“These specific dossiers require my sovereign authorization before the morning shift initializes,” he murmured, his wrist moving with fluid precision as he turned a data page. “The files must be fully processed tonight.”

“Then my line will anchor your perimeter for a brief window.” Pei Xiqing let out a soft, drowsy yawn, subtly shifting her weight until her bare shoulder pressed flush against the crisp fabric of his suit sleeve. “I issue an administrative guarantee: my optical sensors will never log the restricted data on those sheets.”

He reached out, his massive arm smoothly sweeping around her bare shoulders to yank her pliant frame straight into his torso, anchoring her weight against his ribs. “Provided your vocal receptors refrain from broadcasting the transcripts to a secondary faction, the clearance is authorized,” he whispered against her hair.

Pei Xiqing let out a quiet, amused laugh against his chest. “Even if my system intercepted a high-clearance military blueprint, your trackers would have zero methodology to verify the data leak.”

“My office holds a thousand sophisticated metrics to audit your compliance, little zombie.”

She leaned her head completely against the dense muscle of his shoulder, her voice dropping to a lazy, breathy murmur. “The workload governing your station is aggressively grueling.”

“Authorize a ten-minute calibration break?” she whispered. Detecting the cool temperature tracking along his long fingers, she forcefully pried his hand away from the documents, sliding his broad palm directly beneath the protective warmth of her casual jacket, pressing his fingers against her skin. “Deactivate your sensors. Close your eyes.”

Duan Xiaolin’s fingers tightened around her slender waist. With a single, effortless contraction of his muscles, he hoisted her pliant frame straight onto his lap, his massive arms locking around her torso like titanium bands to crush her breath out. “Mhm,” he murmured.

Feeling her soft, delicate fingertips initialize a hyper-precise massage across his tense temples, the volatile adrenaline charging his neural network smoothly stabilized, allowing his system to extract a rare, unburdened window of absolute rest.

Pei Xiqing methodically traced the sharp, statuesque line of his prominent brows, her eyes analyzing his features through the thin gold rims of his glasses.

Her cognitive logs indicated that since the convoy had breached the gates of Base Three, this man hadn’t allocated a single standard shift to preserve his own health.

Her own system routinely crashed into deep sleep cycles the second they cleared the field, leaving Duan Xiaolin with zero temporal clearance to shut down his own processors.

She maintained the gentle massage for approximately ten minutes until her fingers hit a minor threshold of muscle soreness. Sensing the slight pause in her rhythmic pressure, the administrator’s eyelids fluttered open, his large hand instantly tracing down her spine to firmly pinch the sensitive skin of her lower back. The sharp, tickling sensation caused her entire frame to shudder. She quickly raised both palms, framing his statuesque jawline to lock his gaze. “What specific protocol are you initializing? Re-engage the rest cycle for a few more minutes.”

His towering build completely enveloped her pliant frame, virtually burying her anatomy within his shadow. He slowly tilted his head down, resting the heavy weight of his forehead straight against the curve of her bare neck. “Maintain the synchronization for an additional ten minutes,” he commanded flatly against her pulse. “Execute a strict vocal alert the exact millisecond the timer hits zero.”

“Very well,” she whispered.

The ten-minute allocation seemed to expand exponentially within her perception. The slow, deep rhythm of his respiration vibrated continuously against her ear, their heartbeats transmitting across their chests in a steady, synchronized loop.

The interior of the villa fell into an absolute, suffocating quiet, completely devoid of any domestic sound or the distant rustle of nocturnal wildlife outside the glass. The cold, brilliant moonlight pouring through the bay windows blanketed their locked silhouettes in silver. Gradually, Pei Xiqing’s own nervous system dropped its defensive barriers, her eyelids growing impossibly heavy as she closed her eyes, waiting for the timer to drain.

But before the clock finalized the shift, her consciousness completely fractured, and she fell sound asleep directly across the tyrant’s chest.

Duan Xiaolin detected the sudden, pliant weight shift instantly. Reaching out, his cool fingers gently caressed the soft, slightly chilled contour of her cheek.

He smoothly shifted his leverage, effortlessly carrying her sleeping frame back through the bedroom threshold.

As he methodically tucked the heavy wool quilts around her bare shoulders, his green eyes locked onto her forearms. A few faint, grey-green necrotic tracks had re-manifested across her skin—the exact coordinate sector where Xiaobai’s infected snout had brushed against her epidermis. His pupils turned a dangerous, pitch-black shade.

The absolute culprit of the viral flare-up—the reanimated Husky—was currently squatting dead center in the balcony doorway, its red eyes blinking with an expression of pure, unadulterated innocence mixed with profound guilt.

The administrator stood upright, his face a freezing wall of indifference as he slid the heavy bedroom blast door shut, ruthlessly locking the hound out in the corridor.

The night cycle drained completely, and the brilliant glare of the morning sun began to scorch the floorboards. Pei Xiqing’s internal sensors slowly registered the thermal shift, her long lashes fluttering open as her consciousness reset.

The solar glare piercing the viewport was aggressively sharp. She raised her left forearm to block the light, executing a lazy turn within the deep warmth of the quilts before tracking the digital compass on her phone.

The interface read precisely ten in the morning.

She let out a soft yawn, sitting upright against the pillows with extreme reluctance. Pushing the heavy sliding door open to clear the bedroom, her boots nearly tripped over Xiaobai, who was still squatting on the carpet with an intensely wronged, pathetic posture.

Pei Xiqing dropped into a crouch, scratching the dense fur behind his ears. “Form up, dog. Let’s calibrate the kitchen grid and prep a clean allocation of protein for your bowl.”

Marching into the vanity sink to execute her morning hygiene routine, her visual sensors suddenly locked onto her inner forearms. A network of pale green viral spots had bloomed across her skin, accompanied by a sharp, maddening itch that forced her to lock her jaw to prevent herself from aggressively scratching the flesh raw.

The irritation was immense.

Multiple times, her motor control nearly failed, her fingers desperate to tear the epidermis open to find relief.

But her analytical faculties held the line: if her nails breached the tissue during a viral flare-up, the localized cellular structure would hit critical failure, leaving her arm permanently sloughing with necrotic rot.

She forced her focus away from the irritation, utilizing the leftover vacuum-sealed beef from the previous shift to cook down a high-yield ration pot for the hound, before executing a rapid consumption protocol on her own breakfast. She spent the morning hours entirely isolated within the quiet of the villa.

However, the exact second she finalized her meal, the encrypted terminal interface on her wrist violently pulsed with an incoming link from Duan Xiaolin.

“Advance your coordinates to the central command hub of the base during the evening shift,” his crisp voice commanded through the comms.

She had initiated a formal request to audit the cybernetic engineering of the dreadnought hours ago, but she hadn’t calculated that his administrative overwatch would clear her transit authorization this rapidly.

“Understood. Specify the exact target timestamp for my arrival.”

“The allocation is entirely unlocked,” he murmured smoothly. “My office anchors this command post for the consecutive shifts. I am consistently here.”

“Copy that.”

The line remained open for a beat before his low voice purred across the encryption. “Furthermore… my medical division is scheduled to extract a clean blood sample from your circulatory system to run a full diagnostic sweep on your cellular parameters. The viral tracking marks scoring your epidermis have crossed a critical baseline; we must isolate a high-yield suppression matrix to permanently neutralize the mutation.”

On the opposite side of the base corridor, inside the supreme administrative inner sanctuary of the high tribunal, Duan Xiaolin severed the link, immediately returning to verify a massive stack of high-clearance execution files. The exact second his signature stamped the final page, a black division director stepped into his perimeter, surrendering a thick, reinforced folder packed with digital photographs and ballistic forms.

“Chief Judge, our execution squads have extracted the latest structural evidence and behavioral tracking logs regarding the black-market smuggling cells. Review the data.”

“Leave the file on the desk.”

Suddenly, the heavy reinforced door of the sanctuary was violently pushed open, and Ling Lang strode into the command sector, his combat boots echoing heavily against the steel. He casually reached down, snatching a copy of the high-level intelligence briefing from the table before crossing his long legs over an adjacent leather chair, his posture radiating a supreme, swaggering arrogance. “Hmph. The data streams entering this base are completely corrupted. Every single one of these regional directors is attempting to run a deceptive bluff against our division. This so-called ‘evidence’ reads like a primitive fabrication upon a single visual audit.”

He violently tossed the documents back onto the mahogany desk, a harsh scoff leaving his lips. “Reviewing garbage of this tier represents a negative return on our focus.”

He leaned forward, his sharp eyes narrowing as he analyzed his brother’s profile. “Brother, the administrative load governing your desk is scaling at an exponential rate. These operational logs are legacy data from the previous shift, correct? Our logistics division hasn’t even finalized the engineering overhaul on yesterday’s vehicle manifests, yet the high command has flooded your terminal with a fresh mountain of treason cases today. Do your parameters genuinely calculate that your cells function as an automated cybernetic robot?”

“The initial strategy allowed for a total completion of the files during the night shift,” Duan Xiaolin noted, his tone entirely level as his fingers maintained a steady rhythm against his pen. “But an uncalibrated variable violently disrupted my cognitive focus.”

The ultimate responsibility for the logistical delay rested entirely on his own board.

He was the sovereign entity who had allowed his iron-clad concentration to completely implode, rendering his mind incapable of executing a clean data sweep. Last night, his system had merely required a microscopic, ten-minute rest cycle to reset his metrics—yet his possessive instincts had ruthlessly extended the timeline, his consciousness entirely incapable of stabilizing its parameters while her pliant frame was anchored to his chest.

Ling Lang’s brow pulled together in a tight, suspicious frown. “What specific episode managed to scramble your processing units?”

“Your current combat clearance ensures your mind lacks the desire to intercept the data,” the administrator stated flatly.

Ling Lang’s eyes flashed with immediate, aggressive confusion. “Huh? My system lacks the desire to decode the transcript? What baseline drives that statement, Judge?”

My biological brother and I have navigated through a thousand lethal ground-zero breaches along the frontier, he reasoned furiously. What precise variable could possibly exist within his universe that my own database is restricted from knowing?

Duan Xiaolin calmly adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses, his piercing green eyes locking directly across his brother’s profile with absolute, freezing stillness. “The variable is explicitly anchored to the timeline of Pei Xiqing.”

…

Ling Lang’s posture instantly snapped rigid, his crossed legs dropping heavily back to the floorboards.

The ambient air in the command sanctuary seemed to violently freeze for a heavy, agonizing second. “…Oh,” he muttered, his voice dropping to a low, tight rasp.

“Attached to her line,” the captain growled, his long fingers instinctively locking around the grip of his sidearm, wildly twirling the heavy weapon around his index finger as he forced a wave of cold, unvarnished indifference across his features. His physical frame was coiled tight like a spring. Following a prolonged, suffocating window of absolute silence, he violently snapped his head up, his piercing gaze cutting through his white lashes like a blade. “Brother… let’s run the ground truth on this calculation. Is your board genuinely running a permanent alignment with that anomaly?”

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