Lin Qiao failed to notice that as soon as she had this thought, the crowd of zombies became agitated, transitioning from moving stiffly to rushing forward crazily with an agile speed. They opened their mouth wide, baring their teeth and extending their hands in front while fiercely swarming forward.
The surrounding zombies which had been slowly approaching all thrust their feet against the ground and rushed at the three like crazy.
"What happened? Why are these zombies going crazy all of a sudden?" The two who had been defending the group were already busy warding off the increasing number of the zombies, when all the zombies on the scene suddenly went mad, violently pouncing on them.
The two were immediately overwhelmed and their defense instantly fell apart as they quickly lost their advantage.
Lin Yong had sensed the abnormal movements of the zombies once he broke the door lock. Before he pushed the door open, he turned around to check the situation behind him. At that instant, all he saw was the mad expressions of the surrounding zombies, startling him greatly. He then hurriedly turned around to launch attacks and defend against the approaching zombies.
Lin Qiao opened her zombie eyes wide, feeling a little strange when watching the changes happening outside.
Why were these zombies suddenly going mad?
However, as she watched the trio being attacked by more and more zombies, an idea flashed across her mind. She walked out of the dark room, joined the group of zombies, and rushed at the trio.
At first, there were barely two-hundred zombies in this area, but for some unknown reason, endless zombies suddenly showed up nearby. Baring their claws and teeth, they all charged at the three with abandon while their number kept increasing steadily.
"What happened? What has happened? Why are these zombies rioting?" Lin Yong asked in confusion while wielding his arms and sending out streaks of flame to singe the zombies which were pouncing on him.
Liu Hongshi was getting anxious as well. Facing more and more zombies, a layer of sweat oozed out of his face. "I don't know! They suddenly went mad," he yelled back.
The three tried their best to defend themselves against the zombies, but none of their superpowers were high-leveled. As the number of zombies increased, it got more and more difficult to repel them.
At last, Liu Hongshi said a little fretfully, "It's not working. There're more and more zombies coming. We're going to get exhausted. Let's leave for now. If this continues, we'll be surrounded and eaten by zombies eventually."
Meanwhile, Lin Qiao had already quickly made her way around the wall from the edge of the zombie mob.
She saw that the three had no choice but to give up on the cold storage as more and more zombies approached them. They fought their way through the zombie mob and left the area temporarily.
With that, the zombie crowd also followed them away from the door of the cold storage.
Lin Qiao walked to the door and raised a claw to push it.
The two lingering zombies near the door turned back their heads after Lin Qiao pushed the door open, oddly staring at the door before Lin Qiao's face with their pale gray eyes, as though something had attracted them.
Lin Qiao's nose was many times more sensitive than the noses of these average brainless zombies. Therefore, she had sensed a tempting aroma quite a while ago.
She felt that the zombies around her wanted to approach the door as well.
"Roar!" Lin Qiao growled angrily at them as a strong spiritual force was sent from her mind to repel these zombies.
"Roar… Roar… Ow-whoo..." After being forced back by her growls, the surrounding zombies turned around immediately and limped away.
Having seen the situation, Lin Qiao paused briefly. She didn't give these zombies another thought as she just wanted to check on the child.
As soon as she caught the aroma, she had the confirmation that there was a living person inside, even though the aroma was very faint.
She pushed the door open, walked inside, and then closed the door behind her. The cold storage was so dark on the inside that ordinary people wouldn't be able to see their own hands in front of their faces. However, Lin Qiao could clearly see everything in this place.
This cold storage unit had many compartments. She followed the aroma to one compartment, and as she had expected, she spotted something in a corner.
Hurriedly making her way to the corner, she smelt this faint aroma that made her feel hungry and also made her desire to eat raw meat resurge.
She wanted to eat! She wanted to eat meat, to drink blood!
These thoughts muddled her brain for a second, but she soon realized what had happened.
While suppressing her hunger with her willpower, she moved to the corner and squatted down, gently pulling away the blanket which had something wrapped in it using her nails.
The blanket was unwrapped, exposing an adorable face. The pair of eyes were closed tightly, and the lips were parched.
Lin Qiao lifted the child up, spreading her fingers with her long and sharp nails and gently stroking the child's face.
As a zombie, she had no body temperature, but she could still feel the temperature of other things, such as the warmth of this kid's skin.
On touching the child, Lin Qiao felt that the former's body temperature was a little low. Her teeth were clenched, eyes tightly closed, and her breath was shallow. Lin Qiao lowered her head and put her ear against the child's chest, finding that her heartbeat was very slow.
Lin Qiao knew that the child was dying, and she couldn't possibly leave her here.
She thus held up the child and hurried out of the cold storage.
Judging by the child's parched lips, Lin Qiao surmised that she hadn't eaten or drunk for a few days. An adult would be dead after three days without water, let alone a five-year-old child.
But miraculously, this child in Lin Qiao's arms was still alive, although at her last breaths.
From Lu Tianyu's memories, Lin Qiao learned who this child was, and that she actually had a superpower as well. However, her power wasn't strong enough yet, and she hadn't learned to control it or use it to attack.
Nevertheless, her instinctive desire for survival allowed her power to firmly protect her life-force, which was why she was still alive after days without food and water.
Lin Qiao carried the child outside, but she was at a loss without knowing what to do. The child was unwell, and would die unless she was given some food and water soon.
Lin Qiao looked around, finding nothing but ruins. How could any water possibly be found here?
Suddenly, she thought of the small, clear lake in her mysterious space. She looked at the child in her arms, then abruptly raised her head and growled again.
"Roarrrr!"
'Back off!' she said.
The growl was meant for the surrounding zombies who were attempting to approach them bit by bit. On hearing her threatening roar, these zombies retreated immediately.
Lin Qiao held the child and concentrated, then firmly said a single word in her heart.
'In!'
As a bright light flashed across her eyes, the dark, abandoned street before her eyes changed into a lush green grassland, although the light in this place was a little dim and misty right now.
She quickly carried the child to the lakeside and laid her down on the ground. After that, she glanced at the grass near the lake and found an extra wide and long blade, plucking it out.
Next, she rolled the grass blade into a funnel, with which, she scooped some water from the lake and put it gently by the child's tightly closed mouth. Then, she clasped the child's jaw and gently pinched it with her other hand.
Consequently, the child's mouth was opened, and she poured the water gently into it.
She knew that this five-year-old child was called Ling Ling, and that she was that man's daughter.
The water trickled into Ling Ling's mouth. At first, it kept spilling out, but after Lin Qiao tried a few more times, her subconscious seemed to wake up and she slowly began to swallow the water.
As the child had finally drunk some water, Lin Qiao exhaled a breath of relief that she had been holding in all this time.
The child took a few more sips, after which Lin Qiao couldn't make her drink any more water. She threw away the grass leaf, picked up the child, and walked away. Finding a dry spot on the grass, she laid the girl down along with the blanket.
After setting the child down, she put her palm on her chest to feel her heartbeat. The child's heartbeat was still very weak, but stable nevertheless, and without the frightening irregularity that she had felt before.
Lin Qiao thought about what to do and decided that the best course of action was to send this child back to her father. She thought of it as making amends for the bad things done by the former owner of her body. It was dangerous and inconvenient for the child to be with her anyway.
As a zombie, she had an instinctive hunger deep down for living human beings, so she worried that she might lose control someday and eat this child.
As the child had been found, she now needed to find the group of people and send the child back secretly without alerting them.
It seemed to be quite simple, but the problem was that she was a zombie, and those people would attack her as soon as she approached them. Fortunately, she now looked nothing like that woman with heavy makeup. Otherwise, every single one of those people would try to kill her on sight, wouldn't they?
Just as Lin Qiao prepared to leave her space and try finding the child's father, the child, who had her eyes closed and had been asleep the whole time, twitched her eyelids slightly and then slowly opened them without any warning.
Lin Qiao was busy preparing to leave and didn't notice that the child had woken up.
"Ahhhhhh!" All of a sudden, a high-pitched scream gave Lin Qiao one hell of a scare, making her jump. All the fine hairs on her body stood straight up as she bared her teeth and leaped to her feet like a startled cat, looking at the source of this scream with her face alert and filled with fear.
She saw the child already sitting up while looking at her with a face that was a picture of fear, and bright eyes that were filled with panic.
Lin Qiao didn't know what to say.
On the other side, Wuyue Ling's had a confused look in her eyes when she saw Lin Qiao react that way.
However, in the next second, she suddenly realized that this creature standing in front of her was a zombie, a human-eating monster. Her dad had told her that these monsters liked to eat human beings, especially children!!!
Wu Yueling became horrified right away, fixing her wide-open eyes on Lin Qiao. She wanted to scream and cry, but she hadn't noticed that she couldn't utter a single sound anymore, and her body had become uncontrollably stiff.
'She'll eat me! She'll definitely eat me!' she screamed in her head.
Once Lin Qiao recovered from her own scare, she patted her chest with her claws to calm herself without realizing that, in fact, she no longer had a heart.
'She scared the life out of me! This little kid almost gave me a heart attack... My god!'
After patting her chest a few times, Lin Qiao suddenly thought of something.
'Damn it! Damn it! I'm a zombie! How could a child possibly scare the life out of me!'
She raised up her head and looked at the child. The girl was staring back at her with two big wide-open eyes. Her body was stiffened, and pupils were shrinking and dilating. Lin Qiao felt that the girl would pass out immediately if she got any closer. However, before this thought had even faded from her mind, the little girl trembled by the sight of her face which was covered with wounds, then fell on the ground with her eyes rolling back.
'See? My face has scared her senseless... Wait, is my face really so scary?' Lin Qiao wondered.
She walked over to check on the child and found that her whole face had taken on a bluish tint. Apparently, she had been scared quite badly.
Lin Qiao placed the child's body into a comfortable position, letting her sleep comfortably in the blanket.
Then, she stood up and turned around while saying one word silently.
'Out'.
A bright flash appeared before her eyes. When she could finally see again, she found herself out of the space as expected, standing in the same spot where she had entered the space from.
She looked at the scattered zombies around her and realized that they could somehow understand her orders. She had also been faintly sensing these zombies' thoughts, which were comprising of just one phrase—'So hungry!'
She too was incredibly hungry, more so than ever as she had been staying with the little girl the whole time. Smelling the girl's enticing aroma made her want to bite the little thing so badly.
Beyond that, she was a little confused when she thought about the rioting of zombies that happened earlier.
At the time, she was just thinking that if only those zombies would all rush at the three, she would have a chance to lose herself in the crowd. What she didn't expect was that the zombie mob really would charge at the three. She didn't know for sure if they heard and understood her order, and yet, the fact that more and more zombies were attracted to that area seemed to suggest that they did.
She turned to a wandering zombie near her, fixed her eyes on it, and murmured silently, 'Look at me... Look at me... Look at me...'
As expected, the male zombie that Lin Qiao was staring at stopped shuffling forward, slowly turned his head back to look at her, then turned his entire body around as his gray, half rolled up eyes stared at her in confusion.
'Walk over...' Lin Qiao kept staring at him and said silently.
Next thing she knew, the zombie began swaying toward her.
When that happened, Lin Qiao was truly shocked because the male zombie was really able to sense her thoughts and follow her orders. Had she evolved into a high-level zombie already? Was that why she was able to control these unintelligent zombies?
As she was thinking about this, the male zombie had swayed to where she was, then stopped and looked at her with confusion.
Lin Qiao glanced at him, then waved him off.
'Go away.'
After receiving her command, the male zombie turned around and left, still confused.
Lin Qiao then performed the same test on another zombie and got the same result. She was now certain that she had been upgraded, although she didn't know how many levels she had risen, neither was she clear about the zombie ranking system.
After confirming that she was able to control other zombies, she turned around without further deliberations and searched through Lu Tianyu's memories for the location of the building in which she had raped the man.
After confirming the direction, she promptly headed that way.
She didn't know if the man would still be there, but she believed that he would be nearby. He must be searching for his daughter near that area for sure.
It was night time now, perfect for her activities.
She ran in that direction like a nimble shadow in the darkness of the night. She ran quite fast, but still didn't feel tired at all. Two hours later, she came to the front of that building, but didn't detect any human vibes or see any humans.
She stood in an obscure corner and called a zombie over, trying to communicate mentally with it.
'Are there human beings in this place?' she asked silently.
The zombie looked at her with confusion, failing to comprehend her meaning, and seeming to have completely no idea what she was talking about.
"Roar!"
'Human beings?' Lin Qiao asked which ended up emitting out in the form of a growl.
The zombie continued looking at her confusedly, giving absolutely no response.
"Roarrrr?"
'Have you seen any human being?' she asked again.
The zombie couldn't look any more confused at this point.
Lin Qiao was speechless, having no idea how to proceed forward from this point.