Huan Tian had already discarded his blood-soaked jacket outside the small conference room, leaving only a thin shirt clinging to his body. Lin Qingqing wore nothing but a white blouse, which was now drenched through the front by Huan Tian's sweat, turning nearly transparent and faintly revealing what lay beneath.
What made it worse was the intense, close-quarters struggle with the zombies just moments ago. Their bodies had been in constant contact, shifting and pressing against each other in the confined space. Now that the tension had eased, the heat building between them felt almost unbearable.
Flushed with embarrassment, Lin Qingqing turned her face away and muttered, "If you're going to lie there, then just lie still… don't move again."
"I'm not moving…"
Huan Tian replied, voice low and awkward. He could feel the rush of adrenaline and dopamine surging through him begin to settle, but the aftereffects lingered, turning into something primal, something harder to suppress.
After surviving ten years in the apocalypse, Huan Tian had long abandoned the old shackles of civilization. In his eyes, the only sane response to the end of the world was to live for the moment. And in his past life, he had more than one confidante.
In another place, at another time, he wouldn't have hesitated to claim a little "reward" from Lin Qingqing.
But not here. Not now.
"Ah!"
Lin Qingqing gasped suddenly. She felt Huan Tian's strong arm wrap around her slender waist as he leaned in and inhaled deeply against her back, like a wolf savoring the scent of its prey.
"Lin Qingqing, I'll consider this something you owe me."
With that, the pressure on her body lifted. Huan Tian pushed himself up and closed his eyes, forcibly calming the searing heat still coursing through his veins.
Five seconds later, he had fully regained control, his body once again steady and composed, as if nothing had happened.
But Lin Qingqing's heart was still racing. She had seen it clearly, that raw, burning desire in Huan Tian's eyes.
Her mind was a mess. It felt like her body no longer belonged to her.
He had saved her—more than once.
If one day Huan Tian asked her to repay that debt…, what would she do?
Lin Qingqing's face had turned crimson, the heat and shame swallowing up the pallor that had been there moments ago due to fear. For a second, she was completely at a loss.
"Can this ventilation duct lead into the warehouse?"
Huan Tian's voice snapped her back to reality.
"Y-Yes… it can."
"Good. Then we'll crawl through."
Huan Tian moved first, using the wider, horizontal L-shaped section of the vent to shift his body around. With his help, Lin Qingqing turned herself around as well. Then, without hesitation, Huan Tian drew the broken fruit knife and stabbed it into the zombie's skull, killing it completely.
After that, he climbed directly over the corpse without the slightest hesitation, as if the body were no more than debris.
But Lin Qingqing froze behind him, unmoving for a long moment.
"Do I really… have to crawl over it?"
The thought of brushing so closely against a rotting corpse made her entire body tense with disgust.
Huan Tian's increasingly cold gaze made her swallow hard.
"F-Fine…"
Gritting her teeth, Lin Qingqing practically closed her eyes and rushed forward, crawling over the zombie as quickly as she could. Once she passed, she exhaled in relief, as though she had just escaped from hell.
"You need to toughen up," Huan Tian said coolly. "And if you're going to keep following me out there, you'd better get used to sleeping while hugging a corpse."
Lin Qingqing nearly burst into tears on the spot.
"Hugging them…? I don't want to!"
"But that's the safest option."
His voice was devoid of emotion. "Zombies rely on sight, sound, touch, and smell to locate prey. They also sense temperature changes. Among these, smell and temperature are the most sensitive. Keeping your body covered in the stench of rotting flesh is one of the best survival strategies in the apocalypse."
"If you can't learn to handle that, then you can stop following me."
Without sparing her another glance, Huan Tian kicked open the end of the ventilation duct and jumped down into the warehouse below.
Lin Qingqing was left frozen in place, a chill crawling up from her feet to her scalp. Her entire face had gone stiff with fear.
There were no windows in the warehouse—only the ventilation duct they had crawled through, now sealed behind them. The entire space was shrouded in absolute darkness. Huan Tian moved along the wall, feeling for a light switch.
Just as his fingertips brushed against the cold surface of the wall, a faint sound swept past his ear.
It was so subtle it was nearly imperceptible, yet in the deathly silence of the warehouse, it rang out with eerie clarity, like it was right beside him.
"Huan Tian… there's something here. Ah!"
Reacting instantly, Huan Tian pulled Lin Qingqing close. The two of them pressed their backs tightly against the wall. Lin Qingqing trembled as she raised her short spear toward the darkness ahead, but the pitch-black void before them seemed bottomless, swallowing even her courage.
Swish—swish—swish—
The sound returned, right beside their ears, as if something was slowly dragging across the floor with a deliberate, rhythmic scrape.
Then—suddenly—the sound accelerated!
Without warning, a towering shadow over two meters tall lunged at them from the darkness like a battering ram.
"Move!"
Huan Tian shouted and yanked Lin Qingqing with force, flinging her behind a nearby shelf. In that instant, the two of them finally caught a glimpse of their attacker.
A zombie construction worker.
There was a clear bite mark on his shoulder. He had probably tried to hide here while fleeing other zombies, only to succumb to the infection in the end.
And in his hand, a fire axe.
No, it wasn't just in his hand. His arm had begun to mutate. Muscle fibers, thick and gnarled like ropes, had wrapped around the axe, fusing it into his flesh. The weapon and the limb were now one. The grotesque transformation resembled what they'd seen earlier on Luo Mai.
But what truly made the blood run cold was the thing embedded in the zombie's back—a fully fused second-tier Nightmare Crystal, glowing with a sinister light.
"A Tier-2… zombie."
Even Huan Tian's face changed in an instant.
A Tier-2 mutant wasn't just a zombie with one enhanced limb or organ—it was a creature whose entire body had undergone comprehensive augmentation.
A crude short spear? Against this thing, it might as well be a toothpick.
Roar!
With a deafening bellow, the zombie brought the axe crashing down in a vicious arc.
Huan Tian dove to the right, narrowly avoiding the strike. The blade whistled past his head and slammed into the metal shelving unit behind him with a thunderous clang.
Boom!
The alloy frame twisted under the sheer force of the blow. Boxes and debris rained down from above, clattering across the floor.
In the darkness, death was getting closer—one step at a time.
Lin Qingqing let out a sharp scream and rolled away in panic.
Clang!
A massive hunk of iron crashed to the ground, narrowly missing her head. The floor trembled from the impact.
"Find a place to hide—now!"
Huan Tian only had time to shout this as the Desert Eagle was already in his hand.
Bang!
The shot rang out like thunder in the confined space, striking the zombie's right shoulder with deadly precision.
Boom—!
A burst of corrupted flesh exploded as the Nightmare-infused ammo detonated on impact, tearing a hole clean through its shoulder.
But that one shot was all Huan Tian had time for.
The Tier-2 zombie roared in fury and swung a leg at him like a battering ram. The sheer speed was explosive, so fast that Huan Tian barely managed to cross his arms in front of his chest in defense.
Thud!
The impact was like muffled thunder cracking through the air.
It felt like being hit head-on by a speeding car. His arms went numb instantly, and a split-second later, the force slammed directly into his chest.
He heard it—crack!—the unmistakable sound of something breaking.
The forearm guard on his right arm shattered on impact.
Luckily, the crumbling armor absorbed part of the force. Even so, Huan Tian was flung backward like a ragdoll, crashing spine-first into a metal shelving unit.
Crash!
The rack shuddered violently before collapsing with a deafening roar, boxes and debris scattering in every direction.
The Desert Eagle was knocked from his grip, clattering across the floor and sliding beneath one of the shelves.
Gritting his teeth, Huan Tian forced himself to suppress the agonizing pain with sheer willpower. As he gasped for breath, a stream of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
That one strike had nearly knocked him out of his Demon Hunter state.
"Damn it... broken rib!"
The pain in his chest made it unmistakably clear. But he inhaled deeply and forcibly drove his consciousness into full focus, using the Demon Hunter state to deaden his sense of pain, dampening it to near nothing.
"...Huan Tian…"
Hiding in the shadows, Lin Qingqing trembled uncontrollably.
The man who had once dispatched Tier-1 zombies like slicing vegetables, now had barely managed to defend himself.
For the first time, she realized just how terrifying a real monster could be.
It was terrifying—almost unbearably so.
But Huan Tian remained calm. He shook his head at Lin Qingqing, signaling her to stay hidden. In his icy gaze, the hunger for victory burned hotter than ever.
That last blow had confirmed it: this creature wasn't a strength-enhanced type, nor a defense-oriented one. Which meant—he had a chance.
He needed to probe further to determine what kind of mutation it possessed.And the best way to do that… was to enrage it.
"Graaaahhh!"
Blood still poured from the wound on the zombie's right shoulder, but the sight of blood trickling from the corner of Huan Tian's lips seemed to send it into a frenzy.
With an enraged bellow, it lunged forward, the fire axe in its hand crashing down like a guillotine, twice as fast as before!
Nowhere to run.
But then, Huan Tian's eye caught something on the wall. Without hesitation, he dove forward and slammed his palm against it.
Click!
The overhead fluorescent lights flickered on with a buzz, flooding the warehouse with sudden, blinding brightness.
The Tier-2 zombie, having dwelled in darkness for so long, instinctively raised an arm to shield its eyes, its deadly attack freezing mid-swing.
Huan Tian, however, forced his body and mind to resist the natural impulse to flinch. Ignoring the searing pain in his chest and back, he rolled to his feet.
Tears involuntarily welled in his eyes from the light, but he gritted his teeth and plunged the fruit knife straight into the zombie's right eye.
The zombie didn't feel pain, but losing half its vision only fueled its rage.It thrashed wildly, swinging the fire axe in a chaotic arc, shredding everything in its path like a hurricane.
Huan Tian ducked beneath one of the wild swings and twisted his body, locking the zombie's axe-wielding arm with a scissor kick.
Using the creature's reflexive flailing to his advantage, he released his grip mid-air, flipping his body and lunging toward the ground, his hand clamping around the handle of a short-handled axe.
Landing, rolling, twisting, turning—target locked.
The sequence was seamless.
As Huan Tian spun around, he unleashed the full force of his 8 strength points, hurling the axe straight at the Tier-2 zombie's head.
The creature had just turned its face when the axe struck dead center.
Even with its reinforced skull, it couldn't fully withstand the sheer power of Huan Tian's throw.The axe blade sank deep into its cranium, embedding itself in the middle of its face with a sickening crunch.
It wasn't enough to shatter the skull, but the immense force behind the blow rocked the creature, leaving it visibly staggered and swaying.
Lin Qingqing was just about to cheer—
When suddenly, a strange ripping sound swept past her ear...