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

Chapter 247: Shame

She didn’t know when the bleeding had started.

Her vision had been blurred for a long time before she even realized what was happening. Pei Xiqing felt as though she had been sitting there in a daze for hours.

When Long Yan gently wiped the blood from her cheek, Pei Xiqing could barely make out the large, dark stain blooming across the handkerchief.

Long Yan sat on the edge of the bed, her mouth opening and closing as she spoke rapidly. Pei Xiqing could no longer hear a single sound, but she could roughly guess what the other woman was saying. Taking the initiative, she reached out and gently squeezed Long Yan’s hand.

Long Yan paused, stunned. She reached up to touch Pei Xiqing’s pale face and deliberately exaggerated her lip movements to say: Everything will be fine. Brother Duan will be here soon.

Pei Xiqing nodded and offered her a soft smile.

She truly didn’t feel any pain. In a way, this was exactly what she had wanted. Yet, looking at their deeply worried eyes and watching their anxious figures hurry back and forth to perform various medical examinations on her, a complicated sense of guilt settled in her chest.

Judging from Long Yan’s lip movements earlier, it seemed Ling Lang was waiting outside. Pei Xiqing picked up her electronic input device and typed out a message: He is in charge of the garrison. Won’t standing guard outside affect his military duties?

Long Yan smiled reassuringly as she read the screen. “Don’t worry, he can handle it. Besides, the situation outside headquarters is completely chaotic right now, let alone the other sectors. The army is responsible for protecting this area anyway. If he can’t even manage this much, he has no right to call himself a Major General.”

Pei Xiqing gave a slow nod of understanding.

Long Yan stayed to comfort her a little while longer. It was only when she saw that Pei Xiqing’s mental state remained stable—despite her pupils occasionally losing focus and turning dull—that she finally breathed a sigh of relief.

She was surprisingly calm.

When Qiu Chao had called Long Yan over in a panic, she had been terrified that Pei Xiqing would suffer a mental breakdown upon waking up and realizing the terrifying extent of her sensory loss. Seeing her accept the gap so peacefully made Long Yan feel a profound sense of relief.

Stepping out of the bedroom, she spotted Ling Lang standing at the bottom of the stairs, fully dressed in his pristine military uniform. She crossed her arms, studying his broad back. She had long since seen through his tough facade, and she couldn’t help but let out a quiet sigh.

Walking down, she patted Ling Lang heavily on the shoulder. “You brat, leaving your post without permission. If command finds out, we’ll see how this Major General of ours handles the fallout.”

Ling Lang rested a hand casually on the holster at his waist. “Brother isn’t here right now. I will guard this place.”

“Her condition is stable,” Long Yan offered softly. “You don’t need to worry so much.”

“…Okay.” Ling Lang paused. He instinctively took a half-step toward the stairs, but then stopped, seamlessly retreating back to his original position.

“Don’t you want to go up and take a look at her?” Long Yan asked.

He shook his head, straightening his posture. “My place is out here.”

Long Yan shook her head in mild disbelief.

No matter which base he was in, Ling Lang operated like a devil. There was nothing in this wasteland he couldn’t take by force; there were only things he simply didn’t want. It was incredibly rare to see him act so timid and restrained.

But when it came to her, if he couldn’t overcome the hurdle in his own heart, nothing anyone else said would make a difference. This brat always claimed to be more ruthless and heartless than anyone else, but in reality, he was the most fiercely devoted of them all.

Even now, she couldn’t entirely read what was going through Ling Lang’s mind. She only knew that he was fundamentally different from the reckless team captain he had once been.

It was a good thing. At least it showed growth. As for the painful process behind that growth and the heavy price he had to pay for it—well, everyone’s burden was different.

She checked the time on her tactical watch. “Looking at the schedule, it seems the rest of the operatives from Franlun will be arriving soon.”

Once that elite vanguard officially breached the capital, headquarters would truly change hands. Anyone capable of climbing to the upper echelons of Franlun was just as terrifying and difficult to deal with as Qiu Chao.

“Yes,” Ling Lang agreed flatly.

“It’s a pity you didn’t officially join Franlun back then,” Long Yan mused. “Otherwise, you’d be out there executing their shadow missions right now.”

“Franlun is no longer short on manpower. But here at headquarters, we are.” Ling Lang stared straight ahead. As long as his brother was operating in the capital, Ling Lang would anchor his power from within the military, ensuring the regular army didn’t dare target Duan Xiaolin over Franlun’s aggressive expansion.

Long Yan understood the unspoken vow perfectly and nodded. “Has there been any unusual movement recently?”

“It’s the same old story with those parasites.”

“Keep a close eye on them,” Long Yan warned, her expression darkening with disgust. “I never would have imagined that the supreme high command of humanity would be reduced to negotiating terms with a parasite. It’s an absolute joke.”

Who could have predicted that the elites at headquarters would be the first faction in the apocalypse to actively surrender and make peace with the monsters? They had absolutely no spine, and even the Marshal himself had quietly acquiesced to the cowardly strategy.

The Marshal must have known about the progenitor parasite all along. It had been lurking beneath the Ghost Market for so long, even nesting in the adjacent village. It was almost entirely within expectations that the situation had escalated to this point. But what truly sickened her was that while every other survivor base was still desperately bleeding to fight the swarms, headquarters had already surrendered to the enemy in secret.

Currently, only a handful of top-tier officials knew the truth about the truce. Once the news leaked to the public, the entire apocalyptic world order would be turned upside down. The peripheral bases, the frontline armies, the surviving civilians—they would all rise up in a fury that would completely overturn headquarters. Their hegemony would be reduced to ash.

Those cowards at the top had been cowering in their offices, refusing to take decisive action, entirely out of fear that exposing the truth would strip them of their comfortable positions and political power.

“To survive, the people at headquarters have tried a myriad of underhanded methods,” Long Yan muttered. “This particular strategy was pathetically unambitious, but looking at the recent breaches, it’s obvious they are already regretting the deal.”

“It’s humiliating,” Long Yan scoffed, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling.

Ling Lang let out a cold sneer. “There is never a good ending when you choose to cooperate with a beast.”

“That thing has an entirely unpredictable, chaotic temperament. God only knows how many humans and species it has devoured to mutate this far. Believing its promises is tantamount to begging for death.”

Ling Lang glanced at her. “Did the high command agree to their new demands?”

“The crystal cores were their primary condition. Now that Brother Duan has achieved his personal objective with the cores, he will likely agree to step in and clean up their mess.”

“Understood.”

“In five or six hours at most, the rest of Franlun’s forces will lock down the perimeter. You should take a break then. Don’t stand guard here all day. Thanks for the hard work.”

Ling Lang offered a stiff nod.

After Long Yan left, Ling Lang cast a quiet glance up the stairs toward the closed bedroom door. He subconsciously breathed a heavy sigh of relief, then turned around, his posture returning to an unyielding, military strictness.

Qiu Chao visited the room several times throughout the day. At first, Pei Xiqing managed to muster just enough energy to communicate with him via her writing tablet. But as the hours bled on, she slipped into a deep, heavy slumber, entirely losing track of time and day.

Standing by the hospital bed, Qiu Chao stared down at the pale woman, a heavy shadow of deep thought crossing his features beneath his surgical mask.

If they wanted to save Pei Xiqing, they absolutely had to preserve the anomalous substance within her body that was actively fighting off the zombie virus.

But attempting to stabilize that failing substance was like trying to make a rotting apple fresh again. It was like trying to drag a dead person back to life, or forcibly rewriting the laws of fate. No matter how he analyzed the medical data, it was a biological impossibility.

The exact second those protective antibodies vanished, she would completely transform into a mindless zombie.

Perhaps there would still be a fleeting window where she could revert to a normal human, but it would be agonizingly brief. In less than half a day, her remaining consciousness would be completely and permanently devoured by the virus.

Chapter 248: What Do You Think?

Ling Lang pushed open the bedroom door, his hand subconsciously resting on the hilt of his saber. “What’s the situation?”

His eyes immediately, uncontrollably drifted toward the woman lying motionless on the hospital bed.

Qiu Chao glanced at him over his shoulder. “I genuinely assumed you weren’t going to come up.”

“What’s her status?”

“Critical,” Qiu Chao sighed, stepping forward to adjust the IV drip connected to Pei Xiqing’s arm. “Although the raw crystal cores currently feeding into her system can stabilize her most severe symptoms and effectively suppress the zombie virus attempting to crush her organs, it is ultimately nothing more than a temporary patch.”

“Then what’s the solution? What can I do?”

Qiu Chao turned around, arching an eyebrow beneath his mask. “You?”

“What?” Ling Lang glared at him, his temper flaring. “What exactly is that attitude supposed to mean?”

Qiu Chao let out a dry, humorless laugh. “What exactly can you do in this scenario?”

“I have my methods.”

“Oh, really? Don’t joke around with me on this. I do not possess the bandwidth to entertain your nonsense.”

Ling Lang gritted his teeth, remaining silent.

Noticing the dangerous twitch in the Major General’s jaw, Qiu Chao realized he was losing his patience. He quickly raised a hand in mock surrender. “Alright, relax. It was just a joke.”

“I crossed paths with her long before you ever did,” Ling Lang stated, his voice dropping into a low, deadly serious register. “I am fully capable of executing whatever you can do. And more importantly, I am capable of executing the things you can’t.”

He didn’t elaborate further.

Qiu Chao studied his rigid posture for a few seconds before a slow smile spread beneath his mask. It seemed he had finally grasped the underlying variable driving the younger man.

He didn’t press for details. Instead, he turned back to his medical logs, thoughtfully scribbling down a fresh set of diagnostics.

“Are you truly entirely out of options?” Ling Lang demanded.

“What do you mean, entirely out of options? Her physical baseline is an absolute anomaly. It’s a biological miracle she’s even survived this long. If any other subject harbored this matrix, they would have mutated into a walking catastrophe cycles ago.”

“Well… it’s like this.” Ling Lang stared at Pei Xiqing’s pale face. He recalled how she had desperately navigated the zombie hordes out in the wilderness, only to be recovered by his unit in the heart of a dead, infected city… yet she had emerged entirely unscathed. That reality alone dictated that her biological existence was profoundly unique.

“Brother Duan has issued explicit orders,” Ling Lang continued, his voice tight. “He intends to permanently preserve her special abilities.”

He understood his brother’s strategic logic perfectly. Preserve her leverage for her own protection.

“That is an exceptionally difficult parameter to meet,” Qiu Chao sighed, pulling off his surgical mask and running a frustrated hand through his messy hair. “But it isn’t an absolute impossibility. The outcome hinges entirely on whether Brother Duan can successfully secure the absolute remainder of the global crystal core supply.”

“I am a member of Franlun. I can assist the extraction.”

“Oh, come on. Are you planning to abandon the headquarters entirely? If the commanding Major General deserts the capital’s defense grid simply to hunt down crystal cores, there won’t be a single officer left with the authority to suppress the amphibious parasites currently scaling the seawalls.”

Beyond the immediate threat of the water ghouls, the corrupt military factions within the capital were actively conspiring in the shadows, waiting for a moment of weakness to strike. With Brother Duan deployed in the outer sectors and the bulk of Franlun’s enforcers still hours away, Ling Lang was the solitary pillar holding the capital’s command structure together. If he abandoned his post, the internal fallout would be catastrophic.

Ling Lang’s fists clenched tightly at his sides. “I will deploy my elite scouts to hunt down the remaining coordinates. As long as we secure the total cache, she can be saved, correct?”

“I cannot offer a clinical guarantee,” Qiu Chao replied grimly. “At this threshold, it relies entirely on the will of the cosmos. It depends on whether the system actually permits her to survive.”

“I don’t believe in the will of the cosmos.”

“Perhaps you should start. Because in my professional opinion, the variables surrounding this crisis are highly suspicious.” Qiu Chao leaned against the diagnostic cart, his eyes narrowing. “These crystal cores are structurally identical to the artifacts Xiao Yue utilized prior to his termination. You crossed blades with him; you experienced firsthand just how terrifying his mechanized equipment was.”

“So what?”

“So, I reasonably suspect that Xiao Yue either possessed the schematic to artificially synthesize high-tier cores, or he commanded an advanced exploration algorithm that mapped their exact global coordinates.”

“Forget it,” Ling Lang scoffed dismissively. “That bastard? He was simply riding an anomalous wave of luck. When stripped of his armor, his raw combat output wasn’t strong enough to withstand a single decisive strike.”

“A valid tactical assessment. Yet, the empirical data remains: immediately following Xiao Yue’s death, the frequency of these high-tier cores circulating in the wild increased exponentially. It makes me wonder what catastrophic secrets he buried before he died. These artifacts are impossibly rare variables; how exactly did he secure a monopoly over them?”

As he delivered the theory, Qiu Chao deliberately bumped his shoulder against Ling Lang’s arm.

“Perhaps… the shifting variables truly are the will of the cosmos at play?”

“If I don’t fear the will of the cosmos, why should you?” Ling Lang shot back, his eyes flashing with irritation. “When did the Chief Researcher of Franlun become so incredibly timid?”

With a final, sharp glare, Ling Lang turned on his heel and strode out of the room.

Qiu Chao watched his retreating back, letting out a dark chuckle. Since he fears absolutely no one, he won’t hesitate to execute the necessary extraction.

Qiu Chao had personally engaged Xiao Yue in combat on the outskirts of Base Three. The equipment that man had wielded was highly anomalous, powered entirely by a density of crystal cores that shouldn’t have mathematically existed in that sector. Even then, Qiu Chao had suspected Xiao Yue was a walking contradiction. And looking at the current board, he strongly hypothesized that Pei Xiqing—who had stubbornly abandoned Base Three only to violently reverse course—harbored critical intelligence regarding Xiao Yue’s true nature.

Pei Xiqing drifted in and out of consciousness.

Her body registered absolutely zero pain, but an overwhelming, crushing exhaustion pinned her to the mattress, rendering her completely incapable of anchoring her conscious mind. Even during her comatose phases, she suffered from a terrifying hallucination: she felt as though her soul had detached from her biology, her consciousness dissolving into static, leaving only a hollow, empty shell resting in the physical world.

When she finally managed to pry her eyes open again, the windowpanes were pitch black.

Long Yan and a towering, masked operative were seated in two chairs on the right side of the room. Long Yan was methodically polishing a high-caliber round, while the operative, entirely concealed beneath a heavy tactical cloak, was meticulously analyzing a vial of glowing serum.

Hearing the faint rustle of the bedsheets, Long Yan looked up in surprise. She immediately set her ammunition aside, moving to the bed to gently help Pei Xiqing sit up against the headboard.

“You’ve finally surfaced. I just administered a fresh injection of the counter-agent. The medical team explicitly warned me that if you failed to wake within the next half-hour, I would have to violently alter the chemical formula and double the dosage. Thank God you breached the threshold in the final hour.”

Pei Xiqing was far too drained to attempt vocalizing. She leaned heavily against the pillows, gesturing weakly for her electronic input device. With trembling fingers, she typed out a single line: What time is it? How long was I under?

“Five hours,” Long Yan replied smoothly.

Pei Xiqing typed again: Five hours of deep sleep. Factoring in the intermittent waking phases, it has been eight hours in total.

She pressed a weak hand against her forehead. She had nearly lost her absolute grip on the timeline.

Where is Brother Duan?

“He’ll be here soon. He personally deployed to the black market syndicates to extract the remaining cache. According to the tactical logs, the operation was executed with extreme prejudice and efficiency.”

Pei Xiqing nodded slowly, the tension in her chest easing a fraction.

Her dark eyes then drifted toward the imposing figure seated beside Long Yan. The operative was heavily armored, his entire frame concealed beneath thick layers of tactical gear and a sweeping cloak. His face was entirely hidden behind a reinforced mask, and even the sliver of his pupils visible through the visor looked like bottomless, dead voids. It was impossible to discern a single shred of human emotion from his posture.

The exact millisecond their eyes met, she felt a wave of absolute, pure killing intent radiate from his frame. He felt like an emotionless executioner dragged straight from the depths of hell; even the slightest shift of his shoulder seemed saturated with the metallic stench of blood.

Confronted with such a terrifying entity, Pei Xiqing couldn’t help but freeze in momentary shock.

Sensing her alarm, Long Yan immediately leaned in to clarify. “This is Operative Three. Most of the vanguard simply refer to him as Lao San. He ranks as the third highest authority within Franlun, operating directly beneath Qiu Chao’s division. Hence the callsign.”

Operative Three offered a stiff, mechanical nod. His features remained entirely obscured in the shadow of his hood, but his gloved fingers moved with terrifying precision, smoothly discharging a few excess drops of glowing green liquid from the syringe into the air.

“Don’t let his aura intimidate you,” Long Yan reassured her softly. “Third Brother harbors zero malicious intent toward you. He is one of Brother Duan’s most lethal assets. He was explicitly deployed to the wilderness to hunt down rogue crystal cores. He just transferred the harvested cache to Qiu Chao, who is currently utilizing them to synthesize your next treatment cycle. Third Brother is merely stationed here to calibrate the resulting potion for your system.”

Absorbing the explanation, Pei Xiqing managed to straighten her posture slightly. She extended a pale, trembling hand toward the imposing operative, mouthing two silent words: Thank you.

Operative Three reached out, his massive, gloved hand gently enveloping hers.

The tactical leather was freezing cold, devoid of any human warmth, yet Pei Xiqing could clearly feel the underlying, profound respect in his grip. After a brief second, he released her hand and stepped back into the shadows.

Pei Xiqing took two slow, deep breaths to steady her racing heart. She tugged on Long Yan’s sleeve and typed rapidly on her screen: After all this time, this is my first genuine encounter with Franlun’s inner circle. His baseline is incredibly intimidating.

Long Yan let out a dry laugh. “Every single operative within Franlun’s high command operates on that exact frequency. Did you honestly forget exactly who Brother Duan and Qiu Chao are?”

She leaned closer, her eyes flashing with amusement. “Or perhaps Brother Duan has played the gentle, devoted partner in your presence for so long that you’ve entirely forgotten the monster he truly is?”

Pei Xiqing let out a dry, embarrassed cough, quickly snapping the cover of her electronic device shut. The tips of her ears flushed a faint crimson. After a long moment of awkward silence, she closed her eyes, attempting to feign sleep.

Long Yan reached out, gently tapping a coded message against the back of Pei Xiqing’s hand: The total crystal core cache is nearly secured. What are your final parameters?

Pei Xiqing opened her eyes. Hmm?

Do you desire to stabilize your current matrix and remain a conscious zombie variant… or do you desire to permanently revert to a normal human being, so you can stand in the light alongside us and Brother Duan?

Chapter 249: Opportunity

Pei Xiqing’s thoughts stalled for a moment, her mind going momentarily blank. She lifted her head, a trace of confusion evident in her dark eyes.

Misinterpreting her expression, Long Yan assumed she simply hadn’t grasped the magnitude of the proposition. She reached out to take the electronic tablet, intending to type out a detailed explanation. However, before she could even punch in a few words, Pei Xiqing gently reached out and covered her hand.

Long Yan tilted her head. “Hmm?”

Pei Xiqing looked at her with an intense, solemn focus. A rare, deep struggle flickered through her unfocused pupils.

“Qiu Chao has already finalized the clinical blueprint,” Long Yan urged softly. “He explicitly stated that if you genuinely desire to revert to a normal human baseline, he will expend absolutely every ounce of his skill to execute it. You don’t need to harbor any anxiety regarding the residual virus in your system—just trust his expertise. And Brother Duan shares that exact sentiment; he will secure your humanity regardless of the logistical cost.”

Become a normal person?

“Yes.”

Then what about the lethal virus currently anchored in my biology…?

“He said not to worry about that. He has a countermeasure.”

Pei Xiqing’s brow furrowed into a tight knot.

There was absolutely no way the world’s source code would offer a miracle that clean.

Her mind drifted back to a highly obscure, easily forgotten lore setting buried within the original novel’s text.

Once a specific variant of the zombie virus infected a human system, it could never be entirely eradicated. It was a staggering statistical anomaly—manifesting in perhaps one out of every thousand infected individuals—but once that specific strain breached the host’s cells, it left behind a permanent, lethal legacy.

The standard military serum only treated the superficial symptoms; it failed to address the root cause. It could neutralize 99% of the viral load, but it lacked the biological capacity to hunt down, engulf, and permanently eliminate that final dormant fraction.

A normal survivor could indeed be “cured” by the serum and return to society. On the surface, they would look entirely indistinguishable from a healthy human being. However, that deeply embedded virus would quietly take root in their bone marrow. And without a single warning metric, that individual could suffer a sudden, catastrophic necrosis and drop dead at any given moment.

It was an exceptionally vicious, disgusting narrative mechanism designed to ensure that the psychological terror of the zombie pathogen never truly faded. It forced even elite ability users who had survived an infection to live out the remainder of their days looking over their shoulders, suffocating under the perpetual dread of a sudden, unpredictable termination.

Given the rarity of the anomaly, Pei Xiqing suspected that virtually no one in this timeline was even aware of its existence. Over the past five years, cases aligning with this specific metric had rarely surfaced across the alliance grids. Even if an ability user suddenly collapsed and died, it wasn’t considered anomalous—the process of forcing a genetic breakthrough carried a myriad of lethal risks. Consequently, no investigative body had ever bothered to audit those sudden deaths.

She heavily doubted that even the supreme high command possessed the data regarding this dormant strain.

She desperately wanted to ask Qiu Chao if his clinical models had accounted for this variable.

Pei Xiqing tapped her stylus against the screen, writing slowly: What specific methodology does Brother Qiu Chao intend to deploy? Can you detail his parameters?

“That…” Long Yan hesitated, her confidence wavering slightly. “I honestly lack the medical clearance to explain it. I’ll have to summon him up here so he can brief you directly.”

Pei Xiqing nodded. That would be troublesome.

Long Yan stared at the screen, momentarily stunned, before asking in a hushed voice, “Xiqing, I’m asking about your personal choice, your deepest desires. You don’t need to factor the logistical burden on others into this equation so quickly. You are the absolute core of this operation; you hold the ultimate decision-making authority.”

Pei Xiqing hadn’t anticipated Long Yan to harbor such intense, genuine concern for her autonomy. Her eyes widened slightly in surprise. Offering a faint, reassuring smile, she took the tablet and typed deliberately: I will not choose to become a normal human.

Long Yan’s eyes blew wide with absolute shock. “But why?!”

This was the ultimate, miraculous opportunity! Although it was far too early to guarantee success, as long as Brother Duan managed to secure the entire cache of crystal cores from the black market and channeled their power into her system, she could execute a flawless biological reset. She could turn a catastrophic crisis into a profound blessing, genuinely shedding her status as a fringe, half-zombie variant and returning to the world as a pure human being.

From that moment forward, she would no longer have to hide her viral spots beneath heavy clothing. She would no longer be tortured by the excruciating agony of the pathogen, nor would she have to endure the suspicion, bullying, and violent discrimination of the survivor factions.

Long Yan truly, fundamentally could not comprehend why Pei Xiqing would actively reject such a flawless escape route.

Pei Xiqing simply pursed her pale lips, offering a quiet, unshakeable smile. Her complexion was deathly white, yet her resolve remained absolutely ironclad.

The hidden price of executing that reset was catastrophically high. She had harbored the zombie virus within her cells for an incredibly extended timeline. Attempting to instantaneously convert a host saturated with countless viral nodes back into a pure human being fundamentally violated the pre-coded order and physical rules of this world. If she authorized the procedure, God only knew what horrifying, karmic price the man executing the blueprint on her behalf would be forced to pay.

The cycle of cause and effect in this narrative was absolute. If a major plot node failed to manifest naturally, an invisible, corrective force would inevitably crush everything in its path to force the timeline forward.

The current parasite crisis was the perfect empirical example.

In the original novel’s timeline, the amphibious parasites had indeed caused a minor disruption along the coast, but before the ocean could truly turn hostile, the swarms had been systematically eradicated by the original protagonist, Xiao Yue, and his vanguard.

The parasites were undeniably difficult to combat, but their biological reproduction rate was inherently slow, requiring a significant incubation cycle. As long as their deep-sea hatcheries were torched before the eggs matured, they posed no existential threat. Throughout the novel, the true, unending nightmare for Xiao Yue and the survivor factions had always been the zombie hordes.

The undead boasted massive numerical superiority and an instantaneous infection rate; they could completely overrun an entire metropolitan grid in the blink of an eye. The sheer volume of zombies in the apocalypse meant they could never be truly exterminated. Consequently, the parasite threat had always been relegated to a secondary, background hazard.

But in their current, altered reality, the parasites had abruptly mutated into the primary apocalyptic threat, giving the entire alliance a massive, collective headache. No one could accurately map their new biological metrics. It even felt as though their aggressive expansion was intentionally eclipsing the zombie hordes, catching the high command and the frontline armies completely off guard, leaving them paralyzed and unable to mount a defense.

Pei Xiqing had spent hours analyzing the shifting variables, and she had finally managed to connect the anomalous parasite aggression back to the crystal cores.

Could the true target of the parasite swarms… actually be the crystal cores themselves? Or perhaps the sudden, terrifying acceleration in their mutation and reproductive capabilities was directly fueled by the presence of those unrefined artifacts?

Following the premature death of the protagonist, Xiao Yue, the legendary crystal cores had lost their designated, pre-coded master. They could no longer seamlessly integrate into the narrative. Did that massive void cause the world’s source code to completely lose its equilibrium, actively buffing the parasite swarms—which should never have escalated to this threat level—into an unstoppable force to correct the imbalance?

There were countless variables she couldn’t definitively confirm yet, but she was absolutely certain of one core metric: as long as the world’s engine continued to run, the system would inevitably deploy a corrective force to brutally wrench the derailed timeline back onto its original, pre-coded track.

And once the world order forcibly corrected itself, it meant that those who were destined by the plot to die would be resurrected, while those who had defied their pre-coded deaths would be systematically terminated.

That violent correction would require a massive, catastrophic catalyst.

She desperately hoped she wouldn’t be the spark that ignited that purge.

Pei Xiqing closed her eyes, sinking into a deep, heavy meditation.

Vast sections of her cognitive awareness were quietly fading into static. She felt absolutely zero physical pain, leaving her no anchor to the physical world; she could only relentlessly loop her core memories and emotional attachments in her mind just to prevent them from dissolving into the void.

For a long time, the room was entirely silent.

When she finally felt a slight shift in the air, she reached out blindly, her fingers brushing against the electronic keypad. Opening her eyes, a flicker of surprise crossed her dull pupils.

Qiu Chao, fully clad in sterile gear and a surgical mask, was now seated in the chair beside her bed. He had a thick medical ledger open in his lap and was meticulously logging data with a pen.

Pei Xiqing lowered her gaze. Resting on the digital tablet before her was a highly detailed, comprehensive clinical blueprint. It outlined his exact theoretical methodology, cataloging the precise number of high-tier crystal cores currently secured within their vaults, and mapping out the exact biological sequence he intended to use to integrate their raw energy into her bone marrow to permanently engulf the zombie virus.

It was an agonizingly meticulous, brilliant piece of medical engineering.

To calculate biological metrics with such flawless precision in such a compressed timeframe, he must have burned through an unimaginable amount of mental energy and focus.

Pei Xiqing parted her lips, her body subconsciously attempting to force a vocal response.

Qiu Chao instantly raised a gloved hand, halting her effort. “Do not attempt to vocalize. The strain will damage your vocal cords. If you require communication, input the data here—or utilize this.”

He reached into his coat and produced a specialized neural-reader headset.

Pei Xiqing offered a weak nod. The device was engineered to directly translate localized cognitive thoughts into text, operating on the same baseline technology as the memory-extraction rig they had encountered outside the ghost market.

She settled back against her pillows, allowing the neural-reader to initialize. The specific parameters she wished to convey were instantly projected onto the external monitor.

Qiu Chao glanced at the screen, his brow furrowing. “Are you harboring anxiety that my clinical execution will fail?”

I have never once doubted your medical brilliance, the screen displayed. I am simply terrified that forcefully interfacing with those crystal cores will inflict a catastrophic biological backlash upon your own system, and trigger entirely unmapped, lethal variables.

Qiu Chao’s eyes darkened slightly beneath his mask. “Your threat assessment is entirely accurate. During the brief intervals I have spent physically handling the raw crystal cores in the lab, my own nervous system has already begun logging anomalous, structural mutations.”

Then you must terminate the procedure immediately, Pei Xiqing’s thoughts fired across the screen.

“I cannot terminate the procedure,” he replied flatly, adjusting his grip on his pen. “From a purely scientific standpoint, I am deeply compelled to test the absolute limits of my own biology. I want to log exactly what kind of genetic evolution these artifacts can trigger within my cells. I have spent my entire career operating from behind a microscope; it is an exceptional, thrilling rarity to finally utilize my own body as the primary test subject. The empirical data is exhilarating.”

Pei Xiqing stared at him, her expression unreadable. Qiu Chao simply shrugged. “Furthermore, if I fail to synthesize a cure and save your baseline, Brother Duan will absolutely never forgive me. I would be liquidated regardless.”

He was the one who had initially proposed weaponizing the crystal cores. The raw data confirmed that their energy matrix was theoretically capable of saving her life. Now that the entire global cache was about to be deposited directly onto his laboratory table, he had completely trapped himself; there was no escape route left for his division.

Seeing his absolute refusal to back down, Pei Xiqing bypassed the pleasantries and directly outlined the hidden lore regarding the dormant, incurable strain of the virus to him via the neural-link.

Qiu Chao’s pen froze mid-stroke. He stared at the screen, utterly stunned. “How on earth did you extract that data?”

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