Chapter 49

If there hadn't been this viral storm, after a few more years of social ups and downs, Lu Tao should have had enough ways to deal with this woman.

Now... although he is fearless in the face of zombies, with enough energy and strength, he can only be timid and hesitant in front of a woman who doesn't know what "shame" is.

"Move away from the door, let me in!"

"Hey! What are you standing there for?"

"...You, a big man, how can you turn your back on me so quickly? What, you want to pretend you don't know me after we've been together? Do you think I won't shout it out on the microphone, letting everyone know what you've done?"

Li Jie was clearly not new to such situations.

She knew very well the weakness of young men like Lu Tao, who have thin skins. So, she began to act crazy, shouting and screaming, stomping the ground with her high heels, and fiercely pounding the door like a泼妇. The loud noise disturbed the other residents on the floor. Many people came out, standing at the stairwell, watching her with curiosity, their gazes filled with confusion, contempt, ridicule, and mockery...

Lu Tao's eyes trembled slightly, feeling his mouth twitching, and his body swaying uncontrollably.

He wanted to curse and hit her without restraint, but for some reason, he couldn't open his mouth or extend his hand.

"Is it just you, a small man, who wants to have your way with me and then deny it? Where in this world are there such good things?"

Li Jie became even more frenzied. She kept swaying her hips, not caring about her exposed chest, using exaggerated movements and sharp, biting words to attract more attention. A few people standing at the stairwell also "hehe" laughed strangely. They whispered among themselves, but no one came to stop her, all watching the commotion from the side.

Suddenly, Lu Tao felt a surge of blood rush to his head.

He rushed into the room in a few steps, took out the pot hidden on the balcony, and poured it over the head of the woman who was still standing at the door, spewing out curses. Instantly, scalding porridge splashed all over the woman's body, the thin, sheer nightgown sticking to her skin like a second layer. Her hair was covered with rice grains and vegetable leaves, and her face was marked with sticky, hot streaks. The still warm porridge poured over her head, scalding her, making her scream and jump around like a fish that had just fallen into a pot of oil, her voice hoarse and her feet stomping on the ground.

"You want to eat, right? Here, take it! All of it—"

Lu Tao roared, throwing the empty pot out of the door with great force. He panted heavily, his usually pale face turning an abnormal red. His brain was dominated by intense anger, forcing him to solve the problem in the most violent way possible.

"Clang—"

The pot rolled down the stairs, making a sharp, metallic sound.

Lu Tao suddenly felt an unprecedented sense of relief. He was puzzled—why had he been so afraid of this woman before?

She couldn't fight him, and with zombies everywhere outside, she would die if she went out, living like a dog dependent on others. Yet, she still put on such a show in front of him... Even if she kept knocking on the door, what loss would it be to him? In a world where life and death are at stake, what does face matter?

Many questions he had never thought about before now had answers in his mind. His eyes turned redder, and his gaze on the woman became more brutal. He really wanted to rush out and beat her up, but he couldn't cross the line of his conscience, so he spat out a thick wad of phlegm and slammed the door shut with a "bang."

The crowd watching burst into laughter.

Li Jie was still screaming.

Various sarcastic words stabbed at her, making her truly feel the fear and shame of being completely exposed. The thin nightgown and thong were no longer the best props to attract men's eyes but were now ropes binding the word "lewd" to her body. Her high heels were twisted, her black stockings torn, and her shoulders and face covered in red, blistered burns. Her wet hair smelled of food, but she couldn't eat it. Her neck and arms were greasy and sticky... Hmm! That seemed to be the smell of lard.

The woman no longer dared to make a fuss as usual. She covered her chest and face, hurriedly pushing through the crowd and rushing to her room as fast as she could. Anger and shame quickly merged into an intense desire for revenge, and she trembled, leaving a final, sharp, and bold remark.

"Little bastard Lu, you, you wait for me!"

Just like the beaten and fleeing wolf in a cartoon.

...

Before the first rain of autumn, the main buildings of the outdoor camp were finally completed.

From the professional engineer Dong Guoping's perspective, the actual workload was not large. It included four six-story triangular residential buildings, a two-kilometer-long irregular wall, and four sixty-meter-high watchtowers.

These buildings used three to five times more steel than similar projects, and high-grade cement made the concrete extremely solid. With a foundation reaching dozens of meters deep... Dong Guoping believed that even a 105mm shell hitting directly would not make the thick wall shake, at most just breaking off the surface layer of cement and producing some insignificant debris.

To test whether the existing wall really had a blocking effect, last week, Dong Guoping and the workers threw a few zombies at the base of the wall. These creatures, emitting a foul odor, looked very hungry. They opened their eyes wide, stretched out their arms, and tried to grab the people standing on top of the wall. Watching from a distance of dozens of meters, it felt like watching tigers in a zoo from behind a cage.

The wall was very smooth, and the zombies tried every way to climb it. They bit the hard cement with their teeth, scratched the wall with their fingertips. The gray wall quickly gained a series of dark red streaks, as well as clear claw and tooth marks. These mindless, flesh-eating creatures didn't think to stack stones or use wooden objects as ladders. They just stood at the base of the wall, reaching up, as if doing so could pull the people on top down and eat their brains.

That day, the workers were very happy.

They teased the zombies in various ways—some threw small stones into the zombies' open mouths; some threw ropes down for the zombies to grab, then played tug-of-war with several people; others pointed at the zombies and cursed them with the most vicious and dirty words... Chen Erzhu even took off his pants and urinated on them. The zombies were drenched and became even more foul-smelling.

To be honest, Dong Guoping didn't quite believe what Su Hao said about "zombies giving birth."

He respected the young man who had saved him from a dire situation and was willing to follow his orders and continue leading the team in construction.

He just found it absurd.

So, he specifically caught a few zombies to study.

...

The underground oil tank at the No. 1 gas station was already full. In the originally empty courtyard, three heavy oil tankers, also full of oil, were parked. These vehicles were mainly for emergency situations or when the camp urgently needed fuel.

Su Hao was meticulous, always leaving a backup plan, and having more options in times of crisis.

Dong Guoping glanced at the distant, now-closed wall, gave a few instructions to the workers responsible for pouring concrete, turned around, and walked to a newly built small room behind the gas station office.

It was a prison cell, very small, about twenty square meters.

He pushed the door open, walked in, and closed it. Sunlight streamed in from a window about three meters above the ground, illuminating the dark room and allowing Dong Guoping to see the two zombies tied to the concrete pillars in the corner with iron chains.

These were the trophies he and the workers had captured near the gas station yesterday afternoon.

At the time, there were five zombies. Three were killed on the spot after extracting the fungal hormones and silver bones, and the remaining two were kept by Dong Guoping and locked in the cell.

The zombies were tightly bound. Their hands were tied behind their backs, and their thighs, chests, and abdomens were secured with wire or electrical cables. The workers even tied a sailor's knot behind their necks, which was difficult to untie and tightened with pulling. Zombies, unlike humans, don't need oxygen and thus wouldn't suffocate to death.

Dong Guoping stared at the two zombies in front of him.

One male and one female. From the remaining clothes, the male was about forty to fifty years old, with a bald forehead and pants torn by shrubs and rocks. The female wore a strapless top and a pleated skirt, likely younger. The side of her skirt was torn, exposing a cotton undergarment that had been soaked in decay and turned black. Their virus-eroded faces were mottled and terrifying, like they had been burned with sulfuric acid. Seeing Dong Guoping enter, the two zombies immediately became agitated. They stretched their heads forward, writhing to break free, and opened their mouths wide, emitting a "huhuhu" sound filled with intense hunger.

Dong Guoping's expression was calm. He walked to the wooden table against the wall, opened the drawer, and took out a sharp knife. Then, he approached the male zombie, who was making terrifying sounds but couldn't move, and focused his gaze on the left side of the male zombie.

"Did you... really used to be human?"

He shook his head sadly, using the tip of the knife to lift the zombie's clothes and tear them along the shoulders, exposing the brown skin tightly wrapped around the ribs.

Dong Guoping's knife continued downward, cutting through the zombie's belt and pants... When the tattered pants lost their grip and loosely fell from the zombie's thin waist, his pupils suddenly narrowed, and his face contorted, "hehehe" with a low, strange laugh.

Due to a long time without eating, the zombie's fat had been severely depleted.

It was very thin, with ribs and pelvis prominently protruding from under the muscles and skin, like a skeleton covered in a thin layer of skin. The male organ, a symbol of masculinity, hung limp, shriveled into a small, black object the size of a walnut. If not for his intimate knowledge of his own body, Dong Guoping probably wouldn't have associated the word "organ" with that mass of dirty, smelly decay.

He put on gloves and a mask, wiped his glasses, and squatted down, about twenty centimeters from the zombie's lower body, focusing intently on the mass.

Dong Guoping gently prodded it with the tip of the knife, feeling a brittle texture. The decaying organ quickly fell off, leaving a slightly red, two to three centimeter protrusion. It was somewhat transparent, resembling soft cartilage in an animal's body.

The decaying flesh on the ground immediately attracted two ants that had been wandering nearby.

They crawled over, tapping the sticky, decaying flesh with their antennae, seemingly studying whether it was edible.

A strong sense of nausea instantly filled Dong Guoping's mind. He suppressed the urge to vomit, inserted the knife into the zombie's chest, and cut a straight line from the top to the bottom. This action was not as cautious as a doctor's, but more brutal than a butcher's. As the abdominal skin split open, a large mass of black-brown organs immediately slid out. The slimy intestines were interspersed with kidneys, and the deformed