Sickly Girl Doesn’t Die in Zombie Simulator 229

Chapter 229: Destructive Vertical Pupil

The previous devouring of the A-rank flesh and blood, along with the five bags of Blood Crystal Serum, had already brought A4 to a state of extreme saturation.

Now, while devouring the B-rank flesh and blood, the blood crystals in its body were basically unable to accumulate further.

In order to eat more, Lin Jiayao could only activate all of A4’s enhancements, maintaining its strongest Perfect Form mode.

To deal with the accumulating blood crystal liquid, Lin Jiayao even split off a large amount of mycelium to store it, just like Huayibai’s mycelium blanket.

By the time Lin Jiayao finished devouring all the flesh and blood and emerged from the “pouch,” her appearance had completely changed.

Additional blood crystal conduits, formed from mycelium, had appeared on her neck, shoulders, and all over her body, connecting to her flesh.

She looked like some kind of bio-engineered cyborg from a science fiction film.

Until she acquired a more reliable storage evolution, Lin Jiayao could only store this excess blood crystal energy externally.

If possible, Lin Jiayao wanted to try cutting out a piece of No. 5’s heart and bringing it to A4, to see if A4 could devour and acquire Ino’s Turbine Heart Pump.

With the Turbine Heart Pump, a large amount of blood crystal liquid could be compressed and stored in the heart, slightly expanding her storage capacity.

That’s right…

Lin Jiayao suddenly remembered that she hadn’t tried letting A4 devour the flesh and blood of her other logged-in zombies…

If she could, could A4 also acquire Mask’s abilities?

Even just obtaining [Ghost Swimmer] would be a huge boost to A4’s combat power, let alone [Bone Crystal Thread], which was a more efficient method of blood crystal storage.

Thinking this, Lin Jiayao stood up on Mask’s abdomen and looked at the neck of the giant skeletal Tyrannosaurus in front of her.

The cervical vertebra connecting the neck to the head was where Mask resided.

Seemingly sensing Lin Jiayao’s intent, the system-controlled Mask quickly raised the Skeletal Tyrannosaurus’s hands to cover the back of its neck, its crimson eyes opening, warily watching Lin Jiayao on its abdomen.

[Warning: The logged-in body’s genes and evolutions are protected by the system and cannot be plundered by external forces.]

A system prompt popped up; it seemed a bit anxious.

“Heh…”

Lin Jiayao chuckled dryly, a cold smile that made the controlled Mask want to shake her off.

But it was too late.

The multiple scarlet pupils on A4’s face glowed simultaneously. Under Lin Jiayao’s control, her hand plunged into the flesh of the Skeletal Tyrannosaurus, grabbed a Bone Crystal Thread controlling the creature, and yanked it out.

Along with the rotting flesh and bone, Lin Jiayao ripped out a half-meter-long Bone Crystal Thread.

The moment the thread was pulled out, the black scales on Lin Jiayao’s back opened, revealing the nozzles within. With a crimson roar, she stomped her feet and shot away from Mask like a streak of light.

Rapidly fleeing the scene, Lin Jiayao ignored the Skeletal Tyrannosaurus’s roar and stuffed the Bone Crystal Thread into her mouth as she ran.

There were still some seabed zombie bones left in the lake, enough for the system to repair Mask’s body.

No matter what the system said, she had to try first.

The bone thread, filled with blood crystal liquid, was chewed and swallowed by Lin Jiayao, but the precipitated Blood Crystals accumulated in her stomach.

After being forcibly devoured by the mycelium, these bones and Blood Crystal Threads only added a glowing mycelium tube to A4’s body, without granting any evolutions.

It seemed the system wasn’t lying. Devouring things protected by the system was useless, only providing Blood Crystals.

What if… she had A4 beat Mask half to death, then immediately extracted and logged into Mask?

Then, if the system hadn’t repaired Mask yet, would she receive compensation?

Lin Jiayao began to consider the feasibility of this plan.

Forget it…

It seemed feasible, but Lin Jiayao wasn’t 100% sure she could defeat a system-controlled Mask.

After all, A4’s main attack method was the bone blade, and using a bone blade against Mask was like bringing a knife to a gunfight.

As Lin Jiayao sprinted towards the Extraction Point, she pondered how to get A4 promoted to A-rank.

A-rank promotion was uncharted territory for Lin Jiayao.

From the current situation, simply devouring flesh and blood seemed insufficient for A4 to advance further; it only resulted in a meaningless accumulation of Blood Crystals.

The only thing Lin Jiayao could think of was through battle.

Looking back at the evolution of her logged-in zombies, basically, except for Ino, who was constantly being bound and fed, the others had all reached the verge of evolution through continuous battles or major conflicts.

Perhaps A4 just lacked such a battle, or several evenly matched battles.

Where could she find such a battle?

It seemed that she had to wait for the new [Crystal Detector] to be built before she could get an answer.

On the way to the Extraction Point, as she approached the more populated areas, the sky became overcast, and it was raining in many places.

Compared to areas without rain, the seabed zombies that had climbed ashore seemed more active in the rain.

Along the way, Lin Jiayao didn’t hold back on her Blood Crystal consumption. The flame-spewing scales on her back were almost always active, her entire body like a fighter jet, flying close to the ground.

Lin Jiayao even used Super-Sensory Hunt a few times, but only found some larger C-rank zombies, no B-ranks.

This puzzled Lin Jiayao.

She was clearly in the area closest to Yangzhou City, less than seventy kilometers in a straight line from the estuary.

Mask had encountered a B-rank just by passing through once, and she had also encountered a B-rank while staying put during a previous extraction. With this density, there was no reason why A4 couldn’t find one.

Guessing wouldn’t get her anywhere. She could only wait for the Blue Serpent to arrive and lure the A-rank away, and then Lin Jiayao could personally investigate through login.

During the next extraction, Lin Jiayao could have Huayibai broadcast a message on the radio station in Chongyu City, gathering information and seeing if any other survivors had any intelligence about the seaside.

The radio station and signal tower in Chongyu City were still intact, but Lin Jiayao hadn’t utilized them. She could try using this opportunity to see if she could get any responses from the camps.

If any camps really encountered trouble from B-ranks, they would definitely try to contact the radio station.

It was definitely better than her running around like a headless fly alone.

What Lin Jiayao didn’t know was that since Survivor’s Light’s radio station had been unresponsive, most survivors had shifted their daily listening from Survivor’s Light to the “Voodoo Radio Station”.

Although Lin Jiayao hadn’t used the radio station to broadcast anything for a long time, it had been playing music during downtime.

For those survivors, having a radio station to listen to music was much better than constantly listening to annoying static.

They even hoped that one day the radio station would broadcast again, bringing them some good news.

People seemed to have shifted their hope from Survivor’s Light to this seemingly more powerful and equally “righteous” organization.

Because she was occasionally delayed by zombies along the way, it took Lin Jiayao almost an hour to reach the Extraction Point in Qingzhou City.

This place was about a thousand kilometers away from Kun City in a straight line. She might have to log in several more times to reach Kun City.

Standing in front of the Extraction Point, Lin Jiayao looked at the remaining three hours of extraction time and the estuary less than a hundred kilometers away, and paused slightly.

What if, while the Blue Serpent was holding back that seabed A-rank, she descended a fully powered A4 there?

Would there be a chance to kill it?

The moment this thought appeared, Lin Jiayao was stunned.

She didn’t know when, but she had actually started thinking about hunting A-ranks… even though she had struggled so much in the battle with the Living Weapon before.

Maybe it was the new “Descend” function that gave her the confidence, after all, it was lossless.

If she won, it would be a huge profit, and the Blue Serpent could help “collect the body”. If she lost, it wouldn’t be a loss either. The death of the descended replica wouldn’t affect Lin Jiayao at all.

It was just like a simulation.

“Tsss—”

The scales on Lin Jiayao’s back stopped ejecting flames. The black scales, which had been completely burned red, were emitting heat that distorted the surrounding space.

Lin Jiayao took a step forward and entered the Extraction Point, waiting for the system’s countdown.

[Extracting: 7.9]

A4’s current location was very strategic. Whether something happened by the sea or if Mask moved and something happened, she could basically arrive at any time.

Having A4 stationed here was equivalent to having a gun pointed at four places.

Because she wasn’t carrying anything, after the extraction countdown finished, Lin Jiayao skipped the settlement space, and her consciousness directly returned to her body.

[Please retain your evolution.]
[1. [Lava Black Scales Lv.1 (Purple): Generates black scales on your body surface that can eject flames, consuming blood crystals when burning.]]
[2. [Destructive Vertical Pupil Lv.1 (Gold): Fuses a Destruction Eye with a large amount of blood crystals, allowing you to fire a plasma destruction beam by consuming blood crystals.]]
[3. [Adaptive Armor Lv.1 (Gold): Makes your body’s defensive abilities compatible with each other, automatically recording the last attack and evolving targeted defenses.]]

Holy shit! A-rank!

As expected of A4.

Because she controlled A4 to devour a large amount of flesh and blood and obtained many evolutions, retaining A4’s evolutions was like opening a blind box for Lin Jiayao.

After all, A4 had too many evolutions in its body, which reduced the probability of getting good evolutions.

Lin Jiayao thought that this time, like last time, she would get the previous tumor evolution or the fish evolutions she swallowed, but A4’s retained evolutions gave her a big surprise.

Two golds and one purple, and they were all very practical evolutions.

Destruction Beam and Adaptive Armor were obviously evolutions obtained from the A-rank cans, while Black Scales were from the scales of the B-rank zombie fish that Mask first killed.

With it, Lin Jiayao could even skip walking and directly fly.

But compared to Black Scales, the other two evolutions were obviously more tempting.

Adaptive Armor could greatly improve Lin Jiayao’s defense, even stacking all defensive evolutions together, and it even had automatic defense.

No wonder the A-rank before was so difficult to fight, it turned out that the black armor on its body was Adaptive Armor.

But after hesitating again and again, Lin Jiayao still chose the second one, Destructive Vertical Pupil.

Because so far, Lin Jiayao didn’t have a real attack-enhancing evolution. The only golden one that could be considered an attack was probably Crystal Vibration Pressure.

Other evolutions, such as Perfect Form, were all auxiliary body enhancements, allowing her to better utilize her body’s evolutions.

Lin Jiayao lacked a truly powerful attack method.

Now, the retention of Destructive Vertical Pupil directly filled this gap in her attack.

After choosing Destructive Vertical Pupil, Lin Jiayao felt like her whole body was melting, starting to become hot.

Lin Jiayao, who was originally holding Huayibai and basking in the sun in the wheelchair by the roadside, her whole body began to turn red.

Even Huayibai, who was sleeping soundly in her arms, seemed to feel the heat and struggled to fall from Lin Jiayao’s arms before she could even open her eyes, drowsily opening her eyes.

As soon as Huayibai opened her eyes, she saw her mommy raising her right hand.

A crack appeared in the center of her right palm, and the cracked crevices made the surrounding skin dry and charred, as if it had been burned.

Amidst the rising steam from the burning flesh and blood, the crack slowly opened, revealing the orange-yellow pupil inside.

The lightning-shaped pupil was almost identical to the Living Weapon’s, instantly evoking unpleasant memories for Huayibai.

“Mommy…” Huayibai shrank back on the ground in fear.

She looked at Mommy in front of her, who was looking at her palm with an expressionless face, and felt a sense of unfamiliarity.

Her calling out “Mommy” seemed to bring Lin Jiayao’s soul back.

The vertical pupil in Lin Jiayao’s hand slowly closed, and the crack also disappeared, but the cracks and char on her hand did not disappear.

The burning pain from her right hand brought Lin Jiayao back to her senses from the joy of obtaining the evolution.

Just now, focused on the ability, the pain was suppressed by [Hunting Rhythm] and [Spirit Lv.5], and she didn’t even notice the pain in her right hand.

The side effect of activating this once was a bit too much… her flesh and blood body couldn’t withstand firing a Destruction Beam.

It was estimated that after the beam was fired, her arm, or even half of her body, would be blown away by the recoil.

It seemed that she had to use it with Perfect Form in the future…

Even without Perfect Form, Lin Jiayao herself thought of an effective activation method.

Use bone spurs to create a “gun mount” on her arm, with the center of the barrel connected by mycelium, and let the Destructive Vertical Pupil generate on the eyeball simulated by mycelium, without direct contact with herself.

Although it sounded magical, it was indeed feasible.

It was literally “flesh and blood technology”.

Lin Jiayao rubbed her right hand, and the burned dead skin and carbonized flesh were rubbed off by her, and new flesh and blood were slowly forming on her hand.

She directly covered the empty flesh and blood with mycelium as a “concealer” and extended her hands towards Huayibai, who was sitting on the ground, at a loss.

“It’s okay, don’t be afraid.” Lin Jiayao said calmly.

If she continued to evolve, she could foresee that her body would gradually “collapse”.

She was already prepared, and only hoped that the people she cared about could also accept these changes as soon as possible.

“Normal” could be simulated with fungi.

Becoming stronger was a lifelong pursuit.