What?! I Became the Zombie Beauty in the Villain’s Arms – CH74

Chapter 74: The Wife Beats Up the Mistress

Pei Xiqing wasn’t particularly interested in this kind of drama. It was usually just a chaotic, ugly scene, and when it came to cheating, it always took two to tango.

But Long Yan was in high spirits and looked genuinely excited. Pei Xiqing figured the doctor was just trying to help relieve her boredom; after all, she had done nothing but eat and sleep for days, and outsiders probably thought her life was incredibly dull. In reality, she loved this kind of quiet routine where she could just lie down and do nothing.

She followed Long Yan as they hitched a ride down to the main commercial strip. The moment they stepped out of the vehicle, the sky opened up, and it began to rain heavily.

Pei Xiqing and Long Yan held up their umbrellas, standing at the back of the crowd of onlookers who insisted on watching the spectacle despite the downpour.

Long Yan smacked her lips. “Wow, they’re still tearing into each other even in a storm. You can imagine how massive this feud is. It’s a shame we can’t see a thing from back here.”

Nudging her shoulder, Long Yan added, “Come on, there’s a teahouse upstairs right next to us. We can watch the drama unfold from the balcony.”

Dozens of people were crowding the ground floor to escape the rain, but the upper-level tea rooms were strictly restricted. Long Yan easily guided her past the security guards and up the stairs simply by flashing her vanguard medical ID.

Below them stretched a bustling, lively boulevard. Even in the driving rain, the foot traffic was immense. The surrounding buildings were all designed in a spacious, clean European style, with sleek luxury vehicles passing by at regular intervals. The affluent scenery was a stark contrast to the dilapidated, flooded slums they had visited the day before; it felt like a completely different world.

As she stood on the covered balcony, the wind sprayed a fine mist of rain into the air, though the deep awning kept the interior completely dry.

Long Yan handed her a cup of hot tea. “How is it? Have you ever visited this sector before?”

“Never.”

“This is where the elite and powerful of the base like to spend their time,” Long Yan explained, gesturing down the avenue. “Further ahead, you’ll find luxury hotels and all kinds of entertainment venues. Life in the stronghold isn’t just about manual labor and suffering; there’s plenty of wealth and exciting things to do if you have the clearance. Especially the black market down there—that auction house is truly squeezing gold from the ashes, making an absolute fortune off the end of the world.”

Leaning against the railing, Long Yan continued, “By the way, I haven’t told you what that woman down there actually did. The primary wife is the childhood sweetheart of a high-ranking base official. Lately, his assignments kept him away from home more and more frequently, and the wife eventually discovered he was keeping a string of secret women outside. By the time she gathered her people to raid his hidden villa, this particular mistress was the only one caught sleeping in the bed. The others had already fled.”

“Look, the wife is starting.”

Pei Xiqing took a small sip of her tea and immediately knit her brows.

Long Yan smiled. “Not used to the flavor profile? It’s a specialized brew made from rare medicinal herbs. It’s supposed to be excellent for your health.”

“What kind of herbs are in this…?”

“Honestly, if I tell you the ingredients, your stomach might reject it entirely. It’s better if you don’t know the exact taxonomy; just know it functions as an exceptional health tonic.”

The tea carried a distinct, heavy fishy odor. Worse, the moment the liquid hit her tongue, a bitter, metallic aftertaste bloomed in her mouth, far more unpleasant and bizarre than the initial smell. She carefully set the cup down on the wooden table, refusing to take another sip.

Down on the asphalt below, the big show of the year was reaching its chaotic peak—the wife was violently beating the mistress.

The two women were fiercely clawing at each other, tearing out handfuls of hair. The surrounding crowd cheered and clapped enthusiastically. Some onlookers even began shouting, inciting the wife to beat the woman to death, demanding they strip her bare and parade her down the boulevard for public humiliation.

Noticing that Pei Xiqing lacked even a trace of a smile and looked completely unbothered by the spectacle, Long Yan turned her head. “Do you dislike watching this kind of drama? Or is your system just tired?”

Pei Xiqing shook her head slightly. “Sister Long Yan, I just think the entire display is entirely unnecessary.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Infidelity is the joint responsibility of both the man and the third party; both assets should absorb the penalty,” she said, leaning her weight against the intricately carved wooden railing, her eyes filled with a quiet despondency. “Yet in this entire scene, the husband won’t face a single disciplinary action or moral condemnation from the crowd. What is there to enjoy about that?”

Long Yan let out a dry sigh. “The social hierarchy inside the fortress has operated exactly like this for the past few winters.”

“It’s just like the old woman we rescued yesterday,” she continued, her voice dropping. “Her husband went out and secured no fewer than five other women, funneling all his earnings directly into their pockets. The moment his boots cleared his own threshold, he did nothing but curse and beat the old lady. She has to drag her frame out of bed at five every single morning to cultivate and water those greens, drag them to the market to sell, and only returns to her quarters at five in the evening. By the way, did the old lady formally accept the hospital’s transfer to the nursing home yesterday?”

“Mhm.” Pei Xiqing caught a shift in her tone. “Did she fail to report to the facility?”

“She reported to the ward, but the exact second she secured her placement, she used the nursing home’s administrative connections to beg the directors to extract her criminal son from the dungeon. She even packed up all the food, clothing, and stipends the facility provided for her own care and sent them straight back to her abusive husband and son.”

Pei Xiqing lowered her eyelashes, staring at the floorboards.

Below them, a brutal new wave of violence erupted. The primary wife’s attendants had successfully stripped the mistress of her clothing.

The vast majority of the crowding spectators were men. They stared fixedly at the woman’s exposed, shivering form with naked, lewd greed. If the street weren’t heavily patrolled by base security, some of those degenerate assets would have likely lost all control and dragged her straight into the dark alleyways.

The wife continued to strike her ruthlessly with a heavy wooden staff.

The mistreated girl was pinned flat against the wet asphalt by the wife’s hired hands, dragged across the rough stones by her hair without a single stitch of fabric left to shield her, entirely exposed to the mocking crowd. As she was dragged along the lane, passing laborers reached out to touch her skin, and several vulgar men actively trailed behind her heels just to lay hands on her.

The situation collapsed into complete, chaotic depravity.

The woman unleashed a series of miserable, high-frequency shrieks through the rain, entirely broken by the absolute humiliation. Unable to bear the crushing disgrace, she suddenly wrenched her torso sideways and violently slammed her head against a jagged stone milestone.

Blood splattered instantly across the pavement.

Pei Xiqing’s expression froze. When her eyes focused back on the scene, the woman lay entirely motionless, a dark crimson stream blooming from her forehead.

Long Yan tutted, shaking her head. “Wow… the public sectors are genuinely becoming more volatile by the shift. I calculated this as a standard cheating dispute, but how did it end in an immediate casualty?”

As the words left her lips, an armored patrol squad marched onto the boulevard to manage the incident. Moving with practiced, chilling efficiency, they simply covered the corpse with a coarse piece of canvas and decisively dragged it away, while a secondary detail immediately began hosing down the bloodstains on the stones.

Within a mere ten minutes, the crowding spectators dispersed back into the rain, and the entire avenue returned to normal, as if the horrific event had never occurred.

Pei Xiqing stared blankly at the empty street for a few seconds. “And then? How will the administration log the case?”

“They won’t do a single thing about it,” Long Yan stated flatly, turning to look at her. “That’s just how the rules run. The curtain falls right here.”

Pei Xiqing felt a suffocating tightness squeeze her chest, her mind struggling to process the sheer, casual cruelty of the environment.

Long Yan patted her shoulder gently. “I’m sorry, Xiqing. My predictive models didn’t account for a casualty, but this is the unvarnished reality of the stronghold. If that girl had survived the beating, she would have likely been drugged by the enforcement teams and locked inside an iron cage along the commercial lanes, reduced to a common commodity or sold off directly to the subterranean black markets.”

“Do you recollect the old friend I briefed you on during our drive?”

“I remember,” Pei Xiqing murmured. Long Yan had noted that her friend had entangled her timeline with multiple high-clearance men across the base.

“The high command fed her experimental chemical restraints, injected her system with excruciating nerve toxins, and came within an inch of bolting her inside an iron cage on the boulevard,” Long Yan said solemnly. “That is the absolute law governing this stronghold. The system maintains zero tolerance for unfaithful women, let alone an ounce of leniency.”

Pei Xiqing subconsciously reached down and swallowed another gulp of her lukewarm tea to settle her nerves.

The fishy, bitter copper taste shot straight to her head, instantly triggering her coughing reflex. She choked violently, patting her chest as her face flushed a bright, burning red from the cough.

Leaning heavily against the carved wooden railing to catch her breath, she remained entirely oblivious to the fact that someone was standing on the adjacent private balcony just a few paces away.

A well-dressed man had stepped out to clear the air, his eyes locking onto her flushed features. He stared fixedly at Pei Xiqing’s face for several consecutive seconds, before his eyes widened in absolute shock. Turning on his heel, he sprinted back into his private tea suite, shouting frantically toward a distinguished figure who was calmly painting at a grand mahogany desk.

“Mr. Gu! I’ve located her! I’ve finally found her!”

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