Chapter 3: Volume One & Two: Chapter 3: Zombie Linglan—Super Evolution!

Right.

In the story, a gang of marauders had driven Fuling into a corner.

Linglan looked at the grenade. It slowly rose into the air and drifted toward the door like a ghost.

Fuling tensed at first, but when she saw Linglan’s calm gaze, she gripped a dagger and stepped in front of her to shield her.

The latch clicked open. The bolt turned. As the door swung open by itself, startled cries rang out from the other side. The attackers ducked behind cover, never noticing the grenade dropping from above the doorway.

“BOOM!”

After the deafening blast, one of the marauders was hurled into the house and slammed into the shoe cabinet with a thud.

A few pieces of shrapnel had lodged in his gas mask. Leaning against the cabinet, he clutched his bleeding stomach in one hand and held a handmade gun in the other, dazedly staring into the room.

The instant he and Fuling met eyes, the man still managed to raise his steel-pipe gun and pull the trigger.

At the same time Fuling drew her knife, she threw it at him and knocked his weapon aside. The gun barrel flashed, sending a hail of pellets toward her.

“Vmmm—”

The air seemed to shiver. Countless electric-blue rings appeared in front of the pellets, one after another. At first, the pellets easily punched through the rings. But as they neared Fuling, their momentum wasn’t enough to break through. They came to a halt in midair right in front of her.

“Huh?!”

It all happened in an instant. From Fuling’s perspective, the marauder had fired flaming bullets at her, trailing blue fire.

Her pupils contracted violently as she stared at the suspended pellets, thinking she was watching the moments of her life flash before her eyes.

Then the pellets drifted together, slowly forming a question mark in front of her.

Only then did she understand. It was Linglan’s second ability: Electromagnetic Manipulation.

In the next moment, a magnetic accelerator made of thirty electric rings aimed at the marauder’s head. One pellet rolled lazily into the first ring. The following instant, a sonic boom cracked through the room.

“Bang!”

The pellet pierced the man’s skull and blew the top of it off. Red and white matter splattered across the wall behind him.

“S-so cool,” Fuling murmured. A flicker of disappointment crossed her face, but she quickly rallied and looked at Linglan with admiration. “Now Ling can… um…”

Her voice trailed off. She swayed a few times, then toppled sideways. Just before her head hit the floor, an invisible force caught her and gently lowered her down.

Phew. That should do it for now.

The spores had already seeped into her body. If the novel’s plot was accurate, she’d evolve into an Awakened in another four hours.

Linglan yawned in her mind. It was strange, though. Her body had wanted Fuling desperately, but it had barely reacted to the marauders with their wild imaginations.

Seriously? We’re in the apocalypse, and you’re still picky?

Never mind. I should make sure they’re dead.

Linglan remembered that, in the story, the badly wounded Fuling had found the marauders’ modified car downstairs and rummaged through it for three bottles of Essence Extract. They’d helped her recover from her injuries.

I’ll drink two and save one for Fuling.

As she thought this, Linglan rose slowly off the ground, as if someone were lifting her by the head. Her arms and legs flailed, still trying to get closer to Fuling. Unfortunately…

“Crack.”

Linglan’s ruined body couldn’t withstand the struggle between the two opposing forces any longer. Her head tore free.

Zombie Linglan—Super Evolution!

Flying Head Monster!

Her headless body felt around uncertainly, then happily swayed back to Fuling’s side and hugged her like a child. If Linglan’s head had still been attached, it probably would have started biting her.

The sight of what should have been a sweet, cuddly moment left Linglan stunned.

How can a zombie move around without its head?

Did my body evolve behind my back?!

Nothing like this had ever appeared in the novel. The one thing Linglan could be sure of was that she was still controlling her body remotely, and that she hadn’t become a two-souled monster. Her body was simply out of control because it had gone so long without flesh.

Linglan didn’t dwell on it. She drifted slowly out of the room and finished off the marauders one by one with their own weapons.

They were idiots. They’d clustered together right outside the door and been wiped out by a single grenade. They must have been too busy thinking about women to use their heads.

Linglan flew right out through the hallway window. A crowd of Mutants had already gathered below. From a quick glance, most were low-level zombies.

After all, during the first year of the Hell Spores outbreak, countless lives had been lost to infection. The concentration of spores in the atmosphere had been extraordinarily high, giving rise to many high-level Awakened and Mutants in a very short time.

The two sides had constantly expended spores fighting each other. Nearly all the high-tier combatants had died, and eventually the spore concentration had been depleted to a critically low level.

In the novel, spores were like experience potions for humans and Mutants. The spore concentration in an area determined the maximum level that could appear there.

As time passed, the overall combat power of the apocalypse continued to decline.

Some people even believed that if they detonated an explosion in the sky every day to reduce the spore concentration, Earth would eventually return to the way it had been before the apocalypse.

Hehe~

Linglan’s head settled on the roof of a car. She watched the mindless zombies crowding around the emergency exit and couldn’t help laughing.

Those idiots have no idea the good stuff is in the car.

She opened the car door and found what she was looking for in a storage box: Essence Extract.

The pale green liquid came in a test tube. Using it was like opening a vial: snap off the neck and drink.

It was extracted from spores and even high-tier Mutants. It could restore energy in a very short time.

It’s really just like the novel said. Good grief. Is some big shot watching me?

Hey, can you see me?

I’m cute. Please don’t kill me off!

Linglan idly wondered as she took the three bottles and hurried away. Once she’d flown far enough that the zombies couldn’t sense her, she opened one and poured it over her head.

Though people drank it, Mutants could absorb it through their skin.

At last, rain after a long drought!

As the liquid seeped into her body, her numb nerves began to itch. Linglan felt the severed muscle in her right cheek reconnect. Even her skin seemed to be recovering a little.

“Click, click!” She tested her jaw, and the crisp crunch told her that one of her teeth had broken. It had been exposed to the elements for a long time.

Yikes!

Linglan was too scared to keep playing with her fragile body. She could feel her energy returning to its limit, but she was nowhere near as strong as she’d once been.

Was that because the spore concentration was too low?

No. Low spore concentration would only affect how quickly high-level Mutants naturally recovered. It wouldn’t limit their combat strength. It seemed the problem came from how long this body had been dead.

Linglan set the question aside. When she returned home, she snapped open one of the remaining bottles of Essence Extract. The body that had been cuddling Fuling quickly scrambled to its feet, as if it had sensed an even more delicious food.

It staggered toward Linglan with its arms raised.

Now!

Body snatch!

With the Interstellar theme playing in her head, Linglan seized her chance to settle back onto her neck and poured the Essence Extract over herself.

The burst of energy restored her severed limbs. Fuling still tempted her, but at least she could control her body now and stop it from doing anything outrageous.

All that remained was to wait for Fuling to finish evolving.