What?! I Became the Zombie Beauty in the Villain’s Arms – CH46

Chapter 46: Like the Man in the Cage

As for the overarching villains of this world, Pei Xiqing had harbored a clinical interest in their parameters from the very beginning.

The supreme sovereign of Franlun was written as an absolute, apex entity in the novel’s lore. If the author hadn’t aggressively forced a massive reduction in his intelligence metrics during the late-stage chapters to protect the narrative trajectory, the protagonists’ entire squad combined wouldn’t have possessed the kinetic energy to match him in a single encounter.

She desperately wanted to analyze this mastermind face-to-face and decipher the precise administrative relationship running between his office and Duan Xiaolin.

During that chaotic global briefing line the previous evening, she had been deliberately, ruthlessly targeted by the man pinning her to the sofa. Her processors had only intercepted a few scattered fragments of the strategic data; as for the wider military metrics, her receptors had missed them entirely, her consciousness completely consumed by his every unyielding movement.

Nevertheless, her analytical faculties had extracted a core ground truth: Duan Xiaolin wasn’t merely a high-clearance operator within Franlun; his sovereign status inside the syndicate’s hierarchy was staggeringly high.

Even within the command structure of the central base, his vocal commands carried absolute weight.

Because of this specific data, she was exponentially more curious about the relationship linking him to the pre-written villain.

Now that the local civilian demographic was actively highlighting his execution protocol, and since her spatial coordinates were currently bridging the adjacent sector, her system calculated that joining the crowd to run a visual audit wouldn’t yield a negative return.

Regrettably, her spatial mapping data was severely lacking. The internal geography of Base Three was vastly more complex and expansive than her mind had simulated—the entire stronghold was choked with a dense network of labyrinthine alleys and transit roads, interconnected like an absolute maze.

The exact second she vacated the pristine perimeters of the North Courtyard, her coordinates inadvertently drifted into a hyper-dense commercial boulevard. The transit lane was flooded with a chaotic mass of civilian assets pushing heavy material carts, their vocal receptors screaming as they aggressively bartered over resources.

An unversed observer would assume her physical body had reverted to the pre-apocalyptic era of her past life. The singular, visceral variable shattering the illusion was the uniform presence of chained mutants lining both sides of the asphalt, their skeletal frames violently pierced by alloy links.

A containment cage occupied the sidewalk almost every two paces; a rapid algorithmic calculation suggested at least three to five thousand locked mutants choked this single street alone.

For a modern consciousness harvested from a civilized era, the sheer sight brought a profound, sickening shock. She even encountered several active variants thrashing against the steel.

Halting her stride directly in front of an electrified iron cell, her acute perception traced an erratic, rhythmic pulsation in the air—the caged masses were frantically trying to communicate a specific thesis, but their vocal apparatus had been permanently degraded by the pathogen. The biometric synchronization between her half-zombie cells and their ruined biology lacked total precision, preventing an accurate data transfer. However, her intuition easily decoded the underlying current: at this late stage of their cellular decay, their singular desire was for a hard deletion to escape the hooks.

Pei Xiqing dropped into a low crouch, her eyes locking onto the milky, completely lifeless depth of the eyes staring through the bars. Before her vocal receptors could test a frequency, her presence was flagged by the armed ability users commanding the sector’s logistics.

The guards held a significant numerical advantage, their eyes narrowing with a sharp, predatory scrutiny as they stepped into her perimeter. “Hey, little girl, those biological masses are registered under our Commander’s private inventory. If your system desires to secure a unit, you’ll need to execute a heavy transaction. Exactly how many high-tier crystal cores does your pouch contain? These specific slaves cost our extraction squads a massive amount of asset expenditure to break. Can your personal ledger sustain the invoice?”

“Bury the pitch, man. Look at her gear—the parameters confirm she carries zero currency,” another guard scoffed, waving him off. “This stray drifted from a low-tier quadrant; she hasn’t even grown her full feathers yet. Let’s advance our tracking down the commercial line.”

“Fine.” The deployment cell brushed past Pei Xiqing’s shoulder, dropping a ‘friendly’ tactical warning into her comms range as they broke rank. “Refrain from targeting your visual sensors toward assets that override your clearance level, kid. Maintain strict caution, or these ravenous beasts will rip your throat open—and then your timeline will permanently integrate into the cage demographic right alongside them, hahahaha…”

As the laughter faded, their eyes idly tracked her form, but the moment their scanners hit the loose, oversized contours of her windbreaker, they completely lost behavioral interest and marched away.

Pei Xiqing’s nervous system registered zero panic from their intimidation scripts. Forcing her posture rigid, she stood in absolute silence, her unblinking gaze tracking their departure before shifting to analyze the thousands of reanimated lives systematically reduced to cheap, monetized commodities around her.

The entire fortress was a grotesque, manufactured illusion—simulating prosperity while running on absolute moral poverty.

Completely disoriented by the shifting alleyways, she initiated a directional query with a passing laborer. The second the asset’s scanners registered the unpolished style of her windbreaker, he merely shook his head, a highly complex expression of disdain clouding his features.

She let out a silent, irritated sigh.

The tactical gear isn’t even degraded.

This is a perfectly standard, high-efficiency windbreaker.

Yet compared to the pristine, hyper-tailored uniforms of the local civilian demographic, her loose proportions appeared entirely out of alignment with the sector’s aesthetic.

The living metrics within Base Three were generally optimized above the global baseline. The entities authorized to anchor their timelines within this inner ring universally possessed high-tier ability users in their primary family tree, or carried direct bloodlines tied to the base’s elite military command. Consequently, their domestic cells reaped an immense bounty of preferential logistics and luxury subsidies.

The structural requirements for external apparel and behavioral etiquette were strictly enforced; virtually every citizen meticulously optimized their personal appearance and social manners to project status.

She was operating as an absolute anomaly in their grid.

Fortunately, Pei Xiqing’s psychology had always harbored a profound preference for absolute, unadulterated simplicity.

She spent another hour navigating the grid before her sensors finally isolated an ancient civilian woman retailing uncultivated greens who was willing to clear her navigation channel.

“Child, your tracking vector is locked onto the South Courtyard sector? That grid houses the absolute foundation of the base’s subterranean water dungeon,” the old woman warned, her weathered face tightening. “The high command anchors every high-risk criminal element inside those flooded vaults. My intelligence confirms a massive demographic of calculated, heinous murderers are currently locked in the lower chambers. What precise operational objective drives a girl of your tier to approach a sector that volatile?”

Pei Xiqing’s brow furrowed. “A water prison?”

This matched the exact coordinate sector Ling Lang’s squad had highlighted during their briefing.

“Affirmative. A flooded subterranean black site. Every major stronghold constructs an identical asset pen. During the initial years of the outbreak, the cells were empty; but over the past few calendar shifts, as the infrastructure stabilized internal security, a terrifying wave of domestic criminality corrupted the base. Premeditated murder and arson are considered the lowest-tier offenses running through those ledgers now.”

“What additional data has your station harvested?”

“If your system targets an inquiry to the standard civilian units, their databases will return a blank file compared to my logs. My biological son is embedded within that infrastructure; he commands the primary prison patrol cell. He has synchronized the schematics of that South Courtyard dungeon to my processor more than once. The architecture is segregated into three distinct subterranean tiers. The first and second levels manage low-threat offenders, but the absolute third floor… that grid is entirely terrifying.”

The old merchant executed a rapid visual scan of the immediate street. Verifying that zero security drones were tracking their audio frequency, she leaned closer, her voice dropping to a low, intense rasp. “The assets locked on that bottom tier are apex, high-ranking ability users who weaponized their elemental ranks to execute horrific crimes. In this current era, a massive demographic believes their elite power grants them the absolute right to overwrite the law. Thank God the high command retains an entity capable of violently crushing their fields—that… that execution division from Franlun. If their squads didn’t anchor the overwatch, the entire fortress would have collapsed into absolute, primitive chaos a long time ago.”

“What baseline drives that deduction?”

“The calculation is elementary, child. The exact microsecond an asset elevates their combat tier, their internal desires and material needs scale at an exponential rate, correct? The census of high-tier ability users inside these walls is compounding by the shift, and a massive sub-section inherently refuses to submit to military discipline. Before Franlun established its judicial overwatch, what precise quality of life do you think non-enhanced ordinary citizens like us sustained under their boots? A girl of your young generation has clearly never experienced the raw, unvarnished horror of a lawless empire.”

The old woman’s grey eyes drifted toward the horizon, her gaze turning entirely hollow as a heavy sigh escaped her chest. “If the sovereign overwatch fails to maintain absolute order… every single human asset in this fortress becomes identical to the rotting meat locked inside those cages.”

Having finalized the data gathering, Pei Xiqing issued a brief transcript of gratitude and advanced her tracking vector toward the South Courtyard alone.

To her astonishment, the transit required over sixty minutes of aggressive marching just to breach the outer margins of the southern sector.

The sheer spatial scale and structural density of the base interior far exceeded her initial calculations.

Driven by pure analytical curiosity, her initial strategy was to simply hover at a secure distance outside the perimeter of the flooded dungeon, running a brief visual audit of the architecture without triggering a security flag.

But the exact second her boots cleared the final turn, she slammed directly into a colossal, hyper-dense wall of human bodies massed in front of the structure. The civilian density was so suffocatingly high that all motor function in the lane was paralyzed; passing through the grid became a mathematical impossibility.

She held zero intention of penetrating the epicenter of the crowd, but as more columns of citizens aggressively flooded the lane from the rear transit vectors, her frame was forcefully swept deep into the wake of the mob.

Her motor functions were entirely co-opted by the momentum of the crowd, her stride slowing to a halting stop-and-start cadence as the human density around her coordinates scaled to critical levels.

Pei Xiqing reach up, violently zipping her tactical windbreaker all the way to the crown of her jaw, leaving absolutely nothing but her piercing eyes exposed to the environment, systematically isolating her identity from the curious, scanning glances of the surrounding citizens.

Directly adjacent to her shoulder, a pair of laborers initialized a high-frequency dialogue, trapping her coordinates right in the center of their audio range.

“The execution squads of Franlun are completely refusing to conceal the administrative purge this time. They systematically terminated those high-level assets right on the public deck before the entire registry. My sources confirm those specific prisoners commanded supreme financial leverage and held massive ancestral bloodlines inside the core command, yet Franlun liquidated their lines without a microsecond of hesitation.”

“Executing them was the only optimal calculation. Have you reviewed the data on their crimes? The external mutant threat hasn’t even been contained at the frontier, yet a disgusting colony of domestic termites has been actively hollowed out our infrastructure from within. If the sovereign overwatch fails to ruthlessly purge these treasonous cells to prevent future systemic failures, I am terrified the entire civilian population will be reduced to disposable puppets under their control.”

“True… but the physical mechanics deployed by Franlun remain as terrifyingly decisive and brutal as ever—they operate with zero mercy. Did your sensors register the crimson pooling on the main deck ahead? They literally hacked the prisoners’ flesh to pieces with heavy tactical blades. Even the high-tier defensive ability users couldn’t generate enough elemental resistance to slow the steel. Just running the simulation sends a freezing shock straight down my spine. The blood volume is so massive it’s literally flowing down the drainage channels toward our boots.”

…

Pei Xiqing dropped her chin, her eyes tracking the asphalt.

A dark, fresh film of crimson was actively scoring the soles of her tactical boots.

Her survival instincts spiked. She aggressively deployed her physical weight, squeezing forward through the thick wall of shoulders, desperate to extract a clear line of sight toward the execution deck before the sector cleared, but the sheer human mass was impenetrable. The high command had deliberately engineered this hyper-dense spectator gathering to serve as an absolute, crushing warning to the populace—consequently, breaking the perimeter via raw physical leverage was impossible.

“What tactical urgency is driving your weight forward, girl?” a laborer growled as her shoulder clipped his vest.

“Apologies… clear the tracking channel… let me bypass the line to verify the front metrics…”

She broadcasted a continuous stream of formal apologies as her frame slid through the narrowest fractures in the crowd. The exact second her head finally cleared the final layer of human torsos, her visual sensors locked onto a massive floor completely blanketed in a lake of fresh, streaming gore—right before an iron-clad grip violently clamped down on her windbreaker to halt her stride.

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