Chapter 217: Death Cycle (XV)

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Chapter 217: Death Cycle (XV)

The airflow around them suddenly shifted. A moment later, Zuo Xian appeared not far away.

“Where is he?” Zuo Xian asked, looking at Shang Ke. Naturally, he meant Di Kui. Before they set out, Huo Xuan had instructed Zuo Xian to keep an eye on the Zombie King while Huo Xuan monitored him from the shadows. But Di Kui was so quiet during the day that he might as well not exist, and at night he vanished without a trace. He was almost impossible to track. That was precisely why Zuo Xian had brought Shang Ke along. If conflict broke out in a place like this, at least only zombies would be caught in it.

“I don’t know.” As Shang Ke answered, he sent his perception outward in every direction but found nothing. Experts at Huo Xuan and Di Kui’s level were nearly impossible to locate if they deliberately concealed themselves.

“You’d better make sure he doesn’t attack anyone—or deliberately draw zombies over to surround the mercenary group.” Zuo Xian stared at him coldly, making no effort to hide his hostility.

Shang Ke sneered. “With his strength, would he really need to go to that much trouble?”

Zuo Xian glanced at him, then at Huo Xuan beside him. “Let’s go. A large concentration of zombies has gathered ahead. That should be their nest. We’ll split up from here. Watch yourselves.”

With that, he ignored them and left on his own.

Huo Xuan frowned, clearly displeased that Zuo Xian had simply abandoned his teammates. There was no time to dwell on it, however. He stepped beside Shang Ke and reached for his waist, intending to teleport with him as before.

Shang Ke quickly dodged. “Don’t worry about me. Go on ahead.”

“Don’t be difficult. Come here.” Huo Xuan pulled him firmly into his arms. In the next instant, they passed through the surrounding buildings and slipped into the heart of the zombie nest.

A foul stench of decay filled the darkness. Zombies moved through the streets, alleys, and buildings in scattered groups of three or five.

Huo Xuan brought Shang Ke into a dilapidated stadium. They lay flat along a steel support beam near the roof and quietly looked down.

The interior was dim, but both men had night vision and could see the scene below clearly. What they saw left them stunned.

Three or four hundred people were packed into the vast floor below—men and women, young and old. Their bodies were tangled together as they coupled frantically like animals, painful and despairing moans escaping their throats.

Dozens of high-rank zombies were scattered around them. The zombies shrieked and clawed excitedly. Every so often, one lost control and lunged into the crowd, mauling a human body while tearing off flesh to eat, only to be dragged violently away by the others moments later.

The bloody, debauched scene before them resembled hell itself and was enough to turn the stomach. Neither of them had been prepared for anything like this. They had come only to investigate the zombies’ numbers and distribution, yet the truth was far more horrifying than either had imagined.

Huo Xuan pressed Shang Ke’s head against his chest and whispered beside his ear, “I’ll get you out of here.”

Shang Ke shook his head and pointed directly below them.

Huo Xuan followed his gesture. In a dark corner below, two female zombies sat curled up on filthy cushions. Both were completely naked and motionless, their expressions numb and lifeless. More shocking still, their abdomens were visibly rounded. They looked pregnant.

Horror flashed through Huo Xuan’s eyes as one word struck him—reproduction.

The most terrifying thing about zombies was not their fighting strength but their infectiousness. Yet as research into antibodies advanced, humanity would eventually conquer the virus completely. When that day came, zombies would inevitably face extinction.

What Huo Xuan had never expected was that zombies would attempt to reproduce through humans. Had some zombies already evolved to this level of intelligence? Judging from those two women’s bellies, they were at least four or five months pregnant. But how could zombies become pregnant?

Huo Xuan looked back over the people on the stadium floor. Most of those mating frantically were still ordinary humans. In other words, the zombies first forced humans to become pregnant, then infected them. The vitality of the fetus transformed the pregnant women into another kind of creature—a zombie mother.

Perhaps it was not limited to human women. Any female organism might be capable of becoming a zombie mother.

At that moment, the surrounding darkness seemed to deepen. Even with Huo Xuan and Shang Ke’s enhanced vision, their sight gradually began to fail.

Huo Xuan’s expression tightened. Holding Shang Ke close, he left their hiding place and moved toward the stadium exit.

But instead of emerging outside, the two were swallowed by absolute darkness in the next instant. It felt as though they had entered a void without a single ray of light. The only thing they could sense was a strange fragrance slowly spreading through the air.

“It’s a spatial ability,” Huo Xuan said. “A General-class zombie with a spatial ability. Its strength is comparable to a King-class zombie. We need to be careful.” No wonder none of the earlier scouts had returned. Against a zombie of this caliber, they truly had no chance.

Shang Ke covered his nose and frowned. “What is that smell? It’s making me uncomfortable.”

Huo Xuan felt nothing unusual himself, but he noticed that the person in his arms was growing hotter by the second, his breathing increasingly rapid.

“What’s wrong?” Huo Xuan swept one hand through the darkness. Countless silver blades of light immediately began circling the two of them, yet even their sharp glow illuminated no more than five meters around them.

Shang Ke rubbed his increasingly dizzy forehead. Huo Xuan’s closeness only made the heat inside him worse. He reached out to push him away and create some distance, but the instant he touched him, a violent surge of desire erupted through his body, nearly swallowing his reason whole.

Only then did Shang Ke understand why the people in the stadium had been mating so frantically. The lightless space and that strange fragrance stripped away reason and reduced people to instinct.

“Shang Ke…” The deep voice seemed to come from another world, echoing softly beside his ear.

Shang Ke’s thoughts blurred, his body strangely weightless. It felt as though he were dreaming.

“Shang Ke… Keke…”

Di Kui? Or Mutu?

Who cared? Either way, it was his man!

Shang Ke knocked the man beside him down, tugging at his clothes and biting at him through the haze.

The man tried to stop him, but Shang Ke caught him in a hard kiss. That familiar aura surrounded him, making the drugged desire surge even more fiercely.

Shang Ke felt the man beneath him gradually stop resisting and begin to respond—holding him, kissing him, bodies pressed together until rational thought dissolved into the drugged haze. Then came a dull ache as their bodies joined, followed by repeated movement…

“Ah!”

Shang Ke jolted awake from a deep sleep and found himself lying in bed. Several rays of sunlight streamed through the window, brightening the room.

“Keke.” A head leaned over and bit him on the neck.

Fragments of broken images flashed through Shang Ke’s mind. Startled, he cupped the head nestled against his neck and lifted it. When he saw Di Kui’s expressionless face, he secretly breathed a sigh of relief.

“Where is this? Why am I here?” Shang Ke sat up, and the blanket slipped from his chest to reveal smooth, unmarked skin. His body felt clean and normal, with nothing obviously wrong.

“When I came back, you were already asleep on the bed.” Di Kui sniffed at him and frowned. “Something feels wrong.”

“What feels wrong?” Shang Ke checked himself again but found nothing. In truth, even if there had been an injury, his body would already have healed it.

Shang Ke checked the time. It was already past nine the next morning. The night before, he and Huo Xuan had gone to investigate the zombies and discovered a hellish scene inside the stadium: zombies attempting to use humans to reproduce.

After that, they had left the stadium and become trapped inside a dark space…

Shang Ke rubbed his head. He could not remember anything after that. It was like waking from a dream that left no trace behind.

With Huo Xuan’s strength, he should have escaped safely in the end… right?

As he was thinking, someone suddenly knocked on the door.

Di Kui glanced coldly toward it, then vanished from the room. His emotions had been unstable lately; whenever he saw humans, the urge to kill became difficult to suppress. Until he learned to control it, he had no intention of spending much time around them.

Shang Ke frowned. He had noticed that something was wrong with Di Kui as well. In the past, Di Kui had never disappeared this frequently. Even when he left, he usually took Shang Ke with him. But over the last few days, his aura had become increasingly unstable, especially after they entered Huaiqu.

The knocking continued. Shang Ke gathered his thoughts, dressed, and walked toward the door. Just as he was about to open it, a burning pain suddenly flared across his chest.

He let out a low sound and pulled open his collar. A crimson flower shaped like living flame was slowly blooming across the right side of his chest, layer upon layer of petals spreading toward his shoulder and collarbone.

The Crimson Skyfire? Why had this mark appeared again?

“Shang Ke?” Huo Xuan’s voice came from outside the door.

Shang Ke raised his head and stared thoughtfully at the door. Then he slowly backed away. Once he was more than five meters from it, the burning sensation in his chest gradually eased and the flower mark began to fade.

So it really was because of Huo Xuan? But nothing like this had happened during their previous interactions.

Shang Ke took several steps toward the door again. Sure enough, the pain in his chest returned.

He was pressing a hand against his chest to ease the pain when a figure suddenly appeared beside him.

“What’s wrong?” Huo Xuan drew him into his arms. His gaze caught the edge of the Crimson Skyfire exposed beneath Shang Ke’s clothes, and his breathing faltered. Memories of the previous night surfaced unbidden. He had never imagined that something like that would happen between them under such circumstances. It had been an accident brought on by the zombie’s ability, yet every detail remained painfully clear in his memory.

Huo Xuan carried Shang Ke to the bed and said gently, “Rest. I’ll have Yu Fei come examine you. He used to be a military doctor, and he’s very skilled.”

“No need. I’m fine.” Shang Ke leaned against the headboard, his slightly disheveled hair falling loosely over his forehead and a faint haze lingering in his clear eyes.

Huo Xuan stared at him without blinking, his gaze filled with warmth and affection.

Deep in thought, Shang Ke failed to notice Huo Xuan’s unusual intimacy. Once the pain in his chest eased somewhat, he asked, “What’s happening with the zombies?”

“We move tonight. I’ll deal with the General-class zombie. Zuo Xian and the others will clear out the rest.” After a pause, Huo Xuan added, “You stay here and remain on standby.”

Shang Ke nodded without objecting. A few dozen people against several hundred zombies meant the operation had to remain covert. As long as he avoided being injured and bleeding, he would already be making the greatest possible contribution to the team.

He hesitated for a while before finally asking, “About last night…”

“Don’t worry.” Huo Xuan stroked his hair. “I’ll take responsibility.”

Shang Ke was horrified: Take responsibility for what?!

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