What?! I Became the Zombie Beauty in the Villain’s Arms – CH7

Chapter 7: “Just Be Patient”

Pei Xiqing actually slept surprisingly well. When she woke up, her physical condition felt vastly improved. The agonizing, bone-deep itch across her skin had significantly subsided, and the venomous green discoloration on her arms was showing genuine signs of fading. She no longer felt the manic, uncontrollable urge to hurt herself like she had last night.

The virus was still inside her body. In the eyes of any ability user, she was already a zombie.

Whatever. It doesn’t matter.

Still, Pei Xiqing wasn’t entirely thrilled with her current situation.

A zombie that still has human consciousness… It sounds pretty cool in theory.

However, the self-inflicted knife wound from last night was healing at an unnatural, terrifying speed. The skin on her body, which should have been festering and rotting off like every other infected person, hadn’t worsened. In fact, the physical decay had practically reversed. Staring at her arm in disbelief, she quickly rolled up her sleeves and pant legs to inspect the rest of her skin.

The physical symptoms of the zombie virus were actively retreating.

But at the exact same time, a dark, intrusive thought flashed through her mind: It would feel so good to bite someone right now.

God.

Pei Xiqing violently shook her head, thoroughly terrified of her own brain.

She scrambled out of the heavy G-Class to clear her head. Stepping into the morning air, the first thing she saw was Ling Lang dragging a massive, grotesquely mutated zombie across the dirt by its leg. The creature was easily twice the size of a normal human.

Ling Lang was dressed in his sleek black combat uniform, his tall, athletic figure moving with effortless power. He wasn’t wearing his tactical mask, and his striking features were twisted into a look of pure, irritated violence. The massive zombie suddenly began thrashing and letting out a shrill shriek. Without even turning around, Ling Lang smoothly drew his sidearm and fired two rounds directly into its knee joints.

I’m already pissed off having to work this early in the morning, his expression seemed to scream. And you dare try to fight back?

He turned his head and caught Pei Xiqing staring at him. He raised an eyebrow coldly and mouthed the words, Idiot zombie.

For a second, she couldn’t tell if he was cursing at the shrieking mutant on the ground or insulting her.

She wordlessly pointed a finger down at Ling Lang’s boots.

Ling Lang glanced down, only to realize the crippled mutant was actively trying to gnaw on his combat boots. His face turned a sickly shade of green. With a look of absolute disgust, he stomped his heel directly through the creature’s skull.

Pei Xiqing narrowed her eyes.

Her teeth suddenly felt incredibly itchy.

The urge to bite someone flared up again. Specifically… she wanted to bite the impossibly tall, imposing man who was calmly smoking a cigarette amidst the piles of corpses a few yards away.

Ling Lang dragged the now-dead mutant over to a clear patch of dirt. With a grimace, he drew his combat dagger and began brutally hacking into its skull to extract the energy core. The process was sickeningly gory, but he moved with ruthless, mechanical efficiency, showing zero hesitation.

Pei Xiqing was still morbidly curious about what a raw crystal core looked like, but Long Yan’s voice called out from the campfire. “Xiqing! Come over here, breakfast is ready!”

She honestly hadn’t expected to still be alive this morning, let alone be invited to sit around a campfire and eat breakfast with top-tier elite operatives. When Long Yan shoved a steaming bowl of hot wonton soup into her hands, Pei Xiqing felt entirely disoriented. The warmth radiating from the bowl didn’t feel real.

“We’ve been out in the wasteland for a while now, so our rations are almost depleted,” Long Yan explained apologetically. “If we were fresh out of the base, we’d be having braised beef right now. Things are a bit tight at the moment, so just be patient. We’ll eat properly once we get back.”

“Are you kidding? I’m incredibly grateful just to have hot wontons,” Pei Xiqing replied earnestly.

“As long as you don’t mind.”

“I really don’t.”

She was starving. She hadn’t eaten a single real meal since she transmigrated yesterday. The compressed biscuits the original team had thrown at her were expired and tasted like chalk. At the time, she was convinced she was going to die and turn into a brain-eating monster anyway, so she had refused to eat them, surviving solely on a few sips of water.

Seeing the girl eat with such quiet enthusiasm, Long Yan smiled warmly. “We’ll be moving out soon. Oh, by the way, the guy sitting across from you is Lu Xudong. He’s our demolitions and heavy ordinance expert.”

Pei Xiqing looked up and offered a polite nod. “Hello.”

“Hey there,” Lu Xudong grunted. “If you run into any trouble down the line, just holler. You can call me Brother Xu. This wasteland is no joke. A little girl like you needs to keep your head on a swivel.”

Lu Xudong was a massive, bald man with a naturally intimidating scowl. Heavy, intricate tattoos snaked up his arms and throat. He looked like an absolute warlord—someone you never wanted to cross. Yet, when he spoke, he had a thick, hearty Northeastern accent that sounded like he belonged in a rural comedy sketch.

Pei Xiqing couldn’t help but smile. “Okay. Thank you, Brother Xu.”

“Ling Lang is our Captain, and I’m the Vice-Captain,” Long Yan continued. “Our squad officially has eight members, but the other four are deployed on separate missions. If you manage to make it back to the base with us, you might get the chance to meet them.”

“Mhm.” Pei Xiqing hesitated, swirling the broth in her bowl. “Can I really go to the human base?”

“As long as we keep our mouths shut, no one will know you’re infected.” Long Yan studied the girl’s innocent, slightly bashful face. If it weren’t for the faint green veins lingering on her neck and wrists, absolutely no one would guess she was carrying the zombie virus. “That is, assuming you don’t bite anyone. If you lose control in the base, you will be instantly obliterated by the defense grid.”

Long Yan’s tone turned entirely serious. “I’m not joking, Xiqing. The base is crawling with high-tier ability users, and every single one of them is stronger than the last.”

“If you really want to survive there, you have to be incredibly careful.”

To be completely honest, Pei Xiqing had zero desire to go to the human stronghold.

If she went to the base, there was a massive chance she would run into the novel’s male and female protagonists.

If they found out she was still alive, they would immediately expose the original owner’s horrific track record. Worse, they would publicly announce that she had been bitten by a zombie, essentially signing her death warrant.

And, frankly, she couldn’t guarantee that she wouldn’t get pissed off and bite them herself.

It was infinitely safer for her to wander the apocalyptic wasteland alone. While eavesdropping on their route planning yesterday, she had memorized the names of several abandoned sectors. She figured she could just treat it like a dark tourism trip and check in at different landmarks.

Having made up her mind, Pei Xiqing lifted the bowl and drank the rest of the hot broth, feeling a comforting warmth spread through her chest.

Duan Xiaolin and Ling Lang walked back to the camp. Out of the corner of his eye, Duan Xiaolin caught a glimpse of the girl quietly finishing her meal, looking entirely docile. His face remained an impassive mask as he sat down, immediately briefing the squad on the updated itinerary.

Long Yan frowned as she listened. “I didn’t expect the main highway to be completely overrun overnight. And both of the adjacent cities are swarming with infected. The sheer volume of the horde is going to be incredibly difficult to break through.”

Ling Lang shoved his hands into his pockets, his eyes glinting with arrogance. “If they’re in the way, we’ll just slaughter them. I’m not afraid of a few walking corpses.”

The word “retreat” literally did not exist in Ling Lang’s dictionary.

Just as the arrogant words left his mouth, a chorus of terrified screams erupted from the dense tree line a few hundred meters down the road.

The entire squad snapped to attention.

A ragged group of survivors burst out of the foliage, sprinting down the asphalt in sheer panic, screaming, “Fall back! Fall back!”

Without a word, Ling Lang drew his weapons, sprinting toward the tree line to cover their retreat. He fired a rapid succession of shots into the treeline, instantly dropping the fastest mutants crawling out of the brush. But the horde pouring out behind them was massive. Recognizing the threat, Long Yan and Lu Xudong drew their weapons and sprinted into the fray to provide heavy fire support.

Fifteen minutes of deafening gunfire later, the massive wave of zombies was entirely wiped out.

Ling Lang walked over to the panting survivors, aggressively kicking the leg of a man who was still screaming on the ground. “Shut up. Which faction are you from?”

“We… we’re just an independent scavenger team!” the man stammered, staring in awe at the carnage. “Who… who the hell are you guys?!”

“Tch.” Ling Lang grabbed the man by the collar and hauled him to his feet. “Call the rest of your squad out here. Now.”

They were a spontaneous, self-governing survivor group formed in one of the outlying towns—a very common occurrence in this era. While the massive central bases monopolized the highest-tier ability users, there were plenty of strong survivors who despised military regulations and preferred to operate independently, building their own small empires in the wasteland.

They survived by scavenging, fighting the undead when they had the numbers, and running for their lives when they didn’t.

While their gear was mostly scavenged junk, the ability users in these rogue teams weren’t necessarily weak.

Slowly, the rest of the group emerged from the trees. There were at least thirty of them, mostly rugged men with only a handful of women mixed in.

Many of them were bleeding. Ling Lang’s sharp eyes immediately locked onto a man huddling nervously behind a rusted car door. “How did he get that injury?”

A burly man quickly stepped forward, physically blocking Ling Lang’s line of sight. “He just tripped and fell while we were running!”

“Is that right?” Ling Lang sneered, stepping aggressively into the man’s personal space and shoving him aside. “I want to see exactly how he managed to ‘fall’ and get a bite mark.”

Instantly, the entire scavenger team bristled, forming a defensive wall in front of the injured man. “Who the hell do you think you are?! Why are you sticking your nose into our team’s business?!”

“Yeah! Who do you think you are?! He’s our Vice-Captain! We said he fell, so he fell! Back off!”

Ling Lang spat on the ground. “A bunch of suicidal, ignorant country bumpkins.”

“Who the hell are you calling bumpkins?! Do you want to die?!”

Tempers flared instantly. Several men drew their scavenged weapons, aggressively closing in on Ling Lang. “Listen here, kid. Don’t think just because you shot a few zombies for us that you can boss us around! We could have handled that horde without you. Nobody asked for your help! Who exactly are you looking down on?!”

As the burly leader shouted, his gaze drifted past Ling Lang and landed on Pei Xiqing, who was standing quietly near the G-Class. He let out a harsh, mocking laugh. “Look at this joke! Your squad barely has any manpower, and you’re dragging around a useless, frail little girl? She just stood there doing absolutely nothing during the fight. Let me guess, she doesn’t even have a superpower, right? Is this really the extent of your ‘elite’ team’s strength?”

Pei Xiqing blinked, snapping out of her thoughts about zombie mutations, only to realize that thirty hostile men were suddenly glaring at her.

Before she could even open her mouth to speak, a towering shadow moved seamlessly in front of her, completely shielding her from their view.

Duan Xiaolin raised his handgun with one hand, aiming the barrel with terrifying precision through the gap in the crowd, directly at the skull of the injured Vice-Captain hiding in the back.

“You—” the burly leader began, his face twisting in fury.

BANG!

Before the word could leave his mouth, the gun fired.

A flawless headshot.

The sharp scent of gunpowder instantly filled the heavy air.

Dead silence fell over the road. Everyone stared in absolute, paralyzing shock at the headless corpse of the Vice-Captain collapsing into the dirt.

Then, the rogue team exploded in absolute hysteria. “You fucking shot our Vice-Captain!! You’re dead! You hear me?! We’re going to kill all of you!”