What?! I Became the Zombie Beauty in the Villain’s Arms – CH28

Chapter 28: You Are Not Trouble Yet

Xiao Yue lowered his voice, his expression tightening. “Captain Ling Lang, can we please speak in private?”

Ling Lang frowned, his patience running dangerously low. “Just say whatever you have to say right here.”

Everyone surrounding them was part of his elite unit. He saw absolutely no reason to play cloak-and-dagger games just to look for a civilian. What could this guy possibly say that his comrades weren’t allowed to hear?

Xiao Yue let out a tight, formal cough. “Captain Ling Lang, it’s a long story. My girlfriend has a younger sister who went missing five years ago, right at the beginning of the global outbreak. We searched for her for years with zero success. But just a few weeks ago, we crossed paths with her while clearing a sector… unfortunately, a series of misunderstandings occurred, and she ended up leaving our squad.”

Xiao Yue paused, trying to maintain his composure. “Just a few minutes ago, my scouts intercepted a rumor in the camp. Someone claimed they spotted a girl matching her exact description in this sector. I’ve already cleared the perimeters of the other two squads. Yours is the only unit left. If it’s not too much trouble, could you please allow me to review your manifest?”

Ling Lang let out a harsh, mocking scoff. “Review my manifest? You tracked down my unit to ask for a headcount? Who the hell do you think we are? What gives an independent squad the right to demand the clearance files of my personnel? I am under zero obligation to let you check anything.”

“That wasn’t my intention,” Xiao Yue quickly backpedaled, his tone remaining polite but firm. “I merely wanted to confirm whether the anomaly spotted by my scouts was actually her. I have no interest in breaching your unit’s classification or uncovering military secrets.”

Ling Lang stared at him, entirely unimpressed by the diplomatic front. “If I remember correctly, the brass mentioned that S1 recently produced a rare, high-tier dual-ability user.”

Xiao Yue lowered his eyes. “Yes.”

“Is it you?”

“To be frank, Captain Ling Lang occupies a similar status within the Vanguard, doesn’t he?” Xiao Yue countered smoothly, dodging the interrogation. “There’s really no need to test me, Captain. S1 operates under the direct sanction of the central command. Since the military has deployed to secure this metropolis, I will execute my duties to serve the base to the absolute best of my ability.”

Inside the tactical tent, Pei Xiqing listened to every syllable of the exchange. She pulled the black composite mask off her face, tossing it onto a crate. Sitting in front of a small portable stove, she watched the tent flap through the thick cloud of rising steam, her chopsticks frozen mid-air.

Standing just beyond the canvas, Xiao Yue was easily as tall as Ling Lang. His build was exceptionally rugged and symmetrical. From what she could recall of the novel’s descriptions, his features were strikingly handsome and structured—the kind of face that looked entirely unyielding, flawlessly living up to his role as the destined male protagonist. Standing before an elite military captain, he was neither humble nor arrogant, already projecting the aura of a global savior.

The protagonist couple was infamous in the novel lore for their absolute, black-and-white hatred of corruption and evil. On the surface, they submitted to the central base’s military jurisdiction to secure resources, but their ultimate trajectory was to dismantle the oppressive apocalyptic hegemony, forge their own empire, and build a utopian new world.

Pei Xiqing took a slow, expressionless sip of water.

Long Yan observed her tense posture for a few seconds before leaning in with a whisper. “Is he hunting for you?”

Pei Xiqing nearly choked on her water, coughing violently. “Sister Long Yan…!”

Long Yan burst into a loud, delighted laugh. “Hahaha! Relax, kid, I’m just messing with you. Don’t take it so seriously.”

Pei Xiqing covered her mouth, her voice slightly raw from the coughing fit. “You nearly scared the life right out of me.”

“I know,” Long Yan smiled, her eyes turning serious as she idly twirled her chopsticks. “The absolute second Team S1 rolled into this sector, they started aggressively interrogating the perimeter guards. You really think they could keep a manhunt like that a secret from me? They’re desperate to find this girl, but honestly? Based on the behavior of a few S1 scouts I observed, it looks less like a rescue mission and more like they’re ready to skin her alive the moment they capture her. Ling Lang isn’t going to give you up to them. Neither am I. And neither will anyone else in this unit.”

Pei Xiqing froze, staring at the older woman in absolute, wide-eyed silence.

Long Yan took a bite of tender beef from the pot. “Xiqing, we don’t care about whatever history you have with them, or why they’re hunting you down. I can guess they realized you carry the virus and want to execute you as a threat. But since you’ve chosen to conceal your identity from them, we will fully respect that choice. At the end of the day, whether you’re a half-zombie or an anomaly, they have zero authority over our unit.”

Pei Xiqing’s eyes rimmed with a sudden prickle of heat. “Thank you… Sister Long Yan. If I can figure out how to permanently stabilize this virus so I never turn, I swear I will—”

“Stop. You don’t owe us an explanation,” Long Yan interrupted gently. “I have zero interest in digging into your past, just like I have no intention of telling you about mine. In an elite special ops unit, nobody wants their comrades digging into the ghosts they left behind before the world ended.”

“It’s the apocalypse now, kid. The past is nothing but dead weight. The only metric that matters out here is survival.” Long Yan patted her shoulder reassuringly. “But on a completely separate note, I should probably warn you: that hotheaded brat Ling Lang doesn’t have a single clue how romance actually works.”

“Right, I understand… wait, what?”

Pei Xiqing went from deeply touched to utterly dumbfounded in a fraction of a second.

Long Yan winked at her playfully, reaching out to pat her flushed cheek. “Enjoy the rest of your dinner. I need to go establish the high-voltage perimeter array. The scanners indicate the local horde is massing just beyond the concrete ruins; they aren’t going to wait until dawn to strike. The outer barricades are going to face critical pressure any minute now.”

Pei Xiqing quickly reached out, grabbing her sleeve. “Sister Long Yan, don’t throw your life away out there. If the perimeter collapses, just order a tactical retreat. This sector isn’t worth dying for, and you don’t need to be consumed by the horde…”

“Even I wouldn’t dare make a guarantee like that in City B,” Long Yan noted, surprised. “How can you be so certain the defenses will fall?”

“I just…”

Assuming the girl was simply panicked and projecting her anxiety, Long Yan offered a warm smile. “Hey, I hear you. I won’t play the martyr. Don’t worry about me.”

In the lawless apocalyptic wasteland, there was no sacred soil worth dying to protect. The only absolute doctrine driving the military elites was the total eradication of the virus. Now that they had locked onto a localized ground-zero event, no operative had an excuse to retreat. No matter how many thousands of mutants flooded the gates, they had to be systematically slaughtered.

If they didn’t purge the horde now, the concentrated viral mutations would only accelerate, producing terrifying new variants that would inevitably breach the central strongholds.

Long Yan slipped out of the tent, and the remaining operatives immediately stood up to join her.

Fu Feng and Nie Bin checked their sidearms. “We’re heading out to the line too, Xiqing. The operational clock is ticking.”

“Yeah,” she nodded softly. “Please be careful out there, brothers.”

Fu Feng and Nie Bin exchanged a quick grin. “Hearing a beautiful girl worry about us is pretty refreshing. We’ll make sure to stay alive.”

The operatives flooded out into the night, leaving the massive tent completely hollow. Pei Xiqing forced down another bite of beef, but thinking about the impending canonical slaughter detailed in the novel, she completely lost her appetite.

The male and female protagonists possessed a literal narrative halo; they were fundamentally guaranteed to survive the jaws of death. The elite operatives around her did not.

Up until tonight, she had foolishly convinced herself that by running from Team S1, she had successfully removed herself from the main plot—that her path and the protagonists’ path were two entirely separate, parallel lines. But looking at the warzone around her, she realized with sinking horror that she had been pulled directly into the vortex of a major canon event.

Once you are caught within the gravity of the central plot, every single variable becomes a matter of life and death. The narrative wasn’t just a collection of fictional paragraphs she could casually skim past; it was a brutal, physical reality.

She was genuinely terrified of what would happen to Ling Lang, Long Yan, and the others if the plot adjusted to protect the protagonists at the expense of everyone else. After all, the combat tier of the mutated horde in City B was canonically ranked among the top three deadliest events in the entire novel.

Dropping her chopsticks, she could still hear Xiao Yue’s voice outside the canvas, arguing with Ling Lang. However, the Captains of the Base Four and Base Ten units had stepped into the conversation, boisterously cutting him off.

“Captain Ling Lang! Our heavy ordinance positions are fully locked and loaded for the defensive engagement!”

“Everyone brace for immediate contact! The scanners show that horde isn’t going to give us until sunrise. We severely underestimated their migration pattern. My scouts report the structural density of the swarm is absolutely staggering. City B was a massive metropolitan chokepoint before the collapse; the sheer volume of biological hosts here is insane. The entire city transformed into an undead nest overnight five days ago. The high command dispatched over a dozen vanguard units this week, and they barely made a dent. Tonight, we have to burn this nest to the ground!”

“Hell yeah! Let the high command see that we’ve shattered our operational targets! We’ll all be looking at major military promotions by dawn!”

“Though, I have to admit, I’m surprised to see an independent outfit like S1 operating in this grid. Are you sure you didn’t just show up to ride Captain Ling Lang’s coattails once you realized the Vanguard was holding the line?”

Xiao Yue’s eyes turned visibly cold, but he maintained a calculated, placating smile. “My squad was simply navigating the southern trade corridor.”

The two rival Captains let out a synchronized scoff. “Passing through? Word through the grapevine is that someone in your little squad triggered a dual-ability mutation. Planning to leverage that to secure a commission? I just hope Captain Xiao isn’t the type of leader who relies entirely on his women to climb the ranks.”

“Yeah, and didn’t we hear a rumor that Captain Xiao had some serious domestic drama before leaving the base? Some desperate girl tried to climb directly into his bed? Tsk, tsk… Captain Xiao’s personal life sounds incredibly vibrant.”

“I hear holding one woman isn’t enough for him; he always has to keep his eyes wandering to the next… Tsk.”

Xiao Yue’s jaw clenched violently, his face turning an ash-grey as he forced himself to endure the public humiliation. “Captain Ling Lang, I strongly urge you to reconsider my request…”

The two rival Captains suddenly shifted their attention, their eyes landing on the silent, imposing figure of Duan Xiaolin standing right beside Ling Lang. They aggressively cut Xiao Yue off again. “Captain Ling Lang, aren’t you going to introduce your companion? Is he… a new specialist attached to your unit? I don’t recall seeing his face on the high-level manifests.”

They had noticed several high-ranking officers respectfully saluting this man from a distance earlier. Why was he standing here in absolute, unbothered silence?

Duan Xiaolin was quietly smoking a cigarette, his gold-rimmed glasses catching the glare of the camp lights, obscuring his expression. He exhaled a stream of grey smoke, slowly raising his heavy eyelids. “There is no need for introductions. You will be seeing a lot of me in the future.”

Ling Lang immediately stepped in, closing the matter. “Captain Xiao, my answer is final. The individual you are hunting is not a member of my unit. There is nothing to check.”

“But—”

Ling Lang smoothly drew his sidearm from his tactical holster, checking the chamber as he stared out at the black storm clouds massing on the horizon. “We are out of time. All units, execute defensive deployment! Move out!”

The superficial political posturing vanished instantly. The Captains threw their field rations aside, grabbed their heavy weapons, and sprinted toward their respective defensive perimeters.

Within minutes, the entire joint-camp transformed into a hyper-efficient, roaring military machine.

Pei Xiqing cautiously poked her head out of the tent flap, her mask securely fastened.

Outside, dozens of ability users were frantically hauling heavy munitions crates and calibrating automated artillery batteries. Absolutely no one paid her any attention.

But the exact second she tried to step onto the asphalt, a powerful grip clamped onto the back of her collar, yanking her firmly backward.

“!”

Pei Xiqing gasped in panic.

Spinning around, she collided with Duan Xiaolin’s calm facade and let out a massive sigh of relief. “Brother Duan…”

“Sneaking around the perimeter like a common thief, are we?” he asked smoothly.

“I was just… worried about becoming a distraction or a burden to the defense lines.”

“You aren’t capable of causing real trouble yet,” Duan Xiaolin said, releasing his grip on her collar.

Watching him walk toward a decaying, concrete structure, Pei Xiqing instinctively followed close behind. “Is there absolutely anything I can do to help? Just give me an order.”

Duan Xiaolin scaled the skeletal remains of the collapsed skyscraper, stepping onto a jagged ledge on the ruined top floor.

From this elevated vantage point, the terrifying reality of the novel’s description manifested before her eyes.

It wasn’t just a localized horde; it was an absolute sea of mutants surrounding the city sector in dense, undulating layers. Pei Xiqing had spent days mentally preparing herself for a full-scale siege, but looking down at the reality, a primal horror seized her throat.

The density of the crowd was infinitely more suffocating than the most chaotic red-carpet fan events from her past life. She vividly recalled times she had been trapped on the upper floors of a luxury hotel, looking down at thousands of obsessed fans crowding the streets. That had been unsettling—but this was a nightmare.

The infected were violently clawing and crushing forward, driven by a mindless, frenzied instinct. Thousands of bodies were packed so tightly together that they couldn’t even fall down, their milky eyeballs bulging from their sockets, their flesh an ashen corpse-grey. The collective, guttural howling of the swarm was deafening, accompanied by the skin-crawling, metallic sound of millions of jagged fingernails frantically scraping against the asphalt.

The absolute zenith of the novel’s horror was unfolding directly beneath them.

Duan Xiaolin glanced down at her. “Are you terrified?”

Pei Xiqing stiffened for two seconds before murmuring, “…A little bit.”

“When the localized outbreak first manifested five days ago, the structural density of the infected inside the inner ring was twice this size,” he noted, his gaze tracking the migration pattern with clinical precision. “Only a microscopic fraction of the civilian population successfully made it to the extraction points. In less than a week, humanity established a secure base corridor, consuming an immense amount of tactical resources, but the mutation rate of the infected has accelerated proportionally.”

“Five days…” Pei Xiqing swallowed hard. “How many people did this virus actually claim?”

The virus didn’t just reanimate the freshly killed; it systematically hijacked every biological host in the sector. Over the past five days of constant skirmishes and base building, humans had been infected by the hour.

The cumulative biological volume of the swarm was astronomical.

“The tactical deployment gave the infected room to breathe, but did the high command honestly believe the virus wouldn’t evolve its own elemental mutations?” the man asked, his tone perfectly level, having already completely calculated the trajectory of this apocalypse.

“There are so many of them…” Pei Xiqing whispered, clutching the concrete railing.

Reading a paragraph in a novel was one thing; standing on a ledge and feeling the vibrations of a million shrieking monsters was an entirely different reality. Her knees felt entirely weak.

“Didn’t you claim you wanted to act as my guard?” Duan Xiaolin asked, reaching out to lightly tap the space between her brows. “If your human mind cannot process the sight, retreat to the safety of the G-Class.”

Pei Xiqing bit her lower lip, forcing her posture straight. “No. I’m a half-zombie. Why should I be terrified of my own kind? Besides… Ling Lang and the elite operatives are holding the frontline.”

Duan Xiaolin’s eyes darkened, turning bottomless. “True. But they cannot hold the line tonight.”

Pei Xiqing’s eyes widened in shock. “How is that possible?!”

They are the elite squad! And the protagonists are here to reinforce them!

“If you don’t believe my calculations, we can simply watch the timer,” he noted smoothly.

“Watch it for how long?”

“Two hours.”

“That fast?!”

Duan Xiaolin gave a slow nod, a dangerous smirk playing on his lips as he mimicked her earlier defensive tone. “So… we can prepare to run away.”

Pei Xiqing’s face flushed hot. She looked up at him, her voice dropping to a bold whisper. “If I run away, I am absolutely dragging you with me, Brother Duan.”

Driven by a sudden, protective surge of adrenaline, she reached out and firmly grasped his broad palm. He didn’t pull away; he simply stood there, watching her in absolute stillness. Pei Xiqing pressed her fingers tightly against his skin. “I will protect you. If a mutant breaks through the lines, I’ll let it bite me instead. It doesn’t matter what happens to my body anyway.”

Duan Xiaolin’s fingers twitched, smoothly sliding around her wrist, reversing the grip and locking her in place. “Then I shall eagerly await your protection.”

“Though, I am slightly reluctant to let you take a hit,” he murmured, his gaze dropping to her swollen mouth. “If you take another direct bite, this flawless skin might completely decay.” He raised her hand, his lips lightly brushing against her fingertips. “I prefer you preserve yourself. Do not let anything touch you unless it is absolutely necessary.”

A violent, electrifying thrill shot straight up her spine. Desperate to break the suffocating tension, she frantically changed the subject. “But I’ve been meaning to ask… what exactly is your superpower, Brother Duan?”

She blinked up at him. “Am I allowed to know?”

“You are.”

“Has anyone else in the base actually witnessed you use it?”

“They have.”

He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a glacial murmur. “Every single person who has ever witnessed my ability is currently rotting in a high-security black site.”

Pei Xiqing shivered, her blood running cold. “Your… your power… it isn’t… it isn’t related to psychological torture or extraction, is it? Do you physically break people?”

Duan Xiaolin shook his head, a dark, unfathomable glint flashing behind his gold-rimmed glasses. “Before you waste your energy guessing the nature of my power, why don’t you focus on uncovering your own?”

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