Chapter 7: The Aroma of Food
Editor: Hitesh_
The only good thing about the nighttime was that it was much cooler without the scorching sun of the daytime.
By now, Lin Qiao was walking in a more natural and much faster way. The stiff-legged feeling from before had completely disappeared.
What had happened? Why was she so much more flexible now?
She kept thinking about this while walking. Suddenly, her nose twitched as a trace of a strange aroma wafted toward her from an unknown source,
'Eh? This aroma! It has to be something edible!'
Lin Qiao instinctively had this thought as she caught the aroma. This had to be the sweet smell of food. She raised her head to sniff it carefully, and found that it came from the woods on the left-hand side.
She turned around and followed the aroma, walking into the woods comprising of the oddly shaped trees.
The woods were completely dark, but that didn't bother her as she now had an owl-like night vision and was able to see everything clearly.
Her eyes were sharp, as was her sense of smell. It seemed that becoming a zombie wasn't so bad after all.
The closer she got to the woods, the stronger the aroma became. She had also detected some other faint aromas, but she didn't give up on the one that she had caught in the first place. She moved through the woods, pushing aside the branches and vines with her hands to create a path where there was none.
Some vines and leaves with thorns scratched her skin, but she felt nothing.
She continued on into the woods, sensing the source of the aroma getting closer and closer.
'Almost there! Something edible! It's something edible for zombies! It isn't a human though, is it?' She prayed in her heart, promising herself that if the aroma belonged to a human, she would bite her own flesh off and eat that instead!
She halted when reached a large tree and stared at the trunk near the roots. There was a hole in the tree trunk, which was where the aroma was coming from.
'It isn't a human being! Thank god!'
The hole was small, just the size of a human head. She squatted and lowered her head to look inside.
Squeak!
All of a sudden, a fist-sized figure darted out of the hole at lightning speed and flew directly at her face.
There was no time for her to lift her arm and defend herself from it.
'Holy smokes! What the hell is that?' Feeling spooked, Lin Qiao unconsciously bared her sharp teeth and instinctively backed away while fiercely biting at the black creature.
Squeak!
A horrible shriek came from Lin Qiao's mouth.
To be exact, the shriek came from the thing in her mouth.
She felt an intensely struggling lump of fur between her teeth. Sweet blood had been flowing from that thing into her mouth as her sharp teeth had bitten into it!
Sure enough, the thing became limp after a short struggle.
She raised her hand and removed the thing from her mouth to take a look at it, only to be struck speechless.
Damn it! It was a very chubby mutant mouse.
Lin Qiao dangled this dying mouse before her eyes to get a better look at it.
After its mutation, this mouse hadn't grown in shape, but its two front teeth were especially sharp and long, sticking out of its mouth on each side. This mouse's fur was also much longer than that of normal ones.
Lin Qiao licked the blood on her mouth. To her surprise, she actually felt no awful feelings. The blood in her mouth was fishy, sweet, and... acceptable.
She smiled while holding the mouse by its tail.
If this mutant mouse was edible, could she eat other animals as well? As to whether there would be any adverse effects, she would know only after finishing up this mouse.
Squeak!
At that moment, some strange noises were heard from inside the hole in the tree. Judging by the noise, Lin Qiao figured that those could be some baby mice.
She put a hand inside the hole, and as expected, found a few tiny things which were extremely soft and smooth. When she saw the five to six furless baby mice on her palm, she suddenly had an idea. These baby mice weren't even big enough to fill the gaps between her teeth, so she wondered if she could keep them in her space.
With this thought, she concentrated and said one word inside her head.
进去.
'In.'
In the next second, she found herself on the lush grassland, with the large mouse in one hand and the baby mice in the other.
She wanted to keep these baby mice, but she had already killed the adult mouse. She glanced at the adult mouse and then at the six baby mice.
What should she feed them with? There was nothing here in this space but grass and lake water.
She put the adult mouse aside, squatted down, and conveniently picked a handful of grass leaves. She then wadded them up with one hand before putting them on the ground and shaping them into a small nest. After that, she placed the baby mice inside the nest.
'Oh well, I'll leave them here for now. I'll just eat them if they can't survive.'
She turned around to look at the adult mouse, wondering how she would eat it as she had no tool to build a fire. Besides, she didn't know if zombies needed their food to be cooked or not. What if cooked food gave her diarrhea? If that happened, would she keep on eating raw meat?
She directly left the space with the adult mouse clutched in her hand.
Looking around, she saw nothing but trees. She had walked a great distance from any human settlement, and couldn't find anything to start a fire with in this wilderness.
And unfortunately, she didn't have a fire superpower.
At last, she made up her mind while staring at the dead mouse, then lifted her claws and began to skin it with them.
She didn't feel much about eating mice, because she had once spent half a month in a forest during devil training. In the whole fifteen days, she survived by eating only what she could find in the forest. Back then, mice could be counted as a gourmet meal, as she and her teammates also dined on snakes, frogs, worms, and other creatures... However at that time, she and her teammates had one advantage, which was having a fire.
But now…
She sighed as she skillfully opened up the adult mouse. The mouse had a thin membrane under its skin, along which, Lin Qiao finished skinning the mouse quite easily without causing a bleed.
She sharply twisted the mouse's head off and threw it away, then gently sliced open the mouse from its chest all the way to below its belly button with her nail. After that, she dug out the intestines without breaking them, threw them away, and then scooped out the liver.
She sniffed at it, and unexpectedly, she sensed no unpleasant smell. She then stuck out her tongue gave it an experimental lick, finding it to be soft and a little warm.
She took a deep breath, then put the raw mouse liver into her mouth. She was a little too scared to chew it, so she held it in her mouth for a while. Surprisingly, it seemed a little sweet! She couldn't help but bite into it.
The texture of the mouse liver was soft and tender, and it was unexpectedly tasty, with no strong scent of blood or any other off-putting flavor. It was so sweet and soft that she only needed to chew a few times before finishing it off.
After having her first taste of raw food, she felt less stressed about the whole thing. So, she put the mouse meat directly into her mouth and began to chew. In the end, she even chewed up the bones and swallowed them as well.
At that moment, she suddenly thought of her stomach and hurriedly lifted her dress to look at her belly which was wrapped in cloth strips. She hesitated, not sure if she should unwrap the cloth to check whether her stomach was still inside her body or not!
Earlier on, she hadn't paid much attention except noting that only her intestines were exposed, and not the other organs.
But now, she actually began to worry. If her stomach was gone, would the food that she just ate simply fall out?
She touched her stomach and felt that it was still torn open though there was no discomfort. She thought about this and that strange sensation overcame her once again. When she had woken up, she saw that the stomach of this body had been ripped apart already. And yet somehow, she still felt hunger!
This was the only feeling that zombies had, wasn't it?
Chapter 8: The Evildoing Woman
Editor: Hitesh_
The mouse meat had satiated her hunger slightly, but she was still hungry! She wanted more meat!
While thinking, she sniffed the air once again. Some faint aroma came from afar, clearly indicating the presence of an edible source!
She kept sniffing and couldn't help but follow the aroma. She again squirmed through the woods, making her way out to reach an overgrown grassland. The grasses were tall, about a meter in height and reaching her thighs.
She followed the aroma and noticed that it grew stronger and stronger after she reached this grassland. Yet, when she walked to a certain spot, the aroma disappeared. She looked down at the ground, feeling a strange certainty that the source of the aroma was underneath her feet.
She squatted and looked down at the grassroots, finding a spot that had no grass growing over it.
She raked the area with her claws and found the earth to be soft. There seemed to be a hole down there, possibly a rabbit hole.
Without thinking, she began digging quickly with both her hands. She found that her new nails were especially useful as digging tools. These nails were even able to penetrate zombie skulls, so they surely encountered no resistance from mere earth.
She wielded both her arms and dug very quickly! Soon enough, she had created a large hole which was connected to a tunnel as she kept digging through it.
In just a few minutes, she had already dug half a meter deep into the ground. While she was digging, a gray figure suddenly sprinted out of the tunnel.
Fortunately, Lin Qiao's reactions were fast enough, plus she was already prepared. When the gray creature raced out, she thrust out her hand and clenched her fingers, catching hold of a fluffy animal.
She lifted it up and took a look. 'Wow! Such a big rabbit!' The size of this rabbit was no longer the same as that of ordinary rabbits. This rabbit in her hand was twice as big as regular rabbits, almost as big as a young Chinese rural dog.
After seeing this gray rabbit, a thought flashed across Lin Qiao's mind, 'Now, this is a full meal!'
The rabbit in her hand was quite fierce. It kicked its legs with a surprising strength and wielded its front paws wildly, intensely struggling and twisting its body to try and free itself from her grip.
Her fingernails had already sunk into the rabbit's skin as she seized the furry pelt on its back. The rabbit struggled so vigorously that Lin Qiao couldn't help but bare her teeth, open her mouth, and bite its neck.
About half an hour later, Lin Qiao wiped her mouth and looked at the clean rabbit fur in her hand.
She wondered if she could collect the rabbit fur in her space.
As she thought about this, she looked at the fur in her hand and said one word in her head.
'Collect!'
As soon as she finished thinking the word, the furry pelt disappeared from her hand, vanishing into thin air.
'In!'
After thinking that, she too disappeared without a trace, reappearing on the grassland a short while later.
The reason she went inside the space was to check whether the rabbit fur was truly in there. As she expected, this space could collect things for her as well. To collect something, she didn't need to take it in herself and only needed to touch it.
Standing in the hole on the grassland, she was preparing to turn away and leave this place when she heard some noise from the rabbit hole that made her pause.
'Are there baby rabbits inside?'
With this thought, she couldn't help but squat again and put her hand inside the hole. A sudden stinging pain on her finger made her pull her hand back, and then she saw a fist-sized grey rabbit dangling from her finger.
The baby rabbit was biting her finger and kicking its legs. Lin Qiao caught it with her finger as if she was fishing, feeling a little speechless.
She then grabbed the rabbit with her other hand.
'Collect!'
And just like that, the baby rabbit was stored in her space as well.
She then put her hand back into the hole and continued rummaging, but found nothing even after spending a few minutes hunting through the hole.
She sighed while standing up and raised her head to look at the sky, then turned around and walked back.
Maybe because she was full now, some more fragments of Lu Tianyu's incomplete memories popped up in her mind. While she was recollecting these disjointed memories, a throbbing headache hit her again. However this time, the pain wasn't as bad as before.
In these memories, a large group of soldiers had shown up in a field camp, Lu Tianyu being one of them. However, she was often with a little girl who was around four or five years old.
These memories were found to be incomplete as Lin Qiao sensed the scenes in her head. At last, the scene got fixed in a room. The little girl's limbs were tied, and her mouth was taped, her black and shiny eyes filled with fear. The one who had tied her up was none other than Lu Tianyu herself.
Lin Qiao finally remembered this now.
Before this, many memories had flashed through her mind, all disjointed and from a long time ago. As for Lu Tianyu's memories of the past six months, not too many of them had emerged in Lin Qiao's mind.
Lin Qiao hurried back, as she didn't know whether that little girl was still alive or not! The girl had been locked up for three or four days by now, and Lin Qiao was worried that she might have had starved to death already!
Thinking about this, Lin Qiao felt a deep contempt for Lu Tianyu. That woman was so selfish, unscrupulous, evil, and brutal that she had even hurt a child! She deserved to be bitten to death by zombies!
...
In the dark night, a zombie was running swiftly down the road in a baggy dress.
Lin Qiao ran very fast because she was so worried about the child. However, the child's location was too far from her current location. Her limbs weren't as stiff as zombie limbs anymore, but still, they couldn't allow her to run fast enough.
As she was running, she realized that she didn't feel tired at all! That was another benefit of being a zombie.
Her heart had stopped beating. She didn't breathe, and couldn't feel anything when she was running. She ran and ran, but still felt nothing after running five miles, as if she was not the one who had ran all this while.
However, she did feel waves of dull ache in her head during the run. She endured the pain while worrying about the child, with some images flashing across her mind from time to time.
In those images, she saw a naked handsome man underneath her with red, raging eyes, strong chest muscles, and a snow-white skin like that of a girl. However, it was a man indeed…
Another scene flashed across her mind, comprising of two men and a woman. It seemed they often carried out missions together, and all three of them had superpowers. The middle-aged man had lustful eyes, the woman looked frosty as ice, and the young man was fierce-looking.
At last, the scene froze again. The fierce-looking man was facing Lu Tianyu with his fists clenched and the woman was throwing out sharp ice crystals that pierced her shoulders while the middle-aged man was talking coldly. Lu Tianyu screamed one last time just before she died.
As she was recalling all of this, Lin Qiao wondered if this could be counted as karma. Lu Tuanyu had gotten many people killed before, and in the end, she was killed by her own teammates.
Lin Qiao was a zombie, so nothing came out to stop her while she was running in the darkness. When running, she was also trying to piece the badly disjointed memories together in her head.
To sum everything up, Lu Tianyu, this sl*tty woman, had her eyes on a man. In order to have this man, she kidnapped his five-year-old child and then raped him!
Holy heavens! This woman actually did such a thing before she died! Why couldn't she have raped a different man? Why did she have to rape a man who seemed to be so powerful!
Lin Qiao was just speechless as she prayed for herself, 'Please don't let me run into that man. I'll just send his child back in secret! But, I don't even know whether the child is still alive or not! Damn it!'
...
When Lin Qiao was running desperately toward the city, a squadron of soldiers had been resting for two whole days inside the warehouse where Lu Tianyu was killed by Liu Hongshi and the others in the city.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
200+ Power
Ranking 
18 Power
stone 
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