Chapter 52: 3.11
System 555: "Those bastards! Pei! All pig teammates!"
The thunderstorm was suddenly followed by a heavy douse of rain. Feng Mian knew that the odds were stacked against her if she continued to strike lightning bolts arbitrarily. Thirty per cent of the time, she had missed.
And so she ran. The zombies trailing hot behind her.
One even got so close that it grabbed hold of her backpack and it ripped open at the seams. Feng Mian had to ditch the backpack. Charging the sole of her feet with electrical sparks, she raised her knees and pivoted around to deliver a roundhouse kick at the zombie's head. It faltered in a crouching position and became paralysed with static running through its' bones.
She had no time to mourn for the several snacks that had fallen out of their pockets and were trampled on before she had to continue running.
It was the first time System 555 knew that its host had known martial arts. It felt like it had just seen a preview of an action scene from a kung fu movie!
Feng Mian was multitasking. She was running not only to escape, but to also buy herself some time. The dark clouds above the sky condensed even more heavily and poured buckets of ice-cold water without stopping as Feng Mian continued aggravating the particles inside. The more she charged precipitation was, the more rain and thunder the clouds released.
It was hailing by the time she reached the top of a hill.
"Baobei, I need rubber boots."
555 didn't ask and immediately deducted points. "500 points deducted. 109 700 points left."
Her shoes were immediately replaced by rubber.
Downhill, a flood had already formed, the water level becoming parallel to the height of a car's tire. The faster batch of zombies had already started climbing uphill.
This time, she concentrated on the biggest thunderstorm cloud above her. Both her arms had risen to generate electricity from the cloud, pulling in every current charge from its surroundings until the lightning ball became big enough.
The conglomeration of zombies was closing in and she couldn't wait anymore. She only had one shot.
A gigantic sized bolt was released from the sky and struck the puddle of water around her. For a split second, the sky flashed with sparks of yellow and following the roaring of thunder was the incoherent eerie cries of the undead.
Three dozens of zombies simultaneously went into a seizure at once. Water conducts electricity and they were sizzled to burnt bits.
Feng Mian smelt barbequed flesh.
555 felt its code jumping around in excitement. "Daddy can't believe his eyes. You were so handsome back then oh Feng Mian!"
Feng Mian plopped down to her back, exhausted and high on adrenaline.
"What do we do now?" she asked 555.
"Do you want to walk back to Z City's base?"
"... No."
"It's going to be nighttime soon. The zombies will be more active then, you should replenish your energy and find a safe place to hide Xiao Mian."
Feng Mian stared at the retreating clouds as they revealed the darkening sky. System 555 was right, they have a tracking collar on her. If they wanted to find her, it would be an easy feat. She'll just bide her time until then.
She groaned suddenly. "I forgot the backpack's busted. There's nothing to eat."
"Then just make do with what's in front of you then."
Feng Mian was still reeling from the ecstasy of having her blood rush so quickly from her heart and her mind was bleary. She asked groggily, "What'd you mean?"
"The zombies' nuclei is a bit disgusting, but they are nutritious."
Feng Mian took two seconds to process 555's words. The upper half of her body lethargically sat up as she savoured those words over and over. "The zombies' nuclei? What's that?"
It couldn't be.
"The zombies' brains, duh. It's what you've been eating all this time in the lab. After people become zombified, their brains evolve into crystal nuclei. You didn't know?"
It's what you've been eating all this time...
It's what you've been eating all this...
It's what you've been eating all…
It's what you've been eating...
She didn't know ba.
Why didn't anyone tell her?
Her stomach churned and she felt the snacks coming up the passage from where they came in. Whatever she ate this morning and from the day before all came out as she barfed the content of her stomach empty. When there was nothing to puke out, she regurgitated water. She should have known that 555 was a good for nothing.
"Why didn't you say I was eating brains! You didn't think to tell me?!"
"No, not brains. Nuclei. They're not the same thing. How else do you expect ability users to evolve? By eating doughnuts?"
Feng Mian: 'You're the doughnut! Your entire family is a doughnut!'
Feng Mian felt the energy drain from her body entirely. She grew limp and her head hit the grass. What the eyes doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve.
System 555 felt partly guilty for not warning its host early on and consoled. "Don't be too inflexible about it Xiao Mian. In this world, there are a lot of times when humans even have to eat other humans to survive. It's just a zombie nucleus that doesn't taste of anything, just pretend that it's a lollipop ba."
555 persuaded further, "Just think about it, it's dangerous outside the base alone by yourself. You're only a second levelled ability user, it could be considered lucky that you've only encountered the lowest level zombies just now, but what about later? You need to stay alive until Ye Junli is able to find you, right?"
Feng Mian wavered but couldn't bring herself to crack open one of the zombies' heads and dig out a nucleus to eat. She decidedly grabbed the ankle of the zombie nearest to her and dragged him to a nearby shelter.
Before they left, she scribbled on the hill's dirt with a dried twig. In a chicken scratch like handwriting, she wrote:
'Ye Junli, your teammates are pig a**holes. Find me at Lane 9.'
An urban clothing store at lane number nine was her chosen place of shelter for the night. Feng Mian dissembled the clothing racks there and kept the metal rods in a pile.
The metal rods were charged to form an impenetrable electric field. Anyone other than Feng Mian who touches them would be fried into cinders.
In a corner where the body of an unmoving zombie laid, she stacked out the rods in a semicircle formation layer by layer. Using the toes on her feet to shift him, she coasted him aside to make space for herself and sat down sceptically.
She stared at him for a long while.
To eat... or not to eat?
Her stomach grumbled and there was an echo of beasts howling outside in the open space. Feng Mian could no longer afford to hesitate.
In the wilderness, it is survival of the fittest. And she, Feng Mian, is intent on surviving.
Her thumbs pressed to put pressure on the zombie's head. It was even more fragile than Feng Mian had initially thought and cracked without much effort asserted; like hollow porcelain.
There wasn't a lot of blood in the skull's cavity but they had been thick; dark red, almost black in colour. It was sticky, putrid and drizzled like poignant liquid from a leaking tap. A horrendous and nauseating sight to watch was what it was, but Feng Mian couldn't take her eyes off the trailing red. Like a car crash you know would happen and how bad the outcome would be, but you still watch the moment of impact anticipatingly. That split-second of car wreck drawled on for what seemed like an eternity.
The whiteness in Feng Mian's eyes was spiderwebbed in yellow and her pupils glowed an intense golden hue. She felt ravenous. A type of insatiable hunger that makes the mind fall into blankness.
The howling outside had quietened down noticeably.
The crystal nucleus was successfully extracted with one tug. The nucleus was coated with pungent strings of blood, Feng Mian had neither wiped it nor washed it before her salivating mouth had taken lead and bit at it edaciously.
System 555 watched from the side nervously and a bit frightened. "Um, host? Feng Mian… Were you that hungry?"
With every swallow, Feng Mian felt tantamount energy replenished, and there was a change in her body. Statics jumped wildly in zeal and she felt a force wanting to break open a barrier that concealed Pandora's box.
Her mind was groggy and she failed to register 555's words. She only wanted to eat. So eat she did.
That night, Feng Mian had directly advanced into a stage four ability user.
When an out of breath Ye Junli arrived at the shelter, the sight of 119 with her lips smothered in dried blood, her eyes glowing yellow and a half-eaten crystal nucleus in hand came into view.
He skidded into a halt at the door.
[SYSTEM PROMPT: Soul fluctuation detected. Awakening revived by 60%.]
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone