What?! I Became the Zombie Beauty in the Villain’s Arms – CH39

Chapter 39: Fear

Pei Xiqing’s palms were slick with sweat from the force of his grip. Pinned against the wood, she couldn’t move an inch. She could only look up at him helplessly, her voice dropping to a breathless whisper. “It hurts.”

The man slightly relaxed the pressure of his hands. He lowered his head into the crook of her neck, his tongue lightly tracing the heavy pulse point vibrating beneath her skin. His eyes turned bottomless, dark with an ancient, suffocating hunger—as if he wanted to completely swallow her into his system.

A few fresh beads of dark crimson had begun to seep through the puncture marks on her throat.

Duan Xiaolin stared at the blood for a fraction of a second, then dragged his fingertips over the wound, smearing the fluid across his skin. He asked softly, his voice a low vibration against her ear, “Did your data register that our blood profiles are running an identical frequency?”

“What do you mean?”

“After your fangs breached my threshold.”

Pei Xiqing’s eyes widened in sudden panic. “What?”

She looked up at him, her heart slamming against her ribs. “After I bit you… wasn’t the infection systematically neutralized by the high-concentration serum? Are you saying your cells are still mutating into a zombie?”

“The diagnostic sheet doesn’t indicate a structural failure,” he noted, his expression unreadable. “I haven’t reached a definitive conclusion yet, but the biochemical alignment between our blood samples is running an exceptionally high probability match.”

“Then… you don’t feel the primal hunger seizing your system?”

“Negative.”

Pei Xiqing let out a long, shaky breath of relief. But before her balance could reset, he leaned down and licked the side of her throat again without a word of warning. The damp, scorching touch sent a violent jolt through her nervous system, leaving an uncontrollable, maddening itch in its wake.

She instinctively tilted her head back to dodge the friction, but the man was perfectly mapping out every micro-reaction of her flesh. A low chuckle escaped him. “It appears my board isn’t the only one running these illicit calculations.”

Pei Xiqing’s face burned a brilliant crimson, the flush tracking all the way to her brows. She frantically shoved against his chest, trying to force a physical boundary between them. “I am absolutely not running those calculations!”

But the man’s towering build remained an unyielding wall of solid iron; she lacked the physical leverage to move him a millimeter. He caught her wrists, his massive palms effortlessly locking her hands down. His fingers were long, structured, and packed with the immense, effortless kinetic power of a high-tier entity. He held her frame pinned against the timber, the crisp fabric of his shirt sliding roughly against her skin, leaving her with a terrifying sense of psychological invasion.

If this workbench truly represented a military mattress, she thought with sinking horror, those broad, calloused hands would have already systematically mapped out every inch of her flesh, ultimately locking around her ankles until her entire timeline was held under his absolute control.

Due to the flesh-cutting trauma on his shoulder, his uniform was unbuttoned, the thin linen revealing a faint smear of fresh blood against the white bandages. Yet, the pure, dominant masculinity radiating from his chest was overwhelming. Blushing furiously, she had to wrench her eyes away.

Pei Xiqing remained perfectly still, not daring to trigger another reaction.

Trying to shift the analytical focus, she stammered, “Your… your physical biological response is vastly more volatile than mine.”

It was the raw, undeniable reaction of an alpha predator. Her eyes involuntarily darted down for a split second before she caught herself, swallowing hard.

Standing in the shadows of this room, she realized this man was infinitely more terrifying than any elite director or powerful executive she had ever navigated around in her past life—especially if the parameters shifted to a bedroom.

She vividly recalled the novel’s world-building notes: the high-tier biological mutations didn’t just enhance an asset’s elemental reserves; they systematically upgraded every single physical and physiological metric. She suddenly wondered if the virus had run the exact same hyper-dense upgrade on a man’s intimate stamina…

The absolute second her brain finalized the thought, her cheeks burned hot enough to melt, and she frantically dropped her head.

Duan Xiaolin smoothly hooked his thumb under her chin, forcing her face up to plant a brief, hard kiss against her lips. He stared down at her bruised, swollen mouth, his voice dropping to a glacial murmur. “You are under zero obligation to respect the high command’s regulations within this room. And that doctrine remains absolute once we breach the base corridor.”

“It simply so happens that my administrative code has never operated within the boundaries of the rules.”

She met his intense green gaze, but before her vocal receptors could generate a counter-argument, he leaned down and ruthlessly claimed her mouth again.

Pei Xiqing’s breathing fractured entirely. Recalling the suffocating, deep aggression of his previous kiss, her long lashes fluttered in pure panic.

A deep, crimson flush saturated her face from the inside out. “…But regarding the base corridor,” she whispered, her voice shaking as he finally broke the seal, “we will hold the disclosure until we analyze the interior grid. I will stay and observe their logistics. If the environment fails to match my parameters and I execute an evacuation, Brother Duan won’t deploy his black squads to lock me down, correct?”

The man offered a low, dark sneer behind his lenses.

He effortlessly lifted her off the timber workbench, setting her down into a metal folding chair.

He offered zero verbal validation.

But the silent answer was glaringly obvious: You are never leaving my board.

A sudden commotion shattered the quiet perimeter outside the room. Duan Xiaolin calmly adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses, the intense, dark hunger vanishing from his features in a single heartbeat as his face returned to the chilling, impenetrable mask of Franlun’s elite bureaucrat.

Although she had never formally breached the syndicate’s inner strongholds or decoded the exact nature of his administrative title, his absolute dominance was undeniable. As long as he stood upright, he perfectly embodied the lethal authority of Franlun.

Cold, ruthless, entirely unfathomable, and a master of psychological concealment.

Yet, the raw evidence of his unhinged, passionate kiss was still visibly bruising her lips.

Standing up to face him in the center of the room, the terrifying, frantic echo of his heartbeat still resonated clearly within her own chest.

He had meticulously reorganized his uniform, resetting every button and crease until his appearance bore absolutely zero trace of the violent encounter. Pei Xiqing, by contrast, looked completely wrecked. Her dark hair had fallen entirely loose from its pins, cascading messily down to her waist. Her heavy windbreaker was wrinkled and disordered, exposing the smooth curve of her shoulder, while the faint, flushed color of her bruised lips stood out against her pale throat. Her clear eyes were still swimming with a chaotic mixture of adrenaline, shyness, and undeniable desire.

Pei Xiqing felt too profoundly humiliated to look any of the operatives in the eye.

She covered her burning cheeks with her hands, frantically fishing through her pockets for the black tactical mask. The moment her fingers cleared the composite material, Duan Xiaolin’s hand shot forward with calculated kinetic force, striking her wrist.

The impact wasn’t violent, but it entirely disrupted her grip.

The mask slipped from her fingers, clattering onto the concrete floor.

She snapped her head up, staring at him in pure shock.

Duan Xiaolin adjusted his cuffs, his tone entirely nonchalant. “It appears your gear dropped. Leave it on the floor.”

He stepped forward, smoothly pulling the collar of her heavy windbreaker up to cover her neck, entirely unbothered by the tactical mask sitting in the dirt between his boots.

This absolute villain did that on purpose!

Pei Xiqing puffed out her cheeks in irritation. Stooping down, she snatched the mask from the concrete, aggressively dusting off the composite weave. “How can an administrator just discard a high-tech piece of equipment like trash?”

He simply shot her a freezing glance before forcefully pushing the heavy door open, stepping out into the sunlight.

Pei Xiqing muttered under her breath as she hurried behind his shadow, “I have absolutely no structural concept of why your calculations are so aggressively hostile toward a simple face mask…”

Ling Lang had personally handed her this gear. If her virus flared up inside the human stronghold, a high-tech visual scrambler would be the only asset protecting her from an immediate execution.

The second they cleared the threshold, she discreetly shoved the mask deep into her inner utility pocket, waiting until she gathered enough psychological composure before marching into the main camp area.

Outside, the settlement was a hive of high-intensity military movement. The vanguard operatives were entirely consumed by securing the logistics crates and running rapid diagnostics on the wounded; not a single asset had the spare focus to analyze her appearance.

Pei Xiqing let out a massive sigh of relief, rapidly sliding into the rank to help sort the salvaged supplies.

The inventory volume was immense, the majority of the crates harvested from the trunks of the G-Class SUVs. When the vehicles were online, transportation logistics were seamless—but now that the convoy had been abandoned in the bottleneck of City B, every single asset had to be hauled through the mountain pass via manual labor.

Furthermore, the high-priority data drives and physical intelligence dossiers recovered from the frontier outposts were classified as non-negotiable; they had to be extracted at all costs.

Pei Xiqing crouched on the gravel, methodically cataloging a stack of physical dossiers and sliding them into a reinforced digital combination crate. As she sorted through a rogue bundle of operational logs, a loose administrative sheet slipped from the folder, drifting onto her boots. She picked it up, her eyes automatically tracking the high-level clearance signatures stamped at the bottom. It was an official personnel transfer application within the black jurisdiction of Franlun—and the master signature clearing the authorization belonged to Duan Xiaolin.

His handwriting perfectly mirrored his psychology: sharp, cold, and rigid, radiating a chilling precision from the ink alone.

However, her memory of the novel’s lore triggered an anomaly: personnel changes within the black ranks required the explicit, sovereign authorization of Franlun’s Supreme General Manager. Why did Duan Xiaolin’s singular signature occupy the primary command line?

Before her brain could run a deeper calculation on his true identity, Long Yan strode over, carrying a massive armful of historical files and violently dumping them onto the gravel. A thick plume of toxic dust erupted from the pile, causing Pei Xiqing to cough twice. Waving her hand to clear the air, she looked up. “There’s this much data left? Are we manually hauling this entire library through the mountain pass?”

“Negative,” Long Yan replied, pulling a heavy tactical lighter from her vest. “We run a total purge. Not a single shred of this data can leave a physical trace in this sector.”

“Are the logs compromised? Or does the high command require an absolute media blackout on the operations?”

“The volume is too heavy to sustain on a march,” Long Yan stated flatly, flipping open the lighter. “Move your coordinates over to the secondary line. Your civilian baseline can’t decode these encryption keys anyway. I’ll filter the core schematics and incinerate the redundant files.”

“Understood.”

Long Yan dropped into a crouch, her fingers moving across the documents with terrifying speed. She was scanning ten lines of code in a single glance, and within ten minutes, she had systematically reduced the massive pile to a mountain of discard sheets.

A sudden spark ignited the paper, and a bright flame rapidly devoured every single scrap of text at their feet.

Pei Xiqing watched the ash scatter into the wind, her brow furrowed.

The unit was clearly running a massive, unspoken concealment protocol, but she couldn’t identify the core variable and didn’t have the spare energy to play detective.

It’s likely tied to the internal political friction between the base commanders and the administrative overwatch of Franlun, she reasoned.

Pei Xiqing shifted her coordinates, walking over to help organize the field medicine crates. Looking up, her eyes landed on the prone form of Xiao Yue. The male lead was completely unconscious, his face deathly pale and covered in jagged, weeping lacerations.

He lay stretched out on a raw timber pallet, looking as though his body had just been violently dragged out from a mass grave.

Yet, his respiratory rhythm remained steady.

Did the narrative timeline already trigger his separation from the female lead? she wondered.

Back in the dead forest, when he forcefully ordered the female lead to execute an immediate evacuation with the scouts, her escape column must have chosen a separate geographic vector through the pass.

The plot development seemed to be tracking the canon script. The protagonists were destined to survive the catastrophic Siege of City B, but the sheer chaos of the breakthrough would violently splinter their squad.

The trajectory matched.

According to her memory of the novel’s chapters, after the separation, the male protagonist was scheduled to embark on a grueling, isolated journey through the wasteland, systematically dismantling rogue factions and hunting down corrupt scum. Along the way, his narrative halo would grant him a series of evolutionary breakthroughs, upgrading his dual-abilities to legendary tiers before his ultimate reunion with the female lead at the central stronghold.

However, during his solitary transit, his path would be cluttered with desperate female supporting characters—functioning exactly like the female demons from Journey to the West, every single one of them frantically deploying their charms to attach themselves to his rising star.

Then she analyzed her own position on the board.

The script is running the exact same play.

She realized with a jolt of irritation that the original owner had been written purely as a disposable stepping stone—a pathetic, manipulative hurdle designed to test the male protagonist’s moral fortitude before his growth spurt.

I am absolutely refusing to play the victim for his character development, she thought firmly.

Pei Xiqing snapped the lid of the medical crate shut, preparing to instantly break eye contact and exit the bunker. But the exact millisecond her boot shifted toward the door, a low, wet cough echoed from the timber pallet behind her.

“…cough… cough… Pei Xiqing… hold your coordinates.”

Pei Xiqing stopped dead, her posture turning rigid.

She slowly turned around. “What do you want, Commander?”

“I need to verify the data,” Xiao Yue muttered, forcing his battered torso upright with an agonizing grunt. “Did the negotiation you initiated back in the valley yield a successful extraction?”

“The terms were fully executed,” she replied coldly. Duan Xiaolin’s system had successfully absorbed the regenerative serum, and his vitals had stabilized; the immediate infection had been broken. The remaining metrics were simply a matter of time.

“Good,” Xiao Yue gasped, his eyes clouding. “Is that elite asset your primary target now? You compromised your own safety parameters just to secure his extraction.”

“…”

“…cough… I hold zero intention of penalizing your past failures in this sector. Tingting has been running an immense wave of anxiety over your status since the retreat. I cannot comprehend how a civilian baseline like yours managed to integrate with an elite vanguard unit. But as your brother-in-law, my tactical advice is to permanently sever your connection to their convoy. Especially regarding Long Yan and that injured administrator… those entities are completely saturated with darkness. They are not good people.”

Pei Xiqing let out a sharp, mocking scoff. “What an incredible coincidence, Commander. I am completely devoid of goodness myself.”

She tilted her head, her eyes flashing dangerously behind her lashes. “Why else do you think I tried to climb directly into my brother-in-law’s bed back at the base?”

“cough… cough…” Xiao Yue’s face turned an ash-grey, completely paralyzed by her bluntness. He was an incredibly rigid, traditional protagonist—the type of man who operated with zero sense of humor, despised ironic banter, and viewed interpersonal relationships through an incredibly archaic moral lens. “Do not vocalize such illicit transcripts. It permanently degrades your social standing. Furthermore, I am your legal brother-in-law. Regarding the indiscretions of your past… provided you issue a formal, systemic apology to the family, I can configure my database to wipe the log and pretend the anomaly never occurred.”

Pei Xiqing had absolutely zero interest in wasting her breath on his self-righteous delusions. She spun on her heel, slamming the heavy reinforced door open as she marched out. But the exact second she cleared the threshold, she nearly collided with Long Yan, who was standing pinned against the concrete wall with an expression of pure, unadulterated shock.

Her jaw was literally hanging open.

Pei Xiqing froze, her heart dropping. “Sister Long Yan…”

Long Yan took a rapid step backward, her hand flying up to cover her chest rigging as she let out a long, theatrical breath. “It’s completely fine… Do not panic…”

She swallowed hard, trying to stabilize her face. “Mhm, my system is functioning perfectly. My audio receptors registered absolutely zero transcripts just now. You didn’t broadcast a single scandalous sentence. The log is completely blank. That is the final data.”

Pei Xiqing’s face burned a brilliant crimson. “No! Wait, Sister Long Yan! The context of that conversation is completely distorted! It’s not what your brain is calculating!”

“There is zero necessity for an administrative explanation, kid. I understand your board perfectly. I am deeply well-versed in women’s tactical maneuvers.”

Suddenly, the heavy crunch of boots echoed down the gravel path. Ling Lang strolled into the sector, balancing a fresh canister of fuel over his shoulder. “Are you two running an active communication loop? What exactly is the topic? Do my clearance metrics allow me to listen in?”

Long Yan violently shoved his shoulder, forcing him away from the door. “Your clearance is completely denied.”

Pei Xiqing shot him a flat glare. “Absolutely denied.”

Ling Lang let out a harsh, arrogant scoff. “Hmph. I run a zero-interest parameter on your gossip anyway.”

He shifted his gaze to Pei Xiqing, his eyes narrowing as he analyzed her face. “You… why exactly are your cheeks radiating that level of heat again? Your flush metrics are constantly hitting critical levels today. Are you entirely certain your viral load isn’t triggering a fever?”

“Your own cognitive wiring is the only thing experiencing a failure here, Captain.”

“Then who exactly is triggering the flush?”

Feeling intensely guilty, Pei Xiqing’s defensive responses grew exponentially more aggressive. “Why do you care about my metrics?!”

“Tch.” Ling Lang raised his eyes, his gaze shifting directly past her shoulder toward the threshold. “Captain Xiao.”

Xiao Yue stepped out into the sunlight, his face a bloodless mask as he clutched his fractured ribs. “Thank you for facilitating my medical extraction, Captain Ling Lang. I need to verify if your scouts have intercepted the coordinates of my remaining S1 units.”

“Negative.”

“Then I shall launch a solo reconnaissance pass.”

However, the male lead hadn’t even navigated three paces down the gravel path before the severe neural depletion violently hijacked his motor functions. His consciousness collapsed, and his body crashed heavily onto the dirt.

Ling Lang didn’t even stoop to check his pulse. He turned to the older woman. “Sister Long Yan, order Lu Xudong to secure the target. Your sub-unit holds absolute command over his processing. Run the numbers and decide whether we extract his frame to the base corridor or abandon his asset line in this town.”

“Copy that.”

Long Yan dropped into a crouch, pressing her fingers against Xiao Yue’s neck to verify his respiratory parameters. “He is the sovereign Commander of Team S1. Discarding his frame in a remote sector like this would trigger a massive administrative inquiry from the high command. Besides… his inventory is packed with top-tier gear. I have no idea which black-market hub he plundered to secure these assets. Look at the alloy weave on his sidearm—it’s an unreleased, premium military grade. And his tactical arrays are highly advanced. Tsk… is this truly the standard configuration for an independent squad?”

Her eyes narrowed into dangerous, calculating slits as a sharp smile played on her lips. “His elemental threshold is exceptionally high. At this stage of the deployment, we cannot verify if his faction will operate as an ally or an enemy against Franlun’s board. If his trajectory threatens our alignment later, we can simply execute a quiet termination once his vitals recover.”

Pei Xiqing let out a tight cough, quickly stepping into the conversation. “Let’s refrain from running an execution protocol on his line just yet. We lack the intelligence to trace the origin of his high-tier gear. It’s highly probable we can extract critical tactical data from his database once he wakes up. If his compliance parameters fail later, we can simply cut him loose and let the wasteland run its course, right?”

If the vanguard unit actively attempts to assassinate the male protagonist, the narrative backlash will violently manifest as a lethal accident for the squad.

The most efficient strategy was either to let fate manage his survival index, or to strictly maintain a neutral distance without triggering a blood feud.

“Mhm.” Long Yan looked up at her, a deeply amused, knowing smile spreading across her face. “I will withhold the termination protocol… but I will ensure his survival line is fully secured.”

She deliberately dragged out the emphasis on the word secured, her eyes dancing with mischief.

Pei Xiqing frantically shot her a desperate, pleading look.

Stop the broadcast! Do not drop hints in front of Ling Lang!

Long Yan offered an understanding wink, reassuringly tapping her shoulder as she stood up. “Relax, kid, I will preserve his life. However, his neural core is in critical condition. Our field kit lacks the necessary advanced medical arrays to stabilize him. We need to accelerate our transit to the base corridor immediately.”

Ling Lang checked his tactical compass. “The target coordinates are within close proximity. We clear this mountain pass, execute a high-speed march for two hours through the valley, and we breach the primary frontier line.”

“Excellent.” Long Yan grabbed Xiao Yue by his boots, effortlessly dragging his unconscious body across the gravel like a sack of supplies. “Form up the column. We move out in five minutes.”

Pei Xiqing felt a sudden, violent spike of psychological tension.

The final threshold separating her from the human fortress was shrinking to zero.

She subconsciously turned her head, looking back toward the reinforced structure.

Duan Xiaolin had just cleared the threshold. He strode toward her coordinates, his voice a low, commanding rasp that vibrated directly against her ears. “March.”

Pei Xiqing sniffed the air, hesitating for a fraction of a second before falling perfectly into alignment behind his long shadow.

The special ops column initiated the final leg of the transit. They marched aggressively for hours, systematically scaling the jagged, steep mountain pass. Pei Xiqing had managed to maintain an efficient physical pace during the initial miles, but as the afternoon heat peaked, the residual viral fatigue violently hijacked her nervous system, forcing her consciousness to completely black out.

When her eyelids finally fluttered open, she realized she was no longer moving under her own power. Her torso was resting against a broad, solid back, her arms securely locked around a pair of wide shoulders.

She was being carried by Ling Lang.

Pei Xiqing froze, her mind short-circuiting. “Wait… where is Sister Long Yan? Wasn’t she supposed to handle my extraction if my stamina failed?”

Ling Lang kept his stride perfectly level, his voice drifting back to her with its usual arrogant, lazy cadence. “Your consciousness crashed an hour ago. While you were drifting in your delirium, you were frantically screaming through the comms channel, explicitly demanding that I act as your personal transport.”

“That is mathematically impossible! My subconscious would never run that script!”

“Why wouldn’t it?” Ling Lang scoffed. “The entire vanguard column intercepted the audio log.”

Pei Xiqing’s face burned hot enough to ignite. She frantically began twisting her weight, trying to scramble down from his back, but her movements were instantly cut off.

Duan Xiaolin—dressed in his immaculate, pristine black military uniform, his silver watch gleaming as he methodically buttoned the last cuff of his sleeve—brushed past their coordinates with long, smooth strides. His voice was a monument of glacial, administrative calm. “Move her directly to the North Courtyard quadrant once we breach the perimeter. I am scheduled for an immediate high-level assembly with the Marshal. I will inspect her diagnostics later.”

Pei Xiqing’s head snapped up.

A majestic, terrifyingly massive megastructure rising straight out of the desolate earth filled her entire field of vision.

The perimeter walls were hundreds of meters high, constructed from a seamless, anti-ballistic alloy that gleamed coldly under the sun. Hundreds of automated, high-velocity patrol fighters cut through the sky in hyper-precise formations, perfectly enclosing the towering skyscrapers and inner command hubs of the central human fortress.

Ling Lang deliberately shifted his weight, bouncing her slightly on his back as a dangerous, sharp smirk spread across his face.

“We have officially breached the frontier base line, little zombie,” he joked, his eyes locking onto hers. “Are your fear metrics hitting critical yet?”

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