What?! I Became the Zombie Beauty in the Villain’s Arms – CH38

Chapter 38: Besides Crying

The man looked down at her with absolute, stony composure. Yet, the more immovable his facade became, the clearer she could track the terrifying, volatile rage vibrating beneath his skin. His silence wasn’t peace; it was a lethal, hyper-compressed fury that grew more suffocating the calmer he appeared.

She dropped her head, completely losing the courage to look him in the eyes again.

Her own mind was a fractured, chaotic mess.

Duan Xiaolin had executed absolutely nothing to compromise her safety or betray her position, yet she had been the first to completely dismantle their alignment and withdraw her trust.

She was acting entirely without shame.

Simply because she harbored a systemic distrust toward human nature and the transactional relationships of this apocalyptic world, she had ruthlessly penalized his intentions.

But her internal logic was backed into a corner. Fleeing into the wilderness was a raw, primitive exit strategy, but it yielded a zero-net return. She inherently despised the fascist constraints of the central base, yet she lacked a viable alternative path on the board.

She kept nervously snapping her fingers, entirely speechless before the towering weight of his presence. In truth, she hadn’t calculated that her declaration would trigger this level of profound fury within him. She had genuinely rationalized their entanglement as a standard, high-stakes ambiguous tryst. Back in her past life, during her university days and her rapid ascent through the entertainment industry, her reality had been saturated with powerful men deploying every conceivable metric to manipulate or hook her onto their strings.

She had witnessed countless elite executives throwing mountains of currency at her feet, demanding absolute compliance, while her digital channels were flooded with explicit offers for patron sponsorship every single day. Surviving that predatory industry for years had conditioned her to run a very specific stereotype against anyone wielding authority. She had systematically shut down her emotional receptors, channeling her entire consciousness into a single, sterile obsession: grinding on set and extracting maximum revenue.

When the transmigration script flipped, she had initially calculated that her timeline had reached its end, only to be recovered from the wreckage by Duan Xiaolin. Under his watch, she hadn’t endured a single microsecond of physical torture or faced starvation—yet she had still chosen to weaponize her tongue and shatter his composure.

The silence between them stretched into a lethal stalemate. Driven by a mounting wave of guilt, she offered a soft, breathy whisper. “Brother Duan… drop the anger. I will re-run the calculations.”

Though she kept her tone guarded, her internal defenses were severely fracturing. She couldn’t verify if trusting an operative of his caliber was a fatal error, but in this exact millisecond, she desperately wanted to bet on his word.

If the baseline failed later, she could simply execute a hard reset and bolt into the wild. After all, she still required a secure environment to decode the mechanics of the dark green energy rolling across her palms.

If she severed her connection to the Vanguard now, she would be completely isolated in a dead zone. No human asset would remain to map out her elemental progression, decode her reload thresholds, or explain why her infected cells had manifested this specific anomaly.

The second the compliance left her lips, the man took three calculated steps forward, entirely closing the physical grid. Her shoulder blades hit the crumbling concrete wall of the structure, forcing her to slightly tilt her chin up to track his height. “What else is on your agenda? I explicitly stated I would re-run the numbers. Surely you aren’t still maintaining this level of fury?”

She boldly leaned into his personal space, her breath brushing his shirt. “Brother Duan? Kill the anger. It was my miscalculation. I only simulated an evacuation because… because my baseline is completely incapable of letting you go.”

In the thick, suffocating darkness of the room, her pupils had dilated until her eyes appeared entirely black. His towering frame cast a massive, oppressive shadow over her torso, and as he pressed his weight closer, she felt as though the oxygen was being systematically extracted from her lungs, layer by layer.

“Did an asset just classify our alignment as a ‘transient anomaly’?” the man asked, his voice a low, vibrating rasp.

Pei Xiqing’s gaze darted toward the shadows, a sudden flush of heat rushing to her cheeks. “I was simply utilizing a formal descriptive term… because, as the current data stands, our relationship lacks a verified classification, doesn’t it?”

“You require a formal verification of ownership?”

Before Pei Xiqing could even process the warning, his large hand clamped onto her forearm with crushing leverage, forcefully dragging her straight toward the exit. “Hey… hold on… Brother Duan!”

She let out a panicked gasp, frantically planting her boots to pull against his grip, but his physical power was absolute; the sheer resistance nearly left her breathless. Before her balance could even reset, his glacial voice cut through the dark. “My initial calculation was to hold the disclosure until we breached the primary gates, utilizing a high-yield protocol to announce your status before integrating you into the central sector. But since your mind is so desperately anxious to force the confirmation, I have zero problem running the broadcast right now.”

“No! Absolutely not!” Pei Xiqing frantically threw her weight forward, wrapping both arms around his neck like a desperate koala to anchor his stride.

Duan Xiaolin stopped, lowering his heavy eyelids to analyze her clinging form. “What exactly is your objective here?”

“Do not pass that threshold. And do not broadcast a single syllable of my data to the squad right now.”

“Provide a logical justification.”

She bit her lower lip, her voice dropping to a small, breathless murmur. “Because my internal courage metrics are flatline. Do not force the exposure.”

“You classify this protocol as a threat?”

Pei Xiqing nodded frantically, tightening her grip around his neck, carefully bracing her torso against his right side to ensure she didn’t aggravate the freshly bandaged tissue on his left shoulder. “I am genuinely terrified. Especially when you lock your jaw and refuse to vocalize your choices. It scrambles my nervous system.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, Brother Duan. It was a severe miscalculation on my part. I should never have initiated that dialogue. Even if my trust parameters were fluctuating, I should have maintained compliance until we integrated into the base corridor. I hold absolute certainty that you wouldn’t deploy physical coercion to retain me then. I still retain full confidence in your basic administrative honor.”

“Oh? What data tracking generated that confidence?” he murmured, a dangerous smirk playing on his lips. “Did I ever formally state that I would refrain from using physical coercion to lock you down?”

“Stop playing with my metrics,” Pei Xiqing muttered, her face burning hot against his skin. “You are a High Representative of Franlun. Your administrative code requires you to strictly enforce the regulations and set an absolute precedent for the ranks.”

Duan Xiaolin made zero effort to forcefully dislodge her from his torso. He simply watched her emotional baseline wildly fluctuate as she systematically contradicted her own arguments within a matter of seconds. For a rare moment, a faint sense of analytical helplessness softened his gaze.

He genuinely possessed no standard protocol to manage the chaos of her personality.

A few minutes later, the girl clinging to his chest grew so profoundly anxious from his silence that a pair of hot tears slipped over her lashes, her voice trembling as she intermittently mumbled frantic reassurances. He let out a low sigh, effortlessly lifting her by the waist and hoisting her onto a heavy timber workbench nearby. “You are an exceptionally exhausting asset,” he noted.

Pei Xiqing’s cheeks burned crimson. She slightly loosened her death grip on his neck, peering through the dark lenses of his glasses. “Is the anger deactivated?”

Duan Xiaolin offered zero verbal confirmation. Reaching out, his long fingers caught the zipper of her tactical windbreaker, smoothly sliding it down to expose the elegant line of her throat and the thin linen of her shirt beneath. His gaze methodically swept over her pale skin like a predator running a diagnostic scan. Leaning in, he pressed a hard, bruising kiss into the corner of her mouth, tracked the edge of her jawline, and finally anchored his lips against the side of her neck, initiating a deep, possessive pull against the tissue.

The moment she tried to violently shift her weight to dodge the contact, his long, slender fingers clamped over her lips, silencing her breath. His expression remained a monument of freezing administrative indifference, but the unadulterated, raw hunger burning behind his eyes was entirely naked.

Pei Xiqing’s pulse pounded so violently it echoed in her eardrums.

Yet, her primary neurological response wasn’t a surge of panic—it was an intense, intoxicating rush of adrenaline.

The man was holding her locked against the timber, his freshly mutilated body an immovable wall of raw power before her. He leaned over her frame, his massive shadow completely swallowing her torso, the hard, dense lines of his muscles shifting beautifully under her palms.

The ancient workbench was structurally narrow and dangerously unstable from years of decay. Perched on the edge of the wood, she felt as though the slightest shift in weight would send her crashing onto the concrete if his massive arm wasn’t clamped like an iron bar around her lower back.

“Do not press closer,” she whispered breathlessly against his fingertips. “The foundation of this table is about to fracture.”

Duan Xiaolin’s hand slid to the back of her head, his fingers threading through her hair to tilt her face up. He lowered his head and sank his teeth directly into the flushed skin he had just marked, applying a precise, agonizingly sharp pressure.

Pei Xiqing winced, her hand flying up to cover the mark the second he pulled back. “What are you doing?! That hurts…”

“I deployed minimum kinetic force, yet your receptors are registering pain?”

“Why did you bite me?”

“I am simply returning the viral load to its source,” he murmured.

Pei Xiqing let out a soft, breathy laugh against his chest. “Unbelievable. A strategist of your caliber is actually capable of acting entirely childish?”

Duan Xiaolin’s broad palm slid down to her waist, his fingers tracing the delicate curve of her spine as he pulled her closer against his hips. The sudden, intimate shift in his touch caused Pei Xiqing’s baseline to flip instantly. She planted both palms firmly against his chest, trying to force a physical boundary between them. “The vanguard operatives are standing right outside that threshold!”

“I am fully aware of their coordinates,” he replied lazily.

“Do not—”

Her protest was ruthlessly crushed as the man leaned in, his mouth completely overwhelming her lips and suppressing her breath.

The uneven leg of the decaying workbench violently slammed into the concrete floor under their combined weight, letting out a loud, echoic thud through the dark room.

Pei Xiqing’s knuckles turned white as she desperately bundled the fabric of his shirt into her fists, her slender neck entirely cradled within the heavy contours of his palm. The man completely dominated her space, his kiss deep, unyielding, and ravenous.

He moved like an apex predator holding its territory in the dark woods—constantly maintaining a flawless administrative restraint on the surface, only unleashing his true, lethal claws within the shadows.

Pei Xiqing’s torso trembled uncontrollably beneath his weight. She subtly tried to weave her head away to catch her breath, her voice shaking through the static. “You… mm… hold the line for a second…”

She possessed absolutely zero leverage to counter his physical authority, forced to passively absorb the suffocating depth of the kiss. She couldn’t verify if his fangs had actually punctured her skin, but a sharp, burning agony flared along her throat. She genuinely felt as though Duan Xiaolin was going to rip the tissue clean from her throat, his massive palm locking her skull in place. Even though he wasn’t deploying his maximum kinetic force, the sheer density of his grip was inescapable; she felt as though her oxygen reserves would hit absolute zero at any millisecond.

She had never witnessed this facet of his persona before.

Compared to the hyper-disciplined, clinical bureaucrat he projected to the vanguard, a savage, primal ferocity governed the core of his biology.

Duan Xiaolin kept his fingers anchored against her throat, tangibly mapping out every micro-pulsation of her carotid artery beneath his skin. The fresh puncture marks on her pale neck were weeping a thin bead of crimson, cutting across her skin like beautiful, vivid fractures in porcelain. Tightening his grip by a fraction, he silently analyzed the exquisite wreckage of her composure—entirely locked under his administrative control.

Pei Xiqing felt her consciousness begin to fray, her vision blurring into dark spots. Gathering the absolute final reserves of her physical strength, she violently shoved against his shoulders.

The crushing leverage around her neck vanished instantly. Pei Xiqing collapsed forward, coughing violently as she clutched her throat, hot tears spilling over her lashes as her chest heaved. “Do not… do not run the board like that. I am genuinely terrified.”

The man took a single step back, leaning his spine against a rotting timber pillar. His green eyes were dark, a heavy, unvarnished blood-red glint flashing behind the lenses, rendering his usual clinical expression dangerously clouded. He looked entirely unsatiated. “If I issue an administrative directive ordering you to drop the fear, will it stabilize your system?”

…

“The protocol would yield a zero-net return,” he noted calmly, his voice dropping back to its smooth, clinical cadence. “Furthermore, the structural foundation of this workbench has officially reached critical failure.”

“…”

He adjusted his windbreaker over his bandaged shoulder. “The current coordinates lack the necessary security parameters. But ensure your memory registers this transcript: I hold a meticulous log of every single debt you owe my board.”

Finally decoding the dark, implicit threat running beneath his tone, Pei Xiqing scrambled off the timber workbench, her boots hitting the concrete as her knees violently buckled from the residual adrenaline.

Duan Xiaolin crouched down beside her form, his long fingers reaching out to smoothly brush a stray lock of hair away from her face.

Staring down at her wrecked, flushed features and the glazed, hyper-reactive quality of her eyes, he let out a low, analytical sigh. “The wasteland is overflowing with assets who harbor a deep, systemic terror of my methods. It appears you have officially integrated into that demographic.”

Pei Xiqing kept her jaw tightly locked, refusing to validate the assessment.

She simply reached out, her fingers catching the edge of his sleeve in a pathetic, silent plea for restraint. “You truly shouldn’t deploy that level of aggression.”

She realized with sinking horror that her baseline had been completely compromised.

“What exactly did my deployment breach?” he asked, his interest visibly piqued. “My calculations indicate I haven’t even initiated a standard interrogation protocol against your cells yet. What baseline is triggering your panic? Or is your human mind running an entirely separate simulation?”

“I am running absolutely zero illicit simulations!” she snapped, her face burning.

“I am,” he stated bluntly. He reached down, his large palms effortlessly encircling both of her wrists in a single, unbreakable vice. His eyes locked onto hers with lethal clarity. “And the simulation yields an infinitely higher efficiency parameter if there is a reinforced military mattress anchoring your spine.”

“By the time that calculation runs, I will ensure your vocal receptors are entirely incapable of generating a single sound… besides crying.”

Like this novel? Read Advance Chapters (PDF & EPUB Format)