What?! I Became the Zombie Beauty in the Villain’s Arms – CH29

Chapter 29: Pushing Away

“My superpower?” Pei Xiqing stared at him, momentarily bewildered. “Don’t change the subject. I asked you first. Why are you turning this back on me?”

Duan Xiaolin’s voice remained perfectly flat. “My superpower is no longer functional.”

?

“Huh?”

She blinked, unsure if he was spinning a tactical lie or telling the absolute truth. “What do you mean ‘no longer functional’? As in… you lost it permanently?”

He didn’t seem even remotely concerned that she might weaponize this information or expose it as a fatal weakness. He admitted it directly. “Yes.”

“But I can clearly feel the energy fluctuations radiating from you,” she argued. As a half-zombie, her sensory perception was hyper-acute; she could gauge an ability user’s raw strength just by breathing the same air. Looking at Duan Xiaolin, she could tethers her senses to an undeniably massive, crushing aura of power.

“That is merely a psychological illusion,” he noted, a ghost of a smile playing on his lips. “Even you fell for it. It proves my acting is flawless.”

“No way…”

“Are you disappointed?”

“A little bit. I was genuinely looking forward to seeing your ability in action,” she admitted honestly. “But I suppose it doesn’t really matter. You still have Ling Lang by your side, and the rest of the squad is packed with apex users.”

Duan Xiaolin’s expression turned freezing and indifferent. “A pity they are merely them.”

Pei Xiqing tilted her head up. “They are them, but they are also your comrades. They protect you.”

His lips curved into a faint, unreadable smile. “I suppose.”

“Do they know your power is gone?”

“They know.”

“See? That proves it. Nobody in this squad thinks a person without a superpower doesn’t deserve to survive.”

Inside her head, however, Pei Xiqing was breaking out into a cold sweat.

What the hell am I doing?

To an outside observer, the intense, low-whispered conversation between them on this ruined roof would look entirely intimate and bizarre.

In reality, she understood the underlying warning in his words. In the brutal economy of the apocalypse, relying on the strength of others was a delayed suicide.

But she firmly believed in Duan Xiaolin’s tactical genius, and she trusted Ling Lang’s fierce loyalty.

Duan Xiaolin leaned back, his eyes narrowing. “Now. It is your turn.”

“What exactly do you want to see?”

Pei Xiqing was genuinely lost. When it came to superpowers, she herself hadn’t the slightest clue what kind of energy was dormant in her veins. How could he possibly diagnose it?

Without a word of warning, Duan Xiaolin’s large hand shot forward, his fingers clamping firmly around her jaw. “Tilt your head up. Look at me.”

Pei Xiqing subconsciously obeyed, her eyes locking onto his.

The man’s dark eyes were like thousand-year-old cold jade—bottomless, freezing, and heavy with unspoken intent. Just colliding with his gaze left her feeling entirely exposed and defeated. Her survival instincts screamed at her to break the suffocating eye contact, but before she could wrench her face away, his grip tightened, holding her anchored.

“Look at me a little longer,” he commanded softly.

Pei Xiqing practically ground her teeth together, forcing herself to maintain the intense stare. “…Why?”

“Why…?” He paused deliberately, his voice dropping to a low, analytical rasp. “If you keep suppressing it like this, how much longer do you honestly think your mind can endure?”

“What?” Pei Xiqing blinked, wondering if the howling wind had distorted his words. He was speaking in maddening, cryptic riddles.

She forced her voice steady. “What can’t I endure?” She glared at him. “Are you practicing your Franlun interrogation techniques on me?”

Duan Xiaolin didn’t answer. Instead, his slender, calloused fingertips slid smoothly down her jaw, tracing the length of her forearm. “The physical symptoms of your mutation are rapidly worsening.”

She tried to violently wrench her wrist from his grasp, but his strength was absolute; she couldn’t move an inch. “I am fully aware of my condition! Are you asking me this because you’re worried about me? Because if I’m a liability, I can sprint into the wasteland right now. Or are you just terrified that I’m going to bite you?”

“I hold absolute trust that you won’t,” he murmured. “But you do not need to fight the virus using this specific method.”

His thumb pressed hard into the corner of her jaw, forcing her mouth to part slightly, relaxing her rigid tongue. “Stop biting your own lips to stay lucid.”

“I-I was just a little nervous,” Pei Xiqing stammered, her tongue feeling heavy. “I was just using the pain to ground myself and relieve the tension.”

“And what about this?”

Duan Xiaolin ruthlessly yanked her heavy sleeve all the way up to her elbow.

Exposed to the freezing night air was a horrifying network of self-inflicted injuries—deep knife gashes tracking right alongside a chaotic mess of bloody, jagged fingernail scratches.

Wait… didn’t I meticulously check my arms earlier? I thought the skin had almost entirely healed.

Pei Xiqing hadn’t even realized that during her fitful, feverish sleep over the past few nights, her subconscious mind had driven her to frantically claw at her own flesh to fight the maddening internal itch. Her brain hadn’t even registered the trauma.

Staring at the raw, mutilated skin exposed beneath the floodlights, her psychological defenses fractured. The numbness vanished, and a blinding wave of agony violently rushed into her nervous system.

“Hiss…!” She gasped, her face draining of color. “It hurts…”

Several of the jagged tracks were fresh, actively weeping blood from the past twenty-four hours, while the older gashes had begun to form sickly scabs. Now that the phantom numbness had shattered, the accumulated agony of the past few days hit her like a physical blow. She clutched her arm to her chest, trembling. “Why does it hurt this much?”

“Your previous delirium forced your nervous system to adapt, masking the sensory toll of the virus through sheer psychological trauma,” Duan Xiaolin explained calmly, his thumb tracing the edge of a fresh scratch. “It forced your body to become immune to basic physical pain. But judging by your current reaction, and the fact that your receptors can still process this neural shock, the infection hasn’t entirely seized your neural pathways. It’s not critical yet.”

Pei Xiqing felt as though her bones were being systematically crushed by the radiating waves of pain.

She looked up at him, a desperate hope flaring in her eyes. “Does that mean… I can still be cured? There’s a way to save me?”

“You are entirely beyond saving.”

“Oh.” She let out a long, hollow breath, slumped against his arm.

The man’s brow pulled together in genuine bewilderment. “Do you truly desire to become a monster?”

“Of course,” Pei Xiqing muttered, forcing a bitter, self-deprecating smirk. “This is clearly the narrative trajectory. Fate is irreversible.”

Duan Xiaolin stared deeply into her eyes. “Is it?”

Pei Xiqing opened her mouth to shoot back a defensive retort, but the overwhelming sensory shock radiating from her open wounds completely paralyzed her voice.

Her knees buckled entirely. Her body collapsed sideways, sliding down the concrete wall of the roof. Duan Xiaolin instantly reached out, his massive arm catching her before she hit the rubble, anchoring her against his chest. “Can your mind no longer hold the line?”

Pei Xiqing stared blankly ahead, her consciousness fraying.

The maddening, primal hunger of the virus was violently exploding inside her skull. Standing this close to the apex ability user, her senses were completely overwhelmed by his unique, intoxicating elemental aura. To her infected cells, the raw energy vibrating beneath his skin was more desperately tempting than stumbling upon a pristine oasis after wandering bone-dry in the desert for weeks. She wanted to rip his throat open, sink her fangs into his flesh, and devour his blood…

For the very first time since transmigrating, she was experiencing the true, terrifying reality of a mindless zombie’s hunger.

Pei Xiqing fell to her knees on the rubble, her body entirely soft and trembling as she slumped weakly against his chest. Fighting her own monstrous impulses, she desperately planted her palms against his shoulders, trying to shove him away.

“Get… get away from me. Hurry.”

Duan Xiaolin didn’t flinch. He remained an unyielding wall of solid muscle, completely refusing to let her go.

Pei Xiqing’s panic spiked. “Hurry up and back off!”

The man merely looked down at her, his eyes perfectly calm, as if he was actively waiting for the unpredictable mutation to unfold.

As her mind began to fracture, a sudden wave of reality hit her brain.

How can I be this stupid?

Duan Xiaolin was a ruthless interrogator for Franlun. The second her fangs pierced human skin, no force in this universe could save her. He would execute her on the spot. She had fought so hard to survive the initial infection, only to end up getting slaughtered by his hands?

Summoning every single ounce of her remaining human strength, she violently shoved against his chest, breaking his grip.

She needed to run.

But the moment she spun around and sprinted down the stairwell to the ground floor, she ran directly into a chaotic wave of retreating ability users fleeing the frontline.

Panicking, she frantically adjusted her tactical mask, yanked her sleeves down to hide her arms, and dropped her head, attempting to blend into the shadows.

The fleeing scavengers were screaming at each other in total hysteria. “It’s a disaster! The central ammunition depot is completely dry!”

“We didn’t pack enough high-caliber rounds for a siege! But I swear to god, when I ran the log check twenty minutes ago, the crates were full! Who the hell raided our logistics?!”

“Damn it! The mutant horde is closing the perimeter, we’re about to be completely surrounded, and we have zero ammo left!”

“There are too many of them! Even if the crates were full, it wouldn’t be enough to hold the line!”

“What about the Base Ten squads?!”

“They’re busy defending their own skin! Nobody is coming to bail us out!”

“Jesus Christ! Fall back! Retreat! Are we just going to stand here and wait to be eaten?!”

…

The panicked mob surged past her. Within seconds, the fragile “joint-alliance” that the Captains had spent hours organizing completely disintegrated. The sudden “lack of ammunition” was glaringly obvious—it was nothing more than a convenient, manufactured lie to justify abandoning the line and deserting the battlefield.

Absolute, violent chaos rippled through the camp.

Pei Xiqing stopped, slowly turning her head to look back toward the roof.

It hadn’t even been an hour since Duan Xiaolin had made his calculation. Not even close to the two hours he predicted.

That man had meticulously dissected human psychology. He understood exactly how cowards operated under pressure, and he knew precisely how to play the board.

Pei Xiqing let out a heavy sigh.

Looks like it’s officially time to pack up and run for my life.

But her immediate priority wasn’t the collapsing defensive line; it was the terrifying, erratic surge of the virus inside her own veins.

Determined to slip away quietly into the dark before the elite operatives noticed her status, she took two rapid steps toward the perimeter gates—only to collide head-on with a massive, heavily built frame moving at a dead sprint.

The violent impact threw her off balance, and she crashed heavily onto the hard asphalt.

Gasping from the pain, she snapped her head up. Standing directly over her was Meng Jiankai. He was dressed in his Base Four combat gear, clutching a massive assault rifle, his thick brows furrowed in a furious scowl.

Seeing that he had run over a thinly dressed woman wearing a tactical mask, he roared in irritation, “Which blind idiot doesn’t look where they’re going?! Can’t you see the camp is collapsing?! Damn it, where the hell did this useless civilian come from? You’re blocking the extraction route! Do you have any idea how many lives your stupidity is going to cost?!”

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