It was the first time she had ever been picked up like this. Huazhi stared at him blankly, still struggling to process what was happening.
She had remained conscious the whole time, but her body had suddenly frozen until he lifted her into his palm.
The man possessed a beautifully defined jawline and sharp, handsome features. His short hair was a pure, clean black, and his dark, deep eyes held a piercing sharpness that left nowhere to hide. Strangely, the golden aura radiating from him seemed to blend seamlessly with her own.
“She ate them?” Qi Chaoyang could hardly believe his ears. “She ate all those crystal cores?”
With the ground covered in fallen zombies, there had to be dozens of crystal cores scattered there.
Suspended in midair and hearing them talk about her, Huazhi felt a rabbit’s natural sense of insecurity flare up. Panic set in, and she tried to jump down, only to find she still couldn’t move. She was trapped in his palm.
What did he say she had eaten? What was a crystal core? Was it that black qi inside the zombie heads?
Before she could figure it out, Qi Chaoyang leaned in closer. “Can she even digest that much?”
The soft, white little rabbit nestled obediently in Feng Jinghuai’s palm. Curled into a tiny ball with her ears flopped over the sides of her head, her three-lobed mouth twitched ever so slightly, making it impossible not to want to pet her.
The thought crossed Qi Chaoyang’s mind, and his hand moved instinctively.
Before he could touch her, Feng Jinghuai shifted sideways, moving the rabbit out of reach.
Feng Jinghuai looked at him with a cold expression. “You’re too dirty.”
Qi Chaoyang glanced down at himself. He was covered in patches of blood and grime. Did the man think everyone could come out of a fight looking spotless like him?
Pursing his lips, Qi Chaoyang gave in. Fine, he was dirty, he wasn’t worthy.
Still, what about all those crystal cores? Unwilling to give up, he searched through a few more corpses, but every single crystal core was gone.
He wasn’t stupid. A moment of thought was all it took to grasp Feng Jinghuai’s meaning.
The zombies’ heads were intact, but the little white rabbit had touched every one of them. He had wondered why she was patting their heads earlier. This was downright supernatural.
Recalling the zombie cat that had collapsed after being stomped on twice, Qi Chaoyang took a few exaggerated steps back. He stared at Huazhi in horror. “Is that even a normal rabbit? Aren’t you afraid she’ll suck you dry holding her like that?”
Huazhi shook her head vigorously. She would never do such a thing. She wasn’t some evil spirit that cultivated by draining people’s essence qi.
Wait, was he seeing things? Qi Chaoyang rubbed his eyes and leaned in closer. Did that rabbit just shake its head?
Feng Jinghuai’s brow twitched slightly as he moved Huazhi out of reach. “The crystal cores from those Tier 3 zombies are still there.”
He gave Huazhi a gentle squeeze, feeling her soft fur and warm little body. Deciding Qi Chaoyang wasn’t worth any more of his time, Feng Jinghuai turned and walked away with the rabbit in his arms.
Hearing that some prizes had been spared, Qi Chaoyang hurried over to dig through the Tier 3 corpses. Sure enough, the crystal cores were still inside their heads.
Feeling both relieved and heartbroken at the near loss, he called out after Huazhi, “You sure have an appetite, little bunny!”
Cradled firmly in Feng Jinghuai’s hands, Huazhi struggled to break free, but she couldn’t jump down no matter how hard she tried. After exhausting herself, she gave up and squatted quietly in his grip.
Only now did she remember one of the reasons she had run over in the first place: she wanted to get close enough to rub against his golden aura, hoping it would help her turn back into a human sooner.
Yet the moment she arrived, she had been completely distracted by all those zombie heads, forgetting all about the golden light.
Why was he holding onto her, anyway? Was he planning to roast her for rabbit meat, or perhaps skin her to make a fur scarf?
As small herbivores, rabbits sat at the very bottom of the food chain, always at risk of losing their lives. Throughout her centuries of cultivation, Huazhi’s greatest challenge had simply been avoiding being eaten by other beasts.
The gray rabbit, on the other hand, did not worry in the slightest, thoroughly absorbed in rubbing against the golden light radiating from Feng Jinghuai.
This was not good. A sense of danger and unease nagged at Huazhi. Her four legs kicked out frantically, desperate to break free from his palm.
Feng Jinghuai shifted her higher in his grip, gently rubbing the soft fur behind her ears. “Hold still.”
A tingling sensation washed over her, making her freeze in place, too startled to move. Despite his cold demeanor, his hands were remarkably warm. His fingertips worked a strange magic as they massaged the soft flesh behind her ears, tickling lightly and filling her with a soothing warmth.
Before long, Huazhi narrowed her eyes in pure contentment, her long ears twitching now and then.
She truly could understand what they were saying.
Feng Jinghuai withdrew his hand from her neck and turned his palm over, revealing a transparent crystal core. He held it out toward her.
The rabbit, which had looked ready to drift off to sleep just a moment before, snapped her eyes open. Her ruby-red eyes gleamed with sudden interest.
Though the crystal core was translucent, it remained wrapped in black qi.
Huazhi placed a paw over it, and within seconds, the core dissolved into nothing.
Feng Jinghuai’s cool gaze flickered slightly before he masked his expression and handed her another.
The routine repeated until he reached the tenth core. Seeing her absorb it just as tirelessly, Feng Jinghuai finally stopped.
Her fluffy, snowball-like tail swayed gently, radiating pure delight.
Ten Tier 2 crystal cores, not counting the ones she had taken earlier, were absorbed all at once. Any ordinary ability user would have exploded from the influx of power, yet she showed no changes at all. He could not sense the slightest ripple of energy from her.
She was like a bottomless pit.
Feng Jinghuai had no doubt that if he gave her more, she would devour those too.
She understood human speech, took down threats without shedding blood, and could absorb a crystal core from a zombie’s brain with a mere touch. Feng Jinghuai swept his mental power through her body once more.
Others only knew of his wind ability, but he was actually a dual-type ability user, with mental power serving as his primary strength.
Yet no matter how he probed, he found no trace of energy fluctuations. She seemed no different from an ordinary rabbit.
Things were getting more and more interesting.
Huazhi sprawled in Feng Jinghuai’s palm, wagging her tail. After that hearty feast, both she and the little gray rabbit agreed that he was truly a good person, with no intention of eating her.
She had only just realized that the black qi she absorbed came from those crystal cores, which could only be obtained by killing zombies. Recalling the scene from earlier, obtaining them seemed rather difficult.
Nothing in life came for free, and Huazhi had no idea why he was treating her so well. Still, she resolved to thank him properly once she turned back into a human.
For now, she decided to stay quietly by his side.
Unable to leave, Huazhi simply lay flat against his hand. “Did you absorb the light he was giving off?”
The little gray rabbit happily showed her the energy progress bar.
[I only absorbed two-thirds of the energy from that strongest zombie, but along with the others, our mission progress is almost at one percent!]
Huazhi nodded, her mood lifting. “Then can I change back into a human?”
The little gray rabbit nodded in agreement. [It’s enough, it’s enough. But if you can stay by his side, we won’t need to waste energy maintaining your human form.]
The little gray rabbit was still thinking about the zombie head it hadn’t finished absorbing, feeling a bit regretful. Just one percent on the progress bar, and it would have been able to fully boot up.
Huazhi found its logic hard to argue with. Leeching off his halo was far easier than killing zombies, and it was best to conserve their energy whenever possible. Besides, she was currently a rabbit and couldn’t very well transform into a human right in front of them.
Hearing them mention that they were heading back to base, she decided she might as well stay put for now.
In his palm, the rabbit suddenly stopped struggling, settling down obediently.
Feng Jinghuai located the pet store they had passed earlier. The interior was a wrecked mess, with everything edible already looted clean, so he simply stored all the clean pet supplies he could find into his space.
As the sun began to sink in the west, everyone packed up and climbed into the vehicles, eager to return to the base without wasting any more time.
The three large trucks had their beds piled high with supplies.
Jiang Xu seemed to have taken quite a shock and remained unconscious in the back seat. There was no doctor among the group, but compared to the other severely wounded survivors, his minor scrapes hadn’t even bled much. Since he was still breathing, the others left him alone.
The rabbit in Feng Jinghuai’s hands caught everyone’s eye the moment he stepped into the vehicle.
He placed her on his lap, stroking her fur with one hand. The bumpy road rocked the car rhythmically, and his fingers gently rubbed the soft spot behind her ears. Drowsiness quickly overtook Huazhi.
She was truly exhausted. None of the energy she had absorbed filled her stomach, which was now rumbling with hunger. At the end of the day, she was still a Rabbit Spirit who needed food and water to survive.
Surrounded by a safe, zombie-free environment, resting on a broad lap under a warm palm, Huazhi tucked her paws beneath her belly. Her eyes narrowed to thin slits. Rabbits could fall asleep anytime, anywhere, though they woke at the slightest disturbance.
Her ears flopped loosely against the sides of her head while the man’s slender fingers toyed with them, creating an exceptionally peaceful scene.
Huazhi was barely the size of a palm, and with her long fur, she wouldn’t even make a mouthful. Perched comfortably on Feng Jinghuai’s lap, she gave no one any ideas of turning her into a meal.
Ever since the apocalypse began, all animals had mutated. Even those that avoided turning into zombies had evolved. Aside from the ordinary creatures stored in dimensional spaces early on, anything left outside had long since become zombie food.
Post-apocalyptic rabbits were tough, thick-skinned, and had chilling red eyes. Yet here in the wild sat a palm-sized, snowy-white bunny, completely untouched by the corrupted world. Staring at it, everyone felt as if their eyes and weary hearts were being cleansed.
Bored during the drive, Qi Chaoyang glanced at Jiang Xu’s filthy face, struck by a sudden idea.
As the others watched his bizarre antics in stunned silence, Feng Jinghuai spoke up. “Why was he suddenly surrounded by zombies?”
Qi Chaoyang chimed in, “Yeah, where did all those high-level zombies come from? No one noticed them beforehand. And the rest of us took heavy injuries while he only got a few scrapes.”
No one had given it much thought in the heat of the moment, but now that things had quieted down, the entire situation seemed suspicious.
Everyone had been busy clearing zombies and gathering supplies, but in the blink of an eye, Jiang Xu had sprinted back with a horde of them trailing behind him.
The mission’s commander frowned deeply. If Feng Jinghuai had not been there, all of them would have died. What had Jiang Xu actually done?
Jiang Xu’s life as a researcher was certainly valuable, but the state prioritized every single person’s safety, and the others’ lives were just as important.
“We will investigate this thoroughly and give everyone an explanation,” the commander promised.
Hearing those words put the crowd at ease.
The vehicle jolted suddenly, startling Huazhi awake. She gave an involuntary shiver, but once she realized she was safe, she settled back down. Nuzzling against Feng Jinghuai’s thigh until she found a comfortable position, she drifted back to sleep.
Finally, someone could not resist asking cautiously, “I don’t think I saw this rabbit when we set out. Is she…”
“I picked her up.” Feng Jinghuai gently twirled his long fingers around her ear.