Jiang Ran looked down at his right hand.
His long, broad hand was wrapped snugly between her soft, delicate palms; she even snuggled her cheek affectionately against the back of his hand.
“You really want to be my bedmate?” His deep voice betrayed neither anger nor pleasure.
Lin Buyu was a natural-born drama queen. Certain that Jiang Ran wouldn’t actually lay a hand on her, her mind overflowed with flirtatious, cheesy lines.
“Of course! Didn’t you say so yourself? The base doesn’t allow assignments to be revoked unless I awaken an ability or prove useful in other ways, neither of which applies to me. Besides… becoming your bedmate was a dream of mine from the very first moment I laid eyes on you.”
In short, it was the perfect excuse to stick by his side.
She blinked her eyes rapidly, putting on a show of total sincerity.
Yet he knew that not a single word coming out of her mouth was true.
A faint, amused glint surfaced in Jiang Ran’s ink-black eyes. Drawing his hand back, he reached out instead to stroke her cheek with a light touch.
“Is that so? A dream from the very first moment you saw me? Do you like me?”
“Mhm,” Lin Buyu hummed softly, continuing to blink her wide, expressive eyes. “Do you believe in love at first sight? Honestly, the moment I saw you, I’d already lived out an entire lifetime with you in my head.”
Lin Buyu could swear that the sentence was genuine truth.
Because the moment she laid eyes on him, she knew her life was about to become an uphill battle.
One look was all it took to know he was an extraordinarily sharp, high-IQ villain.
“If that’s the case… then fulfill your duties as a bedmate first.”
The hand gently caressing her face slid around to the back of her head, suddenly pulling her forward to press her firmly against his chest.
His vibrant red lips brushed past her cheek, coming to rest near her ear as he lowered his voice into a sultry murmur: “I must admit, I am rather interested in your body.”
The intimate, lingering tone sent a sudden wave of goosebumps straight down Lin Buyu’s spine.
Wait… did I miscalculate? Doesn’t he have the classic chaste villain trope?
Before Lin Buyu could process her confusion, she felt a sudden force hurl her backward, sending her floating across the room from the window onto the bed in a split second.
Sink deep into the plush mattress, she looked up to see Jiang Ran’s handsome face hovering directly above her.
He knelt with one knee positioned between her legs, one hand reaching down to unbuckle his leather belt.
Lin Buyu: “…”
Is he actually for real?!
No, no, he’s definitely just testing me.
After all, this was the ultimate villain—and a ridiculously good-looking one at that. In a novel world, a character of his caliber was guaranteed to be written with a strictly clean, untouchable record.
Maintaining her composure, she let out a delicate, alluring moan, reaching her fingers out to catch his collar and pull him downward with deliberate force.
“Leader Jiang… are you finally going to fulfill my wish?”
Her act was far more dramatic than anything in an adult film. She gazed up at Jiang Ran with bedroom eyes, exuding pure seduction, while her slender arms wrapped around his neck like a pair of soft, boneless snakes.
Jiang Ran’s fingers resting on his belt buckle paused for a fraction of a second—and then, with a sharp click, the buckle released.
The crisp sound sent a wave of stiffness straight through Lin Buyu’s body.
Shit. I really kicked a steel wall this time.
The brief flash of panic in her eyes didn’t escape Jiang Ran, who had been watching her every reaction.
So she does panic.
It seemed his instinct was spot-on: her true motive for coming here was definitely not trading her body for survival.
Could she be aiming for the head of Yulan Base?
He was genuinely looking forward to finding out.
“You’re far too stiff. I don’t care for rigid women.”
With those words, he snapped his belt back into place with a single hand, turned around, and sauntered out of the room.
Before pulling the door shut, he shot her a lingering wink, his tone dripping with flirtatious charm: “Learn how to be a soft, supple woman first before you try flirting with a man again.”
Lin Buyu felt distinctly humiliated.
Meh, whatever. She didn’t really care anyway. If it weren’t for the sake of reviving her younger brother, she wouldn’t be bothering to humor that bastard in the first place.
While working to reform the big villain, she needed to evolve her own capabilities first. After all, besides straightening out Jiang Ran, she also had to slice away all his future villainous henchmen.
In this world, anyone with an ounce of influence possesses an elemental ability. As the right-hand lackeys of the chief villain, how could they not have powers of their own?
Her zombie crystal core had been ripped out, and her remaining psychic energy was thoroughly drained while saving that vehicle full of survivors. For now, she couldn’t control zombies or wield her former powers.
According to the system, the fact that consuming zombie crystal cores altered her physical form proved that those cores could replenish her energy.
Cores were the ultimate source of power.
If she devoured enough of them, would a new crystal core regenerate inside her brain?
While Lin Buyu was pondering how to level up her abilities, news that the leader of Elite Team A had finally taken a bedmate sent shockwaves through the base.
After the initial surprise, people quickly found it quite natural. A man was still a man, after all; he couldn’t stay abstinent forever, and the day was bound to come when he craved a taste of flesh.
The other two members of Team A heard the news the moment they returned to base.
Su Ya and Xiao Jingcheng immediately tracked down Nie Fei, who was practicing his elemental powers on the training grounds.
“Ran-ge actually took a bedmate?!” Su Ya threw an arm around Nie Fei’s neck from behind, forcibly interrupting his session.
The flame dancing in Nie Fei’s palm vanished with a soft whoosh.
“Pretty much. He brought her back to the base himself.”
While Jiang Ran was taking Lin Buyu to register, Nie Fei had gone to report the retrieved supplies to the base leader. He had only learned about it through the grapevine, and he had even gone to the registration desk specifically to verify the truth with the clerk.
According to the registrar, Team Leader Jiang was present on the spot and raised no objections whatsoever to the girl becoming his bedmate.
For a man like Jiang Ran, lack of rejection equaled tacit consent—because no one in the base dared to force anything upon him.
Xiao Jingcheng rested his chin on his hand, probing further: “Have you seen the woman? What’s she like?”
He was intensely curious about any woman capable of catching Jiang Ran’s interest.
Recalling his first impression of Lin Buyu, Nie Fei admitted frankly, “Beautiful, delicate, fragile—a rare, stunning beauty in this wasteland. She might be a helpless dodder flower… or she might be a man-eating piranha plant.”
Nie Fei’s response sent Su Ya into utter shock. She clasped her head in both hands. “So when Ran-ge rejected me back then, was it really because I had too much muscle and was too tough?!”
She still vividly remembered the embarrassing moment when her teenage crush bloomed and she confessed her feelings to Jiang Ran, only to be ruthlessly shut down by his terrifyingly capable self.
He had merely glanced at her biceps and remarked: “I don’t like tough women. You’re far too rigid.”
She had only caught the first half of Nie Fei’s assessment.
Xiao Jingcheng, however, was thinking far deeper: “Why do you say she might be a man-eating plant?”
At that, Nie Fei let out a low chuckle. “Would you believe it? A gorgeous woman with no elemental powers and no high-tier zombie traits, wandering around in the apocalypse wearing the cleanest white dress, her cheeks glowing with health, her skin porcelain-smooth, looking like a runaway princess. And the spot where we found her? A minor zombie surge of hundreds was breaking out, yet she didn’t have a single scratch on her.”
Those words carried a heavy, unspoken meaning.
Everyone knew that in the wasteland, pretty women had the hardest time surviving. Without civilization and social constraints, the malice in human nature was magnified tenfold. Unless a woman possessed formidable strength of her own, she inevitably ended up as prey on the plates of cruel men.
The woman Nie Fei described had no elemental powers and wasn’t a high-tier zombie, yet she emerged from a feeding frenzy of hundreds unscathed.
What did that imply?
It meant she likely arrived at Yulan Base with ulterior motives.
No one would ever believe she was truly powerless.
If anything, she was hiding her true strength.
For anyone seeking refuge at a base, displaying raw power was the ultimate stepping stone to gaining influence and privileges. A person who intentionally concealed their abilities was undoubtedly trying to cover up something far more sinister.
None of them could have ever guessed that Lin Buyu was currently truly devoid of any powers—and that the only reason the zombies hadn’t torn her apart was simply because she was one of them.