Jiang Ran lowered his head and looked at his right hand.
His long, slender hand was being cradled by two soft, delicate little hands. She even affectionately rubbed it against her cheek.
“You really want to be my bedmate?” His deep voice revealed no emotion.
Lin Buyu was a natural drama queen. Knowing that Jiang Ran wouldn’t actually do anything to her, her mind was filled with cheesy, flirtatious lines.
“Of course. Didn’t you say it yourself? The base won’t make exceptions to its rules unless I have an ability or some greater value to offer. But I don’t have either. Besides, being your bedmate is something I wanted to do from the very first moment I saw you.”
In short, this was a good way to get close to him.
She blinked her big eyes repeatedly, looking as though she was trying her best to make him believe her.
But he knew that not a single word she said could be trusted.
A faint smile appeared in Jiang Ran’s dark eyes. He pulled his hand free and instead gently stroked her cheek.
“Is that so? From the very first moment you saw me, you wanted to be my bedmate? You like me?”
“Mhm.” Lin Buyu continued blinking her large, doll-like eyes. “Do you believe in love at first sight? Actually, from the moment I saw you, I had already imagined spending my entire life with you.”
Lin Buyu swore that this particular statement was true.
Because the moment she saw him, she knew that her life was about to become extremely difficult.
He looked exactly like the kind of incredibly intelligent villain who was going to be a huge headache.
“I see. Then, let’s fulfill your duties as my bedmate first.”
Jiang Ran’s hand, which had been stroking her cheek, moved to the back of her head. He suddenly pressed her head toward him, forcing her against his body.
His lips lightly brushed across her cheek before moving to her ear. In a low, seductive voice, Jiang Ran whispered, “I’m still interested in your body.”
His ambiguous tone made goosebumps rise all over Lin Buyu’s body.
Could she have been wrong about him? Was he not actually the abstinent type?
While Lin Buyu was still wondering, she suddenly felt a force push her backward. In an instant, she was moved from beside the window onto the bed.
Her body sank into the soft mattress. The next moment, Jiang Ran’s handsome face appeared above her.
He knelt on one knee between her parted legs, one hand reaching for his belt buckle.
Lin Buyu: “……”
Is he actually serious?
No. She was certain he was testing her.
After all, this was the great villain we were talking about—a great villain who was also ridiculously handsome.
Since this was a world inside a novel, she believed that someone as formidable as him must have been written as a highly self-disciplined man who kept himself pure.
So she calmly let out a soft moan, reached out, grabbed his collar, and pulled it open.
“Team Leader, are you really going to fulfill my wish?”
She acted even more convincingly than someone in a romance movie, looking at Jiang Ran with seductive eyes as though she were trying to tempt him.
Her slender arms wrapped around his neck like two clinging snakes, soft and boneless.
The fingers resting on Jiang Ran’s belt buckle paused for a moment.
Then—
Click.
He released the buckle.
The sound made Lin Buyu’s body instantly stiffen.
It seemed she had really kicked an iron wall.
The fleeting panic in her eyes was caught clearly by Jiang Ran, who had been watching her closely.
She was nervous.
It seemed his instincts had been right. Her purpose for coming here definitely wasn’t simply to sell herself in exchange for survival.
Could she be planning to take the life of the leader of Lan Base?
He was looking forward to finding out.
“You’re too stiff. I don’t like women who are too hard.”
With that, he fastened his belt with one hand and turned to leave the room.
Before closing the door, he gave her a wink, his voice teasing and dangerously seductive.
“Go learn how to be a softer woman before you come flirt with a man again.”
Lin Buyu felt as though she had just been humiliated.
Well, whatever. It didn’t matter. She didn’t care.
If it weren’t for saving her younger brother, she wouldn’t have bothered pleasing this bastard in the first place.
While trying to change the great villain’s fate, she also needed to improve her own abilities first.
After all, besides changing Jiang Ran, the great villain himself, she would first have to eliminate all of his lackeys.
In this world, anyone with some degree of strength possessed a supernatural ability.
As the great villain’s subordinates, how could his lackeys possibly be without abilities?
Her zombie crystal core had been stolen, and the last bit of mental power she had left had been completely depleted while saving those people in the vehicle. For the time being, she couldn’t control zombies or use her abilities.
According to the system, she could consume zombie crystal cores to alter her own form, which meant that zombie crystal cores could replenish her energy.
Crystal cores were a source of energy.
If she ate enough crystal cores, could another crystal core belonging to her grow inside her brain?
Lin Buyu began thinking about how she could increase her strength.
Meanwhile, the news that the leader of the First Elite Team had finally found himself a bedmate caused quite a stir throughout the base.
After the initial shock, however, everyone felt that it was perfectly understandable.
After all, men were men. He couldn’t remain celibate forever. Sooner or later, he was going to want some female companionship.
The other two members of Team A had just returned when they heard the news.
Suya and Xiao Jingcheng immediately went to the training grounds to find Nie Fei, who was practicing his supernatural ability.
“Brother Ran really found a bedmate?”
Suya draped one arm around Nie Fei’s neck, forcibly interrupting his training.
The flames in Nie Fei’s hand vanished with a whoosh.
“Pretty much. Brother Ran was the one who brought her back to the base himself.”
When Jiang Ran had taken Lin Buyu to the registration office, Nie Fei had gone to report the supplies they had collected to the base leader.
He had only learned about the matter from someone else. Because of that, he had specifically gone to the registration office to confirm the news with the staff.
According to the registration clerk, Brother Ran had been there himself and had shown no objection whatsoever to the woman becoming his bedmate.
As far as Jiang Ran was concerned, not refusing was the same as giving his approval.
After all, no one at the base would dare force him into anything.
Xiao Jingcheng rested his chin on his hand and pressed for more information.
“Have you seen that woman? What is she like?”
He was curious about the woman who had managed to interest Jiang Ran.
Nie Fei thought back to the first time he had seen Lin Buyu and answered honestly.
“Beautiful, delicate, spoiled—the kind of breathtaking beauty you rarely see in the apocalypse. She might be a helpless flower clinging to a tree, or she might be a man-eating flower.”
Nie Fei’s answer left Suya utterly shocked.
She grabbed both sides of her head.
“So the reason Brother Ran rejected me back then was really because I have too many muscles and I’m too hard?”
Even now, she still remembered when she had first fallen for Jiang Ran.
Back then, she had confessed her feelings to the incredibly capable Jiang Ran, only to receive a merciless rejection.
He had glanced at her biceps and said,
“I don’t like women who are too hard. You’re too hard.”
She had only paid attention to the first half of the sentence.
Xiao Jingcheng, however, was thinking about something else.
“Why did you say she might be a man-eating flower?”
At that, Nie Fei chuckled.
“Would you believe me if I told you? A beautiful woman with no supernatural ability and no high-level zombie characteristics was wearing the cleanest dress imaginable in the middle of the apocalypse. Her complexion was rosy, her skin fair and radiant, and she looked like a little princess who had escaped from somewhere.”
“On top of that, the place where we encountered her had just experienced a small zombie horde numbering in the hundreds, yet she came out completely unharmed.”
There was a deeper meaning behind his words.
Everyone knew that beautiful women had the hardest time surviving in the apocalypse.
With civilization and social restraints gone, the malice within some people had been magnified without limit.
Unless a woman was powerful enough to protect herself, she could easily become prey for vicious men.
The woman Nie Fei described had neither a supernatural ability nor the characteristics of a high-level zombie, yet she had encountered such a zombie horde and emerged completely unharmed.
What did that mean?
Perhaps she had another purpose for coming to Lan Base.
No one would believe that she truly had no abilities.
Unless she was deliberately hiding her strength.
If she intended to seek refuge at the base, revealing her abilities would be the foundation for gaining greater authority and privileges.
If she deliberately refused to reveal her strength, she must have been hiding something.
They could never have imagined that Lin Buyu genuinely had no supernatural ability at the moment.
It was simply because she was a zombie herself—and therefore, the other zombies had no interest in attacking her.