The Zombie King, Wen Zangyu, was a rather legendary figure.
She only became a zombie in the fifth year of the apocalypse. By then, many high-level zombies already existed, and it was extremely difficult for a newly turned one to stand out. Some speculated that she had just become a zombie when the great zombie evolution occurred, allowing her strength to skyrocket as if she had boarded a rocket.
Moreover, she was the only zombie known to possess all five elemental abilities. Of course, that was public speculation. Jiang Fu, who had fought her several times, knew that this woman also wielded a number of strange, niche abilities. In addition, she had mental powers—specifically geared toward mental intimidation and illusion casting.
In short, she was absurdly powerful.
Jiang Fu could never quite understand how her body could contain so many different types of abilities without exploding.
In any case, her innate talent was extraordinarily high, her willpower exceptionally strong. She had caught the wave of the great evolution at just the right time, and by continuously devouring other zombies, she grew at an astonishing pace.
It was said that by the sixth year of the apocalypse, she had regained the intelligence and cognition she possessed in life, and later gradually recovered her ability to speak.
By the eighth year, she was already capable of disguising herself as a living human and infiltrating populated human settlements.
In terms of strength, she was formidable. In terms of intelligence, she was cunning.
If one were to name her weaknesses, there were two.
First, she was a lone wolf.
High-level zombies typically possess an innate ability to control lower-level zombies, yet she never tried to command hordes. Perhaps because before becoming a zombie, she had been an ability user who killed zombies every day—she felt no sense of belonging toward them.
At the same time, she harbored immense hostility toward humanity. According to those who studied her, she could not stand seeing humans live good lives. Whenever she infiltrated human communities, she would stir up internal conflict by every means possible.
She delighted in watching alliances collapse, shelters and bases descend into chaos. Schemes where people turned against each other over resources were her absolute favorite.
Thus, some speculated that in life she must have suffered a devastating betrayal, which twisted her so thoroughly.
Her second weakness might be related to that: at times, her emotions would become extremely unstable. If something triggered her, she would go completely berserk, entering a frenzied state.
Logically, that should have made her easier to deal with. But perversely, during those moments her combat power would surge continuously.
She lost her reason, but her ferocity was overflowing—her destructive power spiked off the charts.
In short, she was an exceptionally difficult opponent. Countless people had set traps, employed overwhelming human-wave tactics, deployed large quantities of advanced weaponry, and even designed biochemical attacks specifically targeting her. Some had lured her to a location and detonated explosives powerful enough to destroy an entire city.
But none succeeded.
And every failure invited her frenzied retaliation.
Until she faced Jiang Fu.
Now, Jiang Fu looked at the zombie before her—body battered and torn, hair disheveled—and recalled how formidable she had once been. She could not help but sigh, though a trace of irritation lingered.
From the eighth year onward, when Wen Zangyu began stirring up chaos everywhere, she had not targeted Fu’an Base. Not until the eleventh year, when other bases could no longer endure her attacks. They diverted the disaster eastward and lured her toward Fu’an Base.
Jiang Fu had long heard her name. How could she dare let such a being enter the base? She personally went out to meet her in battle.
They fought to a draw.
She was likely the first person who, without relying on human-wave tactics or weapon assistance, could fight her one-on-one to a standstill. From then on, Wen Zangyu fixated on her. Over the next three years, she showed up time and again to provoke her.
Eventually, the world began to link the Zombie King and Jiang Fu together, as though killing the Zombie King was Jiang Fu’s personal responsibility alone.
It wasn’t as if Jiang Fu gained nothing from it. Under that immense pressure, she forcibly advanced to become a tenth-tier ability user.
Crouching beside Wen Zangyu now, she sighed.
“If you hadn’t pushed so hard back then, once I reached the tenth-tier, if I’d just had enough time to properly consolidate and comprehend it, how could those people have managed to kill me?”
The gap between the tenth and ninth tiers was a chasm. Had she been given a year or two to stabilize her strength, even several waves of so-called protagonists would have been no threat.
Unfortunately, not long after she broke into the tenth-tier, Wen Zangyu came knocking again. In the end, Wen Zangyu died by her hand, while Jiang Fu herself was gravely injured and exploited by others taking advantage of the situation. She survived only a few more hours.
In fact, the two of them died in the same year, the same month, and the same day.
Jiang Fu’s lips twitched. Thinking back now, Wen Zangyu had already shown strong self-destructive tendencies. Her increasingly frequent provocations seemed almost as if she intended to die at Jiang Fu’s hands.
In the evil spirit’s version of the novel, only she could kill the Zombie King. Jiang Fu was portrayed as carrying humanity’s last hope on her shoulders. But from Jiang Fu’s perspective, this woman had practically been deliberately crashing into her. She had been forced to respond.
She let out a sigh.
Some people are like that. Even if they don’t want to live anymore, they won’t quietly commit suicide. They insist on choosing a death they like—such as fighting a grand, earth-shaking battle with an opponent they respect.
“You may have gotten a satisfying end, but you really dragged me down with you,” Jiang Fu muttered, reaching to pull her up.
Only then did she notice that Wen Zangyu’s legs were entangled in some kind of thread. The threads seemed to have “grown” directly out of the ground and were still creeping upward.
She tried to yank one. It would not budge or snap.
Narrowing her eyes, she condensed her resentment into a blade, hooked one of the thin threads, and flicked upward. With a metallic snap, the thread broke.
But for every one that snapped, many remained. Worse, as if stimulated, they began writhing faster—some even burrowing into Wen Zangyu’s flesh.
Jiang Fu raised her hand, ready to sever them all.
Then she paused.
She suddenly remembered that Wen Zangyu once had an ability that produced numerous silver threads. At the time, Jiang Fu had assumed it was a metal-element ability—but on closer thought, it hadn’t entirely matched.
Now that she looked at these threads, they seemed strikingly similar.
A thought surfaced.
Could it be that all those strange abilities Wen Zangyu possessed came from being attacked by such powers—and then converting them into her own?
This time, Jiang Fu intended for Wen Zangyu to become the Zombie King earlier and dominate the apocalypse. Naturally, the stronger she was, the better.
She glanced around. Those who had besieged Wen Zangyu were all knocked unconscious by her earlier shockwave. She examined them carefully and found none who appeared capable of such a technique.
Which meant the true culprit was not here.
After a brief hesitation, she chose not to remove the threads from Wen Zangyu’s legs. Instead, she studied the ground from which they grew.
Then she said, “I curse the one who set this trap to suffer the pain of ten thousand arrows piercing the heart…”
As she spoke, she felt difficulty forming the words. It was as though some force was preventing the curse from being uttered, while resentment churned violently within her body, tightening her throat.
Her eyes shifted slightly.
She continued, “The pain will not affect physical health—only pain itself.”
The resistance lessened somewhat.
“It will last for three days…”
The resistance weakened further, but it was still there.
She corrected herself. “Three hours.”
The resistance vanished. The curse took effect.
And the moment it did, a large surge of resentment energy inside Jiang Fu was instantly drained.
Her body trembled slightly. She lifted her head and looked in a certain direction. She could sense the person she had cursed was somewhere that way—probably quite far off.
She withdrew her gaze, raised her hand, gathered resentment energy in her palm, and slammed it hard into the trapped section of ground at her feet.
…
“Pff!” In a nearby base, a young man suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood.
The people who had been chatting casually around him froze, then hurried over.
“Liang Ji! Liang Ji, what’s wrong with you?!”
After a flurry of panic and checks, he stopped vomiting blood, but he clutched his chest tightly, his expression twisted, his face pale as wax. The pain was so intense that he collapsed to the ground, unable to utter a single word.
It was a terrifying sight. Yet no one could find anything wrong with him. Everyone was alarmed and anxious.
“Has Liang Ji run into anything recently?”
“Nothing unusual.”
“Or met anyone special?”
“Not that I know of.”
“The cause of his chest pain is unclear, but that mouthful of blood was most likely an ability backlash,” said the calmest-looking woman after thoroughly examining him with her power.
“Ability backlash? But no one attacked him.”
“Doesn’t he often use his ability to set traps?”
“Oh—right. Yesterday in West Town, Liang Ji ran into a group of people who were being targeted by a particularly troublesome zombie. He helped them set up a trap.”
“Then the problem must’ve started there. Could that zombie really have been so powerful that it broke his trap?”
“Forget it. Let’s go over there and see what’s going on.”
After a brief discussion, the group set off at once.
…
Jiang Fu grabbed Wen Zangyu and retreated more than ten meters. The moment she landed, she tapped the ground with her toes and swept back again.
In front of her, the ground continued collapsing. The clash between her resentment energy and the powerful ability energy stored within the trap caused the destruction.
In the end, more than half the street caved in. The unconscious people nearby fell into the massive pit, their fates unknown.
Jiang Fu didn’t spare them a glance. She knew the person who had set the trap—and whom she had just cursed—would likely arrive soon. With Wen Zangyu in hand, she prepared to leave.
Wen Zangyu began struggling, growling hoarsely, still trying to lunge at Jiang Fu and scratch her.
Jiang Fu held her farther away. Resentment energy spread like cloth, binding the restless claws to her sides.
“Alright, alright. Be good. I know—I won’t leave your little brother behind.”
She looked toward the zombie youth still suspended in midair. With a thought, the clump of resentment energy supporting him drifted over. Jiang Fu lifted the zombie youth and examined him.
Though two large holes had been blasted through his chest and his body was shattered and limp, his mouth could still open and close. Good. He looked salvageable.
She placed him in front of Wen Zangyu and let her sniff. “This one, right?”
Wen Zangyu sniffed him. Her roar softened somewhat, and she struggled less violently, though she still twisted around in dissatisfaction at being carried.
“You’re practically falling apart yourself, and you’ve still got this much strength.”
After a moment’s thought, Jiang Fu picked up the second brother as well—the one whose limbs had all been crushed.
She had spent a long time searching for Wen Zangyu. It was only after sensing strong ability fluctuations and signs of battle here that she found her way over. She didn’t know what grudge these people had with Wen Zangyu, but bringing along this troublemaker would not only help her understand the situation—if Wen Zangyu started acting up, he could also serve as a convenient punching bag for her to vent on.
She lifted her head and saw that the plump black cat had finally caught up, hanging from a rooftop railing and panting heavily.
“Too slow,” she said. “Let’s go.”