What?! I Became the Zombie Beauty in the Villain’s Arms – CH34

Chapter 34: The End of the World

After stating his analysis, Ling Lang cast a sharp, probing glance toward Pei Xiqing.

The suspicion burning in his eyes was palpable. “They look like operatives attached to Team S1.”

“You think they look like them? Or are you entirely certain?” Long Yan countered, stepping up to examine the coordinates.

Pei Xiqing stared down at the bleeding scouts, maintaining a rigid silence. Terrifying luck, she thought. Another collection of assets tied directly to the original owner’s chaotic history.

Nearby, one of the consciousness-depleted S1 scouts suddenly cracked his eyelids. Spotting her silhouette under the camp floodlights, his pupils dilated in sheer horror. He pointed a trembling, blood-slicked finger at her, his jaw hanging open as if his vocal cords had permanently locked.

“Aren’t you… supposed to be dead…?”

Unbelievable, Pei Xiqing grumbled internally. It feels like no matter which coordinate sector I flee to in this wasteland, I am guaranteed to collide with an old casualty of the original owner.

Masking her anxiety, she kept her expression perfectly blank. “I was only embedded with S1 for a brief period before the migration, so I don’t recognize their structural sub-units. But judging by the alloy weave of their tactical armor and the standard-issue firearms, I can definitively confirm they are active members of Team S1.”

Ling Lang snapped straight, addressing the perimeter guards. “Drag the wounded into the medical bunker. The rest of the vanguard officers, arm yourselves and form up on me.”

“We explicitly refused to synchronize our operational fields with them back in the city ruins,” Long Yan reminded him, her brow furrowed. “Are you entirely certain it’s wise to breach their grid now? The second they abandoned the defensive lines, our joint-coalition charter was permanently voided.”

Ling Lang rammed a fresh magazine into his sidearm, his voice dropping to a low, ambitious rasp. “The Commander of Team S1 is carrying high-tier currency. Do you honestly think I care about their internal politics?”

“What exactly is he carrying?”

“He has a dozen high-level crystal cores capable of forcibly elevating an asset’s elemental tier, two pristine special-grade cores, and a highly classified regenerative serum designed to aggressively rebuild necrotic muscle tissue. If I delay our deployment, those assets will inevitably be plundered by rival rogue factions or buried under a mountain of corpses. More importantly… my brother requires that exact biological medicine to stabilize his cells.”

Long Yan raised an eyebrow in genuine surprise. “How did you manage to run that diagnostic check?”

“I ran a scan on his gear schematic the second he breached our camp earlier tonight. Did your radar miss it?”

“I didn’t waste my breath speaking to him,” Long Yan laughed, shaken by his observation. “I didn’t realize you kept such a meticulous ledger on supply hoarding.”

“Who in their right mind turns down a resource that can jump-start an elemental core? I don’t execute operations that yield a negative return.”

“Then execute the acquisition,” Long Yan nodded, her tone turning cautious. “But if that man is hoarding resources of that caliber, he holds massive leverage within the central command. Watch your blind spots.”

“Copy that.” Ling Lang turned to break rank. As his shoulder brushed past Pei Xiqing, he lowered his voice to a lethal whisper. “The Captain of S1… why exactly was he tracking our coordinates back at the camp? Is he hunting you?”

“Does he look like he’s infatuated with me?”

Pei Xiqing shot him a flat glare. “You are overanalyzing the data. It’s completely irrelevant.”

Ling Lang held her gaze for a beat, his expression softening slightly. “Fine. I accept your calculation.”

He turned to sprint toward the gates, but Pei Xiqing’s voice sliced through the dark. “Ling Lang, wait.”

“What is it?”

“I will handle the extraction,” she stated firmly, stepping directly into his path. “I will retrieve the high-tier cores and the regenerative serum for you. I can leverage my previous history with their unit to execute a clean trade. Just let me pass the perimeter alone.”

Ling Lang’s jaw clenched in immediate refusal. “Stop talking nonsense.”

“I am entirely serious.” Pei Xiqing stepped closer, her fingers clamping tightly around his forearm. “You cannot deploy your operatives to that sector. No one in this unit can risk the exposure. Only I have the biological clearance to walk into that swarm.”

Xiao Yue and Pei Yanting are the destined protagonists of this narrative arc. Anyone who attempted to plunder their assets or oppose their trajectory was canonically coded as an antagonist, destined to meet a brutal, swift end as disposable cannon fodder.

She was already locked into the role of the vicious, doomed female supporting character; her narrative sheets were already stained. If she took the fall for the theft, it wouldn’t alter her survival odds.

But Ling Lang’s timeline was still clear. He couldn’t risk the narrative backlash.

Ling Lang studied the intense, unyielding gravity in her eyes. “What variable are you concealing from me?”

“Nothing. I am simply calculating the tactical efficiency. The undead don’t target my cells. I can navigate the epicenter of that horde and extract the S1 remnants without wasting a single round of ammunition. If you deploy a military column now, the structural noise will draw every migratory swarm within ten miles, permanently compromising our extraction route.”

Long Yan interjected, her brilliant mind instantly running the numbers. “Her calculation is mathematically sound, Captain. But can your cognitive baseline handle the visual trauma of the pit?”

“Perfectly,” Pei Xiqing nodded, her fangs faintly catching the moonlight behind her mask. “I will deliver the high-tier cores and the medicine for Brother Duan.”

Ling Lang’s brow pulled together in a harsh frown. “I am anchoring your rear flank. I’m coming with you.”

“Negative. The second they spot an elite vanguard officer hovering over the ridge, their defensive parameters will lock down, and they will blow those assets sky-high before surrendering them to the military.”

She physically shoved against his chest, forcing him back toward the campfire. “Hold the line here. Keep your radar online, and I will execute the extraction as quickly as possible.”

Without waiting for his tactical counter-argument, she spun on her heel and sprinted out of the camp gates, dissolving into the pitch-black shadows of the wilderness trail.

Ling Lang took a violent step to give chase, but Long Yan’s arm instantly clamped down like an iron bar across his chest, anchoring him in place. “Let the girl run the board. Perhaps she requires this confrontation to permanently sever her connection to her past. Besides, she carries an explicit blood tie to that unit. Isn’t S1’s elite tracker her biological sister? How catastrophic can a family reunion truly get in the wasteland?”

Pei Xiqing ran through the dark, her acute physical senses tracking the distant, echoic thud of heavy gunfire. Ahead of her stretched an endless, dead forest choked with toxic undergrowth. The moment she breached the tree line, several decomposing zombies lost their footing in the canopy above, crashing heavily into the dirt right in front of her steps. The mutants instantly snapped their jaws, prepared to tear into her flesh, but the second their olfactory receptors registered her unique viral signature, their heads clicked at a weird angle and they passively shambled away into the brush.

She violently shoved past the rotting corpses blocking her path, running toward the deep canyon floor where the echoes of desperate combat were growing deafening.

Parting a dense thicket of dry, razor-sharp grass, Pei Xiqing crouched flat against the ridge. She smoothly scaled the branches of a massive, dead oak tree, positioning herself to comfortably analyze the protagonists’ final stand down in the ravine. She idly patted the head of a decaying mutant that was trying to scale the trunk beneath her boots, preparing to kick it loose, when the wind carried the loud, crude voices of two S1 scouts pinned against a nearby rock face.

“Damn it! If I had known we’d cross paths with that manipulative bitch Pei Xiqing back in City B, I would have dragged her into the ruins and had my way with her first! Now we’re about to get torn apart in this ditch, and I haven’t even touched a woman in six months!”

“Shut your useless mouth! Just hearing that witch’s name makes my blood boil. She was sleeping with the Lieutenant while actively throwing herself at the supply officers. Just recalling her face makes me sick—she was absolute poison. Besides, the scouts confirmed she took a direct bite during the retreat. Her skin is probably sloughing off her bones by now. How the hell could you even get turned on by a rotting corpse?”

“Who cares if she’s turned into a monster? Qiu Gang swore she still looked completely put together when he spotted her in that black SUV. The idiot was probably hallucinating from exhaustion. But honestly? The concept of a zombie slave sounds incredibly—”

A woman wearing thick, black-framed tactical glasses let out a furious scowl, her elemental aura flaring as she violently cut them off. “Focus your fire on the choke point! Why are you wasting precious oxygen gossiping about a dead traitor? Do you lack a basic sense of disgust?”

“Yes, of course! Sister Pei is right! It’s entirely my fault for bringing up your useless sister’s memory!”

The remnants of the squad returned to frantically discharging their weapons into the advancing swarm.

“Where the hell is our extraction column?! Didn’t Commander Xiao swear he brokered a rescue deal with the Vanguard assets at the camp?!”

Down in the pit, the narrative halo was being tested to its absolute limits.

Beside Pei Xiqing’s perch, a straggler zombie was staring at her with milk-white, bloodshot eyes. Growing impatient with her absolute stillness, it let out a wet, guttural howl.

She quickly clamped a hand over her ears, reached down to grab a thick clump of dried moss from the branch, and violently stuffed it straight into the mutant’s foul-smelling jaw.

“Maintain operational silence,” she muttered, patting its decaying shoulder.

The zombie continued to let out muffled, pathetic gurgles.

Suddenly, a wet sniffing sound echoed from the adjacent branch. A massive, mutated zombie dog had scaled the timber, its rotting jaw snapping as it joined the chorus.

Pei Xiqing felt an involuntary, dark amusement bubble up in her chest. Sitting lazily on the thick branch, she watched the protagonists’ stamina bars rapidly drain down in the ravine. Letting out a soft snort, she hooked her finger toward the skeletal canine.

The animal’s infected brain instantly locked onto her crushing viral authority. It scrambled across the bark, circling her knees before dropping its heavy head onto her lap, its tail giving a rigid, clicking wag.

She brushed her fingers against its skull. Although her palms met nothing but exposed bone and matted, frozen fur, it was still a remarkably obedient creature compared to the human cowards she had left behind in the wasteland.

Reaching into her heavy windbreaker, she pulled out a stale piece of ration bread she had saved from dinner and held it out.

The canine sniffed the wheat, let out two sharp, disgusted barks, and turned its snout away.

“Right. Forgot your digestive tract is entirely necrotic,” she murmured, scratching the thick hide behind its ears. The remaining fur was surprisingly intact; the animal had clearly undergone mutation within the past forty-eight hours.

Analyzing the skull shape and the structural markings around its eyes, she blinked. A purebred Husky.

Pei Xiqing burst into a soft laugh. Unbelievable. Even in the middle of a catastrophic biological apocalypse, a Husky retains its absolute idiocy.

Pulling her high-tech military smartphone from her inner pocket, she tapped the camera interface. “Come here, line up for a diagnostic frame.”

The animal seemed to read her intent, shifting its heavy skeletal frame closer to her shoulder, its jaw gaping open in a grotesque caricature of a smile.

Pei Xiqing snapped a clear digital photo, capturing the anomaly for her personal log, wanting to preserve the data on localized canine mutations.

It was an entirely surreal moment.

She was still adjusting the digital filter on her phone when a blood-curdling shriek erupted from the ravine below. She didn’t even bother to glance down; she figured it was more efficient to wait until the S1 perimeter completely collapsed before walking down to harvest their high-tier crates from the wreckage.

But her absolute lack of concealment finally backfired. An S1 sniper, scanning the treeline for a escape route, locked his scope directly onto her branch.

“A ghost! The witch has returned as a vengeful entity!” he screamed hysterically, dropping his rifle.

“What?! What the hell are you losing your mind over?!”

“Look at the apex timber above the ridge! She’s sitting right on the crown! Ahhhh! It’s a succubus! She’s returned to claim our souls!”

Pei Xiqing sighed, resting her hand calmly against the Husky’s skull as she peered over the edge of the branch, looking directly down into the canyon.

Her piercing, luminous eyes collided flawlessly with their paralyzed, horrified stares.

Down in the blood-slicked mud, Xiao Yue and Pei Yanting slowly raised their eyes, their elemental fields freezing.

Seeing the girl perched gracefully in the dead oak, the male protagonist’s jaw dropped, his mind completely short-circuiting.

Her appearance defied every single biological law of the wasteland. Her skin was flawless, entirely devoid of the grey necrosis they had witnessed during the retreat. Under the heavy shadows of the canopy, her features looked striking, dangerously elegant, and radiating absolute health.

While the remnants of S1 were covered in filth, shivering from the freezing wind and starved to the bone, she was dressed in a pristine, custom-tailored military windbreaker. Her posture was perfectly composed, her hair immaculate and clean.

They hadn’t seen clean water or a shower in nearly a month, yet looking up at her was like staring at an apex, high-society succubus feeding on the energy of the disaster.

And resting right beside her knee was a slavering, reanimated alpha hound, its mutated red eyes bulging from its skull in total submission to her weight.

Pei Yanting’s face turned an ashen grey. She violently pushed her black-framed glasses up the bridge of her nose, her analytical mind screaming as she verified the diagnostic parameters.

“No… that’s impossible…” she whispered, her voice trembling. “Her vitals are flatline. She is an active zombie!”

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