Why Did Qi Xing Look So Delicious?

The mountain wind whistled past her ears.

The two of them plummeted rapidly. Qi Xing's arm was clamped tightly around Jiang Zhaosu's waist as she panicked and held up her nearly severed head, which the wind had blown askew, lest it fall off her shoulders.

With the vines cushioning their fall, they landed safely on the ground.

However, even Qi Xing, who was usually calm and composed, could not avoid rolling several times after jumping down from halfway up the mountain. His black clothes were covered in mud and grass clippings.

Jiang Zhaosu was in even worse shape.

Her face and body were covered in dirt, making her look like she had just crawled out of a mud pit.

One man and one corpse lay sprawled on the ground, spitting dirt for a long while.

Qi Xing looked up at the minibus still parked on the road halfway up the mountain, his expression dark. "The supplies I worked so hard to collect!"

Jiang Zhaosu let out a long howl as well. "Awoo!"

Her head! Her meat!

If she had known this would happen, she should have finished eating Square Face at noon!

There was no time to complain. Qi Xing rose from the ground, grabbed Jiang Zhaosu's arm, and hauled her up. "Run first. Those two might come after us."

His ability was at the same level as Xiao Yi's.

He had launched a sneak attack first, and Xiao Yi had not intended to kill him, so it had seemed as though Xiao Yi was at a disadvantage.

If they fought seriously, with Xiao Chuxi added to the mix, he might not necessarily be able to win.

Besides, he was dragging around a little zombie like Jiang Zhaosu.

Qi Xing scooped Jiang Zhaosu into his arms, stretched his long legs, and swiftly darted into the nearby forest.

Places with plenty of plants were his home turf.

Even if Xiao Yi wanted to keep chasing them, she would have to worry about her sister's safety and temporarily stop pursuing them.

Most of the plants in the forest had already withered, but there were still plenty of dead branches and fallen leaves.

Long, yellowed branches tangled together, occasionally snagging Qi Xing as he rushed through them.

The dry, hard branches tore through the man's clothes, leaving pale red scratches on Qi Xing's fair, jade-like skin.

A faint scent of blood drifted from those wounds, making Jiang Zhaosu, whose head was buried in his chest, let out an unconscious growl. It also drew out some beasts lurking deep within the forest.

Dozens of enormous Mutated Giant Rats came rushing over in a pack.

Every mutated rat was larger than an ordinary domestic goose. Their fist-sized black eyes glimmered with a ghostly green light, while their blackish-gray fur stood erect like steel needles, hard as iron. Sharp fangs protruded from their mouths, dripping foul-smelling saliva, and their swollen cheeks made a teeth-grinding creaking sound.

Some lacked noses or eyes, their flesh mangled and bloody. Others were riddled with holes filled with maggots, and all of them reeked.

Qi Xing finally understood why Xiao Yi had come to this godforsaken place. She had come to wipe out these things.

"Ha ha." Looking at the Mutated Giant Rats that had somehow surrounded him, Qi Xing no longer knew how to describe his feelings and could only laugh bitterly.

These things were easy enough to kill, but they always appeared in huge packs. They were disgusting, could swim and climb trees, and were especially troublesome.

Whenever Qi Xing encountered these things, he felt like he was rolling around in a latrine.

Even if he won, he still felt helplessly filthy afterward.

Qi Xing lowered his head to check on Jiang Zhaosu.

Jiang Zhaosu had already lost consciousness from the severe injuries to her head and neck.

Mutated Giant Rats were omnivores. They ate not only people, but zombies too.

He could not toss the little zombie aside.

With no other choice, Qi Xing held Jiang Zhaosu and resigned himself to fighting the Mutated Giant Rats before him.

While unconscious.

Jiang Zhaosu felt as though she had returned to the rental room where she had lived before she died.

After graduation, she could no longer stay in the school dormitory, and her job did not provide housing. Jiang Zhaosu could only spend a whopping three hundred to rent a tiny basement room, living there temporarily while waiting for university to begin.

Because the rent was cheap, the basement she rented had no furniture.

Since she was only staying for a little over two months, Jiang Zhaosu could not bear to buy a bed. She found a stack of old newspapers to spread on the floor, then laid out her bedding on top and made do with that.

The basement had only one tiny window. It was narrow, cold, damp, and filled with a strange smell.

But Jiang Zhaosu not only worked as an NPC at a horror Paradise, she also sometimes tutored students. She worked several jobs a day and returned to the basement late every night.

After washing up, Jiang Zhaosu would collapse wearily onto her makeshift bed, scroll through her phone for a while, then close her eyes and sleep.

When she first started working at the haunted house, her boss often criticized her for being bad at scaring people. He told her to read more zombie novels to get a feel for it.

That was when Jiang Zhaosu read many apocalypse novels. She admired and envied some of the protagonists, while others disgusted and repulsed her.

The protagonists Jiang Zhaosu hated were generally those chosen geniuses who had maxed out every stat from the moment they were born.

Why did they get to have everything from birth, as if the entire world existed to serve them?

So many people struggled desperately to survive in the apocalypse, yet beneath the protagonists' halos, they could only become background characters and pitiful cannon fodder.

Whenever she read novels about Gary Stus and Mary Sues, Jiang Zhaosu felt like a roadside dog. After working hard all day and finally returning to her rental room to relax, she would be standing there minding her own business when the male and female leads of some wish-fulfillment story kicked her for no reason.

She remembered where she had seen the names Xiao Yi and Xiao Chuxi before.

They had appeared in one such zombie apocalypse novel.

However, Xiao Yi and Xiao Chuxi were not the protagonists of that novel. They could only be considered members of the Protagonist Group, so Jiang Zhaosu had not remembered them very clearly.

Jiang Zhaosu remembered that, as positive characters, the sisters had been quite popular in that novel.

During one mission, the two of them were severely injured by an antagonist.

Xiao Yi lost an arm because of it, while Xiao Chuxi suffered brain death and remained unconscious.

Readers had furiously cursed the villain at the time. One reader spoiled the plot in the chapter comments: "It's okay, sisters! Chu Xi wakes up later! She breaks this man's limbs, skins him, pulls out his tendons, and throws him into a horde of zombies. So satisfying!"

Jiang Zhaosu preferred reading the parts about zombies and did not pay much attention to such side plots. They did not stir much emotion in her, and she usually just skimmed over them.

Later, the protagonist's cheat powers became too absurd. The protagonist kept humiliating cannon fodder, and the plot became too clichéd and brainless, so Jiang Zhaosu got bored and dropped the novel without seeing the ending.

Now that she thought about it, the man Xiao Chuxi had skinned and had his tendons pulled out should have been Qi Xing.

Fuck!

When she had first come to this world, she had thought Qi Xing acted like a villain.

She never expected this guy really was a villain!

Qi Xing... he had not even had a name in that novel. He did not even count as the eighth male character, yet he had challenged two major members of the Protagonist Group by himself. Impressive.

Wait!

If she followed Qi Xing, then she was following a villain. Sooner or later, the righteous side would destroy her.

This could not be happening!

Was it still too late for her to leave Qi Xing, abandon darkness, and turn toward the light?

Jiang Zhaosu panicked and abruptly opened her eyes.

In every direction lay severed limbs and mangled remains of unknown creatures. Blood flowed like a river, filling the air with a thick, fishy stench.

Qi Xing lay not far from her, his eyes tightly shut. He was covered in dirt and blood, his handsome face like a pearl covered in dust, smeared with grime. His complexion and lips were as pale as a corpse that had been dead for three days.

What happened?

Jiang Zhaosu hurriedly scrambled to her feet, ran to Qi Xing's side, and tremblingly held a finger beneath his nose.

A warm breath slowly brushed against her finger.

Thank goodness. He was still breathing. He was not dead.

Jiang Zhaosu hurriedly grabbed Qi Xing by the shoulder. Just as she was about to shake him awake, her stomach growled at the worst possible moment.

The sun had long since set, and everything around them was pitch-black. A cold wind blew past, and the twisted branches resembled strange skeletons in the heavy night, stretching their limbs amid eerie howls.

A faint red light glimmered in Jiang Zhaosu's eyes. The bones in her not-yet-healed neck crackled. She was clearly worried about Qi Xing, yet her gaze involuntarily drifted toward his neck.

So hungry.

She wanted to bite him so badly...

Why did Qi Xing look so delicious? Could she have just one bite?