Listening to the sounds rising and falling from beside her and from inside her stomach, the expression on Li Qiu’s face could only be described with one line from a song: I don’t dare open my eyes, I hope this is just an illusion.
“Stop barking.” Li Qiu waved her hand helplessly.
Unexpectedly, her words really worked, and silence once again returned to the surroundings.
But although Fang Qi did not speak, she looked at Li Qiu with a gaze that was both timid and reverent.
“Look at him, not me.” Li Qiu tentatively pointed at Su Zhihai.
Those words worked as well, and Fang Qi immediately carried out the simple command as quickly as possible.
Li Qiu thought, This is truly unbelievable. Before, these zombies either treated her as a human and tried to take a bite out of her, or they simply ignored her altogether. But now, they were actually listening to her.
Thinking of this, Li Qiu decided to conduct another experiment.
“You, roll over.” She pointed at Su Zhihai.
“And you, drag that corpse five hundred meters away over here.” Li Qiu pointed at Fang Qi.
After receiving the commands, one zombie immediately began rolling around nonstop, while the other dropped to all fours and swiftly leaped toward the corpse five hundred meters away.
Li Qiu widened her eyes. “They’re so obedient.” Could it be that she was actually the unparalleled genius of the zombie world, and in such a short time, she had evolved into a species even more incredible than the intelligent species?
“I… I…” The Li Dong inside her stomach spoke again.
He was clearly repeating a single syllable over and over, yet Li Qiu somehow understood what he meant.
“You want me to give you an order too?” Li Qiu was speechless. “Can you stop competing already? You’re still a baby zombie. Wait until you’re born first.”
“Okay… okay…” Li Dong’s tone rose, and he seemed very happy.
Not long afterward, Fang Qi dragged over all the corpses within five hundred meters. Whether they were missing arms and legs or had only half a head left, she brought all of them to Li Qiu’s side.
Li Qiu was once again surrounded by a mountain of corpses.
“I’m not hungry anymore.” Li Qiu had just eaten her fill and had regained her human consciousness, so she had no plans to keep eating.
She was suffering from a food coma and wanted to sleep.
Unexpectedly, when Fang Qi saw that she remained motionless for a long time, she suddenly threw herself to the ground and began kneeling repeatedly again.
For the first time, Li Qiu saw an anxious expression on a zombie’s face.
She instinctively reached out to help her up. “What are you doing now?”
Fang Qi said nothing. She even pushed the unresponsive Su Zhihai, making him kneel as well. Then Li Dong’s voice came from her stomach.
“Eat… eat…”
The three of you are really in perfect sync. Not a single one of you is missing.
After thinking about it, Li Qiu tentatively picked up an arm and took a bite out of it as if it were a chicken drumstick.
This time, Fang Qi raised her head and stopped stubbornly kneeling. After discovering that Li Qiu liked arms, she immediately tore off the arms from another zombie corpse and neatly placed them within easy reach of Li Qiu’s hands.
Li Qiu understood.
Fang Qi wanted her to eat, which was why she had kept kneeling nonstop.
This was the first time a zombie had been so determined to make her eat. The last person who had been this determined to feed Li Qiu had been her best friend. Her best friend had always said, “I don’t ask to be born on the same year, month, and day, but I do ask to get fat on the same year, month, and day.” She had been so afraid that Li Qiu would eat even one bite less than she did.
Thinking about her best friend back in her hometown, Li Qiu still felt melancholy, but her mood improved slightly.
“I really can’t eat anymore. Don’t you see how big my stomach and belly already are?” Li Qiu shouted.
Fang Qi stared fixedly at Li Qiu’s abdomen, for some unknown reason.
That gaze made Li Qiu feel a little uncomfortable. She slightly turned her body and hid her stomach from Fang Qi’s line of sight.
“You two, go wait over there.” Li Qiu issued another command.
After the command took effect, Li Qiu leaned against the pile of corpses and sat down.
Back when she used to eat and drink recklessly with her best friend, her stomach had swollen this much before. But usually, after sleeping through the night and using the toilet, it would go back down. This time, however, things were different. There was a zombie inside her stomach.
Li Qiu tried to search her limited memories for the truth about how Li Dong had ended up in her belly, but naturally, she found nothing.
Too many unbelievable things had happened after the natural disaster apocalypse.
Humans, as the beings at the top of the world’s food chain, had split into two extremes. One group became ability users, gaining greater power and choosing either to shoulder greater responsibility or to control the fates of others. The other group became neither human nor ghost, turning into zombies that also possessed a hierarchical system and regarded their former fellow humans as food.
Li Qiu could still accept all of that.
She had even accepted the fact that she was a half-human, half-zombie existence. It was like a pot of food that had only been cooked halfway, like a piece of clothing made without sleeves, or like a car with only four wheels completed. Everything in the world had unfinished products, and humans and zombies were no exception.
But the Li Dong inside her stomach had completely overturned Li Qiu’s understanding of the world.
She could become pregnant by “eating.”
And Li Dong would not die even after being “eaten.”
Yet none of the zombie corpses Li Qiu had eaten before had remained alive like Li Dong.
Li Qiu wanted to understand this issue.
“Hey, Li Dong.” Li Qiu patted her stomach.
“Here.” Li Dong’s voice was much louder than before. Li Qiu guessed that perhaps he had grown a little bigger inside.
“How exactly did you get in there? Did I eat you?”
“Yes.” Li Dong’s answer was concise.
Li Qiu continued asking, “I remember not seeing you when I rolled over here. Did you come looking for me while I was eating and I accidentally ate you? Just answer yes or no.”
“No.”
“You didn’t come looking for me?”
“Yes.”
“You were already dead at that time?”
“Yes.”
Li Qiu: “…”
Li Dong had already died, and he could live only because she had eaten him.
I gained the ability to resurrect zombies! Li Qiu arrived at this conclusion.
She felt a headache, and her stomach hurt too, throbbing painfully.
“Didn’t I lose my sense of pain? I must be under too much stress. My head hurts and my stomach hurts. I even feel like throwing up again.” Li Qiu sighed.
However, in the next second, the sound of eating came from her abdomen.
“Hungry.” At the same time came Li Dong’s voice. He was eating Li Qiu’s uterus.
“Ahhhhhhh!” Li Qiu let out a scream identical to that of a marmot.
“Come out.” Li Dong’s words were mixed into Li Qiu’s screams.
Inside Li Qiu’s body, he had grown everything a zombie should have, sharp fangs and razor-like claws. He opened his mouth and gnawed at the obstruction before him, impatient to come out and see this world, impatient to see his mother.
For the first time, Li Qiu understood why people always said that a person could unleash hidden potential when cornered.
Her hidden potential was pulling out the meat cleaver she carried with her and, with absolute calm, slashing down at her own abdomen.
Li Qiu was the kind of person who would scream for half a day even when killing a chicken, yet now she cut through her own fat layer, cut through her rectus abdominis, layer after layer, with the composure of someone who had been doing this work for thirty years.
Although she had no experience with anything like this, Li Qiu’s survival instincts allowed her to accurately locate Li Dong’s position. Summoning all her strength, she reached into the mass of flesh and blood and pulled Li Dong out.
When Li Dong was pulled out, he was only a tiny bundle, about the size of a kitten. But his mouth was still chewing nonstop, and the claws on his hands were still clutching bits of Li Qiu’s flesh.
The cesarean section caused a large amount of half-red, half-black blood to flow from Li Qiu’s body. Following the slope of the land, the blood seeped into the soil and eventually formed a small puddle.
The puddle was filled entirely with Li Qiu’s blood.
“Mama…” Li Dong waved his hands and tried to get closer to Li Qiu.
Li Qiu forced a smile that did not reach her eyes, then threw Li Dong into the grass. Very soon, rustling sounds came from the grass. Li Dong was frantically crawling, trying to return to Li Qiu’s side.
Li Qiu’s expression remained completely indifferent.
Jokes were one thing and fooling around was another, but she could never keep something that wanted to eat her flesh and blood by her side. The current Li Dong was no longer the previous Li Dong. The fact that Li Qiu had not killed him and had merely thrown him away already counted as showing the utmost kindness.
“Giving birth” had exhausted most of Li Qiu’s strength. Before long, her stomach and body returned to their original, normal state.
Li Qiu silently looked at the long wound across her abdomen.
There were needles and thread in the car parked on the highway, but it was already too far away. In comparison, the distant village looked much closer.
The villagers had fled, and the zombies had been eating people. No one would likely have taken the sewing supplies from their homes. Therefore, going to the village would be quicker.
Li Qiu took off her clothes and tied a crude knot around her abdomen. Then she took several arms that Fang Qi had prepared for her earlier.
As she walked through the grass, Li Dong’s crying could be heard.
Li Qiu thought that it turned out zombies could cry too. But she did not stop. She merely held her stomach and continued walking toward the village without pausing.
After noticing that Li Qiu had left, Fang Qi and Su Zhihai, who had been lingering nearby and did not dare approach earlier, came running over excitedly. Their eyes shone brightly as they stared at the blood in the puddle and the bits of Li Qiu’s flesh scattered on the ground.
The king…
This was the flesh and blood that belonged to the king.
As long as they ate it, they would become even stronger!
Su Zhihai followed closely behind Fang Qi. His level was lower than hers, so naturally he had to wait until Fang Qi finished enjoying it before he could have any.
However, neither Fang Qi nor Su Zhihai ended up tasting even a drop of Li Qiu’s blood or a piece of her flesh.
Li Dong, who had crawled out from the grass, was already as large as a one-year-old infant. His eyes had turned blood-red, and he was coldly staring at Fang Qi and Su Zhihai. The growling sounds coming from his mouth were a warning to the two zombies.
Unwilling to give up, Fang Qi tried to step forward and hook away a piece of flesh. In the next second, however, Li Dong shot into the air. His claws reached Fang Qi’s face and directly tore three deep, bone-revealing wounds across her left cheek.
After that strike, Fang Qi retreated to where she had been before like an injured beast. Su Zhihai also obediently shrank beside Fang Qi like an eggplant that had been hit by frost.
Yet there was no joy of victory on Li Dong’s face.
His body was growing at a speed visible to the naked eye. In just this short time, he had already become as tall as a two-year-old child and could even stand upright.
Li Dong stared in the direction Li Qiu had left for a very, very long time.
If one held their breath and listened carefully, they could even hear his sobbing voice.
“Mama, I will come find you.”
After saying those words, Li Dong immediately lay beside the puddle and began drinking the blood inside it, racing against time.