Duan Yuanyuan Died

So this was what it felt like after being bitten by a zombie.

Duan Yuanyuan felt as if her entire body were being scorched by fire.

The blood inside her seemed to have turned into boiling magma, dissolving all her organs in blistering heat.

The excruciating pain covered her skin in cold sweat, making her wish she were dead.

She wanted to scream, to roar, but it felt as though her throat had been cut open by a blade. All she felt was searing pain with the taste of blood, unable to make a sound.

Was she about to die?

But she did not want to die.

How could she want to die? If she had wanted to die, she should have died back in that apartment instead of enduring humiliation just to survive until now.

Her refusal to get into the car with Jiang Zhaosu was not because she no longer wanted to live.

It was simply because she knew her own worth.

To Qin Feng, she still had her looks and body. But to Jiang Zhaosu and Qi Xing, she was utterly useless.

They might be willing to take her along now, but who could say that, over time, they would not become another Qin Feng and Cao Yuan?

She had quite a good impression of Jiang Zhaosu and Qi Xing. She did not want to ruin the image she had of them.

Besides, she had truly had enough of this kind of life.

Always being someone else's appendage.

Carefully watching others' expressions, groveling to please them, begging for their pity just to stay alive.

She no longer had a chance to become an Ability User, but Jiang Zhaosu had shown her another kind of hope.

If possible, she wanted to become a Mutated Species like Jiang Zhaosu.

She did not need to be especially powerful. She only needed to be able to hunt like a beast and survive on her own abilities.

Tormented by pain as if it had come from hell itself, Duan Yuanyuan collapsed to the ground, her heart stopping.

When she opened her eyes again, her eyeballs had turned cloudy and dull.

The lingering warmth of her human body rapidly faded away, and the midnight wind soon chilled Duan Yuanyuan's body until it was like ice.

Her fair skin turned pale and bluish-gray. Purple veins protruded across her body like bizarre patterns, while terrifying lumps of flesh swelled wherever they spread. Those irregular growths gave her strength she could never have possessed as a human.

Duan Yuanyuan could now even freely twist her hands and feet in any direction.

She crawled stiffly up from the ground in an impossibly twisted posture, tilting her head back and sniffing the human scent in the air.

Blood, flesh...

She was hungry. She needed blood and flesh to nourish her body.

Duan Yuanyuan had lost her human consciousness by then, leaving only a zombie's most basic instincts.

Yet she felt stronger, freer, and more exhilarated than ever before.

"Grrr..."

After catching the scent of blood in the village, a terrifying rasp came from her throat. Her body twisted grotesquely as she raced on all fours toward the source of human flesh.

"Jiao Jiao, are you okay?"

Since he did not know how many enemies there were, Pei Chixuan did not rashly chase after Qi Xing and Jiang Zhaosu.

After dealing with the remaining zombies, he hurried to check on Cen Jiao.

Fortunately, Cen Jiao was not hurt, but she had been badly frightened. In her haste to climb into the car, she had twisted her ankle in her high heels.

Pei Chixuan got into the car as well and had Cen Jiao take out some medicine for bruises and sprains from her space, then applied it to her swollen foot.

He was gripping Cen Jiao's slender white ankle and massaging the swollen area when she suddenly kicked him.

Still panicked and constantly looking out the window, Cen Jiao shrieked, "Another zombie is coming!"

"It's that woman!"

Cen Jiao stared outside in horror, her voice trembling. "She turned into a zombie too!"

Pei Chixuan looked out the window as well.

Sure enough, it was the scantily dressed woman who had lured them here earlier.

Duan Yuanyuan was still wearing nothing but that cool, thin Sling Dress, but she no longer looked sexy, seductive, pitiful, or like someone waiting to be rescued.

Her skin was bluish-white and ashen. Strange lumps of flesh writhed all over her body, her limbs twisted as she crawled along the ground. Her lipstick-smeared lips stretched all the way to her ears, exposing sharp white fangs, while bizarre, terrifying sounds constantly rose from her throat.

"She was bitten by a zombie and turned into a mutant."

As Pei Chixuan watched Duan Yuanyuan, the faint contempt he had once held for such a promiscuous woman vanished, just as it had from Cen Jiao. In its place was the wariness and hatred reserved for an enemy.

Duan Yuanyuan first pounced toward Qin Feng and Cao Yuan, who were lying on the ground.

Though they had been burned black by the fire, their corpses were still fresh.

Duan Yuanyuan took huge bites out of Qin Feng's remains.

He was once the man she had loved. Even though Qin Feng had later done many excessive things to her, a trace of feeling had still remained in her heart, making her unwilling to leave him.

So she swallowed him into her stomach first.

From then on, Qin Feng's blood and flesh would merge with hers. They would never be separated again.

Afterward, Duan Yuanyuan ate Cao Yuan too.

She was still somewhat disgusted by Cao Yuan, only picking out a few pieces of his Heart Flesh before swallowing the Crystal Core whole along with them.

Inside the car, Cen Jiao and Pei Chixuan watched as she ate until her mouth was covered in blood. She dug the men's hearts out with her sharp nails and swallowed them along with the tendons and blood.

"How disgusting."

Faced with such a bloody scene, Cen Jiao's face went pale. After watching for only a few seconds, she covered her mouth, hurriedly pulled over a trash can, and vomited into it.

Pei Chixuan did not look much better. His stomach churned, and he felt faintly nauseated.

Even after eating Qin Feng and Cao Yuan, Duan Yuanyuan was not satisfied. She crawled toward them on all fours.

Like a leopard inspecting its prey, the woman slowly paced around their car several times before suddenly leaping onto its roof.

Despite her light, slender frame, she made the several-ton military vehicle shake violently beneath her feet.

Cen Jiao began screaming again, her beautiful Peach Blossom Eyes reddening as tears welled up in them.

Pei Chixuan hugged her. His face had darkened slightly as well, but he said, "It's fine. She's just one Mutated Species. Your husband will take care of her in two minutes."

With that, he had Cen Jiao create a safe for herself to hide in.

Then he kicked open the car door, blazing red fire flaring in his palm as he launched himself toward the roof.

A tiny blackish-gray dot in her mind suddenly exploded.

Jiang Zhaosu, who had been reclining in the passenger seat, abruptly opened her eyes and leaned forward, her eyes wide.

Qi Xing, still driving, noticed her movement from the corner of his eye. He turned his face slightly and asked softly, "What's wrong?"

Jiang Zhaosu stared blankly at the unfamiliar road ahead.

Duan Yuanyuan was dead.

She could sense it.

Just as she had sensed the deaths of those Mutated Giant Rats that had fought the black bear.

Every time a Mutated Giant Rat died, one of the little black dots linked to her mind would explode before disappearing.

The little dot linked to Duan Yuanyuan was gone.

The woman must have returned to find Pei Chixuan and Cen Jiao after turning into a Mutated Species.

A foolish villain who envied the protagonists' beauty, strength, and space, who wanted to harm them and steal everything they had, was effortlessly dealt with by the protagonists and died without a whole corpse left behind.

Jiang Zhaosu had read this kind of classic face-slapping plot countless times in novels.

In novels, cannon fodder who could not even survive three chapters usually received only a few lines of description, their images flat and shallow.

Some did not even have names, merely slapped with labels like "a murderous maniac who enjoyed torturing and killing his own kind and betraying his organization" or "a scantily dressed Green Tea girl."

So when Jiang Zhaosu saw them die, she had felt nothing. Sometimes, she had even cursed along with the story, "Ungrateful bastard. Good riddance."

But after she truly transmigrated into the novel, those cannon fodder characters were no longer vague symbols in her eyes.

They became living people. They had names, personalities, and thoughts. They became friends who spent their days and nights with her.

But when the protagonists arrived, the plot became like a powerful whirlpool, crushing all their newly vivid traits into pieces and turning them back into flat symbols.

Duan Yuanyuan, who had been chatting and laughing while picking out dresses and combing Jiang Zhaosu's hair just the day before, had now inevitably died at the protagonists' hands, becoming a foil for their moving love and formidable strength.

An indescribable ache welled up in Jiang Zhaosu's chest.

She curled forward and covered her eyes with one hand.

What was she supposed to do?

She seemed unable to look at all this calmly from the perspective of a bystander anymore.