The Bigger Picture

As soon as Jonathan heard they could go in, he hurriedly straightened his clothes again. Then he frowned at Xia Leng behind him, signaling that he should follow the rules and not overstep his place.

Then he pushed open the door and led Xia Leng into the general manager's office.

The moment they stepped inside, the fresh scent of air freshener washed over them, enveloping them both.

Clean and tidy were the only words Xia Leng could think of to describe the office.

The spacious office covered nearly a thousand square meters. Apart from a redwood desk in the center, a leather executive chair, and a leather sofa in front of the desk, there were no other decorations. The vast room seemed almost empty, yet somehow put them at ease.

Of course, there was also Parick, the director in charge, seated in the executive chair—the man who had always filled Butler Jonathan with dread.

Parick looked like an ordinary man, not particularly handsome, but with a touch of refinement.

His short, tousled hair was neat and practical. His skin was remarkably fair, something rarely seen in the apocalypse. Black-rimmed glasses sat on his high nose, and his white shirt was spotless.

Overall, he had the polished, energetic air of an old-world office worker. He also looked very young, perhaps somewhere in his twenties.

Parick raised his head. The moment he saw the two people entering, his eyes went straight to Xia Leng behind the butler. The young man's skin was even fairer and more flawless than his own—almost perfect.

That immediately gave him a favorable impression of the clean-cut young man.

Even Xia Leng himself, who rarely looked in a mirror, didn't know that after merging with the Blacklight Virus, his skin—which he had once deliberately tanned—had gradually been "purified" by the virus. He didn't even have a single blemish, and his skin was more delicate and fair than that of women in the old world...

But when Xia Leng looked at the director in charge, his first subconscious thought was that the man would probably taste pretty good after he devoured him...

Parick was an intellectual whose brain had been enhanced. Physically, he was no different from an ordinary person, so he lacked the unmistakable aura of violence that clung to strength-type Baptized Ones.

Still, Xia Leng could sense the unusual aura around him. It was just faint and difficult to make out clearly.

"Lord Parick, this is Xia Leng, the second-rank Apocalypse Hunter I told you about. He found a lead on a new kind of mutated creature himself."

Butler Jonathan didn't waste time with empty words or put on a flattering smile. He simply introduced the young man behind him.

The butler knew the director's temperament. Parick hated pointless pleasantries and anything else that wasted his time.

"Mm, I know. Wait outside for now. I want to speak with him alone. But don't go too far."

Parick replied calmly, telling the Fortress butler to wait by the door. As for "don't go too far," it meant that if the lead he'd brought was fake, he'd be thrown into the furnace too...

"Yes..."

Butler Jonathan's body instinctively trembled at those words. This really was a high-risk reward...

Once the butler had left the office, only the two of them remained in the spacious room.

"Are you really a merchant from the wilderness, like you wrote on the form? Your skin doesn't look the part."

Parick asked with an apparently casual, teasing tone, then gestured for Xia Leng to sit on the sofa. If the other man hadn't looked so clean, he wouldn't have let just anyone sit on his sofa.

Xia Leng didn't stand on ceremony. He walked over and sat down, then replied calmly, "I'm just a merchant. Other than this time, when I needed a ticket to enter your Fortress, I rarely hunted outdoors myself. I haven't been exposed to much sunlight, so I suppose my skin ended up like this."

Parick got an equally casual answer. Given his temperament, he didn't feel like pressing the issue. He went straight to the point. "So, what lead have you found on a new kind of mutated creature? A rabbit with ears on its back, or a snake with legs?"

Before this, plenty of people chasing dreams of getting rich had come to him with supposed discoveries of new mutated creatures.

Without exception, they were usually just animals that had been drenched in Black Rain and mutated grotesquely, such as growing an extra leg or eye. They were hardly any different from mutated creatures already on record.

After enough of these false alarms, Parick had gradually grown sick of them. He'd eventually settled on a harsh punishment: if the report proved false, the person would be thrown into a furnace to generate power along with their "new creature."

After that, people hoping to bluff their way through all but disappeared. Their own lives mattered more, after all.

"I know there's a Living Corpse King somewhere in the commercial district. All the living dead on that street obey its commands. I thought you might be interested." Xia Leng wasn't moved by the threat hidden in Parick's seemingly joking words. He replied as calmly as ever.

But Parick could no longer remain calm.

He certainly knew about living dead, those ferocious monsters mutated from humans. The company had even captured many of them for study back then, but hadn't found anything of value in them.

"A Living Corpse King? You mean a leader of those walking corpses? Hahaha! Are you telling me those brute monsters have developed a social hierarchy? Do you have any proof? And how could you, all by yourself, get into the center of the Street of the Living Dead?"

Parick burst out laughing. The zombies they'd studied before had no sense of social hierarchy. They didn't even have self-awareness. Like other beasts, they only knew how to fill their bellies with savage attacks.

"I don't have proof, but I can take you there to verify it yourself. If it's false, you can have your men punish me on the spot however you like." Xia Leng remained expressionless.

"Oh? So confident? Do you think I wouldn't dare kill you because you're a young, second-rank Baptized One?"

Parick propped his chin on the back of his hand and fixed the other man with a sharp gaze, trying to spot anything unusual—or any sign of fear or hesitation.

But there was nothing. Xia Leng's eyes were like a placid lake, without the slightest ripple. Even Parick, whose mental strength far surpassed that of ordinary people, couldn't see through him.

"Why do his eyes make him seem almost inhuman..."

Parick's eyes, sharpened by his intellect, were like a highly precise lie detector. He could catch even the slightest changes in someone's gaze or expression. If the other man lied to him, he would definitely notice.

But the eyes of the man in front of him were so calm they hardly seemed human, even though Baptized Ones had already begun to leave humanity behind...

"All right. If those living dead really have developed social behavior, that could be very valuable for our company's research—especially if the Living Corpse King you mentioned is real."

Parick mulled it over. A Living Corpse King...

If one really existed and they managed to capture it, they might be able to uncover the secret behind how it commanded the other zombies. After all, nearly 90 percent of humanity across the globe had now mutated into these monsters.

If his company could control the enormous hordes of living dead, the balance of power in the entire wasteland would be turned upside down!