What?! I Became the Zombie Beauty in the Villain’s Arms – CH86

Chapter 86: Give Up

Pei Xiqing didn’t take his words to heart at first, but hearing his voice drop into that heavy, vulnerable frequency made her turn around in surprise.

Ling Lang instinctively shifted his gaze, his eyes darting away to avoid her stare.

By the time she fully processed what was going on, he had already shut down his line of questioning. He turned his torso around, pacing toward the courtyard gate.

“Never mind.”

“Wait a moment.”

Pei Xiqing moved to follow him.

Ling Lang kept his back turned to her. “What’s wrong? Just decode my words as a glitch. Forget I even asked. You didn’t hear a single thing—it was just a stupid joke.” He paused, his shoulders tense. “I simply calculate that an absolute trash asset like Gu He was never worthy of your devotion. True perfection and flawless romance don’t exist in this wasteland. Instead of burning your processing power on those illusions, your system would extract far more utility by studying your newly unlocked superpower.”

“Mhm,” Pei Xiqing agreed smoothly, leaning against the porch railing. “Gu He is undeniably an absolute bastard.”

Ling Lang crossed his arms, slowly turning around to face her. A mocking, familiar smirk touched his features. “If your vocal receptors had released that exact evaluation earlier, a chaotic crisis like yesterday’s would have never cleared the security parameters.”

“Is your board deflecting a fraction of the blame to my ledger?” she asked, her voice dropping. “Are you asserting that my actions caused Brother Duan’s injuries yesterday?”

Ling Lang froze for a microsecond, before his defensive algorithms immediately fired a rejection. “Who says my station is blaming your line? My brother absorbing those lacerations… that was strictly—”

He slammed on his internal brakes just in time.

Who inside this entire base could actually fracture his brother’s physical defenses? Ling Lang calculated. Unless Duan Xiaolin explicitly authorized the damage to run a specific play.

Never mind.

Before the raw data could slip past his teeth, he abruptly swapped the topic. “Deactivate your worry protocol regarding that parameter. My brother and I have navigated a massive ledger of crises, anomalies, and structural threats over the winters. Our systems have successfully survived more black-market assassination attempts than I can quantify. A minor scrap like yesterday is nothing to our board.”

“Then clarify the underlying meaning of your previous sentence,” she pressed.

“Which data string?”

“Vocalize the truth.” Pei Xiqing took two measured steps closer, closing the physical gap to parse the exact expression shifting behind his lashes. “Executing a protocol even when your predictive models return a mathematical impossibility… Is your mind actively wrestling with a directive it lacks the compliance keys to fulfill? Are you trapped in a loop of hesitation?”

The query hit Ling Lang precisely like a boot stepping squarely on a hound’s tail. His volatile temper instantly detonated, and he aggressively lunged forward to crowd her personal perimeter, eliminating the space between them until his chest nearly brushed her windbreaker. “What precise definition is your intellect assigning to my words? Your station queries my board so smoothly, but the reality is, my own processors run a blank. Why don’t you decode the algorithm for me?”

Pei Xiqing took a cautious step back onto the grass.

Her sensors logged that he was forcefully suppressing a massive wave of turbulent emotional output. After a brief pause, she asked in a very soft whisper, “Are you… harboring rage?”

Her vocal frequency lacked even a microsecond of defensive threat.

Hearing that gentle cadence, the chaotic friction inside Ling Lang’s chest suddenly lost its momentum. He didn’t actually feel angry. In truth, his processing units couldn’t even derive why his emotional meters spiked so violently every single time his form crossed her coordinates. His mental and physical controls simply felt entirely uncalibrated around her.

He stepped back, opening up the space as he muttered, “Negative. I simply calculate that my own baseline value is remarkably worthless.”

“If your line continues to broadcast that specific evaluation, will it magically preserve the life parameters of the other soldiers guarding this base?”

The severe tension locking Ling Lang’s features visibly relaxed, his aggressive posture deflating entirely. “Pei Xiqing, your system genuinely lacks a functional algorithm for comforting a comrade.”

“Does my statement contain a calculation error? Or is Captain Ling Lang preparing to transition into a certified jerk?” she teased, her eyes bright. “The youngest, most celebrated genius of the vanguard division is actively dumping a self-pity routine onto my desk. Are you aware that if this transcript ever breaches the security firewall, the morale of the lower ranks will hit absolute zero?”

Ling Lang was hit by such a wave of exasperation he let out a sharp laugh. “Is that the core issue my words were tracking?”

“Are our respective stations not auditing the exact same file?”

His white brows arched, a sudden flush of crimson creeping up his throat. “Negative!”

“Then identify what your mind is focusing on.”

“You…! The parameter remains entirely locked out from your business.”

“Hey, lower the frequency,” Pei Xiqing murmured. “Has your system recently initialized a romantic tracking lock on a new target?”

Ling Lang’s eyes turned lethally sharp. “Which division leaked that file to your radar?”

“Your own face,” Pei Xiqing stated bluntly. “The data is splashed right across your features.”

The way he had phrased those intense queries a moment prior—only an absolute idiot would fail to decrypt the underlying message. His intellect was desperately trying to express a hidden parameter.

Yet, her own analytical models failed to isolate who the white-haired captain could possibly be tracking, or why the configuration introduced such a massive calculation conflict for his board. He was normally so radiant, passionate, and unyielding.

Ling Lang’s vocal processors completely jammed, leaving him speechless.

“Fine, some data fields are best left unshared,” she smiled gently, letting the pressure drop. “My line won’t force a breach of your encryption. But since Brother Duan and my timeline are officially linked, I calculate it’s my administrative duty to monitor your welfare on his behalf.”

“Representing his desk? Bury the script,” Ling Lang shot back. “Your sovereign directive is to optimize your own defense firewalls. Refrain from sleeping so deeply out in an open courtyard that a high-tier intruder can clear your perimeter without your sensors registering a single alert.”

Pei Xiqing’s cheeks flushed with mild embarrassment. “The event was an extreme anomaly. A total system error.”

The masked asset’s physical capabilities were light-years advanced compared to her current ceiling. Even Xiaobai’s hunting arrays had been neutralized within a microsecond. A predator of that caliber didn’t routinely navigate the residential ring. If his intentions had been lethal, her timeline would have hit an immediate hard shutdown.

“Shifting back to the target,” Pei Xiqing probed, her eyes tracking his reactions. “Does the complication stem from a discrepancy in institutional status, or does the chronological age gap run too wide for comfort?”

Seeing that Ling Lang’s lips remained firmly locked, she floated a secondary hypothesis. “A reverse age gap? An older woman? That configuration is entirely standard across the modern sectors. It introduces zero structural errors.”

Ling Lang sighed. “Terminate the random calculations. And ensure your vocal processors refrain from releasing a single syllable of this transcript to my brother.”

“Deliver the data file to my station, and I issue an ironclad promise to encrypt it away from his desk forever,” she vowed, lightly tapping her fist against her chest.

Ling Lang reached out, violently yanked a metal garden chair across the grass, and sat down.

“Fine. Step into close proximity, and my line will transmit the file.”

Pei Xiqing calculated the transfer was authentic. The exact millisecond her frame bent to sit on a low stool near his knees, Ling Lang leaned his face close to her ear, releasing a quiet, whispered syllable.

Pei Xiqing slowly straightened her spine, her expression instantly shifting into unvarnished disgust.

“?”

Ling Lang shrugged his shoulders carelessly. His handsome features were entirely saturated with the unruly, arrogant nature of a young vanguard soldier. “Your database rejects the output?”

“The output is verified,” Pei Xiqing muttered flatly. “But the parameter definition is far too broad.”

He had literally just whispered the word “Woman.”

Pei Xiqing stared at him. Was that a diversion tactic? Or was his radar tracking a male asset instead? Given the chaotic state of the world, that alternative introduced zero mathematical anomalies. But analyzing Ling Lang’s unvarnished, hyper-masculine geometry… he was essentially a textbook definition of an unyielding straight line.

She pressed a palm against her forehead. Her system had just been flawlessly played by his diversion script a second time.

“Clear out. Every single conversation with your station triggers an immediate urge to deploy a physical strike against your head.”

Ling Lang let out a low chuckle. Maintaining his seated posture, he tilted his head to look directly back into the eyes of the girl anchoring the low stool.

Pei Xiqing’s tracking arrays locked onto his striking facial architecture. Up close, his sharp pupils carried a distinct, brownish-red ember tint. Framed by his unruly white hair, his visual aesthetic looked precisely like an elite protagonist extracted from a graphic novel.

Ling Lang went completely silent for two consecutive seconds. The deep hesitation and agonizing calculation grid locking his white brows were laid entirely bare—clear, sincere, and completely stripped of his usual defensive sarcasm.

“Pei Xiqing,” he vocalized softly.

Pei Xiqing raised her chin. “If your core holds an authentic data packet, release it now.”

“Has your own timeline genuinely never logged…” His Adam’s apple executed a heavy, nervous shift. Pei Xiqing blinked, her sensors waiting for the next stream of data. Unexpectedly, his vocal track fractured mid-sentence. He tilted his head away, before tacking on a rough whisper. “…a fraction of tenderness for my station?”

?

Pei Xiqing let out a slow, quiet sigh. “What point are you desperately trying to establish?”

A prolonged silence settled over the courtyard, the wind rustling the leaves. Finally, his voice cut through the quiet, repeating the parameter block.

“My office intends to state the ground truth.”

“I intend to define the profile of the asset anchoring the supreme priority slot inside my core. It is mathematically possible that my psychology tracks her file, or perhaps… the calculation remains entirely uncalibrated. I lack the diagnostic data.”

Pei Xiqing rested her palms flat over her knees, her posture shifting into an attentive, respectful listening mode. “Proceed with the data transfer.”

A sudden, internal memory must have flagged inside Ling Lang’s database, because the corners of his lips curled into a rare, remarkably soft smile.

“The asset is exceptionally interesting,” he murmured, his eyes dropping to the grass as his internal firewalls slowly powered down. “Silly… thoroughly endearing, and commands an incredibly gentle baseline. That is the consensus logged on my ledger. Her own system likely evaluates my presence as a standard, high-frequency annoyance, so my boots will refrain from disrupting her perimeter from this milestone forward. Furthermore, her current timeline projects maximum happiness metrics. If her sector ever logs a critical structural hazard requiring a heavy kinetic shield, my vanguard unit will permanently hold the line at her flank.”

“But the emotional calculation doesn’t carry a fatal weight. It tracks exactly with your own philosophy—zero human assets are permanently indispensable to a secondary registry. Perhaps my operational core functions with too much raw impulse, failing to drive a deep analysis before launching an assault script. If her system ever truly returned my affection, my own raw immaturity would have inevitably fractured her baseline anyway.”

“Historically… my file was categorized as an unwanted child. The surrounding youth demographics commanded pairs of integrated playmates, but my own coordinates remained entirely isolated. To run an honest diagnostic: the initial detonation of the apocalypse functioned as an absolute relief for my system. I genuinely love the structural rules of the post-outbreak world. I love the exact reality that every high-ranking director is intensely irritated by my behavioral style, yet their stations lack the sovereign leverage to liquidate my badge. I can force them to swallow my arrogance while my uniform remains fiercely true to its own coding.”

“But my biological brother operates on an entirely separate wavelength.”

He raised his brownish-red eyes, his gaze locking directly into Pei Xiqing’s clear pupils with a crushing, absolute sincerity.

“He matches the singular profile my core desperately desires to see clear a perfect happiness script.”

“My system wants his timeline to secure a flawless state of joy, far more than my own board requires the parameter.”

“Consequently, my operational units have finalized a permanent decision: I am deleting all romantic algorithms and non-essential domestic targets from my ledger—including the asset anchoring my private affection. My uniform will remain strictly dedicated to shielding his flank for the remainder of our timelines.”

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