Chapter 7: The Nest Zombie
How to describe the feeling of moving with bone spikes…
It was quite strange.
At first, Lin Jiayao didn’t have much of a sense of what she looked like; she just felt her perspective was a bit shaky.
It wasn’t until she left the stairwell, passed through the fire door to the elevator lobby, and saw herself in the glass that she felt a wave of discomfort.
A bloody, mangled female head bobbed and weaved as the bone spikes moved.
Her long, dust-covered and dried hair, barely recognizable as once golden, dragged across the floor, leaving a trail as Lin Jiayao moved.
If her current self were thrown into a horror movie, it would surely be the stuff of nightmares.
Lin Jiayao paused slightly, manipulating her bone spikes to turn around and face the elevators.
The elevator doors were long gone, leaving only a dark elevator shaft.
Lin Jiayao didn’t dare to venture close to the shaft; if she slipped and fell, it wouldn’t end well.
She had to stay steady and collect more blood crystals to strengthen the zombie.
The more blood crystals absorbed, the more likely the zombie was to mutate and gain special abilities, and Lin Jiayao’s main body desperately needed these abilities.
Since she lacked the aptitude to become an Awakened, she could only become stronger through evolution.
“Click, click, click—”
Lin Jiayao didn’t linger in the elevator lobby, nor did she choose to explore the office area.
Not to mention that there weren’t many useful supplies in office areas, even if there were, Lin Jiayao couldn’t carry them out.
After all, she was just a head.
She returned to the stairwell and hopped down the stairs step by step.
As she descended, she felt more and more adapted to moving with this body, her crawling speed increasing significantly.
But after crawling down from the 35th floor to the 28th, she stopped.
Something was wrong with this building…
During the last four years of the apocalypse, Lin Jiayao had barely left her room.
But that didn’t mean she didn’t understand the outside world.
On the contrary, having an Awakened sister meant she knew more about the outside world than ordinary people.
Almost every time her sister returned from an exploration and rested, she would tell Lin Jiayao about what had happened.
This was also a way for Lin Jiayao to help her sister relieve stress.
This stairwell was too clean. Except for the 35th floor, there wasn’t a single corpse or zombie.
According to her sister’s descriptions, since the apocalypse broke out during working hours, almost every building became a zombie nest after the outbreak.
Not just the corridors, even the elevator shafts were likely filled with zombies that had accidentally fallen in.
Yet, apart from the pile of zombie corpses on the top floor, Lin Jiayao hadn’t seen a single zombie or corpse in the stairwell.
The piled-up zombies on the rooftop now seemed to have been deliberately placed there…
Deliberately placed?
As if to confirm Lin Jiayao’s suspicions, a loud “thump, thump, thump” suddenly came from below.
It sounded like a crowd rushing down the stairs for a meal in a cafeteria.
But this sound wasn’t descending; it was coming up.
If Lin Jiayao didn’t do anything, she would definitely encounter something.
“Click, click—”
Lin Jiayao didn’t dare stay where she was. She immediately waved her four bone spikes and crawled towards the elevator lobby on the 28th floor.
But the safety door on the 28th floor was closed. Even with all her might, Lin Jiayao couldn’t push it open.
Opening a door with just a head was a bit too much to ask.
Lin Jiayao turned and looked towards the stairwell.
Ugh…
Lin Jiayao couldn’t describe what she saw.
Even without a heart or stomach, a wave of nausea surged from deep within her.
It was a grotesque and gigantic mutated zombie.
It was about three meters tall, crawling on its stomach, its body covered with dense, spike-like legs, similar to Lin Jiayao’s bone spikes.
The sound of dozens of people running was likely the sound of it crawling.
Even more terrifying was its abdomen.
This zombie was crawling upside down, its bulging abdomen filled with something unknown.
It had characteristics of both a Lurker and an insect.
The worm-like zombie seemed to notice Lin Jiayao huddled in the corner. It stopped and tilted its head.
It seemed puzzled as to how this head had gotten here on its own.
But the zombie’s intelligence clearly couldn’t support further thought. Almost without hesitation, it opened its four-lobed mouth, lacking sharp teeth, and swallowed Lin Jiayao whole.
After swallowing Lin Jiayao, it quickly crawled upwards again.
It didn’t stop until it reached the stairwell on the 35th floor, where it slowly opened its mouth.
“Gurgle—Gurgle—”
Clumps of bloody water mixed with corpses and zombies were vomited onto the pile of corpses, including a head-only zombie with its eyes closed.
It vomited out more than ten corpses. Only after its bulging abdomen deflated did the worm-like zombie turn itself over and crawl downstairs at an even faster speed than before.
Lying in the pool of blood, Lin Jiayao was stunned.
She finally understood why the system had given her three hours to descend a little over a hundred meters of stairs.
Because this building was the nest of that terrifying zombie.
And the 35th floor was where it stored its “food.”
Lin Jiayao didn’t think her four small bone spikes could outrun its rows of waving bone legs.
“It’s over… I can’t go down…”
Lin Jiayao sighed inwardly.
Half an hour had passed, and she was back where she started, leaving her at a loss.
Just as Lin Jiayao was feeling desperate, a glittering crystal in the pool of blood caught her eye.
Among the corpses brought by the monster, there were mutated zombies and blood crystals that were still precipitating!
For some reason, the terrifying worm zombie hadn’t chosen to digest these blood crystals on the spot.
Perhaps for zombies, blood crystals weren’t something that could be consumed at any time?
Regardless of the zombie’s reasoning, Lin Jiayao couldn’t ignore the blood crystals in front of her.
Even if she couldn’t escape after consuming them, as long as she evolved new abilities, she would gain something.
Lin Jiayao started moving on all fours, quickly crawling among the pile of corpses.
Soon, she had collected a thumb-sized chunk of blood crystals, almost 40g.
She had never seen so many blood crystals before her eyes.
The blood crystals, now fused together, emitted a demonic blood-red glow.
Not wanting to waste any time, Lin Jiayao bit down on the blood crystals. The shattered fragments melted into her skin, and for the first time, she felt pain in her zombie body.
It felt like being burned by flames. She felt flesh falling off her face and new things forming.
The 40g of blood crystals seemed to be bringing her a transformative evolution…
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