Chapter 111 : Zombie Empire (25)

In that battle, the B City safe-zone lost a lot of their high levelled experts and incurred large losses to their main forces. Despite this, the zombie army managed to retreat safely. They hadn’t even managed to touch the clothes of the person they were meant to kill.

For a long time after that, the people of the B City safe-zone lived in fear that the woman who could control zombies and held a grudge against them, would come back with said zombies.

After being on edge for more than a month and no zombies appearing to siege the city, they finally calmed down.
……

At that time, Shi Sheng was on the outskirts of the capital with a horde of zombies.

“Rarr!” A zombie at the fifth stage eyed her carefully as he presented a slab of fresh meat still dripping with blood.

Shi Sheng was dumbstruck. ‘I really don’t eat human though!!!’

There were quite a few high levelled zombies by Qian Li’s side. That was probably where all the missing elites of D County went. Qian Li had brought more zombies under his control on the way over. One of them was this fifth stage zombie. You know, the one presenting with her human meat.

Low levelled zombies would ignore Shi Sheng. Third to fourth stage zombies wouldn’t ignore her, and would even reveal a desire to attack but display fear at the same time. Only this fifth stage zombie sucked up to her.

Whenever it found any ‘delicacies’ it would first offer her the best share before letting his boss Qian Li take his pick. Shi Sheng had asked Qian Li before but Qian Li had told her that he hadn’t ordered the zombie to fawn over her.

“Qian Li…” Shi Sheng called out to Qian Li who was in the distance. Qian Li immediately teleported beside her. Seeing the bloody meat on the ground, he didn’t need Shi Sheng’s instructions for him to teleport it away before snarling at the fifth stage zombie.

A hint of confusion flashed in its eyes, as if it was confused as to why Shi Sheng didn’t like the food it had found. After all, the food was so fresh and it had run a long way to get such fresh offerings. The zombie looked at Shi Sheng then looked at his boss before squatting down shakily, like a child who had done something wrong.

Fifth stage zombies already possessed intelligence akin to that of three or four year olds. Their outer appearance had also pretty much returned to normal. It was just that their skin was still green so they looked weird.

“What’s wrong with him?” Shi Sheng pointed at the fifth stage zombie.

“He likes your smell.” Qian Li’s speech had become more fluent though it was still a bit slow.

“My smell?”

‘Recently we’ve been travelling a lot, haven’t got time to bathe. The only smell on me right now is body odour… Don’t tell me all zombies have such eccentric tastes?!’

Qian Li seemed to have noticed that Shi Sheng had misunderstood, for he pulled her hand into his mouth and gently stroked her fingertips with his tongue.

Shi Sheng subconsciously used her ability, causing Qian Li to reveal an expression of enjoyment and bliss.

‘…So he was talking about this. Oh fuck, my ability does have a boosting effect on zombies after all?! They’re going to chase after me from now on, aren’t they?

This is the zombie version of Xuanzang’s flesh¹!!! I reject this setting!!!’

Shi Sheng walked next to the fifth stage zombie and used her ability in front of him. A black flower around the size of a palm appeared on white fingertips. The layered flower petals looked like a peony in bloom.

The fifth stage zombie revealed an expression of longing and thirst when Shi Sheng made the flower appear. He looked exactly the same as Qian Li did when she first met him.

Shi Sheng placed the flower in front of his mouth. The zombie carefully looked at his boss. Having received his boss’ threatening glare, his neck pulled back, not daring to eat it but the thirst in his eyes grew stronger.

Noticing his movements, Shi Sheng turned her head to glare at Qian Li before practically shoving the flower into the zombie’s mouth.

“You don’t have to go find food for me anymore. I don’t like them.” Shi Sheng emphasized the word ‘food’ exceptionally clearly so the zombie could hear it but he hadn’t heard the rest of her words.

And so, on the next day, Shi Sheng found a pile of fresh meat at least twice as large as yesterday’s.

‘I really don’t eat humans, jeez!’

The fifth stage zombie waited for some praise from Shi Sheng but didn’t get any. Instead, he got beaten up by Qian Li. Qian Li seemed to have finally gotten something into that thick skull for the zombie didn’t offer food to Shi Sheng anymore.

…It switched to finding all sorts of odd knick-knacks and giving them to her.
……

Of course it wasn’t possible to bring zombies with her into the capital’s base so Shi Sheng only brought Qian Li. The fifth stage zombie was reluctant to leave as it continued following her. Only after Qian Li had roared at it a few times did he run off.

Shi Sheng drove a slightly less broken-down car towards the base.

It had already been more than 6 months since the start of the apocalypse, but there were still new arrivals to the capital’s base every day. Without other ability users as a cover, Shi Sheng could only line up this time. But she hadn’t even entered when she heard rumours about herself from others. As well as the fact that her wanted poster was put up in the capital’s base.

Though the picture captured by the surveillance camera was a bit grainy and her appearance was a bit blurry, causing her features to be less distinguishable, if one looked closely, they’d be able to see the similarities. Contact between the bases and large-scale safe-zones existed so this was a good move on B City safe-zone’s part.

Of course, this wasn’t enough to stop Shi Sheng. Qian Li summoned some zombies to cause a bit of chaos which Shi Sheng used to get inside the base. As for the checkpoint inspections, Shi Sheng got White Tiger to toss some of the live zombies it had in its space.

This was the first time Shi Sheng truly felt that White Tiger had foresight.

This strange phenomenon aroused the attention of the base but Shi Sheng had avoided the cameras, so it looked like the zombies had appeared from nowhere.

And the zombies that appeared were not recorded in the base’s system so they weren’t originally residents of the base. This situation raised a lot of danger signals so the patrols on the streets doubled.
……

There were three major powers in the capital base. The military and government were two of them. The final power being the various great families which were in the capital. These families were rich, whether it was in terms of resources or human resources.

They had exercised their influence at the start of the apocalypse to collect resources. After the base was set up, they became part of the ruling factions.

And amongst these families was the Cheng Family, the leader of the alliance of great families.

Shi Sheng felt like these families couldn’t have started gathering resources only after the apocalypse started. ‘How many resources would it take for them to stand on equal footing with the gov and the military? They must’ve had some prior warning.’

In the original storyline, when Qi Mingxue had been clearing this dungeon {literary use}, the Cheng Family had only been briefly described and the author hadn’t gone into detail.

Shi Sheng patiently observed the mansion of the Cheng Family for a period of time. After she had asked around, she had confirmed this was the Cheng Family she was looking for.

Few people came and went from the mansion. The most commonly seen person though, was the head of the household, Cheng Song. Cheng Su’s older brother.

Cheng Song immediately discovered something was wrong when he entered his study and he quickly attempted to retreat. However, a young man had appeared behind him at some point and pushed him back into the room.

The soft click of the door shutting could be heard. Cheng Song panicked a bit but he soon calmed down. Though it looked like there weren’t many people here, in truth, he had plenty of people in the shadows.

The office chair that had been facing away from him slowly turned and when he saw the face of the young woman sitting there clearly, his breathing hitched and his pupils shrunk.

Author’s note:

50 monthly votes for more updates.

1. Xuanzang was the Buddhist (?) name of the MC of Journey to the West, a Buddhist {duh} monk. His flesh was rumoured to be able to grant immortality to whoever ate it so demons/devils/spirits {I think the last is used most often} are often out for his blood. And flesh. And bones. Basically, they want to eat him. It’s one of the major plot points. And boy am I glad I got this reference. More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xuanzang_(Journey_to_the_West)